MY EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGNS THROUGH THE SOUTH AND WHAT THEY TAUGHT ME
Several years ago, in company with a few personal friends, most of them
Negro business men of Little Rock, Ark., I made a week’s journey through
Arkansas and Oklahoma, visiting most of the principal cities, speaking,
wherever I had time and opportunity along the route, to audiences of
both races.
In order to cover as much ground as possible in the eight days we had
allotted to the trip, and in order to make the journey as comfortable as
possible, we secured a special car in St. Louis and on the night of
November 17, 1905, I think it was, we started out on what was one of the
most interesting and memorable journeys I have ever made.
For several years my friend, Mr. John E. Bush, receiver of public moneys
at Little Rock, and at that time head of the local Negro Business League
in that city, had been urging me to come and see for myself the progress
which Negroes were making in Little Rock and the neighbouring city of
Pine Bluff. After I had finally decided to accept his invitation, I made
up my mind that I would take advantage of the opportunity to see
something, also, of the progress Negroes were making in the neighbouring
state of Oklahoma and in what was then the Indian Territory.
At that time thousands of Negroes were pouring into this new country
from the South. Some of my own students were either in business or
teaching school in different parts of the present state of Oklahoma and
from them, and from other sources, I had heard much of the progress that
coloured people were making, particularly at Muskogee and in the booming
little Negro town of Boley, where, within a few years, a flourishing
little city, controlled entirely by Negroes, and without a single white
inhabitant, had sprung into existence.
In the course of my journey I visited not only Little Rock and Pine
Bluff, Ark., but Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Muskogee, South McAlester, and
several other towns in Oklahoma, and I confess that I was surprised to
note the enterprise which these coloured immigrants had shown and the
progress they were making, particularly in material and business
directions. I met successful farmers, who, having sold their farms in
Texas or in Kansas at a considerable advance, had come out into this new
country to re-invest their money. I made the acquaintance in nearly
every part of the state, of successful merchants, bankers, and
professional men. At South McAlester I stayed at the home of E. E.
McDaniels, a successful railway contractor, the first Negro I ever
happened to meet who was engaged in that business. At Oklahoma City I
remember meeting Albert Smith, who is known out there as the “Negro
cotton king” because he gained the prize at the Paris Exposition in 1900
for the best bale of cotton. It was a great satisfaction to me to be
able to talk with these men, to hear from their own lips the stories of
their struggles, of their difficulties, mistakes, and successes. It
seemed to me that, after talking with them around the fireside and in
the close and intimate way I have suggested, I gained a deeper insight
into the forces that were making for the upbuilding of my race than I
could have possibly gained in any other way.
One thing that particularly impressed me was the difference between the
condition of the coloured people who were pouring into this new portion
of the Southwest and the condition of those who some thirty years before
had poured into Kansas at the time of the famous “exodus.” At that time
some forty thousand bewildered and helpless coloured people, coming for
the most part from the plantations of Louisiana, Arkansas, and
Mississippi, made their way to Kansas in the hope of finding there
greater opportunity and more freedom. It was people from these same
regions who, with much the same purpose, were at this time pouring into
Oklahoma. The difference was that these later immigrants came with a
definite notion of where they were going; they brought a certain amount
of capital with them, and had a pretty clear idea of what they would
find and what they proposed to do when they reached their destination.
The difference in these two movements of the population seemed to me the
most striking indication I had seen of the progress which the masses of
the Negro people had made in a little more than thirty years.
[Illustration:
MR. WASHINGTON ADDRESSING AN AUDIENCE OF VIRGINIA NEGROES
]
During the next five years, in company with different parties of Negro
business and professional men, I made similar journeys of observation
through Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Delaware, and portions of Virginia and West Virginia. In several
instances we made use of special trains to make these trips, and this
enabled us to cover longer distances and make the journey practically on
our own time. On each of these journeys I took advantage of my
opportunities, not only to meet and talk with the people individually,
but also to speak to large audiences of white and coloured people about
many matters which concerned the interests of both races and
particularly about the importance, to both races, of increasing the
efficiency of the Negro schools. In fact, I had not made more than two
or three of these trips before they came to be regarded by both white
and coloured people as the beginning, in each of the states I visited,
of a movement or campaign in the interest of Negro education.
Perhaps I can best indicate the character of these campaigns and the
sort of information and insight that they gave me in regard to the
condition of the coloured people in the states I visited by giving a
more extended account of my journey in Mississippi in 1908. As an
indication of the general interest in the purpose and the success of my
visit I ought to say that, while the journey was made under the
direction of the Negro Business League of Mississippi, representatives
of nearly every important interest among Negroes in the state either
accompanied the party for a portion of the journey or assisted in making
the meetings successful at the different places at which we stopped. For
instance, as I remember, there were not less than eight presidents of
Negro banks and many other successful business men in the course of the
eight-day trip. Among them were Charles Banks, president of the Negro
Business League of Mississippi, and one of the most influential coloured
men of the state. It was he who was more directly responsible than any
one else for organizing and making a success of our journey. Not only
the business men, but the representatives of different religious
denominations and of the secret organizations, which are particularly
strong in Mississippi, united with the members of the business league to
make the meetings which we held in the different parts of the state as
successful and as influential as it was possible to make them.
It is a matter of no small importance to the success of the people of my
race in Mississippi that business men, teachers, and the members of the
different religious denominations are uniting disinterestedly in the
effort to give the coloured children of the state a proper and adequate
education, and that they are using their influence to encourage the
masses of the people to get property and build homes.
Dr. E. C. Morris, for instance, who was a member of the party,
represents the largest Negro organization of any kind in the world—the
National Baptist Convention, which has a membership of more than two
millions; J. W. Straughter, as a member of the finance committee of the
Negro Pythians, represented an organization of about seventy thousand
persons, owning about three hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars’
worth of property. The _African Methodist Episcopal Review_, of which
Dr. H. T. Kealing, now president of the Negro college at Quindaro, Kan.,
is editor, is probably the best-edited and one of the most influential
periodicals published by the Negro race. It has been in existence now
for more than twenty-five years.
I have mentioned the names of these men and have referred to their
positions and influence among the Negro people as showing how widespread
at the present time is the interest in the moral and material upbuilding
of the race.
I had heard a great deal, indirectly, before I reached Mississippi, of
the progress that the coloured people were making there. I had also
heard a great deal through the newspapers of the difficulties under
which they were labouring. There are some portions of Mississippi, for
instance, where a large part of the coloured population has been driven
out as a result of white-capping organizations. There are other portions
of the state where the white people and the coloured people seem to be
getting along as well as, if not better than, in any other portion of
the Union.
After leaving Memphis, the first place at which we stopped was Holly
Springs, in Marshall County. Holly Springs has long been an educational
centre for the coloured people of Mississippi. Shortly after the war the
Freedman’s Aid and Southern Educational Society of the Methodist Church
established here Rust University. Until a few years ago the State Normal
School for Training Negro Teachers was in existence in Holly Springs,
when it was finally abolished by former Governor Vardaman. The loss of
this school was a source of great disappointment to the coloured people
of the state, as they felt that, in vetoing the appropriation, the
governor was making an attack upon the Negro education of the state.
Under the leadership of Bishop Cottrell, a new industrial school and
theological seminary has grown up to take the place of the Normal
Training School and do its work. During the previous two years Bishop
Cottrell had succeeded in raising more than seventy-five thousand
dollars, largely from the coloured people of Mississippi, in order to
erect the two handsome modern buildings which form the nucleus of the
new school. In this city there had also been recently established a
Baptist Normal School, which is the contribution of the Negro Baptists
of the state in response to the abolition of the State Normal School.
The enthusiasm for education that I discovered at Holly Springs is
merely an indication of the similar enthusiasm in every other part of
the state that I visited. At Utica, Miss., I spoke in the assembly room
of the Utica Institute, founded October 27, 1903, by William H.
Holtzclaw, a graduate of Tuskegee. After leaving Tuskegee he determined
to go to the part of the country where it seemed to him that the
coloured people were most in need of a school that could be conducted
along the lines of Tuskegee Institute. He settled in Hinds County, where
there are forty thousand coloured people, thirteen thousand of whom can
neither read nor write. In the community in which this school was
started the Negroes outnumber the whites seven to one. He began teaching
out in the forests. From the very first he succeeded in gaining the
sympathy of both races for the work that he was trying to do. In the
five years since the school started he has succeeded in purchasing a
farm of fifteen hundred acres. He had at that time erected three large
and eleven small buildings of various kinds for school rooms, shops, and
homes. On the farm there were one large plantation house and about
thirty farm houses. He told me that a conservative estimate of the
property which the school owned would make the valuation something more
than seventy-five thousand dollars. In addition to this, he has already
started an endowment fund in order to make the work that he is doing
there permanent, and to give aid by means of scholarships to worthy
students who are not fully able to pay their own way.
At Jackson, Miss., there are two colleges for Negro students. Campbell
College was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Jackson
College, which had just opened a handsome new building for the use of
its students, was established and is supported by the Baptist
denomination. At Natchez I was invited to take part in the dedication of
the beautiful new building erected by the Negro Baptists of Mississippi
at a cost of about twenty thousand dollars.
Perhaps I ought to say that, while there has been considerable rivalry
among the different Negro churches along theological lines, it seems to
me that I can see that, as the leaders of the people begin to realize
the seriousness of the educational problem, this rivalry is gradually
dying out in a disinterested effort to educate the masses of the Negro
children irrespective of denominations. The so-called denominational
schools are merely a contribution of the members of the different sects
to the education of the race.
Nothing indicates the progress which the coloured people have made along
material lines so well as the number of banks that have been started by
coloured people in all parts of the South. I have made a special effort
recently to learn something of the influence of these institutions upon
the mass of the coloured people. At the present time there are no less
than fifty-six Negro banks in the United States. All but one or two of
them are in the Southern States. Of these fifty-six banks, eleven are in
the state of Mississippi. Not infrequently I have found that Negro banks
owe their existence to the secret and fraternal organizations. There are
forty-two of these organizations, for example, in the state of
Mississippi, and they collected $708,670 in 1907, and paid losses to the
amount of $522,757. Frequently the banks have been established to serve
as depositories for the funds of these institutions. They have then
added a savings department, and have done banking business for an
increasing number of stores and shops of various kinds that have been
established within the last ten years by Negro business men.
A special study of the city of Jackson, Miss., made shortly before I
visited the city, showed that there were ninety-three businesses
conducted by Negroes in that city. Of this number, forty-four concerns
did a total annual business of about three hundred and eighty-eight
thousand dollars a year. But, of this amount of business, one contractor
alone did one hundred thousand dollars’ worth. As near as could be
estimated, about 73 per cent. of the coloured people owned or were
buying their own homes. It is said that the Negroes, who make up one
half of the population, own one third of the area of the city of
Jackson. The value of this property, however, is only about one eleventh
of the taxable value of the city.
As nearly as could be estimated at that time, Negroes had on deposit in
the various banks of the city almost two hundred thousand dollars. Of
this amount, more than seventy thousand was in the two Negro banks of
the city. I learned that most of these businesses had been started in
the previous ten years, but, as a matter of fact, one of the oldest
business men in Jackson is a coloured man, with whom I stopped during my
visit to that city. H. T. Risher is the leading business man in his
particular line in Jackson. He has had a bakery and restaurant in that
city, as I understand, for more than twenty years. He has one of the
handsomest of the many beautiful residences of coloured people in
Jackson, which I had an opportunity to visit on my journey through the
state.
Among the other business enterprises that especially attracted my
attention during my journey was the drug store and offices of Dr. A. W.
Dumas, of Natchez. His store is located in a handsome two-story brick
block, and although there are a large number of Negro druggists in the
United States, I know of no store which is better kept and makes a more
handsome appearance.
According to the plan of our journey, I was to spend seven days in
Mississippi, starting from Memphis, Tenn., going thence to Holly
Springs, Utica, Jackson, Natchez, Vicksburg, Greenville, Mound Bayou,
and then, crossing the Mississippi, to spend Sunday in the city of
Helena, Ark. As a matter of fact, we did stop at other places and I had
an opportunity to speak to audiences of coloured people and white people
at various places along the railroad, the conductor kindly holding the
train for me to do this at several points, so that I think it is safe to
say that I spoke to forty or fifty thousand people during the eight days
of our journey. Everywhere, I found the greatest interest and enthusiasm
among both the white people and coloured people for the work that we
were attempting to do. In Jackson, which for a number of years had been
the centre of agitation upon the Negro question, there was some
opposition expressed to the white people of the town attending the
meeting, but I was told that among the people in the audience were
Governor Noel; Lieutenant-Governor Manship; Major R. W. Milsaps, who is
said to be the wealthiest man in Mississippi; Bishop Charles B.
Galloway, of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South), who has since died;
United States Marshal Edgar S. Wilson; the postmaster of Jackson, and a
number of other prominent persons.
At Natchez the white people were so interested in the object of the
meeting that they expressed a desire to pay for the opera house in which
I spoke, provided that the seating capacity should be equally divided
between the two races. At Vicksburg I spoke in a large building that had
been used for some time for a roller-skating rink. I was informed that
hundreds of people who wished to attend the meeting were unable to find
places. At Greenville I delivered an address in the court-house; and
there were so many people who were unable to attend the address that, at
the suggestion of the sheriff, I delivered a second one from the steps
of the court-house.
The largest and most successful meeting of the trip was held at Mound
Bayou, a town founded and controlled entirely by Negroes. This town,
also, is the centre of a Negro colony of about three thousand people.
Negroes own thirty thousand acres of land in direct proximity to the
town. Mound Bayou is in the centre of the Delta district, where the
coloured people outnumber the whites frequently as much as ten to one;
and there are a number of Negro settlements besides Mound Bayou in which
no white man lives. My audience extended out into the surrounding fields
as far as my voice could reach. I was greatly impressed with the
achievements and possibilities of this town, where Negroes are giving a
striking example of success in self-government and in business.
From what I was able to see during my visit to Mississippi, and from
what I have been able to learn from other sources, I have come to the
conclusion that more has been accomplished by the coloured people of
that state during the last ten years than was accomplished by them
during the whole previous period since the Civil War. To a large extent
this has been due to the fact that the coloured people have learned that
in getting land, in building homes, and in saving their money they can
make themselves a force in the communities in which they live. It is
generally supposed that the coloured man, in his efforts to rise, meets
more opposition in Mississippi than anywhere else in the United States,
but it is quite as true that there, more than anywhere else, the
coloured people seem to have discovered that, in gaining habits of
thrift and industry, in getting property, and in making themselves
useful, there is a door of hope open for them which the South has no
disposition to close.
As an illustration of what I mean, I may say that while I was in Holly
Springs I learned that, though the whites outnumbered the blacks nearly
three to one in Marshall County, there had been but one lynching there
since the Civil War. When I inquired of both white people and coloured
people why it was that the two races were able to live on such friendly
terms, both gave almost exactly the same answer. They said that it was
due to the fact that in Marshall County so large a number of coloured
farmers owned their farms. Among other things that have doubtless helped
to bring about this result is the fact that the treasurer of the Odd
Fellows of Mississippi, who lived in Holly Springs, frequently had as
much as two hundred thousand dollars on deposit in the local banks.
My purpose in making the educational campaigns to which I have referred
was not merely to see the condition of the masses of my own people, but
to ascertain, also, the actual relations existing between the races and
to say a word if possible that would bring about more helpful relations
between white men and black men in the communities which I visited.
Again and again in the course of these journeys I noticed that, almost
invariably, as soon as I began to inquire of some coloured school
teacher, merchant, banker, physician, how it was he had gotten his
start, each one began at once to tell me of some prominent white man in
their town who had befriended them. This man had advised them in their
business transactions, had, perhaps, loaned them money, or had pointed
out to them where they could invest their savings to advantage, and in
this way had managed to get ahead. In some cases the very men who had
privately befriended these individual coloured men were persons who in
their public life had the reputation, outside of the community in which
they lived, of being the violent opponents and enemies of the Negro
race.
These experiences have been repeated so often in my journeys through the
South that I have learned that public speeches and newspaper reports are
a very poor indication of the actual relations of the races. Somehow
when a Southern politician gets upon a platform to make a public speech
it comes perfectly natural to him to denounce the Negro. He has been
doing it so long that it is second nature.
Now one of the advantages of the educational campaigns I have described
is that they have given an opportunity to Southern men to stand up in
public and say what was deep down in their hearts with regard to the
Negro, to express a feeling toward the Negro that represents another and
higher side of Southern character and one which, as a result of
sectional feelings and political controversies, has been too long hidden
from the world.
After returning from my last educational trip through North Carolina I
received letters from prominent people in all parts of the state
expressing their approval of what I had said and of the work that my
visit was intended to accomplish. These letters came from business men,
from men who were or had been in public life, as well as from school
superintendents. For example, Charles L. Coon, superintendent of public
schools at Wilson, N. C., whose paper before the educational conference
in Atlanta, in 1909, was the most convincing plea for the Negro schools
I have ever read, wrote as follows:
I write to express my personal appreciation of your visit and its
effects here in Wilson. You had a good audience representing all
classes of our white and coloured population. Numbers of the best
white people in town have told me that your address was the very best
ever made here. Many of them say you must come back. Some want to get
a warehouse so that everybody can hear you.
The Negro school here is stronger in the affections of the coloured
people, the white people are prouder of it, than before you came. I
was delighted that we had a school building in which you could speak.
The Negro school will get better each year. It is not doing nearly all
it ought to do, but we are moving forward. There will be slight
opposition from now on. I am more than ever convinced that white
people will believe in and stand for the education of the Negro
children, if the matter is put to them in the right shape. Our Negro
school has more coloured than white opposition. In fact, the last
white man in town who counts _one_ was converted by you! I rejoice
over this sinner’s making his peace with me.
I have quoted Superintendent Coon’s letter because it represents the
attitude toward Negro education and toward the Negro of an increasing
number of thoughtful and earnest men of the younger generation in the
South. Perhaps I can give no better idea of how many of the older
generation of the Southerners feel toward the Negro than by quoting the
words of Judge Bond, of Brownsville, Tenn., in the course of a few
remarks he made at the close of my address in his city.
Judge Bond said, according to a short-hand report taken at the time and
afterward published in the Boston _Transcript_:
I was born and reared here in the South and have been associated all
my life with Negroes. I feel that as a Southern white man I owe a debt
to the Negro that I can never pay, that no Southern white man can ever
pay. During the war the Southern white man left his home, his wife,
and his children to be taken care of by the Negroes, and I have yet to
hear of a single instance where that trust was betrayed or where they
proved unfaithful; and ever since that time I have sworn by the Most
Divine that I shall ever be grateful to the coloured people as long as
I shall live, and that I shall never be unfair to that race. I have
always since thought that a white man is not a man who does not admit
that he owes a duty in the sight of God to the coloured people of this
country; he is not a man if he is not willing at all times and under
all circumstances to do all he can to acquit himself of that duty. If
there was ever a people in this country who owed a debt to any people,
it is the Southern white man to the Southern coloured man. The white
man who lives on the other side of the Ohio River owes him a debt,
too, but, by my honest conviction in the sight of God, his obligation
is nothing compared to that of the Southern white man to the coloured
people, and I have often wondered what will be the judgment on the
Southern white man and his children and his grandchildren in failing
to discharge his duty toward the old Negro, his children, and his
grandchildren for their many years’ faithful and true service.
My mother died at my birth. Now I am growing old. An old black mammy,
who, thank God, is living to-day, took me in her arms and nursed me
and cared for me and loved me until I grew strong and to manhood; and
there has never been a day since that she has not been willing to do
the same for my wife and children, even in spite of her years.
I remember some time ago very well, when I was sitting in a darkened
room nursing my youngest child, who was confined with the dreaded
disease small-pox, my wife in a most distressing manner appeared at
the head of the stairs (we had been separated because of our little
girl’s condition and we were kept from the rest of the family
upstairs). My wife called down to me and informed me that she feared
another of our children had fallen victim to the small-pox. We were in
a predicament, you may easily see. It was necessary at once to remove
the child from the rest, but there still remained a doubt as to her
being a victim, so we could not bring her into the room in which we
were and it was also necessary that she be taken out of the room in
which she was. She must be kept in a separate room and neither was it
safe for her mother or myself to be in the room in which she would be
taken. She must remain in this room all night without care or
attention from either, but just about that time the old black mammy,
this same black mammy who nursed and cared for me, appeared. Black
mammy was heard from. “Small-pox or no small-pox, that child cannot
stay in that room by herself to-night or no other night, even if I
takes the small-pox and dies to-morrow”; and she did go into that room
and stayed in that room until morning, and was willing to stay there
as long as it was necessary. God bless her old soul!
I am glad to see Mr. Washington here and to have him speak to us. He
is a credit to his race, and would be a credit to any race. I wish we
had many more men like him all over this country.
Mr. Washington, I pray to God that the Spirit may ever guide you in
your purpose to lift up your people and that you may inspire all
Southern white men as well as Southern coloured men to lift up and
elevate your race.
These expressions of interest in the welfare of my race and of hearty
sympathy with work which others and myself have been trying to do for
the upbuilding of the Negro have come to me in recent years from every
part of the South. Almost from the beginning of my work in Alabama,
however, I have had the support and the encouragement, both public and
private, not only of my neighbours, but of the best white people
everywhere in the South who were acquainted with what I was trying to
do. When I have been inclined to be discouraged, the expressions of
good-will have given me faith. They have taught me—in spite of wrongs
and injustices to which members of my race are frequently subjected—to
look with confidence to the future and to believe that the Negro has the
power within himself to become an indispensable part of the life of the
South, not feared and merely tolerated, but trusted and respected by the
members of the white race by whom he is surrounded.