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THE NEGRO
In the Light of the Great War.
I have heard that a woman, who belongs to what is popu¬
larly known as "the weaker sex/' has on occasion summoned
the courage to d'efy the overwhelming brute strength ^f the
lion, when she found it necessary to protect her own young.
Such courage was not .momentarily created in that woman.
It was already there. It had only to be summoned from the
depth of her being toy the imperative of nature. A great crists
does not create character so much as it makes character mani¬
fest. What light has the great war thrown on the character
and the "problem" of our everlasting Negro? Character is
more fundamental than reputation. In 1914 the Negro was
the most undesirable element in the United States. In 1918
the same 'Negro was the most reliable element in the same
United States. No such sudden contradictory change of char¬
acter is possible, not even in the individual, much less in the
race. The Negro was in 1918 just what he had been in 1914.
It was the seeming that changed. In 1914 his silhouette
loomed like a specter in the obscurity of prejudgment and
neglect. In 1918 his real character stood forth revealed in the
light of war from the all-exposing fires of a burning world.
His country in peril of its life could no longer appraise things
£^t ^heir traditional oi^ sentimental valuation. Its! resources,
human an* material, had to 'Ijf weighed at once anil taken for
what they actually were. As soon as war was declared in 1917,
the Negro was set to guard the residence of the Chief Execu¬
tive, the Capitol of the Nation and the water supply of the city.
The same political party which in 1914 had dug in Washington
a deep grave, called "segregation," in which it was about to
bury the Negro politically and economically for generations to
come—this same Party in 1918 found it convenient to appoint
the Negro to more positions as assistants and "advisers" in the
government than any previous administration in the history
of the United States.
And the most impressive thing about this universal and un¬
limited confidence in the Negrchas a genuine American was
its apparent unconsciousness and effortlessness. Men did not
seem to be aware that today they were reposing supreme confi¬
dence in a race which (but yesterday was proclaimed to be
unworthy of all trust. This proves something: that the un¬
savory reputation which the Associated Press and the loud¬
mouthed anti-Negro orators had^fkstened upon the race for
half a hundred years, was not really the conviction of the best
white people, or it could not Eave been changed in a day.
Th^^nderers tried to fool us fq>r generations; in our hearts
we knew they were trying to fool us, but having no self-
interest in defending the weak, we allowed the fakers to go
un until we were each particeps criminis of a most dangerous
public illusion. But illusions are consumed in the terrible (fires
of war, as dross is burned from gold. Let us see what the
searchiig'ht of world war has revealed in this three-hundred-
years-old element of our civilization.
First, as a patriot. He was not loud or vindictive. He
showed confidence in the constituted authorities and respect
for them, even though the administration was of a party which
held the world's record for legislation prejudicial to the Negrc.
He did. not hate even the enemy and was not spectacular in
denouncing the barbarians who were sinking our ships, mur¬
dering our friends and impugning our national security in the
world. For generations he had himself battled against that
arrogant spirit of man. 'Materially outweighed, he had sur¬
vived by virtue of certain immaterial powers: self-restraint
and patience, imagination and sympathy, courage and faith
This was his stock in preparedness. And when on April 6th,
1917, his long-suffering country declared war on the aich
barbarian of history, his country's position caught his imagina¬
tion and touched his sympathy and he stood ready and steady
and loyal to a man. This was a surprise to the enemy who
had figured out Negro psychology, as he reckoned all psy¬
chology, on a loss-and-gain basis, without taking into account
any of the finer and more unselfish elements of human char¬
acter. The, material-minded and unprincipled enemy did not
reckon on the family spirit: t4^t brothers and compatriots"
may fight each other at home, but fight side by side against
foreign attack.
As a soldier the Negro begins with American history and
shares its proudest annals. In war he is not cruel 'but terrible.
In peace he is not cowardly but gentle. And he is as terrible
in war as he is gentle in peace. Hie gave the first life in the
American Revolution and followed George Washington
through suffering to victory. He was one of the Yorktown
races. In the War of 1812 he was with Perry on Lake Erie
and helped to defend New Orleans and Baltimore. His was
the reserve power which turned the tide of the Civil War for
union, "that free government might not perish from the earth."
Negro regiments of the regular army fought the Indians for
half a century and conquered the West to civilization. The
same regiments fought the proudest actions in Cu'ba, cleaned
out the treacherous purlieus of the Philippines, and impressed
the dull masses of Mexico with respect for our flag. But not
until the great war was he permitted to fight largely captained
by officers of his own race. lathis war the Negro from both
America and Africa has made bis first great record as a modern
international factor and a positive world influence. The his¬
tory of man is overwhelming proof that races achieve most
when led by their own kind. But the American Negro was for
centuries practically excluded from officership in the army on
the mere statement that he was an unfit leader for himself,
with no disposition to test the assertion by a demonstration.
Inordinate demands of the great war have given him his
chance. Over one thousand of his commissioned officers have
exposed a sentiment that was never founded in fact. And he
has more than lived up to his record in this war. Black Amer¬
ican regiments brigaded with the French immediately won the
highest honors for courage. Two Negro soldiers in "no man's
land" turned 'back a German party of twenty odd men and
destroyed forever the myth of Teutonic omnipotence. His
cool work with the bayonet has given him on the French front
a great reputation in the use of that terrible weapon. To the
credit of cosmopolitan France, let us say in passing, the French
army has black generals from Africa who for years have held
their own against the best prepared military machine of history.
The courage of the American Negro surprises those who do
not analyze his situation at home. It is a popular conception in
America that the Negro is a coward, but popular conceptions in
all ages have arisen from the appearance of things rather than
from their Substance. The man who has all odds against him, is
the one who must constantly exercise the virtue of courage. If
the sentiment of the community and the machinery of the law
are against the Negro, he is the party who must |tse courage
all the timb in order to live. \o umreflective observation it does
not appear so, for he is seen to be instantly getting the worst
of the matter. The Negro who attempts to defend his wife in
Mississippi must summon all the courage of which human nature
is capable—and then, perhaps, fail in the attempt. If a white
Mississippian undertakes to defend his wife, especially against
a Negro, he need not exercise the virtue of courage. The whole
community backs him, supports him, even commands him to do
the deed. It would require the greatest courage for him to
refuse. The man whose actions are but expressions of the great
popular will, needs little courage of his own. But the man who
must battle almost unsupported, if he be not broken, becomes iron.
When a Negro dangles from a tree, done to death by a thousand
'men, the dangling black man possibly represents the passing of the
last bit of courage in that whole group. For every-day life in
America the Negro must often summon the pristine courage of
imttlrfe;. but the . American white man, if he choose, may go
through, life with the exercise of almost no courage at all. The
Negro soldier only demonstrates what a man brought up to fight
against odds may do when the ftjht is fair. No wonder that a
French general had to cite a whole colored American /egiment for
bravery, not being able to pick out one man above another.
There is something so unwarlike about the American Negro in
every-day life that public sentiment not unnaturally divests him
of anything like martial courage. He is diplomatic with the super¬
ior force aibout him. He is not vindictive; he is imaginative and
sympathetic. He therefore sings at war—he has music for the
bayonet thrust. It is impossible for an unsyimpathetic, and vin¬
dictive mind to interpret him. In the Civil War he lay like a
watch-dog on the doorsteps to protect his owner's wife and chil¬
dren, while the master was fighting a fight that would have per¬
petuated slavery. For this many praise the Negro and few
blame him; but he deserves neither praise nor blame for this:
it is his nature. This is unsophisticated loyalty to duty. When
toward the end of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln armed that
same Negro, clothed him in a soldier's pride and commissioned
him to defend the Union, that same slave was as gallant in the
fight against his master in the field as he had been loyal in defense
of his master's family at home. It was consistent: he was loyal
in defense of-the innocent and loyal in defense of the flag.
And one of the finest examples of commonsense and magnimity
to be found in American history is the willingness with which the
colored people entered the work of the Red Cross and other war
auxiliaries wherein their co-operation was in times of peace
neither sought nor accepted. They might have said: "You invite
us now because you need us." Colored people are human, and
that was exactly their first thought. But they had another thoug'ht
coming, l?ke this: "We live neither in the past nor for the past.
We live in the present and for tkie future. This emergency gives
us the opportunity to show how we can help, and gives our white
fellow citizens the opportunity to learn how we can help. God
gives both races an opportunity in this war." Verily was -the
latter end of the Negro's thinking better than the first.
Along with all the other races allied against ruthlessness and
faithlessness, the American Negro had some purposes in this
struggle which are very dear to him. And not the least of these
is the desire to better conditions at home. When a black Amer¬
ican shot a German in France, he hoped he saw a lyncher die—
a spiritual death. It is not a paradox, it is'truth, that the Negro
thrust his bayonet harder in Europe when he thought of condi¬
tions in the United States. For the time being he was endeavoring
to overcome these home conditions by an indirect attack : by show¬
ing his loyalty as a citizen and his worth as a soldier. He hoped
to overcome evil with good.
As an industrial factor the Negro in wair time presents a not
less interesting spectacle. For the first time in his twelve genera¬
tions of American life, the war gave him half a chance to work-
without at the same time "being worked." Since his emancipa¬
tion it had been continually dinned into our ears that he was an
industrial Jonah; that he could never be anything but a day-
laborer under the threatening eye of a boss; and that he was
absolutely unfit to work in the more complicated machinery of
modern industry. Nobody pretended, of course, that he had been
tried in these things and had failed. He was disqualified without
trial, and the prejudgment was so emphatic that honest-minded
men were afraid even to try him. We imported laborers and
artisans from among strange peoples across two seas, rather than
try this which lay at our door for three hundred years. This was
not logical—human nature is not logical. The obviously logical
thing would have been to try the Negro rather than disqualify
him to our own inconvenience by a mere prejudgment. War
whose companion god is necessity, has compelled us to try the
Negro and he has made good everywhere. There is no laborer
on earth more agreeable, more adaptable or more quickly inclined
to see his interest in common with the interest of his employer.
More than that, we suddenly found1 out that the unreliable Negro
in our midst is the safest man to load our shells and handle our
high explosives. He has never been suspected of being the instru¬
ment of the enemy for any of the damnable injury to our life
and property done in munition plants. Will this black man who
has shown himself so trustworthy in time of war, ever again have
doors shut in his face in time of peace and security on the mere
prejudgment of unreliability?
And what light has the great war thrown on the problem of the
education and general development of our colored people ? Many
of us had conceptions of the beauty and goodness of human
society with artificial lines of superior and inferior classification,
permanent and fixed. The war has injured those conceptions, and
we hope fatally. This war has demonstrated that weakness in any
part or class of a nation, is national weakness; that inferior
classes especially are a sort of millstone about the national neck;
that the sum of a nation's power is the resultant of all its factors
and not simply the product of its more favored classes. Internal
weakness is more dangerous than external foes. Russia simply
could not come through this war because she had bad insides.
She expected that in time of need her upper classes would be able
to inspire and1 lead her great disadvantaged masses. Theyi failed.
Nature forbade success. When we put our colored men in the
front line of trenches, we expected and, for the time being, at
least we ardently wished that they would be the equals of any
soldier in the world. Even the blind1 could1 then see that Negroes
are a link in our chain. We understood in a moment what we had
not understood in fifty years: how closely bound up in destiny
with'all the rest of us is this Negro—that his weakness is our
weakness, his strength our strength. Our national government
nad to teach many of these black tipys to read after they were
drafted and in camp. He who can ii-ead is more useful. If any
part of lis lie down, we are all down in proportion all of the time,
and our condition is only made plain when the great crisis comes.
.Every element of a nation makes or breaks its power, as every
particle in the earth's mass has its influence on the chain of grav¬
itation which binds the earth to the sun. An ignorant man may be
an occasional advantage to some selfish individual, but he is a
continual deficit to the nation as a whole, We cannot educate a
black man into a white man, nor vice versa. The black man can
become the best black man, and the white man the best white man.
As a nation our policy should be: All Americans up and no
American down. In many places the provision for Negro educa¬
tion is the community's greatest camouflage. In most of the
schools operated exclusively for his children, scientific instruction
and technical training are not.
After this war will come the greatest reconstruction period the
nations have ever known. Reconstruction is pregnant with both
opportunity and danger. War acts like a great fire: it destroys
old buildings which ought to have been destroyed long ago, but
which we spared from selfishness or sentimentality, and it gives us
the privilege of building new ideas into the new structures. Amer¬
ica can now avoid the mistakes which were made in.the smaller
reconstruction of fifty years ago. ^The trouble then was sectional¬
ism; one party wanting to put the Negro in and another party
wanting to keep the Negro out. Today there should be no party
who aims to keep the Negro out. The war has been teaching that
the Negro belongs in, that he is aj)art of us. Have wp the capac¬
ity to learn*? God has lent us our foreign allies, but He has given
us the Negro for keeps. Belgians, French, English are for the
time being with us, but the American Negro is of us: he breathes
our air, his body is our clay, and the soul that he has is American
grown. Only God knows what will be the international alliances
of twenty-five years from this day, but in all alliances the Negro
is permanently with us That is an important consideration.
Numerically a tenth of us, in influence he is more than a tenth
because of the distinctness and separateness we attach to him.
And he himself is expecting to be nothing less than an American
citizen with equal rights before the laws written and unwritten.
"Black Americans,"as the Kaiser called them,have supported
our allies from the snow-white wastes of Siberia to the deep blue
Mediterranean. They have gazed upon the cold peaks of Switzer¬
land and the warm hills of sunny Italy. Caesar went as far as
lie could go northward; Attila came as far as he could push
southward. These Americans have outrivaled both Caesar and
Attila. And the red blood of black men on the white plains ot
Si'beria and the gray hills of"Italy, is the most innocent blood of
the whole sacrifice. This is especially true of the great army
from Africa. Africans had ro particular quarrel with any par¬
ticular European nation. To make the world safer primarily for
* *
white men, and we l^ope at least incidentally for black men,
..Africans went to war a million strong, and supplied many mil¬
lions of the industrial army which supported the wrar. But while
Africa was not the active cai^fe" of the war, the war will cause
activity in Africa. And out of this travail of the world will be
born its future.
^ The Slegro landed in this country three hundred years ago. He
is one hundred per cent American. Whether or not he is today
the most desirable citizen, when he landed he certainly was the
immigrant most desir^l. It is now not nearly so important that
he zcas a slave, as it is important that he is a citizen. As a citizen
he has set a record for the world in unmixed patriotism: the
kind which makes a man true to his country because it is his
country; as he loves his mother because she is his mother, even
though he cannot approve altogether of her conduct. One may
be sorely vexed by his mother, but he cannot hate her. He may
himself oppose her, but if she be attacked he will defend her.
The man who could betray his country for popularity or for
pelf, could betray his mother for flattery or for pieces of other
men"s silver. An unbreakable tie binds one to his native soil.
In this matter the American Negro has more nearly lived up to
New Testament morality than has any other race of men. He
had tempting offers to be disloyal, but it cannot be said that he
had great inducements to be loyal. While Negro soldiers were
in France fighting the enemies of this country and saving the lives
of its white men, some of these men were in Georgia' butchering
colored women in the exact m-uner in which men have for ages
butchered cows—hung up by their feet. (See foot note.)
We should' not resent the Negro's being a Negro. Perhaps it
is a good thing that he is. The Kingdom of God must 'be on
earth as.it is in heaven, and all the races of man must contribute
their best to the make-up of this kingdom. The United States
of America has the best opportunity to exemplify it. Men of all
colors and from all climes have gathered here, not for Armaged¬
don, but for universal brotherhood. To this Kingdom of God
and paradise of man the American Negro can make the best
offerings of patience and forgiveness, of heart and art, of sym¬
pathy and song.
WILLIAM PICKENS.
Morgan College, Baltimore, Md.,
November, 1918.
Note.—In the year 1918 a Georgia mob of white men hung a colored woman up by
her feet, disemboweled her of her unborn yr.-jig, and when the unnaturally delivered
infant cried out in protest, a member of the nob crushed with his heel the head of the
hapless child. This woman was not accused oE any crime, not even by tlm mob.