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YOUR NEGRO NEIGHBOR
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: JOANNA P. MOORE]
YOUR
NEGRO NEIGHBOR
BY
BENJAMIN BRAWLEY
Author of "A Short History of the American
Negro," "The Negro in Literature
and Art," etc.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1918.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I YOUR NEGRO NEIGHBOR 1
II THE NEGRO IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL REVIEW 10
III THE NEGRO AS AN INDUSTRIAL FACTOR 33
IV LYNCHING 41
V ASPECTS OF NEGRO EDUCATION 48
VI A GREAT MISSIONARY: JOANNA P. MOORE 61
VII SOME CRITICS AND THEIR FALLACIES 73
VIII THE PROMISE OF THE NEGRO 84
IX A PLEA FOR A MORALIST 91
YOUR NEGRO NEIGHBOR
I
YOUR NEGRO NEIGHBOR
_To the People of the United States of America_,
CITIZENS AND PATRIOTS:
Our country is still in the midst of the greatest war in the history
of mankind. Already our sons and brothers have died in Europe. While
the sacrifice is great, and each day comes home more closely to us,
there must be no ceasing of the conflict until victory is assured. The
principles of Christ must prevail, and democracy must be given some
chance in the world. Because we believe this, because we love our
country, because we wish to see our country truly noble and great, I
am once more asking your attention to the vital subject of the place
of the Negro in our American life.
We feel that we may not unreasonably ask a hearing at this time. In
the war now raging we have fully done our part, if indeed any
American could venture to say that he has done his part. Whether as
officers or stevedores our men have borne their share of the brunt of
battle. Let it not be supposed that many of them did not enter the
conflict with misgiving. They could not readily forget that under our
country's flag crimes unspeakable had been committed against them.
They could not help remembering that even as they went forth to fight,
their sisters and their wives did not have the full protection of the
law. They still had faith, however, in the great heart of the American
people; and they could not believe that when the nation's finest
manhood was being given for the principles of democracy and
Christianity, deliberate injustice would indefinitely be tolerated.
We remember of course at this time that public sentiment with
reference to the Negro has undergone a great change within fifty
years. Immediately after the Civil War there was a spirit, in the
North at least, to give him a helping hand, though even here he was
not always wanted as a laborer. In a period when feeling ran high
there was a tendency to base his rights on the fundamental principles
of the republic. Recently, however, in the stress of commercialism,
the status of the Negro, along with many other grave moral questions,
has been much in the background. Suddenly the war burst upon us and
gave us a new era of soul-questioning.
The period of industrialism was formally signalized by one of the most
telling speeches ever delivered in this or any other country, all the
more effective because the orator was a high-minded, patriotic
gentleman. In 1886 Henry W. Grady addressed the New England Club in
New York on "The New South." The two preceding decades had been an era
of great scandal in the public life of the United States. Grady spoke
to practical men, and he knew his ground. He asked his listeners to
bring their "full faith in American fairness and frankness to
judgment" upon what he had to say. He pictured in brilliant language
the Confederate soldier, "ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted," who
wended his way homeward to find his house in ruins and his farms
devastated. He spoke kindly also of the Negro: "Whenever he struck a
blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he
raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck
off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges."
But Grady also implied that the Negro had already received too much
attention and sympathy from the North. Said he: "To liberty and
enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the Negro. The rest must be
left to conscience and common sense." Hence he asked that the South be
left alone in the handling of its grave problem. The North took him at
his word. Result: Disfranchisement, segregation, and a lynching record
that leaves us very little to say about the Turk in Armenia.
To-day the Negro daily suffers such indignities as make the very words
Liberty and Democracy a travesty. If he rides in a trolley-car in the
South he is assigned a few rear seats. If his part of the car is
crowded and seats near the front are vacant, he must still stand. If
he takes a train he must ride in a dirty half-coach, the other half
being the baggage car; and he enters the railway station by a
side-door. In all the cities, even some of the largest, there is a
persistent endeavor to restrict his residence to some unfavorable part
of the town; witness the segregation struggles in Atlanta, St. Louis,
and Baltimore. Places of refinement and refreshment, libraries, parks,
etc., are regularly closed to him. If Negro children go to school they
stand only a fraction of a chance of getting an education--or a seat.
In Massachusetts, of the children from six to fourteen years of age,
93 per cent. are in school. In Louisiana 68.4 per cent. of the white
children are in school and 37.4 per cent. of the Negro children. In
Birmingham there is a public high school to which Negro students have
to pay to go; in all Georgia there is no public high school for
Negroes at all. Not long ago a colored man of excellent character and
standing boarded a train between Birmingham and Chattanooga,
accompanying his sister. Some white men invaded the coach and
proceeded to smoke. The colored man protested to the officials, and
forthwith both he and his sister received a beating. Such are the
incidents that drive the iron into the Negro's soul. We submit that
they are altogether unjust and entirely at variance with the
principles for which we are at war.
Not only at home, however, do we have to consider the problem. The war
has brought us as never before face to face with the whole foreign
policy of the United States, especially as regards the mixed races and
colored peoples with whom the National Government has to deal. With
one country after another the question is raised whether, under her
imperialistic policy and the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has
acted with the honor and the diplomatic courtesy that the cases
demanded. Already, as is well known, in spite of repeated professions
of friendship, the whole of South America views the great country at
the North with suspicion; and the ultimate reason for the feeling is
that in South America the color line is a vanishing quantity, whereas
in the United States it is a very definite reality. Chile has not
forgotten the gratuitous insults of 1891, nor Brazil our arrogance in
1893. The conscience of the nation is not yet satisfied that we did
not for selfish reasons in 1898 force war upon a weaker nation; and
the treatment of Colombia in the matter of the Panama Canal Zone was
so infamous that ten years afterwards the United States was still
wondering just what sum of money would hush the mouths of the
Colombian people. In Santo Domingo we have taken away from the people
the right to handle their own money; and two years ago in Hayti,
ostensibly for the suppression of a revolution, the country was
seized, American officers installed, and a Southern white man
appointed minister to the country, by tradition one especially jealous
of its integrity as a nation. More recently we have purchased St.
Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, on which islands, let us remember,
the population is made up almost entirely of Negroes. In this
connection we recall the Indian, remembering that Osceola was captured
under a flag of truce. It is the cold, hard truth that the treatment
by the United States of all colored or mixed races has been one marked
by arrogance, injustice, and lack of honor. Said L.C. Wilson, in
writing from Porto Rico to the _American Missionary_: "When the
Americans came to the island sixteen years ago there was very little
color line, but now it is well established. It has probably been
hastened by the presence of many officials from the Southern States.
Even the Y.M.C.A. has been compelled to recognize it, and the fine new
building is only for white young men."
In the face of such things we go back to fundamentals. The Declaration
of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States says: "The right of citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by
any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude." But above even such noble utterances as these stand the
words of Him whom we profess to follow: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."
And who is my neighbor?
We feel that the United States can not long remain in the dilemma of
fighting for democracy while at the same time she denies the
fundamental principles of democracy at home. We cannot much longer
pluck the mote from our brother's eye unmindful at the same time of
the beam in our own.
Meanwhile, however, the Negro goes quietly about his work. He has
picked cotton and pulled fodder, scrubbed floors and washed windows,
fired engines and dipped turpentine. He is not quite content, however,
to be simply the doormat of American civilization. Twelve million
people are ceasing to accept slander and insult without a protest.
They have heard about freedom, justice, and happiness, though these
things seemed not for them. They can not quite see the consistency of
fighting for outraged Belgians or Armenians so long as the rights of
citizens at home are violated. In the words of Foraker, "They ask no
favors because they are Negroes, but only justice because they are
men."
Yours for liberty and democracy,
BENJAMIN BRAWLEY.
II
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL REVIEW[1]
It was in August, 1619, that a Dutch vessel brought to Jamestown, Va.,
twenty Negroes, who were sold into servitude. While this event
definitely signalized the coming of the Negro for permanent residence
within the limits of what is now the United States, it by no means
marked his first coming to this country. The records of the Negro
extend as far back as the voyages of Columbus. Within a few years
after the visits of the great explorer there were several Negroes in
the West Indies, and in 1513 thirty assisted Balboa in the building of
the first ships made on the Pacific Coast. One of the four survivors
of the ill-starred expedition of De Narvaez in 1527 was the Negro
Estevanico, to whom belongs the credit of the discovery of the Zuni
Indians and of New Mexico. Nothing from these early years, however,
exercised any abiding influence on the history of the Negro in the
United States.
The status of the Negro after 1619 was for several decades complicated
by the system of indentured labor known as servitude. This applied
especially to white servants brought from England; but the first
Negroes brought to the country technically fell into the system.
According to the New International Encyclopedia, "Servitude became
slavery when to such incidents as alienation, disfranchisement,
whipping, and limited marriage, were added those of perpetual service
and a denial of civil, juridical, marital and property rights as well
as the denial of the possession of children." While legislation was
enacted earlier in Massachusetts, it was Virginia that in 1661 really
led the way for the South in the definite recognition of slavery as a
system by saying that Negroes were "incapable of making satisfaction
for the time lost in running away by addition of time." The next year
the same colony enacted that the status of a child should be
determined by that of the mother, which act both gave to slavery the
sanction of law and made it hereditary; and thus the system definitely
gained a foothold in the oldest of the colonies.
It must not be supposed that the institution of slavery was fastened
on the colonies without many doubts and fears. As early as 1688 the
Germantown Quakers made a formal protest against the barter of human
beings, and moral sentiment developed in other places as well as in
Pennsylvania. In the far South, especially in the colony of South
Carolina, where the slaves eventually outnumbered the white people,
the constant fear of insurrections led to the imposition of heavier
and heavier fines on those brought into the country; and for one
reason or another Virginia before 1772 passed thirty-three acts
looking toward the prohibition of the importation of slaves. Nothing,
however, was able to stand in the way of the cupidity of Englishmen
who were gaining riches by the traffic; economic considerations were
as potent two hundred years ago as now. In the course of the
eighteenth century slavery grew by leaps and bounds. By the time of
the first regular census in 1790 there were 757,208 Negroes in the
states, 19.3 per cent. of the total population. Fifty-nine thousand,
three hundred and eleven of these were those who in one way or another
had become free. It is important to note that the percentage of total
population has never been higher than 19.3. It has in fact steadily
declined since 1790, the common figure for recent years being 11 per
cent.
As a race there was little to be remarked of the Negro in the colonial
period. To those in bondage there was little outlook. Occasionally
there was an attempt at an insurrection; but nothing of first rate
importance materialized. In 1741 there was a very unhappy panic in New
York, then a prosperous town of ten thousand inhabitants. Nine fires
in rapid succession led to the report that the Negroes were conspiring
to burn the city. All of the eight lawyers of the town appeared
against the defendants, who had no counsel and who were convicted on
most insufficient evidence. Before the fury was over, fourteen of the
Negroes were burned, eighteen hanged, and seventy-one deported.
Any evidence of progress in this period would of course have to be
found among the free Negroes. The position of these people was a very
anomalous one. In the South especially very harsh laws were passed
against them; but very frequently these were not enforced. In general
the class was regarded as idle and shiftless and a breeder of
mischief. More and more, however, individuals made their way in
gainful occupations. The free Negro might become skilled at a trade;
he might buy land; he might even buy slaves; and he might have one
gun with which to protect his home. Liberty, however, genuine liberty,
he did not possess. In all the finer things of life, the things that
make life worth living, the lot that was his was only less hard than
that of the slave.
The general period of the Revolution was one of idealism.
Humanitarianism and liberalism were in the air, and both principles
were exerting a profound influence on English literature and life. In
1772 Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of England, thrilled all
English-speaking people by handing down from the Court of King's Bench
the decision that as soon as a slave set foot upon the soil of England
he became free. The logic of the position of the patriots, Franklin,
Adams, and Jefferson, naturally forced them to defend liberty at all
times; and by the time the convention for the framing of the
Constitution of the United States met in Philadelphia, at least two of
the original thirteen states (Massachusetts and New Hampshire) had
positively prohibited slavery, while in three others (Pennsylvania,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island) gradual abolition was in progress.
Under the influence of commercialism and industrialism, however, great
convictions gradually declined; and at least two of the three great
compromises that entered into the Constitution were a concession to
the slave-holding South. Then across the page of history flashed the
brilliant figure of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the Negro race to
obtain its first independent colony outside of the continent of
Africa. In America the influence of the chieftain became one of the
reasons for the cheap selling of Louisiana, and rendered more certain
the prohibition of the slave-trade at the end of 1807. A wave of fear
swept over the South, and Georgia and the Carolinas at once passed
repressive measures designed especially to restrict the importation of
Negroes from the West Indies.
All-potent, however, proved the cotton-gin. Almost suddenly Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana appeared on the map. By 1830 the exports of
what then comprised the Southern states amounted to $32,000,000, and
this section had not less than $2,000,000,000 invested in slaves. As a
system of labor, however, in spite of seeming advantages, slavery was
not slow in revealing its shortcomings. Its ultimate effects on the
South were disastrous. As Rhodes says, "It needed no extensive
marshaling of statistics to prove that the welfare of the North was
greater than that of the South. Two simple facts, everywhere
admitted, were of so far-reaching moment that they amounted to
irrefragable demonstration. The emigration from the slave states was
much larger than the movement in the other direction; and the South
repelled the industrious emigrants who came from Europe, while the
North attracted them." It was the rich planter rather than the white
man of slender means who profited by slavery, wealth being more and
more concentrated in the hands of a few; and in 1860, 41 per cent. of
the white men who had been born in South Carolina were living in other
states. More and more the South realized that she was not keeping pace
with the country's development; and one of her own sons, speaking
"simply as the voice of the non-slaveholding whites of the South," set
forth such unpleasant truths as that the personal and real property,
including slaves, of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri,
Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, taken all together, was less than that
of the single state of New York; that representation in Southern
legislatures was unfair; that slavery was to blame for the migration
from the South to the West; and in short that the system was harmful
in every way. Helper's book was proscribed in some quarters;
nevertheless it succeeded because, in spite of the fact that it did
not rest on the broadest principles of humanity, it did attempt to
attack with some degree of honesty a great economic problem.
Meanwhile the sections were being arrayed against each other. The
first fugitive slave law had been passed in 1793. The period 1820-60
was marked by five great aggressive steps on the part of the slave
power: the Missouri Compromise (1820), the annexation of Texas (1845),
the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854), and
the Dred Scott Decision (1857). One after another appeared Lundy and
Garrison, Parker and Birney, Whittier and Lovejoy, Phillips and
Sumner, Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the South replied
to the Underground Railroad with a virtual reopening of the
slave-trade; John Brown made a raid on Harper's Ferry; and then came
the appeal to arms.
And what of the Negro himself in all this period of turmoil and tumult?
The inner life of the race was one of furious ferment. Already were
there sharp cries for vengeance, for economic freedom, and for the
immediate granting of the full privileges of citizenship; and on the
other hand there were those who tried to look far into the future with
an air of conservatism and philosophy. Naturally there was the appeal
to force; the only wonder is that there was not more of this. As early
as 1687 a conspiracy among the Negroes in the Northern Neck in Virginia
was detected just in time to prevent slaughter. In Surry County in 1710
there was a similar plot, betrayed by one of the conspirators. An
attempt in New York in 1712 resulted in the execution of many Negroes.
In 1740 some slaves on the coast of South Carolina, under the lead of
one of their number named Cato, began an indiscriminate slaughter of
the white people in which many lives were lost. Somewhat more ambitious
was the effort made in Richmond in 1800 and known as Gabriel's
Insurrection. In 1822 an unusually intelligent Negro, Denmark Vesey,
the deepest thinker of all Negro insurrectionists, conceived a plan
that contemplated nothing less than the total annihilation of the
people of Charleston. His plot was divulged, and as a result
thirty-five men were executed and thirty-seven banished. For the
magnitude of its plan, the care with which it was matured, and the
faithfulness of the leaders to one another, Vesey's insurrection was
never equaled by a similar attempt for freedom in the United States.
Nine years later, however, Nat Turner, the type of the emotional
insurrectionist, with the assistance of five other men, actually killed
fifty-seven white people before he was stopped. The effect of this
revolt upon legislation was immediate. Virginia, Maryland, North
Carolina, and other states at once passed harshly repressive measures.
Less direct than open revolt, but more effective sometimes, was escape
by running away. In general the slaves directed their way to the North
or to the swamps such as those in Virginia and Florida. The Dismal
Swamp became a famous hiding-place. Soldiers never ventured into the
colony, and bloodhounds sent thither did not return. The first
Seminole War was very largely caused by fugitives who had been
befriended by the Indians, and the second was even more directly so
caused than the first.
In the ordinary social life of the Negro, however, the decade after
Nat Turner's insurrection was one of the most trying in the history of
the race in America. Repressive measures in the Southern states have
just been remarked. In the North the free Negro was beginning to feel
the force of economic ostracism. In Ohio no Negro was allowed to
settle unless he gave bond for his support. When this law and others
of similar import began to be put in force in 1829, serious riots
prevailed in Cincinnati for three days, in the course of which several
Negroes were killed. Mobs in Philadelphia at various times within the
period also murdered Negroes.
Meanwhile migration was strongly urged in some quarters as a solution
of the problem. Says Dr. DuBois: "As early as 1788 a Negro union of
Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed a general exodus to Africa. John
and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for the right to vote in 1780,
started in 1815 for Africa, organizing an expedition at their own
expense which cost four thousand dollars. Lott Carey organized the
African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negro college graduate
went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of public
schools.... About two thousand black emigrants eventually settled in
Hayti."
Even after the Civil War migration efforts were renewed, the Baptists
and the Methodists of South Carolina joining hands in 1877 in the
formation of the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Company. As early as
1833, however, in his pamphlet entitled "Thoughts on African
Colonization," Garrison showed the futility of the whole plan as a
means of solving the problem of the Negro in the United States, and
time has justified his view.
Gradually, in spite of all the discouraging circumstances, hope
appeared on the horizon. England emancipated the slaves in her
colonies in 1833, and more and more conventions of free Negroes showed
an interest in the welfare of the race. A strong foothold began to be
gained in certain occupations, such as those of the barber and
caterer. Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass appeared on the public
platform; the poems of Phillis Wheatley ran through three new editions
within four years; Elizabeth Greenfield sang before the royalty of
Europe; and the African Methodist Church began to show what it was
possible for the Negro to do in organization. By 1850, the year of the
Fugitive Slave Law, when things were looking especially dark, the
turning of the tide was much nearer than most people imagined. The
South was still triumphant; but each new victory had to be more
fiercely fought for than the last, and awakened stronger and stronger
elements of opposition.
Into the crucible of war of course fell not only slavery, but every
other great question of interest to the American people. Free labor,
free speech, woman suffrage, the authority of the Federal Government,
were all at stake as well as the cause of the Negro. So far as the
Negro himself was concerned, one of the first questions that the
Northern generals had to settle was what to do with the fugitive
slaves that flocked to their standards. In May, 1861, while in command
at Fortress Monroe, Major-General Benjamin F. Butler put such men to
work, justifying their retention on the ground that, being of service
to the enemy for purposes of war, they were, like guns, powder, etc.,
"contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. On August 30th of
this year Major-General John C. Fremont, in command in Missouri,
placed the state under martial law and declared the slaves there
emancipated. The administration was embarrassed, Fremont's order was
annulled, and he was relieved of his command. The next May, however,
Major-General David Hunter, in charge of the Department of the South,
issued his famous order freeing the slaves in his territory, and thus
brought to general attention the matter of the employment of Negro
soldiers in the Union armies. The Confederate government outlawed
Hunter, Lincoln annulled his order, and the grace of the nation was
again saved; but in the meantime a new situation had arisen. While
Brigadier-General John W. Phelps was taking part in the expedition
against New Orleans, a large sugar-planter near the city, disgusted
with Federal interference with the affairs of his plantation, drove
all the slaves away, telling them to go to their friends, the Yankees.
Phelps attempted to organize the Negroes who came into troops.
Accordingly he too was outlawed by the Confederates and his act
disavowed by the Union, that was not ready to take this step. It was
not until a great many men had been killed, and until the Emancipation
Proclamation had changed the status of the Negro, that steps were
taken by the Union for his employment as a soldier. Opinion in his
favor gained force after the Draft Riot in New York, when Negroes in
the city were mobbed and beaten by the enemies of conscription. Soon a
distinct bureau was established in Washington for the recording of all
matters pertaining to Negro troops, a board was organized for the
examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in
Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. By the end of 1864 nearly 200,000
Negroes had been enrolled in the army. The exploits of these men at
Port Hudson, Fort Wagner, and Fort Pillow are a part of the romance of
American History.
The Civil War meant more than the emancipation of four million slaves,
with all the perplexing problems that that liberation brought with it;
it involved the overturning of the whole economic system of the South.
To educate the freedmen, to train them in citizenship, and to give
them a place in the new labor system, was all a problem calling for
the wisest statesmanship and the largest and most unselfish
patriotism. Strange contradictions moreover were frequently in
evidence to increase the practical difficulties of the situation. Some
Negroes, because of personal attachment, refused to leave their former
masters; while the South in general, although it laid all its ills at
the door of the Negro, violently opposed any considerable effort to
have him taken away.
What was the Federal Government to do with the freedman? Of course it
could leave him alone. Having emancipated him, it could let him work
out his destiny as he would. In view of the situation, however, and
the principles for which the war had been fought, such a course was
manifestly impossible, especially as the so-called Black Codes of some
of the Southern states raised the question if the results of the war
were really being accepted in good faith. The next course then was
some form of Federal oversight; and thus we have the Freedmen's
Bureau. The best exposition of the work of this institution is to be
found in the writings of Dr. DuBois. It started the ex-slaves on their
new career as free laborers, gave them recognition before the courts,
and established the free common school in the South. It did not wholly
guard its methods from paternalism, however; it did not live up to its
implied promise to furnish the freedmen with land; and, worst of all,
when the Negroes in spite of all their disadvantages had actually
accumulated a total of three million dollars, the same being deposited
in the Freedman's Bank, this bank, morally if not technically a part
of the Freedmen's Bureau, failed, and the former slaves, at the very
beginning of their economic freedom, received a severe blow not only
to their confidence in the good faith of their government but also to
that in the virtues of self-reliance and thrift. Gradually, through
the efforts of Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in
the House, the conviction was forced upon the country that the only
solution of the problem was to give the Negro the ballot as the full
protection of his citizenship. Thus in 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment
was passed. All the logic of the situation demanded it, in spite of
temporary disadvantages; and yet it has never since ceased to be
bewailed in some quarters as a grave political error, even by such a
representative student as James Bryce. In proof of this position theft
and the incompetency of officials in the Reconstruction era are cited,
when everybody knows that the carpetbaggers rather than the freedmen
themselves received most of the spoil, and that the good points of the
Reconstruction governments, such as the emphasis on common school
education, have just as sedulously been belittled. In 1875 the second
Civil Rights Act was passed, designed to give Negroes equality of
treatment in theaters, railway cars, hotels, etc.; but this the
Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883. Meanwhile the KuKlux
Klan was already at work; the withdrawal of the Federal troops and the
wholesale removal of disabilities by Congress weakened the
Reconstruction governments; and thus the way was paved for democratic
success in the South.
Now ensued a period of such harshness in the ordinary life of the
Negro as can not easily be imagined. The general lack of protection
in the country districts and the greater economic attractiveness of
the cities led many laborers to leave the farms and to find an outlet
in some other occupations. To counteract this movement the "convict
lease system" appeared in all its hideousness. By every possible means
the effort was made to bind the Negro laborer to the soil, and in
numberless instances not even the sanctity of his home life was
regarded. At the same time, in ordinary intercourse with his
fellowmen, many times a day was he subjected to personal indignities.
By 1879, by reason of such things as these, as well as excessive rents
and the exorbitant prices at some stores, matters had become so bad as
in many places to be no longer tolerable. Not unnaturally many Negroes
had come to fear that they were about to be remanded to slavery. A
general convention in Nashville in May, 1879, adopted a report that
set forth their grievances and encouraged migration to the North and
West. Thousands now left their homes in the South, going in greatest
numbers to Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana. Within about twenty months
Kansas alone received thus an addition to her population of 40,000
Negroes. Difficulties of adjustment of course arose, but the whole
movement was sufficient to prove utterly false the contention of some
that no amount of unfairness and injustice in the South would induce
the Negro to move away.
As the KuKlux Klan declined, however, and the Negro, in spite of
discouraging circumstances, steadily advanced in property, education,
and culture, more and more the South felt the need of reenforcing its
position by definite legislation. In 1890 the era of disfranchisement
was formally inaugurated. In this year Mississippi so amended her
constitution as to exclude from the suffrage any person who had not
paid his poll-tax or who was unable to read any section of the
Constitution, understand it when read to him, or give a reasonable
interpretation of it. Real discretion in interpretation of course lay
only with the registrars, who could admit just so many persons as they
deemed of good character and as understanding the duties of
citizenship. South Carolina amended her constitution to similar
purpose in 1895; and in 1898 Louisiana invented the so-called
"grandfather clause." This excused from the operation of her
disfranchising act all descendants of men who had voted before the
Civil War, thus admitting to the suffrage all white men who were
illiterate and without property. Other Southern states in one way or
another followed these three. In the final estimate of history the
whole effort must appear simply as a pathetic attempt to delay the
full operation of justice and the rights of man.
For the present, however, the question of the Negro's attitude toward
the problem was one of surpassing moment. Suddenly, in 1895, arose a
new and genuine leader, Booker T. Washington, who offered a very
definite program. In a remarkable speech at the Atlanta Exposition he
said to the white South: "In all things that are purely social we can
be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress.... Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not
strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top
instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the State
Legislature was worth more than real estate or industrial skill." What
seemed the common sense and the sweet reasonableness of this program
at once commanded attention; and the South, in the first flush of a
new era of industrial development, and the North, perfectly ready to
accept any program that promised to make Southern investments secure,
both approved the new leader, who along the lines of thrift and
self-reliance certainly gave tremendous inspiration to thousands of
his brother-laborers in the South.
From the very first, however, there was a distinct group of Negro men
that honestly questioned the wisdom of the platform offered by Mr.
Washington. They felt that in seeming to be willing temporarily to
accept segregation and to waive political rights he had given up
altogether too much. As the opposition, however, they were not at
first unitedly constructive, and in their utterance they sometimes
offended by harshness of tone. Some years ago they were sneered at as
the "intellectuals," "the idealists," etc. It is significant that
to-day the sneers are few, and that a constructive program has more
and more commanded attention. The recognized leader who has risen from
the group is W.E. Burghardt DuBois, editor of the _Crisis_, the voice
of an organization formed in 1910 and known as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This organization
frankly "proposes to make 11,000,000 Americans physically free from
peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically free from
disfranchisement, and socially free from insult." To this end it is
waging a fight for justice in every way, whether at the polls, in the
courts, in public conveyances, in schools, in chances for earning a
living, and it has widened the door of hope not only for the college
man or woman, but for the agricultural laborer as well.
Let it not be forgotten that even in the first of these two large
programs there was much that was admirable. Its virtues, however, fell
distinctly short of the second. A man might have ten thousand dollars
in his pocket; but if he was in a strange town and legally denied a
bed late at night, or if he could not buy a meal in a restaurant when
he was hungry, he would learn that there are some things in the world
greater than money; and to-day more than ever we might assert that
anything other than the fullest emphasis on the ordinary rights of
citizenship is out of harmony with the principles of American
democracy.
In this rapid review we have of course touched only lightly upon some
matters of the highest importance. Among these are the economic
advance of the race and its very great importance as an industrial
factor; lynching; education; political significance; literature and
music; and the connections with the present great war. Some of these
will be considered more fully in the pages that follow. More and more
we trust that it will be found that a struggling people is working out
its own salvation, slowly out of the darkness climbing to the light.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This chapter is naturally indebted in some degree to the author's
"A Short History of the American Negro" (Macmillan, 1913).
III
THE NEGRO AS AN INDUSTRIAL FACTOR
If the war has taught us anything, it has given us new respect for
labor. There may once have been a time when great plantation owners
despised workers in fields; but that time is past. Under the stress of
new conditions, our richest captains of industry value the man who can
raise cotton or make a shell or fix rivets in a ship.
The Negro has importance in America to-day as a working-man; and,
aside from all questions of philanthropy or sentiment, he asks for
consideration in this capacity. Some of our greatest businesses are
becoming dependent upon him. In turn he asks if it is unreasonable for
him to expect a man's chance to earn a living, fair wages for fair
work, and such working conditions as make for general health and
social betterment.
In 1910, of 3,178,554 Negro men at work in this country, 981,922 were
listed as farm laborers and 798,509 as farmers. That is to say, 56
per cent. of the whole number were engaged in raising farm products
either on their own account or by way of assisting somebody else. The
great staples were of course the cotton and corn of the Southern
states, and the new importance given to these crops by the war no one
can gainsay. That is not all, however. If we take along with the
farmers those engaged in the next occupations employing the greatest
numbers of men--those of the building and hand trades, saw and planing
mills, as well as those of railway firemen and porters, draymen,
teamsters, and coal mine operatives--we shall find a total of 71.2 per
cent. engaged in such work as represents the very foundation of
American industry. What of the women? Of these, 1,047,146, or 52 per
cent., were either farm laborers or farmers, and 28 per cent. more
were either cooks or washerwomen. In other words, a total of exactly
80 per cent. were doing some of the hardest and at the same time some
of the most necessary work in our home and industrial life. These are
the workers for whom we ask consideration; and we make the request not
on the basis of what they did fifty or a hundred years ago, but what
they are worth now, to-day, as an important asset in the industrial
life of the United States.
It has sometimes been said that these people are not reliable as
workers, that they are migratory, that they fail to appear on Monday
mornings, etc., and hence that it is hardly advisable to give them a
chance in American industry on a large scale. Hear the testimony of
Homer L. Ferguson, described as "the most human shipbuilder in
America--and one of the ablest," fully half of whose 7,800 men and
boys in his great Newport News shipyard are Negroes. Mr. Ferguson was
born in North Carolina and he was talking to a Northern reporter:
"Don't you dare come down from the North to this yard and tell us that
the black man in the South is an industrial failure--you who only use
him as an elevator boy or a parlor-car porter or a chauffeur and
refuse to give him an equal industrial opportunity with white labor.
How long would one of our expert machinists last at Taunton or at
Paterson or at Schenectady? What opportunity would the unions give
him? Can one of our good riveters go north and join the union? He can
not. And otherwise he can not drive a single rivet."
What would the unions do in fact? What have they done already? We
learn from the very valuable study by Mr. Abraham Epstein, "The Negro
Migrant in Pittsburgh," in the publications of the School of Economics
of the University of Pittsburgh, that an official of a union which has
a membership of nearly five thousand, said that it had about five
colored members. An official of an even more powerful union was
"greatly astonished when he learned that there are white people who
take an interest in the Negro question. He absolutely refused to give
any information and did not think it worth while to answer such
questions, although he admitted that his union had no colored people
and would never accept them." To be thoroughly concrete, however, let
us consider the Negro plasterers of Pittsburgh. On January 1, 1917,
about thirty of these men, discriminated against by the local white
union, wrote to the national organization in Middletown, Ohio, asking
formally to have a local body of their own. Headquarters sent back
reply to the effect that a charter could not be given without the
consent of the older organization. Then followed a meeting in which
the Negro secretary was given five minutes before the white local at
its regular meeting. Nothing resulted. Under such circumstances is it
any wonder that Negroes adopt a canny attitude when labor unions are
concerned? More than this, can not organized labor itself realize the
dangers for all in this hostile attitude toward the black race?
In spite of the labor unions, however, the Negro has gone North. The
war, suddenly putting an end to the great immigrant stream from
Europe, brought a sudden demand for unskilled labor undreamed of five
years ago. Nobody knows how many Negroes have gone from the South to
the North within the last three years. Perhaps 500,000; perhaps even
200,000 more. We do know, however, that they have gone in amazing
numbers; and the thing of really vital importance is that these people
shall be adequately adjusted to their new environment. Some
opportunity should be afforded them to rise from the ranks of
unskilled into those of skilled laborers. It is moreover of the
highest importance that these newcomers to our large cities shall be
adequately housed. Thirty persons are known to have lived recently in
a seven-room house in Philadelphia; and in Pittsburgh 57 out of 390
rooms investigated have shown over six persons using the same room. In
many cases the paper is torn off the walls, plaster sags from the
laths, windows are broken, and the ceiling is low and damp. The whole
question is of course closely connected with disease and mortality. In
many places, and even in some of our training camps, there is too
little opportunity for wholesome refreshment for the Negro. When will
our cities learn that tuberculosis and typhoid fever are no respecter
of persons? It is not enough to isolate bad cases after they are found
out. The conditions of home sanitation, or lack of sanitation, that
lead to these should be made impossible. I recall a section of
pleasant homes in the West End of Atlanta. Suddenly, in the midst of
clean, comfortable little cottages for white people there yawned
before me an alley in which Negroes lived, with its dilapidated
two-room dwellings, general lack of cleanliness, and its unwholesome
air. From these places came the cooks and the washerwomen for the
white families in the neighborhood; and this condition in one section
of Atlanta can be duplicated in any city in the South, and in many in
the North.
In 1910 the death-rate in 57 representative cities was 27.8 per 1,000
for Negroes and 15.9 for white people. The rates for both white people
and Negroes were higher in the South than in the North, but not a
great deal more so. Among the Negroes the diseases that
overwhelmingly outnumbered the others in their victims were
tuberculosis and pneumonia. Can any one doubt that this is due to the
unsanitary conditions under which these people are in many instances
forced to live?
To argue, however, that the Negro should be looked after in order that
white people should be protected is to be guilty of a fallacy. All
should be protected because all should have the best chance at life
that their city or their state can afford them. All the more important
is the question since it involves the welfare of three million men and
women upon whom so largely rest the burdens of our farming, our
mining, our railroading, our planing industries, and our home life.
The war has already taught us many things, and among the most
important is the need for a new adjustment of social and economic
values. If we are to be together in a crisis we must be together in
times of peace, with the broadest sympathy one for another. Especially
must we give due consideration to those who have the hardest work to
do. Too long have some few become rich by exploiting the poor, the
unprotected, the ignorant. True democracy does not mean that any one
race or any one class shall be on top or at the bottom, but that all
shall advance together to the height of human attainment. Only thus
can we finally be secure. Only thus can our country be the country of
our dreams.
IV
LYNCHING
Within the last thirty-five years 3,200 Negro men and women have been
lynched within the boundaries of the United States, an average of just
a little less than 100 a year. While there has been some decrease
within recent years, the figures between 1890 and 1900 were so
extraordinary that the average is still high. Nor can one find much
comfort in the fact that there has been some decrease within recent
years, for some of the most recent cases were those of the most
revolting torture. The year 1917 moreover was marked by the greatest
outbreak of mob violence that the race has ever suffered, considerably
more than one hundred Negro men, women, and children losing their
lives in East St. Louis.
Fifteen years ago, in Mississippi, a Negro became involved in a
quarrel with a white man who was just about to shoot him when the
Negro himself fired, fatally wounding the man. He then fled to the
woods and his wife accompanied him. Bloodhounds were sent after them,
and after a long chase they were captured. Then followed such torture
as is without parallel even in the history of lynching. The man and
his wife were both tied to trees, one after another their fingers were
cut off, then their ears, both fingers and ears being distributed as
souvenirs among the members of the mob. The supreme stroke, however,
was still to come. A large corkscrew was bored into the more fleshy
parts of the two writhing bodies, and so jerked out as to tear out
large pieces of flesh. Both the man and his wife were then burned
alive. And the sun still shone in heaven!