The Negro was freed as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer.
There were a few free Negroes who owned property in the South, and a
larger number who owned property in the North; but ninety-nine per cent of
the race in the South were penniless field hands and servants.
To-day there are two and a half million laborers, the majority of whom are
efficient wage earners. Above these are more than a million servants and
tenant farmers; skilled and semi-skilled workers make another million and
at the top of the economic column are 600,000 owners and managers of farms
and businesses, cash tenants, officials, and professional men. This makes
a total of 5,192,535 colored breadwinners in 1910.
More specifically these breadwinners include 218,972 farm owners and
319,346 cash farm tenants and managers. There were in all 62,755 miners,
288,141 in the building and hand trades; 28,515 workers in clay, glass,
and stone; 41,739 iron and steel workers; 134,102 employees on railways;
62,822 draymen, cab drivers, and liverymen; 133,245 in wholesale and
retail trade; 32,170 in the public service; and 69,471 in professional
service, including 29,750 teachers, 17,495 clergymen, and 4,546
physicians, dentists, trained nurses, etc. Finally, we must not forget
2,175,000 Negro homes, with their housewives, and 1,620,000 children in
school.
Fifty years ago the overwhelming mass of these people were not only
penniless, but were themselves assessed as real estate. By 1875 the
Negroes probably had gotten hold of something between 2,000,000 and
4,000,000 acres of land through their bounties as soldiers and the low
price of land after the war. By 1880 this was increased to about 6,000,000
acres; in 1890 to about 8,000,000 acres; in 1900 to over 12,000,000 acres.
In 1910 this land had increased to nearly 20,000,000 acres, a realm as
large as Ireland.
The 120,738 farms owned by Negroes in 1890 increased to 218,972 in 1910,
or eighty-one per cent. The value of these farms increased from
$179,796,639 in 1900 to $440,992,439 in 1910; Negroes owned in 1910 about
500,000 homes out of a total of 2,175,000. Their total property in 1900
was estimated at $300,000,000 by the American Economic Association. On the
same basis of calculation it would be worth to-day not less than
$800,000,000.
Despite the disfranchisement of three-fourths of his voting population,
the Negro to-day is a recognized part of the American government. He holds
7,500 offices in the executive service of the nation, besides furnishing
four regiments in the army and a large number of sailors. In the state and
municipal service he holds nearly 20,000 other offices, and he furnishes
500,000 of the votes which rule the Union.
In these same years the Negro has relearned the lost art of organization.
Slavery was the almost absolute denial of initiative and responsibility.
To-day Negroes have nearly 40,000 churches, with edifices worth at least
$75,000,000 and controlling nearly 4,000,000 members. They raise
themselves $7,500,000 a year for these churches.
There are 200 private schools and colleges managed and almost entirely
supported by Negroes, and these and other public and private Negro schools
have received in 40 years $45,000,000 of Negro money in taxes and
donations. Five millions a year are raised by Negro secret and beneficial
societies which hold at least $6,000,000 in real estate. Negroes support
wholly or in part over 100 old folks' homes and orphanages, 30 hospitals,
and 500 cemeteries. Their organized commercial life is extending rapidly
and includes over 22,000 small retail businesses and 40 banks.
Above and beyond this material growth has gone the spiritual uplift of a
great human race. From contempt and amusement they have passed to the
pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while within
their own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open
protest and more and more manly self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of them
could not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300
papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compelling
attention. Already in poetry, literature, music, and painting the work of
Americans of Negro descent has gained notable recognition. Instead of
being led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes are
gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals.
Self-realization is thus coming slowly but surely to another of the
world's great races, and they are to-day girding themselves to fight in
the van of progress, not simply for their own rights as men, but for the
ideals of the greater world in which they live: the emancipation of women,
universal peace, democratic government, the socialization of wealth, and
human brotherhood.