a statement denouncing mob violence. But no one was ever brought to
justice, though the names of the ringleaders were ascertained. No
committee of inquiry was sent from Washington. In fact, the people of
Georgia were allowed thus to smirch the glorious flag of the republic
and to lower the opinion of America in every capital of the world;
for the facts of this story have been printed in circular form and
distributed widely. It is undoubtedly a remarkable example of lynching.
It seems rather strange that lynching crowds allow themselves to be
photographed. Men and women and children in hundreds are to be seen
in horrible pictures. One sees the summer mob all in straw hats, the
men without coats or waistcoats, the women in white blouses, all
eager, some mirthful, some facetious. You can upon occasion buy these
photographs as picture postcards. The people are neither ashamed nor
afraid.
Northern Negroes go down to investigate lynchings, buy these
photographs, bring them back to safe New York, and then print them off
in circulars with details of the whole affair. Southern newspapers,
though reticent, cannot forego giving descriptions of lynchings,
everyone is so much interested in them. Newspaper reports are also
reprinted. There is no need to resort to hearsay in telling of the
mob murders of the South. They are heavily documented and absolutely
authenticated. The United States Government cannot, for instance,
prosecute such a Negro association as the N. A. A. C. P. for the
pamphlets it issues on lynchings, because it does no more than publish
facts which have been publicly authenticated. If prosecuted, worse
details would see light. Therefore, these pamphlets go forth.
The first thing they do is tell the colored people as a whole what has
been happening. The Negroes of Alabama and Tennessee hear what has been
happening in Georgia; the Negroes of Florida and Louisiana hear what
has taken place in Arkansas and Texas. Above all, the educated Northern
Negroes know of it. Advanced papers such as the _Crisis_, the Chicago
_Defender_, and the _Negro Messenger_ are giving the Negro people as
a whole a new consciousness. First of all in Christianity in the days
of slavery and in their melancholy plantation music they obtained a
collective race consciousness. And now, through persecution on the one
hand and newspapers on the other they are strengthening and fulfilling
that consciousness. Destiny is being shaped in this race, and white men
are the instruments who are shaping it. May it not emerge eventually as
a sword, the sword of the wrath of the Lord.
I met many Whites who boasted of having taken part in a lynching, and I
have met those who possessed gruesome mementoes in the shape of charred
bones and gray, dry, Negro skin. I said they were fools. Actually to
have the signs upon them! Truly they were in the state of mind in which
most men seem to be when fate is going to overtake them. They were
proud of their “quick way with niggers,” they justified it, they felt
the wisdom of lynching could never be disproved. The matter to them
was not worth arguing. They assumed that anyone who wished to argue
the point must have sympathy with the “niggers,” and that was enough
for them. It never occurred to them that one who doubted the wisdom of
lynching might be actuated by sympathy or at least apprehensive for
them.
I felt sorry for the white women of the South; there will some day be
a terrible reckoning against them. Their honor and safety are being
made the pretext for terrible brutality and cruelty. Revenge, when
it gains its opportunity, will therefore wreak itself upon the white
woman most. Because in the name of the white woman they justify burning
Negroes at the stake to-day, white women may be burned by black mobs by
and by. There is no doubt that almost any insurrection of Negroes could
ultimately be put down by force, and that it would be very bad for the
Negroes and for their cause, but before it could be put down what might
happen? And should it synchronize with revolutionary disturbances among
the Whites themselves, or with a foreign war?
I do not believe that there are real conspiracies of Negroes. But
there is growing disaffection. The colored people are a friendly,
easy-going, fond-to-foolish folk by nature. But their affection and
devotion have been roughly refused. It has almost disappeared. Now we
have the phenomenon of Negro mothers telling their little children
of the terrible things done by the white folk, and every Negro child
is learning that the white man is his enemy. Every lynching, every
_auto-da-fé_ is secreting hate and the need for revenge in the Negro
masses. Because the Negroes are weak and helpless and unorganized
to-day, illiterate often, stupid and unbalanced often, clownish and
funny and unreliable, white folk think that it will always be so.
But they are wrong. While the industrialized masses of the Whites are
certainly degenerating, the masses of the Negroes are certainly rising.
Trouble is bound to arise and retribution terrible. What the lowbrows
of the South are teaching the Negro he will be found to have learned,
and as Shylock said about revenge—it will go hard but he betters the
instruction.
It may be thought that this is written with too much emphasis, and that
this statement on the lynchings is too unmerciful to the white South.
But I believe it is absolutely necessary. There are those who would be
ready to do again the injustice which was done to the Whites in the
South after the Civil War. When discussing these matters in the North
I have been horror-struck by the opinions I have heard expressed. This
is written in no partisan spirit, and I believe those who would rejoice
in the destruction or punishment of the Southern white population are
utterly wrong in heart. Punishment and revenge will only perpetuate the
strife. But an _éclaircissement_, a flood of daylight on these matters,
a thorough shaking of these stupid people down below the line—a
warning in such terrible terms as I have made, might save Black and
White for the religion of love and a joy in God’s creatures.
It may come from a stranger, a complete outsider, with more force than
from an American. I have, however, found a Southerner who condemned
Georgia, the Roman Catholic Bishop, Benjamin J. Keiley, who gave out a
very serious warning in Savannah on the 2nd of November of last year.
He said:
“It is hardly necessary to state that I am a Southerner.... I warmly
love the South; and her story, her traditions, and her ideals are
very dear to me.... But I fully recognize the absolute justice of one
charge which is made against her, and I look with grave apprehension
to the future, for no people that disregards justice can ever have the
blessing of God, and we are guilty of great injustice to the Negro. The
Negro was brought here against his will; he is here and he will remain
here, and he is not treated with justice by us; nay, I will say that he
is often not treated with ordinary humanity.
“Look at the statistics in our own State. Georgia stands first in the
list of States in the matter of lynching. Has there ever been a man
punished in this State for lynching a Negro?
“Lynching is murder, nothing else.
“Besides, is it not the fact that fair and impartial justice is not
meted out to white and colored men alike? The courts of this State
either set the example, or follow the example set them, and they make
a great distinction between the white and the black criminal brought
before them. The latter as a rule gets the full limit of the law. Do
you ever hear of a street difficulty in which a Negro and a white man
were involved which was brought before a judge, in which, no matter
what were the real facts of the case, the Negro did not get the worst
of it?
“Georgians boast of being a Christian people, and this year they are
putting their hands into their pockets to raise millions to bring the
light of Christianity, as understood by them, to some less favored
peoples in Europe.
“I would like to know if it is entirely compatible with Christian
morality to treat the Negro as he is treated here? My belief is that
the Negro and the white man were redeemed by the blood of Christ shed
on the cross of Calvary, and that the Christian religion absolutely
condemns injustice to anyone and forbids the taking of life.
“To me the murder of a Negro is as much murder as the killing of a
white man, and in each case Christian civilization demands that the
punishment of the crime should rest in the hands of the lawfully
constituted authorities.
“I have lived to see in Georgia an appeal made to the highest authority
in the State for protection of the lives of colored men, women, and
children, answered by the statement that the Negro should not commit
crimes! The people of Georgia vest in certain officials the execution
of justice. Yet no lyncher has ever been punished here, and I regret
to state that public sentiment seems to justify the conduct of the
officials.
“Only a short time ago I was reading the strange news of the race
riots in the Northern and Western cities. Thank God, we have had none
of these riots in the South. Do you know the reason? The only reason is
the forbearance of the Negro. He has been treated with gross injustice;
he has not retaliated. In all these cases gross disregard for law
and order are either the cause or the direct consequence of those
disturbances.
“Are there not numbers of honest, law-abiding citizens of Georgia who
know that I am telling God’s truth, and who will protest against this
injustice to the Negro? Is there not a just and fearless man on the
bench in this State who will have the courage to announce that there
shall be no difference in his court between the white man and the
colored man?
“Injustice and disregard of law and the lawful conduct of affairs are
the sure forerunners of anarchy and the loss of our liberty, and we are
drifting in that direction.
“The Negro will not stand asking for justice from Georgia laws or
Georgia courts. He has been patient, and I hope he will remain so, but
he well knows where the remedy lies, and he will very soon be found
knocking at the door of the Federal Congress, asking protection. And
Congress will hear him.
“If appeals to right, justice, to Christian morality, do not avail to
put a stop to this injustice to the Negro and protect him against the
murderous lynchers, then Georgia will see Federal bayonets giving him
protection.”
Such a voice is very rare. The warning is the more worth heeding.
X
EXODUS
The Negro’s refrain, “Let My People Go,” continues to have a strong
emotional appeal. Though devoted to the Southland in an intense,
sentimental way, for the Negro has an infinitely pathetic love of home,
he has come sorrowfully to the conclusion—_he must go away from here_.
It is strange, because homesickness is almost a mania with the Negro.
He relates himself to the white master’s house where he works, to the
rude cabin where his family live, to his church, to the “home niggers,”
in an extravagant pathological way which has nothing to do with
gratitude. Perhaps it is because as a people the slaves were uprooted
out of a home in Africa, and they have a haunting melancholy in the
hidden depths of their souls. I believe their childish idealization
of heaven in their hymns is fundamentally a sort of homesickness. The
Negro is not a natural nomad or vagrant like the Russian, the Jew, the
Tartar. He must have been as geographically fixed in his native haunts
in Africa. Judge, then, how great a disturbance must take place before
the Negro en masse would be ready to emigrate. Yet so it is to-day.
With consternation in their aspect, whole families, whole communities,
are waiting—to go North. And hundreds of thousands of them are on the
move. Of course it is not a complete change of scene. The North has its
Negro masses too. One rather loses sight of them among the Whites, but
they are there. And they do not cease to invite their unhappy brothers
and sisters down South to throw up everything and come North.
While it is commonly said that the Negro cannot stand the colder
climate of the North, there is, however, not much evidence to that
effect. As their orators are proud to declaim—the only civilized man
to accompany Peary to the actual North Pole was his trusted servant,
Matt Henson, a Negro. To some delicate Negroes, no doubt, a severe
climate would be fatal, but that is true for Whites as well as Negroes.
On the whole, the Northern air seems to be good for the Negro if he
can stand it. The Negroes of New York and Chicago and Boston, and the
Canadian Negroes, are firmer in flesh and in will than those who live
in the South. And they are certainly more energetic. They yield more
hope for the race as a whole than do the others. Perhaps one ought to
discount this fact in the light of the extra prosperity and happiness
of the Northern Negroes. There is nothing that will undermine the
constitution more than terror and nervous depression. Security is the
real Negro ozone.
There has been during the last three years a steady migration of
Negroes northward. This has been primarily due to the stoppage of
foreign immigration and the consequent labor shortage in the districts
which depended on the immigrant. The reasons why the Negro was ready to
leave his Southern habitat have been summarized in the U. S. Department
of Labor Report:[5]
“General dissatisfaction with conditions, ravages of boll weevil,
floods, change of crop system, low wages, poor houses on plantations,
poor school facilities, unsatisfactory crop settlements, rough
treatment, cruelty of the law officers, unfairness in courts, lynching,
desire for travel, labor agents, the Negro press, letters from friends
in the North, and, finally, advice of white friends in the South where
crops had failed.”
It is impossible to calculate the numbers with any likelihood of
accuracy. Even the census of 1920 will hardly indicate what has taken
place—for no one can say what allowance ought to be made for natural
increase in the last ten years. But the insurance companies reckon that
between May, 1916, and September, 1917, between thirty-five and forty
thousand Negroes left Georgia. Perhaps the net loss to the South has
been a quarter of a million, the majority young, single men and women.
Some certainly put the figure higher. The movement has slowed down,
owing to the after-the-war stagnancy in trade, the very bad housing
conditions in the North, the race riot in Chicago, and other retarding
influences. With a revival of trade it may go on more rapidly.
Certainly whenever a countryside in the South is visited by some
special act of violence there is a tendency for the colored population
to flee. Unfortunately, the lot of migrants of the type of Negroes is
always a hard one. It is difficult to settle down in a new community.
Irregular habits bring disease. Provincial dullness makes it difficult
to find a job or to evade sharpers. Unfortunately, also, Negroes are
not by nature altruistic, not clannish like the Jews. They do not help
one another in distress as much as poor Whites do. So many who flee
northward inevitably come to grief.
It is urged in the South that the North is not entirely appreciative of
the influx of so many Negroes. But, on the other hand, it is alleged
that the large Northern companies sent their agents into every State
in the South seeking labor. It was certainly useful to the companies.
And although the loose and nondescript unemployed immigrants were
guilty of a number of crimes, it is generally held that those who
found employment proved very steady and reliable. The Negro proved a
safe man in the munition factory, and it was found he could do a white
man’s job in a mine and in the steel works. The employers of labor were
well pleased. But there was a section of the community that was not
pleased, and that was the working class—the poor Whites once more, who
saw in Negro migration an influx of non-union labor, depressing wages,
and lowering the standard of living. The workingmen speedily quarreled
with the Negro—seeing in him the oft encountered strike breaker.
Those who have gone through the Negro district of Chicago, with its
filthy, ramshackle frame buildings occupied by Negro families, a family
to a room, know how appalling is the aspect of the Negro there. In
the old days the white population took it as a matter of course, as
they did so many other things in this evil industrial conglomeration
so aptly called the _Jungle_. But too much competition and too many
unfamiliar, gloomy Negro faces on the streets caused the nervous shock
which accounted for the Chicago riots, begun strangely enough not by
a Negro attack, but by a white youth knocking a Negro boy off a raft
on the lake and drowning him. The three days’ free fight which ensued
was one of the most disillusioning episodes in the history of Northern
friendship for the Negro.
Nevertheless, Negro leaders still cry “Come North!”
* * * * *
There have always been those who thought that the Negro problem could
be solved by encouraging migration. The exodus to the North was hailed
as a partial liquidation of the Southern trouble. Doubtless an even
distribution of Negroes over the whole of the country would put them
in the desired minority as regards Whites. Outnumbered by ten to one,
they would never seem to threaten to grasp electoral control or be in
a position to use physical force with a chance of success. But these
are highly theoretical suppositions. Even at the present great rate
of exodus it would take hundreds of years to even them out, and there
is no reason to think that the emigrants would distribute themselves
easily. They would probably crowd more and more into the large cities
like Chicago and Pittsburgh, and be as much involved in evil conditions
there as they were in the South.
Another popular misconception is that it is possible to find a home
for the Negro in Africa, and get rid of him that way. Men say airily,
“Pack them all off to Liberia,” as they used to say, “Send the Jews
back to Palestine.” It is not a practical proposal. Abraham Lincoln
held this view, and he opened negotiations with foreign governments in
order to find suitable territory for Negro colonization, but he gave
up the idea when General Butler, who investigated the matter for him,
convinced him that the Negro birth rate was greater than any possible
rate of transport.
What was true in 1865 ought to be more obvious to-day. It is a physical
impossibility to transport those twelve millions and their progeny to
Africa. If a large instalment were taken, would they not perish from
starvation and disease? The eyes of the world would be on the United
States doing such a thing, and they would be involved in a terrible
scandal.
But, indeed, the first to cry out “Give us back our niggers” would be
the South; for her whole prosperity has a foundation of Negro labor.
Take away the black population, and the white farmers, and traders,
and financiers would be so impoverished that they also would want to
emigrate to Africa.
In a material way would not the whole continent of America suffer
greatly? You cannot withdraw twelve million from the laboring class
and go on as before. It is a ridiculous solution. The only reason for
giving it place in serious criticism is that so many people nurse the
delusion that the problem can be solved by deportation. It stands
in the way when people would otherwise face the facts honestly—our
forefathers introduced the Negro into our midst, he is here to stay,
and we have to find out what is best for him and best for the White,
taking the facts as they are.
One good purpose has, however, been served by the encouragement of
Negro emigration back to Africa. It has kept the Negro in touch
with his original home. It has broadened the Negro’s outlook and
started a Negro Zionism—a sentiment for Africa. The Negro loves
large conceptions—the universal tempts his mind as it tempts that of
the Slav. In short, Liberianism has possessed the Negro of a world
movement.
XI
IN NORTH FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS
Lynching is more associated with the cotton-growing districts than
with others. It is not a fact that the further south you go the more
violent the temper of the people. Southeastern Georgia, where the main
business is lumbering and rice growing, has a better record than the
cotton-growing interior. The cotton planters are aware of this, and
it is not uncommon to curse the cotton and wish they could turn to
something else. Cotton is not a popular industry. In the old days it
bound slavery upon planter and Negro—for cotton necessitates cheap
labor—and now it keeps the Negro down and perpetuates an ungenerous
type of life.
I worked down the Atlantic coast to Brunswick and Jacksonville,
preparing in mind for some sort of joyful surprise when I should enter
Florida. Brunswick is one of the oldest ports in Georgia. As far as
records go, it has never been disgraced by a lynching. Its background
of industry is chiefly timber, and the eye looks in vain for a cotton
bale or a cotton blossom. It is a peaceful little city, all sand and
low palm and scrub, with innumerable grasshoppers and butterflies even
in December. An open-streeted port with placid, happy Negroes and no
race movement of any kind.
At Jacksonville one experiences a complete change of air. It is the
climate of Florida, and the difference between cotton and fruit. The
difference also between much sombre business and some gilded pleasure.
When the rich from the North step out of their cars in Florida and take
their ease at Palm Beach, they naturally would not care to be mixed up
in the South’s pet sport. Lynchings are bad business in Florida, for
if the things occurred there that take place in the neighboring State
of Georgia it would certainly frighten away many polite and wealthy
visitors. As regards the white woman also, the Floridians do not so
assiduously libel the Negro as do the Georgians. Ladies need not be
afraid to visit the watering places; the colored man is said to have
his passions well under control. Most of the trouble that does occur is
in more obscure places, and more in northern than in southern Florida.
Jacksonville is a large port with a population bordering on a hundred
thousand. Naturally, there are masses of poor as well as numbers
of rich. There is employment for a great quantity of Negro labor,
and on the streets one may observe the characteristics of a large
maritime city. What strikes an Englishman visiting these Atlantic
ports—Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah, Jacksonville, when compared
with Hull, Cardiff, Liverpool, London Docks, etc.—is the absence
of that somewhat agitating phenomenon of black dock laborers walking
out with poor white girls. You may see them any evening in England.
As a natural and instinctive thing, most Whites resent it, and street
fights in England are the not uncommon result. In America, walking out
with Negroes either innocently or otherwise is impossible. Riots and
lynchings do not arise from that reason, but from alleged individual
assaults upon white women. It should be remarked that womanhood
in America is _practically_ idealized. The public as a whole is
disinclined to tolerate a woman smoking or drinking, or bathing in
inadequate attire, or even “spooning.” It would not occur to a poor
white factory girl as even possible to walk out with a Negro. Her moral
self-esteem is higher than that of her English sister. The girls who
are seen walking out with Negroes in London belong more often to a
class which is economically or morally submerged.