irtaiuaeeand
a
Cas sor .
tabaci aes seas < . = ; F c
agerren et eee i, re : : " : por paey peirererye)
. : : a oan eet eae eee
rattan era tues ys “a ;
business ?
9. What is the effect of the industrial movement on living ©
conditions of Negroes?
CHAPTER VII
LAW AND ORDER
In the successful adjustment of the legal relationships of
the two races democracy is vitally involved. The right toa
fair trial by an impartial jury of peers is one of the bed-
rocks upon which freedom rests, and if it cannot be pre-
served when the courts serve two races, then democracy
itself rests on quicksand. The problem of legal justice is,
therefore, fully as important to the white race as to the
Negro race. Any tendency to weaken the feeling that the
court system is entirely impartial, unaffected by passion
or prejudice, and meticulously just, or any tendency to
strengthen the feeling that the court can be biased or made
the instrument of a particular class, is a tendency which
may wreck society. Like the machinery of government, the
machinery of justice is entirely in the hands of the white
man. He makes the laws which courts enforce, he has
evolved the court system, he furnishes the judges, court
officers, and juries. It is therefore his great responsibility,
in face of any difficulty, to render justice through them.
The descendants of the Anglo-Saxon have gained a su-
premacy in many lands because they have been supremely
fair and supremely just. A departure from fair and just
policies will inevitably sap their moral stamina and endanger’
their hard-won supremacy, for supremacy is not anindividual
or a racial heritage. It must be constantly maintained.
I25
126 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
NEGRO CRIME RATE
The necessity of dealing with a large number of backward
colored people puts a strain upon the courts. The pressure
of prejudice and jealousy, and the desire by some classes of
white people to exploit, often leads to injustice toward the
Negro. On the other hand, the presence of large numbers
of Negroes, as yet poorly adapted to the codes and institu-
tions of the white civilization in which they live, brings
problems of law and morals to both races. The task of pre-
serving law and order is therefore twofold, consisting of
efforts to reduce the crime among the irresponsible class of
Negroes, and to reduce the violence and injustice among the
irresponsible class of white people. In fact, the Negro race
has a large, but not excessive, criminal element, but, with
the exception of thefts, the great majority of his crimes are
committed against other Negroes. A study of the crime
rate indicates that their criminality is not attributable to
racial tendencies so much as it is to living conditions.
The following figures indicate the extent and something
of the distribution of Negro criminality.
PRISONERS AND JUVENILE DELINQUENTS: COMMITMENT
RATES PER 100,000 OF EACH RACE, 1910
WHITE NEGRO
it aldin isdn veh bet aah aaa lial hae aL ead 467 1,102
PURE SOUL ay a ak owen ae eR) ek eae alcrdes QBS iy 880
seu OL kp aria bial en tae pa ed 503 2,836
SERIE) VV CSOT eee ie eh eer Fanner 816 3,667
Thus one out of every hundred Negroes and one of every
two hundred and fifty whites were committed to prison in
tg10. The rate for Negroes is more than twice the rate for
|
\
LAW AND ORDER 127
white people, but one out of each hundred is not a suff-
ciently large proportion to warrant branding the race as
having deep-rooted criminal tendencies.
In passing, it may be said that the Negro crime rate ap-
pears higher than the actual amount of criminality because
of injustices in the courts. It is a notorious fact that in
many sections the Negro who becomes involved in the toils
of the law can gain his freedom only by a stroke of fortune
or by extraordinary effort. The arrest and conviction of
innocent Negroes, therefore, swells the commitment rate
beyond the actual volume of crime.
CAUSES OF CRIME
The variations in the different sections furnish further
clews as to the real reasons for Negro crime. The South,
with a large rural population which has become adapted to
its situation, has a low crime rate for both white people and
Negroes. The North and West, where the Negro population
is largely concentrated in cities and where it has recently
migrated, have Negro crime rates three and a half and four
and a half times as high as the South. In the West North-
Central section, which approaches the South in its propor-
tion of rural inhabitants, the commitment rate for native
white people was only 296 per hundred thousand, but the
commitment rate for foreign-born whites was 550. That is,
among the migrant whites the crime rate was twice that of
the natives. These rates of crime among the native and
foreign born are comparable to those of the white and col-
ored people in the South. This influence of city life and
migration on the crime rate is further evident from the
rates in New England with 630 commitments per 100,000
128 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
native whites and 1143 for the same number of foreign
born. In other words, the crime rate among the foreign
born in New England is higher than the crime rate among
the Negroes in the United States.
Another factor in the crime rate is the inadequate care of
the insane and the feeble-minded. Many of these are not
confined in institutions. This is especially true of the
feeble-minded, there being no institution for the segregation
of the colored cases in the Southern states. A study of the
inmates of the Georgia penitentiary showed that 60 per cent
of the Negro inmates were feeble-minded. From this it is
evident that a proper understanding and care of this element
of the population would greatly reduce crime.
The outstanding causes of Negro criminality may, there-
fore, be said to be: The Negro’s racial background, 7.e., his
lack of adaptation to the codes and institutions of the white
race; his migration from country to city; the adverse
economic and housing conditions surrounding him; and
feeble-mindedness. Only the last of these is due to inborn
traits. The others can be minimized by education, pains-
taking effort to adjust the Negro to American life, and
humane and modern administration of penal institutions.
Lack of modern, humane methods of dealing with Negro
offenders hampers many sections in reducing crime. All
phases of contact between society and the criminal or sus-
pect need to be thoroughly safeguarded. Extreme care
should be taken in making arrests. Those committed to
jails, penitentiaries, or reformatories should be surrounded,
in these institutions, with conditions which will tend to
correct their criminal tendencies rather than with condi-
tions which tend to debase, brutalize, and increase criminal
LAW AND ORDER 129
tendencies. Every effort should be made to return them to
society as useful citizens. Adequate institutional treatment
should also be supplemented with modern systems of proba-
tion and parole.
LENGTH OF SENTENCE
In the North and in the South virtually the same propor-
tion of Negroes are committed for minor offenses, yet there
is a striking inequality in the length of sentences served.
The proportion of long sentences in the South is unduly high :
PER CENT COMMITTED (1910) FOR
OVER ONE ONE MONTH | ONE MONTH
YEAR TO ONE YEAR OR LESS
White commitments
INOFL I BL t ten ate ae in Celt il 6.9 53-9 39.2
SOULE Rc borate ray ag 7. 33.8 37.8 28.4
Negro commitments
INP Eee nae oe Nd fey Set ity Y, foe 16.0 53-5 30.5
OUR EUMM TLS Or ET Na tee ah, G } 42.3 40.4 17.4
Thus almost a half of the Negroes in the South are com-
mitted for a year or more, while only about a sixth of the
Northern Negroes are given such a long term; and only a
sixth of the Southern Negroes are committed for one month
or less while a third of the Northern commitments are for
this short period. The fact that the commitments are also
longer for white people in the South indicates that some of
this discrepancy in length of sentence is due to a sectional
rather than a racial difference in administration of justice.
The purely sectional tendency toimpose longer sentences in
the South on both races does not, however, fully account for
130 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
the great proportion of Southern Negroes committed for
over a year and the very small proportion committed for
less than a month.
It indicates a definite tendency on the part of Southern
courts to impose heavier sentences on the Negro than upon
white men, and heavier sentences than those imposed by the
Northern courts. The strikingly small number of commit-
ments for less than a month is also indicative of a tendency
on the part of Southern judges to condone or merely repri-
mand certain peccadillos of the Negro which are punished
with short imprisonment in the North. In some sections,
the system of employing convicts on the roads of the county
in which they are convicted influences court officials and
judges to impose heavy sentences, but in most instances
there is an honest belief on the part of the judge that the
best way to correct the Negro is to follow the method
applied to children and either merely reprimand and warn,
or impose a heavy punishment.
Unjust ARREST
One of the most persistent complaints of Negroes, North
and South, arises from the conduct of arresting officers. No
adequate figures as to arrests are available, but if they could
be secured, the number of useless arrests of Negroes would
prove astounding. The fee system, which allows officers a
fee for each arrest and allots to judges, solicitors, and
sheriffs a proportion of the court costs of trials, is a vicious
factor in this useless arrest. |
The following quotation from a leading Georgia daily
during the migration indicates that some of the Southern
communities are waking up to this consideration :
LAW AND ORDER 131
Everybody seems to be asleep about what is going on right
under our noses, — that is, everybody but those farmers who
waked up on mornings recently to find every Negro over twenty-
one on their places gone. . . .
And we go about our affairs as usual — our police raid pool
rooms for “‘loafing Negroes,’ bring in twelve, and keep them in
the barracks all night, and next morning find that ten of them
have steady jobs and were merely there to spend an hour in the
only indoor recreation they have; our county officers hear of a
disturbance at a Negro resort and bring in fifty-odd men, women,
boys, and girls to spend the night in jail, to make a bond at
1o per cent, to hire lawyers, to mortgage half of two months’
pay to get back to their jobs Monday morning, although but
half a dozen of them could have been guilty of disorderly conduct.
A Mississippi daily adds the following :
We allow petty officers of the law to harass and oppress our
Negro labor, mulcting them of their wages, assessing stiff fines
on trivial charges, and often they are convicted on charges,
which if preferred against a white man, would result in prompt
acquittal.
Nor are these practices confined to the South. “The fol-
lowing record of events is traceable in the files of the daily
papers of a large Northern city which has recently received a
considerable influx of Negro migrants. There was a period
of industrial unemployment attended, as usual, by a series
of thefts and holdups. The chief of police was roundly
criticized by the “‘out”’ faction for not bringing the thieves
to justice. He blamed the large number of Negro unem-
ployed for the situation, and announced that on a certain
Friday night he would conduct a clean-up of the Negro
ward. As this announcement was printed on Wednesday
it is extremely improbable that any criminal remained in
132 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
that ward to wait for his raid on Friday, nevertheless it was
conducted. Every Negro pool room was entered and 160
arrests were made. All but 20 of these were charged with
the technical offenseof vagrancy. Of the 140 vagrants about
60 were finally able to show enough money or sufficient
employment to clear themselves from that charge. The
other 80 were convicted of vagrancy and released on con-
dition that they leave town immediately. One of these
who had no money tried to walk out of town but was
re-arrested and brought back twice; then he tried stealing
out on freight trains and was brought back by railroad
detectives twice, until the judge, in desperation, had one of
the bailiffs take him in his own car to the city limits. In
remarking on this, the leading daily said that with such
brilliant activity on the part of the police department, it
was a mystery why the thievery and hold-ups continued
unabated.
This high-handed arrest of colored people is extremely
galling to the law-abiding citizens, who often live constantly
in fear that they, at any time, may be causelessly subjected
to this humiliation. It cannot be excused on any ground
other than ignorance and inefficiency of police officers who
engage in these practices, and indifference of the citizens
who permit such officers to remain on the job.
REFORMATION
As a rule the faults of jails, chain gangs, and penitentiaries
apply to white and colored alike except that in many jails,
where the two races are segregated, the Negroes have the
more unsanitary quarters. Mr. G. Croft Williams of the
South Carolina Board of Welfare observes that “the average
LAW AND ORDER 133
jail is not an exhibition of the citizenry’s cruelty, but of
their callous neglect. All professions of humanitarianism
and of the sincere desire to make a better and happier world
will echo back in hollow mockery as long as our present
jails stand as their sounding boards.”
It is not the province of this book to go into the horrors
of the jails, chain gangs and road camps of some states.
Experts have painted terrible pictures and reports of official
investigating committees contain authoritative statements
as to the exposure, the debasement, the filth, and the in-
humanity of the surroundings of criminals placed in some
convict camps. It must be realized that the society which
places a white man or a black man in such an environment
for several months can expect nothing else than that he
return to society more debased and more inclined to crime.
It is only very recently that the need for special treatment
for juvenile delinquents has been widely understood, and
the task of caring for the white juvenile delinquent is much
further advanced than that of caring for the colored. In
many instances ignorance of the law, lack of the proper
place of detention or of the proper machinery for probation
leads to placing juvenile delinquents in jail alongside of
hardened criminals. This is not corrective but debasing.
It does not lessen criminality but brings recruits to the
criminal ranks.
Most of the Southern states have some kind of reforma-
tory for colored boys, but only Virginia, Kentucky, Okla-
-homa, Tennessee, and South Carolina provide such an
institution for colored girls. A movement is on foot in
several other states to make provision to meet this need.
Without such an institution many judges are unwilling to
134 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
place colored girls who have committed minor offenses in
jail. They merely release them to go back into their vicious
environment, drift into worse habits and finally to become
criminals. In the larger counties this is a serious situation.
If probation officers are white, they have great difficulty in
gaining the confidence of the Negro probationers. The bar-
rier of color is between them and their charge. A few large
counties have found the solution of this situation in the em-
ployment of colored probation officers. The first colored pro-
bation officer was employed only as late as 1915, but since that
time several large counties have added such workers to their
staff and found that the service which they render in correct-
ing colored boys and girls is invaluable to the community.
There is a great need for the extension of this work, and coun-
ties whose revenues do not warrant the employment of a full-
time officer are in need of part-time or voluntary probation
service for colored delinquents. The Negroes themselves
need to take a more enlightened and active interest in this
great problem of theirs, and to manifest this interest by
organizing juvenile delinquency councils which will codper-
ate with the juvenile courts in handling the colored cases.
With these adverse influences in living conditions, feeble-
mindedness, unjust arrests, penal institutions and probation,
the marvel is, not that one in each hundred Negroes is a
convicted criminal, but that the rate is as low as it is.
INJUSTICES IN THE COURTS
The injustices to which the courts subject the Negro are
largely the product of three things: prejudice, the economic
condition of the Negro who is involved in court, and the
unreliability of the testimony of many Negroes. Not only
LAW AND ORDER 135
is this true in criminal cases, but it also applies to civil suits
in which a Negro is involved with a white man. Wherever a
Negro is arrayed against a white man it is the old story of
the weak against the strong. The report of the Carnegie
Foundation on “Justice and the Poor” showed vividly that
the poor man, whether he is white or black, is at a grave
disadvantage when he attempts to secure justice in the
courts. Studies of the relation of the immigrant to the court
show that he suffers many of the same disadvantages as the
Negro. Lawyers, not clients, secure justice, and the man
who can employ competent counsel, and who has friends
among the court officials and jurymen, has all the advantage
on his side.
Legal aid, when wisely administered, can do much to
adjust this balance. There are now a few legal aid agencies
in the South but, for the most part, the legal aid which
Negroes receive is informal and unorganized. If the Negro
who gets in trouble has a kind-hearted employer, or white
friend who will secure a good lawyer for him, and will aid in
getting witnesses to testify, he has an excellent chance to get
justice, often to get more than justice. If, on the other
hand, he is friendless, the small fee which he is able to pay
often limits him to the services of a young, inexperienced, or
an older shyster lawyer. The practices indulged in by some
of these men who make a habit of soliciting Negro business
around the jail is a disgrace to the legal profession and
should subject them to disbarment. A well-organized legal
aid society which would take only those cases which were
thoroughly investigated beforehand, would divert much of
the business from these less able lawyers and correct many
of the injustices suffered by the Negro.
136 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Again, there is much honest doubt in the minds of those
who are experienced in handling Negro testimony as to
when to believe and when not to believe this testimony in
court. This is not due so much to any racial difference in
attitude toward truth as it is to difference in mental attri-
butes. The masses of Negroes are ignorant and highly
excitable. Such people, in reporting events, often report
their feelings rather than what they actually see and hear.
They feel the events so keenly that they obtain a distorted
notion of what is happening and actually believe that what
they relate is true; but they can easily be tripped up and
discredited before a jury by an experienced cross examiner.
This has occurred so habitually that many jurymen flatly
refuse to believe Negro testimony, and this condition will
continue until training and self-control render the state-
ments of the masses of Negroes more reliable, even when
made under emotional stress. This condition makes pos-
sible the rise of the loan-shark evil, exploitation by mer-
chants and landlords, and peonage, against which the
friendless Negro has little chance of redress in the courts
unless he is extended legal aid.
LYNCHING
Lynching is the most spectacular and intensified injustice
to the Negro. It is the one which agitates both the leaders
and the masses most profoundly. At the same time it con-
stitutes the greatest menace to white civilization. In the
heat of a debate on international policies and in the midst
of the controversies of a presidential campaign, Congress
passed a resolution deploring the “‘British atrocities in Ire-
land.” The Canadian Parliament immediately retaliated
LAW AND ORDER 137
with a resolution condemning mob violence in the United
States. This was merely a piece of mutual legislative imper-
tinence, but the response of the Canadians is a matter for
careful thought. The potential influence of such ideals as
the United States may sponsor is seriously challenged when
Canadian Members of Parliament, Japanese publicists, and
Tagore and his Indian followers inquire whether promis-
cuous hanging and burning of fellow human beings are
symbols of American civilization and democracy, when the
prominent European journals feature the vilest actions of
the mob, and when the people of Haiti and Mexico say that
they see no reason why mob control of their countries gives
us the excuse for intervention in their affairs when our own
mobs are so violent and go unpunished.
From these angles it is evident that lynching is a matter of
more than nation-wide importance. Indeed it has assumed
international aspects. Mob violence seems to be confined
largely to America, but it is not confined to the Southern
states. There the mob lynches; elsewhere it indulges in
strike riots, race riots, or gang killings and bombings.
These are diabolical blots on American civilization. A
description of the barbarous details of lynchings would be
too revolting to print, but the investigator of these cases
could parallel the inhuman horrors of the Spanish inquisi-
tion in the action of mobs in twentieth-century America.
The most conservative records of mob actions list some
four thousand victims of lynchers alone since 1885. In
other words, during the past thirty-eight years Judge Lynch
has executed on the average of two victims per week. This
includes only persons who were accused or suspected of some
crime. If a similar record could be compiled of the victims
138 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
of race riots and strike mobs, the total would probably
reach ten thousand. Judge Lynch has been active long
enough to be an institution in some communities. He is a
part of the hardened cake of custom and will not be easily
dislodged. There are, however, methods by which his hold
can be weakened. The facts indicate that they are the long
slow methods of community education and local action
rather than some sudden reform by the passage of an act of
Congress. A deep-rooted custom has never been legislated
out of existence in a hurry.
One of the excuses of those who apologize for lynching is
that it avenges a particular brutal and abhorrent crime
which would be given too much publicity by court action.
An examination of the facts does not bear out this state-
ment. The majority of the lynchings are not for rape but
for violence. The causes are as follows:
Murder and assault, 43.6 per cent; rape or attempted
rape, 23.0; theft, 7.4; other causes, 26.0. Thus while the
mob may begin by lynching for one crime, once their blood
lust is aroused they lynch for other crimes and sometimes
for fancied offenses. As to publicity there is no comparison
between the notice given an orderly court trial and that
accorded by the flaming headlines which greet a lynching.
In this respect the mob defeats its avowed purpose of
protecting an innocent victim from the focus of public
attention.
CoMBATING THE Mos
On the face of the record it is evident that mob rule is a
temporary but vicious manifestation of a spirit of anarchy,
and is, to an alarming degree, unpunished. In view of this
condition it is regrettable that the present constitution and
LAW AND ORDER 139
machinery of the federal government seem unable to do
anything effective to check this great evil. An attempt was
made through the Dyer bill, which was introduced and
shelved in the 1922 session of Congress and reintroduced in
1924. The intent of this bill was to make participation in a
mob an offense which may be punished by federal courts.
The bill also provided that a fine of $10,000 be assessed
against any county in which mob violence was committed
and provided penalties against negligent public officials.
Nothing was ever rationally settled by partisan or sec-
tional controversy, and when the debate becomes both
partisan and sectional, the result is disastrously unsettling.
In handling the Dyer anti-lynching bill, Congress developed
little but partisan and sectional arguments. The net result
was that the national attitude toward this question of fun-
damental importance has been decidedly muddled. Northern
Congressmen tore their hair over the lynching record of the
Southern states, — and it is black enough. But Southern
Congressmen merely countered with citations of the race
and strike riots of Northern cities. In addition there were
honest doubts on both sides as to whether or not it is consti-
tutional to take this particular form of crime, now in the
hands of the state courts, and place it in the jurisdiction of
the federal courts.
Aside from the constitutionality of federal interference
in lynching, the fundamental objection to this course, which
was hardly touched on in Congress, is that the federal courts
would, in all probability, be less effective than state courts,
and the act of giving the federal courts and officials responsi-
bility would lessen the very essential sense of responsibility
now developing among state and county officials. Many
140 ‘THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
local sheriffs and police officers would shrug their shoulders
and say: ‘‘Now that Uncle Sam has taken hold, that
lets me out. The United States marshal is welcome to
the job.”
To those who have watched the federal courts in their
efforts to enforce the prohibition law, it is evident that much
is to be said in favor of leaving the power and the responsi-
bility in the hands of local officials. In some of the states
which had prohibition laws before the passage of the federal
act, the flagrant violations of the national law have led to
the belief that the previous state enforcement was more
effective than the present federal effort. Recent contact
with peonage cases, in which federal officials have been
unable to act effectively, has forced the belief that, in this
field also, there is very little to choose between federal and
state action.
In the last analysis, whether the trial be in the federal
court or in a state court, the conviction of mob members will
depend upon whether or not local people will come forward
and give their testimony freely and frankly, whether local
officers will do their sworn duty in gathering this testimony,
and whether local jurors will set aside their prejudices and
personal feelings to the extent of returning a verdict in
accordance with the evidence submitted. In other words,
whether conviction is sought for violators of a prohibition
act, peonage act, or anti-lynching act, the federal court will
hardly be more efficient than the state court in areas where
the local sentiment has not reached the point of repudiating
the crime.
The one good result of the introduction of the Dyer bill
has been that it stimulated discussion and wide publicity.
LAW AND ORDER 141
It was opposed on the plea that the states should handle
lynching, and that has contributed to the growth of the
feeling that state and local officials are placed under a
moral obligation to stamp out the evil.
But there is another side of the picture. Successes in
some local efforts to curb Judge Lynch have been as encour-
aging as the failure of the federal government has been
disheartening. Lynching is on the decline, largely because of
these local efforts. From 255 victims in 1892, the number has
steadily decreased to 57 in 1922, 28 in 1923, and 16 in 1924.
Many states, including those of the so-called ‘‘ Wild West,”
have reduced the evil to a vanishing point. In Georgia,
where the problem is often said to be the most difficult,
notable progress has been made. The method of conducting
the fight under difficult conditions is worthy of detailed
attention.
In 1919 and 1920, when crime was rife in the United
States, Governor Hugh M. Dorsey was struggling against
the current in Georgia. He had many calls for aid from
local communities and much experience in dealing with
local officials. Upon leaving the governor’s chair he sum-
marized some of his experiences in an appeal to the con-
science of the law-abiding element in the state, calling upon
them to protect Georgia from the acts of organized mob
minorities. He cited 135 cases of injustice to the Negro and
stated that there had been 57 lynchings, 14 per year, dur-
ing his administration. The publication of this appeal in
pamphlet form was the opening gun in a long campaign
against the lawless element.
Since then three years have elapsed, enough time to judge
the effects of this course. Before the publication of this
142. THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
pamphlet over 400 cases of lynching had occurred in the
state with only one indictment of mob members. In 1922,
instead of 14 lynchings, there were g, in 1923 only 4, and in
1924 only 2. In four cases indictments have been returned
and twenty-two people were indicted. Four have been sent
to the penitentiary. In two cases where mobs were unsuc-
cessful their members were sued for damages and eight
members of unsuccessful mobs were indicted for assault.
In every case there has been a storm of indignant protest
from the better element of the community.
“That looks like real progress,” is the comment of the
Christian Index, the official organ of Georgia’s Baptists.
“One thing is true: The people of Georgia are opposed to
lynching. We do not believe that this statement has been
made frequently enough. There has not been as much
encouragement to stand against mob rule as there should
have been.” .
Before Governor Dorsey’s exposé the large state papers
published very little concerning mobs either in the news or
the editorial sections. Since that time, although there has
been less actual violence, the volume of comment and con-
demnation has been large. Clippings from the Atlanta
papers alone fill a sizable scrap book. This publicity has
been one of the strong weapons against the mob, for mob
members shrink from it. Changes in the public mind are
slow and their reflection in the acts of officials and courts
are still slower, but it is generally felt in Georgia that there
is a distinct trend toward the disfavor of Judge Lynch, and
the recital of the outcome of the lynching prosecutions of
1922 indicates beyond doubt that this change is gradually
molding the acts of local courts and communities.
LAW AND ORDER 143
Besides the press, another powerful agency is arrayed
against lynching as never before. This is the sentiment of
the churches. The Southern Baptist Convention has con-
demned mob violence strongly and this condemnation has
found its way to congregations through the pulpit. Another
powerful religious organization recently arrayed against
lynching is the Southern Methodist Woman’s Missionary
Council. Their statement of their position is especially
strong:
Whereas the defeat of the Dyer anti-lynching bill, which pro-
vided for the federal control of lynching, has thrown the whole
responsibility back upon each state for removing this hideous
crime, therefore:
We do now demand of the authorities of the several states
that they make good their claim (that they can control lynch-
ing), proving their competency to abolish violence and lynching.
That we formulate plans in behalf of adequate state laws and
law enforcement. |
Besides these general religious bodies, a number of local
presbyteries, synods, conventions, and conferences in the ©
South have spoken against the evil and urged their members
to use their influence to abate it. The general federation of
churches in the United States, the Federal Council, has com-
mitted itself to a five-year campaign against the evil. When
these great spiritual currents, which are guided by the
churches and by the women, turn against lynching, there
can be no doubt as to the final outcome of the struggle to
eliminate it.
Throughout the South, county committees on race rela-
tions and, in some states, county leagues for the enforce-
ment of law have been organized. They have been most
144 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
effective in strengthening the constituted authorities in
their stand against the mob. A study of the activities of
these organizations indicates that more vigorous local action
may be expected along two lines. One type consists in
strengthening the machinery of law enforcement; that is,
imposing penalties on negligent sheriffs, creating state
police forces, and providing for the rotation of judges and
prosecutors so that some of the effects of local prejudice are
nullified. The other type consists of the application of a
more militant spirit to the enforcement of law in the courts ;
that is, conscientious jury service, and service as reviser of
the jury list, demand for stringent investigation of lynch-
ings, and law-and-order organizations which pledge them-
selves to lend active aid to the officers of the law.
Much can be expected from such action. This has been
proved in some states. In the far West, where lynching
first became prevalent, this form of violent and illegal
punishment has almost disappeared. It has been supplanted
by a strong system of courts and a greater respect for the
lawful processes. In the South, where lynching took hold
when the court machinery was weakened by the ravages of
the Civil War, the evil has thrived behind a smoke screen of
color prejudice. Yet in some of the Southern states it has
been successfully attacked.
South Carolina, in 1895, adopted a constitutional provi-
sion that the governor could remove any sheriff who per-
mitted a lynching in his county. Since that time lynchings
in South Carolina have steadily decreased almost to the van-
ishing point. By a similar provision, adopted in 1gor, Ala-
bama has reduced her number from 12 to 5 per year, and the
addition of a state police has further decreased the evil. Since
LAW AND ORDER 145
the passage of the state police law in Tennessee, almost four
years ago, there have been but two lynchings. Kentucky,
Florida, and West Virginia also give their governors power
to remove their sheriffs, and movements are on foot to
secure the same provision in other states.
The most effective anti-lynching provision is the plan of
making the sheriff answerable to a superior authority. A
determined sheriff can stop almost any mob. He has the
whole manhood of the county at his disposal. One sheriff is
known to have stopped a mob by deputizing its leaders to
protect the prisoner and telling them that they would be
held personally responsible for his safety. Another informed
the mob that the jail doors were open to them, but that the
prisoner was armed with a riot shot gun and would use it if
they entered the front door. They did not enter. A power-
ful water hose is another excellent means of dispersing a
crowd, more effective and less fatal than rifle fire. In short,
there are a dozen ways open to a resourceful, determined
sheriff. For this reason most preventive laws are aimed at
strengthening the hands of the sheriff and providing penal-
ties for his negligence. This remedy is much to be desired
because it is designed to stop mobs before they accomplish
their purpose rather than to punish them after they have
committed murder.
Local action also takes the form of more vigorous investi-
gation of lynchings with the view of punishing mob members.
Much of the success along this line in recent years has been
due to the activity of prominent local leaders who assist
prosecuting attorneys in gathering their facts, and who help
to create such a sentiment against lynching that grand
juries will indict and petit juries will convict mob members.
146 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Another form of local action consists in protecting the
prisoner. In one Georgia county eight hundred men re-
cently organized for this purpose. They were divided in
squads and one of these squads was actually on duty at the
jail continually. The publication of this fact in the local
papers made it impossible for a mob to form. In another
county the local interracial committee quieted the mob
spirit by offering a large reward for the capture and legal
conviction of a criminal. Such local activity is now so wide-
spread that the number of frustrated mobs is greater than
the number which are successful.
Thus more efficient state and local action has not only
almost abolished lynching in some of the Southern states,
but in others it has localized the evil. In Georgia, for
instance, an examination of the records for the past 22 years
reveals that three-fourths of the lynchings have been con-
centrated in 36 counties and 67 counties have never resorted
to this practice. The proportions run about the same
throughout the South. These lynching counties are without
exception in rural areas where police protection is inade-
quate and where the courts are weakest.
Another ten years of vigorous propaganda and prosecu-
tion will see the mob spirit thoroughly controlled in the
United States. This much-to-be-desired goal cannot be
reached, however, without the expenditure of a great deal
of effort and energy by the average citizen in the communi-
ties where the evil is now localized. It will require daring
and skill, and there is enough adventure in matching wits
with a mob or facing it boldly to appeal to the American
spirit. It is a citizen’s fight, and the need for waging war
against this enemy which attacks our civilization from
LAW AND ORDER 147
within is as great as was that for curbing the raids of the red
savage against the early pioneer settlements, for mob vio-
lence flouts the law and, if unchecked, it weakens all laws.
It is dynamite at the foundations of government. If the
fight is not won, there can be no safety under legal institu-
tions and democracy itself is in danger.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Annual Report of the Georgia Committee on Race Relations, 1922.
Atlanta University Publications 8 and 19, 1904 and 1o15s.
Commission on Interracial Codperation. ‘Black Spots on the Map.”
Cut Ler, J. E. Lynch Law in the United States.
DorsEy, HucH M. A Statement as to the Negro in Georgia.
MECKLIN, J. M. Democracy and Race Friction, Chapter IX.
Report of the Georgia Commission and the Survey of Mental Hygiene
made by National Committee for Mental Hygiene.
» STEPHENSON, G. T. Race Distinction in American Law.
The Negro in Chicago. Chapters I and VII.
WasHINGTON, B. T. The Story of the Negro, Vol. II, Chapter IV.
Witcox, W. F. Studies in the American Race Problems, pp. 443-476.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. Spend some time in a court in which Negroes are tried
and make observations on the manner of dispensing justice
and the attitude of arresting officers and court officials.
2. From your knowledge of the African background of the
Negro discuss the suddenness of his change from tribal customs
to United States law: (a) in regard to property; (0) in regard
to family morality; (c) in regard to drunkenness.
8. From Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915,
study the crimes for which Negroes are convicted and draw
conclusions. Supplement this with a study of a local com-
munity.
148 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
4. Trace the effect of the four outstanding causes of Negro
criminality as they are evidenced in the type of crime for which
Negroes are convicted.
5. From your knowledge of the actions of a mob, or from
actual observation in a community, discuss the effects of a
lynching on publicity given the crime, on respect for law in the
community, on the innocent Negro population. When two men
have been members of a mob and later one is on trial and the
other is on the jury, what will happen? How does this affect
the court machinery ?
6. Study the distribution of lynching and endeavor to ex-
plain it: (a) on the basis of presence or absence of Negro popula-
tion; (0) on the spirit of law observance; (c) on the strength of
the police powers.
7. What are the essential differences and similarities between
lynchings, strike mobs, and race riots?
8. Study the case records of a charity organization and
determine how legal-aid work would lighten the charity burden.
9. Summarize the anti-lynching activities in the United
States.
10. Report on the care of the feeble-minded Negroes. (See
Census of Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915,
also reports National Committee for Mental Hygiene.) What
effect would better care of this problem have on crime?
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT
The adjustment of the Negro to federal, state, county,
and city governments furnishes one of the most difficult
tasks of American politics. If democracy is anything more
than an empty formula, it means the equalization of op-
portunity to the fullest extent consistent with the harmo-
nious development of the whole community. It means
that every individual, regardless of his color or creed, should
have the chance to develop his capacities in any respect in
which his individual development does not infringe upon
the opportunities of the whole group. It means that the
government shall furnish institutions which will contribute
to this development of the citizenry and that, in so far as
it is consistent with the welfare of these institutions, the
citizens shall have a voice in determining institutional
policies and administering them.
NEGRO CITIZENS
On the other hand the duties of citizenship in a democracy
imply much more than mere residence. They demand sup-
port of the community institutions by contributions of
money and service and, in extreme necessity, by bearing
arms in their defense. Obviously every population is
composed of individuals who vary greatly in the ability
149
130 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
to perform these duties of citizenship. At the upper end
of the scale democracy places the energetic and able leaders
who are chosen by the people as experts in legislative,
administrative, and judicial capacities. At the lower end
are various classes, such as the criminal, the insane, the
feeble-minded, and the unnaturalized foreign born, who
are almost completely excluded from any of the privileges
of citizenship. Between these extremes the masses of
average men participate in varying degrees in the adminis-
tration of the communal affairs. As democracy evolves
in the direction of efficiency, more and more restrictions
are placed around office holding in order to insure the fitness
of the candidate for the place. Various qualifications are
set up for voting, the one most universal being the necessity
of paying at least a poll tax toward the support of the
government. Other prerequisites which have been imposed
In various states are literacy, property ownership, and
time of residence in the community.
Notwithstanding all idealistic theories that every man is
born free and equal, the enlightened democracy does not
treat every man equally with regard to the suffrage, eligi-
bility for office, or even with regard to the right to move
freely in the community. If it did so, it would lay itself
wide open to the attrition of inefficiency, ignorance, vice,
and crime. The one principle which must be observed,
however, in determining these restrictions is that of testing
the capacity of the individual. Whole classes or groups
cannot be restricted without the stultification of democratic
principles.
If, therefore, all Negroes were feeble-minded, or all were
criminal, or all were unable to pay any tax, there would be
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT st
no problem concerning their relation to American institu-
tions; they would be automatically excluded. If, on the
other hand, they were all property holders, all of average
intelligence, all incorruptible, the problem would be equally
as simple; they could exercise the full duties, therefore
share all the privileges of democracy.
But the situation is not simple in any respect. In the
very areas where the Negro is in the majority, his group is
less intelligent, less familiar with American institutions,
farther down in the economic scale, and most likely to
constitute the corrupt mass-voting element. In the areas
where the Negro is distinctly in the minority, he is more
intelligent, has had more chance to observe the workings
of the white man’s institutions, is higher in the economic
scale, and more fitted in every way to perform the duties
of citizenship. Consequently the extent to which Negroes
are given a voice in determining policies and administering
community affairs varies greatly in different localities. In
some states the poll tax is the only requirement which they
have to meet in order to vote, and as a result we find that
full suffrage is granted in all the Northern and several
Southern states. In such towns as Boley, Oklahoma,
Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and a number of others where
the population is wholly Negro, they are in complete control
of affairs, and in every state, Northern and Southern, they
vote on the same terms as other property holders in bond
issues and school elections.
In the light of these differing governmental attitudes of
communities toward the Negro, it is interesting to examine
the facts available concerning the ability of the Negro to
perform the duties of citizenship and the effect of this
152 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
performance upon the government, for if democracy is to
assume a rational attitude toward this large group of
citizens it will be arrived at by a calm consideration of the
facts rather than zealous advocacy of idealistic formule,
or stubborn adherence to partisanship or tradition.
NEGRO TAXPAYERS
As property holders a substantial and growing number of
colored people contribute their tax money to the support
of their federal, state, county, and city governments. The
218,000 farm owners alone pay taxes on over $200,000,000
worth of land. In addition the growing army (472,000 in
1920) of owners of humble homes and the proprietors of
small businesses pay considerable amounts into the public
treasuries.
It is difficult to determine the exact amount of these tax
payments for several reasons, the principal one being that
only three states, — Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia,
— separate the property returned by colored tax payers. In
Georgia the real and personal property returned by Negroes
in 1921 was $59,000,000 out of a total of $1,200,000,000 ;
that is, about a twentieth of the total. The $69,354,000
worth of real and personal property returned in Virginia
is 4.4 per cent, or about a twentieth of the total. In North
Carolina they return $106,866,000 of the state’s $2,213,755,-
000, or 4.7 per cent of the total. Estimating from the actual
returns in these three states, and the farms and homes owned
in other states, it is safe to say that Negroes return about
8 per cent of the taxable property in Mississippi, 7 per cent
in South Carolina, 6 per cent in Arkansas, 5 per cent in
Alabama and Louisiana, 3 per cent in Florida, 2 per cent
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 153
in Tennessee, 2 per cent in Texas, and 1 per cent in Ken-
tucky. A safe estimate of the amount of property which
they returned for taxes in the whole country is $650,000-
ooo. Inasmuch as property is never assessed at its full
value, this is far below the market value of the property
owned by colored people.
This proportion varies greatly within the different
states. In certain counties and cities where the Negroes
are in the majority, the proportion of taxable property
which they return is higher. In Burke County, Georgia,
for instance, they return about an eighth of the total, while
in some of the mountain counties of that state they return
none. In the city of Hampton, Virginia, they return 12 per
cent of the property, while in Radford they return only
about 2 per cent.
PROPERTY OF NEGROES (CENSUS OF 1920)
PERCENTAGE
US VALUE OF VALUE OF own eda
STATE PROPERTY FARMS FARMS HOMES | “RenreD
Si ees an! rome 2 eter a RG da
Ser eves at Necunes NEGROES
Alabama 21.5 $29,024,680 | $86,826,227 | 35,402 | 164,609
Arkansas 24.2 45,592,538 | 135,677,516 | 27,158 | 83,154
Florida . 6.2 9,027,053 | 7,522,015 | 22,533 | 57,203
Georgia . 28.0 45,486,236 | 275,510,473 | 40,203 | 225,250
Kentucky . 2.9 16,391,297 | 18,996,335 | 19,372 | 41,502
Louisiana 22.9 25,472,023 | 81,347,335 | 28,906 | 129,088
Mississippi 51.1 56,751,385 | 343,737:036 | 36,449 | 179,954
North Carolina 21.4 58,650,868 | 169,844,814 | 45,909 | 105,197
South Carolina 35.7 59,839,583 | 228,363,624 | 36,519 | 140,235
Tennessee . 8.8 25,277,345 | 64,349,200 | 28,070 | 79,907
Texas 6.1 68,170,518 | 155,175,385 | 49,550 | 116,949
Virginia 9.8 57,085,473 | 41,573,389 | 61,307 | 84,071
154 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
But the property which is on the tax books in the name of
colored owners is by no means a complete gauge of the tax
borne by colored people. For every dollar’s worth of land
owned there is approximately three dollars’ worth rented
by colored farmers; for every home owned there are three
rented, and it is a well-established economic fact that on
city rental property, although the landlord actually hands
over the tax money to the collector, his ability to pay rests
on the payment of the rent by the tenant. Likewise the
taxes on corporate property and the license taxes are paid
by the patrons of the businesses, and the colored people bear
their proportionate part. A fair method of arriving at the
proportion of the total tax borne by colored people, there-
fore, would be to add to the value of real property
owned, the value of homes rented, and the personal prop-
erty, and to find what proportion this sum is of the total
property.
Such large contributions from colored taxpayers to the
support of their governments certainly merit consideration
when funds are appropriated for public institutions. Justice
and honesty should demand that the Negro get from the
government services at least in proportion to the amount of
tax which he pays directly and indirectly. The democratic
theory of public expenditure demands more than common
justice. It demands that the money raised from public tax-
ation be spent where it is most needed, regardless of the sums
which the needy group have paidin. If the policy of expend-
ing money for education in proportion to the amount paid in
were adopted, then the rich districts and wards would have
magnificent palaces for public schools and the poorer dis-
tricts and wards would have schools little better than those
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 155
provided for the Negroes now. In order to equalize the
opportunities in rich and poor counties almost every state
has a state school fund which is distributed to these counties
not on the basis of what they pay into the state treasury,
but on the basis of their school population or school
attendance. This would seem to be a fair basis for the coun-
ties in turn to use in equalizing the opportunities in their
poorer and richer school districts.
Some communities are, however, so far behind the reali-
zation of this democratic ideal that it is necessary to hold
up before them the amount of money which the Negroes
actually contribute in order to emphasize the fact that
common justice demands the more liberal support of colored —
institutions.
Many communities in the South have never expended a
cent of public money for a colored public school building,
but have relied on the use of a church or a school building
erected by private agencies. In some of these communities
bonds have been issued recently to build expensive schools
for whites. This means that colored property holders are
taxed to build school buildings for white people — a con-
dition which is not only undemocratic and unjust, but
also unworthy of the essential love of fair play of the
American.
When, however, other institutions than the common
schools are considered, it is evident that in the majority
of Southern states and local communities there are appro-
priations from which the Negro receives less than justice.
For institutions of higher education, that is, the universities,
normal schools, junior colleges, agricultural and mechanical
schools, and special institutions in Georgia, the Negroes
156 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
receive only a thirty-fifth of the appropriation, though they
pay a twentieth of the taxes directly and bear a much
larger part of the tax burden.
The distribution of funds for the benefit of the two races
in reform schools, asylums, institutions for feeble-minded,
schools for blind and deaf, tuberculosis sanitaria, and other
state institutions is more difficult to determine because, in
many instances, the Negroes are cared for in special wards
of one general state institution, and the one budget includes
both races. We may note, however, that only Virginia,
Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and South Carolina have
provision for the institutional correction of Negro delin-
quent girls. In no state is there an institution for the Negro
feeble-minded.
When the local communities are considered there are still
other inequalities in the distribution of public funds. Ap-
propriations for parks, almshouses, hospitals, libraries, and
other civic improvements should be very carefully scru-
tinized to see that the Negro has his share of the benefits,
at least in proportion to his contribution to the public
treasury, if not in proportion to his great need for such
institutions.
NEGRO PATRIOTS
In the defense of his country the Negro also measures up
to the standard required of a citizen. Those who doubt the
loyalty of the Negro to his country or his willingness to lay
his life on her altar need only to trace his record in battle.
Comparatively few remember that it was Crispus Attucks,
a former slave, who was the first to fall in the Revolutionary
War; or that Peter Salem, one of a company of Negroes in
the battle of Bunker Hill, fired the shot which killed the
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 157
British leader, Major Pitcairn, and turned the tide of that
battle; or that the song, ‘‘The Old Flag Never Touched
the Ground, Boys,” originated from the saying of standard
bearer Carney, who, at Fort Wagner, though severely
wounded and nearly exhausted from loss of blood, held the
flag of his regiment on the parapet until the regiment was
relieved; or that a Negro officer of the 24th infantry was
the first to enter the Spanish Block House in the battle
of El Caney and to haul down the Spanish flag; or
that two Negro soldiers of the 369th infantry (15th New
York National Guard) were the first members of the
American Expeditionary Forces to receive the French croix
de guerre.
It is significant that, in spite of the successive war ex-
periences demonstrating the fitness and devotion of Negro
soldiers, each new war finds leaders debating the advis-
ability of the use of Negro troops. Asa rule their doubts
have been frankly expressed, not on the ground of fear of
lack of efficiency in colored troops, but on the ground that
inasmuch as the Negro had not been given a full share of the
privileges of the country — had not always been justly
dealt with — he might not be as devoted and loyal as other
Americans. Another fear frankly expressed has been that
if the Negroes should be called upon to fight for the country
they might demand as recompense more privileges than the
country was willing to grant. In other words, when Amer-
icans have faced great crises they have felt as a house
divided; they have feared that resentment on the part of
one great group of the population would make them unwill-
ing to defend the country. These doubts as to the use of
Negro troops appeared early in the Revolutionary War,
158 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
when in 1775 General Washington and some of his brigadier
generals unanimously rejected the idea of enlisting Ne-
groes. The last day of the same year, however, General
Washington reversed this policy and issued orders author-
izing the enlistment of free Negroes. Although colored
body servants were with Southern troops from the beginning
of the Civil War, the federal government, unwilling at
first to face the question of the emancipation of slaves,
declined to use Negro troops, and this struggle had been
in progress two years before Negroes were enlisted. Similar
doubts were expressed upon the entry of the United States
into the World War, but were very early overruled in favor
of the fullest use of colored soldiers.
The Negroes’ Revolutionary War record begins with the
fall of Crispus Attucks on Boston Common and runs through
the exploits of the colored company at Bunker Hill, of the
colored regiment in the Battle of Rhode Island, and of the
Black Legion from Haiti, which covered the retreat of the
Americans and French in the battle of Savannah. It is a
chronicle of which Americans, black and white, may be
justly proud.
In the War of 1812 the two signal contributions of Negroes
were service in the battle of Lake Erie, for which they were
praised by Admiral Perry, and at the battle of New
Orleans, on whose eve General Andrew Jackson spoke to
them in these stirring words:
To the men of color — Soldiers! from the shores of Mobile
I collected you to arms; I invited you to share in the perils and
to divide the glory of your white countrymen. I expected much
from you, for I was not uninformed of those qualities which
must render you so formidable to an invading foe. I knew you
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 159
could endure hunger and thirst and all the hardships of war. I
knew that you loved the land of your nativity and that, like
ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man. I
have found in you, united to these qualities, that noble enthu-
siasm which impels great deeds.
Throughout the bitter hardships of the closing months of
the Civil War, Negro troops were used. General Butler
organized the first regiments of Louisiana Negroes late in
1862, and a Kansas regiment was organized early in 1863.
In less than six months after the first regiment had been
mustered in they had participated in six important actions
and had acquitted themselves well.
From the time of the Civil War onward, several Negro
units were included in the regular army. The oth and roth
cavalry and the 24th and 25th infantry regiments have
a most honorable place in the annals of the regulars, and
were assigned important duties in the Cuban campaign
and in the Mexican punitive expedition.
The most remarkable work done by colored troops, how-
ever, was during the World War, when 342,000 were mo-
bilized for a great variety of services. At home the active
contributions of colored citizens to increased agricultural
and industrial production, to Red Cross work, food conser-
vation, and government loan campaigns were a source of
pride and a gratifying surprise to those who had not in-
formed themselves on the Negro’s patriotism. War records
for driving piles and driving rivets fell before the vigor with
which Negro workers approached their task. It wasa Negro
bank of Portsmouth, Virginia, which sold $100,000 worth of
Liberty Bonds, though its quota was only $5700, thereby
winning first place from all banks in the United States. It
160 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
has been estimated that the average contribution from
Negro men, women, and children to war work funds
was $25.
The selective service boards certified 31.7 per cent of
Negro and 26.8 per cent of white draftees for full military
service. This larger proportion of Negroes indicates a
commendable refusal of many colored draftees to claim
exemption.
No one who entered or left through one of the great base
ports in France can forget the bustling activity and the
tuneful singing of the Negro stevedores and labor battalions
which, under the direction of American engineers, revolu-
tionized the operation of these ports and opened the eyes
of the world to the possibilities of efficiency in unloading
ships.
Negro combat troops also were employed. Undoubtedly
mistakes of the kind which are unavoidable with green
troops were made, but the War Department records show
that on the whole these troops, like the white American
regiments, acquitted themselves on the field of glory not
only with merit, but also with distinction.
The colored combat units were designated as the 93d
provisional division (infantry only) and the g2d division
(complete). The four infantry regiments (369th, 37oth,
371st, and 372d) of the 93d were among the first to
embark and were brigaded with the French. The 369th
was brigaded with French Moroccan troops and, in the
Champagne drive, the whole regiment behaved with such
gallantry and courage that 171 of their number were given
the croix de guerre and the colonel was awarded the
Legion of Honor. This regiment was the first allied unit
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 161
to reach the Rhine (in front of Laon), and it is said that
they ‘‘never lost a foot of ground nor a man captured.”
At one time when the French were hard pressed they held
a sector for three months without relief. In the farewell
order to the 371st and 372d, General Coybet of the 157th
French Division d’infantrie said, ‘‘Never will the 157th
Division forget the indomitable dash, the heroic rush of the
American regiments up the observatory ridge and into the
Plains of Monthois. Through their steady devotion, the
‘Red Hand’ Division for nine whole days of severe struggle,
was constantly leading the way for the victorious advance
of the Fourth Army.”
The 92d Division, composed of the 365th, 366th, 367th,
and 368th infantries, with trains and machine gun battal-
ions, was first in the St. Die sector, then at Marbache,
before Metz, where they engaged in some heavy action.
The casualties of this division were 103 officers and 1543
men. One whole battalion of the 367th was cited for
bravery and awarded the croix de guerre, and General
Pershing said to them in their farewell review: ‘You
stood second to none in the record you have made since
your arrival in France.”
No one who reads this record need fear that the Negro is
lacking in patriotism or in ability to bear arms for the
nation. In all this long military service there has never
been a Negro spy or traitor and few have been captured.
After each war they have returned to the peaceful pursuits
and violence has been put aside. Thus, though denied the
fullest participation in the privileges and liberties of Amer-
ica, they have given freely when they were called upon to
defend these privileges and liberties.
162 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
NEGRO VOTERS
These contributions of the Negro to the support and the
defense of the government bring about a paradox in democ-
racy, for there are numbers of communities in which the
colored man’s ability to support and to defend the gov-
ernment is fully recognized, but in which his privilege of
voting to determine policies and to choose officers is flatly
denied.
It is significant that this denial is strictest in the areas
where the Negro forms a very large proportion of the popu-
lation. In these communities, the decision as to the Negro’s
participation in government rests finally upon the actual
effects which this participation would have upon the
public institutions and public life. The condition is one
which calls for supreme wisdom, supreme forbearance, and
a supreme determination to preserve the institutions and
ideals of democracy against the corruption and inefficiency
of mass ignorance on the one hand, and against dema-
goguery, prejudice, and exploitation on the other.
Back of this situation is the bitter history of reconstruc-
tion days when the federal government insisted upon the
immediate, idealistic application of the principles of uni-
versal suffrage to the illiterate and inexperienced freedmen,
and when as a result the South saw exploitation and cor-
ruption placed in power, public office debauched, public
appropriations lavished, and public faith in government
destroyed.
Some escape from such an intolerable situation was
imperative. Because the federal constitution forbade dis-
crimination on account of race or color, the reaction in
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 163
the South was in the direction of the disfranchisement of
ignorance and poverty, which, at first, was a virtual dis-
franchisement of the Negro.
The three classes of restriction which the disfranchisement
movement of the 1880’s and 18g90’s placed upon the suffrage
were: Requirement that the voter own a stipulated amount
of property, demonstrate ability to read and write, or to
interpret the constitution of the United States. Since such
a large proportion of the Negro population was, at that
time, illiterate and since such a large proportion owned no
property, they were automatically disfranchised. The door
was not, however, closed to them for all times, for, under
the law, when they become property owners and when they
_ become trained, they are privileged to apply for registration
as qualified voters. It would prove interesting if students
of politics could give an accurate picture of the extent to
which Negroes have succeeded in registering and in voting
under these stringent rules. Where there are two parties,
as in Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and parts of Vir-
ginia and North Carolina, a considerable number of colored
registrants vote in all elections. In other states consider-
able numbers vote on bond issues and local matters but do
not take the trouble to vote in general elections because the
one-party system is such that the democratic nominee is
virtually conceded the election, and very few votes, white
or black, are cast except in the primary. In the absence
of any recent investigations of this subject the writer may
state that it is his personal observation that some 3500
Negroes are registered in Atlanta, 2000 in Savannah,
tooo in Jacksonville, and proportionate numbers in every
city or town.
164 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
So far there can be no quarrel with the Southern franchise
laws as written. If states decide to limit the suffrage to
the property holding and intelligent citizens, they are well
within their rights and, according to many students of
political science, are acting the part of wisdom, for igno-
rance and irresponsibility are dangerous forces to be loosed
in a democracy.
But the administration of these laws was placed in the
hands of local registration boards with wide discretionary
powers. Where these boards are fair, applying the law to
white and colored illiteracy and irresponsibility alike, they
serve as a protection of the suffrage. In areas where the
Negroes are in the majority, however, or where they form a
very large minority, these boards resort to many subter-
fuges to let in white registrants and rule out colored regis-
trants. In these communities the basis upon which these
local boards proceed is that of experience. The bitternesses
of reconstruction, the realities of the degradation of politics
by the sudden enfranchisement of the masses of black
illiterates are too close at hand for them to desire a second
experiment in extending the suffrage too rapidly to the
masses of colored citizens. Such communities need, how-
ever, to weigh carefully the ultimate results of this policy.
To quote from Dr. Edgar Gardner Murphy’s Present South:
Before all questions which touch the political status of any
race or class of men there arises the primary question as to the
effect upon our country and its constitution, upon its civic
customs and its habits of thought, of the creation of a serf
class, a fixed non-voting population.
Another restriction which disfranchises fully as many
white people as Negroes is one which is wisely calculated
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 165
to combat corruption. During the halcyon days of univer-
sal suffrage it was common for political henchmen the day
before the election to corral large groups of men, march
them to the registration booths, give them money to pay
their poll tax, and vote them en bloc. In order to prevent
this, most states require that the poll tax be paid from three
to six months in advance of the election. No boss will trust
a corrupt voter for such a long period and hence none will
advance his poll tax. This requirement restricts the suffrage
to the conscientious, far-sighted citizens who form the
regular habit of paying the poll tax and registering promptly.
With this provision also, there can be no quarrel, as it is
usually fairly administered. It is probable that the failure.
to comply with this provision has more to do with the
failure of colored people to vote than any other because the
masses of the race do not seem to be nearly so interested in
the suffrage as many of their leaders seem to desire.
The third method of excluding the Negro from govern-
mental affairs is the one-party system which has worked
out as much to the disadvantage of the white South as that
of the Negro. When the literacy and property tests dis-
franchised the Negro, only the white democrats were left
voting and they secured control of the party machinery and
determined that the voting in democratic primaries should
be restricted to white voters. Legally this is strictly proper,
for it is within the rights of a political party to restrict its
membership. In practice, however, this has saddled a one-
party system on the Southern South which vitiates political
life. Where there is just one party, issues are purely local
and in most cases they are entirely obscured by personali-
ties. Demagoguery is enthroned and machine government
166 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
thrives. Thus in closing the front door to ignorance and
unreliability, the Southern democratic party has encouraged
mediocracy and opened the back door to boss rule and
election on petty personalities.
There is much discontent abroad in the South concerning
this one-party system. Its evils are keeping good men
from seeking office and even preventing them from voting;
and there are no counteracting vital public issues to attract
them to the political arena. Many people feel that the
solution of the situation is the development of two or more
parties in the South, and there is no doubt that if the
bugaboo of Negro domination were dispelled, the solid
South would split, — at least on local issues. It is, therefore,
apparent that in excluding the Negro the South is, in a way,
politically dominated by the Negro question. Before all
others it looms as the bulwark of the one-party system.
It was a determining factor in the prohibition vote. It
affected the South’s stand on woman suffrage and it ramifies
into hundreds of questions of public policy, it influences
the South’s position on child labor, it is a stumbling block
in the administration of compulsory school laws, standing
as an ever-present shadow across the door of political
councils.
The present status of Negro participation in government
may, therefore, be stated as one of change, — of transition
from the complete disfranchisement of the 1880’s and the
1890’s to some status of limited franchise under legal eligi-
bility tests.
It may be said, in passing, that politics and the race
question do not mix well. In fact, when the mixture is
attempted, both politics and the race question suffer. It
THE NEGRO AND GOVERNMENT 167
would seem, therefore, that the evolution of the Negro’s
place in government must be by the processes of growth
rather than by any sudden universal enfranchisement,
especially in those communities where the most ignorant
and the most backward colored people are massed and
constitute a majority. Any agitation on the part of Negro
leaders for sudden enfranchisement of the masses only
tends to cement the determination of these communities
to go to any lengths rather than permit it. On the other
hand, the more rigid the regulation against Negroes voting
the more they want to vote and the more they magnify the
demand for the ballot out of all proportion to its real sig-
nificance as a means to progress.
For the nation, therefore, the fair position would seem —
to be that the South is entitled to work out this extremely
important and extremely delicate question in the way in
which they have begun, without further disastrous inter-
ference such as occurred during the reconstruction period.
For the white South, what is needed above all is fairness, a
determination to enforce suffrage tests equitably on white
and black alike, and a resolve to break away from the one-
party system and to regain preéminence in the national
forums of political action by building a political system
around the live national issues and forgetting the more or
less dead issue of Negro domination. For the Negro himself
the need is for patience, increasing emphasis on the duties
of citizenship, and a faith in democracy deep enough to carry
conviction that participation in the government will be
extended as rapidly as it can be done without the precipita-
tion of reactions which would be harmful to the community
as a whole and to the Negroes themselves.
168 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BRAWLEY, BENJAMIN. A Short History of the Negro, Chapter XIII.
Census of Wealth, Debt, and Taxation.
DuBots, W. E. B. Negro Landholder in Georgia.
Haynes, G. E. The Trend of the Races, Chapter IV.
Lone, F. T. (Phelps Stokes Studies #5, University of Georgia.) The
Negroes of Clarke County, Georgia, during the Great War.
Morton, R. L. History of Negro Suffrage in Virginia Since the
Civil War.
Reports of the State Boards of Control, Education, Health and Pub-
lic Welfare. .
Reports of the State Tax Collectors of North Carolina, Virginia, and
Georgia. !
Scott, Emmett. History of the Negro in the World War.
SNAVELY, T. R. Taxation of Negroes in Virginia.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. To what extent is the Negro’s present political status com-
plicated by the reconstruction controversies ?
2. In what states do Negroes hold what approximates the
balance of political power ?
3. Study the reports of a state which has separate Negro
institutions and determine the extent to which Negroes benefit
from state appropriations.
4. From a standard text on economics summarize the theory
as to the burden of taxation and discuss the factors which
determine the taxes borne by Negroes.
5. Compare the record of the Negro during the World War
with that of other groups. What does this indicate as to
loyalty?
6. Discuss the proposition that the Negro should receive in
appropriations only such amounts as he pays in taxes.
CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION
The racial differences which complicate the tasks of racial
adjustment most are the cultural and mental differences.
When these are equalized, the Negro is more able to take
care of himself. He is a better producer, presents fewer
health problems, is less of a burden on the courts, has a
fuller religious life, and is less likely to become a dependent
or a defective. Education is the greatest force in equal-
izing these mental and cultural differences. The school
aids all other processes of adjustment. When schools are
properly developed, churches are stronger, health organi-
zations less burdened, asylums and almshouses emptier,
the courts relieved of congestion, and government generally
more efficient. Thus education is the greatest of the tasks
of racial adjustment.
After years of intimate dealing with public school officials
throughout the South, Dr. James H. Dillard, of the Jeanes
and Slater Funds, writes:
There has been within ten years, and even more within five
years, a decided advance in the readiness and desire of school
boards and superintendents to give the colored children a square
deal in education. There has been an advance both in length
of term in colored schools and in the salaries paid to colored
teachers. There has been an advance in the interest taken by
superintendents in the better housing and better supervision
~ of the colored schools.
169
170 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
As illustrations in proof of the progressive attitude let me
cite three facts. First: Public school officials are appropriat-
ing this year $425,000 in codperation with the Rosenwald dona-
tions toward building rural schoolhouses for colored children.
Second: Up to seven years ago the Jeanes Fund paid practically
all the salary for the rural supervising teachers that were em-
ployed in various counties, little or no appropriations coming
for this purpose from public funds. This year the public
school officials are paying for these workers $120,000. Third:
Eight years ago, through the codperation of the Slater Fund,
four graded county training schools were established, to each
of which the public school officials appropriated $750, or $3000
in all. This year (1921) the public school officials are appropriat-
ing over $650,000 to 141 of such schools.
This quickened interest, especially in the South, in the
training of the Negro for more effective citizenship has
come partially through the recognition of the essential
justice of the plea of the previous chapter for equitable
distribution of public funds, and partially through a realiza-
tion that a better training for Negro citizens will react to
the advantage of the whole community. It becomes in-
creasingly clear that ignorance and inefficiency in any class
fasten their burdens upon the whole nation and seriously
hamper the working of democratic principles.
Many have depreciated and a few still depreciate any
effort put forth for Negro schooling. Some of these say
that the Negro is incapable of learning beyond a certain
point. It was Thomas Jefferson who expressed the belief
that no Negro could be found who could trace the propo-
sitions of Euclid, and John Calhoun who said that none
could give the syntax of a Greek verb. Others fear that
education will give him too much power, and still others
EDUCATION 74
frankly admit the desire to keep the colored man in the
cotton field and state that education spoils a good field hand.
Sixty years of Negro schooling have brought results which
practically nullify the fears of these doubters. A sufficient
number of Negroes have gone through colored colleges and
even through some of the larger Eastern universities to
dispel any doubt as to the ability of at least a considerable
proportion of the race to assimilate a higher education.
NATIVE MENTAL ABILITY
It is known that there are differences in the native mental
ability or intelligence of the two races, but just what these
differences are, in quantity or in quality, is not known.
They are, however, not great enough to warrant any
assumption that training along the same fundamental lines
as that given to white children will not be beneficial to
colored children.
In fact, as Woodworth points out, the world’s peoples
have essentially similar mental equipments. All have the
same senses, instincts, and emotions; all can remember past
experiences, and all can imagine objects not present to the
senses. All can discriminate, compare, reason, and invent;
and in all one impulse can inhibit another. To his mind, the
important racial differences are those by which some indi-
viduals apply their powers in utilizing certain materials
more successfully than others. While one may be gifted in
mathematics another will show a special aptitude for music.
According to his experiments, there is much overlapping
in racial groups. When a specific mental trait is used as the
basis of comparison, one group may show a lower average
than another, but the superior members of the lower group
172 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
surpass the inferior members of the higher group. This is
true of brain weight which “would seem to be a trait of
great importance in relation to intelligence.’’ The average
weight of the Negro brain is about two ounces lighter than
the average of white brains, but the variation in each group
is about 25 ounces. Thus the heaviest Negro brains con-
siderably outweigh the lightest white brains.
Primitive races are commonly reputed to be far superior
to civilized people in their sensory powers, but tests made
by the same investigator in this field showed that the
popular assumption was erroneous. While the Indians,
Filipinos, and other primitive peoples averaged stronger
in vision than whites, the members of these groups who
were weaker in vision than the average were considerably
weaker than the stronger visioned members of the white
group. This same overlapping relationship held in experi-
ments with the other senses.
Measuring intelligence is, therefore, a most intricate task,
one requiring quantitative tests made on large numbers
of individuals by trained scientists. The closest approxi-
mation of such a scientific standard was developed in the
army mental tests which were given to the recruits drafted
for service in the World War. While these tests were
primarily designed to measure military value, many com-
mentators take them as a measure of native mental abil-
ity, or intelligence. They furnish data based upon a large
number of cases, gathered by trained pyschologists. Their
results have been painstakingly compiled by Yerkes. They
show a considerable difference in the scores made by white
and colored soldiers. Of the representative sample studied,
only 21 per cent of the Negroes made average or superior
EDUCATION £73
scores, while 79 per cent made inferior scores. Of the
whites, 76 per cent made average or superior scores, while
24 per cent made inferior scores. Even in this test, it will
be noted that there was much overlapping, since the high-
est 21 per cent of the Negroes ranked above the lowest
24 per cent of the whites.
When quantitative differences in the army tests were
equalized by comparison of white and colored men who
made the same total scores, it was found that Negroes ex-
celled the whites in certain types of tests, while the whites
excelled in other types. This indicated that there are also
qualitative differences, and these, in the opinion of many
students, will be found to constitute the important dis-
tinctions in racial intelligence. When they are thoroughly
defined they will be the guideposts to the special capabilities
of the Negro and will enable him to find his proper niche
in American life.
There are, however, grave doubts as to the fairness of
using the army mental tests or, for that matter, of using any
mental tests yet devised, as indices of the relative native
mental ability of two races. These doubts arise from
the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to test native intelli-
gence apart from learning. The army tests show that the
educated soldiers measured higher in intelligence than the
uneducated. This result leads to the supposition that they
tested not native capacity alone, but native capacity plus
a coefficient of schooling.
If that is the case, it is to be expected that the Negroes
with less home training and less schooling would, apart
from any differences in native mental capacity, make a
lower grade than the white soldiers. It would also be
174 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
expected that the Northern Negro, with relatively more
schooling, would test higher than the Southern Negro, and
an examination of the results of the army tests shows that
to be true. The score made by the Northern Negroes aver-
ages about halfway between the average of the white
soldier and that of the Southern colored soldier. Until
psychological tests are further revised so as to measure the
factors of native mental capacity more accurately and
separate them more sharply from the learned reactions,
other comparisons made between white and colored groups,
with differing degrees of home and school training, will be
subject to the criticism that they do not measure the inborn
racial differences, but measure the relative amounts which
the individuals have been able to learn.
Making due allowance for the differences in score which
may be due to differences in training, the net results of these
tests may be summed up as follows: They justify the
presumption that some mental differences exist. They
lead to the supposition that the important differences are
probably qualitative rather than quantitative, and they
indicate that these differences are not sufficiently marked
to warrant the previous popular assumption of the essential
inferiority of the Negro mind, and certainly not sufficiently
marked to justify the current belief of the past generation
that the majority of Negroes are not capable of profiting
by an education.
FEARS OF NEGRO EDUCATION UNFOUNDED
It is true that education does give the individual Negro
more power, but this is by no means disadvantageous to the
white man. The trained man, white or black, is more
EDUCATION 175
valuable to his community; and the trained colored man,
if his training has been sound and has included character
building as well as learning, is the natural leader of his own
people and may be depended upon to lead them in paths
which are harmonious with the development of the whole
community. The trained leader is more self-controlled.
This manifests itself in the clean record of the large num-
ber of educated Negroes. Only a negligible number of the
thousands of graduates of Hampton, Tuskegee, and the
colored colleges have ever become involved in difficulties
with the law, and the records of one of the oldest medical
schools show that only one of their 2500 graduates has
ever been arrested. The Negro’s increased power of self-
control, and increased power over material things certainly
do not work a disadvantage to the white man, while
increased power to know his situation and adapt himself
to it makes him a much more valuable member of the
community.
The fear of spoiling a good laborer by education is
extremely short-sighted. The South cannot advance in
efficiency until the Negro is better trained. If there is any
doubt as to the value which training adds to the work of
a colored man, it can be dispelled by an examination of
railroad wages. So-called soulless corporations do not pay
by sentiment. They arrange their wage scale according to
the values which the services of various laborers create for
them. With this in mind the traveler can observe the
railroad track laborer, an unskilled workman with little
training. His wage is proportionately low. Then there is
the train porter, more highly trained, more efficient in
service, and twice as well paid as the section hand. Then,
176 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
if the traveler is in the South, the chances are that there
is another Negro in the cab of the engine, — the fireman.
He must be strictly trained for his job, trained to know the
road and to know his engine. He must be proficient enough
to enable him, in case of accident, to assume the duties of
the engineer and to bring in the precious burden of the train.
He, accordingly, is twice as well paid as the porter and four
times as well paid as the section hand. The difference in
pay of these men is based on their difference in value to the
railroad and their difference in value is largely a product of
difference in training. In other words, education takes a
dollar a day man and makes him worth four dollars a day.
Thus it is apparent that the depreciators of Negro edu-
cation use very shallow arguments. Their assertions as to
the essential inferiority of the Negro mind do not rest
upon verified facts, and their fears that education damages
the Negro and damages the community can be dispelled by
actual observation of trained Negroes at work.
The two great tasks which confront the educators of the
colored population are: (1) Provision of a training for the
masses which will lift their general standard of living and pre-
pare them to do their everyday job with more efficiency and
more character. (2) Provision of a training for the leaders
which will enable them to encourage and aid their people on
the upward path. This involvesspecial training for teaching,
preaching, medicine, and other fields of professional service.
WEAKNESS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The training of the masses is, of necessity, the job of the
public schools. Public school systems, even for white pupils
in the South, are still relatively backward in their develop-
EDUCATION 177
ment. It was only in the decade from 1865 to 1875 that
elementary schooling was made public on a state-wide basis,
and only recently have some states extended aid to high
schools. The South is further burdened with the necessity
of supporting a double system of schools from woefully
inadequate revenues. Before the Civil War it was the
richest section of the nation. The war, however, destroyed
this wealth and the South became the poorest section.
From 1870 to 1900 Southern states were actually poorer
in per-capita wealth than they were in 1860. In the mean-
time other sections of the country had been steadily forging
ahead in the accumulation of wealth.
The newness and the comparative poverty of Southern
public school systems are great drawbacks to Negro educa-
tion. In some communities there is also an indifference to
Negro education which leads to an unjust distribution of
the limited school funds. Notwithstanding these influences
the finances of the colored public schools are steadily
improving, but are still woefully inadequate for meeting
the great needs of the two and a quarter million educable
Negro children.
The expenditure for white schools in the South is meager
enough in comparison to the expenditure in other sections,
but the following table indicates that the expenditure for
Negroes is far lower than that for white people. The per
capita for the South as a whole in 1922 was $29.72 for each
white child and $7.12 for each colored child 6 to 14 years
of age. The ratio of white expenditure to Negro expendi-
ture ranges from over 8 to 1 in South Carolina to about
2 to 1 in Oklahoma and Tennessee and almost equal in
Kentucky.
178 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
EXPENDITURES FOR TEACHERS’ SALARIES IN PUBLIC
SCHOOLS PER CHILD SIX TO FOURTEEN YEARS OF AGE
INCREASE
STATE YEAR
White Negro White | Negro
Oklahoma IQ12-1913 $14.21 9.96
1920-1921 41.94 24.85 196 149
Texas . IQI3-I914 10.08 5-74
1922-1923 32.45 14.35 222 148
Kentucky? . IQII-1I912 8.13 8.53
Tennessee! . IQI3-1914 8.27 4.83
North Carolina IQII-I9I2 5.27 2.02
IQ2I-1922 26.74 10.03 407 397
Virginia . IQII-I1912 9.64 2.74
IQ2I-1922 28.65 9.07 197 231
Arkansas IQI2-1913 12.95 4.59
IQ2I-1922 20.60 7.19 59 56
Louisiana IQII-1912 13.73 LGt
1922-1923 36.20 6.47 104 303
Florida IQIO-IQII II.50 2.64
1921-1922 37.88 6.27 229 138
Georgia IQII-I912 9.58 1.76
IQ2I-1922 23.68 5-54 147 215
Mississippi . 1912-1913 10.60 2.26
I9Q2I-1922 28.41 4.42 168 96
Alabama IQII-1912 9.41 1.78
IQ2I-1922 22.43 4.31 138 142
South Carolina IQII-1912 10.00 1.44
1921-1922 30.28 3.63 202 152
PER CAPITA
Per CEntT OF
1 Per cent figures not available.
These figures are encouraging in that they show that
during the past ten years there have been substantial in-
creases in the per-capita expenditure for Negro children.
This increase has, however, not been sufficient to correct
the discrepancy between the expenditures for white and
colored education because the white expenditures have
EDUCATION 179
also been increasing at a rapid rate. It is interesting to note
that in several of the States the expenditure for Negro
schools in 1922 just about equaled the expenditure for white
schools ten years before.
The variation in expenditure from state to state is subject
to further variation in counties. The Black Belt counties do
far less in proportion for their great mass of Negroes than do
the counties with a lighter percentage of colored population.
PER CAPITA EXPENDITURE FOR TEACHERS’ SALARIES IN
COUNTIES GROUPED ACCORDING TO PERCENTAGE OF
NEGROES IN. THE TOTAL POPULATION
United States Bureau of Education, Bulletin 38, 1916
WHITE PER NEGRO PER
CAPITA CAPITA
Counties under 10 per cent Negro . . . 7.96 7,22
Counties 10 to 25 percent Negro .. . 9.55 S55
Counties 25 to 50 percent Negro .. . be Me 3.19
Counties 50 to 75 percent Negro . . . 12.53 1.77
Counties 75 percent and over . . . . 22.22 1.78
It is very significant that counties containing over 50
per cent of Negroes in their population spend so much on
white pupils and so little on Negro pupils. This means that
in the country districts of these counties a few expensive
schools are maintained for the scattered white pupils, while
the congested Negroes can be herded into small one-
teacher schools with wholly inadequate equipment. State
school funds are distributed to these counties on the basis
of their combined white and black school population or
attendance. In other words, they receive as much from the
state fund for each colored child as they do for each white
child. The local school board then takes the state fund,
180 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
adds a local tax, and apportions it to white and colored
schools as they please. Justice should demand that such
funds be apportioned more closely in proportion to the
population of the two races. !
Many school districts own no school for colored pupils, but
use a church, abandoned cabin, or lodge hall. This property
is wholly unsuited to school purposes and is a mere make-
shift. The rooms are poorly lighted, equipped with rough,
wooden, backless benches, and sometimes utterly lacking
in sanitary facilities. Many of the buildings which are
owned by the county are in little better condition. A
compilation of the amount invested in public school build-
ings in the fifteen Southern and border states shows a value
of $327,067,500 for white schools and $27,828,000 for
colored schools, or about $65.50 for each white child of
school age and $8.28 for each colored child. This average
includes city schools. If rural schools were valued sepa-
rately and the border states eliminated, the investment per
colored child in the rural South would be about $3.50. In
other words, the average value of a rural school building
serving a typical district of one hundred and fifty children
is about $525. There is no need to dwell upon the limita-
tions which such a poor plant imposes in the way of inad-
equate lighting, seating, ventilation, and sanitation.
Limited funds also make it impossible to operate the
schools in the country and in small towns for the full term
of nine months. The United States Bureau of Education
estimates that the average time during which schools are
open in the South is one hundred and twenty days for
colored pupils and one hundred and forty-five for white.
For the colored pupils this runs as low as four months in
EDUCATION 181
South Carolina and as high as seven months in Virginia and
seven and half in Oklahoma.
Furthermore, the attendance is very irregular in the
country districts where pupils are often withdrawn to help
with the farm work. This is especially true of tenant
districts. Pupils, therefore, do not get the full benefit even
of the short term offered. The Bureau of Education esti-
mates that the average time that colored pupils are actually
in attendance is eighty days per year, or four months. On
this basis it would take eighteen years for the average colored
pupil to complete the full elementary course of eight nine-
month school years. That is to say, he would be about
twenty-four years old before entering the high school. This
condition, however, is rapidly improving, as it was only a
few years ago that the colored attendance averaged only
about fifty days per year.
Colored public schools are also handicapped by the poor
quality of teaching. While there is an increasing number
of devoted, fairly well-trained teachers, the majority of
them are concentrated in the towns. There are 35,000
teachers in colored public schools, and only a very limited
annual output from teacher training schools to maintain
this force. In addition the low pay often makes it impossible
for a girl from outside the community to come in and pay
board. This means that in many cases the teacher must
be found within the community. It happens, therefore,
that hundreds of these rural schools are taught by young
girls whose training has been limited to that given in the
local schools. The average colored rural teacher has less
than a full grammar school training and little special prep-
aration for teaching.
182 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Until ten years ago, when county training schools were
established, there were no rural high schools for colored
pupils, and city high school facilities were very limited. In
one Southern state, as late as 1914, there was only one town
which provided a full public high school course and there
was no rural district with such provision. Rapid progress
has been made in this line recently, but much remains to be
done. Cities of the type of Louisville, Richmond, Norfolk,
Raleigh, Charleston, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Birmingham,
Nashville, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, Houston, Fort
Worth, Oklahoma City, and Little Rock are rapidly cor-
recting this defect in their public school systems. The
smaller towns of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, are also mak-
ing some progress, but there are fully two million colored
children living in small towns and country districts where
their educational opportunities are limited to a meager
elementary schooling.
The reports of the United States Bureau of Education
show that in the United States there are 19,428,000 white
pupils, of whom 1,829,500 (or 9.4 per cent) are in high
school, while only 27,631 (or 1.3 per cent) of the 2,150,000
colored pupils are receiving this training.
Fair dealing demands that public high schools for colored
pupils should be developed as rapidly as possible. As a
measure for training a valuable group of local Negro leaders
the expansion of the high school program is also needed.
These schools are the principal agency for training teachers
and skilled workers, and as long as many Negroes never
can and never will go to college the secondary school will
be the training ground for local leaders.
EDUCATION 183
To perform this function effectively, these schools should
be much broader in scope than the strictly college prepar-
atory institution. Increased emphasis should be given to
history, civics, economics, and the natural sciences, so that
everyday life will be more intelligently appreciated. The
stimulation of race pride demands that colored pupils be
taught more of the history and achievements of their own
race. The growing body of literature by colored writers
should be studied and the accomplishments of colored men
of mark held up as inspiring examples. The exact nature
of these special adaptations of the curriculum of colored
schools, and the extent to which such adaptations are lack-
ing, are fully developed in the report on Negro educa-
tion compiled by Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones for the United
States Bureau of Education.
Since the masses of rural Negroes are farmers, and since
the majority of those in cities are engaged in manual labor,
vocational training is of great importance. Manual arts,
domestic arts, and agriculture deserve a much more prom-
inent place in the program than they now occupy. There
is a widespread general interest in the industrial training
of the masses of the Negroes, but because this work is
slightly more expensive than the teaching of academic
subjects it has been slow to spread.
Many of the minor defects in the colored school could be
corrected by sympathetic and careful supervision. Left
to their own devices, the small rural schools have many
unnecessary faults which could be eliminated by proper
supervision. It would seem that Southern states and
counties, with an investment of about thirty million dol-
lars, and an annual outlay of over fourteen million dollars
184. ‘THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
in colored schools, would insist that their boards of educa-
tion and superintendents of schools should interest them-
selves at least to the extent of making sure that the
expenditure of this great sum is efficiently administered.
Such, however, is not the case. The superintendents who
take a really sympathetic interest and a healthy pride in
their colored schools do so entirely on their own initiative.
This number is, however, increasing. There are many super-
intendents who, because of pressure of other duties and a few
who because of indifference, visit only one or two colored
schools each year. Although the superintendent is elected to
supervise all public schools, there is little local criticism of a
superintendent who neglects the colored schools.
On the whole, when consideration is given to all these
discouraging influences which beset the Negro pupil in the
way of short terms, poor teachers, inadequate buildings, and
equipment, and the unsettled family conditions which often
prohibit regular attendance, the progress which he has
made in education has been phenomenal. In 1880 70 per
cent of the Negroes over ten years of age were illiterate,
but in 1920 this percentage had fallen to 22.9 per cent.
Such commendable progress is evidently the product of
two things: first, the deep desire, almost amounting to a
passion, for schooling which is widespread among the masses
of Negro parents; and second, the willingness of communi-
ties to provide facilities whereby Negroes may, after a fash-
ion, receive schooling.
But the task still looms large. Illiteracy amounting to
22.9 per cent (or a total of 1,842,161 illiterates) is a menace,
especially since census takers enumerate any one as lit-
erate who can so much as write his name. Many of the
EDUCATION 185
77 per cent called literate are, therefore, unable to
show much greater learning than is required to scrawl their
names. Communities suffer the penalty of these condi-
tions. Whether the illiterates are white or black, they bring
the inevitable burdens of inefficiency, slovenliness, disease,
and immorality. Thus Negro illiteracy constitutes both
an enormous moral responsibility for training these belated
people and a serious threat to the communities which
neglect this training.
CONSTRUCTIVE AGENCIES
The progress which has been made is due to the states-
manlike codperation between the educational authorities
of the states and counties on the one hand, and the philan-
thropic boards and foundations on the other. These con-
structive factors are worthy of close study.
State Supervisors of Colored Schools. The creation of
the office of State Supervisor of Colored Schools arose from
the feeling of Southern state superintendents that state
departments of education could be effective in extending a
helping hand to the counties in the task of building colored
public schools. Through the generosity of the General
Education Board, the salaries of such appointees of the state
superintendents were provided. They are extremely val-
uable in stimulating the interest of county superintend-
ents throughout the South, and, in addition, they act as
local agents for the Rosenwald School Building Fund, the
Jeanes and Slater funds, and other constructive school
funds. Although these supervisors have been at work only
about ten years, the public school system of every Southern
state has felt the imprint of their personality.
186 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
The Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, which was established to
aid the rural colored school, has been in operation since 1911,
and has rendered a sterling service in raising standards, and
in stimulating the codperation of local school authorities.
This fund offers aid to the county in employing a super-
vising teacher who travels among all the schools in the
county, encouraging and aiding the rural teachers and
assisting in the elementary instruction in manual arts,
household arts, and gardening. Some 270 of these teachers
are employed by Southern counties and about three-fourths
of their salary is paid from public funds. They are, in effect,
rural missionaries, and in the great majority of cases they
are well trained and devoted.
Slater Fund. This foundation is especially interested
in aiding industrial education in public high schools and
in private schools. About ten years ago its directors noted
the woeful lack of trained teachers and the fact that low
pay necessitated the choosing of many teachers from the
local community. They, therefore, felt that each county
should have some central school whose academic standards
should be slightly higher and whose industrial work should
be more thorough than the standards and work of sur-
rounding rural public schools. Two hundred and four
of these county training schools have been built. The
county authorities, the Rosenwald Fund, and the General
Education Board codperate in establishing these training
schools. A recent study by Leo M. Favrot shows that
while they are still weak in many respects, they represent
the nearest approaches to county high and normal schools
that are open to the Southern rural Negroes. The public
expenditure for developing these institutions is gradually
EDUCATION 187
being extended, $594,000 being expended from public funds
in 1924 as against $131,000 in1g19. Over 6100 pupils are
enrolled in high school grades, and reports indicate that the
great majority of county superintendents thoroughly ap-
preciate their value as places to which the more advanced
pupils of the county can go and receive slightly better
training than that offered by the average rural schools.
Rosenwald Building Fund. In order to stimulate the
erection of better rural school buildings, Julius Rosenwald
has offered to defray part of the cost (from a third to a
fourth of the total) of rural school buildings. As it works out
in the community, the Rosenwald Fund usually appro-
priates about one-fifth, the public funds about one-half, and
the white and colored people raise about a third of the cost
of these buildings.
Under this plan (up to 1925) 2565 schools have been
built at a cost of over $10,000,000, and they are stimulat-
ing a wide interest in better construction, better equipment,
and better sanitation in colored rural schools. They serve
as object lessons for the rest of the county in modern
school construction. Over 1000 have a capacity for three
or more teachers. No single force has been more influ-
ential in improving Negro public schools than the pro-
vision of this generous aid in building modern school
buildings and the resultant tendency to equip these build-
ings well and to man them with better teachers.
General Education Board. This board appropriates to the
Jeanes Foundation to aid supervising teachers, pays state
supervisors of schools, who act as local agents and super-
visors for the above funds, and aids with the equipment
of county training schools.
188 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Phelps Stokes Fund is a research foundation of broad
scope which is interested principally in the larger schools,
but which has codperated in various ways with all the above
named foundations. This fund has been valuable in stimu-
lating study of the Negro by white college men.
With all these efficiently directed agencies codperating
closely to promote better state and county supervision,
better school buildings, and central training schools in
each county, those who are genuinely interested in Negro
education can secure valuable aid in launching some com-
munity project if they can secure enough local interest to
make the community do its part.
STATE HIGHER SCHOOLS
Negro education must work at the bottom and at the
top of the scale at the same time. The primary need is,
of course, the training of the masses in the public school,
but this is not possible without the simultaneous develop-
ment of a trained Negro leadership, and especially a trained
group of Negro teachers and preachers. The pioneer
efforts to develop a public school system are well under
way in every state, but, to train leaders, the development
of higher and professional schools must go hand in hand
with the development of the public school system.
States recognize this policy in their general system of
education for white people. State institutions for white
people include universities, colleges of agriculture, law,
mechanic arts, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and normal
schools. The demand for Negroes who have the training given
in such schools is growing. In the Southern states senti-
ment will not permit them to attend the same institutions
EDUCATION 189
as white people. The South must choose, therefore,
between providing a separate system of higher education
for Negroes and shirking the moral responsibility for
developing a Negro leadership. If this moral responsibility
is shirked, then the South is faced with the further practical
difficulty of dealing with a colored population whose masses
are trained at home in the public schools, but whose leaders,
including the teachers of the public high schools, are trained
in other states.
This responsibility rests partially upon the whole nation,
because the events of the Civil War and reconstruction
made the tasks of racial adjustment national in scope, and
because recent migrations have made the Negro population
national in distribution. The philanthropists of the nation
as a whole have shouldered this responsibility for training
Negro leaders more whole-heartedly than have the Southern
states. The study published by the United States Bureau
of Education in 1916 indicated that about half the high
school pupils and all but twelve of the sixteen hundred and
forty-three college pupils were in private and denomina-
tional schools, while the nine hundred and forty-four pro-
fessional students were all in private schools. In other
words, the states have, to date, assumed no further respon-
sibility than that of offering agriculture, trade, and teacher
training in conjunction with public high school work.
In each Southern state there is a colored agricultural and
mechanical school of secondary grade offering trades, domes-
tic arts, and teacher-training courses. These schools are
partially supported by state appropriations and partially by
the Morrel Federal Fund for Agricultural and Mechanical
Education. In addition, several states maintain separate
190 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
normal schools for colored people. In proportion to the
expenditure for white institutions the support of these
colored state schools is very meager.
According to the Bureau of Education report, “‘The
Southern states appropriate annually $6,429,991 for higher
schools for white pupils and only a little over a third of a
million for higher schools for colored pupils (1914-15).”
The amounts have increased since this survey, but the
proportion between white and colored remains about the
same. In other words, while the Negroes form about a third
of the population of this section, they receive only about a
sixteenth of the money expended for training above the high
school. In one Southern state they form nearly half the
total population and own about a twentieth of the property,
but receive only one thirty-fifth of the money expended for
higher education. In other words, they receive a smaller
proportion of the appropriation than that to which their
share of the taxes entitles them.
The federal government, through the Smith-Hughes Act
of 1917, appropriates money for aid in teaching agriculture,
domestic arts, industry, and teacher training. For every
dollar of federal money spent, the state or community must
spend a dollar. These funds are allotted to the states as
follows: for teacher training, on the basis of total popula-
tion; for agriculture, on the basis of rural population; for
trades and home economics, on the basis of urban popula-
tion. The Negroes are, therefore, entitled to share in these
funds on the basis of their proportion in the population.
The need for industrial and agricultural education and
teacher training is universally recognized in the South.
But Southern politicians have not reached the point of
EDUCATION IQ
granting the justice of the demand for increased appropria-
tions to meet this need. This condition is, however, chang-
ing. Within the past few years several of the state Negro
schools have received substantial increases in their appro-
priations, and there is hardly a state which has not increased
its appropriation slightly. In order that practical agricul-
ture may be well taught, that instruction in the trades and
household arts be thorough, and that teacher training be
modern, there is a great need for an increase both of federal
and of state appropriations for the work.
HAMPTON AND TUSKEGEE
In advancing this type of education the ideals of Hampton
Institute and Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School have
been very influential. Beginning with the pioneer ideas and
spirit of General Armstrong’s work for freedmen at Hamp-
ton and developing and spreading through the growth of
that school and through the founding of Tuskegee by Booker
T. Washington, these institutions have given the world
valuable ideals of industrial training and character building.
The work of each is twofold in its significance, as it consists
not only of training students within the school, but also of
rendering a broader service to the leadership of the colored
people by maintaining many extension activities.
These institutions are cities within themselves, each
having about eighteen hundred pupils and several hundred
instructors. Each has been able to make such a large
number of friends for its plan of education that property
worth several million dollars apiece has been accumulated,
and annual maintenance funds of over three hundred thou-
sand dollars apiece are contributed. The visitor on the
192 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
campus of either of these schools is inspired by the sight of
hundreds of neatly arranged, substantial buildings, many of
which have been entirely constructed by the manual labor
of the students. Orderly activity is apparent on the farm,
in the dozens of trade shops, and in the classroom. Here
one feels that the young colored boys and girls are given
the opportunity to share in the best which the two races
have been able to evolve in education.
Until recently both these institutions have confined their
academic work to the high school courses. Within the past
few years, however, Hampton has added a college course in
order that the academic training of those who go out to
teach may be more thorough.
The plan of going to school three days and working at
a trade three days in the week has been one of the distinc-
tive contributions of these schools to industrial education.
While this has limited the academic training received from
book study, it has made for a thoroughness in trade instruc-
tion and a type of character building which has produced
leaders whose services have been of untold value to the
South.
The plan of allowing first-year students who are without
funds to work all day and go to school at night opens the
door of these schools to energetic youths, even though they
be practically penniless ; and hundreds, like Booker Wash-
ington, lacking even railroad fare, have walked long dis-
tances to enter. As a result, they have risen from the bot-
tom to positions of great usefulness.
But the activities outside the walls are as significant as
those within. A score or more of small editions of Hampton
and Tuskegee have been started by graduates of these
EDUCATION 193
schools, and the parent schools are constantly aiding and
encouraging these branches. The many teachers, super-
visors, farm and home demonstration agents, nurses, trades-
men, farmers, and preachers who have graduated are aided
in their services to colored communities by movable schools,
farm demonstration service, and frequent conferences and
short courses. Arising from Booker Washington’s interest
in health, the observance of National Negro Health Week
has spread throughout the colored population and become
an institution. From the business interest has sprung the
National Negro Business League. No short chapter could
begin to describe and evaluate the manifold activities of
these schools. But it may be said that he who would learn
of Negro education and Negro progress might well begin
his study by a trip to Hampton or Tuskegee.
PRIVATE AND DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS
White philanthropists and denominational boards have
been very generous in providing for the higher education
of colored people. In fact, had it not been for their contribu-
tions the facilities for training Negro leadership would be
very much undeveloped. The annual income of these private
schools is about three and a half million, of which about two
and a quarter million is expended in denominational schools
and a million and a quarter in independent schools. These
institutions care for the entire college and professional
training of the Negro. The larger proportion of this money
is contributed by individuals and denominations in the
North. In fact, of the two and a quarter million expended
annually for maintenance of denominational schools, only
about $100,000 comes from Southern white denominations,
194 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
and $500,c00 from colored denominations, leaving about
$1,600,000 from Northern white mission boards.
For some time after the Civil War these boards gave
considerably more than money. They sent some of the
choicest spirits in their ranks as missionary teachers.
Facing discouragement, ostracism, and many other diffi-
culties, these white teachers preserved the link of connection
between the white race and the training of Negroes in the
higher schools. They have left their indelible imprints upon
such institutions as Fisk, Howard, Atlanta, Tougaloo,
Talladega, Lincoln, Straight, Hampton, Clark, and Me-
harry Medical College, as well as upon a number of smaller
denominational high schools. The character and devotion
of many of the well-trained Negroes of to-day is due largely
to the efforts of these missionaries, and the South and the
Negro race owe them much gratitude. As colored people
receive more training, these white teachers are gradually
being replaced by Negro teachers. But several hundred of
them still remain and serve in a spirit of devotion.
As these white teachers are withdrawn there still remains
a number of white people who serve on boards of trustees of
colored institutions. These are also very useful in main-
taining the necessary friendly contacts between the colored
schools and the white race.
Most of these higher schools for colored people have been
seriously hampered by inadequate funds. This has limited
their teaching force, library facilities, and scientific appara-
tus; and it has, therefore, seriously narrowed the scope of
college and professional work. In fact the Bureau of Edu-
cation’s survey disclosed only three institutions whose
teaching force and equipment made them worthy of
EDUCATION 195
classification as “‘college.”” Since this survey others have
improved sufficiently to receive this classification. Fifteen
others had a comparatively small college enrollment with
large elementary and high school departments, while 15
others offered a few college subjects above their high school.
Thus only 33 institutions at the outside offered any degree
of college training and they enrolled only about 2500 in
college classes, a number entirely inadequate to provide a
corps of trained leaders for ten million people. The need
is not so much for new colored colleges as for an expan-
sion and strengthening of the facilities of the colleges now
established.
The same weakness in social and natural sciences which
was commented upon in the high school is evident in the
colored college. Limited teaching force confines many of
them to the narrow classical college curriculum with much
time devoted to mathematics and foreign languages and
relatively few electives offered. Recent expansions in the
appropriations for these schools have begun to enable them
to broaden the courses which they offer, but most of them
are in need of much greater expansion.
In 1916, excluding teacher training, there were only
1400 students in professional schools of college grade, of
whom 431 were medical, 287 dental, 160 pharmaceutical,
441 theological, and 80 legal. This meager output empha-
sizes the great need for the development of several real
university centers for Negroes, where professional training
could be given along with courses of college grade. No
such center is now available. Atlanta with five colleges,
Nashville with Fisk, Roger Williams, and Meharry College,
and Washington with Howard University offer possibilities
196 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
as university centers. The diversity of ownership and
control in Atlanta and Nashville have militated against
requisite codperation between the institutions, and the
limited appropriations of Congress to Howard University
have hampered its development.
When the conditions of Negro education for both the
masses and the leaders are compared with their condition
forty years ago, it is realized that remarkable progress has
been made in the elimination of illiteracy, in the beginnings
of a public school system, in establishing policies in trade
and agricultural training, and in founding institutions for
training leaders. On the other hand, when the facilities for
Negroes are compared to the facilities for white people, the
stupendous task of Negro education is apparent. The effec-
tiveness of the various funds and denominational boards
now at work and the rapidly growing public opinion in
favor of greater educational opportunity lead the student
to feel that the future will see this task taken firmly in hand.
The $500,000 which the Negroes give annually to schools
operated by their own denominations, the $2,300,000 which
they have given toward the erection of Rosenwald public
school buildings, and the sums which they raise in many
communities to supplement the meager public funds and
extend the school term a few weeks show that even from
their limited means they are willing to contribute for edu-
cation. The crowding in such schools as they have indi-
cates a burning desire among the parents that their children
be educated. A race that shows such a desire to learn and
a willingness to take advantage of, and to supplement every
opportunity for schooling certainly deserves a chance to
lift itself through education.
EDUCATION 197
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BoAs, FRANZ. The Mind of Primitive Man, pp. 17-29 and Chapter V.
Bulletins Nos. 38 and 39, 1916. United States Bureau of Education.
“Negro Education in the United States,” Vol. I, Chapters I and
III. Also consult Vol. II for particular state chapters.
Current Biennial Surveys, United States Bureau of Education. (Facts
in this chapter from Bulletin 29, 1923; see pp. 45, 98, 99, 103, 497.)
Haynes, GEorGE E. The Trend of the Races, pp. 63-79.
Morpny, E. G. The Present South, Chapter IT.
Opum, Howarp W. Social and Mental Traits of the Negro.
Reports, General Education Board, Slater, Jeanes, Rosenwald, and
Phelps Stokes funds.
State Department of Education Reports.
WEATHERFORD, W. D. Present Forces in Negro Progress, Chapter V.
WoopworTH, R. S. Racial Differences in Mental Traits. Reprint
from Science, February 4, 1gto.
YERKES, ROBERT M. Mental Tests. Memoirs National Academy of
Science, Vol. XV, Part III, Chapters 8 and 1o.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. From the results of the army tests (Memoirs of the
National Academy of Science, Vol. XV, Part III, Chapter 10)
study the types of mental tests in which the Negro excelled
and the types in which they were excelled.
2. Study the reduction of Negro illiteracy by states. What
effect does this have on crime and efficiency? Supplement this
with observations in your community.
8. Discuss the difficulties confronting the Negro child who
desires an education.
4. Practically all the industrial schools are equipped to teach
the hand trades. In the light of the table, Chapter VI, page 110,
showing Negro occupations in 1910 and 1920, how well is this
teaching adapted to the present industrial situation.
198 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
5. In the light of the occupations of Negroes and democratic
fair dealing, discuss the merits of the controversy between
advocates of industrial and of college education for Negroes.
6. Summarize the activities of the funds interested in Negro
education and rate the value of their activities. Trace the
effect of each on the colored schools of a particular community.
7. Communicate with Hampton Institute, Tuskegee Insti-
tute, or Fisk University, securing data as to occupations of their
graduates, and draw conclusions.
8. Discuss the appropriations of your denomination and those
of your state to Negro schools.
9. Study the schools of your community and report on:
(a) condition of building as compared to white buildings;
(6) length of term; (c) training of teachers;, (d) regularity of
attendance; (e) high school work; (/) industrial work.
CHAPTER X
THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS
No phase of race relations touches the heart of the South
so intimately as the humanitarian task of alleviating the
lot of the unfortunate classes. Although the heart is
touched the intellect does not always direct the wisest action.
The Negro street beggar is generously provided for, and
the “hat in hand diplomat”? who applies to “his white
folks” usually goes away with everything he has asked for,
often with more than he deserves. The liberality with
which these colored beggars are treated is often more of
a liability than an asset to racial adjustment, because such
emotional but unscientific giving often leaves the givers
with a paternalistic feeling toward the whole race and a
belief that by giving small alms they have discharged
their full civic duty toward their colored neighbors.
This kindly, paternalistic spirit in some people and
apathy in others has, in a large measure, thwarted the
growth of really scientific social welfare work for the un-
fortunate classes of colored people. But, with the develop-
ment of organized social work for white unfortunates, some
of the old personal kindness is working itself out into serv-
ice on boards and in organizations for the thoroughgoing
care of the poverty stricken, the orphan, the delinquent,
the insane, and the feeble-minded colored people.
199
200 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
The younger generation of Negroes is taking much more
interest in this type of work among their own people. For-
merly this interest was centered, in an unorganized way, in
their churches, but it has recently become more specialized,
although the colored church is still active in these matters.
RELIEF
The relief of families in distress has been carried on to a
greater extent in colored churches than in white churches.
Many times a destitute colored family, or one who has
knowledge of such a family, appeals to the minister and
is allowed to make an appeal to the congregation, after
which a special collection is taken. Thus the Negroes have,
to a remarkable extent, taken care of their own unfor-
tunates.
This, manifestly, isa haphazard procedure. Money is not
always the primary need of a family in distress. Sometimes
legal aid would help them more. Sometimes a wander-
ing father or brother needs to be compelled to contrib-
ute to their support. In short, in modern organizations,
family relief has become a specialized branch of social
work with a definite technique. While the generous im-
pulse to distribute alms may give a family temporary relief,
it may also tend to sap their self-reliance and make them
perpetual beggars. These generous impulses and humani-
tarian interests are valuable and need to be retained, but
they should be guided by a special worker trained to
investigate such cases, diagnose their real need, and put
them in contact with the agency which can meet that need.
As the Southern charity organizations expand they do more
and more of this scientific family case work among Negroes.
THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS 201
White workers, however, often find it difficult to secure
the full confidence of colored families or to get an intimate
knowledge of their true situation. The most efficient
family case work among colored people, therefore, requires
a well-trained colored case worker employed by the estab-
lished relief agencies. Many charity associations are em-
ploying such colored workers, but training facilities have been
so limited that most of them have been trained on the job.
Public relief appropriations are also voted in small
towns and counties and colored people occasionally share
in them. This is also a very haphazard procedure and
politics rather than scientific rehabilitation often deter-
mines the distribution of these small doles. The indigent
aged are, for the most part, cared for in county almshouses,
there being only one or two very small institutions built
especially for the aged colored people. The census figures
show that in the South there is a slightly higher proportion
of the colored population listed as paupers in almshouses
than of the white, but a much lower proportion of colored
people than of the foreign-born population.
There is a great need for more information upon this
subject of public poor relief both outside and inside of alms-
houses in the South. In the absence of any collection of
scientific data in this field very little can be said as to the
status of the relief of the Negro cases. It does constitute
a problem for both the student of politics and the student
of sociology. The masses of colored people are so low in the
economic scale that sickness, sudden loss, and old age often
find them unprepared.
All of their lodges are, however, mutual-benefit societies,
and the small sick and death benefits which they pay often
202 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
carry the recipient through a period of misfortune. A
tremendously larger proportion of colored people than of
white people carry these small mutual-benefit policies.
Here again, colored people, without any outside aid, have
worked out a mechanism for taking care of their own mis-
fortune, — a means which is peculiarly adapted to the socia-
bility of their temperament and the small wages which they
earn. There are hundreds of these orders scattered through
the country and the Negro Year Book estimates that they
have accumulated about twenty million dollars’ worth of
property. A number of them are national in scope and enroll
several hundred thousand members. It is not at all unusual
to find Negroes who work for a very small wage but pay dues
in five or six of these orders. In addition to the secret benefit
societies, large Negro industrial insurance companies have
grown up, and several white companies do a lucrative busi-
ness writing Negro industrial insurance. The Metropolitan
Life alone numbers 1,500,000 Negro policy holders.
ORPHANS
The family ties are very loose among certain classes of
colored people and the result is a relatively high illegitimacy
rate and a large number of desertions. There is, however, a
real sense of responsibility for caring for the children in
these cases. Most of this burden falls upon the colored
women. When children without father, mother, or near
relatives are found, somewhat the same procedure is fol-
lowed as in relief cases. The minister takes the matter up
and finds some motherly soul in the congregation who will
care for the child. Too often, however, this woman is one
who already has a numerous brood and feels that one more
THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS 203
will not bring much added responsibility. There is seldom
a careful investigation as to the fitness of the home for
receiving the child.
Thus in child placing, also, the colored population, after
its fashion, takes care of its own. Very few orphanages
have been built, and these few are small. The proverty of
the race has saved them from the mistake which the white
people have made in building large institutions and herding
great numbers of orphans together in them to such an
extent that they lack the individual care and the love
which come to the child in the home.
There is need for a thorough study and organization of
the colored child-placing activities so that the commendable
tendency to keep children in normal families may be en-
couraged and systematized. There is also a field for the
limited development of colored orphanages as temporary
homes for many children while they are being placed. A
few will always be permanently domiciled in the institu-
tions. The visitor to such institutions as the Leonard
Street Orphanage in Atlanta, which is a model home in
many respects, is impressed with this need for the further
development of orphan homes to supplement the develop-
ment of child placement.
Every Southern state has a child-placing society but
none of these employ colored workers or handle colored
cases. Thus the colored people are left to their own
devices, and while they take care of their own orphans to
a remarkable extent, it is not at all uncommon for social
workers to discover little black waifs who wander home-
less in the cities. There is really no information as to how
many such waifs there are or how they manage to exist.
204 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
The lack of proper reformatory facilities has been men-
tioned in Chapter VIII. All states have juvenile court
laws, but only the larger counties have juvenile courts in the
real sense of the word. In the smaller counties, the regis-
trar, the county ordinary, or some other county official is
appointed as juvenile judge and he gives only a very small
amount of time to the work, usually without the aid of
a probation officer. Young Negro offenders are seldom
arrested until they become actually obnoxious to the
community, and then they are often thrown into jail with
hardened criminals to receive their first lessons in crime.
Like the family case worker, the white probation officer
often finds difficulty in securing the proper codperation
from colored delinquents, their families, and their neigh-
bors. This creates a real necessity for colored probation
officers in large counties, and for voluntary colored advi-
sory committees in the counties where there are only a
few colored cases to be handled. The codperation of these
people with the juvenile court brings an intimate under-
standing and a sympathetic touch to the colored cases
which can be gained from no other source.
In the final analysis, the sociologist is primarily interested
in preventing the conditions from which disease, poverty,
insanity, desertion, and crime arise, rather than merely
being contented with attempts to cure abnormal cases
after they have developed. This, in effect, means that the
tasks of reducing the numbers of unfortunates are pri-
marily those of the agencies for education, public health,
improvement of economic life, and living conditions.
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THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS 205
One especial line of work which would be of value in
aiding to prevent these abnormalities in society would
be a campaign by the colored church, school, lodge, and
lay leaders to place greater emphasis on the social impor-
tance and sanctity of normal family life. Neither African
tribal customs nor the customs of slavery tended to in-
culcate into the Negro the highest ideals of family life.
_ His church and his customs since emancipation have aided
- greatly in this respect, but further emphasis on the impor-
tance of the stability of the home would contribute mate-
rially to the reduction of the incidence of disease, poverty
arising from desertion, crime, juvenile delinquency, and
dependency.
INSANITY AND FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS
Insanity is probably better cared for than any other
abnormality of the Negro. The colored wards of all state
insane asylums are crowded but usually as well adminis-
tered as the white wards. Census figures tell very little
as to the insanity rate among colored people, but they seem
to indicate a somewhat lower rate than that of the white
population. This may be due in part to lesser tendency to
nervous disorders, and in part to the fact that a larger pro-
portion of the Negro insane are not in institutions but
at large in the community. The discrepancy between the
rate for Negroes (131.4 per 100,000) and that for foreign-
born whites (400 per 100,000) is so large that it is certain
that there is a much stronger tendency toward insanity
among the foreign-born than among the Negro population.
The index to the number of colored feeble-minded is still
less accurate since the census lists a very small number in
206 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
institutions and these are all in the North. Quite a num-
ber of colored feeble-minded patients are in insane asylums,
but no Southern state provides a special institution for these
defectives and the overwhelming majority are free in the
community to breed vice, crime, and more feeble-mindedness.
The interrelation of crime with poverty and feeble-
mindedness is well understood and the power of crime,
when improperly corrected, to breed more crime, is also
a known fact. States, therefore, which do not provide the
proper facilities for the reformation of young offenders and
for the separation of the insane and feeble-minded from
the normal community can hardly expect anything else
than high Negro crime and disease rates, for which the
final fault rests more upon the negligence of the state than
upon any inherent criminality of the Negro race.
As stated in the population chapter, the rapid urbaniza-
tion of the Negro intensifies these problems of the abnor-
mal classes. The Negro crime rate in the North and West is
three times that in the South because the population in
the North and West is largely urban. The urban insanity
rate is also three times the rural rate. Each disaster to
the cotton-growing industry drives thousands of Negro
families from settled, quiet country districts, where they
have been furnished with a house and with fuel by the land-
lord, to the hurried city life, where numbers of them make
a precarious living by doing odd jobs. They are eternally
in difficulties trying to secure funds for paying rent or buy-
ing food and fuel. They are herded in insanitary tenements
where the opportunities for vice and crime are redoubled.
In these social menaces of the city lies the real danger to
the colored population of rapid industrialization.
THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS 207
TRAINING FOR SOCIAL WoRK
Every Negro leader should have a deeper knowledge and
appreciation of social problems. This is especially true of
the preachers and teachers because of the direct contact
which they have with cases needing intelligent care. Col-
ored colleges and theological schools, however, put little
emphasis on the social sciences. The need for colored case
workers, probation officers, institutional workers, and other
specialists creates a further demand for specialized training
in public welfare work.
Little has been done to supply this demand. A few col-
ored students have been graduated from such schools as
the New York School of Social Work and the Chicago School
of Social Administration, but there is need for a still greater
specialization on colored problems than these institutions
offer. Good beginnings toward this specialization have
been made in Nashville in connection with Fisk University,
and in Atlanta, in connection with the colleges and social
welfare institutions of that city. The requisites of this
training are that both academic work in social sciences
and practical observational work in connection with well-
established welfare organizations should be offered. Both
of these Southern schools for training colored social workers
need to be greatly strengthened in order that workers with
the proper standards may be supplied to the growing num-
ber of welfare organizations which are showing a willing-
ness to specialize on colored problems. Colored colleges
also need to impress the importance of this work on their
students so that more of them will take it up as a life
profession.
208 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
The development of high standards in colored welfare
institutions will, of necessity, depend largely upon the
extension of the recent movement to develop strong state
departments of public welfare in the Southern states.
North Carolina and Georgia have made substantial prog-
ress in this line and there are beginnings in the other states
which give great promise of development. The aid and
supervision which strong, well-financed state departments
can give to local communities in handling their problems
of dependency and delinquency is invaluable. Each state
department, in states which have a heavy Negro popula-
tion, should have a specialist in Negro welfare work to
study the special problems of that group and stimulate
their special activities.
COMMUNITY CHESTS
Probably the most concrete recent movement for stimu-
lating the colored people to greater interest in their own un-
fortunate classes and for providing an opportunity for white
and colored people to codperate unselfishly in humani-
tarian endeavor has been the community-chest movement,
which is spreading rapidly in the South. These community
funds usually include at least two agencies which have
a program of welfare work for colored people, — the
Associated Charities, and the Tuberculosis Association.
Often there is also a colored branch of the Y.M.C.A. or
Y.W.C.A. and sometimes a special colored institution, such
as the Urban League, or orphanage, or an old people’s
home.
Without the community chest, the financial support of
these colored programs has been extremely precarious and
THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS 209
their work has been accordingly hampered. But in the
community chest their financial support is assured and they
are able to do far better work.
In subscribing funds to these chest campaigns, the Ne-
groes have shown a real eagerness to respond when special
effort has been made to secure subscriptions from them.
Their contributions as reported by various chests range
from 4o to 95 per cent of the budgets of their institutions.
They usually pay their pledges promptly. The experience of
the Atlanta Community Chest, to which the colored people
subscribed 95 per cent of their budget, is worthy of note.
This campaign included the Associated Charities, two colored
workers; Tuberculosis Association, one colored worker;
Travelers Aid, one colored worker ; Phyllis Wheatly Branch,
Y.W.C.A.; Urban League; Neighborhood Union; and
two colored orphanages. Their combined budgets were
about $40,000 and the colored people subscribed over
$39,000. One colored man alone subscribed $1200, while
the employees of one large colored corporation subscribed
more than $8000. At no previous time had the colored sub-
scriptions to these institutions amounted to over $15,000
annually.
In this campaign a special colored committee was or-
ganized to explain the work of these welfare organiza-
tions to their group and solicit subscriptions from them,
and the ministers extended their fullest codperation. The
results were not only greatly encouraging to the colored
people, who felt that they were carrying their share of the
burden and were accorded a fair representation in the
councils, but their daily reports to the white campaigners
also furnished a fine stimulus to the general campaign, as
210 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
they demonstrated that the colored population was stretch-
ing its thin pocketbook to meet the humanitarian needs of
the city.
The organization of the chest was also of great value to
race relations because, for the first time, it spread the knowl-
edge of social welfare work widely among the masses of
colored people and united them behind their welfare in-
stitutions more solidly than ever before. It also brought
to the attention of the white leaders the needs of the col-
ored community to such an extent that the colored work
is now a definite part of the welfare program of the city.
The by-product of such codperation is a spirit of good will,
mutual understanding, and mutual respect which could
hardly be secured except through such mutual, unselfish
service to the community.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Census of Benevolent Institutions.
Census of the Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915,
Chapter XVII.
McCorp, C. H. The American Negro as a Dependent, Defective, and
Delinquent.
Reports of State Departments of Welfare and Health.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. What would be the effect on problems of poverty, depend-
ency, insanity, and delinquency of more thorough-going effort to
perform the tasks of education, public health, recreation, and
economic justice?
2. What institutions or organizations in your community
handle cases of Negro relief? Are their efforts directed at re-
habilitation of families or merely at giving temporary relief in
the form of charity doles?
THE HUMANITARIAN INTERESTS 211
8. Study the records of a family agency and determine the
factors which contribute to Negro dependency.
4, By inquiring among Negro preachers and sick and death
benefit societies determine the extent and manner in which the
Negro population of a community takes care of its own un-
fortunates.
5. What is the relation of the problems of the day nursery,
the orphanage, and the family relief society?
6. In what respect would a home-visiting teacher attached
to the school be able to reach the problems of abnormal families ?
7. What is the relation of the neglect of poverty and depend-
ency to crime and delinquency?
8. Study the treatment of juvenile delinquents in your com-
munity. Talk with the judge and determine the volume of
Negro cases. Has he a colored probation officer, paid or
voluntary? What training has the officer had? Has hea colored
advisory committee? What is their success in handling cases?
What institutions are available for temporary detention of boys,
of girls; for reformation of boys, of girls? Is the program
designed to prevent delinquency before it occurs or is it de-
signed merely to correct delinquencies already committed ?
CHAPTER XI
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
The church is the most powerful institution in Negro life.
The Negro church is the only social institution of the Negroes
which started in the African forest and survived slavery; under
the leadership of priest or medicine man, afterward of the Chris-
tian pastor, the church preserved in itself the remnants of
African tribal life and became after emancipation the center
of Negro social life. So that to-day the Negro population of the
United States is virtually divided into church congregations
which are the real units of race life. — Report of the Third
Atlanta University Conference.
A larger proportion of Negroes is reached by the church
than by any institution. In fact, the proportion of member-
ship among the Negroes is higher than the proportion in
the white population. The Census of Religious Bodies of
1916 showed that 4,602,805 Negroes, about 45 per cent
of the total population, were church members. The white
church membership was 37,324,049, or about 38 per cent
of the total population.
A second source of the power of the church is the strong
grip of the religious motive on the emotional nature of the
Negro. Because the emotions of the race are so bound up
with the religious urge, the church has a great influence
on all of its members. They attend regularly and will
212
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 213
sacrifice to a remarkable extent to contribute to church
activities. The historical background of the race has also
made a commanding position for religious expression in
the life of the individual. The African medicine man had
a monopoly on sorcery, witchcraft, worship, medicine, and
advice. ‘Tradition has preserved much of this absorbing
importance for the church and the preacher.
The church is also influential in the life of the race on
account of its power as a social institution. The Negro
has so few institutions, so few gathering places, that the
church has become the logical center for community life.
In fact observers have frequently noted that the successful
Negro church is as much a community center as a place of
worship, and the average successful minister is one who
stimulates a continual round of activities, devoting as much
time to community work as to preaching the gospel and
financing the church.
HIsToRY OF THE NEGRO CHURCH
Some of the faults as well as some of the strong points
of these organizations stand out in bolder relief when the
history of the transition from African tribal customs to
American institutions is briefly traced. There have been
four periods in the religious development of the Negro in
the United States: (1) A period when masters feared to
have slaves baptized because of the belief that it was
illegal to hold Christians in slavery. (2) A short period
when the evangelization of slaves was actively carried on
and slaves met for worship in separate congregations or
jointly with their masters. (3) A period when fear of slave
revolts and uprisings made masters endeavor to check
214 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
separate gatherings of slaves and consequently conduct
joint services. (4) The period since the Civil War, when
the Negro church has developed as a separate institution.
During all of these stages the development of colored
churches has been the result of the struggle of the Negro
soul for religious self-expression, aided on the one hand by
the missionary spirits of the white denominations, but often
opposed by the fears and suspicions of those ruled by the
economic motive.
For almost a hundred years (1619-1701) the religious
instruction of Negro slaves was held in check by the un-
written law that a Christian could not be held as a slave.
In permitting slaves to be introduced into the colonies, how-
ever, European sovereigns stipulated that such slaves should
first have embraced Christianity, but there was little super-
vision of the slave trade and not much evidence that this
provision was enforced against the opposition of the planters.
English colonists were primarily interested in building
homes in the New World and looked upon the Negro as a
means to that end rather than as a human being in need
of religious teaching. The scattering number of records of
baptized Negroes indicates that a few of the more religious
planters, even in this period, were scrupulous about the
religious instruction of their slaves.
In Maryland, the only Catholic colony, the practice of
preaching the gospel to white and colored alike began early.
In the Protestant colonies, on the other hand, the forma-
tion, in 1701, of the Society for the Propagation of the Gos-
pel in Foreign Parts, marked the beginning of systematic
efforts to indoctrinate slaves. This was an English so-
ciety which operated from 1701 up to the time of the
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT ais
Revolutionary War and then withdrew. As late as 1667
Virginia passed the following law:
Baptism doth not alter the condition of the person as to his
bondage or freedom, in order that diverse masters freed from
_ doubt may more carefully endeavor the propagation of Chris-
tianity.
In 1670 Locke’s Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina
included the following article :
Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls of all men,
and religion ought to alter nothing in any man’s civil estate or
right, it shall be lawful for slaves as well as others to enter them-
selves and be of what church or profession any of them shall
think best, and thereof be as fully members as any freeman.
But yet no slave shall hereby be exempted from that civil
dominion his master hath over him, but be in all things in the
same state and condition he was in before.
In 1685, the French Code Noir made baptism and religious
instruction of slaves obligatory. These laws and the agi-
tation of Cotton Mather, John Eliot, Oglethorpe, Count
Zinzendorf, and later (1766) of John Wesley, paved the way
for a rather rapid evangelization of Negroes. The mission-
aries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
combed the South and reported many conversions of
Negroes. In some places Negro congregations were formed
and in others they met with the white people. The Mora-
vians or United Brethren began early to establish separate.
missions for Negroes. Their influence was felt in Virginia,
Carolina, and Georgia. Methodism was introduced in
New York in 1766 and the first missionaries sent out by
Wesley in 1769. From the very beginning they preached
216 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
to both white and black and the denomination rapidly
secured a colored membership. In 1800 they began to
advocate the policy of appointing colored preachers for
colored congregations, and Richard Allen, later founder
of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was the first
appointed. The Baptists did not really get well started
in the Southern states until about 1790, but at this time
great revivals were held and many Negroes enrolled. It is
reported that :
In general the Negroes were followers of the Baptists in
Virginia, and after a while, as they permitted many colored men
to preach, the great majority of them went to hear preachers
of their own color, which was attended with many evils. —
Atlanta University Publication No. 8, p. 18.
This policy was largely responsible for the rapid growth
of the colored Baptist congregations, whose membership
in 1793 was estimated to be one-fourth of the total member-
ship in the denomination, or about 18,000. The same
year the Methodists reported 16,227 colored members.
Thus at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Meth-
odists and Baptists had large colored memberships, each
approaching twenty thousand. There was only a sprinkling
of Presbyterians and Episcopalians.
At this time, however, forces of unrest began to work
in the slave population. The same unrest which caused
Toussaint L’Ouverture to lead the Haitians in revolt against
their French masters spread to the United States and some-
thing of the spirit of liberty which flamed in the Colonial
revolution found its way into Negro minds. Religious
gatherings formed excellent places to talk these things over
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 217
and they became marked as the centers of unrest. In 1800
South Carolina declared :
It shall not be lawful for any number of slaves, free Negroes,
mulattoes, or mestizos, even in company with white persons,
to meet together and assemble for the purpose of mental in-
struction or religious worship, either before the rising of the sun
or after the going down of the same.
Later this was amended to allow a minority of Negroes
to remain in meeting with white people. A similar act
was passed in Virginia, but masters were allowed to employ
religious teachers for their slaves.
The Denmark Vesey plot in Charleston in 1822 and the
Nat Turner revolt in Virginia in 1831 illustrate, however,
that these restrictions were not rigidly enforced and that
agitators still found black congregations upon whose minds
they could work. These plots and the economic revolution
by which the cotton industry became so dominant led to
a wave of restrictive legislation.
Virginia declared, in 1831, that neither slaves nor free Negroes
might preach, nor could they attend religious services at night
without permission. In North Carolina slaves and free Negroes
were forbidden to preach, exhort, or teach. Maryland and
Georgia had similar laws. The Mississippi law of 1831 said:
“Tt is unlawful for any slave, free Negro, or mulatto to preach
the gospel.” In Alabama the law of 1832 prohibited the assem-
bling of more than five male slaves off the plantation to which
they belonged, but the act was not to be considered as forbidding
attendance at places of public worship held by white persons. ,
This left the religious worship of Negroes entirely to
their masters. Many were included in white congregations
218 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
and all the ante-bellum churches of the South have gal-
leries in which the slaves sat. But only the favored few
could obtain seats in these galleries and the masses of field
hands were dependent upon the occasional visit of the
itinerant preacher, or the family and plantation services
held by devout masters and mistresses.
The Negro church membership increased from about
50,000 in 1800 to 468,000 in 1859. This increase of goo per
cent in sixty years indicated that, on the whole, the forces
favoring the evangelization of Negroes were much stronger
than the oppressive forces. In fact the oppression came
more in waves impelled by fear and the forces of evangeli-
zation operated constantly.
Even before emancipation, friction in mixed congrega-
tions led to separate worship in many places. The colored
people either used the same church edifice at different hours,
or a separate edifice was erected for them. Nevertheless,
they remained in the same church organization and some
of the ablest white preachers of the time filled their pulpits
and some of the ablest laymen taught their Sunday
schools. Men of the type of Stonewall Jackson and Robert
E. Lee held Sunday schools for colored people each Sunday
and put their whole heart into this work of instruction.
PRINCIPAL DENOMINATIONS
The real tragedy of reconstruction was that these con-
tacts were broken, and the colored church left to work out
its own salvation in separate organizations. The African
Methodist Episcopal Church was founded as a separate
organization by Richard Allen even before the war, but
its activities were almost entirely confined to the North.
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 219
After emancipation it spread south. From the galleries
of the Southern Methodist Church the Colored Metho-
dist Episcopal denomination grew. Later the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion was added. Though in separate
congregations the Baptists remained in the same conven-
tions for some time, but the increasing pressure for self-
determination on the part of the colored Baptists finally
led to the organization of the National Baptist Con-
vention. All the regular Baptist colored churches are now
in separate denominational organizations.
The Baptist and the Methodist bodies include prac-
tically the whole colored population. Of the 4,600,000
church members 2,967,000 are in colored Baptist organiza-
tions and 54,000 are in colored congregations included in
white Baptist organizations. Colored Methodist organi-
zations embrace 1,068,000 and the Methodist Episcopal
Church has enrolled 320,000 in separate colored congrega-
tions. The Protestant Episcopal Church has never divided
into white and colored wings. Though its colored member-
ship is small, the colored congregations belong to the same
synods as the white congregations and some colored suf-
fragan bishops are appointed by the church. Similarly, the
Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian congregations, with
the exception of some colored Cumberland Presbyterians,
are included in the white organizations.
Although much valuable contact with the white race
was lost by the organization of these separate colored de-
nominations, this was in part compensated for by the fact
that the Negro has gained in experience by having these
great religious institutions as a training ground in organiza-
tion and administration.
220 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
EMOTIONAL SERVICES
There are to be found to-day among the city churches
many orderly and well-administered congregations. Many
of the country churches and some of the town congregations,
on the other hand, have assumed many crudities.
A Negro investigator in a Northern city found three
types of churches “‘whose services can be described by no
better terms than religious hysteria.” These are (1) con-
gregations which are members of standard denominations,
but which have wandered afield in their conduct of serv-
ices; (2) special denominations, such as ‘‘Church of God”
and “Saints of Christ’”’; and (3) congregations and organ-
izations built up around individual preachers or leaders
who split off from other churches. In these he found much
hysteria. The services were characterized by singing,
moaning, and shouting, shaking of the body, jumping, and
rolling on the floor. This type of congregation is slowly giv-
ing ground before the advance of better trained preachers
and the development of better self-control.
FACTIONALISM
One of the handicaps which has seriously hampered the
development of the colored church has been the tendency
of congregations to split and form two weak churches where
one was adequate. Factional rows are chiefly responsible
for these splits. This has given the colored people the
burden of too many organizations. In fact they are over-
churched. The census of 1916 gives 39,655 Negro organi-
zations. On the basis of the 1920 population this is a
church for every 262 people. Their average membership
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 221
was 116 as against 190 for the white churches. There are
not nearly enough trained ministers to fill so many pulpits
and those now in the pulpit are handicapped by the limited
finances and uncertain support of such small congregations.
The congregations, in turn, are handicapped by the poorer
quality of preaching and inadequacy of the church edifices.
Negro churches showed in 1916 a combined valuation of
property amounting to $86,809,970, or an average value of
$2189 per church. It is obvious that this sum will not
adequately house a congregation.
There is some evidence, however, that this tendency to
split has not operated so strongly in recent years as it did
formerly. From 1906 to 1916 the membership in colored
churches increased 24.7 per cent, but the number of or-
ganizations increased only 7.8 per cent. This would seem
to indicate that the later tendency is toward the consoli-
dation and strengthening of existing organizations rather
than the formation of new ones. This tendency is one to be
encouraged in every way possible, for the church has lost
much ground through its divisions and dissensions.
RELATION TO THE COMMUNITY
The emotional character of the worship in some churches
has been touched upon. The other outstanding charac-
teristic of the colored church is the extent to which it is
the center of the life of the people. At the close of the Civil
War it was the one institution, and the minister was the
one leader of the people. It therefore early became the
agent not only for Sunday worship, but also for Bible
classes, debating clubs, and social functions. The preacher
was an adviser on temporal as well as spiritual matters.
222 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Lodges sprang up from church congregations. Benefit
societies and labor bureaus were among the activities fos-
tered and, more recently, the church has entered the field
of social welfare by adding institutional features.
No one is properly introduced to the colored community
unless his introduction comes through the church and
no movement can hope for wide success among the masses
of the people which does not use the influence of the minis-
ter as its greatest asset. This has made even a more useful
field for the colored institutional church than for similar
white institutions. A few of the city churches have begun
to develop along these lines. The Congregational Church
of Atlanta numbers among its activities a working girls’
home, an old folks’ home, and numbers of young people’s
clubs. Big Bethel A.M.E. Church of the same city has
for years operated a labor exchange and codperated with
the relief agencies of the city. The Atlanta Mutual Life
Insurance Company grew from a benefit society formed
in Wheat Street Baptist Church and this church engages
its members in many other activities. In Jacksonville,
Memphis, Richmond, and numbers of other cities, forward-
looking ministers are developing institutions of real service
and rooting their church deep in the life of their race.
This line of community service is one which should
especially interest the country church. As yet, however,
little progress toward institutional service has been made
in rural districts. Churches have multiplied so fast that
they have been unable to secure trained pastors, and have
subdivided into such small congregations that they cannot
afford to pay a man for full-time work. Consequently
many preachers serve two, three, and four churches. This
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 223
means that they are non-resident pastors, coming into
the community on Saturday or Sunday morning and
leaving Monday. They leave behind a group of untrained
church officers who are unable to make the community
activities of the church what they should be. Practically
all the money collected in such churches goes to pay the
preacher, and little remains for rendering service to the
congregation. After surveying the rural church in Macon
County, Alabama, where there are many absentee pastors,
Rev. G. Lake Imes of Tuskegee concludes :
Little or no time is given to pastoral visitation. Scant atten-
tion is given to the school. No service is rendered in the week-
day interests of the people, and this is the result: that while
the people of this community contribute nearly four times as
much to religion as they do to education, they receive in the
time of the pastor, and the upkeep of the church, only one-sixth
as much in return as they receive from the schools. In short,
the church and the preacher are in grave danger of becoming
mere parasites in the life of our people.
-It is therefore evident that where there is a resident
preacher the church is a most powerful institution in the
colored community, but where denominational or factional
splits have so overchurched a community that the small
congregations cannot support resident pastors, much work
is needed to harness the potential influence of the church
on community life. The remedies lie in the consolidation
and strengthening of present congregations to the point
where more of the pastor’s time can be demanded, in more
frequent use of rural church buildings as social centers,
in systematic efforts to give more training to the local church
officials, — the deacons and elders, and in more interest
224 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
in utilizing the church as a means of community uplift
during the whole month rather than every other or every
fourth Sunday.
SUNDAY SCHOOLS
One natural result of the interest of the church in tem-
poral matters has been the adoption of an educational
policy by practically every denomination. This educational
policy embraces not only the Sunday school, but also con-
tributions to the support of denominational schools.
Colored Sunday schools may be characterized by the
statement that, as a rule, they are well attended, but, out-
side of the larger city churches, they are poorly organized.
Too many ministers look upon their Sunday school as a
useless adjunct which deflects attention from their regular
service, instead of realizing in it a source of vital power from
which the church can draw young members.
The features of the Sunday school which need strength-
ening are those of organization and administration.
Better grading of the scholars, a clearer understanding
by the teachers of their tasks, better equipment, and better
administrative programs, are points where marked improve-
ment could be made with a little intelligent effort and a
small expenditure of funds.
As yet the large colored denominations, the African
Methodist Episcopal, the African Methodist Episcopal
Zion, and the Baptist, have not begun to approach this
task systematically, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal
Church has just made a small beginning. What is needed is
field work, — visitation and instruction by trained workers
who can go into the church community, discover the leaders,
and arouse them to the task of reaching young people.
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 225
In some states the white Baptists with some financial
aid from the colored Baptists have supported colored
Sunday school organizers who, for a while, rendered valu-
able service. For the most part, however, these workers
have been discontinued for the lack of funds. If the col-
ored Baptists were fully alive to the magnitude of this
need, they are fully able, without the aid of the white
denomination, to support such workers with the proceeds
of one annual Sunday school collection from each church.
The work of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.
is to be especially commended in this line. While this
denomination embraces only about 30,000 colored members,
they have 27 full-time Sunday school workers in the field
whose mission is threefold. They go out and discover
neglected communities in which there is no Sunday school
and organize one. They visit homes and give the people
Bibles and literature, and instruct them in family prayer.
They visit schools already organized and help them with
their problems of grading, teaching, and equipment. They
maintain in Atlanta a well-organized publication bureau
for the distribution of literature and information to these
field workers, and once a year they hold four Sunday school
institutes.
SECULAR EDUCATION
Many adult Negroes in the early days first learned to
read in the Sunday school. It was but a short step from
this kind of Sunday school to a parochial school, where the
simple elementary subjects were taught by the preacher
or by a hired teacher. The consolidation of these parochial
schools has given each denomination something of a system
of education.
226 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
The African Methodist Episcopal Church supports a
school in each Southern state and, in Morris Brown Uni-
versity, this denomination has a college of increasing size
and rising standards. In codperation with the Southern
Methodist (white) the Colored Methodist Episcopal
Church has g schools. The Methodist Episcopal Church,
which includes the white Methodists in the North and quite
a large colored membership in the South, has 18 large schools.
The Presbyterian denomination (Presbyterian Church in
the U. S. A.) maintains 85 schools, most of which are small,
but several of which are important. The Protestant Epis-
copal Church, which is also one of mixed membership, main-
tains 10 large and 14 small schools. The Congregational
board supports 29 schools, all of which are important.
The Baptists have suffered greatly through the decen-
tralization of their educational work. In other words, their
parochial schools have not consolidated to any great
extent beyond the local association. These associations
embrace only a few counties each and are not financially
able to support a large school. This has given the colored
Baptists 110 schools, only 31 of which could be classed as
of any importance other than that of supplementing the
local public schools. In codperation with the American
Baptist Home Mission Society (white), however, the Col-
ored Baptists contribute to 24 large schools, some of which
are among the most important in the country for training
colored leaders.
The combined incomes of the schools of denominations
with all colored membership was, in 1916, $381,000, while
the combined income of the schools supported by denom-
inations of mixed white and colored membership was
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 227
$1,550,000. Thus the church is making a real and increas-
ingly important contribution to the training of colored
leadership.
MORALITY AND THRIFT
While the church has been of great service to the race
in reaching large numbers with an evangelical message
and in serving the people as a many-functioned institution,
it has not fully measured up to its opportunities of incul-
cating greater thrift and morality in its members. This
should be interpreted, not so much as a detraction from
the great part which the church has played in building
Negro character as a challenge to go ahead with a task
well begun. Were it not for the colored church, Negro
home and family life would be nowhere near as moral as
it is to-day, yet there is much room for improvement.
One of the greatest gaps which had to be bridged be-
tween Africa and America was in the life of the home and
the family. The African system was one of polygamous
clans. The slave was uprooted from an existence ordered
under this plan and placed upon a plantation where monog-
amy was theoretically demanded but in many cases not
really expected. This, according to the Atlanta University
Study of the Negro Church, practically amounted to a
new polygamy with all of the evils and none of the benefits
of the African system.
The African system was a complete protection for girls, and
a strong protection for wives against everything but the tyranny
of the husband; the plantation polygamy left the chastity of
Negro women absolutely unprotected in law, and practically
little guarded in custom. The number of wives of a West
Indian slave was limited chiefly by his lust and cunning. The
228 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
black females, were they wives or growing girls, were the
legitimate prey of the men, and on this system there was one
and only one safeguard, the character of the master of the
plantation.
Since emancipation, the white man’s law and the black
man’s church have been the only safeguards of family
morality and of the two the church has been more potent
than the law. It has not, however, measured up to this
responsibility as fully as it could have if the ministers had
addressed themselves whole-heartedly to this task from the
beginning, and had their services contained less of evan-
gelical fire and theological dogma and more lessons of thrift
and morality. In other words, there is a great need, which
is slowly being met, that the Negro church be more inti-
mately related to the lives of its individual members in
its preaching as it is in its institutional features.
As in the white population, this tendency to overempha-
size evangelism and the resultant failure to relate the teach-
ings of the pulpit intimately to life has begun to estrange
the younger generation from the church. They do not
attend as regularly as their parents. Should this tendency
operate unchecked for several generations the colored
church would be in danger of losing its preéminent place
in the life of the race.
PREACHERS
The multiple activities of colored ministers call for a
training above the average and yet the training facilities
are wholly inadequate to meet this great demand. As has
been noted there are almost 40,000 Negro churches and
only about 19,000 ministers. This means that fully 25,000
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 229
Negro churches are without the services of a full-time min-
ister, and have services only twice a month or once a month,
according to the number of other pulpits filled by their
minister. The numerical problem of securing a sufficient
force to supply these half-filled pulpits is, in itself, a great
one. At the time of the Bureau of Education Survey of
Negro Schools (1916) the combined output of all colored
theological schools did not aggregate 200 per year. It is
not at all uncommon to find pulpits filled by men who
during the week are teachers or tradesmen. But until the
weaker colored churches are better organized and more
securely financed, there is not much need for a greater
number of preachers, because, if they were available these
weaker congregations could not now support a full-time
pastor. The problem is rather one of increasing the train-
ing and efficiency of the ministers now in the pulpit with
the assurance of a fairly steady and adequate annual crop
of young men to enter the profession.
From county studies we may picture the average rural
colored preacher thus: He is a man who can read and write,
usually a man of considerable native intelligence and
oratorical ability, but a man with meager elementary
education (only about 1 per cent have had any theological
training and from 3 to 5 per cent have had high school
training). He is handicapped by small, shifting, and
poorly organized congregations. For his labors he receives
from $150 to $500 per year and consequently has to
supplement this by farming or operating a small busi-
ness. In fully go per cent of the cases he serves more than
one church. This means that he stands in the relation of
non-resident pastor to at least one of his congregations and
230 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
sees them only on the day when he preaches, leaving them
without ministerial services for the rest of the month or
two weeks between his sermons.
One of the criticisms frequently lodged against colored
ministers and congregations is that the financial manage-
ment of the smaller churches is lax. This condition arises
partly from the failure of the untrained minister to keep
adequate accounts and provide for annual audits, and
partly from the failure of the congregations themselves
through their officers, to pay their assessments promptly
and fulfill their obligations in business-like manner. Many
colored preachers have to waste much time and energy
at the end of each year in holding “‘rallies” to collect salary
which should have been paid them regularly through the year.
CHURCH COOPERATION
In planning these details of church management the
white ministers and church officers could render valuable
advisory service if they were called in to discuss problems
with the colored minister. In the past much more of this
friendly advice was given than now, but there are still
many white men who would be pleased to render such
service if asked to do so.
The controversies over slavery and the bitterness of the
Civil War estranged white from colored congregations,
and separated Northern from Southern congregations with-
in three great denominations. Opinion was divided to such
a point that organized Christianity in the United States
has no unified policy toward the colored race even though
the love of Christ for all races, nations, and classes of
mankind, is woven all through the New Testament.
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 231
The doctrine, ““Go ye into all the world,” has been
interpreted by Southern denominations as a command
to go into foreign fields, and they have spent many mil-
lions of dollars for foreign missions as against very small
amounts for the great home mission work among the Ne-
groes at their door. In the words of a Southern man,
W. D. Weatherford:
Here at our very door is one of the greatest and most fertile
mission fields the world knows. . . . What princely givers we
have been! The Presbyterians last year gave an average of three
postage stamps per member to this work. The Methodists
averaged less than the price of a cheap soda water — just a
five cent one. The Southern Baptist Convention has only been
asking from its large membership $15,000 annually, or less than
one cent per member for this tremendous work.
The general boards of white denominations can render
great service to the colored church along several lines.
One of the most important is assistance in strengthening
the facilities for training colored ministers. Each colored
denomination should be aided by its affiliated white
denomination to develop its preacher-training facilities.
There is also a big opportunity to train preachers now on
the job through summer institutes. The Southern Metho-
dist Episcopal Church conducts several of these institutes
for Colored Methodist Episcopal pastors and the results
have been excellent. Such institutes are held in connection
with several schools, but this movement is so recent that
very few of the active ministers have yet been reached.
The second great field of service of the white boards
to the colored boards is in assistance with the Sunday
school program. Some description has been given of the aid
232 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
extended by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. A. through
field Sunday school organizers. A little financial assistance
and some codperation in working out literature and institute
plans would prove a great stimulus to the colored church
boards in extending their Sunday school work.
In local communities many mutual problems could be
profitably discussed in joint ministers’ meetings. The plan
of organizing white and colored ministerial unions which
meet separately three times and jointly once a month is
gaining in favor. The Atlanta Christian Council is modeled
on this plan and many useful codperative projects have
been fathered by this body and mutual aid on these proj-
ects has, in turn, contributed to a better feeling between
the races.
Local churches also have a fine opportunity for home
mission activity in developing colored mission Sunday
schools in neglected settlements. A pioneer in this line
was the Rev. John Little of Louisville, Ky., whose Sunday
school is supported and taught by members of a large white
Presbyterian congregation. This work has expanded until
the school is now active all week. The Bible is taught on
Sundays, and industries on week days. The effect of this
industrial training and of neighborhood clubs centering in
the school has made its influence felt throughout one of
the neediest sections of the city.
The Federal Council of Churches has taken a signifi-
cant step in the formation of a commission on race relations
composed of churchmen of both races and many denom-
inations. This commission is beginning to codrdinate the
interracial activities among the churches and promote con-
structive local codperation especially among the Federated
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 233
Church Councils in Northern cities. They have rendered
valuable service in the campaign against lynching; they
have promoted the observance of race relations Sunday;
they maintain a useful information service and are stimu-
lating study projects.
It would be difficult to conceive of a more fruitful field
for the application of practical Christian principles, for
translating the social treachings of Jesus into actual life,
than the field of race relations. The young church mem-
bers of each race need to realize this thoroughly and build
the church organizations of the future generation on the
basis of mutual helpfulness and unity of spirit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atlanta University Publications No. 8.
BRAWLEY, BENJAMIN. A Short History of the American Negro,
Chapter XI.
Haynes, G. E. The Trend of the Races.
The Atlanta Plan of Interracial Codperation.
United States Census — Religious Bodies, 1916.
WEATHERFORD, W. D. Present Forces in Negro Progress, Chapter VI.
Woopson, CarTER G. History of the Negro Church, pp. 286-296.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. Discuss the Negro Church as the center of Negro social
life.
2. What has been the training of the Negro preachers of your
community ?
3. What efforts do white denominations in your state make
to aid Negro denominations or congregations: (zx) in training
preachers; (2) in Sunday school organization and supervision ;
(3) in evangelical activities; (4) in social service?
234 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
4. What local organizations promote codperation between
white and colored churches?
5. How many Negro churches in your community are the
result of splits In one congregation? Get in touch with the
leaders in such a church and get the facts behind the split.
Study these facts and see if they indicate any significant con-
clusion. What effect has the split had on church finances and
leadership ?
6. Is there any relation between illiteracy and the emotional
type of church service?
7. How do you account for the fact that Baptists and Metho-
dists are so predominant among the Negroes?
CHAPTER XII
RACE CONTACTS
A consideration of the elements of race adjustment out-
lined in the preceding chapters will reveal that where the
races come together for educational effort, for health im-
provement, for moral advance, or for humanitarian ends,
the community as a whole benefits and the mutual respect
of the two races increases. It is impossible to work consist-
ently with a man and hate him. On the other hand, the
contacts of the vicious and criminal element, contacts which
lead to amalgamation of races, or those that are even sym-
bols of social intermixture, contacts of violence and exploita-
tive economic contacts, make for race antagonism. In other
words, both the relationships which make for progress and
those which make for friction may be expressed in terms of
contacts. Contacts may therefore be classified as follows:
Helpful — health improvement, educational effort, moral
advance, safeguarding law, religious, civic improvement,
humanitarian effort, economic codperation; Harmful —
vice and crime, social intermingling, violence, economic
exploitation and unfair competition, and demagogic or
exploitative political contacts.
If the races are to live at peace and make progress in the
United States, the simplest formula which can be given to
them is that the helpful contacts should be increased and
strengthened by every possible device, and that each indi-
235
236 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
vidual of both races seek the means of cultivating these
contacts; that the harmful contacts be safeguarded and
discontinued wherever possible, and that individuals of
each race set their faces against such contacts.
A fine recent utterance of this principle was voiced in the
inaugural address of Governor Whitfield of Mississippi :
Wise leaders among the Negroes must be encouraged in their
splendid efforts to aid their own people. Points of agreement
between the races must be emphasized and points of friction
minimized. Every man and woman in the state must see to it
that the laws protecting the Negroes in their lives and property
are rigorously enforced; that the occasional white man who seeks
to profit through the ignorance of his tenants or laborers be
forced by the overwhelming weight of an aroused public opinion
to give a square deal to all whom he employs, regardless of race
or color, and that there be the fullest codperation between the
white man and the black, to the end that peace and prosperity
come to the white and black alike through cordial codperation
in the agricultural and industrial upbuilding of the state.
SEGREGATION
Where the races have lived side by side for some time,
each type of contact has created a code of meeting, —a
contact behavior which has become customary and under-
stood by both races. As is usual with customs and folkways,
these codes are often difficult to rationalize. For instance,
even where “‘Jim Crow” laws are most stringent against
the mixing of the races in railway coaches, it is not at all
unusual to see a colored nurse riding with a white mother
and child. In fact such a situation is specifically exempted
from most of the separate coach statutes. It is understood.
The explanation is that the nurse’s presence is In no way
RACE CONTACTS 237
a symbol of social intermingling. Again, the two races in
the South are to be found working side by side on the
same building as carpenters or masons. Here also the
relationship is well understood. The men codperate in work,
laugh and joke amicably together, but it is perfectly under-
stood that neither will invite the other home to dinner or
extend their personal relationships beyond a certain inde-
finable line. An interesting illustration of this economic
relationship is shown in the story of the Englishman who
ran out of money in South Africa and consented to work for
a native contractor on condition that the native call him
“boss.”
The unanalytical are inclined to dismiss such behavior
phenomena as the result of illogical prejudice, but illogical
though they may be, they arise from roots far deeper than
prejudice. Primarily they may be explained by the funda-
mental sociological principle of consciousness of kind, of
pleasurable association with similars. The ‘‘we-group”
always sets up protective taboos and restrictions against
intermarriage and to some extent against intermingling
with the ‘‘other-than-we-group,” especially if there is a wide
ethnic difference between the two.
When the undesirability of racial amalgamation is
admitted, either from a biological or a social standpoint,
then the necessity for certain forms of separation which tend
to miminize social contacts is apparent. They are the
results of the effort to create a code under which it is pos-
sible to be “‘brothers in Christ without becoming brothers-
in-law.”
A second tendency toward the separation of racial activi-
ties results from the tendency to specialization. Whenever
238 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
an organization is designed to serve the Negro’s special
needs or develop his special capabilities, there is a tendency
for a separate colored organization or a colored branch of
an existing organization to be formed. The most notable
example of the specialization of service is seen in the volun-
tary formation of large Negro congregations within white
denominations and the formation of large separate colored
denominations. The peculiarly religious nature of the Ne-
gro and his desire for a special type of worship and of
religious leadership has exerted a pressure which has led
him to specialize his own religious activity. It was also
noted in an earlier chapter that Negro unionists often prefer
a separate local union, which can not only specialize on their
particular problems, but also codperate with the white
organization in district councils. The increasing number of
colored doctors and their special need for hospital training
is exerting a pressure for the development of separate
colored hospitals. These types of specialization are obvi-
ously very different social phenomena from the arbitrary
separation along social lines, and the two should not be
confused.
There are forms of segregation which are cruel and others
which are useless. Too often the separation of the Negro
simply affords an opportunity to give him inadequate
accommodations for the same pay, and does not help in
preserving race purity. The majority of Negroes oppose
separate railway coaches not because of an inherent desire
to ride with white people, but because most railroads herd
them into half coaches which are part colored passenger
coach and part baggage car. Often there is only one toilet
for both sexes, and sometimes the conductor, brakeman, or
RACE CONTACTS 239
“news butcher,’’ makes his headquarters in the colored
compartment, forcing colored passengers to stand. Some-
times they are furnished wooden coaches which are dan-
gerously sandwiched between the heavy steel coaches.
Likewise the Negro does not move out into a white residence
neighborhood because of the desire to live with white people,
but because of the desire to escape the noxious surroundings
commonly found in Negro settlements —lack of police pro-
tection, dismal lighting, filthy streets, and cramped quarters.
In other words, all that most Negroes see in separation is
that it is a means to degrade and an opportunity to ex-
ploit them. So long asit presents this aspect to them, it will
be galling and insulting, and they will oppose it. Stated
positively, this means that in the final analysis if segrega-
tion is to be successfully maintained, it must not be confused
with discrimination and must finally be approved by the
colored people themselves as beneficial to race relations.
The administration of segregation regulations by minor
functionaries, who are often prejudiced and brutal toward
the weaker race, is an additional source of irritation to the
Negro. It has been the author’s observation that the at-
titude of colored people toward separation in street cars
in certain towns has been radically altered by efforts of
the company to secure uniform courtesy and consideration
on the part of its conductors. In the hands of ignorant
and prejudiced employees segregation can be made a smart-
ing insult.
There was one railroad station from which colored people
were permitted to embark by one gate but into which they
were compelled to return by another gate. In the absence
of any sign directing them there was constant confusion. Of
240 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
course a man could not be supposed to know by instinct that
he was permitted to depart along with white people through
a certain gate but not to come back with them through the
same gate. To make matters worse the gate-keepers were
uniformly gruff and domineering and the resultant effect of
this arrangement was to embitter the whole colored popu-
lace of the surrounding territory. One day the gate-keeper
roughly seized a man who was innocently trying to depart
through the same gate through which he entered. When the
man in his surprise jerked violently away, only the quick
action of some cool heads prevented a near riot. In their
own councils Negroes discuss and often magnify these things
until they loom large in their race consciousness. As Dr.
R. R. Moton expresses it, such petty, nagging restrictions
are ‘‘gravels in the Negro’s shoe, small in size but capable of
inflicting great discomfort and impeding progress.”
Apart from manifest inequalities in separate accommoda-
tions and insulting methods of applying segregation, many
colored citizens seem happier in their own company than
when the company is mixed. There is also evidence that a
growing race pride is strengthening the feeling of colored
people against racial intermixture. But if the white South
is ever to justify segregation and maintain it on any demo-
cratic basis, it will be through the provision of accommoda-
tions which are as nearly equal as possible and through an
administration which is just and considerate.
However, unless those forms of separation which are
meant to safeguard the purity of the races are present, the
majority of the white people flatly refuse to codperate with
Negroes. In other words, the preservation of racial integ-
rity seems to be a fixed policy of the white people, and is
RACE CONTACTS 241
becoming a fixed policy of the colored people. The solution
of this situation would seem to rest in the imposition only
of such forms of segregation as aid in the preservation of
racial integrity, and in the administration of the system with
absolute justice. If, in the long run, the wisdom and justice
of such a system is not recognized by the Negro himself,
there will either be constant discontent and friction or
amalgamation. There is no alternative to these two, except
the systematic minimization of social contacts.
PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PRESS
Any treatment of racial contacts would be incomplete
without consideration of the indirect contacts which come
from reading about or talking about each other, and which
are generally referred to as public opinion. Public opinion is
often different from the realities of a situation, and especially
is this true of public opinion concerning race relations. It
rests in part upon traditional belief and to this extent does
not allow for change and progress. Current public opinion
is formed largely by the press and the pulpit, and when these
sources are poisoned by fear, by demagoguery, or by propa-
ganda, the opinion which they form is wide of the facts.
An analysis of the comments on the Negro question in
white dailies and periodicals reveals an undue emphasis
upon crime and upon the ridiculous elements, with too
little of constructive news and editorial policy. The Chi-
cago Race Commission listed 1338 Negro news items which
appeared over a period of two years in three principal white
Chicago dailies. Of these 667, or one half, were concerned
with riots, clashes, crime, vice, and illegitimate con-
tacts; 551 were concerned with such impersonal matters
242 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
as soldiers, politics, housing, sports, and migration; while
only 58 were on such constructive subjects as education,
art, business, and miscellaneous meetings.
The same investigation indicted the press North and
South as the purveyor of an “inordinately one-sided pic-
ture.”’ In the sensational headlining of race matters, the
difference between North and South is only one of degree.
In support of this the Chicago report quotes the follow-
ing headlines:
NEGRO ROBBER ATTACKS WOMAN NEAR HER HOME
POLICE HUNT FOR NEGRO WHO HELD UP WOMAN
AUSTIN WOMAN ATTACKED IN HER OWN HOME BY NEGRO
WOMAN SHOCKED BY NEGRO THIEF
NEGRO ATTACKS WOMAN
ARREST NEGRO SUSPECT FIND MUCH IN POCKETS, etc.
It will be observed that the word ‘‘ Negro” is prominently
displayed in each case. This, according to colored leaders,
is no more justified than would be the prominent display of
‘red headed” in every case where such an individual com-
mitted a crime. Such a policy foments race hatred and
constantly holds in front of the white world the worst side
of the Negro community, without any counterbalancing
view of the better side. The constant impact of these sensa-
tional headings upon the public mind can hardly be esti-
mated. It is a fact that nearly every race riot has been
preceded by an orgy of newspaper sensationalism of the
most inflammatory type.
RACE CONTACTS 243
Ray Stannard Baker, in his investigations of the Atlanta
riot, noted the effect of the glaring, sensational headlines
displayed several days before this outbreak and pointed out
that some of these sensations later evaporated as mere
rumors. East St. Louis was prepared for her bloody riot by
a similar sensational deluge of the public mind. General
Wood in taking charge after the Omaha riot stated that the
responsibility for the strained relations there rested upon a
few individuals and one newspaper. The Chicago report
gives the following succinct account of the sensation which
paved the way for the Washington riot: “‘The Washington
race riot was precipitated by reports of alleged attacks upon
white women by Negroes. These reports were featured in
the daily newspapers with large front-page headlines, and
suggestions were made that probable lynchings would fol-
low the capture of the Negroes. The series of reported
assaults totaled seven. In each it was claimed that a Negro
had assaulted a white woman. When the fury and excite-
ment of the riot had subsided and the facts were sifted, it
was found that of the seven assaults reported, four were
assaults upon colored women. Three of the alleged crim-
inals arrested and held for assault were white men, and at
least two of the white men were prosecuted for assaults upon
colored women. It further developed that three of the
assaults were supposed to have been committed by a suspect
who at the time of the riots was under arrest.”
Although the colored press rants against the white press
for its unbalanced news and editorial policy, it is, in its way,
fully as one-sided and as potent in its contribution to racial
antagonism. According to the Chicago Commission’s study
of the three Chicago colored papers: ‘‘The news items in
244 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Negro papers show a bias in reporting the opposite of that
of many white papers. They emphasize the Negro view,
frequently to the point of distorting fact. If anything, they
might be said to provide a compensatory interpretation of
the news.”
The painstaking study of Prof. Robert T. Kerlin of Vir-
ginia Military Institute, published under the title “The
Voice of the Negro,” contains ample evidence that the Negro
papers give too much space to the sensational treatment of
discrimination, grievances, rights, riots, lynchings. Professor
Kerlin holds that no one can know the mind of the Negro
without studying their journals, ‘“‘The Negro has discovered
the power and importance of his own press. It is a rapidly
expanding influence, consisting even now of two dailies, a
dozen magazines, and over three hundred weeklies. Init may
be found the voice of the Negro and his heart and mind.”
The situation is discouraging to any one interested in
peace and good will between the races. On one side the
white press assails the white mind with constant impact
from the worst phases of Negro life; on the other side the
Negro press assails the Negro mind with constant impact
from the worst side of white life. Between the two they have
fomented much discontent and several riots, and if their
policy remains unchanged, they will inevitably stir up much
more discontent and many more riots. The press of both
races has seemed only too well contented to sacrifice the
chances for racial peace and progress in order to build a
profitable circulation by catering to the widespread pleasure
derived from the sensational story.
It must be said, however, that much of the damage done
to race relations by this policy has been unintentional. Very
RACE CONTACTS 245
recently white editors have shown a tendency to come to-
gether and face this issue, and have manifested a willingness
to change their policies when they have fully realized their
import. More than fifty editors representing six Southern
states recently declared; ‘‘It would be well if even greater
effort was made to publish news of a character which is
creditable to the Negro, showing his development as a
people along desirable lines. This would stimulate him to
try to attain a higher standard of living.”” Such a policy is
well worthy of the consideration of all press associations.
Similarly, more effort is being made to get constructive news
into the Negro papers, not as an effort to suppress the facts
concerning real grievances and outrages, but in order to
complete the picture by showing both sides of the question.
CONCLUSION
It must always be remembered that the relations between
white and black are but a part of the race problem in the
United States. Many students in Texas feel that their
Mexican problems are more complicated than their Negro
problems, and the people of the Pacific coast would not
qualify their statement that the questions raised by the
presence of Orientals are, to them, ten to one more impor-
tant than Negro questions. In other sections, where people
of different nationalities of the white, race are in contact,
they have their difficulties. The Negro is only one element
— the largest single element in the “ melting pot.”
Again it will be helpful for the student to remember that
the tasks of race relations in the United States are but a
part of the larger tasks throughout the world. In India
and Africa, England faces the black and the brown races.
246 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Belgium and France also have their African tasks, while the
Orient is a meeting ground for the white and the yellow, and
the Near East is a hodgepodge of colors and stocks. Some
of the successful principles of racial adjustment between the
white and the Negro in the United States may apply to race
relations in other areas and between other peoples. Cer-
tainly the fundamental principles of justice and of helpful
codperation are universal in their application.
The diffusion of Negroes throughout the United States
has resulted in a spread and nationalization of racial con-
tacts. Up to the time of the recent migrations, contacts were
largely localized in the South and the white people of other
sections were in the position of bystanders — outsiders
whose comments were often resented. Now, however, the
whole nation is vitally concerned with the satisfactory ad-
justment of race relations and is showing a desire to face
these tasks in a truly American manner. ra
Race relations have become more national and less sec-
tional because, in its expansion, the federal government
has come into contact with the Negro in new ways. The use
of Negro troops, aid to the Negro farmer, application of the
various federal funds appropriated for education and public
health, relation of the Negro to the labor problems of the
nation, and the influence of the presence of large numbers of
Negroes on the immigration policy are all concrete instances
of the growth, altogether apart from party politics, of a
national attitude, to replace the old sectional view of race
contacts.
A review of the diverse tasks of adjusting race relations
which have been outlined in the preceding chapters brings
into bold relief the fact that no one panacea can be applied
RACE CONTACTS 247
as a cure-all. No one symptom can be isolated and called
“The Race Problem.” Problems of race cross-section the
problems of democracy. In communities where the popula-
tion is biracial, all community life is complicated by the
presence of the two races. There are many everyday tasks
of codperation. This reflects back to the idea with which
the introduction of this book is concerned ; namely, that the
adjustment of race relations constitutes far more of a task
than a problem. There is a substantial’ agreement as to
what needs to be done for leadership, for health, for educa-
tion, for law and order, for economic advance, for religious
improvement, for social welfare. The performance of
these tasks demands the wisdom, fairness, and diplomacy of
the thoughtful members of both races. They are above the
realm of partisan politics and of sectionalism. They involve
the prosperity of communities, but even to a greater degree
they control the health and happiness of millions of individ-
uals. They are human tasks and above all their humani-
tarian aspects should be emphasized. But the tasks that
remain involve methods of enabling the organizations now
dealing with these social problems to function for Negroes
as well as for white people.
Human personalities need to be recognized as the para-
mount issue. Antipathies and jealousies based upon the
opinion which one race holds of the other en masse need to
be submerged in the resolve to recognize individual merit
and individual worth. Thus the keynote of the approach to
racial adjustment is not that of partisanship, of sectional-
ism, or of self, but that of service, the type of service which
is consecrated to the benefit of the maximum number of
men, women, and children in the community.
248 THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DuBois, W. E. B. Darkwater.
DETWEILER, D. T. The Negro Press.
KeErLIN, R. T. The Voice of the Negro.
The Negro in Chicago, Chapters VI and IX.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. Pick some one form of race contact and study the number
of individuals brought together and the frequency with which
they are brought together. Study the customs surrounding
this contact and endeavor to explain them. Does this contact
make for race friction or for racial adjustment?
2. Study the places in your community where the races are
separated by law or by custom. What are the reasons for
separation in each case? Is the separation humanely or brutally
enforced?
8. Study a separate Negro residence district. What effect
has this separation on streets, police protection, lights, sanita-
tion? What effect have these things on the Negro’s attitude
toward segregation?
4. Assuming that racial amalgamation is undesirable, is some
form of separation necessary? How much?
5. Analyze the news and editorials in eight or ten issues of a
Negro paper and determine the relative space given to different
types of matter. What is the general effect of this paper on the
Negro mind?
6. What contribution has the United States to make toward
African colonial policies ?
7. What has our domestic Negro problem to do with our
international relations with South American countries, Mexico,
the West Indies, Japan?
APPENDIX
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS
“The Basis of Racial Adjustment” is a treatment of the
significant aspects of the relations of the White and Negro races
in the United States. For those who would use it as a text,
bibliographies and discussion topics have been placed at the
end of each chapter.
The teacher should study the topics and have on hand such
material as census reports, reports of funds, and state depart-
ments and such other documents as can be turned over to the
student for preparation of discussions. ‘The minimum should be
The Negro Year Book published by Tuskegee, Negro Popula-
tion in the United States, 1790-1915 (Census Bureau), and such
official reports as will be needed for reference by students
assigned discussion topics.
If black and white people are to live peaceably and justly,
they must learn to think in terms of the facts of race relations.
The teacher’s task is therefore not so much that of getting
students to follow the printed pages of this book as it is to get
them to think on the topics covered. For this reason the topics
have been arranged so as to call for the maximum amount of
first-hand observation. An hour of such observation, when it is
properly directed, is worth ten hours of book study. Students
are brought face to face“with the realities in such a way that
their own minds work out conclusions rather than accepting
ready-made dogmas. ‘They discover the facts in a concrete
situation from which there is no appeal. Their interest is
vitalized by the study of a real living situation rather than of a
249
250 APPENDIX
printed page. It is urged, therefore, that wherever possible
teachers use this book merely as a basis for guiding first-hand
observation of the community. Such a procedure will not only
quicken the learning process but will yield the most fruitful
results in translating this learning into the practical application
of morality and democracy to interracial affairs.
To get the best results from this kind of study, topics for dis-
cussion should be assigned as far in advance as possible. It
might be well to select all these topics and assign them to
members of the class at its first meeting, so that they can begin
immediately to read and observe. In the event interracial
action is contemplated it might be well at this first meeting to
designate an interracial committee to get in touch with Negro
leaders and with other organizations in the community which are
interested in constructive work.
The author is aware that many groups will have too short a
time to devote a session to each chapter. For this reason the
teacher is requested to study the interrelation of chapters so
that they may be grouped logically. While the following plan
provides only for superficial study it suggests a method of
covering the book in eight sessions :
Session I. Organization and assignment. Study Chapters
IT and II.
Session II. (Chapters. III and IV.) The chapters on Popula-
tion and Health are related and involve the factors of birth,
death, health, and movement.
Session IIT. Chapters V and VI relate to the two aspects of
the Negro’s economic life and can be discussed together.
Session IV. Chapter VII is a most important chapter and if
possible should be treated alone but could be combined with
Chapter VIII, making a unit of law and government.
Session V. Devote to Chapter VIII, if VIII and VII are not
combined.
APPENDIX 251
Session VI. Education (Chapter IX) should by all means
stand alone.
Session VII. Chapters X and XI naturally combine as they
relate to the spiritual and humanitarian sides of the problem.
Session VIII. Chapter XII gives a good opportunity to
review.
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INDEX
\
African Methodist Episcopal Church,
beginnings, 216, 218; schools, 226
African Methodist Episcopal Zion,
21
Apitation and leadership, 22-28
Agriculture, 75-95; education for,
189-193. See Farm
Alabama, percentage of Negroes in,
41-42; emigration from, 52; anti-
lynching laws, 144; property in,
152, 153; school funds, 178; early
religious laws, 217
Allen, Richard, 216, 218
Almshouses, 156, 201
Amalgamation, 3, 42-44, 237
American Federation of Labor, 51
Arkansas, percentage of Negroes in,
41, 42; property in, 152, 153;
school funds, 178
Arrests. See Crime
Asylums. See Insanity and Orphans
Atlanta, Georgia, 34; community
chest, 209; Christian Council in,
232; riot in, 243
Attucks, Crispus, 156, 158
Augusta, Georgia, 34
Baker, Ray Stannard, 243
Banks, 120, 121, 122
Banneker, Benjamin, 13
Baptists: Southern Baptist Conven-
tion, 143; beginnings, 216, 219;
schools, 226
Barbers, 119
Beggars, 199
Biology of race, 7-9
Birth rate, 40-41, 53
Black Belt, 41-42, 54, 179
Bond issues, 4
Brain weight, 172
253
Building trades. See Labor, skilled
Bunker Hill, battle of, 156, 158
Business, 119-123; retail, 120
Business League, 123, 193
Business men, 14, 21, 25
Butler, General B. F., 159
Calhoun, John, 170
Carnegie Foundation, 135
Carney, standard-bearer, 157
Carolina, Locke’s Fundamental Con-
stitutions, 215
Carver, George W., 13, 28
Charities, 200-202
Charleston, South Carolina, 217
Chattanooga, Tennessee, 34
Chicago Commission on Race Rela-
tions, 102, 106, 241-243
Chicago, Illinois: School of Philan-
thropy, 207; press, 241
Childbirth, 59-60
Child-placing. See Orphans
Children of servants, tor. See
Schools, Infant mortality, Juve-
nile delinquency
Christian Index, 142
Christianity, 212-233
Church, power of, 212; members,
212; history, 213-218; opposi-
tion to, 213-218; denominations,
218-219; emotionalism, 220; fac-
tionalism, 220; community cen-
ters, 221-224; institutional fea-
tures, 222; officials, 223; Sunday
schools, 224; morality of mem-
bers, 227-228; preachers, 228-
230; codperation in, 230-233;
segregation in, 237-238
Church of God, 220
Citizens, 149-152
254
City, population, 41; increase of
migration to, 45, 49; effect of
crowding in, 52-53
Civil War, 159
Code Noir, 215
College graduates, 30, 171. See
Schools
Colored Methodist
Church, 219, 226
Commission on Interracial Coodpera-
tion, 31-33, 101. See Interracial
committees
Community chests, 209
Congregational Church of Atlanta,
222; schools, 226
Contacts, race, 235-247
Coolidge, Calvin, 32-33
Cooperation, 5-7, 12-18, 246-247;
and leadership, 22-28. See Inter-
racial committees
Cotton, 46, 75
Courts, 125, 134-136; juvenile, 133-
134, 204
Credits, 90-92
Crime, in cities, 53; rates of, 126-
127; causes of, 127-129; sen-
tences for, 129-130; arrests for,
130-132; reformation of, 132-
134; and the press, 241-243
Cultural differences, 8,10
Episcopal
Day nursery, Ior
Daytona, Florida, 34
Death, rate of, 40-41 ; economic loss
from, 58; causes of, 58-63
Demonstration agents. See Farm
and Home demonstration agents
Denominations, schools of, 195-198,
225-227. See Church
Dentists, 21, 110
Dillard, James H., quoted, 169-
170
Disease. See Health
Disfranchisement, 162-165
Diversification of crops, 46, 49, 75-
76, 86
Doctors, 14, 21, 30; training of, 68-
9
Domestic animals, 80
Domestic science, 100
THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Domestic service, 99-102
Dorsey, Governor Hugh M., 141
Dublin, Dr. Louis I., 61
DuBois, Dr. W. E. B., quoted, 88
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 12
Dyer bill, 139-141
East St. Louis, Illinois, 243
Editors. See Press
Education, 169-198
Educational Funds. See General
Education Board, Jeanes, Phelps
Stokes Fund, Rosenwald Fund,
and Slater Fund
Eliot, John, 215
Emotion end religion, 212, 220
Employment bureaus, 117-118
Evans, M. S., quoted, 87
Factions. See Leaders
Family case work, 201-207
Family morality, 205
Farm : demonstration agents, 23, 64,
93-94; movement from farm, 44,
85, 98, 105; plantation system,
45-48; laborers, 46, 48-50, 76,
78, 813 owners, 77; renters, 77%
tenancy, 77-85; size, 78; wages,
82; loans, 90-92
Federal. See National government
Federal Council of Churches, 143,
232
Fee system, 130-131
Feeble-minded, 128, 205-206
Fisher, Isaac, 12; quoted, 35
Fisk University, 207
Florida: interracial committee, 33;
percentage of Negroes, 41-42;
anti-lynching law, 145; property,
152-153; school funds, 178
Folk music, 12
Foreign-born, crime among, 126;
insanity among, 205
Gate City Free Kindergarten Asso-
ciation, IoI
General Education Board, 185, 187
Georgia: interracial committee, 33-
34; percentage of Negroes, 41-
42; emigration, 44, 52; health
INDEX
department, 67; lynching, 141-
142; property, 152-153; school
funds, 178; early religious laws,
217
Gilpin, Charles, 12
Golden Rule, 1
Government, 149-168. See National
government and State
Gypsies, 3
Hampton Institute, 69, 107, 191-
193, 194
Hayes, Roland, 12
Health, 57-74
Health Week, 66, 193
Heredity. See Biology of race
Home demonstration agents, 93-95
Home-owners, 71
Hospitals, 67-69
Housing, 69-71
Howard University, 69
Illiteracy, 184-185
Imes, G. Lake, quoted, 223
Immigration, European, 115
Impatience of leaders, 27-29
Increase of population, 38-41
Industrial education, 189-193
Industry, 97-118. See Labor
Infant mortality, 59-60, 62
Insanity, 53, 205-206
Insurance, 61, I19, 120, 121, 20I-
202
Intelligence tests. See Mental traits
Interest rates, g1
Interracial committees, 31-35, 66;
effect of, on lynching, 143, 146
Jackson, Andrew, quoted, 158
Jackson, Stonewall, 218
Jails, 132-133
Jeanes Foundation, The Anna T.,
63, 170, 186
Jefferson, Thomas, 170
Jews, 3
Jim Crow laws, 27, 236
Jones, Thomas Jesse, 183
Justice, 2. See Courts
Juvenile courts. See Courts’
Juvenile delinquency, 133-134, 204
255
Kentucky: interracial committee,
33; percentage of Negroes, 41;
anti-lynching law, 145; property,
153; voting, 163; school funds,
17
Kerlin, Robert T., quoted, 244
Kindergarten, 1o1
Labor: agents, 48, 117; skilled, 51,
54,97, 109-112 ; foreignand Negro,
51, 115-116; industrial, 97-118;
distribution, 98, 110; women, 102-
104; unskilled, 104-109. See Farm
Labor unions, 111, 112-115
Lake Erie, battle of, 158
Landlords. See Agriculture and
Real estate
Law and order, 125-147
Lawyers, 21, 110
Leaders, 14, 20-37, 188-196
Lee, Robert E., 218
Legal aid, 33, 135
Leonard Street Orphanage, 203
Local leadership, 32
Lodges, 201
Louisiana, percentage of Negroes in,
41-42; emigration from, 52; prop-
erty in, 152-153; school ‘funds,
178
Louisville, Kentucky, 34
L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 216
Lynching, 136-147
Macon County, Alabama, 223
Marriages, 41, 53
Maryland, 214
Mather, Cotton,:215
Medical schools. See Schools
Meharry Medical College, 69
Mental traits, 8, 10, 171-174
Merchants, 120
Methodists, Southern Women’s Mis-
sionary Council, 33, 143; begin-
nings of, 215, 216, 219; schools
of, 226; preacher training of,
231
Midwives, 60
Migration, 44-55, 76; effect of, on
crime, 127
Mill, John Stuart, 79
256
Mississipp1, percentage of Negroes
in, 41-42; emigration from, 52;
Delta farming in, 82-83; prop-
erty in, 152-153; school funds,
178
Mixture of races, 9. See Amalga-
mation
Mob. See Lynching
Moravians, 215
Morrel Federal Fund, 189 3
Moton, Robert R., 28; quoted, 240
Mulattoes, 42-44
Murphy, Edgar Gardner, quoted, 1,
14, 164
Mutual acquaintance, 13-16, 31
Mutual confidence, 16-17
Mutual interest, 17-18
Nashville, Tennessee, 34
National government, Bureau of
Farm Management, 82; farm
loans, 91; and peonage, 93; De-
partment of Labor, 102, 117, 118;
and lynching, 139-141; and race
problems, 246
National Negro Business League, 123
New Orleans, Louisiana, 34; battle
of, 158
Newspapers. See Press
New York School of Social Work,
207
Normal schools. See Schools
North Carolina, percentage of Ne-
groes in, 41-42; emigration from,
52; health department, 67; prop-
erty in, 152-153; voting in, 163;
school funds, 178
Nurses, 21, 33, 65-67
Occupations. See Agriculture and
Labor
Oglethorpe, Governor, 215
Oklahoma, property in, 152-153;
voting in, 163; schoohfunds, 178
Omaha, Nebraska, riot, 243
Orphans, 202-203
Paternalism, 7, 20, 199
Patriots, 1 56-161
Peonage, 92
THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Pershing, John J., 161
Phelps Stokes Fund, 188
Philanthropy, 31-36
Physical traits, 7-9
Plantation. See Farm
Playgrounds, 72
Pneumonia, 53, 59, 62
Poise of leaders, 29
Police, 130-132
Politics. See Voting
Population, 38-55
Preachers, 14, 21, 25; number, 228;
salary, 229; training, 229-231;
institutes, 231
Prejudice, 4, 13, 15; derived from
domestic servants, 99; in in-
dustry, 101; of foremen, 106; in
labor unions, 112-113; in busi-
ness, 119-120
Presbyterians, 219, 225, 226
Press, 21, 241
Probation, 134
Professions, 14, 21, 25, 97, 110
Property. See Taxation
Protestant Episcopal, 219
Public appropriations, 154-156. See
Schools
Public health. See Health
Public institutions, 154-155. See
Almshouses, Hospitals, Insanity,
Orphans, Reform schools, Schools,
and State
Public opinion among Negroes, rs.
See Press
Public schools. See Schools, public
Racial differences, 7-12
Railways. See Segregation
Real estate, 71, 120, 121, 122
Records broken, 111, 159
Recreation, 71-72
Reform schools, 33, 133-134, 156, 204
Reformation. See Crime
Relief, 200-202
Religion. See Church
Revolutionary War, 156-159
Rhode Island, battle of, 158
Riots, caused by unemployment,
115; strikes, 137-138; race, 137,
138, 139; and the press, 242-243
INDEX
Roman Catholic, 219
Rosenwald, Julius, 73, 187
Rosenwald Fund, 50, 170, 187
Rural institutions, 46, 62
Rural population, 41
Salem, Peter, 156
Sanitary inspection, 70
Savannah, Georgia, 34; battle of, 158
Schools, medical, 30; normal, 30;
theological, 30; private, 193-198,
225-227; professional, 195; for
social workers, 207. See Schools,
public
Schools, public: development, 21,
176; improvement, 50, 169, 177-
179, 185-188 ; appropriations, 155 ;
comparative expenditures, 177-
179; buildings, 180; term, 180-
181; attendance, 181; teachers,
181; county training, 182; high
schools, 182-183 ; supervision, 183,
185
Segregation, 236
Selfishness of leaders, 29-30
Sex ratio, 53
Slater Fund, 170, 186
Slave trade, 35, 214
Slavery, 7, 20, 35, 99
Smith-Hughes Act, 190
Social equality, 26-27
Social work, 207. See Probation and
Family case work
Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, 215
Soldiers. See Patriots
South Carolina: interracial com-
mittee, 33; percentage of Negroes,
41-42; emigration, 52; health de-
partment, 67; anti-lynching laws,
144; property, 152-153; school
funds, 178; early religious laws,
217; slave revolt, 217
Special abilities, 5, 12, 13
Standard of living, 107
Standards of leaders, 30
State : departments of health, 66 ; su-
pervisors of schools, 185; schools,
188-191. See individual states
Strikes, 113
257
Sunday school, 224
Superiority, 11, 12
Talladega College, 69, 194
Tanner, H. O., 12
Taxation, 4, 152-156
Teachers, 14, 21, 25
Tenancy, extent, 77; evils, 79-80;
share, 80, 82; profits, 82-83; in-
crease, 84; contracts, 87-90; in
England, 89
Tennessee: interracial committee,
33-343; percentage of Negroes, 41;
emigration, 52; anti-lynching
laws, 145; property, 153; vot-
ing, 163; school funds, 178
Testimony, unreliability of, 136
Texas: percentage of Negroes in,
41-42; property in, 153; school
funds, 178
Theological schools, 30
Toussaint L’Ouverture.
verture, Toussaint
Trades. See Labor
Tradition, 212, 213, 227
Tuberculosis: death rate, 53, 50-
60, 61-62; National Tuberculosis
Association, 65; state nurse, 67;
sanitaria, 67
Turner, Nat, 217
Tuskegee Institute, 21, 69, 107, I91-
193
See L’Ou-
Uncle Remus, 12
Unions. See Labor
United Brethren, 215
United States. See National govern-
ment
Urban League, National, 118
Urbanization. See City
Venereal disease, 41, 61
Vesey, Denmark, 217
Violence, 49-50
Virginia, percentage of Negroes in,
41-42; emigration from, 52; prop-
erty in, 152-153; voting in, 163;
school funds, 178; religious laws,
215, 217; slave revolt, 217
Voting, 26, 150-151, 162-167
258
Washington, Booker T., quoted, 3,
57; and leadership, 21; and labor,
107, 109, III, 123; and education,
IQI-193
Washington, D.C., riot, 243
Washington, George, 158
Weatherford, W. D., quoted, 231
Welfare, social, 199-211
Wesley, John, 215
White leadership, 30-36
Whitfield, Governor H. L., quoted,
236
Wilcox, Walter F., 39,
Williams, Bert, 12
THE BASIS OF RACIAL ADJUSTMENT
Williams, G. Croft, quoted, 132-133
Women, in domestic service, 99-102 ;
in industry, 102-104; and lynch-
ing, 143
Wood, General Leonard, 243
Woodworth, R. S., 171
World War, 159-161
Yerkes, Robert M., 172
YiMiGs A.) 72-73
Y. W. C.A., 72-73
Zinzendorf, Count, 215
belo
. ass
3S pe: . 4
= 6
E185 .61.W91
The basis of racial adjustm ae
Princeton Theological Seminary
AUN
1 1012 00136 5222