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HALF A MAN 
 
 THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO 
 IN NEW YORK 
 
HALF A MAN 
 
 THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO 
 IN NEW YORK 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY WHITE OVINGTON 
 
 WITH A FOREWORD BY DR. FRANZ BOAS 
 OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
 
 1911 
 

 ■Of 
 
 Copyright, 1911, by 
 Longmans, Green, and Co. 
 
 THE • PLIMPTON • PRESS 
 [W • D • O] 
 
 NOHWOOD MASS • U • S • A 
 
 ©CI./ 100 
 
TO 
 
 THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 
 
 THEODORE TWEEDY 
 
 OVINGTON 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Miss Ovington's description of the status 
 of the Negro in New York City is based on 
 a most painstaking inquiry into his social 
 and economic conditions, and brings out in 
 the most forceful way the difficulties under 
 which the race is laboring, even in the large 
 cosmopolitan population of New York. It 
 is a refutation of the claims that the Negro 
 has equal opportunity with the whites, and 
 that his failure to advance more rapidly 
 than he has, is due to innate inability. 
 
 Many students of anthropology recognize 
 that no proof can be given of any material 
 inferiority of the Negro race; that without 
 doubt the bulk of the individuals composing 
 the race are equal in mental aptitude to 
 the bulk of our own people; that, although 
 their hereditary aptitudes may lie in slightly 
 different directions, it is very improbable 
 that the majority of individuals composing 
 
 vii 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 the white race should possess greater ability 
 than the Negro race. 
 
 The anthropological argument is invari- 
 ably met by the objection that the achieve- 
 ments of the two races are unequal, while 
 their opportunities are the same. Every 
 demonstration of the inequality of oppor- 
 tunity will therefore help to dissipate 
 prejudices that prevent the best possible 
 development of a large number of our 
 citizens. 
 
 The Negro of our times carries even more 
 heavily the burden of his racial descent 
 than did the Jew of an earlier period; and 
 the intellectual and moral qualities required 
 to insure success to the Negro are infinitely 
 greater than those demanded from the white, 
 and will be the greater, the stricter the 
 segregation of the Negro community. 
 
 The strong development of racial con- 
 sciousness, which has been increasing during 
 the last century and is just beginning to 
 show the first signs of waning, is the gravest 
 obstacle to the progress of the Negro race, 
 as it is an obstacle to the progress of all 
 strongly individualized social groups. The 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 simple presentation of observations, like 
 those given by Miss Ovington, may help us 
 to overcome more quickly that self-centred 
 attitude which can see progress only in the 
 domination of a single type. 
 
 This investigation was carried on by 
 Miss Ovington under the auspices of the 
 Greenwich House Committee on Social 
 Investigations, of which she was a Fellow. 1 
 
 Franz Boas. 
 
 1 The Greenwich House Committee on Social Investiga- 
 tions is composed of Edwin R. A. Seligman, Chairman, 
 Franz Boas, Edward T. Devine, Livingston Farrand, 
 Franklin H. Giddings, Henry R. Seager, Vladimir G. 
 Simkhovitch, Secretary. 
 
 Miss Ovington's is the second publication of the Com- 
 mittee, the first being Mrs. Louise Bolard More's " Wage- 
 Earners' Budgets," published by Henry Holt & Co. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I "Up from Slavery" 5 
 
 II Where the Negro Lives .... 31 
 
 III The Child of the Tenement ... 52 
 
 IV Earning a Living — Manual Labor 
 
 and the Trades 75 
 
 V Earning a Living — Business and the 
 
 Professions 106 
 
 VI The Colored Woman as a Bread 
 
 Winner 138 
 
 VII Rich and Poor 170 
 
 VIII The Negro and the Municipality . 195 
 
 IX Conclusion 218 
 
 Appendix 229 
 
 Index 233 
 
 XI 
 
HALF A MAN 
 
HALF A MAN 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Six years ago I met a young colored man, 
 a college student recently returned from 
 Germany where he had been engaged in 
 graduate work. He was born, he told me, 
 in one of the Gulf States, and I questioned 
 him as to whether he intended going back 
 to the South to teach. His answer was in 
 the negative. "My father has attained suc- 
 cess in his native state," he said, "but when 
 I ceased to be a boy, he advised me to live 
 in the North where my manhood would be 
 respected. He himself cannot continually 
 endure the position in which he is placed, 
 and in the summer he comes North to be a 
 man. No," correcting himself, "to be half 
 a man. A Negro is wholly a man only in 
 Europe." 
 
 Half a man! During the six years that I 
 have been in touch with the problem of the 
 
 Negro in New York this characterization has 
 
 3 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 grown in significance to me. I have endeav- 
 ored to know the life of the Negro as I know 
 the life of the white American, and I have 
 learned that while New York at times gives 
 full recognition to his manhood, again, its 
 race prejudice arrests his development as 
 certainly as severe poverty arrests the de- 
 velopment of the tenement child. Perhaps 
 a study of this shifting attitude on the part 
 of the dominant race, and of the Negro's 
 reaction under it, may not be unimportant; 
 for the color question cannot be ignored in 
 America, nor should the position taken by 
 her largest city be overlooked. And those 
 who love their fellows may be glad, among 
 New York's four millions — its Slavs and 
 Italians, its Russians and Asiatics — to meet 
 these dark people who speak our language 
 and who for many generations have made 
 this country their home. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 "Up from Slavery" 
 
 The status of the Negro in New Amster- 
 dam, a slave in a pioneer community, dif- 
 fered fundamentally from his position today 
 in New York. His history from the seven- 
 teenth to the twentieth century contains 
 many exciting incidents, but those only 
 need be considered here that show a prog- 
 ress or a retardation in his attainment to 
 manhood. What were his struggles in the 
 past to secure his rights as a man? 
 
 Slavery in the early days of the colonies 
 was more brutal than at the time of final 
 emancipation. Savages recently arrived 
 from Africa lacked the docility of blacks 
 reared in bondage, and burning and tortur- 
 ing, as well as whipping, were recognized 
 modes of punishment. Masters looked upon 
 their Negroes, bought at the Wall Street 
 
6 HALF A MAN 
 
 market from among the cargo of a recently 
 arrived slaver, with some suspicion and 
 fear. Nor were their apprehensions en- 
 tirely without reason. In 1712 some of 
 the discontented among the New York 
 slaves met in an orchard in Maiden Lane 
 and set fire to an outhouse. Defending 
 themselves against the citizens who ran to 
 put out the flames, they fired, killing nine 
 men and wounding six. Retribution soon 
 followed. They were pursued when they 
 attempted flight, captured and executed — 
 some hanged, some burned at the stake, 
 some left suspended in chains to starve to 
 death. 
 
 Perhaps it was the memory of this small 
 revolt that caused the people of New York 
 in 1741 to lay the blame for a series of con- 
 flagrations upon their slaves. Nine fires 
 that seemed to be incendiary came one upon 
 another, and a robbery was committed. 
 To escape death herself, a worthless white 
 servant girl gave testimony against the 
 Negroes who frequented a tavern where she 
 was employed, declaring that a plot had 
 been conceived whereby the slaves would 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 7 
 
 kill all the white men and take control 
 of the city. New York was aflame with 
 fear, and evidence that at another time 
 would have been rejected, was listened to 
 by the judges with grave attention. The 
 slaves were allowed no defence, and before 
 the city had recovered from its fright, it 
 had burned fourteen Negroes, hanged eigh- 
 teen, and transported seventy-one. 1 
 
 Historians today think that the slaves 
 were in no way concerned in this so-called 
 "plot." The two thousand blacks in the 
 city might have done much mischief to the 
 ten thousand whites, but their servile con- 
 dition made an organized movement among 
 them impossible. We may infer, however, 
 from the fear which they provoked, that 
 they were not all docile servants. In a 
 letter written at the port of New York in 
 1756, an English naval officer says of the 
 city, "The laborious people in general are 
 Guinea Negroes who lie under particular 
 restraints from the attempts they have 
 made to massacre the inhabitants for their 
 
 1 Daniel Horsmanden, " New York Conspiracy, or a His- 
 tory of the Negro Plot." 
 
8 HALF A MAN 
 
 liberty." 1 Janvier in his "Old New York" 
 thinks, "that the alarm bred by the so- 
 called Negro plot of 1741 was most effective 
 in checking the growth of slavery in that 
 city." Probably the restlessness of the slaves, 
 their efforts toward manhood, in a community 
 where there was little economic justification 
 for slavery, contributed to the movement 
 for emancipation that began in 1777. 
 
 Emancipation came gradually to the New 
 York Negro. Gouverneur Morris at the 
 state constitutional convention of 1776-1777 
 recommended that "the future legislature 
 of the state of New York take the most 
 effectual measures consistent with the public 
 safety and the private property of individ- 
 uals for abolishing domestic slavery within 
 the same, so that in future ages every human 
 being who breathes the air of this state shall 
 enjoy the privileges of a freeman." The 
 postponement of action to a future legis- 
 lature was keenly regretted by John Jay, 
 who was absent from the convention when 
 the slavery question arose, but who had 
 
 Barnes Grant Wilson, "History of New York," Vol. II, 
 p. 314. 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 9 
 
 hoped that New York might be a leader in 
 emancipation. The state's initial measure 
 for abolishing slavery was in 1785, when it 
 prohibited the sale of slaves in New York. 
 This was followed in 1799 by an act giving 
 freedom to the children of slaves, and in 
 1817 by a further act providing for the abo- 
 lition of slavery throughout the sjtate in 
 1827. This law went into effect July 4, 
 1827, the emancipation day of the Negroes 
 in New York. 
 
 With gradual emancipation and the cessa- 
 tion of the sale of slaves, the Negroes numer- 
 ically became unimportant in the city. In 
 1800 they constituted ten and a half per 
 cent of the population. Half a century 
 later, while they had doubled their numbers, 
 the immense influx of foreign immigrants 
 brought their proportion down to two and 
 seven-tenths per cent. In 1850 and 1860 
 their positive as well as there relative num- 
 ber decreased, and it was not until twenty 
 years ago that they began to show some 
 gain. The last census returns of 1900 give 
 Greater New York (including Brooklyn) 
 60,666 Negroes in a population of 3,437,202, 
 
10 HALF A MAN 
 
 one and eight-tenths per cent. It seems prob- 
 able that the census of 1910 will show a large 
 positive and a slight relative Negro increase. * 
 The relative decrease in the number of 
 Negroes did not, however, produce a de- 
 crease in the agitation upon their presence 
 and position in the city. Their political 
 status was a subject for heated discussion 
 even before their complete emancipation. 
 
 1 Population of New York from 1800 to 1900: 
 Total and Negro. 
 
 borough of manhattan 
 
 Percentage 
 Total Negro of Negroes 
 
 1800 60,515 6,382 10.5 
 
 1810 96,373 9,823 10.2 
 
 1820 123,706 10,886 8.8 
 
 1830 202,589 13,976 6.9 
 
 1840 312,710 16,358 5.2 
 
 1850 515,547 13,815 2.7 
 
 1860 805,658 12,574 1.6 
 
 1870 942,292 13,072 1.5 
 
 BOROUGHS OF MANHATTAN AND BRONX 
 
 1880 1,206,299 19,663 1.6 
 
 1890 1,515,301 23,601 1.6 
 
 1900 2,050,600 38,616 1.9 
 
 GREATER NEW YORK 
 
 1900 3,437,202 60,666 1.8 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 11 
 
 The first state constitution, drafted in 1777, 
 was without color discrimination, since it 
 based the suffrage upon a property quali- 
 fication requiring voters for governor and 
 senators to be freeholders owning property 
 worth £100. A Negro with such a holding 
 was a phenomenon, a curiosity. But by 
 1821, when the framing of the second con- 
 stitution was in progress, Negroes of some 
 education were an appreciable element in 
 the population, and with them ignorant, 
 recently emancipated slaves. Should they 
 be admitted to the full manhood suffrage 
 contemplated for the whites? Those who 
 favored the new democratic movement were 
 doubtful of its applicability to colored people. 
 Livingston, a champion of universal white 
 manhood suffrage, was against giving the 
 black man the vote. On the other hand, 
 the conservative Chancellor Kent, appre- 
 hending in the new constitution "a disposi- 
 tion to encroach on private rights, — to 
 disturb chartered privileges and to weaken, 
 degrade, and overawe the administration of 
 justice," would yet have made no color 
 discrimination, and Peter A. Jay, who did 
 
12 HALF A MAN 
 
 not believe in universal white manhood 
 suffrage, urged that colored men, natives of 
 the country, should derive from its institu- 
 tions the same privileges as white persons. 
 The second constitution when adopted en- 
 franchised practically all white men, but 
 gave the Negroes a property qualification of 
 $250. The issue of the revolution, however, 
 was not far from men's thoughts, and "tax- 
 ation without representation" was not per- 
 mitted; for while no colored man might vote 
 without a freehold estate valued at 250 dol- 
 lars, no person of color was subject to direct 
 taxation unless he should be possessed of such 
 real estate. 
 
 In 1846 a third constitutional convention 
 was held, and the same matter came up for 
 debate. John L. Russell of St. Lawrence 
 declared that "the Almighty had created 
 the black man inferior to the white man," 
 while Daniel S. Waterbury of Delaware 
 County believed that "the argument that 
 because a race of men is marked by a pecu- 
 liarity of color and crooked hair they are not 
 endowed with a mind equal to another class 
 who have other peculiarities is unworthy 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 13 
 
 of men of sense." John H. Hunt of New 
 York City proclaimed that "We want no 
 masters, least of all no Negro masters. . . . 
 Negroes are aliens." And he predicted that 
 the practical effect of their admission to the 
 suffrage would be their exclusion from Man- 
 hattan Island. A delegation of colored men 
 appeared at Albany before the suffrage com- 
 mittee, but their arguments and those of 
 their friends produced no effect. The new 
 constitution contained the same Negro prop- 
 erty qualification, and it was not until 1874, 
 after the passage of the fifteenth amend- 
 ment to the Constitution of the United 
 States, that legislation placed the Negro 
 voter of New York upon the same footing 
 as the white. 1 
 
 Had New York sincerely desired to keep 
 the Negro in an inferior position, it could 
 have accomplished this by refusing him an 
 education. This it never did, though it 
 suffered much tribulation regarding the place 
 and manner of his instruction. Before the 
 
 1 For a full account of the Negro's political status in New 
 York consult Charles Z. Lincoln's "Constitutional History of 
 New York." 
 
14 HALF A MAN 
 
 establishment of a public school system, the 
 Manumission society, an association com- 
 posed largely of Friends, though including 
 in its membership John Jay, De Witt Clin- 
 ton, and Alexander Hamilton, undertook 
 the education of the Negro. In 1787 it 
 opened a school for Africans on Cliff Street. 
 One of the early teachers was Charles C. 
 Andrews, whose little book on "The Afri- 
 can Free Schools," published in 1830, shows 
 a kindly tolerance for the black race. "As 
 a result of forty years' experience," he writes, 
 "the idea respecting the capacity of the 
 African race to receive a respectable and 
 even a liberal education has not been vision- 
 ary." And he recites the names of some 
 of his pupils: "Rev. Theodore S. Wright, 
 graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary; 
 John B. Russworm, graduate of Bowdoin; 
 Edward Jones, graduate of Amherst; Wil- 
 liam Brown and William G. Smith, students 
 of the medical department, Columbia Col- 
 lege: all of them persons of color." Describ- 
 ing an annual exhibition of his school on 
 May 12, 1824, he quotes from the Commer- 
 cial Advertiser of the same date: "We never 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 15 
 
 beheld a white school, of the same age (of 
 and under the age of fifteen), in which, with- 
 out exception, there was more order and 
 neatness of dress and cleanliness of person. 
 And the exercises were performed with a 
 degree of promptness and accuracy which 
 was surprising." 
 
 In 1834 the public school association took 
 over the schools of the Manumission so- 
 ciety, but before this time the Negroes 
 had begun to assert themselves regarding 
 the method and place of instruction for 
 their children. They clamored for colored 
 teachers and succeeded in displacing Charles 
 Andrews himself. In 1838, at their desire, 
 the word African was changed to colored in 
 describing the race; but of chief importance 
 to their educational future, they began a 
 protest, only to end in 1900, against segre- 
 gation. 
 
 Removed from the care of the Manumis- 
 sion society, the colored schools deteriorated. 
 Their grade was reduced, 1 and owing to 
 the growth of the city, their attendance was 
 
 1 Thomas Boese's " Public Education in the City of New 
 York," p. 227. 
 
16 HALF A MAN 
 
 very irregular, the severe winter weather 
 often keeping children who lived at a dis- 
 tance at home. A Brooklyn man tells me 
 that, when a boy, he used to walk from his 
 home at East New York to Fulton Ferry, 
 passing inferior Brooklyn colored schools, 
 and after crossing the river, on up to Mul- 
 berry Street to be instructed by the popular 
 colored teacher, John Peterson. Here he 
 received a good education; but few boys 
 would have endured a daily trip of fourteen 
 miles. Increasingly parents, if the colored 
 school of their neighborhood was not of 
 the best, sent their boys and girls to be 
 instructed with the white boys and girls of 
 their district. 
 
 The state law declared that any city or 
 incorporated village might establish sepa- 
 rate schools for the instruction of African 
 youths, provided the facilities were equal to 
 those of white schools, and when, in 1862, 
 a colored parent brought a case against the 
 city for forcing her child to go to a colored 
 school, the case was lost. 1 Nevertheless, 
 during the nineteenth century Negroes in 
 
 1 King v . Gallagher, 1882. 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 17 
 
 some numbers attended white schools in 
 both Brooklyn and New York, and Negro 
 parents continued in their quiet but persist- 
 ent efforts against segregation. Then again, 
 New York grew too rapidly to segregate 
 any race. The Negro boys and girls were 
 scattered through many districts, and the at- 
 tendance at colored schools fell off; in 1879 
 it was less than in 1878, and in 1880 less 
 than in 1879; so that the Board of Educa- 
 tion in 1883 decided to disestablish three 
 colored schools. 
 
 But this involved another factor. If the 
 colored schools were disestablished, what 
 would become of the colored teachers? The 
 Negroes met this issue by delaying dis- 
 establishment for a year, while the teachers 
 went about among the parents of the ward, 
 making friends and urging that children, 
 white or colored, be sent to their schools. 
 Numbers of new pupils of both races were 
 brought in within the year, and at the end 
 of the time, after a hearing before the 
 governor, then Grover Cleveland, a bill was 
 passed prohibiting the abolition of two of 
 the three colored schools, but also making 
 
18 HALF A MAN 
 
 them open to all children regardless of 
 color. 1 
 
 Occasionally a colored girl graduated from 
 the normal college of the city, but if there 
 was no vacancy for her in the four colored 
 schools she received no appointment. In 
 1896, however, a normal graduate, Miss 
 S. E. Frazier, insisted upon her right to be 
 appointed as teacher in any school in which 
 there was a vacancy. She visited the ward 
 trustees and the members of the Board of 
 Education, and represented to them the 
 injustice done her and her race in refusing 
 her the chance to prove her ability as a 
 teacher in the first school that should need 
 a normal graduate. She was finally ap- 
 pointed to a position in a white school. 
 Her success with her pupils was immediate, 
 and since then the question of race or color 
 has not been considered in the appointment 
 of teachers in New York. 
 
 Until 1900, the state law permitted the 
 establishment of separate colored schools. 
 In that year, however, on the initiative 
 of Theodore Roosevelt, then governor, the 
 
 1 A. Emerson Palmer, "The New York Public School." 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 19 
 
 legislature passed a bill providing that no 
 person should be refused admission or be 
 excluded from any public school in the state 
 on account of race or color. 1 This closed 
 the question of compulsory segregation in 
 the state, though before this it had ceased 
 in New York. Public education was thus 
 democratized for the New York Negroes, 
 their persistent efforts bringing at the end 
 complete success. 
 
 While the colored people in New York 
 started with segregated schools and attained 
 to mixed schools, the movement in the 
 churches was the reverse. At first the 
 Negroes were attendants of white churches, 
 sitting in the gallery or on the rear seats, 
 and waiting until the white people were 
 through before partaking of the communion; 
 but as their number increased they chafed 
 under their position. Why should they be 
 placed apart to hear the doctrine of Christ, 
 and why, too, should they not have full 
 opportunity to preach that doctrine? The 
 desire for self-expression was perhaps the 
 greatest factor in leading them to separate 
 
 - Laws of New York, Chapter 492. 
 
20 HALF A MAN 
 
 from the white church. In 1796 about 
 thirty Negroes, under the leadership of 
 James Varick, 1 withdrew from the John 
 Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and 
 formed the first colored church of New York. 
 Varick had been denied a license to preach, 
 but now as pastor of his own people, he 
 was recognized by the whites and helped 
 by some of them. He was the founder 
 of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion 
 Church. 
 
 The Abyssinian Baptist Church was organ- 
 ized in 1800 by a few colored members who 
 withdrew from the First Baptist Church, 
 then in Gold Street, to establish themselves 
 on Worth Street, 2 and in 1818 the colored 
 Episcopalians organized St. Philip's Church. 
 In 1820 one of their race, Peter Williams, 
 for six years deacon, became their preacher. 
 
 Another prominent church was the col- 
 ored Congregational, situated, in 1854, on 
 Sixth Street; and it was the determined 
 effort of its woman organist to reach the 
 church in time to perform her part in the 
 
 1 B. F. Wheeler. D.D., "The Varick Family." 
 
 2 Geo. H. Hansell, "Reminiscences of New York Baptists." 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 21 
 
 Sunday morning service that led to an im- 
 portant Negro advance in citizenship. 
 
 In the middle of the last century the right 
 of the Negro to ride in car or omnibus 
 depended on the sufferance of driver, con- 
 ductor, and passenger. Sometimes a car 
 stopped at a Negro's signal, again the driver 
 whipped up his horses, while the conductor 
 yelled to the "nigger" to wait for the next 
 car. Entrance might always be effected if 
 in the company of a white person, and the 
 small child of a kindly white household 
 would be delegated to accompany the home- 
 ward bound black visitor into her car where, 
 after a few minutes, conductor and pas- 
 sengers having become accustomed to her 
 presence, the young protector might slip 
 away. Such a situation was very galling 
 to the self-respecting negro. 
 
 In July, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings, a col- 
 ored school-teacher and organist at the Con- 
 gregational Church, attempted to board a 
 Third Avenue car at Pearl and Chatham 
 Streets. She was hurrying to reach the 
 church to perform her part in the service. 
 The conductor stopped, but as Miss Jen- 
 
22 HALF A MAN 
 
 nings mounted the platform, he told her that 
 she must wait for the next car, which was 
 reserved for her people. "I have no people," 
 Miss Jennings said. "I wish to go to church 
 as I have for six months past, and I do not 
 wish to be detained." The altercation con- 
 tinued until the car behind came up, and the 
 driver there declaring that he had less room 
 than the car in front, the woman was grudg- 
 ingly allowed to enter the car. "Remem- 
 ber," the conductor said, "if any passenger 
 objects, you shall go out, whether or no, or 
 I'll put you out." 
 
 "I am a respectable person, born and 
 brought up in New York," said Miss Jen- 
 nings, "and I was never insulted so before." 
 
 This again aroused the conductor. "I 
 was born in Ireland," he said, "and you've 
 got to get out of this car." 
 
 He attempted to drag her out. The woman 
 clung to the window, the conductor called 
 in the driver to help him, and together they 
 dragged and pulled and at last threw her 
 into the street. Badly hurt, she neverthe- 
 less jumped back into the car. The driver 
 galloped his horses down the street, passing 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 23 
 
 every one until a policeman was found who 
 pushed the woman out, not, however, until 
 she had taken the number of the car. She 
 then made her way home. 
 
 Elizabeth Jennings took the case into court, 
 and it came before the Supreme Court of 
 the State in February, 1855, Chester A. 
 Arthur, afterwards President of the United 
 States, being one of the lawyers for the 
 plaintiff. The judge's charge was clear 
 on the point that common carriers were 
 bound to carry all respectable people, white 
 or colored, and the plaintiff was given $225 
 damages, to which the court added ten per 
 cent and costs; and to quote the New York 
 Tribune's comment on the case, 1 "Railroads, 
 steamboats, omnibuses, and ferryboats will 
 be admonished from this as to the rights of 
 respectable colored people." 2 
 
 When you talk with the elderly educated 
 colored people of New York today, they tell 
 you that before the War were "dark days." 
 The responsibility felt by the thoughtful 
 
 1 New York Tribune, February 23, 1855. 
 
 2 "The Story of an Old Wrong," in The American Woman's 
 Journal, July, 1895. 
 
24 HALF A MAN 
 
 Negroes was very great. They had not only 
 their own battles to wage, but there were 
 the fugitives who were entering the city 
 by the Underground Railroad, whom they 
 must assist though it cost them their own 
 liberty. In 1835 a Vigilance Committee 
 was formed in New York City to take charge 
 of all escaping slaves, and also to prevent 
 the arrest and return to slavery of free men 
 of color. Colored men served on this Com- 
 mittee, and its secretary was the minister 
 of the church to which Elizabeth Jennings 
 was endeavoring to make her way that 
 Sunday morning, the Reverend Charles B. 
 Ray. In 1850 the New York State Vigi- 
 lance Committee was formed with Gerritt 
 Smith as President and Ray as Secretary. 
 Ray's home was frequently used to shelter 
 fugitives. 1 Once a young man, stepping up 
 to the door and learning that it was Charles 
 Ray's house, whistled to his companions in 
 the darkness, and fourteen black men made 
 their appearance and received shelter. There 
 would also come the task of negotiating for 
 the purchase of a slave, or this proving 
 
 1 Life of the Reverend Charles B. Ray. 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 25 
 
 impossible, for the careful working out of a 
 means for his escape. Dark days, indeed, 
 but made memorable to the Negro by heroic 
 work and the friendship of great men. 
 Perhaps the two races have never worked 
 together in such fine companionship as at 
 the unlawful and thrilling task of protect- 
 ing and aiding the fugitive. 
 
 The hardest year of the century for the 
 Negro was 1863, when the draft riot im- 
 perilled every dark face. Many Negroes 
 fled from the city. Colored homes were 
 fired, the Orphan Asylum for colored chil- 
 dren on Fifth Avenue was burned, and even 
 the dead might not be buried save at the 
 peril of undertaker and priest. Elizabeth 
 Jennings, now Mrs. Graham, lost a child 
 when the rioting was at its height. An 
 undertaker named Winterbottom, a white 
 man, was brave enough to give his services, 
 winning the lasting gratitude and patron- 
 age of the colored people. With the dan- 
 ger of violence about them, the father and 
 mother went to Greenwood Cemetery, where 
 the Reverend Morgan Dix of Trinity Church 
 read the burial service at the grave. 
 
26 HALF A MAN 
 
 With the end of the War and the passage 
 of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments 
 came a revulsion of feeling for the race. 
 "I remember," an old time friend of the 
 Negro tells me, "when the fifteenth amend- 
 ment was passed. The colored people stood 
 in great numbers on the streets, and on their 
 faces was a look of gratitude and thanks- 
 giving that I shall never forget." Follow- 
 ing the amendment came the State Civil 
 Rights Bill in 1873, declaring that all per- 
 sons should be entitled to full and equal 
 accommodations in all public places; and 
 discrimination for a time largely ceased. 
 
 While the colored people were winning 
 citizenship, their progress in industry was 
 also considerable. Until 1860 the race was 
 infrequently segregated, and black and white 
 were neighbors, not only in their homes, but 
 in business. Samuel R. Scottron, a careful 
 Negro writer, compiled a long list of the 
 trades in which Negroes engaged before 
 the War. Besides the various lines of do- 
 mestic service, in which they were more 
 frequently seen than today — coachmen, 
 cooks, waitresses, seamstresses, barbers — 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 27 
 
 there were many craftsmen, ship-builders, 
 trimmers, riggers, coopers, caulkers, printers, 
 tailors, carpenters. "Second-hand clothing 
 shops were everywhere kept by colored men. 
 All the caterers and restaurant keepers of 
 the high order, as well as small places, were 
 kept by colored men. . . . Varick and 
 Peters kept about the most pretentious bar- 
 ber shop in the city. Patrick Reason was 
 one of the most capable engravers. The 
 greatest among the restaurateurs was 
 Thomas Downing, who kept a restaurant 
 under what is now the Drexel Building, 
 corner of Wall and Broad Streets. The 
 drug stores of Dr. James McCune Smith on 
 West Broadway, and Dr. Philip A. White 
 on Frankfort Street, were not outclassed by 
 any kept by white men in their day." l 
 
 And so the list goes on. It is perhaps 
 somewhat exaggerated in the importance 
 in the city's business life which it gives to 
 the colored race. Charles Andrews, in 1837, 
 says of the pupil who graduates from his 
 school, "He leaves with every avenue closed 
 against him — doomed to encounter as much 
 
 1 Colored American Magazine, October, 1907. 
 
28 HALF A MAN 
 
 prejudice and contempt as if he were not 
 only destitute of that education which dis- 
 tinguishes the civilized from the savage, but 
 as if he were incapable of receiving it." 
 And he goes on to tell of those few who have 
 been able to learn trades, and their subse- 
 quent difficulties in finding employment in 
 good shops. White journeymen object to 
 working in the same shop with them, and 
 many of the best lads go to sea or become 
 waiters, barbers, coachmen, servants, la- 
 borers. But he is writing of an early date, 
 and the opinion of the colored people seems 
 to be that, before our large foreign immi- 
 gration, the Negro was more needed in New 
 York than today and received a large share 
 of satisfactory employment. His chief com- 
 petitor was the Irish immigrant, like him- 
 self an agricultural laborer, without previous 
 training in business, and he was frequently 
 able to hold his own in his shop. His long 
 experience in domestic service, moreover, 
 made him a better caterer than the repre- 
 sentatives of any other nationality that had 
 yet entered the city. His churches were 
 flourishing, thus securing a profession for 
 
"UP FROM SLAVERY" 29 
 
 which he had natural ability, and as we have 
 seen, colored men and women taught in the 
 New York schools. 
 
 The city grew rapidly after 1875, and the 
 colored society, the little group that had 
 attained to modest means and education, 
 bought homes, chiefly in Brooklyn, where 
 land was easier to secure than in Manhattan, 
 and strove to enlarge the opportunities for 
 those who were to come after them. Color 
 prejudice had waned, and they often met 
 with especial consideration because of their 
 race. Had they been white they would 
 have slipped into the population and been 
 lost, as happened to the Germans and the 
 Irish, who had been their competitors. As 
 it was, they formed a society apart from the 
 rest of the city, meeting it occasionally in 
 work or through the friendship of children, 
 who, left to themselves, know no race. 
 They had battled against prejudice and had 
 won their rights as citizens. 
 
 As we look at the life of a segregated 
 people, however, we see that we tend always 
 to regard not the individual but the group. 
 The Negro is a man in Europe, because 
 
30 HALF A MAN 
 
 there he is an individual, standing or fall- 
 ing by his own merits. But in America, 
 even in so cosmopolitan a city as New York, 
 he is judged, not by his own achievements, 
 but by the achievements of every other 
 New York black man. So we will leave 
 these able colored Americans, who won much 
 both for themselves and for their race, and 
 turn to the mass of the Negroes, the toiling 
 poor, who dwell in our tenements today. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Where the Negro Lives 
 
 It is thirty-five years since, in his Sym- 
 phony, Sidney Lanier told of 
 
 "The poor 
 That stand by the inward opening door 
 Trade's hand doth tighten evermore, 
 And sigh their monstrous foul air sigh 
 For the outside hills of liberty." 
 
 Were Lanier writing this today, we should 
 wonder whether New York's crowded tene- 
 ments had not served as inspiration for his 
 figure. The island of Manhattan, about 
 eight miles long by two miles wide, with an 
 additional slender triangle of five miles at 
 the north end, in 1905, housed two million 
 one hundred and twelve thousand people. 
 These men and women and children were not 
 scattered uniformly throughout the island, 
 but were placed in selected corners, one thou- 
 sand to the acre, while a mile or so away 
 large comfortable homes held families of two 
 
 31 
 
32 HALF A MAN 
 
 or three. This was Manhattan's condition 
 in 1905, and with each succeeding year more 
 congestion takes place, and more pressure is 
 felt upon the inward opening door. 1 
 
 The Negro with the rest of the poor of 
 New York has his part in this excessive 
 overcrowding. The slaver in which he made 
 his entrance to this land provided in floor 
 space six feet by one-foot-four for a man, 
 five feet by one-foot-four for a woman, and 
 four feet by one-foot-four for a child. 2 This 
 outdoes any overcrowding New York can 
 produce, but an ever increasing cost in food 
 and rent is bringing into her interior bed- 
 rooms a mass of humanity approximating 
 that of the slaver's ship. These new-comers, 
 however, are not unwilling occupants, since 
 unlike the slaves they may spend their day 
 and much of their night amid an ocean of 
 changing and exciting incidents. If you are 
 young and strong, you care less where you 
 sleep than where you may spend your 
 waking hours. 
 
 1 Harold M. Finley in Federation, May, 1908. 
 
 2 Thomas Clarkson, "History of the Abolition of the Slave 
 Trade," p. 378. 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 33 
 
 From among the millions of New York's 
 poor, can we pick out the Negroes in their 
 tenements? This is not so difficult a task 
 as it would have proved fifty years ago when 
 the colored were scattered throughout the 
 city; today we find them confined to fairly 
 definite quarters. A black face on the lower 
 East Side is viewed with astonishment, while 
 on the middle West Side it is no more 
 noticeable than it would be in Atlanta or 
 New Orleans. Roughly we may count five 
 Negro neighborhoods in Manhattan: Green- 
 wich Village, the middle West Side, San 
 Juan Hill, the upper East, and the upper 
 West sides. Brooklyn has a large Negro 
 population, but it is more widely distrib- 
 uted and less easily located than that of 
 Manhattan. 
 
 Of the five Manhattan neighborhoods the 
 oldest is Greenwich Village, according to 
 Janvier once the most attractive part of 
 New York, where the streets "have a ten- 
 dency to sidle away from each other and to 
 take sudden and unreasonable turns." Here 
 one finds such fascinating names as Minetta 
 Lane and Carmine and Cornelia Streets. 
 
34 HALF A MAN 
 
 These and neighboring thoroughfares grow 
 daily more grimy, however, and no longer 
 merit Janvier's praise for cleanliness, moral 
 and physical. The picturesque, friendly old 
 houses are giving way to factories with high, 
 monotonous fronts, where foreigners work 
 who crowd the ward and destroy its former 
 American aspect. 
 
 Among the old time aristocracy bearing 
 Knickerbocker names there are a few colored 
 people who delight in talking of the fine 
 families and past wealth of old Greenwich 
 Village. Scornful of the gibberish-speaking 
 Italians, they sigh, too, at their own race as 
 they see it, for the ambitious Negro has 
 moved uptown, leaving this section largely 
 to widowed and deserted women and degen- 
 erates. The once handsome houses, altered 
 to accommodate many families, are rotten 
 and unwholesome, while the newer tenements 
 of West Third Street are darkened by the 
 elevated road, and shelter vice that knows 
 no race. Altogether, this is not a neighbor- 
 hood to attract the new-comer. Here alone 
 in New York I have found the majority of 
 the adults northern born, men and women 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 35 
 
 who, unsuccessful in their struggle with city 
 life, have been left behind in these old for- 
 gotten streets. 1 
 
 The second section, north of the first, lies 
 between West Fourteenth and West Fifty- 
 ninth Streets, and Sixth Avenue and the 
 Hudson River. In 1880 this was the centre 
 of the Negro population, but business has 
 entered some of the streets, the Pennsyl- 
 vania Railroad has scooped out acres for its 
 terminal, and while the colored houses do 
 
 1 Place of birth of 1036 New York Negro tenement dwellers. 
 These figures were obtained chiefly from personal visits: 
 
 New England 
 
 West 
 
 New York 
 
 New Jersey 
 
 Pennsylvania 
 
 Maryland 
 
 District of Columbia . 
 
 Virginia 
 
 Carolinas 
 
 Gulf States 
 
 Canada 
 
 West Indies 
 
 Europe 
 
 Totals 
 
 18 
 
 11 
 
 157 
 
 18 
 
 19 
 
 37 
 
 26 
 
 375 
 
 217 
 
 65 
 
 2 
 
 87 
 
 4 
 
 103G 
 
 East 
 Side 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 6 
 
 
 1 
 
 25 
 
 Green- 
 wich 
 
 Village 
 
 Middle 
 West 
 Side 
 
 4 
 
 
 47 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 15 
 16 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 100 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 42 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 71 
 64 
 23 
 
 1 
 13 
 
 
 
 243 
 
 San 
 Juan 
 Hill 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 55 
 
 9 
 12 
 27 
 16 
 244 
 127 
 39 
 
 
 67 
 
 3 
 
 608 
 
 Upper 
 
 West 
 Side 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 7 
 1 
 1 
 3 
 4 
 37 
 4 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 60 
 
36 HALF A MAN 
 
 not diminish in number, they show no de- 
 cided increase. No one street is given over 
 to the Negro, but a row of two or three or 
 six or even eight tenements shelter the black 
 man. The shelter afforded is poorer than 
 that given the white resident whose dwelling 
 touches the black, the rents are a little 
 higher, and the landlord fails to pay atten- 
 tion to ragged paper, or to a ceiling which 
 scatters plaster flakes upon the floor. In 
 the Thirties there are rear tenements reached 
 by narrow alley- ways. Crimes are com- 
 mitted by black neighbor against black 
 neighbor, and the entrance to the rear yard 
 offers a tempting place for a girl to linger at 
 night. A rear tenement is New York's only 
 approach to the alley of cities farther south. 
 There are startling and happy surprises in 
 all tenement neighborhoods, and I recall 
 turning one afternoon from a dark yard 
 into a large beautiful room. Muslin cur- 
 tains concealed the windows, the brass bed 
 was covered with a thick white counterpane, 
 and on either side of the fireplace, where 
 coal burned brightly in an open grate, were 
 two rare engravings. It was a workroom, 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 37 
 
 and the mistress of the house, steady, capable, 
 and very black, was at her ironing-board. 
 By her sat the colored mammy of the story 
 book rocking lazily in her chair. She ex- 
 plained to me that her daughter had found 
 her down south, two years ago, and brought 
 her to this northern home, where she had 
 nothing to do, for her daughter could make 
 fifty dollars a month. This home picture 
 was made lastingly memorable by the younger 
 woman's telling me softly as she went with 
 me to the door, "I was sold from my mother, 
 down in Georgia, when I was two years old. 
 I ain't sure she's my mother. She thinks so; 
 but I can't ever be sure." 
 
 Homes beautiful both in appearance and 
 in spirit can rarely occur where people must 
 dwell in great poverty, but there are many 
 efforts at attractive family life on these 
 streets. A few of the blocks are orderly 
 and quiet. Thirty-seventh Street, between 
 Eighth and Ninth Avenues, is largely given 
 over to the colored and is rough and noisy. 
 Here and down by the river at Hell's Kitchen 
 the rioting in 1900 between the Irish and the 
 Negro took place. Men are ready for a 
 
38 HALF A MAN 
 
 fight today, and the children see much of 
 hard drinking and quick blows. 
 
 "The poorer the family, the lower is the 
 quarter in which it must live, and the more 
 enviable appears the fortune of the anti- 
 social class." * A vicious world dwells in 
 these streets and makes notorious this section 
 of New York. For this is a part of the 
 Tenderloin district, and at night, after the 
 children's cries have ceased, and the fathers 
 and mothers who have worked hard during 
 the day have put out their lights, the auto- 
 mobiles rush swiftly past, bearing the men 
 of the "superior race." Temptation is con- 
 tinuous, and the child that grows up pure 
 in thought and deed does so in spite of his 
 surroundings. 
 
 Before reaching West Fifty-ninth Street, 
 the beginning of our third district, we come 
 upon a Negro block at West Fifty-third 
 Street. When years ago the elevated rail- 
 road was erected on this fashionable street, 
 white people began to sell out and rent to 
 Negroes; and today you find here three 
 colored hotels, the colored Young Men's and 
 
 1 S. N. Patten, "New Basis of Civilization," p. 52. 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 39 
 
 Young Women's Christian Associations, the 
 offices of many colored doctors and lawyers, 
 and three large beautiful colored churches. 
 The din of the elevated drowns alike the 
 doctor's voice and his patient's, the client's 
 and the preacher's. 
 
 From Fifty-ninth Street, walking north on 
 Tenth Avenue, we begin to ascend a hill 
 that grows in steepness until we reach Sixty- 
 second Street. The avenue is lined with 
 small stores kept by Italians and Germans, 
 but to the left the streets, sloping rapidly to 
 the Hudson River, are filled with tenements, 
 huge double deckers, built to within ten feet 
 of the rear of the twenty-five foot lot, accom- 
 modating four families on each of the five 
 floors. We can count four hundred and 
 seventy-nine homes on one side of the street 
 alone ! 
 
 This is our third district, San Juan Hill, so 
 called by an on-looker who saw the police- 
 men charging up during one of the once 
 common race fights. It is a bit of Africa, as 
 Negroid in aspect as any district you are 
 likely to visit in the South. A large ma- 
 jority of its residents are Southerners and 
 
40 HALF A MAN 
 
 West Indians, and it presents an interesting 
 study of the Negro poor in a large northern 
 city. The block on Sixtieth Street has some 
 white residents, but the blocks on Sixty- 
 first, Sixty-second, and Sixty-third are given 
 over entirely to colored. On the square 
 made by the north side of Sixty-first, the 
 south side of Sixty-second Streets, and Tenth 
 and West End Avenues, 5.4 acres, the state 
 census of 1905 showed 6173 inhabitants. 1 
 All but a few of these must have been Ne- 
 groes, as the avenue sides of the block, occu- 
 pied by whites, are short and with low houses. 
 It is the long line of five-story tenements, 
 running eight hundred feet down the two 
 streets, that brings up the enumeration. 
 The dwellings on Sixty-first and Sixty-second 
 Streets are human hives, honeycombed with 
 little rooms thick with human beings. Bed- 
 rooms open into air shafts that admit no 
 
 1 Some doubt is cast upon this figure. The New York 
 Health Department in an enumeration of its own, in 1905, 
 found a population of 3833. There is no question, however, 
 of the great congestion of this block and the one north and 
 south of it. The erection of new tenements has gone on 
 rapidly since 1905, sweeping away the children's playgrounds, 
 and making this one of the most crowded centres of New 
 York. 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 41 
 
 fresh breezes, only foul air carrying too often 
 the germs of disease. 
 
 The people on the hill are known for their 
 rough behavior, their readiness to fight, their 
 coarse talk. Vice is abroad, not in insidious 
 form as in the more well-to-do neighborhood 
 farther north, but open and cheap. Boys 
 play at craps unmolested, gambling is preva- 
 lent, and Negro loafers hang about the street 
 corners and largely support the Tenth Avenue 
 saloons. 
 
 But San Juan Hill has many respectable 
 families, and within the past five years it has 
 taken a decided turn for the better. The 
 improvement has been chiefly upon Sixty- 
 third Street where two model tenements, one 
 holding one hundred, the other one hundred 
 and sixty-one families, have been opened 
 under the management of the City and 
 Suburban Homes Company, the larger one 
 having been erected by Mr. Henry Phipps. 
 Planning for a four per cent return on their 
 investment, these landlords have rented only 
 to respectable families, and their rule has 
 changed the character of the block. 1 Old 
 
 1 Too much cannot be said of the beneficial effect of good 
 
42 HALF A MAN 
 
 houses have been remodelled to compete with 
 the newer dwellings, street rows have ceased, 
 and the police captain of the district, we are 
 told, now counts this as one of the peaceful 
 and law-abiding blocks of the city. When 
 its other blocks show a like improvement, 
 San Juan Hill will no longer merit its bel- 
 ligerent name. 
 
 The lower East Side of Manhattan, a many- 
 storied mass of tenements and workshops, 
 where immigrants labor and sleep in their 
 tiny crowded rooms, was once a fashionable 
 American district. At that time Negroes 
 dwelt near the whites as barbers, caterers, 
 and coachmen, as laundresses and waiting- 
 maids. But with the removal of the people 
 whom they served, the colored men and 
 
 housing in a colored neighborhood, when under such able 
 management as the City and Suburban Homes Company. 
 Decent homes under competent management are absolutely 
 necessary to an improvement in the Negro quarters of Man- 
 hattan and of Brooklyn as well. I can speak with some 
 authority of the good done by the Phipps houses on West 
 Sixty-third Street, as I lived, for eight months, the only white 
 tenant in the one hundred and sixty-one apartments. Church 
 and philanthropy had done and are doing excellent work on 
 these blocks, but a sudden and marked improvement came 
 from good housing, from the building of clean, healthful 
 homes for law-abiding people. 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 43 
 
 women left also, and it is difficult to find an 
 African face among the hundreds of thou- 
 sands of Europeans south of Fourteenth 
 Street. On Pell Street, in the Chinese quar- 
 ter, there used to be two colored families on 
 friendly terms with their neighbors, who, 
 however, went uptown for their pleasures 
 and their church. 
 
 It is not until we reach Third Avenue and 
 Forty-third Street that we come to the East 
 Side Negro tenement. From this point, 
 such houses run, a straggling line, chiefly 
 between Second and Third Avenues, to the 
 Bronx where the more well-to-do among the 
 colored live. At Ninety-seventh Street, and 
 on up to One Hundredth Street, dark faces 
 are numerous. About six hundred and fifty 
 Negro families live on these four streets and 
 around the corner on Third Avenue. Occa- 
 sionally they live in houses occupied by 
 Jews or Italians. Above this section there 
 are a number of Negro tenements in the One 
 Hundred and Thirties, between Madison 
 and Fifth Avenues — almost a West Side 
 neighborhood, since it adjoins the large 
 colored quarter to the west of Fifth Avenue. 
 
44 HALF A MAN 
 
 On the whole, the East Side is not often 
 sought by the colored as a place of residence. 
 Their important churches are in another part 
 of the city, and every New Yorker knows the 
 difficulty in making a way across Central 
 Park. Yet, the neighborhood is not uncivil 
 to them, and one rarely reads here of race 
 friction. Doubtless this is in part owing to 
 the smallness of the population, all of Man- 
 hattan east of Fifth Avenue containing but 
 fourteen per cent of the apartments occupied 
 by colored in the city; but it is partly, too, 
 that Jews and Italians prove less belligerent 
 tenement neighbors than Irish. 
 
 Five years ago, those of us who were inter- 
 ested in the Negro poor continually heard of 
 their difficulty in securing a place to live. 
 Not only were they unable to rent in neigh- 
 borhoods suitable for respectable men and 
 women, but dispossession, caused perhaps by 
 the inroad of business, meant a despairing 
 hunt for any home at all. People clung to 
 miserable dwellings, where no improvements 
 had been made for years, thankful to have a 
 roof to shelter them. Yet all the time new- 
 law tenements were being built, and Gentile 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 45 
 
 and Jew were leaving their former apartments 
 in haste to get into these more attractive 
 dwellings. At length the Negro got his 
 chance; not a very good one, but something 
 better than New York had yet offered him 
 — a chance to follow into the houses left 
 vacant by the white tenants. Owing in part 
 to the energy of Negro real estate agents, in 
 part to rapid building operations, desirable 
 streets, near the subway and the elevated 
 railroad, were thrown open to the colored. 
 This Negro quarter, the last we have to note 
 and the newest, has been created in the past 
 eight years. When the Tenement House 
 Department tabulated the 1900 census fig- 
 ures for the Borough of Manhattan, and 
 showed the nationalities and races on each 
 block, it found only 300 colored families in 
 a neighborhood that today accommodates 
 4473 colored families. 1 This large increase 
 is on six streets, West Ninety-ninth, between 
 Eighth and Ninth Avenues, West One Hun- 
 dred and Nineteenth, between Seventh and 
 Eighth Avenues, and West One Hundred and 
 
 1 The Tenement House Department tabulated the number 
 of Negro families living in tenements on these streets. I have 
 counted the number of flats rented to colored people. 
 
46 HALF A MAN 
 
 Thirty-third to One Hundred and Thirty- 
 sixth Streets, between Fifth and Seventh 
 Avenues, with a few houses between Seventh 
 and Eighth, and on Lenox Avenues. There 
 are colored tenements north and south of 
 this; and while these figures are correct 
 today, 1 they may be wrong tomorrow, for 
 new tenements are continually given over to 
 the Negro people. Moreover, on all of these 
 streets are colored boarding and lodging 
 houses, crowded with humanity. Houses 
 today fall into the hands of the Negro as a 
 child's blocks, placed on end, tumble when 
 a push is given to the first in the line. The 
 New York Times, in August, 1905, gives a 
 graphic account of the entrance of the 
 colored tenant on West Ninety-ninth Street. 
 Two houses had been opened for a short time 
 to Negroes when the other house-owners 
 capitulated, and the colored influx came: 
 "The street was so choked with vehicles 
 Saturday that some of the drivers had to 
 wait with their teams around the corners for 
 an opportunity to get into it. A constant 
 stream of furniture trucks loaded with the 
 
 J JuIy 15, 1910. 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 47 
 
 household effects of a new colony of colored 
 people who are invading the choice locality 
 is pouring into the street. Another equally 
 long procession, moving in the other direc- 
 tion, is carrying away the household goods 
 of the whites from their homes of years." 
 The movement is not always so swift as this, 
 but it is continuous. 
 
 This last colored neighborhood perhaps 
 ought not to be spoken of as belonging to the 
 poor; not to Lanier's poor whose door pressed 
 so tighteningly inward. Here are homes 
 where it is possible, with sufficient money, 
 to live in privacy, and with the comforts of 
 steam heat and a private bath. But rents 
 are high, and if money is scarce, the apart- 
 ment must be crowded and privacy lost. 
 Moreover, vice has made its way into these 
 newly acquired streets. The sporting class 
 will always pay more and demand fewer 
 improvements than the workers, and, unable 
 to protect himself, the respectable tenant 
 finds his children forced to live in close 
 propinquity to viciousness. Each of these 
 new streets has this objectionable element in 
 its population, for while some agents make 
 
48 HALF A MAN 
 
 earnest efforts to keep the property they 
 handle respectable, they find the owner wants 
 money more than respectability. 
 
 In our walk up and down Manhattan, 
 turning aside and searching for Negro- 
 tenanted streets, we ought to see one thing 
 with clearness — that the majority of the 
 colored population live on a comparatively 
 few blocks. This is a new and important 
 feature of their New York life, and in certain 
 parts of the city it develops a color problem, 
 for while you seem an inappreciable quantity 
 when you constitute two per cent of the 
 population in the borough, you are of impor- 
 tance when you form one hundred per cent 
 of the population of your street. This con- 
 gestion is accompanied by a segregation of 
 the race. The dwellers in these tenements 
 are largely new-comers, men and women 
 from the South and the West Indies, 1 seek- 
 ing the North for greater freedom and 
 for economic opportunity. Like any other 
 
 1 The yearly arrivals of " African blacks " at the port of 
 New York, secured from the Immigration Commissioner, 
 are as follows: 1902-03, 110; 1903-04, 547; 1904-05, 1189; 
 1905-06, 1757; 1906-07, 2054; 1907-08, 1820; 1908-09, 
 2119. The year runs from July 1 to June 30. 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 49 
 
 strangers they are glad to make their home 
 among familiar faces, and they settle in the 
 already crowded places on the West Side. 
 Freedom to live on the East Side next door 
 to a Bohemian family may be very well, but 
 sociability is better. The housewife who tim- 
 idly hangs her clothes on the roof her first 
 Monday morning in New York is pleased 
 to find the next line swinging with the laun- 
 dry of a Richmond acquaintance, who in- 
 structs her in the perplexing housekeeping 
 devices of her flat. No chattering foreigner 
 could do that. And while to be welcome in 
 a white church is inspiring, to find the girl 
 you knew at home, in the next pew to you, is 
 still more delightful when you have arrived, 
 tired and homesick, at the great city of New 
 York. So the colored working people, like 
 the Italians and Jews and other nationalities, 
 have their quarter in which they live very 
 much by themselves, paying little attention 
 to their white neighbors. If the white 
 people of the city have forced this upon 
 them, they have easily accepted it. Should 
 this two per cent of the population be com- 
 pelled to distribute itself mathematically 
 
50 HALF A MAN 
 
 over the city, each ward and street having its 
 correct quota, it would evince dissatisfac- 
 tion. This is not true of the well-to-do 
 element, but of the mass of the Negro 
 workers whose homes we have been visiting. 
 Loving sociability, these new-comers to the 
 city — and it is in the most segregated dis- 
 tricts that the greater number of southern 
 and British born Negroes are found — keep 
 to their own streets and live to themselves. 
 If they occupy all the sidewalk as they talk 
 over important matters in front of their 
 church, the outsider passing should recognize 
 that he is an intruder and take to the curb. 
 He would leave the sidewalk entirely were 
 he on Hester Street or Mulberry Bend. 
 New-comers to New York usually segregate, 
 and the Negro is no exception. 
 
 While congestion and segregation seem 
 important to us as we look at these colored 
 quarters, I suspect that the matter most 
 pertinent to the Negro new-comer is, not 
 where he will live nor how he will live, but 
 whether he will be able to live in New York 
 at all, whether he can meet the landlord's 
 agent the day he comes to the door. For 
 
WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 51 
 
 New York rents have mounted upwards as 
 have her tenements. The Phipps model 
 houses, built especially to benefit the poor, 
 charge twenty-five dollars a month for four 
 tiny rooms and bath; and while this is a 
 little more than the dark old time rooms 
 would bring, it takes about all of the twenty- 
 five dollars you make running an elevator, to 
 get a flat in New York. What wonder that, 
 once secured, it is overrun with lodgers, or 
 that, if privacy is maintained, there is not 
 enough money left to feed and clothe the 
 growing household. The once familiar song 
 of the colored comedian still rings true in 
 New York: 
 
 "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown, 
 What you gwine ter do when de rent comes roun'?" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Child of the Tenement 
 
 Within the last few years white Ameri- 
 cans, many of whom were formerly ignorant 
 of their condition, have been taught that 
 they are possessed of a racial antipathy for 
 human beings whose color is not their own. 
 They have a "natural contrariety," "a dis- 
 like that seems constitutional" toward the 
 dark tint that they see on another's face. 
 But however well they may have conned 
 their lesson, it breaks down or is likely to be 
 forgotten in the presence of a Negro baby; 
 for a healthy colored baby is a subject, not 
 for natural contrariety, but for sympathetic 
 cuddling. They are most engaging new- 
 comers, these "delicate bronze statuettes," l 
 only warm with life, and smiling good will 
 upon their world. 
 
 Not many colored babies are born in New 
 York, at least not enough to keep pace with 
 
 1 Dudley Kidd's, "Savage Childhood," a delightful book. 
 
 52 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 53 
 
 the deaths. The year 1908 saw in all the 
 boroughs 1973 births as against 2212 deaths 
 at all ages. 1 
 
 In this same year the colored births for 
 Manhattan and the Bronx were 1459, and 
 the deaths under one year of age 424, an 
 infant mortality rate of 290 to every thou- 
 sand. 2 That is, two babies in every seven 
 died under one year of age. The white 
 infant mortality rate was 127.7, a little less 
 than half that of the colored. 
 
 Why should we have in New York this 
 enormous colored infant death rate ? Many 
 physicians believe it indicates a lack of 
 physical stamina in the Negro, an inability 
 to resist disease. This may be so, but before 
 falling back upon race as an explanation of 
 high infant mortality, we need to exhaust 
 other possible causes. We do not question 
 the vitality of the white race when we read 
 
 1 Report of the Department of Health, City of New York, 
 1908, pp. 844, 849. The returns for births, the report states, 
 are incomplete. 
 
 2 This per cent is obtained from two sources, the births from 
 the Department of Health report, and the deaths from the 
 Mortality Statistics of the United States Census, 1908. 
 "Colored" includes Chinese, a negligible quantity in the infant 
 population. 
 
54 HALF A MAN 
 
 that in parts of Russia 500 babies out of 
 every thousand die within the year; nor do 
 we believe the people of Fall River, a fac- 
 tory town in Massachusetts, have an inher- 
 ent inability to resist disease, though their 
 infant mortality rate in 1900 was 260 in 
 one thousand births. We look in these 
 latter cases, as we should in the former, to 
 see if we find those conditions which careful 
 students of the subject tell us accompany 
 a high infant death rate. 
 
 Among the first of the accepted causes 
 of infant mortality is the overcrowding of 
 cities. We have viewed overcrowding as 
 a usual condition among the Negroes of 
 New York, and have seen the small, ill- 
 ventilated bedroom where the baby spends 
 much of its life. Heat, with its accompany- 
 ing growth of bacteria and swift process 
 of decomposition, is a second cause. New 
 York's high infant mortality comes in the 
 summer months when in the poorest quar- 
 ters it has been known to reach four hundred 
 in the thousand. 1 In the hot, crowded 
 
 1 Third Annual Report of the New York Milk Committee, 
 1909. 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 55 
 
 tenements, and no place can be so hot as 
 New York in one of its July record-break- 
 ing weeks, the babies die like flies, and yet 
 not like flies, for the flies buzz in hundreds 
 about the little hot faces. Excitement, 
 late hours, constant restlessness, these, too, 
 cause infant mortality. On a city block 
 tenanted by hundreds of men and women 
 and little children, no hour of the night is 
 free from some disturbance. Children whim- 
 per as they wake from the heat, babies cry 
 shrilly, and the brightly-lighted streets are 
 rarely without the sound of human foot- 
 steps. The sensitive new-born organism 
 knows nothing of the quiet and restful dark- 
 ness of nature's night. 
 
 But the most important cause of infant 
 mortality ! is improper infant feeding. And 
 here we meet with a condition that confronts 
 the Negro babies of New York far more 
 than it confronts the white. For a properly 
 fed baby is a breast fed baby, or else one 
 whose food has been prepared with great 
 care, and mothers forced by necessity to go 
 
 1 See G. Newman, " Infant Mortality," for a careful study 
 of this whole subject. 
 
56 HALF A MAN 
 
 out to work, cannot themselves give their 
 babies this proper food. It is among the 
 infants of mothers at work that mortality is 
 high. Mr. G. Newman, an English author- 
 ity on this [subject, gives an interesting ex- 
 ample of this in Lancashire, where, during 
 the American civil war, many of the cot- 
 ton operatives were out of employment and 
 many more worked only half time. Priva- 
 tion was great. A quarter of the mill hands 
 were in receipt of poor relief, the general 
 death rate increased, but the infant mortality 
 rate decreased. The mothers, forced by cir- 
 cumstances to remain away from the fac- 
 tory, though in a state of semi-starvation, by 
 their nursing and by their care of the home 
 preserved the lives of their infants. Negro 
 mothers, owing to the low wage earned by 
 their husbands, for the general welfare of the 
 family and to avoid semi-starvation, like the 
 Lancashire women, leave their homes, but 
 they thereby sacrifice the lives of many of 
 their babies. The percentage for 1900 of 
 Negro married women in New York engag- 
 ing in self-supporting work was 31.4 in every 
 hundred; of white married women 4.2 in 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 57 
 
 every hundred, seven times as many in pro- 
 portion among the Negroes as among the 
 whites. 1 The Negro also shows a large per- 
 centage of widows, a quarter of all the female 
 population over ten years of age. Some of 
 these, we have no means of knowing how 
 many, are widows only in name, and have 
 babies for whom they must in some way pro- 
 vide support. The colored mother who has 
 no husband often takes a position in domestic 
 service and boards her baby, paying usually 
 by the month, and finding the opportunity 
 to visit her infant perhaps once a week. 
 Sometimes she secures a "baby tender" who 
 can give kindly, intelligent care; but under 
 the best conditions her child will be bottle 
 fed and in tenement surroundings inimical 
 to health, while sometimes the woman to 
 whom she intrusts her infant will be igno- 
 rant of the simplest matters of hygiene. 
 
 I remember an old colored woman, she 
 must be dead by this time, who kept a baby 
 farm. Her health was poor, and when I 
 saw her, she had taken to her bed and lay 
 
 1 Census, 1900, combination of Population table and 
 Women at Work. 
 
58 HALF A MAN 
 
 in a dark room with two infants at her side. 
 They were indescribably puny, with sunken 
 cheeks and skinny arms and hands, weigh- 
 ing what a normal child should weigh at 
 birth, and yet six and seven months old. 
 The woman talked to me enthusiastically 
 of salvation and gave filthy bottles to her 
 charges. She was exceptionally incompe- 
 tent, but there are others doing her work, 
 too old or too ignorant properly to attend 
 to the babies under their care. 
 
 Mothers who go out to day's-work are 
 also unable to nurse their babies or to pre- 
 pare all their food. The infant is placed 
 in the care of some neighbor or of a growing 
 daughter, who may be the impatient "little 
 mother" of a number of charges. When the 
 hot summer comes, such a baby is likely to 
 fall the victim of epidemic diarrhoea, caused 
 by pollution of the milk. Newman has a 
 striking chart of infant death rates in Paris 
 in which he pictures a rate mounting in 
 one week as high as 256 in the thousand 
 among the artificially fed infants, while for 
 the same week, among the breast fed babies, 
 the mortality is 32. The Negro mother, 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 59 
 
 seeking self-support by keeping clean an- 
 other's house or caring for another's chil- 
 dren, finds her own offspring swiftly taken 
 from her by a disease that only her nourish- 
 ing care could forestall. 1 
 
 Remedial measures have for some time 
 been taken in New York to check infant 
 mortality, and they have met with some 
 success. The distribution of pasteurized 
 milk by Mr. Nathan Straus, the establish- 
 ment of milk stations during the summer 
 months in New York and Brooklyn where 
 mothers at slight cost may secure proper 
 infant food, and where much educative 
 work is done by the visiting nurse, the mul- 
 tiplication of day nurseries, all these have 
 helped to decrease the death rate. The 
 Negroes have been benefited by these re- 
 medial agencies, but their percentage of 290 
 is still a matter for grave attention. 
 
 Two out of seven of New York's Negro 
 babies die in the first year, but the other 
 five grow up, some with puny arms and 
 
 1 It is interesting to see that the married women of Fall 
 River, where we found a very high infant death rate, show 
 a percentage of married women at work of twenty in a 
 hundred. 
 
60 HALF A MAN 
 
 ricketty legs, others again too hardy for 
 bad food or bad air to harm. 
 
 Like the babies these children suffer from 
 their mother's absence at work. Family 
 ties are loose, and more than other children 
 they are handicapped by lack of proper 
 home care. In an examination of the rec- 
 ords of the Children's Court for three years 
 I found that out of 717 arraignments of 
 colored children, 221 were for improper 
 guardianship, 30.8 per cent of the whole. 
 Among the Russian children of the East 
 Side, Tenth and Eleventh Wards, only 
 15 per cent of arraignments were on this 
 complaint, indicating twice as many children 
 without parental care among the colored 
 as among the children of the Tenth and 
 Eleventh Wards. Rough colored girls, also, 
 whose habits were too depraved to permit of 
 their remaining without restraint, were fre- 
 quently committed to reformatories. 
 
 Truancy is not uncommon in colored 
 neighborhoods, though few cases come before 
 the courts. Sometimes the boy or girl is 
 kept at home to care for the younger chil- 
 dren, but again, lacking the mother's over- 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 61 
 
 sight, he remains on the street when he 
 should be in school, or arrives late with ill 
 prepared lessons. 
 
 Asking a teacher of long experience among 
 colored and white children concerning their 
 respective scholarship, he assured me that 
 the colored child could do as well as the 
 white, but didn't. "From 20 to 50 per 
 cent of the mothers of my colored chil- 
 dren," he said, "go out to work. There is 
 no one to oversee the child's tasks, and 
 consequently little conscientious study." 
 
 One can scarcely blame the children; and 
 certainly one cannot blame the mothers for 
 toiling for their support. And the fathers, 
 though they work faithfully, are rarely 
 able to earn enough unaided to support their 
 families. Perhaps in time the city may im- 
 prove matters by opening its school-rooms 
 for a study period in the afternoon. 
 
 But meanwhile the children are without 
 proper care. This is not hard to endure in 
 the summer, but in winter it is very trying 
 to be without a home. Poor little cold 
 boys and girls, some of them mere babies! 
 You see them in the late afternoon sitting 
 
62 HALF A MAN 
 
 on the tenement stairs, waiting for the long 
 day to be done. It seems a week since 
 they were inside eating their breakfast. 
 The city has not pauperized them with a 
 luncheon, and they have had only cold food 
 since morning. Sometimes they have been 
 all day without nourishment. When the 
 door is opened at last, there are many help- 
 ful things for them to do for their mother, 
 and reading and arithmetic are relegated 
 to so late an hour that their problem is 
 only temporarily solved by sleep. 
 
 Not all the colored working women, how- 
 ever, go out for employment. Laundry 
 work is an important home industry, and 
 one may watch many mothers at their 
 tubs or ironing-boards from Monday morn- 
 ing until Saturday night. This makes the 
 tenement rooms, tiny enough at best, sadly 
 cluttered, but it does not deprive the chil- 
 dren of the presence of their mother, who 
 accepts a smaller income to remain at home 
 with them. For after we have made full 
 allowance for the lessening of family ties 
 among the Negroes by social and economic 
 pressure, we find that the majority of the 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 63 
 
 colored boys and girls receive a due share 
 of proper parental oversight. They are 
 fed on appetizing food, cleanly and pret- 
 tily dressed, they are encouraged to study 
 and to improve their position, and they 
 are given all the advantages that it is pos- 
 sible for their mothers and fathers to 
 secure. 
 
 Jack London tells in the "Children of 
 the Abyss" of the East Side of London, 
 where "they have dens and lairs into which 
 to crawl for sleeping purposes, and that is 
 all. One can not travesty the word by 
 calling such dens and lairs 'homes." I 
 have seen thousands of Negro dwelling- 
 places, but I cannot think of half a dozen, 
 however great their poverty, where this 
 description would be correct. No matter 
 how dingy the tenement, or how long the 
 hours of work, the mother, and the father, 
 too, try to make the "four walls and a 
 ceiling" to which they return, home. Vis- 
 itors among the New York poor, in the past 
 and in the present, testify that given the 
 same income or lack of income, the colored 
 do not allow their surroundings to become 
 
64 HALF A MAN 
 
 so cheerless or so filthy as the white, and 
 that when there is an opportunity for the 
 mother to spend some time in the house, 
 the rooms take on an air of pleasant refine- 
 ment. Pictures decorate the walls, the side- 
 board contains many pretty dishes, and the 
 table is set three times a day. Meals are not 
 eaten out of the paper bag common on New 
 York's East Side, but there is something of 
 formality about the dinner, and good table 
 manners are taught the children. The ten- 
 ement dwelling becomes a home, and the 
 boys and girls pass a happy childhood in 
 it. 
 
 Watching the colored children for many 
 months in their play and work, I have 
 looked for possible distinctive traits. The 
 second generation of New Yorkers greatly 
 resembles the "Young America" of all na- 
 tionalities of the city, shrill-voiced, dis- 
 respectful, easily diverted, whether at work 
 or at play, shrewd, alert, and mischievous 
 — the New York street child. I remember 
 once helping with a club of eight boys where 
 seven nationalities were represented, and 
 where no one could have distinguished Irish 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 65 
 
 from German or Jew from Italian, with his 
 eyes shut. Had a Negro been brought up 
 among them he would quickly have taken 
 on their ways. Of the colored children who 
 model their lives after their mischievous 
 young white neighbors, many outdo the 
 whites in depravity and lawlessness; but 
 among the boys and girls who live by them- 
 selves, as on San Juan Hill, one sees occa- 
 sional interesting traits. 
 
 The records of the Children's Court of 
 New York (Boroughs of Manhattan and 
 the Bronx) throw a little light on this mat- 
 ter, and are sufficiently important to quote 
 with some fulness. For the three years 
 studied, 1904, 1905, 1906, I tabulated the 
 cases of the colored children brought before 
 the court, and also the cases of the children 
 of the Tenth and Eleventh Wards, chiefly 
 Hungarians and Russian Jews, expecting to 
 find, in two such dissimilar groups, inter- 
 esting comparisons. The following table 
 shows the result of this study. The court 
 in its annual report gives the figures for the 
 total number of arrests which I have incor- 
 porated in my table: 
 
66 
 
 HALF A MAN 
 
 Record of Arrests in Children's Court op Manhattan 
 and the Bronx for 1904, 1905, 1906 
 
 
 Negro Arrests 
 
 10th and 11th 
 Wards Arrests 
 
 Total arrests for 
 
 all children in 
 
 Manhattan and 
 
 Bronx 
 
 
 No. of 
 children 
 
 Arrests 
 per 
 cent 
 
 No. of 
 children 
 
 Arrests 
 per 
 cent 
 
 No. of 
 children 
 
 Arrests 
 per 
 cent 
 
 Grand larceny 
 
 Burglary — Robbery . 
 Assault 
 
 56 
 
 27 
 
 27 
 
 27 
 
 221 
 
 90 
 33 
 
 
 5 
 1 
 
 
 
 214 
 
 13 
 3 
 
 7.8 
 3.8 
 3.8 
 3.8 
 30.8 
 
 12.6 
 
 4.6 
 
 
 
 
 
 .7 
 
 .1 
 
 
 
 29.8 
 
 1.8 
 .4 
 
 139 
 108 
 116 
 61 
 305 
 
 124 
 21 
 73 
 
 130 
 
 23 
 
 9 
 
 25 
 
 896 
 
 16 
 3 
 
 6.8 
 5.3 
 5.7 
 3.0 
 15.0 
 
 6.1 
 1.1 
 3.5 
 6.4 
 1.0 
 .4 
 
 1.2 
 
 43.7 
 
 .7 
 .1 
 
 2,697 
 878 
 
 1,383 
 669 
 
 6,386 
 
 1,980 
 312 
 592 
 
 298 
 179 
 
 175 
 
 10,267 
 
 799 
 90 
 
 10.1 
 3.3 
 5.2 
 
 2.5 
 
 Improper guardianship 
 Disorderly child — un- 
 governable child . . . 
 
 Depraved girl 
 
 Violation of labor law . 
 Unlicensed peddling 1 . 
 Truancy 
 
 23.9 
 
 7.4 
 1.2 
 2.1 
 .0 
 1.1 
 
 Malicious mischief. . . . 
 
 Violation of Park Cor- 
 poration ordinances . 
 
 Mischief, including 
 craps, throwing 
 stones, building bon- 
 fires, fighting, etc. . . . 
 
 Unclassified felonies, 
 misdemeanors 
 
 All others 
 
 .7 
 .7 
 
 38.4 
 
 3.0 
 
 .4 
 
 
 
 
 717 
 
 100.0 
 
 2049 
 
 100.0 
 
 26,705 
 
 100.0 
 
 Percentage of Negro to total, 1904-1907 2.7 
 
 Percentage of Negro to total, 1907-1910 1.9 
 
 1 My tabulations of the Negro and Tenth and Eleventh 
 Ward Children are from the Court's unpublished records to 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 67 
 
 Our table shows us that which we have 
 already noted, the high percentage of im- 
 proper guardianship among the Negroes and 
 the grave number of depraved Negro girls. 
 For the sins of petit larceny, grand larceny, 
 and burglary, putting the three together, 
 the colored child shows a slightly smaller 
 percentage than the East Side white, a 
 noticeably smaller percentage than the total 
 number of children. The sin of theft is 
 often swiftly attributed to a black face, but 
 this percentage indicates that the colored 
 child has no "innate tendency" to steal. 
 Ten per cent of the arrests among the East 
 Side children are for unlicensed peddling 
 and violation of the labor law, but no little 
 Negro boys plunge into the business world 
 before their time. They have no keen com- 
 mercial sense to lead them to undertake 
 transactions on their own account, and they 
 are not desired by purchasers of boy labor 
 in the city. 
 
 The most important heading, numerically, 
 
 which I was allowed access. The absence of any figures for 
 Unlicensed Peddling in the Total indicates that in its printed 
 reports the Court has included Unlicensed Peddling with 
 Unclassified Misdemeanors. 
 
68 HALF A MAN 
 
 is that of mischief, and here the Negro falls 
 far behind the Eastsider, behind the aver- 
 age for the whole. While depravity among 
 the girls and improper guardianship are the 
 race's most serious defects, as shown by the 
 arrests among its children in New York, 
 tractability and a decent regard for law are 
 among its merits. The colored child, espe- 
 cially if he is in a segregated neighborhood, 
 is not greatly inclined to mischief. My own 
 experience has shown me that life in a tene- 
 ment on San Juan Hill is devoid of the in- 
 genious, exasperating deviltry of an Irish or 
 German-American neighborhood. No daily 
 summons calls one to the door only to hear 
 wildly scurrying footsteps on the stairs. 
 Mail boxes are left solely for the postman's 
 use, and hallways are not defaced by obscene 
 writing. There is plenty of crap shooting, 
 rarely interfered with by the police, but there 
 is little impertinent annoyance or destruc- 
 tiveness. 
 
 An observer, watching the little colored 
 boys and girls as they play on the city streets, 
 finds much that is attractive and pleasant. 
 They sing their songs, learned at school and 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 69 
 
 on the playground, fly their kites, spin their 
 tops, run their races. They usually finish 
 what they begin, not turning at the first 
 interruption to take up something else. 
 They move more deliberately than most 
 children, and their voices are slower to adopt 
 the New York screech than those of their 
 Irish neighbors on the block above them. 
 Altogether they are attractive children, 
 particularly the smaller ones, who are more 
 energetic than their big brothers and sis- 
 ters. Good manners are often evident. 
 While receiving an afternoon call from two 
 girls, aged four and five, I was invited by 
 the older to partake of half a peanut, the 
 other half of which she split in two and gen- 
 erously shared with her companion. "Gim' 
 me five cents," I once heard a Negro boy of 
 twelve say to his mother who walked past 
 him on the street. She did not seem to 
 hear, but the boy's companion, a youth of 
 the same age, reproved him severely for 
 his rude speech. When walking with an 
 Irish friend, who had worked among the 
 children of her own race, I saw a colored 
 boy run swiftly up the block to meet his 
 
70 HALF A MAN 
 
 mother. He kissed her, took her bundle 
 from her, and carrying it under his arm, 
 walked quietly by her side to their home. 
 "There are many boys here," I said, "who 
 are just as courteous as that." "Is that 
 so?" she retorted quickly, "Then you 
 needn't be explaining to me any further 
 the reason for the high death rate." 
 
 The gentle, chivalrous affection of the 
 child for its mother is daily to be seen among 
 these boys and girls. "Your African," said 
 Mary Kingsley, "is little better than a 
 slave to his mother, whom he loves with a 
 love he gives to none other. This love of 
 his mother is so dominant a factor in his 
 life that it must be taken into considera- 
 tion in attempting to understand the true 
 Negro." 1 And if the child lavishes affec- 
 tion upon its parent, the mother in turn 
 gives untiringly to her child. She is the 
 "mammy" of whom we have so often heard, 
 but with her loving care bestowed, as it 
 should be, upon her own offspring. She 
 tries to keep her child clean in body and spirit 
 and to train it to be gentle and good; and 
 
 1 Mary Kingsley, "West African Studies," p. 319. 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 71 
 
 in return usually she receives a stanch 
 devotion. I once found fault with a col- 
 ored girl of ten years for her rude behavior 
 with her girl companions, adding that per- 
 haps she did not know any better, at which 
 she turned on me almost fiercely and said, 
 "It's our fault; we know better. Our 
 mothers learn us. It's we that's bold." 
 As one watches the boys and girls walking 
 quietly up the street of a Sunday afternoon 
 to their Sunday-school, neatly and cleanly 
 dressed, one appreciates the anxious, mater- 
 nal care that strives as best it knows how, 
 to rear honest and God-fearing men and 
 women. 
 
 Paul Lawrence Dunbar has painted the 
 Negro father, his "little brown baby wif 
 sparklin' eyes," nestling close in his arms. 
 Working at unusual hours, the colored man 
 often has a part of the day to give to his 
 family, and one sees him wheeling the baby 
 in its carriage, or playing with the older 
 boys and girls. 
 
 Negroes seem naturally a gentle, loving 
 people. As you live with them and watch 
 them in their homes, you find some coarse- 
 
72 HALF A MAN 
 
 ness, but little real brutality. Rarely does 
 a father or mother strike a child. Travel- 
 lers in Central and West Africa describe 
 them as the most friendly of savage folk, 
 and where, as in our city, they live largely 
 to themselves, they keep something of these 
 characteristics. But it is only a step in 
 New York from Africa into Italy or Ireland; 
 and the step may bring a sad jostling to 
 native friendliness. To hold his own with 
 his white companions on the street or in 
 school, the Negro must become pugnacious, 
 callous to insult, ready to hit back when 
 affronted. Many are like the little girl who 
 told me that she did not care to play with 
 white children, "because," she explained, 
 "my mother tells me to smack any one 
 who calls me nigger, and I ain't looking for 
 trouble." The colored children aren't look- 
 ing for trouble. They have a tendency to 
 run away from it if they see it in the form of 
 a gang of boys coming to them around the 
 corner. They believe if they had a fight, it 
 wouldn't be a fair one, and that if the police- 
 man came, he would arrest them and not 
 their Irish enemies. So they grow up on 
 
CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 73 
 
 streets through which few white men pass, 
 leading their own lives with their own people 
 and thinking not overmuch of the other race 
 that surrounds them. But the day comes 
 when school is over, and the outside world, 
 however indifferent they may be to it, must 
 be met. They must go out and grapple 
 with it for the means to hire a cooking 
 stove and a dark bedroom of their own; they 
 must think of making money. So they stand 
 at the corner of their street, looking out, 
 and then move slowly on to find what oppor- 
 tunity is theirs to come to a full manhood. 
 The way ahead does not seem very bright, 
 and some move so timidly that failure is 
 sure to meet them at the first turning. But 
 some have the courage of the little colored 
 girl, aged four, who led a line of kinder- 
 garten children up their street and then on 
 to the unknown country that lay between 
 them and Central Park. At the first block 
 a mob of Irish boys fell upon them, run- 
 ning between the lines, throwing sticks, and 
 calling "nigger" with screams and jeers. 
 The leader held her head high, paying no 
 attention to her persecutors. She neither 
 
74 HALF A MAN 
 
 quickened nor slowed her pace, and when 
 the child at her side fell back, she pulled her 
 hand and said, "Don't notice them. Walk 
 straight ahead." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Earning a Living — Manual Labor and 
 the Trades 
 
 In "The American Race Problem," one of 
 our recent important books upon the Negro, 
 the author, Mr. Alfred Holt Stone of Missis- 
 sippi, after a survey of the world, declares 
 that "to me, it seems the plainest fact con- 
 fronting the Negro is that there is but one 
 area of any size wherein his race may obey 
 the command to eat its bread in the sweat of 
 its face side by side with the white man. 
 That area is composed of the Southern 
 United States." l 
 
 On examination we find that only men of 
 English and North European stock are 
 "white" to Mr. Stone, and that his state- 
 ment is too sweeping by a continent or two, 
 but as applying to the United States, it will 
 
 1 Alfred Holt Stone, "Studies in the American Race Prob- 
 lem," p. 164. 
 
 75 
 
76 HALF A MAN 
 
 usually meet with unqualified approval. It 
 is generally believed that discrimination con- 
 tinually retards the Negro in his search for 
 employment in the North, while in the South 
 " he is given a man's chance in the commer- 
 cial world." Northern men visiting southern 
 colored industrial schools advise the pupils 
 to remain where they are, and restless spirits 
 among the race are assured that it is better 
 to submit to some personal oppression than 
 to go to a land of uncertain employment. 
 The past glory of the North is dwelt upon, 
 its days of black waiters, and barbers, and 
 coachmen, but the present is painted in 
 harsh colors. 
 
 There is some truth in this comparison of 
 economic conditions among the Negroes in 
 the North and in the South, but it must not 
 be taken too literally. Today's tendency 
 to minimize southern and maximize northern 
 race difficulties, while strengthening the 
 bonds between white Americans, sometimes 
 obscures the real issues regarding colored 
 labor in this country. We need to look care- 
 fully at conditions in numbers of selected 
 localities, and we can find no northern 
 
EARNING A LIVING 77 
 
 city more worthy of our study than New 
 York. 
 
 The New York Negro constitutes today 
 but two per cent of the population of Man- 
 hattan, one and eight-tenths per cent of that 
 of Greater New York; and, as many workers 
 in Manhattan live in Brooklyn, the larger 
 area is the better one to consider. In 1900, 
 the census volume on occupations gives the 
 number of males over ten years of age en- 
 gaged in gainful occupations in Greater New 
 York at 1,102,471, and of that number 
 20,395 or 1.8 per cent, eighteen in every 
 thousand, are Negroes. In Atlanta, to take 
 a southern commercial centre, 351 out of 
 every thousand male workers are Negroes. 
 This enormous difference in the proportion 
 of colored workers to white must never be 
 forgotten in considering the labor situation 
 North and South. We cannot expect in the 
 North to see the Negro monopolizing an 
 industry which demands a larger share of 
 workers than he can produce, nor need we 
 admit that he has lost an occupation when 
 he does not control it. 
 
 We often come upon such a statement as 
 
78 HALF A MAN 
 
 that of Samuel R. Scottron, a colored busi- 
 ness man, who, writing in 1905, said, "The 
 Italian, Sicilian, Greek, occupy quite every 
 industry that was confessedly the Negro's 
 forty years ago. They have the bootblack 
 stands, the news stands, barbers' shops, 
 waiters' situations, restaurants, janitorships, 
 catering business, stevedoring, steamboat 
 work, and other situations occupied by 
 Negroes." 1 Did the colored men have all 
 this forty years ago when they were only one 
 and a half per cent of the population? If 
 so, there were giants in those days, or New 
 York was much simpler in its habits than 
 now. At present the control by the colored 
 people of any such an array of industries 
 would be quite impossible. To take four 
 out of the nine occupations enumerated: the 
 census of 1900 gives the number of waiters 
 at 31,211; barbers, 12,022; janitors, 6184; 
 bootblacks, 2648; a total of 52,065. But in 
 1900 there were only 20,395 Negro males 
 engaged in gainful occupations in New York. 
 Without a vigorous astral body the 20,000- 
 odd colored men could not occupy half these 
 
 1 New York Age, August 24, 1905. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 
 
 79 
 
 jobs. If they dominated in the field of 
 waiters they must abandon handling the 
 razor, and not all the colored boys could 
 muster 2684 strong to black the boots of 
 Greater New York. We must at the outset 
 recognize that as a labor factor the Negro in 
 New York is insignificant. 
 
 The volume of the federal census for 1900 
 on occupations shows us how the Negroes 
 are employed in New York City. There are 
 five occupational divisions, and the Negroes 
 and whites are divided among them as 
 follows : 
 
 i/ 
 
 
 White 
 
 Per 
 
 cent 
 
 Negro 
 
 Per 
 
 cent 
 
 Domestic and personal service 
 Trade and transportation .... 
 Manufacturing and meehani- 
 
 9,853 
 
 60,037 
 
 189,282 
 
 398,997 
 
 417,634 
 
 .9 
 
 5.6 
 
 17.6 
 
 37.1 
 
 38.8 
 
 251 
 
 729 
 
 11,843 
 
 5,798 
 
 1,774 
 
 1.2 
 
 3.6 
 
 58.1 
 
 28.4 
 
 8.7 
 
 Total 
 
 1,075,803 
 
 100.0 
 
 20,395 
 
 100.0 
 
 
 
 But in examining in detail the occupations 
 under these different headings, we get a 
 clearer view of the place the Negro main- 
 tains as a laborer by finding out how many 
 
80 
 
 HALF A MAN 
 
 workers he supplies to every thousand work- 
 ers in a given occupation. He should average 
 eighteen if he is to occupy the same economic 
 status as the white man. Taking the first 
 (numerically) important division, Domestic 
 and Personal Service, we get the following 
 table: 
 
 Domestic and Personal Service 
 
 Barbers and hairdressers 
 
 Bootblacks 
 
 Launderers 
 
 Servants and waiters 
 
 Stewards 
 
 Nurses 
 
 Boarding and lodging house 
 keepers 
 
 Hotel keepers 
 
 Restaurant keepers 
 
 Saloon keepers and bartenders . . 
 
 Janitors and sextons 
 
 Watchmen, Bremen, policemen . . 
 
 Soldiers, sailors, marines 
 
 Laborers (including elevator 
 tenders, laborers in coal yards, 
 longshoremen, and stevedores) 
 Total, including some occupa- 
 tions not specified 
 
 Total num- 
 ber of males 
 in each oc- 
 cupation. 
 
 Number of 
 Negroes in 
 each occu- 
 pation. 
 
 12,022 
 
 215 
 
 2,648 
 
 51 
 
 6,881 
 
 70 
 
 31,211 
 
 6,280 
 
 1,366 
 
 140 
 
 1,342 
 
 22 
 
 474 
 
 10 
 
 3,139 
 
 23 
 
 2,869 
 
 116 
 
 17,656 
 
 111 
 
 6,184 
 
 800 
 
 16,093 
 
 116 
 
 3,707 
 
 56 
 
 98,531 
 
 3,719 
 
 206,215 
 
 11,843 
 
 Number of 
 Negroes to 
 each 1000 
 workers in 
 occupation. 
 
 18 
 20 
 10 
 201 
 103 
 16 
 
 21 
 7 
 
 40 
 
 6 
 
 129 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 
 38 
 
 57 
 
EARNING A LIVING 81 
 
 The most important of these groups, not 
 only in absolute numbers, but in propor- 
 tion to the whole working population, is the 
 servants and waiters. Two hundred out of 
 every thousand (we must remember that the 
 proportion to the population would be eigh- 
 teen out of every thousand) are holding 
 positions with which they have long been 
 identified in America. We cannot tell from 
 the census how many "live out," or how 
 many are able to go nightly to their homes, 
 how many have good jobs, and how many 
 are in second and third rate places. A 
 study of my own of 716 colored men helps 
 to answer one of these questions. Out of 
 176 men coming under the servants' and 
 waiters' classification, I found 5 caterers, 
 24 cooks, 26 butlers, 30 general utility men, 
 41 hotel men, and 50 waiters. Sixty per 
 cent of the 176 lived in their own homes, not 
 in their masters'. Some of the cooks and 
 waiters were on Pullman trains or on river 
 boats or steamers; only a few were in first- 
 class positions in New York. In the summer 
 many of these men are likely to go to country 
 hotels, and with the winter, if New York 
 
82 
 
 HALF A MAN 
 
 offers nothing, migrate to Palm Beach or 
 stand on the street corner while their wives 
 go out to wash and scrub. 1 "An' it don't 
 do fer me ter complain," one of them tells 
 me, "else he gits 'high' an' goes off fer good." 
 Waiters in restaurants sometimes do not 
 make more than six dollars a week, to be 
 supplemented by tips, bringing the sum up 
 to nine or ten dollars. Hall men make about 
 
 1 Occupations in 1907 of 716 colored men (secured from 
 records of the Young Men's Christian Association and per- 
 sonal visits) compared with census figures of occupations in 
 1900. 
 
 
 716 Men 
 
 Census 
 
 Agricultural pursuits • 
 
 _ 
 
 1.2 
 
 Professional service, 27 men 
 
 3.8 
 50.6 
 
 3.6 
 
 Domestic and personal service, 363 men 
 
 58.1 
 
 5 barbers, 5 caterers, 24- cooks, 30 general util- 
 
 
 
 ity men, 41 hotel men, 76 waiters and butlers, 
 
 
 
 8 valets, 35 janitors and sextons, 29 long- 
 
 
 
 shoremen, 5 laborers in tunnels, 7 asphalt 
 
 
 
 workers, 57 elevator men, 41 laborers. 
 
 
 
 Trade and transportation, 279 men 
 
 39.0 
 
 28.4 
 
 10 chauffeurs, 35 drivers, 13 expressmen, 8 
 
 
 
 hostlers, 12 messengers, 14 municipal em- 
 
 
 
 ployees, 127 porters in stores, 15 porters on 
 
 
 
 trains, 24 clerks, 21 merchants. 
 
 
 
 Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 47 
 
 
 
 men 
 
 6.6 
 
 8.7 
 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
EARNING A LIVING 83 
 
 the same, but both waiters and hall men in 
 clubs and hotels receive large sums in tips 
 or in Christmas money. The Pullman car 
 waiters have small wages but large fees. 
 
 Looking again at the census, we see that 
 129 out of every thousand janitors and 
 sextons are colored. The janitor's position 
 varies from the impecunious place in a tene- 
 ment, where the only wage is the rent, to the 
 charge of a large office or apartment building. 
 Then come the laborers, nearly four thousand 
 strong, with the elevator boy as a familiar 
 figure. Forty per cent of the 139 laborers in 
 my own tabulation were elevator boys, for, 
 except in office buildings and large stores 
 and hotels, this occupation is given over to 
 the Negro, who spends twelve hours a day 
 drowsing in a corner or standing to turn a 
 wheel. Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote poetry 
 while he ran an elevator, and ambitious if 
 less talented colored boys today study civil 
 service examinations in their unoccupied 
 time; but the situation as a life job is not 
 alluring. Twenty-five dollars a month for 
 wage, with perhaps a half this sum in tips, 
 twelve hours on duty, one week in the night 
 
84 HALF A MAN 
 
 time and the next in the day — no wonder 
 the personnel of this staff changes frequently 
 in an apartment house. A bright boy will 
 be taken by some business man for a better 
 job, and a lazy one drifts away to look for 
 an easier task, or is dismissed by an irate 
 janitor. 
 
 Quite another group of laborers are the 
 longshoremen who, far from lounging indo- 
 lently in a hallway, are straining every 
 muscle as they heave some great crate into 
 a ship's hold. The work of the New York 
 dockers has been admirably described by 
 Mr. Ernest Poole, who says of the thirty 
 thousand longshoremen on the wharves of 
 New York — Italians, Germans, Negroes, 
 and Swedes, "Far from being the drunkards 
 and bums that some people think them, they 
 are like the men of the lumber camps come 
 to town — huge of limb and tough of muscle, 
 hard-swearing, quick-fisted, big of heart." 
 Their tasks are heavy and irregular. When 
 the ship comes in, the average stretch of 
 work for a gang is from twelve to twenty 
 hours, and sometimes men go to a second 
 gang and labor thirty-five hours without 
 
EARNING A LIVING 85 
 
 sleep. Their pay for this dangerous, exhaust- 
 ing toil averages eleven dollars a week. 
 "There are thousands of Negroes on the 
 docks of New York," Mr. Poole writes me, 
 "and they must be able to work long hours 
 at a stretch or they would not have their 
 jobs." At dusk, Brooklynites see these 
 black, huge-muscled men, many of them 
 West Indians, walking up the hill at Mon- 
 tague Street. In New York they live among 
 the Irish in "Hell's Kitchen" and on San 
 Juan Hill. They are usually steady sup- 
 porters of families. 
 
 New York demands strong, unskilled la- 
 borers. To some she pays a large wage, 
 and Negroes have gone in numbers into the 
 excavations under the rivers, though a lin- 
 gering death may prove the end of their two 
 and a half or perhaps six or seven dollar a 
 day job. Many colored men worked in the 
 subway during its construction. One sees 
 them often employed at rock-drilling or 
 clearing land for new buildings. About a 
 third of the asphalt workers, making their 
 two dollars and a half a day, are colored. 
 Some educated, refined Negroes choose the 
 
86 HALF A MAN 
 
 laborer's work rather than pleasanter but 
 poorly paid occupations. A highly trained 
 colored man, a shipping clerk, making seven 
 dollars a week, left his employer to take a 
 job of concreting in the subway at $1.80 a 
 day. His decision was in favor of dirty, 
 severe labor, but a living wage. 
 
 When the next census is published, those 
 of us who are carefully watching the economic 
 condition of the Negro expect to find a move- 
 ment from domestic service into the posi- 
 tions of laborers, including the porters in 
 stores, who belong in our second census 
 division. 
 
 Kelly Miller 1 describes the massive build- 
 ings and sky-seeking structures of our north- 
 ern city, and finds no status for the Negro 
 above the cellar floor. One can see the 
 colored youth gazing wistfully through the 
 office window at the clerk, whose business 
 reaches across the ocean to bewilderingly 
 wonderful continents, knowing as he does 
 that the employment he may find in that 
 office will be emptying the white man's waste 
 paper basket. 
 
 1 Kelly Miller's "Race Adjustment," p. 129. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 
 
 87 
 
 Trade and Transportation 
 
 
 Total num- 
 ber of males 
 
 Number of 
 Negroes in 
 
 Number of 
 Negroes to 
 each 1000 
 
 
 in each oc- 
 cupation. 
 
 each occu- 
 pation. 
 
 workers in 
 occupation. 
 
 Agents — commercial travellers 
 
 27,456 
 
 67 
 
 2 
 
 Bankers, brokers, and officials of 
 
 
 
 
 banks and companies 
 
 11,472 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 Bookkeepers — accountants . . . 
 
 22,613 
 
 33 
 
 1 
 
 Clerks, copyists (including ship- 
 
 
 
 
 ping clerks, letter and mail car- 
 
 
 
 
 
 80,564 
 
 72,684 
 
 423 
 162 
 
 5 
 
 Merchants (wholesale and retail) 
 
 2 
 
 
 45,740 
 3,225 
 
 94 
 36 
 
 2 
 
 
 11 
 
 
 8,188 
 3,111 
 
 145 
 
 18 
 
 18 
 
 
 6 
 
 Draymen, hackmen, teamsters . . 
 
 51,063 
 
 1439 
 
 28 
 
 
 5,891 
 967 
 
 633 
 9 
 
 107 
 
 Livery stable keepers 
 
 9 
 
 Steam railway employees 
 
 11,831 
 
 70 
 
 6 
 
 Street railway employees 
 
 7,375 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 Telegraph and telephone opera- 
 
 
 
 
 
 2,430 
 12,635 
 
 6 
 69 
 
 2 
 
 Hucksters and peddlers 
 
 5 
 
 Messengers, errand and office 
 
 
 
 
 
 13,451 
 
 335 
 
 25 
 
 Porters and helpers (in stores, 
 
 
 
 
 
 11,322 
 
 2143 
 
 188 
 
 
 1,572 
 
 15 
 
 9 
 
 Total, including some occupa- 
 
 
 tions not specified 
 
 405,675 
 
 5798 
 
 14 
 
88 HALF A MAN 
 
 This, however, does not apply to govern- 
 ment positions, and a large number of the 
 423 colored clerks in 1900 were probably in 
 United States and municipal service. The 
 latter we shall consider later as we study the 
 Negro and the municipality. Of the former, 
 in 1909 there were about 176 in the New 
 York post-offices. 1 Ambitious boys work 
 industriously at civil service examinations, 
 and a British West Indian will even become 
 an American citizen for the chance of a con- 
 genial occupation. The clerkship, that to a 
 white man is only a stepping-stone, to a 
 Negro is a highly coveted position. 
 
 I have made two divisions of this census 
 list; the first includes those occupations re- 
 quiring intellectual skill and carrying with 
 them some social position, the second, those 
 demanding only manual work. It is in the 
 second that the colored man finds a place, 
 and as a porter he numbers 2143, and reaches 
 almost as high a percentage as the waiter 
 and servant. Porters' positions are paid 
 from five to fifteen dollars a week, the man 
 
 1 It is difficult to get accurate figures as no official record 
 is kept of color. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 89 
 
 receiving the latter wage performing also the 
 duties of shipping clerk. There is some 
 opportunity for advance, always within the 
 basement, and there are regular hours and a 
 fairly steady job. 
 
 The heading of draymen, hackmen, and 
 teamsters, with 28 colored in every thousand, 
 shows that the Negro has not lost his place 
 as a driver. The chauffeur does not appear 
 in the census, but the Negro is steadily 
 increasing in numbers in this occupation, and 
 conducts three garages of his own. 
 
 The last census division to be considered 
 in this chapter is that of Manufacturing and 
 Mechanical Pursuits. 
 
 When Mr. Stone wrote of the Southern 
 States as the only place in which the Negro 
 could "earn his bread in the sweat of his 
 face," side by side with the white man, he 
 must especially have been thinking of work- 
 ers in the skilled trades. Unskilled laborers 
 in New York are drenched in a common 
 grimy fellowship. But in this last division 
 the Negro is conspicuous by his absence. 
 Only four in every thousand where there 
 should be eighteen! In Atlanta, under this 
 
90 HALF A MAN 
 
 Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits 
 
 Engineers, firemen (not locomo- 
 tive) 
 
 Masons (brick and stone) . . . 
 
 Painters, glaziers, and varnishers 
 
 Plasterers 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 Butchers 
 
 Carpenters and joiners 
 
 Iron and steel workers 
 
 Paper hangers 
 
 Photographers 
 
 Plumbers, gas and steam fitters 
 
 Printers, lithographers, and press 
 men 
 
 Tailors 
 
 Tobacco and cigar factory opera 
 tors 
 
 Fishermen and oystermen 
 
 Miners and quarrymen 
 
 Machinists 
 
 Total, including some occupa- 
 tions not specified 
 
 Total num- 
 ber of males 
 in each oc- 
 cupation. 
 
 Number ot 
 Negroes in 
 each occu- 
 pation. 
 
 16,579 
 
 227 
 
 12,913 
 
 94 
 
 27,135 
 
 177 
 
 4,019 
 
 51 
 
 7,289 
 
 29 
 
 12,643 
 
 31 
 
 29,904 
 
 94 
 
 10,372 
 
 40 
 
 962 
 
 18 
 
 1,590 
 
 22 
 
 16,614 
 
 31 
 
 21,521 
 
 53 
 
 56,094 
 
 69 
 
 11,689 
 
 189 
 
 1,439 
 
 65 
 
 326 
 
 21 
 
 17,241 
 
 47 
 
 419,594 
 
 1774 
 
 Number of 
 Negroes to 
 each 1000 
 workers in 
 occupation. 
 
 14 
 
 7 
 6 
 
 12 
 4 
 
 2 
 3 
 4 
 19 
 14 
 2 
 
 2 
 1 
 
 16 
 
 45 
 
 64 
 
 3 
 
 Bakers, boot and shoe makers, gold and silver workers, 
 brass workers, tin plate and tin ware makers, box makers, 
 cabinet makers, marble and stone cutters, book-binders, 
 clock and watch makers, confectioners, engravers, glass 
 workers, hat and cap makers, and others — not more than 
 nineteen in any one occupation, nor a higher per cent than 
 four in a thousand. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 91 
 
 division, the race reaches almost its due 
 proportion, 279 in a thousand instead of 351. 
 The largest number in any trade in New 
 York is 189 men among the Cuban tobacco 
 workers. Seventy-five per cent of all the 
 masons in Atlanta are colored men, while in 
 New York the colored are less than one 
 per cent. Looking down the list we see that 
 the figures are small and the percentage insig- 
 nificant. The highly skilled and best paid 
 trades are seemingly as far removed from 
 the Negro as the positions of floor-walkers 
 or cashiers of banks. 
 
 Omitting for the present the professional 
 class, we have reviewed the Negro as a 
 worker, and neither in wages nor choice of 
 occupation has he risen far to success. In 
 domestic service he has gone a little down 
 the ladder, serving in less desirable positions 
 than in former years. Why has this hap- 
 pened? What good reasons are there for 
 these conditions? 
 
 The first and most obvious reason is race 
 prejudice. No display of talent, however 
 prodigious, will open certain occupations to 
 the colored race. As a salesman he could 
 
92 HALF A MAN 
 
 teach courteous manners to some of our 
 white salesmen in New York, but he is never 
 given a chance. There are a few Negroes, 
 digging in the tunnels or sweeping down the 
 subway stairs, who are capable of filling the 
 clerkships that are counted the perquisites 
 of the whites; but clerkships are only acces- 
 sible as they are associated with municipal or 
 federal service. Of course there are excep- 
 tions, and though they do not affect the rule, 
 they show the existence of a few employers 
 who ignore the color line, and a few Negroes 
 of inexhaustible perseverance. 
 
 Mr. Stone argues that the Negro in the 
 South profits by the strict drawing of the 
 color line, since the white man, always con- 
 sidered the superior, is not lowered in the 
 eyes of the community by working with the 
 black man. The Southern white may lay 
 bricks on the same wall with the Southern 
 black, secure in his superior social position. 
 But this seems fanciful as an explanation of 
 labor conditions. The black doctor, for in- 
 stance, in those localities where the color 
 line is most rigid, may not ask the white 
 doctor to consult with him; or if he does, his 
 
EARNING A LIVING 93 
 
 prompt removal from the community is 
 requested. Colored postal clerks are in dis- 
 favor in the South, though not colored post- 
 men. North or South, the Negro gets an 
 opportunity to work where he is imperatively 
 needed. Constituting one-third of the work- 
 ing population, he can make a place for him- 
 self in the laboring world of Atlanta as he 
 cannot in New York. Pick up the 20,000 
 New York Negroes and drop them in Liberia, 
 and in two or three weeks Ellis Island could 
 empty out sufficient men to fill their places; 
 but remove a third of the male workers from 
 Atlanta, and the city for years would suffer 
 from the calamity. If they are the only 
 available source of labor, colored men can 
 work by the side of white men; but where 
 the white man strongly dominates the labor 
 situation, he tries to push his black brother 
 into the jobs for which he does not care to 
 compete. 
 
 We have seen, however, that in some occu- 
 pations in New York the Negroes appear in 
 such proportion as should be sufficient to 
 secure them excellent positions; the most 
 conspicuous instance being that of the 200 
 
94 HALF A MAN 
 
 colored waiters out of every thousand. Why, 
 then, do we not see Negroes serving in the 
 best hotels the city affords? 
 
 It has been an ideal of American democ- 
 racy, a part of its strenuous individualism, 
 that each member of the community should 
 have full liberty in the pursuit of wealth. 
 The ambitious, capable boy who walks bare- 
 footed into the city, and at the end of twenty 
 years has outdistanced his country school- 
 mates, becoming a multi-millionaire while 
 they are still farm drudges, is the example of 
 iVmerican opportunity. But this ability to 
 Separate one's self from the rest of one's 
 1/ fellows and attain individual greatness is 
 rarely possible to a segregated race. In 
 domestic service individual colored men have 
 shown ambition and high capability, but 
 they have never been able to get away from 
 their fellows like the country boy — to leave 
 the farm drudges and take a place among the 
 most proficient of their profession. They 
 must always work in a race group. And this 
 Negro group is like the small college that 
 tries to win at football against a competitor 
 with four times the number of students and 
 
EARNING A LIVING 95 
 
 a better coach. The two hundred colored 
 waiters, competing against the eight hundred 
 white ones, lose in the game and are given a 
 second place, which the best must accept 
 with the worst. When, then, we criticize a 
 capable colored man for failing to keep a 
 superior position we must remember that 
 he is tied to his group and has little chance 
 of advancement on his individual merit. 
 
 The census division of mechanical pur- 
 suits shows only a few colored men working at 
 trades, and the paucity of the numbers is often 
 attributed by the Negro to a third obstacle 
 in the way of his progress, the trade-union. 
 
 To the colored man who has overcome race 
 prejudice sufficiently to be taken into a shop 
 with white workmen, the walking delegate 
 who appears and asks for his union card 
 seems little short of diabolical; and all the 
 advantages that collective bargaining has 
 secured, the higher wage and shorter working- 
 day, are forgotten by him. I have heard 
 the most distinguished of Negro educators, 
 listening to such an incident as this, declare 
 that he should like to see every labor union 
 in America destroyed. But unionism has 
 
96 HALF A MAN 
 
 come to stay, and the colored man who is 
 asked for his card had better at once get to 
 work and endeavor to secure it. Many have 
 done this already, and organized labor in 
 New York, its leaders tell us, receives an 
 increasing number of colored workmen. Miss 
 Helen Tucker, in a careful study of Negro 
 craftsmen in the West Sixties, 1 found among 
 121 men who had worked at their trades in 
 the city, 32, or 26 per cent in organized labor. 
 The majority of these had joined in New 
 York. Eight men, out of the 121, had 
 applied for entrance to unions and not been 
 admitted. This does not seem a discourag- 
 ing number, though we do not know whether 
 the other 81 could have been organized or 
 not. Many, probably, were not sufficiently 
 competent workmen. In 1910, according to 
 /the best information that I could secure, 
 there were 1358 colored men in the New 
 York unions. Eighty of these were in the 
 building trades, 165 were cigar makers, 400 
 were teamsters, 350 asphalt workers, and 
 240 rock-drillers and tool sharpeners. 2 
 
 1 Southern Workman, October. 1907, to March, 1908. 
 
 2 See foot-note on opposite page. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 
 
 97 
 
 Entrance to some of the local organiza- 
 tions is more easily secured than to others, 
 for the trade-union, while part of a federa- 
 tion, is autonomous, or nearly so. In some 
 
 2 In 1906, and again in 1910, I secured a counting of the 
 New York colored men in organized labor. The lists run as 
 follows: 
 
 1906 1010 
 
 Asphalt workers 320 350 
 
 Teamsters 300 400 
 
 Rock-drillers and tool sharpeners. 250 240 
 
 Cigar makers 121 165 
 
 Bricklayers 90 21 
 
 Waiters 90 not obtainable 
 
 Carpenters 60 40 
 
 Plasterers 45 19 
 
 Double drum hoisters 30 37 
 
 Safety and portable engineers ... 26 35 
 
 Eccentric firemen 15 
 
 Letter carriers 10 30 
 
 Pressmen 10 not obtainable 
 
 Printers 6 8 
 
 Butchers 3 3 
 
 Lathers 3 7 
 
 Painters 3 not obtainable 
 
 Coopers 1 2 
 
 Sheet metal workers 1 1 
 
 Rockmen 1 not obtainable 
 
 Total 1385 1358 
 
 The large number of bricklayers in 1906 is questioned by 
 the man, himself a bricklayer, who made the second counting. 
 However, the number greatly decreased in 1908 when the 
 stagnation in business compelled many men to seek work in 
 other cities. 
 
98 HALF A MAN 
 
 of the highly skilled trades, to which few 
 colored men have the necessary ability to 
 demand access, the Negro is likely to be 
 refused, while the less intelligent and well- 
 paid forms of labor press a union card upon 
 him. Again, strong organizations in the 
 South, as the bricklayers, send men North 
 with union membership, who easily transfer 
 to New York locals. Miss Tucker finds the 
 carpenters', masons', and plasterers' organi- 
 Vzations easy for the Negro to enter. There 
 is in New York a colored local, the only 
 colored local in the city, among a few of the 
 carpenters, with regular representation in 
 the Central Federated Union. The Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labor in 1881 declared 
 that "the working people must unite irre- 
 spective of creed, color, sex, nationality, or 
 politics." This cry is for self-protection, and 
 where the Negroes have numbers and ability 
 in a trade, their organization becomes im- 
 portant to the white. It may be fairly said 
 of labor organization in New York that it 
 finds and is at times unable to destroy race 
 prejudice, but that it does not create it. 1 
 
 1 The comment of the Negro bricklayer who secured my 
 
EARNING A LIVING 99 
 
 A fourth obstacle, and a very important 
 one, is the lack of opportunity for the colored 
 boy. The only trade that he can easily learn 
 is that of stationary engineer, an occupation 
 at which the Negroes do very well. Colored 
 boys in small numbers are attending evening 
 trade schools, but their chance of securing 
 positions on graduation will be small. The 
 Negro youth who is not talented enough to 
 enter a profession, and who cannot get into 
 
 figures is important. "A Negro," he says, "has to be extra 
 fit in his trade to retain his membership, as the eyes of all the 
 other workers are watching every opportunity to disqualify 
 him, thereby compelling a superefficiency. Yet at all times 
 he is the last to come and the first to go on the job, necessi- 
 tating his seeking other work for a living, and keeping up his 
 card being but a matter of sentiment. While all the skilled 
 trades seem willing to accept the Negro with his travelling 
 card, yet there are some which utterly refuse him; for instance, 
 the house smiths and bridge men who will not recognize him 
 at all. While membership in the union is necessary to work, 
 yet the hardest part of the battle is to secure employment. 
 In some instances intercession has been made by various 
 organizations interested in his industrial progress for employ- 
 ment at the offices of various companies, and favorable 
 answers are given, but hostile foremen with discretionary 
 power carry out their instructions in such a manner as to 
 render his employment of such short duration that he is very 
 little benefited. Of course, there are some contractors who 
 are very friendly to a few men, and whenever any work is 
 done by them, they are certain of employment. Unfortu- 
 nately, these are too few." 
 
 / 
 
100 HALF A MAN 
 
 the city or government service, has slight 
 opportunity. Nothing is so discouraging in 
 the outlook in New York as the crowding 
 out of colored boys from congenial remuner- 
 ative work. 
 
 The last obstacle in the way of the Negro's 
 advancement into higher occupations is his 
 inefficiency. Race prejudice denies him the 
 opportunity to prove his ability in many 
 occupations, and the same spirit forces him 
 to work in a race group; but the colored men 
 themselves are often unfitted for any labor 
 other than that they undertake. 
 
 The picture that is sometimes drawn of 
 many thousands of highly skilled Southern 
 colored men forced in New York to give up 
 their trades and to turn to menial labor 
 is not a correct one. Richard R. Wright, 
 Jr., who has made a careful study of the 
 Negro in Philadelphia, 1 finds that the ma- 
 jority of colored men who come to that city 
 are from the class of unskilled city laborers 
 and country hands; the minority are the 
 more skilful artisans and farmers and domes- 
 
 1 R. R. Wright, Jr.'s "Migration of Negroes to the North," 
 Annals of the American Academy, May, 1906. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 101 
 
 tic servants, with a number also of the 
 vagrant and criminal classes. 
 
 In New York the untrained Negroes not 
 only form a very large class, but coming in 
 contact, as they do, with foreigners who for 
 generations have been forced to severe, un- 
 remitting toil, they suffer by comparison. 
 The South in the days of slavery demanded 
 chiefly routine work in the fields from its 
 Negroes. 1 The work was under the direc- 
 tion either of the master, the overseer, or a 
 foreman; and there has been no general 
 advance in training for the colored men of 
 the South since that time. Contrast the 
 intensive cultivation of Italy or Switzerland 
 with the farms of Georgia or Alabama, or 
 the hotels of France with those of Virginia, 
 and you will see the disadvantages from 
 which the Negro suffers. America is young 
 and crude, but opportunity has brought to 
 her great cities workmen from all over the 
 world. In New York these men are driven 
 at a pace that at the outset distracts the 
 colored man who prefers his leisurely way. 
 
 1 See Ulrich B. Phillips' "Origin and Growth of the South- 
 ern Black Belts," American Historical Review, July, 1906. 
 
102 HALF A MAN 
 
 Moreover, the foreign workmen have learned 
 persistence; they are punctual and appear 
 regularly each morning at their tasks. "The 
 Italians are better laborers than any other 
 people we have, are they not?" I asked a 
 man familiar with many races and national- 
 ities. "No," was his answer, "they do not 
 work better than others, but when the 
 whistle blows, they are always there." Mr. 
 Stone, whose book I have already quoted a 
 number of times, shows the irresponsible, 
 fanciful wanderings of his Mississippi tenants, 
 whom he endeavored, unsuccessfully, to es- 
 tablish in a permanent tenantry. The colored 
 men in New York are far in advance of these 
 farm hands, who are described as moving 
 about simply because they desire a change, 
 but they are also far from the steady, un- 
 swerving attitude of their foreign competi- 
 tors. Inadequately educated, too often they 
 come to New York with little equipment for 
 tasks they must undertake successfully or 
 starve — unless, puerile, they live by the 
 labor of some industrious woman. 
 
 I have tried to depict the New York colored 
 wage earners as they labor in the city today. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 103 
 
 They are not a remarkable group, and were 
 they white men, distinguished by some mark 
 of nationality, they would pass without 
 comment. But the Negro is on trial, and 
 witnesses are continually called to tell of 
 his failures and successes. We have seen 
 that both in the attitude of the world about 
 him, and in his own untutored self, there 
 are many obstacles to prevent his advance; 
 and his natural sensitiveness adds to these 
 difficulties. He minds the coarse but often 
 good-natured joke of his fellow laborer, and 
 he remembers with a lasting pain the morti- 
 fication of an employer's curt refusal of 
 work. Had he the obtuseness of some 
 Americans he would prosper better. As we 
 have seen, many positions are completely 
 closed to him, leading him to idleness and 
 consequent crime. Just as not every able- 
 bodied white man, who is out of work and 
 impoverished, will go to the charities wood- 
 yard and saw wood, so not every colored 
 man will accept the menial labor which may 
 be the only work open to him. Instead, he 
 may gamble or drift into a vagabond life. 
 A well-known Philadelphia judge has said 
 
104 HALF A MAN 
 
 that "The moral and intellectual advance 
 of a race is governed by the degree of its 
 industrial freedom. When that freedom is 
 restricted there is unbounded tendency to 
 drive the race discriminated against into the 
 ranks of the criminal." Discrimination in 
 New York has led many Negroes into these 
 ranks. But as we look back at the occupa- 
 tions of our colored men we see a large num- 
 ber who secure regular hours, and if a poor, 
 yet a fairly steady pay. For the mass of the 
 Negroes coming into the city these positions 
 are an advance over their former work. 
 Employment in a great mercantile establish- 
 ment, though it be in the basement, carries 
 dignity with it, and educating demands of 
 punctuality, sobriety, and swiftness. Rich- 
 ard R. Wright, Jr., whose right to speak with 
 authority we have already noted, believes 
 that the "North has taught the Negro the 
 value of money; of economy; it has taught 
 more sustained effort in work, punctuality, 
 and regularity." It has also, I believe, in 
 its more regular hours of work, aided in the 
 upbuilding of the home. 
 
 I remember once waiting in the harbor of 
 
EARNING A LIVING 105 
 
 Genoa while our ship was taking on a cargo. 
 The captain walked the deck impatiently, 
 and, as the Italians went in leisurely fashion 
 about their task, declared, "If I had those 
 men in New York I could get twice the 
 amount of work out of them." That is what 
 New York does; it works men hard and fast; 
 sometimes it mars them; but it pays a better 
 wage than Genoa, and there is an excitement 
 and dash about it that attracts laborers from 
 all parts of the earth. The black men come, 
 insignificant in numbers, ready to do their 
 part. They work and play and marry and 
 bring up children, and as we watch them 
 moving to and from their tasks the North 
 seems to have brought to the majority of 
 them something of liberty and happiness. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Earning a Living — Business and 
 the Professions 
 
 If we walk west on Fifty-ninth Street, 
 at Eighth Avenue, we come upon one of the 
 colored business sections of New York. 
 Here, for a block's length, are employment 
 and real estate agents, restaurant keepers, 
 grocers, tailors, barbers, printers, express- 
 men, and undertakers, all small establish- 
 ments occupying the first floor or basement 
 of some tenement or lodging house, and with 
 the exception of the employment agency all 
 patronized chiefly by the colored race. 
 Another such section and a more prosperous 
 one is in Harlem, on West One Hundred 
 and Thirty-third, One Hundred and Thirty- 
 fourth, and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth 
 Streets. From the point of view of the whole 
 business of the city such concerns are insig- 
 nificant, but they are important from the 
 
 106 
 
EARNING A LIVING 107 
 
 viewpoint of Negro progress, since they 
 represent the accumulation of capital, ex- 
 perience in business methods, and hard 
 work. Very slowly the New York Negro 
 is meeting the demanding power of his 
 people and is securing neighborhood trade 
 that has formerly gone to the Italian and 
 the Jew. Husband and wife, father and son, 
 work in their little establishments and make 
 a beginning in the mercantile world. 
 
 The Negro, as we have seen, has con- 
 ducted businesses in New York in the past, 
 businesses patronized chiefly by whites. 
 Barbering and catering were his successes, 
 and in both of these he has lost, despite the 
 fact that one of the city's wealthiest colored 
 men is a caterer. But if he has lost here, 
 he has gained along other lines. Among a 
 number of photographers he has one who is 
 well-known for his excellent architectural 
 work. Two manufacturers have brought 
 out popular goods, the Haynes's razor strop, 
 and the Howard shoe polish. These men, 
 one a barber and one a Pullman car porter, 
 improved upon implements used in their 
 daily work and then turned to manufac- 
 
108 HALF A MAN 
 
 ture. The headquarters of the Howard 
 shoe polish is in Chicago, where the firm 
 employs thirty people, the New York branch 
 giving employment to twelve. 
 
 A wise utilization of labor already trained 
 and at hand is seen in the Manhattan House 
 Cleaning and Renovating Bureau. This 
 firm contracts for the cleaning of houses 
 and places of business and has also been 
 successful in securing work on new buildings, 
 entering as the builders leave and arranging 
 everything for occupancy. In one week the 
 Bureau has given employment to sixty men. 
 
 In those businesses in which he comes in 
 contact with the white, the most pronounced 
 success of the colored man has been real es- 
 tate brokerage. The New York Negro busi- 
 ness directory names twenty-two real estate 
 brokers, and though a dozen of them prob- 
 ably handle altogether no more business 
 than one white firm, a few put through im- 
 portant operations. The ablest of these 
 brokers, recently clearing twenty thousand 
 dollars at a single transaction, turned his 
 operations to Liberia, where he went for 
 a few months to look into land concessions. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 109 
 
 This broker has aided the Negroes materi- 
 ally in their efforts to rent apartments on 
 better streets. His energy, and that of many 
 more like him, is also needed to open up 
 places for colored businesses, better office 
 and workroom facilities for the able pro- 
 fessional and business men and women. In 
 New Yo rk as in the South the Ne gro needs 
 to obtain a hold upon the land. In this he 
 is aided not only by his brokers, but by 
 realty companies. The largest of these, the 
 Metropolitan Realty Company, in opera- 
 tion since 1900, is capitalized at a million 
 dollars, and had in 1910 $400,000 paid in 
 stock, and $400,000 subscribed and being 
 paid for on instalment. This company oper- 
 ates in the suburban towns, and has quite 
 a colony in Plainfield, New Jersey, where it 
 owns 150 lots. It has built eighty cottages 
 for its members, and has bought eighteen. 
 Among the businesses that cater directly 
 to the colored, probably none is more suc- 
 cessful than undertaking. The Negroes of 
 the city die in great numbers, and the fu- 
 neral is all too common a function. Formerly 
 this business went to white men, but in- 
 
110 HALF A MAN 
 
 creasingly it is coming into the hands of the 
 colored. The Negro business directory gives 
 twenty-two undertakers, one of them, by 
 common report, the richest colored man in 
 New York. Profitable real estate invest- 
 ment, combined with one of the largest 
 undertaking establishments in the city, has 
 given him a comfortable fortune. Another 
 large and increasingly important Negro busi- 
 ness is the hotel and boarding-house. As 
 the colored men of the South and West ac- 
 cumulate wealth, they will come in increas- 
 ing numbers to visit in New York, and the 
 colored hotel, now little more than a board- 
 ing-house, may become a spacious building, 
 with private baths, elevator service, and a 
 well-equipped restaurant. In today's mod- 
 estly equipped buildings the catering is often 
 excellent, and good, well-cooked food is sold 
 at reasonable prices. Occasionally the Hotel 
 Maceo advertises a southern dinner, and its 
 guests sit down to Virginia sugar-cured ham, 
 sweet potato pie, and perhaps even opossum. 
 Printing establishments, tailors' shops, 1 
 
 1 On West 133d Street two former Hampton students have 
 a prosperous little tailor and upholstering shop. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 111 
 
 express and van companies, and many other 
 small enterprises help to make up the Negro 
 business world. One colored printer brings 
 out an important white magazine. There 
 are seven weekly colored newspapers, of 
 which the New York Age is the most impor- 
 tant, and two musical publishing companies. 
 All these enterprises are useful, not only to 
 the proprietor and his patrons, but especially 
 to the clerks and assistants who thus are 
 able to secure some training in mercantile 
 work. In the white man's office, white and 
 colored boys start out together, but as their 
 trousers lengthen and their ambitions quicken, 
 the former secures promotion while the lat- 
 ter is still given the letters to put into the 
 mail box. If the Negro lad, discouraged at 
 lack of advancement, leaves the white man 
 and ventures with a tiny capital into some 
 business of his own, his ignorance is almost 
 certain to lead to his disaster. He is indeed 
 fortunate if he can first work in the office 
 of a successful colored man. 1 
 
 1 Those interested in the Negro in business should look 
 for an intensive study, shortly to be published, on the wage- 
 earners and business enterprises among Negroes in New York. 
 It is entitled " The Negro at Work in New York City," and 
 
112 
 
 HALF A MAN 
 
 We have one more census division to 
 consider, Professional Service. The table 
 runs as follows: 
 
 Professional Service 
 
 Number of 
 Negroes to 
 each 1000 
 workers in 
 occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 Actors, professional showmen, etc. 
 Architects, designers, draftsmen . . 
 
 Artists, teachers of art 
 
 Clergymen 
 
 Dentists 
 
 Physicians and surgeons 
 
 Veterinary surgeons 
 
 Electricians 
 
 Engineers (civil) and surveyors . . . 
 
 Journalists 
 
 Lawyers 
 
 Literary and scientific 
 
 Musicians 
 
 Officials (government) 
 
 Teachers and professors in colleges 
 Total including some occupa 
 tions not specified 
 
 Total 
 number 
 of males 
 in each 
 occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 Number 
 of negroes 
 in each 
 occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 4,733 
 
 254 
 
 3,966 
 
 2 
 
 2,924 
 
 13 
 
 2,833 
 
 90 
 
 1,509 
 
 25 
 
 6,577 
 
 32 
 
 320 
 
 2 
 
 8,131 
 
 18 
 
 3,321 
 
 7 
 
 2,833 
 
 7 
 
 7,811 
 
 26 
 
 1,709 
 
 10 
 
 6,429 
 
 195 
 
 3,934 
 
 9 
 
 3,409 
 
 32 
 
 60,853 
 
 729 
 
 54 
 
 4 
 
 32 
 16 
 5 
 6 
 2 
 2 
 2 
 3 
 5 
 30 
 2 
 9 
 
 12 
 
 Examining these figures we find few col- 
 ored architects 1 or engineers, and a very 
 
 has been made by George E. Haynes, under the direction of 
 the Bureau of Social Research of the New York School of 
 Philanthropy. 
 
 1 Since going to press the new and very beautiful building 
 
EARNING A LIVING 113 
 
 small proportion of electricians, though 
 among the latter there is a highly skilled 
 workman. The New York Negro has no 
 position in the mechanical arts. It may be 
 that, as we so often hear, the African does 
 not possess mechanical ability. 1 You do 
 not see Negro boys pottering over machin- 
 ery or making toy inventions of their own. 
 But another and powerful reason for the 
 colored youth's failing to take up engi- 
 neering or kindred studies is the slight 
 chance he would later have in securing 
 work. No group of men in America have 
 opposed his progress more persistently than 
 skilled mechanics, and, should he graduate 
 from some school of technology, he would 
 be refused in office or workshop. So he 
 
 of St. Philips' Episcopal Church, on W. 134th Street, has been 
 opened. This is a fine example of English Gothic and its 
 architects are two young colored men, one of whom was for 
 years in the office of a white firm. 
 
 1 Mary Kingsley has some interesting generalizations on 
 this point. She speaks of the African mind approaching all 
 things from a spiritual point of view while the English mind 
 approaches them from a material point of view, and of 
 "the high perception of justice you will find in the Af- 
 rican, combined with the inability to think out a pulley or 
 a lever except under white tuition." — West African Studies, 
 p. 330. 
 
114 HALF A MAN 
 
 turns to those professions in which he sees 
 a likelihood of advancement. 
 
 Colored physicians and dentists are increas- 
 ing in number in New York and throughout 
 the country. The Negro is sympathetic, quick 
 to understand another's feelings, and when 
 added to this he has received a thorough 
 medical training he makes an excellent 
 physician. New York State examinations 
 prevent the practice of ignorant doctors from 
 other states, and the city can count many 
 able colored practitioners. These doctors 
 practise among white people as well as among 
 colored. As surgeons they are handicapped 
 in New York by lack of hospital facilities, 
 having no suitable place in which they may 
 perform an operation. The colored student 
 who graduates from a New York medical 
 college must go for hospital training to Phil- 
 adelphia or Chicago or Washington. 1 
 
 1 Lincoln Hospital in New York, while receiving white and 
 colored patients, was especially designed to help the colored 
 race. It has a training school for colored nurses, but neither 
 accepts colored medical graduates as interns, nor allows 
 colored doctors upon its staff. This is one of many cases in 
 which the good white people of the city are glad to assist the 
 poor and ailing Negro, but are unwilling to help the strong 
 and ambitious colored man to full opportunity. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 115 
 
 Colored lawyers are obtaining a firm foot- 
 hold in New York. From twenty-six in 
 the 1900 census they now, in 1911, number 
 over fifty, though not all of these by any 
 means rely entirely upon their profession 
 for support. Some of our lawyers are 
 descendants of old New York families, 
 others have come here recently from the 
 South. 
 
 Turning to our census figures again we 
 see that the three professions in which the 
 colored man is conspicuous are those of 
 actor, musician, and minister. Instead of 
 the average eighteen, he here shows fifty- 
 four in every thousand actors, thirty in 
 every thousand musicians, and thirty-two 
 in every thousand clergymen. And since 
 the pulpit and the stage are two places in 
 which the black man has found conspicu- 
 ous success it may be well in this connec- 
 tion to consider, not only the economic 
 significance of these institutions, but their 
 place in the life of the colored world. 
 
 The Negro minister was born with the 
 Negro Christian, and the colored church, 
 in which he might tell of salvation, is over 
 
116 HALF A MAN 
 
 a century old in New York. Today the 
 Boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn have 
 twenty-eight colored churches besides a 
 number of missions. Some of the societies 
 own valuable property, usually, however, 
 encumbered with heavy mortgages, and 
 yearly budgets mount up to ten, twelve, 
 and sixteen thousand dollars. The Metho- 
 dist churches lead in number, next come 
 the Baptist, and next the Episcopalian. 
 There are Methodist Episcopal, African 
 Methodist Episcopal, and African Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Zion. Bethel African Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, as we have seen, is 
 one of the oldest and is still one of the 
 largest and most useful Negro churches in 
 New York. Mount Olivet, a Baptist church 
 on West Fifty-third Street, has a seating 
 capacity of 1600, taxed to its full on Sun- 
 day evenings. St. Philip's gives the Epis- 
 copal service with dignity and devoutness, 
 and its choir has many sweet colored boy 
 singers. At St. Benedict, the Moor, the 
 black faces of the boy acolytes contrast 
 with the benignant white-haired Irish priest, 
 ind without need of words preach good- 
 
EARNING A LIVING 117 
 
 will to men. Only in this Catholic church 
 does one find white and black in almost 
 equal numbers worshipping side by side. 
 
 The great majority of the colored churches 
 are supported by their congregations, and 
 the minister or elder, or both, twice a Sun- 
 day, must call for the pennies and nickels, 
 dimes and quarters, that are dropped into 
 the plate at the pulpit's base. Contribu- 
 tors file past the table on which they place 
 their offering, emulation becoming a spur 
 to generosity. These collections are sup- 
 plemented by sums raised at entertainments 
 and fairs, and it is in this way, by the 
 constant securing of small gifts, that the 
 thousands are raised. 
 
 The church is a busy place and retains 
 its members, not only by its preaching, but 
 by midweek meetings. There are the class 
 meetings of the Methodists, the young peo- 
 ple's societies, the prayer meetings, and 
 the sermons preached to the secret benefit 
 organizations. Visiting sisters and brothers 
 attend to relief work, and standing at a 
 side table, sometimes picturesque with lighted 
 lantern, ask for dole for the poor. 
 
118 HALF A MAN 
 
 The Sunday-schools, while not so large 
 as the church attendance would lead one 
 to expect, involve much time and labor, in 
 their conduct. A colored church member 
 finds all his or her leisure occupied in church 
 work. I know a young woman engaged in 
 an exacting, skilled profession who spends 
 her day of rest attending morning service, 
 teaching in Sunday-school, taking part in 
 the young people's lyceum in the late after- 
 noon, and listening to a second sermon in 
 the evening. Occasionally she omits her 
 dinner to hear an address at the colored 
 Young Men's Christian Association. On 
 hot summer afternoons you may see colored 
 boys and girls and men and women crowded 
 in an ill-ventilated hall, giving ear to a fer- 
 vid exhortation that leads the speaker, at 
 the sentence's end, to mop his swarthy face. 
 The woods, the salt-smelling sea, the tamer 
 prettiness of the lawns of the city's park, 
 have not the impelling call of sermon or 
 hymn. If the whole of the Negro's summer 
 Sunday is to be given to direct religious 
 teaching, one wishes that it might take 
 place at the old time camp meeting, where 
 
EARNING A LIVING 119 
 
 there is fresh air and space in which to 
 breathe it. The first of Edward Everett 
 Hale's three rules of life as he gave them 
 to the Hampton students was, "Live all 
 you can out in the open air." The relig- 
 ious-minded New York Negro succumbs 
 easily to disease, and yet elects to spend 
 his day of leisure within doors. 
 
 With the exception of the Episcopalians, 
 the churches undertake little institutional 
 work. Money is lacking, and there is only 
 a feeble conviction of the value of the gymna- 
 sium, pool table, and girls' and boys' clubs. 
 The colored branches of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, however, are places 
 for recreation and instruction. The lines 
 that Evangelical Americans draw regarding 
 amusements, prohibiting cards and wel- 
 coming dominos, allowing bagatelle and 
 frowning upon billiards, must be interpreted 
 by some folk-lore historian to show their 
 reasonableness. Doubtless the extent to 
 which a game is used for gambling purposes 
 has much to do with its good or bad savor, 
 and pool and cards for this reason are 
 tabooed. Dancing is also frowned upon 
 
120 HALF A MAN 
 
 by many of the churches, while temperance 
 societies make active campaign for prohi- 
 bition. To New York's black folk, the 
 church-goers and they who stand without 
 are the sheep and the goats, and the gulf 
 between them is digged deep. 
 
 Of the five colored Episcopal churches, St. 
 Philip's and St. Cyprian's have parish houses. 
 St. Philip's has moved into a new parish 
 house on West One Hundred and Thirty- 
 Fourth Street, where with its large, well- 
 arranged rooms, its gymnasium, and its corps 
 of enthusiastic workers it will soon become 
 a powerful force in the Harlem Negro's life. 
 St. Cyprian's is under the City Episcopal 
 Mission, and has unusual opportunity for 
 helpfulness since it is separated only by 
 Amsterdam Avenue from the San Juan Hill 
 district and yet stands amid the whites. 
 Its clubs and classes, its employment agency, 
 its gymnasium, its luncheons for school 
 children, its beautiful church, are all prima- 
 rily for the Negroes; but the colored rector 
 has a friendly word for his white neighbors, 
 tow-headed Irish and German boys and girls 
 sit upon his steps, and his ministry has 
 
EARNING A LIVING 121 
 
 lessened the belligerent feeling between the 
 east and the west sides of Amsterdam 
 Avenue. St. David's Episcopal Church in 
 the Bronx has a fresh air home at White 
 Plains, cared for personally by the rector 
 and his wife, who spend their vacation with 
 tenement mothers and their children, the 
 tired but grateful recipients of their good- 
 will. 
 
 If there were ninety colored clergymen 
 in New York in 1900, as the census says, a 
 number must have been without churches, 
 itinerant preachers or directors of small 
 missions, supporting themselves by other 
 labor during the day. Those men who now 
 fill the pulpits of well-established churches 
 have been trained in theological schools of 
 good standing, for the ignorant "darky" of 
 the story who leaves the hot work of the 
 cotton field because he feels a "call" to 
 preach does not receive another from New 
 York. The colored minister in this city 
 works hard and long, and finds a wearying 
 number of demands upon his time. The 
 wedding and the funeral, the word of coun- 
 sel to the young, and of comfort to the aged, 
 
122 HALF A MAN 
 
 a multiplicity of meetings, two sermons 
 every Sunday, the continual strain of rais- 
 ing money, these are some of his duties. 
 With a day from fourteen to seventeen hours 
 long he earns as few men earn the meagre 
 salary put into his hand. But his position 
 among his people is a commanding one, and 
 carries with it respect and responsibility. 
 
 Strangers who visit colored churches to 
 be amused by the vociferations of the 
 preacher and the responses of the congre- 
 gation will be disappointed in New York. 
 Others, however, who attend, desiring to 
 understand the religious teaching of the 
 thoughtful Negro, find much of interest. 
 They hear sermons marked by great elo- 
 quence. In the Evangelical church the 
 preacher is not afraid to give his imagina- 
 tion play, and in finely chosen, vivid lan- 
 guage, pictures his thought to his people. 
 Especially does he love to tell the story of 
 a future life, of Paradise with its rapturous 
 beauty of color and sound, its golden streets, 
 its gates of precious stones, effulgent, radi- 
 ant. He dwells not upon the harshness, 
 but rather upon the mercy of God. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 123 
 
 A theological library connected with a 
 Calvinistic church, when recently cata- 
 logued, disclosed two long shelves of books 
 upon Hell and two slim volumes upon 
 Heaven. No such unloving Puritanism dom- 
 inates the Negro's thought. Hell's horrors 
 may be portrayed at a revival to bring the 
 sinner to repentance, but only as an aid to 
 a clearer vision of the glories of Heaven. 
 
 The Negro churches lay greater stress 
 than formerly upon practical religion; they 
 try to turn a fine frenzy into a determination 
 for righteousness. This was strikingly ex- 
 emplified lately in one of New York's col- 
 ored Baptist churches. During the solemn 
 rite of immersion the congregation began to 
 grow hysterical, or "happy," as they would 
 have phrased it; there were cries of "Yes, 
 Jesus," "We're comin', Lord," and swayings 
 of the body backward and forward. The 
 minister with loud and stirring appeal for 
 a time encouraged these emotions. Then 
 in a moment he brought quiet to his congre- 
 gation and called them to the consecration 
 of labor. Faith without works was vain. 
 Baptism was not the end, but only the begin- 
 
124 HALF A MAN 
 
 ning of their salvation. "You-all bleege 
 ter work," he said, "if yer gwine foller der 
 Lord. Ain't Jesus work in der carpenter 
 shop till he nigh on thirty year old? Den 
 one day he stood up (he ain't none er yer 
 two-by-fo' men) an' he tak off his blue apun 
 (I reckon he wore er apun like we-alls) an' 
 he goes on down ter der wilderness, an' 
 John der Baptist baptize him." 
 
 From oratory one turns naturally to 
 music. The feeling for rhythm, for melodi- 
 ous sound, that leads the Negro to use 
 majestic words of which he has not always 
 mastered the meaning, leads him also to 
 musical expression. He has an instinct 
 for harmony, and, when within hearing dis- 
 tance of any instrument, will whistle, not 
 the melody, however assertive, but will 
 add a part. 1 Those who have visited col- 
 ored schools, and especially the colored 
 schools of the far South where the pupils 
 are unfamiliar with other music than their 
 own, can never forget the exquisite, haunt- 
 ing singing. When a foreman wants to get 
 
 x See H. J. Wilson. "The Negro and Music," Outlook, 
 Dec. 1, 1906. 
 
EARNING A LIVING 125 
 
 energetic work from his black laborers he 
 sets them to singing stirring tunes. The 
 Negro has his labor songs as the sailor has 
 his chanties, and it would be impossible to 
 measure the joy coming to both through 
 musical expression. 
 
 In New York, despite their poverty, few 
 Negroes fail to possess some musical instru- 
 ment — a banjo perhaps, or a guitar, a 
 mandolin or zither, or it may be the highly 
 prized piano. Visiting of an evening in 
 the Phipps model tenement, one hears a 
 variety of gay tinkling sounds. And besides 
 the mechanical instruments there is always 
 the great natural instrument, the human 
 voice. Singing, though not as common in 
 the city as in the country, is still often heard, 
 especially in the summer, and remains musi- 
 cal, though New York's noise and cheap 
 and vulgar entertainments have an unhappy 
 fashion of roughening her children's voices. 
 
 Music furnishes a means of livelihood to 
 many Negroes and supplements the income 
 of many others. Boys contribute to the 
 family support by singing cheap songs in 
 saloons or even in houses of prostitution. 
 
126 HALF A MAN 
 
 A boy "nightingale" will earn the needed 
 money for rent while learning, all too quickly, 
 the ways of viciousness. Others, more care- 
 fully reared, sing at church or secret society 
 concert, perhaps receiving a little pay. 
 Men form male quartettes that for five or 
 ten dollars furnish a part of an evening's 
 entertainment. There are many Negro 
 musicians and elocutionists who largely 
 support themselves by their share in the 
 receipts from concerts and social gather- 
 ings. 
 
 We speak of men crossing the line when 
 they intermarry with the whites, but there 
 is another crossing of the line when some 
 Negro by his genius makes the world for- 
 get his race. Such a man is the artist, 
 Henry Tanner; and New York has such 
 Negro musicians. Mr. Harry Burleigh, the 
 baritone at St. George's, has won high rec- 
 ognition, not only as an interpreter, but as 
 a composer of music; and one of the richest 
 synagogues of the city has a Negro for its 
 assistant organist. There are five colored 
 orchestras in New York, the one conducted 
 by Mr. Walter A. Craig having toured 
 
EARNING A LIVING 127 
 
 successfully in New England and many other 
 northern states. 
 
 But the colored musician has usually 
 found his opportunity for expression and 
 for a living wage upon the stage. Probably 
 many of the actors noted on the census list 
 are musicians, and many of the musicians, 
 actors; the writer of the topical song having 
 himself sung it in vaudeville or musical 
 comedy. Few New Yorkers appreciate how 
 many of the tunes hummed in the street 
 or ground out on the hand-organ, have orig- 
 inated in Negro brains. "The Right Church 
 but the Wrong Pew," "Teasing," "Nobody," 
 "Under the Bamboo Tree," which Cole and 
 Johnson, the composers, heard the last 
 thing as they left the dock in New York, and 
 the first thing when they arrived in Paris, 
 these are a few of the popular favorites. 
 Handsome incomes have been netted by the 
 shrewder among these composers, and the 
 demand for their songs is continuous. 
 
 With a bright song and a jolly dance 
 comes success. Picking up the copy of the 
 New York Age, that lies on my desk, I find 
 jottings of twenty-four colored troupes in 
 
128 HALF A MAN 
 
 vaudeville in the larger cities of the North 
 and West. Three are at Proctor's and three 
 at Keith's. Their economic outlook is not 
 so hilarious as their songs, for transporta- 
 tion is expensive and bookings are uncer- 
 tain; yet pecuniarily these actors are far 
 better off than their more sober brothers 
 who stick to their elevators or their porters' 
 jobs. 
 
 Twenty years ago the Negro performer 
 probably had little anticipation of advancing 
 beyond minstrel work, in which he sang 
 loud, danced hard, and told a funny story. 
 S. H. Dudley, the leading comedian in the 
 "Smart Set" colored company, said in 
 1909: "When I started in business I had 
 no idea of getting as high as I am now. A 
 minstrel company came to the little town in 
 Texas where I was raised, and at once my 
 ambition fired me to become a musician. 
 So I bought a battered horn and began to 
 toot, to the great annoyance of my neighbors. 
 Then I secured an engagement with a min- 
 strel company whose cornet player had 
 fallen into the hands of the law; and now 
 here I am with one of the best colored shows 
 
EARNING A LIVING 129 
 
 ever gotten together and a starring tour 
 arranged for next season." The movement 
 from the minstrel show to the musical com- 
 edy, from the cheapest form of buffoonery to 
 attractive farce, and even to good comedy, 
 has been accomplished by a number of 
 colored comedians. Williams and Walker 
 may be considered the pioneers in this 
 movement, and the story of their success, 
 as Walker has told it, is a fine example of 
 what the Negro can do along the line of 
 decided natural aptitude. And it is impor- 
 tant to notice this, for today, in the educa- 
 tion of the race, aesthetic instincts are often 
 suppressed with Puritan vigor, and labor is 
 made ugly and unwelcome. 
 
 Bert Williams and George Walker, one a 
 British West Indian, the other a Westerner, 
 met in California where each was hanging 
 around a box manager's office, looking for a 
 job. Hardly more than boys, they secured 
 employment at seven dollars a week. That 
 was in 1889. In 1908 they made each 
 $250 a week, and in later times they have 
 doubled and quadrupled this. Their first 
 stage manager expected them to perform as 
 
130 HALF A MAN 
 
 the blacked-up white minstrels were perform- 
 ing, but the two boys soon saw that the 
 Negro himself was far more entertaining than 
 the buffoon portrayed by the white man. 
 They wanted to show the true Negro, and 
 billing themselves as the "real coons" (their 
 white rivals called themselves "coons") they 
 played in San Francisco with some success. 
 Later they came to New York, and at Koster 
 and Bial's made their first hit. 
 
 "Long before our run terminated," Walker 
 said in telling of those early days, "we dis- 
 covered an important fact: that the hope of 
 the colored performer must be in making a 
 radical departure from the old time 'darky' 
 style of singing and dancing. So we set 
 ourselves the task of thinking along new 
 lines. 
 
 "The first move was to hire a flat in 
 Fifty-third Street, furnish it, and throw our 
 doors open to all colored men who possessed 
 theatrical and musical ability and ambi- 
 tion. The Williams and Walker flat soon 
 became the headquarters of all the artistic 
 young men of our race who were stage- 
 struck. We entertained the late Paul Law- 
 
EARNING A LIVING 131 
 
 rence Dunbar, who wrote lyrics for us. 
 By having these men about us we had the 
 opportunity to study the musical and theat- 
 rical ability of the most talented members 
 of our race." 
 
 In 1893 the World's Fair was held at 
 Chicago, and on the "Midway" the visitor 
 saw races from all over the world. Here 
 was a Dahomey village, with strange little 
 huts, representative of the African home 
 life. The Dahomeyans themselves were late 
 in arriving, and American Negroes, some- 
 times with an added coat of black, were 
 employed to represent them. Among them 
 were Williams and Walker, who played 
 their parts until the real Dahomeyans arriv- 
 ing, they became in turn spectators and 
 studied the true African. This contact 
 with the dancing and singing of the primi- 
 tive people of their own race had an impor- 
 tant effect upon their art. Their lyrics 
 recalled African songs, their dancing took 
 on African movements, especially Walker's. 
 Any one who saw Walker in "Abyssinia," 
 the most African and the most artistic of 
 their plays, must have recognized the 
 
132 HALF A MAN 
 
 savage beauty of his dancing when he was 
 masquerading as an African king. 
 
 After the Dahomey episode the success 
 of the two men was continuous. "In 1902 
 and 1903," Walker said, "we had all New 
 York and London doing the cake walk." In 
 February, 1908, they appeared in "Ban- 
 danna Land," at the Majestic Theatre, and 
 remained there for six months. Only those 
 colored men who have made a steady, uphill 
 struggle for the chance to play good comedy, 
 know how important such recognition was 
 for the Negro. "Bandanna Land" was 
 probably the most popular light opera in 
 New York that winter next to "The Merry 
 Widow." The singing, especially that of 
 the male chorus, was often beautiful. Mrs. 
 Walker's dancing and charming acting were 
 delightful, the chorus girls were above the 
 average in beauty and musical expression, 
 and the two men who made the piece were 
 spontaneously, irresistibly funny; added 
 to this, unlike its successful rival, "Ban- 
 danna Land" was without a vulgar scene 
 or word. 
 
 This was the last time the two men played 
 
EARNING A LIVING 133 
 
 together. Walker became seriously ill, and 
 died in January, 1911. After their company 
 disbanded, Williams went back to the one- 
 piece act of vaudeville, but as a star in a 
 white troupe. His position as a permanent 
 actor in the "Follies of 1910" marks a new 
 departure for the colored comedian, a de- 
 parture won by great talent combined with 
 character and tact. 
 
 Since 1908 the Majestic has seen another 
 colored company, Cole and Johnson's, pre- 
 senting a half-Negro, half-Indian, musical 
 comedy, the "Red Moon." These two men, 
 for years in vaudeville, have written songs 
 for Lillian Russell, Marie Cahill, Anna Held, 
 and other popular musical comedy and 
 vaudeville singers. They have played for six 
 months continuously at the Palace Theatre, 
 London. Accustomed to writing for white 
 actors, their own plays are not so distinct- 
 ively African as Williams and Walker's. 
 Both Johnson and Cole are of the mulatto 
 type, and neither blackens his face. Cole 
 is one of the most amusing men in comedy 
 in New York. He is tall and very thin, 
 with a genius for finding lank and gro- 
 
134 HALF A MAN 
 
 tesque costumes that are delightfully incon- 
 gruous with his grave face. The words of 
 the musical comedies are his, the music, 
 Johnson's. He, too, has become seriously 
 ill, and his company has disbanded. In 
 three years the colored stage has suffered 
 serious loss, but we see forming new and 
 successful companies whose reputation will 
 soon be assured. 
 
 Comedy has always furnished a medium 
 for criticism of the foibles of the times, and 
 there are many sly digs at the white man 
 in the colored play. Ernest Hogan, now 
 deceased, better than any one else played 
 the rural southern darky. In the "Oyster- 
 man" we saw him in contact with a white 
 scamp who was intent upon getting his re- 
 cently acquired money. He was urged to 
 take stock in a land company, to buy where 
 watermelons grew as thick as potatoes, 
 and chickens were as common as sparrows. 
 The audience hated the white man heartily 
 and sided with the simple, kindly, black 
 youth, sitting with his dog at his side, on 
 his cabin steps. Behind boisterous laughter 
 and raillery the writers of these comedies 
 
EARNING A LIVING 135 
 
 often gain the sympathy of their hearers 
 for the black race. 
 
 In this attempt to show the occupational 
 life of the Negro, we have found that race 
 prejudice often proves a bar to complete 
 success, to full manhood. Something of this 
 is true with the actor as well as with the 
 laborer and the business man. In securing 
 entrance in vaudeville, color is at first an 
 advantage. The "darky" to the white man 
 is grotesquely amusing, and by rolling his 
 eyes, showing a glistening smile, and wear- 
 ing shoes that make a monstrosity of his 
 feet, the Negro may create a laugh where 
 the man with a white skin would be hooted 
 off the stage. And since the laugh is so 
 easily won, many colored actors become 
 indolent and content themselves, year after 
 year, with playing the part of buffoon. 
 But with the ambition to rise in his profes- 
 sion comes the difficult struggle to induce 
 the audience to see a new Negro in the black 
 man of today. The public gives the col- 
 ored man no opportunity as a tragedian, 
 demanding that his comedy shall border 
 always on the farcical. And what is de- 
 
136 HALF A MAN 
 
 manded of the actor is also demanded of the 
 musician. Writers of the scores of some 
 of our musical comedies are musicians of 
 superior training and ability, but rarely 
 are they permitted full expression. Mr. 
 Will Marion Cook, the composer of much of 
 the music of "Bandanna Land," for a few 
 moments gives a piece of exquisite orches- 
 tration. When the colored minister rises 
 and exhorts his quarrelling friends to be at 
 peace with one another, one hears a beauti- 
 ful harmony. I am told that Mr. Cook 
 declares that the next score he writes shall 
 begin with ten minutes of serious music. 
 If the audience doesn't like it, they can come 
 in late, but for ten minutes he will do some- 
 thing worthy of his genius. 
 
 However light-hearted a people, and how- 
 ever worthy of praise the entertainment 
 that brings a jolly, wholesome laugh, let 
 us hope that in the near future the Negro 
 will find a more complete expression for 
 his musical and histrionic gifts. Some actor 
 of commanding talent, whose claims cannot 
 be ignored, may reveal the larger life of 
 the race. The nineteenth century knew a 
 
EARNING A LIVING 137 
 
 great Negro actor, Ira Aldridge, a 'protege 
 and disciple of Edmund Kean. He played 
 Othello to Kean's Iago, and in the forties 
 toured Europe with his own company, 
 receiving high honors in Berlin and St. 
 Petersburg. 1 A dark-skinned African, of 
 immense power, physically and emotionally, 
 he made Desdemona cry out in real fear, 
 and caused Bassanio instinctively to shrink 
 as he demanded his pound of flesh. Today's 
 actor must be more subtle in his attack, 
 but it may be given to him to reveal the 
 thoughts at the back of the black man's 
 mind. The genius of Zangwill gave us the 
 picture of the children of the Ghetto; per- 
 haps from the theatre's seat the American 
 will first understand the despised black race. 
 
 1 William J. Simmons's, "Men of Mark." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Colored Woman as a Bread Winner 
 
 The life of the Negro woman of New York, 
 if she belong to the laboring class, differs in 
 some important respects from the life of the 
 white laboring woman. Generalizations on 
 so comprehensive a subject must, of course, 
 meet with many exceptions, but the observ- 
 ing visitor, familiar with white and colored 
 neighborhoods, quickly notes marked con- 
 trasts between the two, contrasts largely the 
 result of different occupational opportunities. 
 These pertain both to the married woman 
 and the unmarried working girl. 
 
 The generality of white women in New 
 York, wives of laboring men, infrequently 
 engage in gainful occupations. In the early 
 years of married life the wife relies on her 
 husband's wage for support, and within her 
 
 tiny tenement-flat bears and rears her chil- 
 
 138 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 139 
 
 clren and performs her household duties — 
 the sewing, cooking, washing, and ironing, 
 and the daily righting of the contracted 
 rooms. She is a conscientious wife and 
 mother, and rarely, either by night or by day, 
 journeys far from her own home. When un- 
 employment visits the family wage earner, 
 she turns to laundry work and day's cleaning 
 for money to meet the rent and to supply the 
 household with scanty meals; but as soon as 
 her husband resumes work she returns to 
 her narrow round of domestic duties. 
 
 After a score of these monotonous years 
 more prosperous times come to the house- 
 wife. Every morning two or three children 
 go out to work, and their wages make heavier 
 the family purse. Son and daughter, having 
 entered factory or store, bring home their 
 pay envelopes unbroken on Saturday nights, 
 and the augmentation of the father's wage 
 gives the mother an income to administer. 
 After the young people's wants in clothing 
 and entertainment have been in part sup- 
 plied, it becomes possible to buy new furni- 
 ture on the instalment plan, to hire a piano, 
 even to move into a better neighborhood. 
 
140 HALF A MAN 
 
 The earnings of a number of children, sup- 
 plementing the wage of the head of the 
 family, make life more tolerable for all. 
 
 These days, however, do not last long. 
 Sons and daughters marry and assume new 
 responsibilities; the husband, his best strength 
 gone, finds unemployment increasing; and 
 since saving, except for wasteful industrial 
 insurance, has seemed impossible without 
 sacrificing the decencies and pleasures of 
 the children, the end of the woman's married 
 life is likely to be hard and comfortless. 
 
 This rough description may fairly be taken 
 to represent the life of the average New 
 York white woman of the laboring class. It 
 is not, however, the life of the average col- 
 ored woman. With her, self-sustaining work 
 usually begins at fifteen, and by no means 
 ceases with her entrance upon marriage, 
 which only entails new financial burdens. 
 The wage of the husband, as we have seen, 
 is usually insufficient to support a family, 
 save in extreme penury, and the wife accepts 
 the necessity of supplementing the husband's 
 income. This she accomplishes by taking 
 in washing or by entering a private family 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 141 
 
 to do housework. Sometimes she is away 
 from her tenement nearly every day in the 
 week; again the bulk of her earnings comes 
 from home industry. Her day holds more 
 diversity than that of her white neighbor; 
 she meets more people, becomes familiar 
 with the ways of the well-to-do, — their 
 household decorations, their dress, their re- 
 finements of manner; but she has but few 
 hours to give to her children. With her 
 husband she is ready to be friend and help- 
 mate; but should he turn out a bad bar- 
 gain, she has no fear of leaving him, since 
 her marital relations are not welded by 
 economic dependence. An industrious, com- 
 petent woman, she works and spends, and in 
 her scant hours of leisure takes pride in keep- 
 ing her children well-dressed and clean. 
 
 At the second period of her married life, 
 when her boys and girls, few in number if 
 she be a New Yorker, begin to engage in 
 self-supporting work, her condition shows 
 less improvement than that of the white 
 woman of her class. Sometimes her chil- 
 dren hand her their whole wage, far oftener 
 they bring her only such part as they choose 
 
142 HALF A MAN 
 
 to spare. The strict accounting of the minor 
 to the parent, usual among Northerners in 
 the past, and today common among the 
 immigrant class, is not a part of the Negro's 
 training. Rather, as the race has attained 
 freedom it has copied the indulgent attitude 
 of the once familiar "master," and regrets 
 that its offspring must enter upon any work. 
 Children with this tradition about them use 
 the money they earn largely for the gratifica- 
 tion of their vanity, not for the lessening of 
 their mother's tasks. But a more potent 
 factor than lack of discipline keeps the 
 mother from being the administrator of the 
 family's joint earnings. White boys and 
 girls in New York enter work that makes it 
 possible and advantageous for them to dwell 
 at home; Negroes must go out to service, 
 accept long and irregular hours in hotel or 
 apartment, travel for days on boat or train. 
 The family home is infrequently available 
 to them, and money given in to it brings 
 small return. Under these circumstances it 
 is not strange if the mother must continue 
 her round of washing and scrubbing. 
 
 The last years of life of the Negro woman, 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 143 
 
 probably a little more than the last years of 
 the white, are likely to bring happiness. 
 With a mother at work a grandmother 
 becomes an important factor, and elderly 
 colored women are often seen bringing up 
 little children or helping in the laundry — 
 that great colored home industry. Accus- 
 tomed all their lives to hard labor, it is easy 
 for them to find work that shall repay their 
 support, and in their children's households 
 they are treated with respect and consider- 
 ation. 
 
 The contrast in the lives of the colored and 
 white married women is not more strongly 
 marked than the contrast in the lives of their 
 unmarried daughters and sisters. Unable to 
 enter any pursuit except housework, the 
 unskilled colored girl goes out to service or 
 helps at home with the laundry or sewing. 
 Factory and store are closed to her, and 
 rarely can she take a place among other 
 working girls. Her hours are the long, irreg- 
 ular hours of domestic service. She brings 
 no pay envelope home to her mother, the 
 two then carefully discussing how much 
 belongs rightfully for board, and how much 
 
144 HALF A MAN 
 
 may go for the new coat or dress, but takes 
 the eighteen or twenty dollars given her at 
 the end of the month, and quite by herself 
 determines all her expenditures. Far oftener 
 than any class of white girls in the city she 
 lives away from the parental home. 
 
 These are some of the differences found by 
 the observer who looks into the Negro and 
 the white tenement. They need not, how- 
 ever, rest alone upon any observer's testi- 
 mony. We have in the census abundant 
 statistics for their verification. Scattered 
 among the volumes on Population, Occupa- 
 tions, and Women at Work are many facts 
 concerning Negro women workers of New 
 York, all of them confirmatory of the descrip- 
 tion just given. We may note the most 
 important. 
 
 In 1900, whereas 4.2 per cent of the white 
 married women in New York were engaged 
 in gainful occupations, 31.4 per cent of the 
 Negro married women were earning their 
 living, over seven times as many in propor- 
 tion as the whites. 1 
 
 1 These figures are obtained by a combination of tables, 
 one in Population, Vol. II, Part II, p. 332, describing the whole 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 145 
 
 Again, in the total population of New 
 York's women workers, 80 per cent were 
 single, 10 per cent married, and 10 per cent 
 widowed and divorced; while among the 
 Negroes, the single women were only 53 
 per cent, the married 25 per cent, and the 
 widowed 22. 1 
 
 Statistics of the age period at which women 
 are at work, show the Negro's long continuing 
 wage-earning activity. Between sixteen and 
 twenty is a busy time for the women of both 
 races. Among the whites 59 per cent are 
 in gainful occupations, among the Negroes 
 66 per cent. But as the girl arrives at the 
 period when she is likely to marry, the 
 per cent of workers among the whites 
 drops rapidly, until for white women, 
 forty-five and over, it is 13.5, about one 
 in seven. With the colored, among the 
 women forty-five years of age and over, 53 
 
 of Greater New York, the other in Women at Work, pp. 266 
 to 275, describing Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. 
 The error through the omission of Richmond and Queens is 
 probably negligible. 
 
 1 Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 28, pp. 266 
 to 274. Among 800 married and widowed colored women 
 whom I myself visited, I found only 150, 19 per cent, who 
 were not engaged in gainful occupations. 
 
146 HALF A MAN 
 
 per cent, more than half, still engage in 
 gainful toil. 1 
 
 Family life can be studied in the census 
 table. While 59 per cent of the unmarried 
 white girls at work live at home, this is 
 found to be true of but 25 per cent of the 
 colored girls; that is, 75 per cent, three-quar- 
 ters of all the colored unmarried working 
 women, live with their employers or board. 2 
 
 The census volume on occupations reveals 
 at once the narrow range of the New York 
 colored woman's working life. Personal and 
 domestic service absorbs 90 per cent of her 
 numbers against 40 per cent among the 
 white. But before considering more fully 
 the colored girl at work, we need to notice 
 another statistical fact, the preponderance 
 in the city of Negro women over Negro 
 men. 
 
 Like the foreigner, the youth of the Negro 
 race comes first to the city to seek a liveli- 
 hood. The colored population shows 41 per 
 cent of its number between the ages of 20 
 
 federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 10, pp. 
 117 to 151. 
 
 2 Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 28, pp. 
 2GG to 275. 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 147 
 
 and 35. But unlike the foreigner, the Negro 
 women find larger opportunity and come in 
 greater numbers than the men. Their range 
 of work is narrow, but within it they can 
 command double the wages they receive at 
 home, and if they are possessed of average 
 ability, they are seldom long out of work. 
 With the immense growth of wealth in New 
 York the demand for servants continually 
 increases, and finding little response from the 
 white native born population, many mis- 
 tresses receive readily the services of the 
 English-speaking southern and West Indian 
 blacks. So the boats from Charleston and 
 Norfolk and the British West Indies bring 
 scores and hundreds of Negro women from 
 country districts, from cities where they have 
 spent a short time at service, girls with and 
 girls without experience, all seeking better 
 wages in a new land. 
 
 Mr. Kelly Miller was the first to call 
 attention to the presence in American cities 
 of surplus Negro women. 1 The phenomenon 
 is not peculiar to New York. Baltimore, 
 
 1 This is incorporated in a chapter in Mr. Miller's volume 
 on "Race Adjustment." 
 
148 HALF A MAN 
 
 Washington, New Orleans, all show the same 
 condition. In Atlanta the women number 
 143 to every hundred colored men. New 
 York shows 123 to every masculine one hun- 
 dred. These surplus women account in part 
 for the number of Negro women workers in 
 New York not living at home. Some are 
 with their employers, but others lodge in the 
 already crowded tenements, for the southern 
 servant, unaccustomed to spending the night 
 at her employer's, in New York also, fre- 
 quently arranges to leave her mistress when 
 her work is done. In their hours of leisure 
 the surplus women are known to play havoc 
 with their neighbors' sons, even with their 
 neighbors' husbands, for since lack of men 
 makes marriage impossible for about a fifth 
 of New York's colored girls, social disorder 
 results. Surplus Negro women, able to se- 
 cure work, support idle, able-bodied Negro 
 men. The lounger at the street corner, the 
 dandy in the parlor thrumming on his banjo, 
 means a Malindy of the hour at the kitchen 
 washboard. In a town in Germany, where 
 men were sadly scarce, I was told that a 
 servant girl paid as high as a mark to a 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 149 
 
 soldier to walk with her in the Hofgarten 
 on a Sunday afternoon. Colored men in 
 New York command their "mark," and girls 
 are found who keep them in polished boots, 
 fashionable coats, and well-creased trousers. 
 Could the Negro country boy be as certain 
 as his sister of lucrative employment in New 
 York, or could he oftener persuade her to 
 remain with him on the farm, he would 
 better city civilization. But the demand for 
 servants increases, and the colored girl con- 
 tinues to be attracted to the city where she 
 can earn and spend. 
 
 The table on the following page shows in 
 condensed form the occupations of the Negro 
 women in New York. As we see, the Negro 
 women number forty -four in every thousand 
 women workers. 
 
 Ninety per cent of all the Negro women 
 workers of New York are in domestic and 
 personal service. This includes a variety of 
 positions. Some Negro girls work in stores, 
 dusting stock, taking charge of cloak or 
 toilet rooms, scrubbing floors. Their hours 
 are regular, but the pay, five or six, or very 
 occasionally eight dollars a week, means a 
 
150 
 
 HALF A MAN 
 
 scanty livelihood without hope of advance- 
 ment. The position of maid in a theatre 
 where perquisites are larger is prized, and a 
 new and pleasant place is that of a maid on 
 
 Females Ten Years of Age and over, Engaged in 
 Gainful Occupations in New York 
 
 Professional service . . 
 
 Domestic and personal 
 
 service 
 
 Laundresses 
 
 Servants and waitresses 
 All others 
 
 Trade and transportation 
 
 Manufacturing and me- 
 chanical pursuits . . . 
 
 Dressmakers 
 
 Seamstresses 
 
 All others 
 
 Total including some oc- 
 cupations not specified . . 
 
 Total 
 
 Negro 
 
 22,422 
 
 281 
 
 146,722 
 
 14,586 
 
 16,102 
 
 3,224 
 
 103,963 
 
 10,297 
 
 24,657 
 
 1,065 
 
 65,318 
 
 106 
 
 132,535 
 
 1,138 
 
 37,514 
 
 813 
 
 18,108 
 
 249 
 
 76,913 
 
 76 
 
 367,437 
 
 16,114 
 
 Number to every 
 1000 workers 
 
 12 
 
 100 
 
 200 
 
 99 
 
 43 
 
 Between one 
 
 and two 
 
 7 
 22 
 14 
 
 1 
 
 44 
 
 Federal Census 1900: Occupations, Table 43, p. 638 
 
 a limited train. But the bulk of the girls 
 are servants in boarding-houses, or are with 
 private families as nurses, waitresses, cooks, 
 laundresses, maids-of-all-work, earning from 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 151 
 
 sixteen and eighteen to twenty-five and even 
 thirty dollars a month. Occasionally a very 
 skilful cook can command as high a monthly 
 wage as fifty dollars. 
 
 The colored girl is frequently found en- 
 gaged at general housework in a small apart- 
 ment. Her desire to return to her lodging 
 at night makes her popular with families 
 living in contracted space. With the con- 
 veniences of a New York flat, dumb-waiter, 
 clothes-dryer, gas, and electricity, general 
 housework is not severe. Work begins early, 
 seven at the latest, and lasts until the dinner 
 is cleared away, at half-past eight or nine. 
 Released then from further tasks, the young 
 girl goes to her tiny inner tenement room, 
 dons a fresh dress, and then, as chance or her 
 training determines, walks the streets, goes 
 to the theatre, or attends the class meeting 
 at her church. Entertainments among the 
 Negroes are rarely under way until ten 
 o'clock, and short hours of sleep in ill- 
 ventilated rooms soon weaken the vitality of 
 the new-comer. Housework under these 
 conditions does not create much ambition; 
 the mistress moves, flitting, in New York 
 
152 HALF A MAN 
 
 fashion, from one flat to another, and the 
 girl also flits among employers, changing 
 with the whim of the moment. 
 
 Few subjects present so fascinating a field 
 for discussion as domestic service, and the 
 housewife of today enters into it with energy, 
 sometimes decrying the modern working girl, 
 again planning household economics that 
 shall lure her from factory or shop. The 
 only point we need to consider now is the 
 dissatisfaction that results when 64 per cent 
 of the women of a race are forced by circum- 
 stances into one occupation. Those with na- 
 tive ability along this line succeed and make 
 others and themselves happy. The faithful, 
 patient, loyal Negro servant is well-known, 
 the black mammy has passed into American 
 literature, but not every colored woman can 
 wisely be given this position. Some of the 
 Negro girls who take up housework in New 
 York are capable of more intelligent labor, 
 and chafe under their limitations; others 
 have not the ability to do good housework; 
 for domestic service requires more mental 
 capacity than is demanded in many facto- 
 ries. In short, a great many colored girls in 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 153 
 
 New York are round pegs in square holes, 
 and the community is the loser by it. 
 
 Among these round pegs are girls who, 
 determining no longer to drudge in lonely 
 kitchens, contrive, as we shall see later, to 
 find positions at other more attractive repu- 
 table work. Others, deciding in favor of 
 material betterment at whatever cost, lower 
 their moral standard and secure easier and 
 more remunerative jobs. A well-paying 
 place, with short hours and high tips, at once 
 offers itself to the colored girl who is willing 
 to work for a woman of the demi-monde. 
 In the sporting house also she is preferred 
 as a servant, her dark complexion separating 
 her from other inmates. In 1858, Sanger 
 wrote in his "History of Prostitution," "The 
 servants (in these houses) are almost always 
 colored women. Their wages are liberal, 
 their perquisites considerable, and their 
 work light." Untrained herself, bereft of 
 home influence, with an ancestry that some- 
 times cries out her parent's weakness in the 
 contour and color of her face, the Negro girl 
 in New York, more even than the foreign 
 immigrant, is subject to degrading tempta- 
 
154 HALF A MAN 
 
 tion. The good people, who are often so 
 exacting, want her for her willingness to 
 work long hours at a lower wage than the 
 white; and the bad people, who are often so 
 carelessly kind, offer her light labor and 
 generous pay. It is small wonder that she 
 sometimes chooses the latter. 
 
 Not all the colored girls who work in 
 questionable places and with questionable 
 people take the jobs from choice; some are 
 sent without knowing the character of the 
 house they enter. A few years ago an agita- 
 tion was started for the protection of helpless 
 Negro immigrants who had fallen into the 
 hands of unscrupulous employment agencies. 
 A system existed, and still exists, by which 
 employment agencies were able to advance 
 the travelling expenses of southern girls, who 
 on their arrival in New York were held in 
 debt until the cost of the journey had been 
 many times repaid. Helpless in the power 
 of the agent, the new-comer was forced to 
 work where he wished. Under the city's 
 department of licenses some of the more 
 unscrupulous of these agencies have been 
 closed, and philanthropy has placed a visitor 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 155 
 
 at the docks to give aid and advice to un- 
 protected girls. But the danger is by no 
 means over. Those familiar with the sub- 
 ject assert that there is a proportionately 
 larger black slave than white slave traffic. 
 
 There is a gainful occupation for women, 
 black and white, too important to be left 
 unnoticed. The census does not tabulate it. 
 The best people strive to ignore it, and care- 
 fully sheltered girls grow up unconscious of 
 its existence. But the employment agent 
 understands its commercial value, and little 
 children in the red light neighborhood are as 
 familiar with it as with the vending of pea- 
 nuts on the street. To the poor it is always 
 an open door affording at least a temporary 
 respite from dispossession and starvation. 
 How many of the colored turn to it, we do 
 not know — certainly not a few. Some gain 
 from it a meagre livelihood, but others, for 
 a time at least, achieve comfort and even 
 luxury. 
 
 Among the round pegs that the square 
 holes so uncomfortably chafe are colored girls 
 of intelligence and charm who deliberately 
 join the anti-social class. Probably a few 
 
156 HALF A MAN 
 
 in any case would lead this life, but the his- 
 tory of many shows an unsuccessful struggle 
 for congenial work, ending with a choice of 
 material comfort however high the moral 
 cost. In One Hundred and Thirty-fourth 
 and One Hundred and Thirty -fifth Streets 
 are apartments where such girls live, two or 
 three together, surrounded by comforts that 
 their respectable neighbors who go out to 
 cook, wash, and iron may fruitlessly long 
 for all their lives. A colored philanthropic 
 worker, stopping by chance at the door of 
 one of these places, saw an old college friend. 
 "How can you do it! " she cried as she recog- 
 nized the life the girl was leading, "How can 
 you do it! I would rather kill myself scrub- 
 bing!" "There is the difference between 
 us," came the answer, "I am not willing to 
 die, and I cannot and will not scrub." 
 
 It is pleasant and encouraging to turn from 
 colored women who have given up the 
 struggle, to ambitious, successful workers. 
 Some among these are in the domestic ser- 
 vice group and enjoy with heartiness their 
 tasks as nurse-maid or cook. "This is my 
 piano day," an expert colored washerwoman 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 157 
 
 says of a Monday morning. Among the 
 domestic service workers, as classified by the 
 census, is the trained nurse, filling an increas- 
 ingly important position in New York. In 
 1909, Lincoln Hospital graduated twenty-one 
 colored nurses, some of whom remain in 
 New York to do excellent work. 
 
 In the professions, with the women as 
 with the men, the first place numerically is 
 occupied by performers upon the stage. So 
 much has been said of the Negro as an actor 
 that there is little to add. A rather better 
 class of colored than of white women join 
 musical comedy chorus troupes, for fifteen or 
 eighteen dollars a week that will attract a 
 Negro to the stage can be made by a white 
 girl in a dozen other ways. Lightness of 
 color seems a requisite for a stage position, 
 unless a dark skin is offset by very great 
 ability, as in the case of Aida Walker, one of 
 the most graceful and charming women in 
 musical comedy. 
 
 No record is kept of the number of colored 
 teachers in the city's public schools, but each 
 year Negro graduates from the normal col- 
 lege secure positions. These are found from 
 
158 HALF A MAN 
 
 the kindergarten through the primary and 
 up to the highest grammar grade. The 
 colored girl with intellectual ability, par- 
 ticularly if she comes of an old New York 
 family, is apt to turn to teaching. Her 
 novitiate is long, but a permanent certifi- 
 cate secured, she is sure of a good salary, 
 increasing with her years of service, and 
 ending in a pension. This path of security 
 has perhaps tended to keep New York col- 
 ored girls from going into other lines of 
 work. I have not yet found one who has 
 graduated from a university. Pratt Insti- 
 tute and the Teachers' College have colored 
 normal students, but they are usually from 
 the South or West, not New Yorkers born. 
 
 Philanthropy is opening up important lines 
 of opportunity to the Negro woman in New 
 York. In 1903, a colored graduate nurse 
 secured an interview with the Secretary of 
 the New York Charity Organization Society, 
 and so ably presented to him the need of 
 Negro visitors among Negroes that she was 
 appointed visiting nurse for the colored sick 
 who came under the notice of the Society. 
 In time the position changed into that of a 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 159 
 
 colored district visitor, other colored nurses 
 entering in numbers into district nursing 
 work. In 1910, three nurses were employed 
 by the Nurses' Settlement, two by the Asso- 
 ciation for Improving the Condition of the 
 Poor of Manhattan, and two by the District 
 Nursing Association of Brooklyn. With in- 
 creased knowledge of the sickness and suffer- 
 ing amid the Negro poor, and of their need 
 of proper care in their homes, the number of 
 these nurses will doubtless increase. Colored 
 women rank high among the trained nurses 
 of New York. 
 
 Other philanthropic work lately has been 
 undertaken by Negro women in New York. 
 In 1910, besides the nurses of whom we have 
 spoken, there were at the head of societies in 
 salaried positions, two settlement workers, 
 two matrons of day nurseries, two matrons of 
 homes in which much social work was carried 
 on, many employees in colored orphan 
 asylums, a teacher of domestic science in a 
 home-keeping flat, a traveller's aid visitor, a 
 playground instructor, besides workers in 
 various religious organizations. This does 
 not include the many colored women doing 
 
160 HALF A MAN 
 
 social and recreation work in the public 
 schools and on the city's playgrounds. In- 
 deed, the difficulty in New York is to secure 
 trained colored women for philanthropic 
 work, the Negro's attitude still being that 
 of the great majority of white women a few 
 years ago, that love for children and a sen- 
 timental kindness constitute the requisites 
 for work among the poor. But the school 
 of experience is training workers, and as 
 the schools of philanthropy of New York, 
 Boston, and Chicago also graduate colored 
 students, we shall have in the North the 
 intelligent, trained workers whom we need. 
 The little kindergarten girl who, with head 
 erect, walked past the jeering line of boys 
 to the green trees and soft grass of the 
 park has her counterpart in many young 
 women of New York. In 1909, a colored 
 girl graduated from one of the city's dental 
 colleges, the first woman of her race to take 
 this degree in the state. From the first 
 her success was remarkable. Colored girls 
 with ability and steady purpose and dogged 
 determination have won success in clerical 
 and business work; but the last large and 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 161 
 
 efficient group is that classified in the census 
 under mechanical and manufacturing pur- 
 suits : the dressmakers, seamstresses, milliners. 
 Colored women have always been known 
 as good sewers, and recently they have 
 studied at their trade in some of the best 
 schools. From 1904 to 1910, the Manhattan 
 Trade School graduated thirty-four colored 
 girls in dressmaking, hand sewing, and nov- 
 elty making. The public night school on 
 West Forty-sixth Street, under its able col- 
 ored principal, Dr. W. L. Bulkley, since 1907, 
 has educated hundreds of women in sewing, 
 dressmaking, millinery, and artificial flower- 
 making. While the majority of the pupils 
 have taken the courses for their private use, 
 a large minority are entering the business 
 world. They meet with repeated difficulties; 
 white girls refuse to work in shops with them, 
 private employers object to their color, but 
 they have, nevertheless, made creditable pro- 
 gress. The census reports the number of 
 Negro dressmakers to have quadrupled in 
 the United States from 1890 to 1900. Some- 
 thing comparable to this increase in dress- 
 making and allied trades has taken place 
 
162 HALF A MAN 
 
 among the Negroes of New York, and it has 
 come through education and persistence, and 
 the increase of trade among the colored group 
 itself. Numbers of these dressmakers and 
 milliners earn a livelihood, though often a 
 scanty one, from the patronage of the people 
 of their own race. 
 
 But despite her efforts and occasional suc- 
 cesses, the colored girl in New York meets 
 with severer race prejudice than the colored 
 man, and is more persistently kept from 
 attractive work. She gets the job that the 
 white girl does not want. It may be that the 
 white girls want the wrong thing, and that 
 the jute mill and tobacco shop and flower 
 factory are more dangerous to health and 
 right living than the mistress's kitchen, but 
 she knows her mind, and follows the business 
 that brings her liberty of action when the 
 six o'clock whistle blows. What she desires 
 for herself, however, she refuses to her colored 
 neighbor. Occasionally an employer objects 
 to colored girls, but the Manhattan Trade 
 School repeatedly, in trying to place its 
 graduates, has found that opposition to the 
 Negro has come largely from the working 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 163 
 
 girls. Race prejudice has even gone so far 
 as to prevent a colored woman from receiving 
 home work when it entailed her waiting in 
 the same sitting-room with white women. 
 Of course, this is not the universal attitude. 
 In friendly talks with hundreds of New 
 York's white women workers, I have found 
 the majority ready to accept the colored 
 worker. Jewish girls are especially tolerant. 
 They believe that good character and decent 
 manners should count, not color; but an 
 aggressive, combative minority is quite sure 
 that no matter how well educated or virtu- 
 ous she may be, no black woman is as good 
 as a white one. So the few but belligerent 
 aristocrats triumph over the many half- 
 ashamed, timid democrats. 
 
 The shirtwaist makers' strike of 1910 was 
 so profoundly important in its breaking 
 down of feeling between nationalities, its 
 union of all working women in a common 
 cause, that the colored girl, while very 
 slightly concerned in the strike itself, may 
 profit by the more generous feeling it engen- 
 dered. Certainly an entrance into store and 
 workshop would be to her immense advan- 
 
164 HALF A MAN 
 
 tage. She needs the discipline of regular 
 hours, of steady training, of order and sys- 
 tem. She needs also to become part of a 
 strong labor group, to share its working 
 class ideal, to feel the weight of its moral 
 opinion; instead of looking into the mirror 
 of her wealthy mistress, she needs to reflect 
 the aspirations of the strong, earnest women 
 who toil. 
 
 Before bringing the story of the life of the 
 New York colored working woman to a 
 close, it may not be amiss to look closely at 
 the discrimination practised against her, not 
 only in her work, but in her daily life. The 
 Negro comes North and finds himself half a 
 man. Does the woman, too, come to be 
 but half a woman? What is her status in 
 the city to which she turns for opportunity 
 and larger freedom? 
 
 Four years ago, within a few hours' time, 
 two stories were told me, illustrative of the 
 colored woman's status. Neither occurred 
 in the city of New York, but both are indica- 
 tive of its temper. The first I heard from 
 a woman skilled in a difficult profession, a 
 Canadian now residing in the United States, 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 165 
 
 and the descendant of a fugitive slave. 
 Her youthful companions had all been white, 
 and while an African in the darkness of her 
 skin and her musical voice, her rearing had 
 been that of an Englishwoman. "Shortly 
 after coming to New York, I went for the 
 first time," she told me, "to a little resort on 
 the Jersey coast. A board walk flanked the 
 ocean, and on the other side were shops 
 and places of amusement. Going out one 
 morning with two companions, a colored 
 man and woman, we turned into an enclosure 
 to examine a gaily painted merry-go-round. 
 The place was open to the public, and a few 
 nursery maids with their charges were seated 
 about. The man in our party, interested in 
 the mechanism of the machine, went up to 
 it and began to explain it to us. Quite sud- 
 denly a rough fellow, in charge of the place, 
 walked over and called out, 'Get out of here! 
 We don't allow niggers.' The attack, to me 
 at least, was so overwhelming that I did not 
 move at once. Thereupon I was again 
 called 'nigger,' and ordered out. 
 
 "When I reached the beach, I asked my 
 companions to leave me, and I sat on a bench 
 
166 HALF A MAN 
 
 looking upon the waves. After a time an 
 old woman came to my side, and said a little 
 timidly, 'What are you thinking about, 
 dearie?' Looking in her face I saw that she 
 feared that I would commit suicide. 'I am 
 thinking,' I said turning to her, 'that I wish 
 the ocean might rise up and drown every 
 white person on the face of the earth.' 'Oh, 
 you mustn't say that,' she cried horrified, 
 and left me. After I cannot tell how many 
 minutes or hours, I returned to my boarding- 
 house, and then to my home in New York. 
 I had had a great many white friends in my 
 native home; I had played with them, eaten 
 with them, slept with them. Now I de- 
 stroyed their letters, and resolved never to 
 know them again. That was my first affront 
 in the United States, and while I have 
 learned to feel somewhat differently, a little 
 to discriminate, I can never forget that the 
 white people in the North stand for the 
 insult which was cast upon me." 
 
 On the evening of the same day I had 
 learned of this happening, a man from a 
 prominent college in New York State told 
 me of a Negro classmate. "He was a pleas- 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 167 
 
 ant, intelligent fellow from the South," he 
 said, "and while I never knew him well, I 
 was always glad to see him. One day, at 
 commencement time, when we were all hav- 
 ing our relatives about, he boarded my car 
 with a young colored woman, evidently his 
 sister. Without a thought I rose, lifted my 
 hat, and gave her my seat. Never again 
 shall I see such a look of gratitude as that 
 which lighted up his face when he bowed 
 in acknowledgment of my courtesy. It re- 
 vealed the race question to me, and yet I 
 had performed only the simplest act of a 
 gentleman." 
 
 In these two incidents we see the unde- 
 cided, perplexing position of the Negro 
 woman in New York. Today she may be 
 turned out of a public resort as a "nigger," 
 tomorrow she may receive the dues of a 
 gentlewoman. And since, while I write, I 
 hear the cry of a class in the community who 
 adjudge the expulsion necessary since the 
 other course must lead at once to social 
 equality, I make haste to add that the second 
 story did not end in wedlock. As far as I 
 have seen, it never does. Intermarriage of 
 
168 HALF A MAN 
 
 white and black in New York is so slight as 
 to be a negligible quantity, but amalgama- 
 tion between the two races is not uncommon. 
 And this we may say with certainty, the 
 man most blatant against the "nigger" in 
 New York as all over the country is the 
 man most ready to enter into illicit relation- 
 ship with the woman whom he claims to 
 despise. The raising of the hat to the 
 colored woman brings a diminution in sexual 
 immorality. 
 
 If the Negro civilization of New York is 
 to be lifted to a higher level, the white race 
 must consistently play a finer and more 
 generous part toward the colored woman. 
 There are many inherent difficulties against 
 which she must contend. Slavery deprived 
 her of family life, set her to daily toil in the 
 field, or appropriated her mother's instincts 
 for the white child. She has today the 
 difficult task of maintaining the integrity 
 and purity of the home. Many times she 
 has succeeded, often she has failed, some- 
 times she has not even tried. A vicious 
 environment has strengthened her passions 
 and degraded her from earliest girlhood. 
 
THE COLORED WOMAN 169 
 
 Beyond any people in the city she needs all 
 the encouragement that philanthropy, that 
 human courtesy and respect, that the fellow- 
 ship of the workers can give, — she needs her 
 full status as a woman. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Rich and Poor 
 
 Of the many nations and races that dwell 
 in New York none, with the exception of 
 the Chinese, is so aloof from us in its social 
 life as the Negro. The childish recollec- 
 tion of an old school friend, recently related 
 to me, well illustrates this. Across the way 
 from where she lived there was a house 
 occupied by a family of mulattoes. They 
 were the quietest, and least obtrusive people 
 on the block, and the wife, who was known 
 to be very beautiful, on the rare occasions 
 when she left her home, was always veiled. 
 The husband was little seen, and the child, 
 a shy boy, never played on the street. For 
 years the family lived aloof from their 
 neighbors, the subject of hushed and mysteri- 
 ous questioning. 
 
 Probably had one of the white women 
 
 dropped in some day to say good-morning 
 
 170 
 
RICH AND POOR 171 
 
 or to borrow a recipe book, the mystery 
 would have been wholly dispelled, — a pity 
 surely for the children. Few of New York's 
 citizens are so American as the colored, few 
 show so little that is unusual or picturesque. 
 The educated Italian might have in his 
 home some relic of his former country, the 
 Jew might show some symbol of his relig- 
 ion; but the Negro, to the seeker of the 
 unusual, would seem commonplace. The 
 colored man in New York has no associa- 
 tions with his ancient African home, no 
 African traditions, no folk lore. The days 
 of slavery he wishes completely to forget, 
 even to the loss of his exquisite plantation 
 music. He is ambitious to be conventional 
 in his manners, his customs, striving as far 
 as possible to be like his neighbor — a dis- 
 tinctly American ambition. In consequence, 
 after indicating the lines along which he has 
 achieved economic success, one finds little 
 to describe in the lives of the well-to-do 
 that will be of interest. And yet this sketch 
 would be open to criticism if, after so long 
 a survey of the working class, it gave no 
 space to those Negroes who have achieved 
 
172 HALF A MAN 
 
 a fair degree of wealth and leisure; and per- 
 haps the very recital of the likeness of these 
 people to those about them may be of im- 
 portance, for the great mass of white Amer- 
 icans are like a vivacious Kentuckian of my 
 acquaintance, who, on learning something of 
 a well-to-do Negro family, assured me that 
 she knew less of such people than she did 
 of the Esquimaux. 
 
 Mr. William Archer, in his book, "Through 
 Afro- America," describes a round of visits 
 to southern Negro homes, where, with touch- 
 ing pride, his hostesses show their ma- 
 terial wealth, or rather the material wealth of 
 their race as embodied in drawing-room, 
 dining-room, and bedroom. There seemed 
 to be nothing remarkable about the rooms 
 unless their very existence was remarkable. 
 So the interiors of colored homes in New 
 York would reveal nothing to mark them 
 from the homes of their neighbors, save per- 
 haps the universal presence of some musical 
 instrument. In Brooklyn, the Bronx, and 
 in the Jersey suburbs, Negroes buy and rent 
 houses, sometimes with a few of their race in 
 close proximity, sometimes with white neigh- 
 
RICH AND POOR 173 
 
 bors only on the block. Brooklyn seems 
 always to have shown less race antagonism 
 than Manhattan (where, indeed, anything 
 but the apartment is beyond the pocket- 
 book of people of modest means), and it 
 has been in Brooklyn for the past three 
 generations that the well-to-do colored fam- 
 ilies with their children have chiefly been 
 found. 
 
 Much pleasant hospitality and entertain- 
 ment take place behind these modest doors. 
 Visitors are common, relatives from the east 
 and west and south, and little dinner and 
 supper parties are numerous. If church dis- 
 cipline does not interfere, the women have 
 their afternoons of whist, and despite church 
 discipline, dancing is very common, few en- 
 tertainments proving successful without it. 
 To play well upon some musical instrument 
 is almost a universal accomplishment, and, 
 as with the Germans, families and friends 
 meet the oftener for this harmonious bond. 
 
 The social life of the well-to-do colored 
 family generally centres about the church, 
 and with a regularity unusual among the 
 white people, father and mother and chil- 
 
174 HALF A MAN 
 
 dren attend the Sunday and week-day meet- 
 ings. Colored society is also at the period 
 of the bazaar and fair, the concert and 
 dramatic entertainment. Money is raised 
 by this means for the church, the private 
 charity, or to supplement the dues of the 
 mutual benefit society. There are a number 
 of Negroes in the different large cities who 
 support themselves by concerts and readings, 
 appearing at benefits in the North and 
 South, where they receive a third or a half of 
 the receipts. Amateur performances are also 
 common. A young New York college man, 
 one winter evening, saw two refined, remark- 
 ably well-dressed colored women turn in at 
 the entrance of the Grand Central Palace. 
 Purchasing a ticket for the benefit, as it 
 proved, of a colored day nursery (the enter- 
 tainment netted $2300), he followed them 
 to find himself in the Afro-American social 
 world. For while the amateur dancing 
 and singing upon the stage were pretty 
 and attractive, the young man was far more 
 interested in the audience. "And the dis- 
 appointing thing about it," he remarked 
 in telling of it afterwards, "was that they 
 
RICH AND POOR 175 
 
 were exactly like other people." To use the 
 newspaper phrase, "there was no 'story.' 
 They were a group of Americans, trained in 
 the social conventions of their own land. 
 
 There are many secret and benefit soci- 
 eties among the Negroes in New York. 
 The Masons have nine meeting places; the 
 Elks, ten lodges. The Odd Fellows have 
 twenty-two places of meeting. The United 
 Order of True Reformers, a strong Negro 
 organization in the South, where it con- 
 ducts large business enterprises, has forty- 
 four head-quarters in church and hall and 
 private house, where meetings are held twice 
 a month. Many benefit societies are closely 
 associated with the churches. Colored men 
 and women are very busy with their mul- 
 titudinous church and society and benefit 
 meetings. I remember once attending an 
 evening service at a colored church when 
 the minister preached the sermon to the 
 benefit orders of St. Luke's and the Gal- 
 ilean Fishermen. The officers, some of them 
 carrying spears with blue and red and white 
 trimmings, marched down the aisle and 
 took their seats at the front of the pulpit. 
 
176 HALF A MAN 
 
 Their leader was in purple, wearing a huge 
 badge like a breastplate with yellow and 
 green stones. The women, equally promi- 
 nent with the men, were dressed one in 
 yellow with green over it, and broad purple 
 bands, two in white with golden crowns. 
 The pageant was very pretty, even beauti- 
 ful, but too artless in its simple enjoyment 
 of color and display for the conventional 
 society of New York, and the colored "four 
 hundred" were not in it. 
 
 Who are the four hundred in New York's 
 colored society? An outsider would be 
 very bold who should attempt to answer. 
 Twenty-five years ago the New Yorker born, 
 especially the descendant of some prominent 
 anti-slavery worker, would have held fore- 
 most social position. The taint of slavery 
 was far removed from these people, who 
 looked with scorn upon arrivals from the 
 South. Many were proud of their Indian 
 blood, and told of the freedom that came 
 to their black ancestors who married Long 
 Island Indians. But these old New York 
 colored families, sometimes bearing historic 
 Dutch and English names, have diminished 
 
RICH AND POOR 177 
 
 in size and importance as have the old white 
 families beside them. The younger genera- 
 tion has gone west, or has died and left 
 no issue. And into the city has come a 
 continual stream of Southerners and more 
 recently West Indians, some among them 
 educated, ambitious men and women, full 
 of the energy and determination of the 
 immigrant who means to attain to promi- 
 nence in his new home. These new-comers 
 occupy many of the pulpits, are admitted 
 to the bar, practise medicine, and become 
 leaders in politics, and their wives are quite 
 ready to take a prominent part in the social 
 world. They meet the older residents, and 
 the various groups intermingle, though not 
 without some friction. Like a country vil- 
 lage, the New York Negro social world 
 knows the happenings of its neighbors, 
 gossips over their shortcomings, rejoices, 
 though with something of jealousy, over 
 their successes, and has its cliques, its many 
 leaders, but also its broad-minded spirits 
 who strive to bring the whole village life 
 into harmony. 
 
 As we have learned from a study of the 
 
178 HALF A MAN 
 
 occupational life of the Negro, the majority 
 of men and women of means are in the 
 professional class, or in the city or federal 
 service. Such positions do not carry with 
 them large incomes, and remembering the 
 high cost of living in New York, and the 
 exorbitant rental paid by black men, we 
 can see that, gauged by the white man's 
 standard, the Negro with his two or three or 
 four thousand dollars a year is poor. Yet 
 with his very limited income the demands 
 upon him are enormous. In the first place, 
 he must educate his children, and this means 
 a large expenditure, for only in the technical 
 schools or the college can his boy or girl be 
 prepared for a successful career. The white 
 boy may find some business firm that will 
 give him a chance of advancement, but the 
 colored boy must receive such an educa- 
 tion as shall fit him to start an enterprise 
 by himself, unless he enters public service. 
 So the trade or professional school or col- 
 lege absorbs the savings of many years. 
 
 The church is another large recipient of 
 the Negro's slender means. Watching the 
 dimes and quarters drop into the contribu- 
 
RICH AND POOR 179 
 
 tion plate as the dark-faced congregation 
 files past the pulpit on a Sunday evening, 
 one wonders whether any other people in 
 America willingly give so large an amount 
 of their income to their religious organiza- 
 tions. And not only will money be requested 
 for the church's need, but special offerings 
 will be given to home and foreign mis- 
 sion work. In 1907, the African Methodist 
 Church alone raised $36,000 for home and for- 
 eign missions. The Baptists raised $44,000. 
 Educational work demands a share : the Afri- 
 can Methodists support twenty schools, the 
 African Zion twelve, and the Negro Baptists 
 one hundred and twenty. The other de- 
 nominations do their share, and the Negroes 
 also give to the schools conducted by white 
 churches for their people. This money comes 
 from all over the country, and the well-to-do 
 New York Negro must contribute his part. 
 Home charities also help to drain the 
 Negro's purse. Manhattan and Brooklyn 
 have a number of colored philanthropies, 
 orphan asylums, old people's homes, rescue 
 missions, Young Men's and Young Women's 
 Christian Associations, and social settlements. 
 
180 HALF A MAN 
 
 Some are supported entirely by white people, 
 but the greater number receive some contri- 
 butions from the colored, and a few are 
 dependent for money upon that race alone. 
 Thousands of dollars are raised yearly, 
 among the well-to-do New York Negroes, 
 for these institutions. 
 
 Yet, with all these various philanthropic 
 activities, one too frequently hears that the 
 Negro does not support his own charities. 
 As though anything of the sort could be 
 expected of him! A little time ago, in 
 asking for money for settlement work among 
 Negroes, I was asked in turn by the exqui- 
 sitely dressed woman before me, whose furs 
 and gown and jewels must have represented 
 a year's salary of a school-teacher, the type 
 of wealthy woman among the colored, why 
 the well-to-do Negroes did not support the 
 settlement themselves. No such question 
 is asked when we demand money for work 
 among the Italians or the Jews, who have 
 incomparably larger means. Indeed, one 
 may question whether the Negro is not too 
 generous for the materialistic city of New 
 York, whether his successes would not be 
 
RICH AND POOR 181 
 
 greater were he niggardly toward himself 
 and others. He lives well, dresses well, 
 enjoys a good play, strives to give every 
 advantage to his children, helps the poor of 
 his race. To hold his own today in this 
 civilization, he needs to be taught to seek 
 first riches, waiting until much treasure has 
 been laid up before he allows philanthropy 
 to draw upon his bank account. 
 
 The traveller to the British West Indies 
 finds three divisions among the inhabitants, 
 white, colored, and black, each group hav- 
 ing a distinct social status. In the United 
 States, on the other hand, there are but two 
 groups, white and colored, or as the latter 
 is now more frequently designated, Negro, 
 the term thus losing its original meaning, 
 and becoming a designation for a race. 
 But while the white race usually makes no 
 social distinction between the light and the 
 dark Negro, classing all alike, social lines 
 are drawn within the color line. Years 
 ago these were more common than they are 
 now. Charles W. Chesnutt, the novelist, 
 tells some amusing and pathetic stories of 
 distinctions between colored and black. One 
 
182 HALF A MAN 
 
 of his mulatto heroes, upon finding, as he 
 thinks, that the congressman who is to call 
 upon his daughter is a jet black Negro in- 
 stead of the mulatto he was supposed to be, 
 to prevent a breach of hospitality, invents a 
 case of diphtheria in the family and quaran- 
 tines the house, only to learn later, to his 
 intense mortification, that he has committed 
 a mistake of identification, and that the 
 congressman is light after all. But this 
 story belongs with the last generation. 
 Black men, if they are distinguished citizens, 
 can enter any colored society, and they not 
 infrequently marry light wives. Success, a 
 position of probity and importance, these 
 are attributes that count favorably for the 
 suitor, and as they are quite as often in 
 the man of strong African lineage as in the 
 mulatto, they gain the desired end. 
 
 Within this little colored world of a few 
 thousand souls, a drop in the city's human 
 sea, there is great upheaval and turmoil. 
 The North is the Negro's centre for con- 
 troversy regarding his rightful position in the 
 commonwealth; and in the large cities, in 
 Boston and Chicago, Philadelphia and New 
 
RICH AND POOR 183 
 
 York, the battle rages. The little society is 
 often divided into hostile camps regarding 
 party politics or the acceptance of a gov- 
 ernment position that brings the suspicion 
 of a bribe. Political, economic, educational 
 matters as they affect the black race, these 
 are the subjects that fill the mind of the 
 thoughtful colored man and woman. 
 
 In his "Souls of Black Folk," Dr. Du Bois 
 describes the white man's tactlessness when, 
 as always, he approaches the Negro with a 
 question regarding his race. But the Negro, 
 apart from his personal home affairs, im- 
 presses the outsider as having little else as 
 subject for conversation. World politics, 
 these concern him only as they affect the 
 race question. Australia is a country where 
 the government excludes Africans. England 
 rules in South Africa and has lately recog- 
 nized the right of African disfranchisement. 
 Germany in Africa is cruel to black men. 
 The Latin people know no color line. At 
 home, the conflict of capital and labor is 
 important as the Negro wins or loses in the 
 economic struggle; the enfranchisement of 
 woman is wise or unwise as it would affect 
 
184 HALF A MAN 
 
 Negro enfranchisement, one colored thinker 
 arguing against it since it would double the 
 white vote in the South where the Negro has 
 no political rights; literature is the poetry 
 of Dunbar, the writing of Washington and 
 Du Bois, the literature of the Negro ques- 
 tion, and art is largely comprised in Tan- 
 ner's paintings. 
 
 This picture should not imply that the 
 colored people of means are without the 
 possibility of wide culture and sympathy. 
 They are perhaps more sympathetic by 
 nature than the white people about them. 
 But each year, as the white American grows 
 increasingly conscious of race, as he argues 
 on racial differences, the Negro feels his 
 dark face, is sensitive to every disdainful 
 look, and separates himself from the people 
 about him and their problems. 
 
 There is a struggle against this. The 
 majority of white people have heard, in a 
 vague way, that there is a difference of 
 opinion in the Negro world; and again, 
 vaguely, that it takes the form of opposition 
 to Dr. Booker T. Washington and industrial 
 training. But the difference of opinion 
 
RICH AND POOR 185 
 
 among the Negroes is a difference of ideals, 
 and reaches far beyond the controversy of 
 industrial or cultural training, or the ques- 
 tion of individual leadership. It is difficult 
 to formulate, inasmuch as few, if any, 
 Negroes hold logically to one ideal wholly 
 to the exclusion of the other. They cannot 
 be logical and live. But their division into 
 radical and conservative is too important to 
 omit; especially since, as we have seen, there 
 is nothing in their social life to distinguish 
 them from their neighbors; only in their 
 thoughts are thej 7 aloof from us — aliens 
 upon whose shoulders is the problem of a 
 race. 
 
 How can one explain these two ideals? 
 Roughly, they accept or reject segregation. 
 The first looks upon the black man in Amer- 
 ica, for many generations at least, as a race 
 apart. Recognizing this, the race must in- 
 creasingly grow in self -efficiency. It must 
 run its own businesses, own its banks, its 
 groceries, its restaurants, have its dress- 
 makers, milliners, tailors; it must establish 
 factories where it shall employ only colored 
 men and women ; its children shall be brought 
 
186 HALF A MAN 
 
 into the world by colored doctors, taught by 
 colored teachers, buried by colored under- 
 takers. Education, along industrial lines, 
 shall help train the worker to this efficiency, 
 and a proper race pride shall give him the 
 patronage of the Negroes about him. When, 
 as will of course happen in the majority of 
 cases, the Negro works for the white man, 
 he must consider himself and his race. He 
 must not go out on strike when the white 
 man strives for higher wages; he is justified, 
 if he is willing to risk a broken head, in 
 filling the place of the striking workman, for 
 he has to look after his own concerns. 
 
 The second point of view resists segre- 
 gation. It believes that the Negro should 
 never cease to struggle against being treated 
 as a race apart, that he should demand the 
 privileges of a citizen, free access to all 
 public institutions, full civil and political 
 rights. As a workman, he should have the 
 opportunity of other workmen, his training 
 should be the training of his white neighbor, 
 and in business and the professions he should 
 strive to serve white as well as black. And 
 just as in the battle-field he fights in a com- 
 
RICH AND POOR 187 
 
 mon cause with his white comrade, so in the 
 struggle for better working class conditions 
 he should stand by the side of the laborer, 
 regardless of race. Believing these things 
 and finding that America fails to meet his 
 demands, he thinks it should be his part to 
 struggle for his ideal, vigorously to protest 
 against discrimination, and never, compla- 
 cent, to submit to the position of inferiority. 
 
 As I have said, few men hold logically to 
 either of these ideals, and as that of acqui- 
 escence to present conditions is naturally 
 popular with the whites, who are themselves 
 responsible for discrimination, material suc- 
 cess sometimes means a departure from the 
 aggressive to the submissive attitude. How- 
 ever, the whole question of the Negro as a 
 wage earner is yet scarcely understood by 
 this small professional and business class. 
 They are in turmoil, in a virile struggle, 
 harsh, bewildering, baffling. 
 
 "I cannot conceive what it would mean 
 not to be a Negro," a prominent New York 
 colored man once said to me. "The white 
 people think and feel so little; their life 
 lacks an absorbing interest." 
 
188 HALF A MAN 
 
 This is the characteristic fact of the life 
 of the well-to-do Negro in New York. He 
 is not permitted to go through the city streets 
 in easy comfort of body or mind. Some 
 personal rebuff, some harsh word in news- 
 paper or magazine, quickens his pulse and 
 rouses him from the lethargy that often 
 overtakes his comfortable white neighbor. 
 Looking into the past of slavery, watching 
 the coming generation, the most careless of 
 heart is forced into serious questioning. A 
 comfortable income and the intelligence to 
 enjoy the culture of a great city do not bring 
 to the Negro any smug self-satisfaction; only 
 a greater responsibility toward the problem 
 that moves through the world with his dark 
 face. 
 
 Before turning to our last topic, the Negro 
 and the Municipality, we ought to note two 
 further characteristics of the Negro in New 
 York. 
 
 There are certain statistics quoted by 
 every writer upon the Negro, statistics of 
 mortality and crime. We have noted these 
 for the child, but not as yet for the Negroes 
 as a whole. They have been left until this 
 
RICH AND POOR 
 
 189 
 
 point in our study that we may view them 
 in relation to what we have learned of the 
 Negro's economic condition and his environ- 
 ment. 
 
 Looking for criminal statistics first, we 
 find them difficult to obtain in New York. 
 The courts' reports do not classify by color, 
 but we can learn something from the census 
 enumeration of 1904 of the prisoners in the 
 New York County Penitentiary and the New 
 York County Workhouse. These are short 
 term offenders sent up from the city of New 
 York. The enumeration is as follows: 
 
 New York County Penitentiary (Blackwell's Island) 
 
 
 Total 
 
 Males 
 
 Females 
 
 Per cent 
 Total 
 
 Per cent 
 Females 
 
 White 
 
 Colored 
 
 582 
 52 
 
 533 
 33 
 
 49 
 19 
 
 91.8 
 8.2 
 
 8.4 
 36.5 
 
 New York County Workhouse 
 
 White . 
 Colored 
 
 1126 
 41 
 
 870 
 12 
 
 256 
 29 
 
 96.5 
 3.5 
 
 22.7 
 70.7 
 
 In view of the proportion of Negroes to 
 whites in Manhattan, two per cent, we find 
 
190 HALF A MAN 
 
 the percentage of colored prisoners high, but 
 no higher than we expect when we remember 
 that the Negro occupies the lowest plane in 
 the industrial community, "the plane which 
 everywhere supplies the jail, the peniten- 
 tiary, the gallows." x But the very large 
 percentage of crime among colored women 
 calls for grave consideration. In the work- 
 house, imprisoned for fighting, for drunken- 
 ness, for prostitution, the colored women 
 more than double in number the colored 
 men. Here is a condition that we noted 
 in the Children's Court records: an unduly 
 large percentage of disorderly and depraved 
 colored female offenders. 
 
 We have already touched upon the subject 
 of morality among colored women. Various 
 causes, some of which we have noted, go to 
 the making up of this high percentage of 
 crime. The Negroes themselves believe the 
 basic cause to be their recent enslavement 
 with its attendant unstable marriage and 
 parental status. They point to the centuries 
 of healthful home relationships among Amer- 
 
 1 Quincy Ewing, "The Heart of the Race Problem," 
 Atlantic Monthly, March, 1909. 
 
RICH AND POOR 191 
 
 icans and Europeans, and contrast them with 
 the thousands upon thousands of yearly 
 sales of slaves that but two generations ago 
 disrupted the Negro's attempts at family 
 life. With this heritage they believe that 
 it is inevitable that numbers of their women 
 should be slow to recognize the sanctity of 
 home and the importance of feminine virtue. 
 
 The mortality figures for the New York 
 Negro are more striking than the figures for 
 crime. In 1908 the death rate for whites in 
 the city was 16.6 in every thousand; for 
 colored (including Chinese), 28.9, almost 
 double the white rate. The Negroes' great- 
 est excess over the white was in tuberculosis, 
 congenital debility, and venereal diseases as 
 the table on the following page shows. 
 
 The Negro's inherent weakness, his in- 
 ability to resist disease, is a favorite topic 
 today with writers on the color question. 
 A high mortality is indeed a matter for grave 
 concern, but we may question whether these 
 figures show inherent weakness. If a new 
 disease attacks any group of people, it causes 
 terrible decimation, and tuberculosis and 
 venereal diseases, the white man's plagues, 
 
192 
 
 HALF A MAN 
 
 have proved terribly destructive to the black 
 man. But recalling the conditions under 
 which the great majority of the colored race 
 
 New York, 1908. 
 
 White. 
 
 Colored. 
 
 Number of deaths from all causes per 1000 
 population 
 
 16.6 
 
 136. 
 
 126 
 91.8 
 78.3 
 76.7 
 45.5 
 24.5 
 23.7 
 19. 
 7.3 
 4. 
 
 367.2 
 
 28.9 
 
 Number of deaths per 1000 deaths: 
 
 Tuberculosis 
 
 232.8 
 
 Pneumonia 
 
 136.3 
 
 Diarrhoea and enteritis 
 
 79 
 
 Bright's disease 
 
 56.5 
 
 Heart disease 
 
 83.4 
 
 Cancer 
 
 24.8 
 
 Congenital debility 
 
 34.1 
 
 Diphtheria and croup 
 
 15. 
 
 Scarlet fever 
 
 3.2 
 
 Typhoid 
 
 6.9 
 
 Venereal diseases 
 
 13.4 
 
 All others 
 
 314.6 
 
 
 
 
 1000.0 
 
 1000.0 
 
 lives in New York, the long hours of labor, 
 the crowded rooms, the insufficient food, we 
 find abundant cause for a high death rate. 
 For poverty and death go hand in hand, and 
 the proportion of Negroes in New York who 
 live in great poverty far exceeds the propor- 
 tion of whites. 1 
 
 1 The statistician, Mr. I. B. Rubinow, in a discussion of 
 
RICH AND POOR 193 
 
 The students at Hampton Institute sing 
 an old plantation song that runs like this: 
 
 "If religion was a thing that money could buy, 
 The rich would live and the poor would die. 
 But my good Lord has fixed it so 
 The rich and the poor together must go." 
 
 Some of our rich men seem to have fixed 
 it with religion to escape from the condition 
 the poem describes, but it depicts a reality 
 in the Negro's life. Rich and poor, as we 
 saw when we left our old New Yorkers, 
 competent and inefficient, pure and diseased, 
 good and bad, all go together. Much of the 
 recent literature written by Negroes, and 
 
 high death rates (American Statistical Association, December, 
 
 1905) quotes the rate in five agricultural districts in a province 
 
 of Russia, districts inhabited by peasantry of a common stock. 
 
 With almost mathematical certainty, prosperity brings longer 
 
 life. He divides his peasants into six groups showing their 
 
 death rate as follows: 
 
 Death Rate 
 
 Having no land 34.7 
 
 Less than 13.5 acres 32.7 
 
 13.5 to 40.5 acres 30.1 
 
 40.5 to 67.5 acres 25.4 
 
 67.5 acres to 135 acres 23.1 
 
 More than 135 acres 19.2 
 
 Mr. Rubinow suggests that the high Negro death rate 
 
 may be explained by noting the poorly paid occupations in 
 
 which the Negro engages. 
 
194 HALF A MAN 
 
 especially that by Dr. Booker T. Washington, 
 attempts to separate in the minds of the 
 community the thrifty and prosperous col- 
 ored men from the helpless and degraded; 
 but the effort meets with a limited success. 
 When we can have a statistical study of 
 some thousands of the well-to-do Negroes 
 compared with an equal number of well-to- 
 do whites, we may find striking similarity. 
 From my own observations I find that the 
 well-to-do Negroes bear and rear children, 
 refrain from committing crimes that put 
 them into jail, and live to an old age with 
 the same success as their white neighbors. 
 But they get little credit for it. Willy- 
 nilly, the strong, intellectual Negro is linked 
 to his unfortunate fellow. Whether an in- 
 crease in material prosperity will break this 
 bond, or whether it will continue until it 
 ceases to be a bond as humanity comes into 
 its own, is a secret of the future. For today 
 the song rings true, and the rich and the 
 poor go together. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Negro and the Municipality 
 
 A capricious mood, varying with the 
 individual, considerate today and offensive 
 tomorrow, this, as far as our observations 
 have led us, has been New York's attitude 
 toward the Negro. Is it possible to find any 
 principle underlying this shifting position? 
 The city expresses itself through the indi- 
 vidual actions of its changing four millions 
 of people, but also through its government, 
 its courts of justice, its manifold public 
 activities. Out of these various manifesta- 
 tions of the community's spirit can we find a 
 Negro policy? Has New York any principle 
 of conduct toward these her colored citizens? 
 This question should be worth our considera- 
 tion, for New York's attitude means its 
 environmental influence, and helps determine 
 for the newly arrived immigrant and the 
 
 growing generation whether justice or intol- 
 
 195 
 
196 HALF A MAN 
 
 erance shall mark their dealings with the 
 black race. 
 
 The first matter of civic importance to the 
 Negro, as to every other New York resident, 
 is his position in the commonwealth; is he a 
 participant in the government under which 
 he lives, or a subject without political rights? 
 The law since 1873 has been explicit on this 
 matter, wiping out former property qualifi- 
 cations, and giving full manhood suffrage. 
 Probably, even with a much larger influx 
 of colored people, the city will never agitate 
 this question again. Since the death of the 
 Know-nothing Party, New York has ceased 
 any organized attempt to lessen the power 
 of the foreigner, and the growing cosmopoli- 
 tan character of the population strengthens 
 the Negro in his rights. Only in those states 
 where the white population is homogeneous 
 can Negro disfranchisement successfully take 
 place. 
 
 With the vote the Negro has entered into 
 politics and has maintained successful polit- 
 ical organizations. The necessity of paying 
 for rent and food out of eight or ten dollars 
 a week is the Negro's immediate issue in 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 197 
 
 New York, and he tries to meet it by securing 
 a congenial and more lucrative job. The 
 city in 1910 showed some consideration for 
 him in this matter. An Assistant District 
 Attorney and an Assistant Corporation Coun- 
 sel were colored, and scattered throughout 
 the city departments were nine clerks making 
 from $1200 to $1800 apiece, and a dozen 
 more acting as messengers, inspectors, driv- 
 ers, attendants, receiving salaries averaging 
 $1275. Three doctors served the Board of 
 Health, and there were six men on the police 
 force (none given patrol duty), and one first 
 grade fireman, while the departments of 
 docks, parks, street cleaning, and water sup- 
 ply employed 470 colored laborers. Alto- 
 gether 511 colored men figure among the 
 city's employees. 1 
 
 In her communal gifts the city acts toward 
 the Negro with a fair degree of impartiality. 
 At the public schools and libraries, the parks 
 and playgrounds, the baths, hospitals, and, 
 last, the almshouse, the blacks have equal 
 rights with the whites. Occasionally indi- 
 
 1 The total number of municipal employees is 55,006 — 
 Negro employees, 511 — Percentage of Negro to whole, 0.9. 
 
198 HALF A MAN 
 
 vidual public servants show color prejudice, 
 but again, occasionally, especial kindness 
 attends the black child. The rude treat- 
 ment awaiting them, however, from other 
 visitors keeps many Negro children, and 
 men and women, from enjoying the city's 
 benefactions. Particularly is this true with 
 the public baths and with some of the play- 
 grounds. The employment by the city of 
 at least one colored official in every neigh- 
 borhood where the Negroes are in great 
 numbers would do much to remedy this 
 condition. 
 
 One department of the city might be cited 
 as having been an exception to the rule of 
 reasonably fair treatment to the colored 
 man. Harshness, for no cause but his black 
 face, has been too frequently bestowed upon 
 the Negro by the police. This has been 
 especially noticeable in conflicts between 
 white and colored, when the white officer, 
 instead of dealing impartially with offenders, 
 protected his own race. 
 
 There have been two conflicts between the 
 whites and Negroes in New York in recent 
 years, the first in 1900, on the West Side, in 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 199 
 
 the forties, the second in 1905, on San Juan 
 Hill. Each riot was local, representing no 
 wide-spread excitement comparable to the 
 draft riots of 1863, and in each case the police 
 might easily in the beginning have stopped all 
 fighting. Instead, they showed themselves 
 ready to aid, even to instigate the conflict. 
 
 The riot of 1900 was caused by the death 
 of a policeman at the hands of a Negro. 
 The black man declared that he was defend- 
 ing his life, but the officer was popular, and 
 after his funeral riots began. Black men ran 
 to the police for protection, and were thrown 
 back by them into the hands of the mob. 1 
 
 The riot of 1905 commenced on San Juan 
 Hill one Friday evening in July with a 
 fracas between a colored boy and a white 
 peddler; both races took a hand in the matter 
 until the side streets showed a rough scram- 
 bling fight. Saturday and Sunday were 
 comparatively quiet; men, black and white, 
 stood on street corners and scowled at one 
 another, but nothing further need have 
 occurred, had each race been treated with 
 
 1 "Story of the Riot," published by Citizens Protective 
 League. 
 
200 HALF A MAN 
 
 justice. The police, however, instead of 
 keeping the peace, angered the Negroes, 
 urged on their enemies, and by Monday 
 night found that they had helped create a 
 riot, this time bitter and dangerous. Over- 
 zealous to proceed against the "niggers," 
 officers rushed into places frequented by 
 peaceable colored men, whom they placed 
 under arrest. Dragging their victims to the 
 station-house they beat them so unmerci- 
 fully that before long many needed to be 
 handed over to another city department — 
 the hospital. Little question was made as 
 to guilt or innocence, and some of the worst 
 offenders, colored as well as white, were 
 never brought to justice. 1 " If," as a colored 
 preacher whose church was the centre of the 
 storm district pointed out, "the police 
 would only differentiate between the good 
 and the bad Negroes, and not knock on the 
 head every colored man they saw in a riot, 
 we should be quite satisfied. As it is, there 
 is no safety for any Negro in this part of the 
 city at any time." 2 
 
 1 New York Age, July 27, 1905. 
 
 2 New York Tribune, July 24, 1905. 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 201 
 
 The result of these two riots was the bring- 
 ing to justice of one policeman and the 
 placing of a humane and tactful captain on 
 San Juan Hill. But for some time the colored 
 man felt little protection in the Department 
 of Police, finding that he was liable to arrest 
 and clubbing for a trivial offence. Often 
 the officer's club fell with cruel force. This, 
 however, was before the administration of 
 Mayor Gaynor, who has commanded humane 
 treatment, and the brutal clubbing of the 
 New York Negro has now ceased. 
 
 From the police one turns naturally to the 
 courts. What is their attitude toward the 
 Negro offender? Is there any race prejudice, 
 or do black and white enjoy an impartial and 
 judicial hearing? 
 
 As the Negro comes before the magistrates 
 of the city courts, he learns to know that 
 judges differ greatly in their conceptions of 
 justice. To the Southerner, let us say from 
 Richmond, where the black man is arrested 
 for small offences and treated with consider- 
 able roughness and harshness, New York 
 courts seem lenient. 1 To the West Indian, 
 
 X A southern student says, "The Negro in Richmond is 
 
202 HALF A MAN 
 
 accustomed to British rule, justice in New 
 York is noticeable for its variability, the 
 likelihood that if it is severe tonight, it will 
 be generous tomorrow. 
 
 "Three months," the listener at court 
 hears given as sentence to a respectable- 
 looking colored servant girl who has begged 
 to be allowed to return to her place which 
 she has held for five years. "I never was 
 up for drinking before," she pleads; "I have 
 learnt my lesson; please give me a chance; 
 I will not do this again." 
 
 "What should you two be fighting for?" 
 another judge, another morning, says to two 
 very battered women, one white and one 
 colored, who come before him in court. 
 And talking kindly to both, but with greater 
 seriousness to the Irish offender, his own 
 countrywoman, he sends them away with a 
 reprimand. 
 
 How much of this unequal treatment comes 
 
 arrested for small offences and fined in the city courts. He is 
 treated with considerable roughness and harshness in his 
 punishment for these offences. It looks as though he were 
 being imposed upon as an individual of the lower strata of 
 society. But the Negro responds so impulsively to what 
 appeals, that constant fear, dread, and impressiveness of the 
 police act well as resistants to temptations." 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 203 
 
 from color prejudice or caprice or tempera- 
 ment, the Negro is unable to decide, but he 
 soon learns one curious fact: while his black 
 skin marks him as inheriting Republican 
 politics, it is the Democratic magistrate, the 
 Tammany henchman whose name is a by- 
 word to the righteous, who is the more 
 lenient when he has committed a trifling 
 offence. 
 
 "Didn't I play craps with the nigger boys 
 when I was a kid?" one of these well-known 
 politicians says, "and am I going back on 
 the poor fellows now?" Of course, the 
 Negro is assured such men only want his 
 vote, but he believes real sympathy actuates 
 the Tammany leader, who is too busy to 
 bother whether the man before him is black 
 or white. The reformer, on the other hand, 
 big with dignity, at times makes him vastly 
 uncomfortable as he lectures upon the Negro 
 problem from the eminence of the superior 
 race. 
 
 But whether Republican or Democrat, the 
 Negro learns that it is well to have a friend 
 at court; that helplessness is the worst of all 
 disabilities, worse than darkness of skin or 
 
204 HALF A MAN 
 
 poverty. So he soon becomes acquainted 
 with his local politician, and if his friend is 
 in trouble, or his wife or son is locked up, 
 pounds vigorously at the politician's door. 
 It may be midnight, but the man of power 
 will dress, and together they will turn from 
 the dark tenement hall into the lighted street 
 and on to the police-station or magistrate's 
 court to seek release for the offender. That 
 too often the gravity of the offence weighs 
 little in the securing of lenient treatment is 
 part of the muddle of New York justice. 
 The Negro finds that he has taken the most 
 direct way to secure relief. 
 
 As far as we have followed, we have found 
 the municipality of New York generally 
 ready to treat her black citizens with the 
 same justice or injustice with which she 
 treats her whites. Exceptions occur, but she 
 does not often draw the color line. Perhaps, 
 in this connection, it might be well to stop 
 a moment and see what return the black 
 man makes, whether by his vote he helps 
 secure to the city honest and efficient gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Walking through a Negro quarter on elec- 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 205 
 
 tion day, the most careful search fails to re- 
 veal any such far-sighted altruism. With a 
 great majority of colored voters the choice of 
 a municipal candidate is based on the argu- 
 ment of a two-dollar bill or the promise of a 
 job, combined with the sentiment, decreas- 
 ing every year, for the Republican Party — 
 the party that once helped the colored man 
 and, he hopes, may help him again. The 
 public standing of the mayoralty candidate, 
 his ability to choose wise heads of depart- 
 ments, the building of new subways, the 
 ownership of public utilities, these are un- 
 important issues. The matter of immedi- 
 ate moment is what this vote is going to 
 mean to the black voter himself. 
 
 Such a selfish and unpatriotic attitude, 
 not unknown perhaps to white voters, leads 
 some of our writers and reformers to doubt 
 the value of universal manhood suffrage. 
 Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells us that the 
 Negro and the poor white in New York, 
 through their venality, are practically with- 
 out a vote. "While the South is disfran- 
 chising by legislation," he says, "the North 
 is doing it by cash." "What else is the 
 
206 HALF A MAN 
 
 meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss 
 and machine system in other cities?" 1 New 
 York's noted ethical culture teacher argues 
 against agitation for woman's suffrage on 
 the ground that so many of those who now 
 have the vote do not know how to use it. 
 But looking closely at these unaltruistic citi- 
 zens, we see that after all they are putting 
 the ballot to its primary use, the protection 
 of their own interests. The Negro in New 
 York has one vital need, steady, decent work. 
 He dickers and plays with politics to get as 
 much of this as he can. It is very insuffi- 
 cient relief for an intolerable situation, but 
 it is partial relief. In another city, Atlanta 
 for instance, he might find education the 
 most important civic gift for which to strive. 
 Atlanta is a fortunate city to choose for an 
 example of the power of the suffrage, for 
 since the Negro's loss of the vote in Georgia, 
 educational funds have been turned chiefly 
 to white schools, and 5,000 colored children 
 are without opportunities for public educa- 
 tion. 1885 saw the last school building 
 erected for Negroes, the result of a bargain 
 
 1 Ray Stannard Baker, "Following the Color Line," p, 269, 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 207 
 
 between the colored voters and the prohibi- 
 tionists. 1 Should a colored teacher in New 
 York be refused her certificate, a colored 
 consumptive be denied a place in the city's 
 hospital, a colored child meet with a rebuff 
 in the city park, the colored citizen would 
 
 1 The following story of Athens, Georgia, told by a North- 
 erner teaching in the South, illustrates this point. "The city 
 of Athens was planning to inaugurate a public school system, 
 and also wished to 'go dry.' It made a proposal to the col- 
 ored voters promising that if their combined vote would 
 carry the city, two schools should be built, of equal size and 
 similar structure for each race. I visited Athens shortly after 
 the two buildings were built, and I found two beautiful brick 
 buildings very similar in all their appointments. At an inter- 
 val of several years I again visited the little city and again 
 spent an hour in the same brick school-house of the colored 
 folk. 
 
 "At my third visit, I found my colored friends occupying 
 a wooden structure on the edge of the city, and not only incon- 
 veniently located, but much less of a building than the one 
 hitherto occupied. Upon inquiry I found that in the growth 
 of the school population of the whites, it was cheaper to seize 
 the building formerly bccupied by the colored children, and to 
 build for them a cheap wooden structure on the outskirts of 
 the town. 
 
 "The colored school was still occupying this inadequate 
 building at my visit this last September, 1909. A second 
 wooden structure has been added to the colored equipment 
 on the east side of the town." 
 
 This story of the Athenians well illustrates what will be 
 done when the Negro counts for something politically, and 
 also what may be undone if his value as a political asset is 
 reduced. 
 
208 HALF A MAN 
 
 find his vote an important means of redress. 
 Then, too, while there are so many men to 
 buy, it is important to have a vote to sell, 
 lest the other citizens secure the morning's 
 bargains. Venality in high and low places 
 will not disappear until we are dominated 
 by the ideal of social, not individual advance- 
 ment. Before that time, it is well for the 
 weak that they are able, at least in the 
 political field, to bargain with the strong. 
 
 The importance to the Negro of the vote 
 is quickly appreciated when we consider New 
 York's attitude unofficially expressed. With 
 the franchise behind him the colored man 
 can secure for himself and his children 
 the municipality's advantages of education, 
 health, amusement, philanthropy. He is 
 here a citizen, a contributor to the city 
 treasury, if not directly as a taxpayer, as a 
 worker and renter. But as a private indi- 
 vidual, seeking to use the utilities managed 
 by other private individuals, he continu- 
 ally encounters race discrimination. Private 
 doors are closed, and were the state not so 
 wealthy and generous, disabilities still graver 
 than at present would follow. 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 209 
 
 A few examples will show the condition. 
 A Negro applies by letter for admission to 
 an automobile school, and is accepted; but 
 on appearing with his fee his color debars 
 his entrance. Carrying the case to court, 
 the complaint is dismissed on the ground 
 that the law which forbade exclusion from 
 places of education on account of race 
 and color is applicable only to public 
 schools. Private institutions may do as 
 they desire. 
 
 Again, a colored man tries to get a meal. 
 At the first restaurant he is told that all 
 the tables are engaged; at the next no one 
 will serve him. Fearful of further rebuffs, 
 he has to turn to the counter of a railway 
 station. He wants to go to the theatre. 
 Like Tommy Atkins, he is sent to the gallery 
 or round the music halls. The white barber 
 whose shop he enters will not shave him; 
 and when night comes, he searches a long 
 time before the hotel appears that will give 
 him a bed. The sensitive man, still more 
 the sensitive woman, often finds the city's 
 attitude difficult to endure. 
 
 American Negroes have become familiar 
 
210 HALF A MAN 
 
 with racial lines, but the foreigner of African 
 descent, a visitor to the city, meets with 
 rebuffs that fill him with surprise as well as 
 rage. Haytians and South Americans, men 
 of continental education and wide culture, 
 have been ordered away as "niggers" from 
 restaurant doors, and at the box office of 
 the theatre refused an orchestra seat. Eng- 
 lish Negroes from the West Indies, men and 
 women of character and means, learn that 
 New York is a spot to be avoided, and cross 
 the ocean when they wish to taste of city 
 life. In short, the stranger of Negro descent, 
 if he be rash of temper, hurls anathemas at 
 the villainously mannered Americans; or, if 
 he be good-natured, shrugs his shoulders and 
 counts New York a provincial settlement of 
 four million people. 
 
 Northern Negroes believe this discrimina- 
 tion in public places against the black man 
 to be increasing in New York. One, who 
 came here fifteen years ago, tells of the simple 
 and adequate test by which he learned that 
 he had reached the northern city. Born in 
 South Carolina, as he attained manhood he 
 desired larger self-expression, broader human 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 211 
 
 relations — he wanted "to be free," as he 
 again and again expressed it. So leaving 
 the cotton fields he started one morning 
 to walk to New York. After a number of 
 days he entered a large city and, uncertain 
 in his geography, decided that this was his 
 journey's end. "I'll be free here," he 
 thought, and opening the door of a brightly 
 lighted restaurant started to walk in. The 
 white men at the tables looked up in 
 astonishment, and the proprietor, laying his 
 hand on the youth's shoulder, invited him, 
 in strong southern accent, to go into the 
 kitchen. "I reckon I'm not North yet," the 
 Negro said, smiling a bright, boyish smile. 
 Interested in his visitor's appearance, the 
 proprietor took him into another room, gave 
 him a good supper, and talked with him far 
 into the night, urging the advantages of his 
 staying in the South. But the youth shook 
 his head, and the next morning trudged on. 
 At length he reached a rushing city, tumult- 
 uous with humanity, and entering an eating- 
 house was served a meal. To him it was 
 almost a sacrament. He belonged not to a 
 race but to humanity. He tasted the freedom 
 
212 HALF A MAN 
 
 of passing unnoticed. But it is doubtful 
 if the same restaurant would serve him 
 today. 
 
 Color lines, on these matters of entertain- 
 ment as on others, are not hard and fast. A 
 few hotels, chiefly those frequented by Latin 
 peoples, receive colored guests; and while 
 the foreign Negro meets with rudeness, he 
 is rebuffed less than the native. "I can't 
 get into that place as a southern darky," a 
 black man laughingly says, pointing to a 
 fashionable restaurant, "I'll be the Prince 
 of Abyssinia." But as Prince or American 
 his status is shifting and uncertain; here, 
 preeminently, he is half a man. 
 
 Discrimination against any man because of 
 his color is contrary to the law of the state. 
 After the fifteenth amendment became a 
 law, New York passed a civil rights bill, 
 which as it stands, re-enacted in 1909, is 
 very explicit. All persons within the juris- 
 diction of the state are entitled to the accom- 
 modation of hotels, restaurants, theatres, 
 music halls, barbers' shops, and any person 
 refusing such accommodation is subject to 
 civil and penal action. The offence may 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 213 
 
 be punished by fine or imprisonment or 
 both. 1 
 
 In 1888, the attempt to exclude three 
 colored men from a skating-rink at Bingham- 
 ton, N. Y., led to a suit against the owner 
 of the rink, and his conviction. The case 2 
 
 1 Civil Rights Law, State of New York. Chapter 14 of 
 the Laws of 1909, being Chapter 6 of the Consolidated Laws. 
 
 " Article 4. — Equal rights in places of public amusement. 
 
 "Section 40. — All persons within the jurisdiction of this 
 state shall be entitled to the full and equal accommodations, 
 advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, 
 hotels, eating houses, bath houses, barber shops, theatres, 
 music halls, public conveyances on land and water, and all 
 other places of public accommodation or amusement, subject 
 only to the conditions and limitations, established by the law 
 and applicable alike to all citizens. 
 
 "Section 41. — Penalty for violation. Any person who 
 shall violate any of the provisions of the foregoing section by 
 denying to any citizen, except for reasons applicable alike to 
 all citizens of every race, creed and color, and regardless of 
 race, creed and color, the full enjoyment of any of the accom- 
 modations, advantages, facilities or privileges in said section 
 enumerated, or by aiding or inciting such denial, shall, for 
 every such offence, forfeit and pay a sum not less than one 
 hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars to the 
 person aggrieved thereby, to be recovered in a court of com- 
 petent jurisdiction in the County where said offence was com- 
 mitted, and shall also, for every such offence, be deemed guilty 
 of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined 
 not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred 
 dollars, or shall be imprisoned not less than thirty days nor 
 more than ninety days, or both such fine and imprisonment." 
 2 People w. King, 110 N. Y., 418, 1888. 
 
214 HALF A MAN 
 
 reached the Court of Appeals, where the 
 constitutionality of the civil rights bill 
 was upheld. "It is evident," said Justice 
 Andrews in his decision, "that to exclude 
 colored people from places of public resort 
 on account of their race is to fix upon them 
 a brand of inferiority, and tends to fix their 
 position as a servile and dependent people." 
 But despite the law and precedent, the 
 civil rights bill is violated in New York. 
 Occasionally colored men bring suit, but the 
 magistrate dismisses the complaint. Usually 
 the evidence is declared insufficient. A case 
 of a colored man refused orchestra seats at 
 a theatre is dismissed on the ground that 
 not the proprietor but his employees turned 
 the man away. A keeper of an ice-cream 
 parlor, wishing to prevent the colored man 
 from patronizing him, charges a Negro a 
 dollar for a ten-cent plate. The customer 
 pays the dollar, keeps the check, and brings 
 the case to court. Ice-cream parlors are 
 then declared not to come under the list of 
 places of public entertainment and amuse- 
 ment. A bootblack refuses to polish the 
 shoes of a Negro, and the court decides that 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 215 
 
 a bootblack-stand is not a place of public 
 accommodation, and refusal to shine the 
 shoes of a colored man does not subject its 
 proprietor to the penalties imposed by the 
 law. 1 This last case was carried to the 
 Court of Appeals, and the adverse judgment 
 has led many of the thoughtful colored men 
 of the city to doubt the value of attempting to 
 push a civil rights suit. Litigation is expen- 
 sive, and money spent in any personal rights 
 case that attacks private business, whether 
 the plaintiff be white or colored, is usually 
 wasted. The civil rights law is on the books, 
 and the psychological moment may arrive 
 to insist successfully on its enforcement. 
 
 If there is an increase in discrimination 
 against the Negro in New York solely be- 
 cause of his color, it is a serious matter to 
 the city as well as to the race. Every com- 
 munity has its social conscience built up of 
 slowly accumulated experiences, and it can- 
 not without disaster lose its ideal of justice 
 or generosity. New York has never been ten- 
 der to its people, but it has a rough hospital- 
 ity, what Stevenson describes as "uncivil 
 
 1 Burke vs. Bosso, 180 N. Y., 341, 1905. 
 
216 HALF A MAN 
 
 kindness," and welcomes new-comers with a 
 friendly shove, bidding them become good 
 Americans. After the war, the Negro en- 
 tered more than formerly into this general 
 welcome. He was unnoticed, allowed to go 
 his way without questioning word or stare, 
 the position which every right-minded man 
 and woman desires. But today New York 
 has become conscious that he is dark-skinned, 
 and her attitude affects her growing children. 
 "I never noticed colored people," an old 
 abolitionist said to me, "I never realized 
 there were white and black until, when a boy 
 of twelve, I entered a church and found 
 Negroes occupying seats alone in the gal- 
 lery." As New York returns to the gallery 
 seats, her boys and girls return to conscious- 
 ness of color and, from fisticuffs at school, 
 move on to the race riots upon the streets 
 with bullets among the stones. 
 
 The municipality, as we have seen, treats 
 the Negro on the whole with justice; its 
 standard is higher than the standard of the 
 average citizen. It cherishes the ideal of de- 
 mocracy, and strives for impartiality toward 
 its many nationalities and races. And the 
 
NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 217 
 
 New York Negro in his turn does not 
 allow his liberties to be tampered with with- 
 out protest. But the New York citizen can 
 hardly be described as friendly to the Negro. 
 What catholicity he has is negative. He 
 fails to give the black man a hearty welcome. 
 "Do you know where I stayed the four 
 weeks of my first trip abroad?" a colored 
 clergyman once asked me. I refused to make 
 a guess. "Well," he said a little shame- 
 facedly, "it was in Paris. Paris may be 
 a wicked city — any city has wickedness if 
 you want to look for it — but I found it a 
 place of kindliness and good- will. Every one 
 seemed glad to be courteous, to assist me in 
 my stumbling French, to show me the way 
 on omnibus or boat, or through the difficult 
 streets. It was so different from America; 
 I was never wanted in the southern city of 
 my youth. In Paris I was welcome." 
 
 "How is it in New York?" I asked. 
 
 "In New York?" He stopped to con- 
 sider. "In New York I am tolerated." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 A new little boy came two years ago into 
 our story-book world. When Miss North, 
 taking Ezekiel by the hand, led him into her 
 school-room, 1 we met a child full of what we 
 call temperament; dreaming quaint stories, 
 innocently friendly, anxious to please for 
 affection's sake, in his queer, unconscious 
 way something of a genius. We saw his 
 big musing eyes looking out upon a world in 
 which his teacher stood serene and reasoning, 
 but a little cold like her name; his friend, 
 Miss Jane, kind and very practical; his em- 
 ployer, Mr. Rankin, amused and contemptu- 
 ous; all watching him with the impersonal 
 interest with which one might view a new 
 species in the animal world. For Ezekiel, 
 unlike our other story-book boys, had a 
 double being, he was first Ezekiel Jordan, a 
 
 1 Lucy Pratt, "Ezekiel." 
 218 
 
CONCLUSION 219 
 
 little black boy, and second, a Representa- 
 tive of the Negro Race. 
 
 Ezekiel was too young to understand his 
 position, but the white world about him 
 never forgot it. When he arrived late to 
 school, he was a dilatory representative; 
 when, obliging little soul, he promised three 
 people to weed their gardens all the same 
 afternoon, he was a prevaricating repre- 
 sentative. He never happened to steal ice- 
 cream from the hoky-poky man or to play 
 hookey, but if he had, he would have been 
 a thieving and lazy representative. Always 
 he was something remote and overwhelming, 
 not a natural growing boy. 
 
 Ezekiel's position is that of each Negro 
 child and man and woman in the United 
 States today. I think we have seen this as 
 we have reviewed the position of the race 
 in New York; indeed, the very fact of our 
 attempting such a review is patent that 
 we see and feel it. We white Americans 
 do not generalize concerning ourselves, we 
 individualize, leaving generalizations to the 
 chance visitor, but we generalize continually 
 concerning colored Americans; we classify 
 
220 HALF A MAN 
 
 and measure and pass judgment, a little 
 more with each succeeding year. 
 
 Now if we are going to do this, let us be 
 fair; let us try as much as possible to dismiss 
 prejudice, and to look at the Ezekiels enter- 
 ing our school of life, with the same impar- 
 tiality and the same understanding sympathy 
 with which we look upon our own race. 
 And if we are to place them side by side with 
 the whites, let us be impartial, not cheating 
 them out of their hard-earned credits, or 
 condemning them with undue severity. Let 
 us try, if we can, to be just. 
 
 When we begin to make this effort to 
 judge fairly our colored world, we need to 
 remember especially two things: First, that 
 we cannot yet measure with any accuracy 
 the capability of the colored man in the 
 United States, because he has not yet been 
 given the opportunity to show his capability. 
 If we deny full expression to a race, if we 
 restrict its education, stifle its intellectual 
 and aesthetic impulses, we make it impossible 
 fairly to gauge its ability. Under these cir- 
 cumstances to measure its achievements with 
 the more favored white race is unreasonable 
 
CONCLUSION 221 
 
 and unjust, as unreasonable as to measure 
 against a man's a disfranchised woman's 
 capabilities in directing the affairs of a state. 1 
 The second thing is difficult for us to 
 remember, difficult for us at first to believe; 
 that we, dominant, ruling Americans, may 
 not be the persons best fitted to judge the 
 Negro. We feel confident that we are, since 
 we have known him so long and are so 
 familiar with his peculiarities; but in mo- 
 ments of earnest reflection may it not occur 
 to us that we have not the desire or the 
 imagination to enter into the life emotions 
 of others? "We are the intellect and virtue 
 of the airth, the cream of human natur', and 
 the flower of moral force," Hannibal Chollup 
 
 1 "The world of modern intellectual life is in reality a white 
 man's world. Few women and perhaps no blacks have 
 entered this world in the fullest sense. To enter it in the full- 
 est sense would be to be in it at every moment from the time 
 of birth to the time of death, and to absorb it unconsciously 
 and consciously, as the child absorbs language. When some- 
 thing like this happens we shall be in a position to judge of 
 the mental efficiency of women and the lower races. At 
 present we seem justified in inferring that the differences in 
 mental expression between the higher and lower races and 
 between men and women are no greater than they should be 
 in view of the existing differences in opportunity." W. I. 
 Thomas, "Sex and Society," p. 312. 
 
222 HALF A MAN 
 
 still says, and glowers at the stranger who 
 dares to suggest a different standard from 
 his own. Hannibal Chollup and his ilk are 
 ill-fitted to measure the refinements of feel- 
 ing, the differences in ideals among people. 
 
 This question of our fitness to sit in the 
 judgment seat must come with grave insist- 
 ence when we read carefully the literature 
 published in this city of New York within 
 the past two years. Our writers have as- 
 sumed such pomposity, have so revelled in 
 what Mr. Chesterton calls "the magnificent 
 buttering of one's self all over with the same 
 stale butter; the big defiance of small ene- 
 mies," as to make their conclusions ridicu- 
 lous. Ezekiel entering their school is at 
 once pushed to the bottom of the class, while 
 the white boy at the head, Hannibal Chol- 
 lup's descendant, sings a jubilate of his own 
 and butters himself so copiously as to be 
 as shiny as his English cousin, Wackford 
 Squeers. Then the writer, the judge, be- 
 gins. Ezekiel is shown as the incorrigible 
 boy of the school. He is a lazy, good-for- 
 nothing vagabond. Favored with the chance 
 to exercise his muscles twelve hours a day 
 
CONCLUSION 223 
 
 for a disinterested employer, he fails to appre- 
 ciate his opportunity. He is diseased, de- 
 generate. His sisters are without chastity, 
 every one, polluting the good, pure white 
 men about them. He is a rapist, and it is 
 his criminal tendencies that are degrading 
 America. The pale-faced ones of his family 
 steal into white society, marry, and insinu- 
 ate grasping, avaricious tendencies into the 
 noble, generous men of white blood, causing 
 them to cheat in business and to practise 
 political corruption. In short there is noth- 
 ing evil that Ezekiel is not at the bottom of. 
 Sometimes, poor little chap, he tries to sniffle 
 out a word, to say that his family is doing 
 well, that he has an uncle who is buying a 
 home, and a rich cousin in the undertaking 
 business, but such extenuating circumstances 
 receive scant attention, and we are not sur- 
 prised to find, the class dismissed, that 
 Ezekiel and the millions whom he represents, 
 are swiftly shuffled off the earth, victims of 
 "disease, vice, and profound discourage- 
 ment." 
 
 Now this is not an exaggerated picture 
 of much that has recently been printed in 
 
224 HALF A MAN 
 
 newspaper and magazine, and does it not 
 make us feel the paradox that if we are to 
 judge the Negro fairly, we must not judge 
 him at all, so little are we temperamentally 
 capable of meeting the first requirement? 
 
 "My brother Saxons," says Matthew 
 Arnold, "have a terrible way with them of 
 wanting to improve everything but them- 
 selves off the face of the earth." And he 
 adds, "I have no such passion for finding 
 nothing but myself everywhere." Among 
 our American writers a few, like Arnold, do 
 not care to find only themselves everywhere, 
 and these have told us a different story of 
 the American Negro. They are poets and 
 writers of fiction, men and women who are 
 happy in meeting and appreciating different 
 types of human beings. 1 If these writers 
 were to instruct us, they would say that we 
 must individualize more when we think of 
 the black people about us, must differentiate. 
 That, too, we must remember that when we 
 pass judgment, we need to know whether our 
 own standard is the best, whether we may 
 
 1 Note especially the stories of Alice MacGowan and Grace 
 MacGowan Cooke, and the poems of Rosalie M. Jonas. 
 
CONCLUSION 225 
 
 not have something to learn from the stand- 
 ards of others. Supposing Ezekiel is delib- 
 erate and slow to make changes or to take 
 risks; are we who are "acceleration mad," 
 who acquire heart disease hustling to catch 
 trains, who mortgate our farms to buy auto- 
 mobiles, who seek continually new sensa- 
 tions, really better than he? Is it not a 
 matter of difference, just as we may each 
 place in different order our desires, the one 
 choosing struggle for power and the accumu- 
 lation of wealth, the other preferring serenity 
 and pleasure in the immediate present? 
 And lastly, after having praised our own 
 virtues and our own ideals, must we not 
 beware that we do not blame the Negro 
 when he adopts them, that we do not turn 
 upon him and fiercely demand only servile 
 virtues, the virtues that make him useful not 
 to himself but to us? l 
 
 1 Careful readers of economic Negro studies by white 
 writers will notice this tendency to look upon the Negro as 
 belonging to a servile class. Emphasis is laid upon his respon- 
 sibilities to the white man, not upon the white man's respon- 
 sibilities to him. Any one familiar with the sympathetic 
 attitude toward the workers in such a study as the Pittsburg 
 Survey will notice at once the difference in attitude in Negro 
 surveys by whites, the slight emphasis laid upon the black 
 
226 HALF A MAN 
 
 No one can talk for long of the Negro in 
 America without propounding the all-em- 
 bracing question, What will become of him, 
 what will be the outcome of all this racial 
 controversy? It is a daring person who 
 attempts to answer. We, who have studied 
 the Negro in New York, may perhaps ven- 
 ture to predict a little regarding his future 
 in this city, his possible status in the later 
 years of the century; whether he will lose in 
 opportunity and social position, or whether 
 he will advance in his struggle to be a man. 
 
 Looking upon the great population of the 
 city, its varied races and nationalities, I 
 confess that his outlook to me begins to be 
 bright. New York is still to a quite remark- 
 able extent dominated socially by its old 
 American stock, its Dutch and Anglo-Saxon 
 element. Few things strike the foreign 
 visitor so forcibly as that despite its enor- 
 mous European population, American society 
 
 laborers' long hours and poor pay, and the failure to emphasize 
 the white man's responsibility. Negro laborers are still 
 studied from the viewpoint of the capitalist. There is one 
 notable exception to this, the study by the governor of 
 Jamaica, Sir Sidney Olivier, on "White Capital and Coloured 
 Labor." 
 
CONCLUSION 227 
 
 is homogeneous. But this is not likely to 
 continue for very long. When the present 
 demand for exhausting self-supporting work 
 becomes less insistent, we shall feel in a 
 deeper, more vital way the influence of our 
 vast foreign life. With a million Jews and 
 nearly a million Latin peoples, we cannot for 
 long be held in the provincialism of to-day. 
 I suspect that to many Europeans New 
 York seems still a great overgrown village 
 in "a nation of villagers," pronouncing with 
 narrow, dogmatic assurance upon the deep 
 unsolved problems of life. But in the future 
 it may take on a larger, more cosmopolitan 
 spirit. Its Italians may bring a finer feeling 
 for beauty and wholesome gayety, its Jews 
 may continue to add great intellectual 
 achievements, and its people of African 
 descent, perhaps always few in number, may 
 show with happy spontaneity their best and 
 highest gifts. If New York really becomes 
 a cosmopolitan city, let us believe the Negro 
 will bring to it his highest genius and will 
 walk through it simply, quietly, unnoticed, 
 a man among men. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 The federal census in 1900 contained a 
 volume on the Negro in the United States, a 
 source of information quoted by nearly every 
 writer on the American Negro. The tables 
 in that volume, however, do not classify by 
 cities, and any one desiring information re- 
 garding the Negro in some especial city must 
 search through other volumes. As this is a 
 lengthy task, I am affixing a list of the tables 
 in the census of 1900, treating of the Negro 
 in New York City, believing that it may also 
 be a guide to students of the new census of 
 1910, who wish to find New York Negro 
 statistics. 
 
 Population. Vol. I, Part I. Published 1901. 
 
 Page 868, Table 57. Aggregate, white, and colored 
 population distributed according to native or foreign 
 parentage, for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 
 1900. 
 
 Page 934, Table 81. Total males twenty -one years 
 of age and over, classified by general nativity, color, 
 
 229 
 
230 HALF A MAN 
 
 and literacy, for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or 
 more: 1900. 
 
 Vol. II. Published 1902. 
 
 Page 163, Table 19. Persons of school age, five to 
 twenty years, inclusive, by general nativity and color, 
 for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. Also, 
 pages 165 and 167, Tables 20 and 21. 
 
 Page 332, Table 32. Conjugal condition of the 
 aggregate population, classified by sex, general nativity, 
 color, and age periods, for cities having 100,000 inhabi- 
 tants or more: 1900. 
 
 Page 397, Table 54. Negro persons attending school 
 during the census year, classified by sex and age periods, 
 for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. 
 
 Page 737, Table 111. Persons owning and hiring 
 their homes, classified by color, for cities having 100,000 
 inhabitants or more: 1900. 
 
 Vital Statistics. Vol. III. Published 1902. 
 
 Page 458, Table 19. Population, birtlis, deaths, 
 and death rates at certain ages, and deaths from cer- 
 tain causes, by sex, color, general nativity, and parent 
 nativity: census year 1900. 
 
 Occupations. Published 1904. 
 
 Pages 634 to 642, Table 43. Total males and females, 
 ten years of age and over, engaged in selected groups of 
 occupations, classified by general nativity, color, con- 
 jugal condition, months unemployed, age periods, and 
 parentage, for cities having 50,000 inhabitants or 
 more: 1900. 
 
 Supplementary Analysis. Published 1906. 
 Page 262, Table 87. Per cent Negro in total popu- 
 lation, 1900, 1890, and 1880, per cent male and female 
 
APPENDIX 231 
 
 in Negro population, per cent illiterate in Negro popu- 
 lation at least ten years of age, and among negro males 
 of voting age, and per 10,000 distribution of Negro 
 pupulation by age periods. 
 
 Women at Work. Published 1907. 
 
 Page 146, Table 9. Number and percentage of 
 breadwinners in female population, sixteen years of 
 age and over, classified by race and nativity, for cities 
 having at least 50,000 inhabitants : 1900. 
 
 Pages 147 to 151, Table 10. Number and percentage 
 of breadwinners in the female population, sixteen years 
 and over, classified by age, race, and nativity. 
 
 Pages 266 to 275, Table 28. Female breadwinners, 
 sixteen years of age and over, classified by family rela- 
 tionship, and by race, nativity, marital condition, and 
 occupation, for selected cities: 1900. 
 
 Pages 354 to 365, Table 29. Female breadwinners, 
 sixteen years of age and over, living at home, classified 
 by the number of other breadwinners in the family, 
 and by race, nativity, marital condition, and occupa- 
 tion, for selected cities: 1900. 
 
 Mortality Statistics. Published 1908. 
 
 Page 28. Number of deaths from all causes per 
 1,000 of population. 
 
 Page 376, Table 2. Deaths in each registration area, 
 by age: 1908. 
 
 Pages 566 to 568, Table 8. Deaths in each city hav- 
 ing 100,000 population or over in 1900, from certain 
 causes and classes of causes, by age: 1908. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aldridge, Ira, 137. 
 
 Amalgamation, 168. 
 
 Andrews, Charles, civil rights 
 of Negroes, 214. 
 
 Andrews, Chas. C, on educa- 
 tion, 14; on industrial op- 
 portunity, 27. 
 
 Archer, William, 172. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 224. 
 
 Arthur, Chester A., 23. 
 
 Association for Improving the 
 Condition of the Poor, 159. 
 
 Athens, Ga., 207. 
 
 Atlanta, Negroes in occupa- 
 tions in, 77, 91, 93; propor- 
 tion of Negro women to 
 men in, 148; suffrage in, 
 206. 
 
 Baker, Ray Stannard, on 
 
 suffrage, 205. 
 Benefit societies, 175. 
 Birthplaces, 35. 
 Boese, Thomas, 15. 
 Brokers, real estate, 45, 108. 
 Brown, William, 14. 
 Bulkley, W. L., 161. 
 Burke v. Bosso, 215. 
 
 Burleigh, Harry, 126. 
 Businesses, 106-112. 
 
 Cahill, Marie, 133. 
 
 Charity Organization Society, 
 158. 
 
 Chesnutt, Charles W., 181. 
 
 Chesterton, Gilbert K., 222. 
 
 Churches: Baptist, 20, 116, 
 123; Catholic, 116; Congre- 
 gational, 20; Episcopal, 20, 
 113, 116, 120; Methodist, 
 20, 116. 
 
 City and Suburban Homes, 
 41. 
 
 Civil rights: state bill, 213; 
 violations of, 209, 210. 
 
 Clarkson, Thomas, 32. 
 
 Cleveland, Grover, 17. 
 
 Clinton, De Witt, 14. 
 
 Cole and Johnson, 127, 133. 
 
 Constitutional conventions, 
 state, 11-13. 
 
 Cook, Will Marion, 136. 
 
 Cooke, Grace MacGowan, 
 224. 
 
 Court: children's, 66. 
 magistrate's, 202-204. 
 
 233 
 
234 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Craig, Walter A., 126. 
 Crime: among children, 66- 
 68; among adults, 189. 
 
 Dahomeyans, 131. 
 
 District Nursing Association 
 
 of Brooklyn, 159. 
 Dix, Morgan, 25. 
 Domestic Service, 80-83, 149- 
 
 153. 
 Downing, Thomas, 27. 
 Du Bois, W. E. B., 183. 
 Dudley, S. H., 128. 
 Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 71, 
 
 83, 131. 
 
 East Side, 42-44. 
 
 Education: colored teacher, 
 17, 18; private colored 
 schools, 14; public colored 
 schools, 15-19. 
 
 Emancipation, 8. 
 
 Ewing, Quincy, 190. 
 
 Fall River, mortality among 
 
 infants, 59. 
 Finley, H. M., 32. 
 Frazier, S. E., 18. 
 
 Gaynor, William J., 201. 
 
 Government service, Ne- 
 groes in, 88. 
 Greenwich Village, 33-35. 
 
 Hale, Edward Everett, 119. 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 14. 
 
 Hampton Institute, 110, 119, 
 
 193. 
 Hansell, George H., 20. 
 Haynes, George E., 112. 
 Health Department, 40, 53, 
 
 197. 
 Held, Anna, 133. 
 Hell's Kitchen, 37, 85. 
 Hogan, Ernest, 134. 
 Horsmanden, Daniel, 7. 
 Housing, 34, 36, 40, 45-51. 
 Hunt, John H., against Negro 
 
 suffrage, 13. 
 
 Janvier, Thomas, 8, 33. 
 
 Jay, John, on emancipation, 
 
 8; interest in education, 14. 
 Jay, Peter, on Negro suffrage, 
 
 11. 
 Jennings, Elizabeth, 21. 
 Jonas, Rosalie M., 224. 
 Jones, Edward, 14. 
 
 Keane, Edmund, 137. 
 
 Kent, Chancellor, favors Negro 
 
 suffrage, 11. 
 Kidd, Dudley, 52. 
 King v. Gallagher, 16. 
 Kingsley, Mary, 70, 113. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, 31. 
 
 Lincoln, Charles Z., 13. 
 
 Lincoln Hospital: attitude 
 towards Negro doctors, 
 114; graduates of, 157. 
 
INDEX 
 
 235 
 
 Livingston, against Negro suf- 
 frage, 11. 
 London, Jack, 63. 
 
 MacGowan, Alice, 224. 
 
 Manhattan Trade School, 161, 
 162. 
 
 Manumission society, 14. 
 
 Middle West Side, 35-38. 
 
 Miller, Kelly, 86, 147. 
 
 Morris, Gouverneur, on eman- 
 cipation, 8. 
 
 Mortality: among infants, 
 53-60; death rate by dis- 
 eases, 192. 
 
 Municipal service, Negroes 
 in, 197. 
 
 Music, 125-127. 
 
 New York Conspiracy, 7. 
 
 New York Milk Committee, 
 54. 
 
 Newman, G., infant mortal- 
 ity, 55, 58. 
 
 Nurses' Settlement, 159. 
 
 Olivier, Sidney, 226. 
 
 Palmer, A. Emerson, 18. 
 Patten, S. N, 38. 
 People v. King, 213. 
 Phillips, Ulrich B., 101. 
 Phipps, Henry, 41. 
 Phipps tenement, 42, 51, 125. 
 Pittsburg Survey, 225. 
 Police department, 198-201. 
 
 Poole, Ernest, 84. 
 Population, Negro, 9; total, 
 
 31. 
 Pratt, Lucy, 218. 
 Prostitution, 155, 156. 
 
 Ray, Charles B., 24. 
 Reason, Patrick, 27. 
 Religion (see Churches) . 
 Riots: draft riots, 25; riot of 
 
 1900, 199; riot of 1905, 
 
 199-201. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 18. 
 Rubinow, I. B., relation of 
 
 death rate to poverty, 193. 
 Russell, John L., 12. 
 Russell, Lillian, 133. 
 Russia, infant mortality in, 
 
 54; mortality and poverty, 
 
 193. 
 Russworm, John B., 14. 
 
 Sanger, William W., 153. 
 
 San Juan Hill, 39-42. 
 
 Schools (see Education). 
 
 Scottron, Samuel R., on in- 
 dustrial opportunities, 26; 
 on occupations, 78. 
 
 Segregation: churches, 19; 
 dwelling - places, 48 - 50; 
 schools, 15-19. 
 
 Shirtwaist makers' strike, 163. 
 
 Simmons, William J., 137. 
 
 Slave ships, 32. 
 
 Slaves, brutality towards, 5; 
 insurrections of, 6-8. 
 
236 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Smith, Gerritt, 24. 
 
 Smith, James McC, 27. 
 
 Smith, William G., 14. 
 
 Stage, 127-137. 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 215. 
 
 Stone, Alfred Holt, on Negro 
 in occupations in South, 
 75; color line in South, 89, 
 92; irresponsibility of Ne- 
 groes, 102. 
 
 Straus, Nathan, 59. 
 
 Street cars, discrimination, 
 21-23. 
 
 Suffrage: past, 11-13; pres- 
 ent, 196; Negro's use of 
 suffrage, 204-208; in Athens, 
 Ga., 207. 
 
 Tanner, Henry, 126. 
 Tenements (see Housing). 
 Thomas, W. I, 221. 
 Trade-unions, 95-99. 
 Trinity Church, 25. 
 Tucker, Helen, on Negro 
 craftsmen, 96, 98. 
 
 Underground Railroad, 24. 
 Upper West Side, 45-48. 
 
 Varick, James, 20. 
 
 Walker, Aida, 157. 
 Washington, Booker T., 184, 
 
 194 
 Waterbury, Daniel S., 12. 
 West Indies, arrivals from, 
 
 48. 
 Wheeler, B. P., 20. 
 White, Philip A., 27. 
 Williams, Peter, 20. 
 Williams and Walker, 129- 
 
 133. 
 Wilson, H. J., 124. 
 Wilson, J. G., 8. 
 Winterbottom, 25. 
 Wright, Richard R., on the 
 
 city Negro, 100, 104. 
 Wright, Theodore S., 14. 
 
 Zangwill, Israel, 137. 
 

 
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