LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF T RNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF T 9| w-m RNIA LIBRm OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHIFORNU LIBRARY OF T F CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA F CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA F CALIFORNIA O^AlQ LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ill THE HANDBOOK SERIES THE NEGRO PROBLEM THE HANDBOOK SERIES AGRICULTURAL CREDIT - $1.25 AMERICANIZATION, 2d ed., $1.80 CLOSED SHOP - $1.80 EUROPEAN WAR. VOL. II $1.25 IMMIGRATION . . $1.80 INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS EMPLOYMT MANAGEMT, $2.40 MODERN INDUSTRIAL MOVE- MENTS . $2.40 PROBLEMS OF LABOR, $2.40 LEAGUE OF NATIONS, 4th ed., $1.50 NEGRO PROBLEM - . $2.25 PRISON REFORM . . $1.25 SHORT BALLOT - . $1.25 SOCIALISM . $1.25 STUDY OF LATIN AND GREEK $1.80 VOCATIONAL EDUCATION $2.25 THE HANDBOOK SERIES SELECTED ARTICLES ON THE NEGRO PROBLEM COMPILED BY JULIA E. JOHNSEN NEW YORK THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY LONDON: GRAFTON & Co. 1921 Published December 1921 Printed in the United States of America EXPLANATORY NOTE This volume is intended to be an interpretation of the leading aspects of the Negro Problem of today, in compact and convenient form, suitable for the student, debater or general reader. A preliminary view of the history and status of the Negro in our civilization is given, with other material of general interest, followed by the more specific phases of our race relationships the problem itself with special consideration to its leading divisions, controversial or otherwise, race prejudice, amalgamation, education, violence including lynching, race riots and peonage, the Negro of the South and the North, Negro suffrage, the Negro in industry, segregation and colonization, and, lastly, the expression of opinion as to the future or the best way to racial peace. In accordance with the general plan of the- Handbook Series, the constant aim in both reprints and bibliography has been for impartiality toward all views, and selections have been chosen from both white and Negro writers, from opposers and sympathizers of the Negro alike, yet with the aim not so much to maintain exact balance as to give ex pression to views that reflect representative opinions and conditions of race friction, and that serve best to indicate the way for constructive effort. The limits of this volume prevent the full consideration that would be desirable on each phase of the subject, and has necessitated the omission of much excellent material. In particular some topics more or less familiar to the general reader, such as the period of American slavery, or emancipation, have been touched upon lightly in the interest of material of more vital importance. The reader will find in the selected and annotated bibliography valuable material for a more com plete study. The classified divisions of bibliography and reprints are not absolute, but overlap considerably. It has been thought 4G3312 EXPLANATORY NOTE desirable, however, to avoid repetitions in the bibliography under different headings, and, as far as possible, in the subdivision of selections, which are entered where they will be of most immediate interest. June 16, 1921. JULIA E. JOHNSEN CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY xi ORGANIZATIONS i INTRODUCTION 3 HISTORY Origin of the Negro Race II \4lie_ World-Position of the Negro and Negroid 20 Beginning of Slavery 28 Alienation of the Races 32 GENERAL Negroes in America 35 Some Advantages the Negro Enjoys in the United States. 36* Psychology of the Negro An Experimental Study 38" Serving New York s Black City 44 Negro in Literature and Art 48 Rural Negro and the South 53 PROBLEM A Negro to America 59 Fuse, Fight or Fail ! 59 The Negro in Relation to Our Public Agencies and Institutions 62 Changed Attitude of the Negro 66 Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races of Man- f kind 69 "VNegro Problem 73 Proposed Solution of the Race Problem 7^ Negro in the North 85 v^The Menace of Race Hatred 86 Social Cost of Southern Race Prejudice 88 Relation of Negroes to the Whites 92 What Does the Negro Want in Our Democracy? 94 The New Negro Race Riots and Their Remedy 105 viii CONTENTS Race Problem 106 Kuklux Klan Revival 108 Social Basis of Race Prejudice 116 e Heart of the Race Problem 117^- Tragedy of Color 1 19 Hostility Toward the Negro 127 In Terms of Humanity 128 ""Tragedy of the Mulatto 129 Brazil and the Negro 135 VIOLENCE LYNCHING, RACE RIOTS AND PEONAGE Lynching Record for 1920 141 Practice of Lynching in the United States 142 Lynching : A National Menace 149 Concerning Lynching 152 Race Riots in Relation to Democracy 154 VWhat is Behind the Negro Uprising? 157 \ The Economic Interpretation of Peonage 161 S Fruits of Peonage 166 -"-EDUCATION The Education of the Southern Negro 169 Task of the Leader 176 Can the Negro Be Educated ? 178 Negro Education 180 National Responsibility for Education of the Colored * People 186 / Progress in the Education of the Negro 189 I The Higher Education of the Negro 193 NEGRO SUFFRAGE Disfranchising the Negro 199 Undoing of Reconstruction 203 Problems of Citizenship 207 > Why Disfranchisement is Bad 213 - The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments 225 Negro Suffrage 232 ^/Has the Fifteenth Amendment Been Justified? 233 Representation 238 CONTENTS ix MIGRATION Negro Migration During the War 245 Efforts to Check the Movement 250 Effects of the Movement on the South 255 NEGRO IN INDUSTRY His Industrial Success 259 ^ Effect of War Conditions on Negro Labor 261 The Negro in Industry 269 Bill of Labor Rights 274 The Negro and His Opportunity 276 RACE SEPARATION SEGREGATION AND^ COLONIZATION Unconstitutionality of Negro Segregation 281 -~ Race Segregation in the United States 283 Conditions Among Negroes in the Cities 291 Gunpowder of Race Antagonism 294 My View of the Segregation Laws 296 Rural Land Segregation Between Whites and Negroes.... 297 The President and the Segregation at Washington 300 Historic Attempts to Solve Race Problem in America by Deportation 303 Black and White in the South 306 Negro s Fatherland 312 Future of the Negro 315 V / 317 FUTURE Proposed Solution of the Race Problem ................ 321 Psychological Factor in Southern Race Problems ........ 329 Practical Application of Christianity to the American Race- Problem ............................................. . 332 An Object-Lesson in the Solution of Race Problems ---- 335 Race Problem ........................................... 339 White Man s Debt to the Negro ........................ 341 The South Taking Up the Problem ...................... 343 Way to Racial Peace ................................... 347 Ultimate Race Problem ........................ ; ......... 35^ Future of the Negro People ........................... 356 Garvey s Empire of Ethiopia ............................ 364 BIBLIOGRAPHY Articles starred (*) have been reprinted entirely or in part in this handbook. BIBLIOGRAPHIES Atlanta University Publications. No. 10. Select bibliography of the Negro American. U2p. Atlanta, Ga. 1906. Murray, Daniel. Preliminary list of books and pamphlets by Negro authors. 8p. Library of Congress. 1900. Sieg, Vera. Negro problem: a bibliography. 22p. Wisconsin Free Library Commission. Madison, Wis. 1908. Young s Book Exchange. Priced catalogue of books pertain ing to Negroes. 28p. 135 W. i35th St, New York. 1918. HISTORY Books, Pamphlets and Documents Brawley, Benjamin Griffith. Short history of the American Negro. 247p. Macmillan Co. New York. 1913. DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. Negro. 254p. soc. Henry Holt & Co. New York. 1915. Bibliography p. 244-52. Harding, Samuel Bannister, ed. Contest over slavery; Civil war and reconstruction. In Select orations illustrating Amer ican political history, p. 242-507. Macmillan Co. New York. 1909. Hill, Mabel. Liberty documents, p. 340-87. Longmans, Green & Co. New York. 1901. Rights of slaves and their race, ch. XXI, Emancipation of the slaves, ch. XXII, Reconstruction amendments, ch. XXIII. Johnson, Allen, ed. Slavery and the constitution. In Readings in American constitutional history, p. 405-63. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston. 1912. Chapters are: Slavery in the territories, Rendition of fugitive slaves, Doctrine of popular sovereignty, Dred Scott v. Sanford, Dred Scot decision, Secession and coercion. *Johnston, Sir Harry H. World position of the Negro and Negroid. Universal Races Congress. Papers on inter-racial problems, p. 328-36. P. D. King & Son. London. 1911. xii BIBLIOGRAPHY Merriam, George S. Negro and the nation. 436p. Henry Holt & Co. New York. 1906. History of American slavery and enfranchisement. Morel, E. D. Black man s burden. 24ip. B. W. Huebsch. New York. 1920. Suffering which Europe has inflicted upon Africa. Page, Thomas Nelson. Southern people during reconstruction. In Old Dominion, p. 235-80. Charles Scribner s Sons. New York. 1908. *Washington, Booker T. Story of the Negro; the rise of the race from slavery. 2v. Doubleday, Page & Co. New York. 1909. Pt. i. The Negro in Africa; pt. 2. The Negro as a slave; pt. 3. The Negro as a freeman. Wilbur, Henry W. President Lincoln s attitude towards slavery and emancipation. 22Op. Walter H. Jenkins. Philadelphia. 1914. Periodical References *Current Literature. 36:526-8. My. 04. Mr. Page s reply to Mr. Schurz. Mistakes of reconstruction. Journal of Race Development. 1 1482-502. Ap. u. Contribu tion of the Negro to human civilization. Alexander Francis Chamberlain. Bibliography, p. 501-2. McClure s Magazine. 22:548-54, 619-26; 23:96-102. Mr.-My. 04. Negro: the Southerner s problem. Thomas Nelson Page. Reconstruction. *North American Review. 170:656-65. My. oo. Origin of the Negro race. Henry M. Stanley. Sewanee Review. 21 : 428-47. O. 13. Reminiscences of the civil war by a confederate staff officer. A. R. H. Ransom. Plantation life in Virginia before the war, and John Brown s raid. GENERAL Books, Pamphlets and Documents Atlanta University Publications. Nos. 1-20. Atlanta University Press. Atlanta, Ga. Titles are: i. Mortality among Negroes in cities, 24p., 1903; 2. Social and physical conditions of Negroes in cities, 1897; 3. Some efforts of Negroes for social betterment, 1898; 4. Negro in business, 1899; 5. College- bred Negro, 1900; 6. Negro common school, 1901; 7. Negro artisan, 1902; BIBLIOGRAPHY xiii 8. Negro church, 1903; 9. Crime among Negroes in Georgia, 1904; 10. Select bibliography of the Negro American, 1906; n. Health and physique of the Negro American, 1906; 12. Economic cooperation among Negro Americans, 1907; 13. Negro American family, 1908; 14. Efforts for social betterment among Negro Americans, 1909; 15. College-bred Negro Ameri can, 1910; 1 6. Common school and the Negro American, 1911; 17. Negro American artisan, 1912; 18. Morals and manners among Negro Americans, 1914; 19. Economic cooperation among the Negroes of Georgia, 1917; 20. Select discussions of race problems, 1916. *Bailey, Thomas Pearce. Race orthodoxy in the South, and other aspects of the Negro question. 386p. Neale Pub. Co. New York. 1914. Contains much suggestive material. Baker, Ray Stannard. Following the color line ; an account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy. 314?. Doubleday, Page & Co. Garden City, N.Y. 1908. These and other articles first published in the American Magazine. v. 63-66. 1907-8. Brawley, Benjamin. Your Negro neighbor. loop. 6oc. Mac- millan Co. New York. 1918. Dowd, Jerome. Negro races; a sociological study. 2v. Mac- millan Co. New York. 1907, 1914. V. i. West Africans, v. 2. East and South Africans. DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. Darkwater; voices from within the veil. 276p. $2. Harcourt, Brace & Howe. New York. 1920. DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. Souls of black folk. 264?. A. C. McClurg & Co. Chicago. 1903. Essays and sketches. Ferris, William H. African abroad. 2v. Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press. New Haven, Conn. 1913. Traces his development under western civilization. Harris, John H. Africa slave or free? 244p. Student Chris tian Movement. London. 1919. Best on exploitation of Africa. Johnson, Franklin. Development of state legislation concerning the free Negro. 2o;p. Arbor Press, Inc. New York. 1918. Johnston, Sir Harry H. Black man s part in the war. I28p. Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd. London. 1917- Mainly Negro of the British Empire. Johnston, Sir Harry H. Negro in the new world. 499p. Me- thuen & Co. Ltd. London. 1910. "A detailed account of the native of each territory in the new world occupied by Negroes or Negroids." Nature. 85:172-3. " D. 8, 10. Review by Theodore Roosevelt. Outlook. 95:241-4. Je. 4, 10. xiv BIBLIOGRAPHY McCord, Chas. H. American Negro as a dependent, defective and delinquent. 342?. Benson Printing Co. Nashville, Tenn. 1914. Mayo, Marion J. Mental capacity of the American Negro. 7op, Author. New York City. 1913. Reprinted from the Archives of Psychology, no. 28. Mitchell, Geo. W. Question before Congress. 247?. A. M. E. Book Concern. Philadelphia. 1918. A consideration of the debates upon various phases of the race ques tion. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Report. 1919. I03p. 70 Fifth Ave., New York. 1920. Odum, Howard W. Social and mental traits of the Negro. 3029. Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. v. 37. 1910. Roman, C. V. American civilization and the Negro. 434p. $2.50. F. A. Davis Co. Philadelphia. 1916. A broad and strong defense of the Negro. * Roundy, Rodney W. Negro; an asset of the American nation. i6p. Home Mission Council, 156 Fifth Ave., New York. (1920?). * Seligmann, Herbert J. Negro faces America. 319?. Harper & Bros. New York. 1920. An impressionistic study. Smith, William Benjamin. Color line. 26ip. McClure, Phillips & Co. New York. 1905. Argues for the inherent inferiority of the black race along lines his torical, statistical, biological, ethnological, and anthropological. Southern Sociological Congress. Addresses. 1913:368-419. Nashville. Economic status of the Negro. William M. Huntley, p. 368-77; Negro as a farmer, J. H. De Loach, p. 378-82; Negro working out his own sal vation (farm ownership), E. C. Branson, p. 383-97; Social and hygienic con dition of the Negro and needed reforms, Josiah Morse, p. 397-405; Preva lence of contagious and infectious diseases among the Negroes, George W. Hubbard, p. 406-12. Stephenson, Gilbert Thomas. Race distinctions in American law. 388p. D. Appleton & Co. New York. 1910. Articles also printed in American Political Science Review. 1:44-61; 3:180-204; N. 06, My. 09. American Law Review. 43:29-52, 205-27, 354- 81, 547-90, 695-758, 869-905. Ja.-N. 09. Stimson, Frederic Jesup. Legislation concerning personal and racial rights. In Popular law-making, p. 308-16. Charles Scribner s Sons. New York. 1910. BIBLIOGRAPHY xv Webster, Edgar H. Chums and brothers. 247p. Richard G. Badger. Boston. 1920. Interprets the Negro broadly and sympathetically. Periodical Articles American Economic Review. 4:281-92. Je. 14. Movements of Negro population as shown by census of 1910. John C. Rose. Detailed study of distribution. Annals of the American Academy. 49:67-73. S. 13. White man s debt to the Negro. L. H. Hammond. Home missions and social welfare. *Annals of the American Academy. 49:233-7. S. 13. Negro in literature and art. W. E. Burghardt DuBois. *Archives of Psychology, v. 5. serial no. 36:1-138. 1915. Psy chology of the Negro an experimental study. George Oscar Furguson, Jr. Atlantic. 93:588-97. My. 04. Part of a man s life. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Negroes are "intensely human." Atlantic. 97 : 245-50. F. 06. Joys of being a Negro. Edward E. Wilson. Century. 85:46-55. N. 12. Is the Negro having a fair chance? Booker T. Washington. Commercial and Financial Chronicle. 112:98-100. Ja. 8, 21. Negro, the crucial problem. Congressional Record. 59 : 7481-3. My 22, 20. Commission on the racial question. Crisis. 8:184-8. Ag. 14. How the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began. Mary White Ovington. Edinburgh Review. 230:78-92. Jl. 19. Colour problem in South Africa. W. C. Scully. Forum. 55 : 269-79. Mr. 16. Fifty years of Negro progress. Booker T. Washington. Independent. 75:373-6. Ag. 14, 13. Adventures of a near- white. Journal of Negro History. 1:110-31. Ap. 16. Negro soldier in the American revolution. "Library Journal. 46:255-8. Mr. 15, 21. Serving New York s black city. Ernestine Rose. xvi BIBLIOGRAPHY *Literary Digest. 63:40. D. 20, 19. Negroes in America. Concludes our present school program is not fitted for the large mass of the Negro race. Nation. 113:357-8. S 28, 21. Pan- African ideal. Manifesto of the Pan-African Congress in Session at London. Natural History. 19:680-6. D. 19. Intelligence of Negro recruits. M. R. Trabue. North American Review. 183:1285-8. D. 21, 06. Color line in the Army. Matthew F. Steele. Protest against discriminations. Outlook. 123:39. S. 10, 19. Is there an explanation? Rossa B. Cooley. Comments upon the failure to have Negro troops in the Great Victory Parade in Paris on July 14. Pedagogical Seminary. 23:199-203. Je. 16. Some sugges tions relative to a study of the mental attitude of the Ne gro. Argues investigations of the Negro by the white race are per se, erroneous. Difficulties in way of the white race making satisfactory studies of Negro psychology. *Putnam s Monthly. 3 : 67-70. O. 07. American Negro of to day. Booker T. Washintgon. World Tomorrow. 4:24-6. Ja. 21. What manner of man is "The Negro"? Bessie W. Stillman. Pen sketches of the better class. BIOGRAPHY Brawley, Benjamin. Women of achievement. 92p. Woman s American Baptist Home Mission Society. 1919. A review of the achievements of the Negro woman in American life, with special accounts of five. Corrothers, James D. In spite of the handicap. An auto biography. 238?. George H. Doran Co. New York. 1916. A picture of what race prejudice means in the north, and the prob lems which confront the abler and more intelligent Negroes. Johnson, James Weldon. Autobiography of an ex-colored man. 207p. Sherman, French & Co. Boston. 1912. Mather, Frank Lincoln. Ed. Who s who of the colored race. 296?. Editor, 5052 Cottage Grove Ave. Chicago. 1915. Moton, Robert Russa. Finding a way out. 295p. $2.50. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, N.Y. 1920. National Cyclopedia of the Colored race. Clement Richard son. Ed. v. i. 619?. National Publishing Co. Mont gomery, Ala. 1919. Mainly biographical, but contains historical and statistical section. BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii Scott, Emmett J. and Stowe, Lyman Beecher. Booker T. Washington; builder of a civilization. 33ip. $2. Double- day, Page & Co. Garden City, N.Y. 1916. Washington, Booker T. Up from slavery. 330?. 6oc. Hough- ton Mifflin Co. Boston. 1901. Also published in Outlook, v. 66, N. 3, oo v. 67, F. 23, 01. NEGRO IN LITERATURE AND ART Brawley, Benjamin. Negro in literature and art in the United States. I74p. Duffield & Co. New York. 1918. Bibliography, p. 160-74. Davis, J. Frank. Almanzar. 227p. $i. Henry Holt & Co. New York. 1918. Kester, Paul. His own country. 692p. $1.50. Bobbs-Merrill Co. Indianapolis, Ind. 1917. Martin, George. Children of the mist. 285p. $1.75. Daniel Appleton & Co. New York. 1920. Means, E. K. E. K. Means. 385?. $1.50. G. P. Putnam s Sons. New York. 1918. Also: More E. K. Means, Further E. K. Means. Murray, Freeman Henry Morris. Emancipation and the freed in American sculpture. 240?. Author. 1733 7th St., N.W. Washington, D.C. Ovington, Mary White. Shadow. 352p. $1.75. Harcourt, Brace & Howe. New York. 1920. Sewanee Review. 24:42-60. Ja. 16. Negro in the southern short story. Hyder E. Rollins. Torrence, Ridgely. Granny Maumee; The rider of dreams; Simon the Cyprenian. Plays for a Negro theater, nip. $1.50. Macmillan Co. New York. 1917. THE PROBLEM Books, Pamphlets and Documents Archer, William. Through Afro-America. 295?. Chapman & Hall, Ltd. London. 1910. An English journalist s impressions from a trip through the Southern states. *Bryce, James. Relations of the advanced and the backward races of mankind. Romanes lecture. 46p. Oxford, Claren don Press. 1902. xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY *DuBois, W. E. B. Negro race in the United States of Amer ica. In Universal Races Congress, Papers on inter-racial problems, p. 348-64. Ginn & Co. Boston. 1911. Kerlin, Robert T. Voice of the Negro. i88p. E. P. Button & Co. New York. 1919. A compilation from the colored press of America for the four months immediately succeeding the Washington riot. Designed to show the Negro s reaction to that and like events following, and to the World War and the discussion of the Treaty. Mecklin, John Moffatt. Democracy and race friction. 273p. $1.25. Macmillan Co. New York. 1914. An attempt to indicate more clearly what the problem really involves. Miller, Kelly. Appeal to conscience. io8p. 6oc. Macmillan Co. New York. 1918. *Miller, Kelly. Out of the house of bondage. 242?. Neale Pub. Co. New York. 1914. Miller, Kelly. Race adjustment. 3o6p. Neale Pub. Co. New York. 1908. Nineteen essays on the Negro in America, several being reprints of magazine articles or pamphlets. Morton, James F. Curse of race prejudice. 78p. 25c. Author. 244 W. 143 St. New York. Moton, Robert R. Racial good will. 38p. Hampton Institute Press. 1916. Reprint from Southern Workman. Page, Thomas Nelson. Negro: the Southerner s problem. 3i6p. Charles Scribner s Sons. New York. 1904. Collection of essays embodying a representative southern viewpoint. Seligman, Herbert J. Negro faces America. 3I9P- $1.75- Harper & Bros. New York. Smith, Bolton. Philosophy of race relations. 3ip. Memphis, Tenn. Mr. 19. Same: Congressional Record. 59:963-9. D. 20, 19. State Bar Association of Wisconsin. Proceedings. 1916-1918. p. 490-515. Negro question. Moorfield Storey. Milwaukee. 1917. Wells, H. G. Tragedy of Color. In Future in America, p. 185- 202. Harper & Bros. New York. 1906. *Same. Harper s Weekly. 50:1317-19. S. 15, 06. Periodical Articles ^American City. (City ed.) 19:151-7. Ag. 18. Negro in re lation to our public agencies and institutions. J. L. Kesler. BIBLIOGRAPHY xix American Journal of Sociology. 6:662-72. Mr. 01. Race prob lem: as discussed by Negro women. Mary Taylor Blauvelt. American Journal of Sociology. 9:593-611. Mr. 04. Psychol ogy of race prejudice. William I. Thomas. American Journal of Sociology. 13 : 676-97. Mr. 08. Is race friction between blacks and whites in the United States growing and inevitable? Alfred Holt Stone. Discussion. American Journal of Sociology. 13:820-40. My. 08. *American Journal of Sociology. 22:577-93. Mr. 17. Social cost of southern race prejudice. George Elliott Howard. Annals of the American Academy. 18:103-18. Jl. 01. Rela tion of the whites to the Negroes. George T. Winston. Social intercourse during slavery and present lack of it. *Annals of the American Academy. 18:121-40. Jl. 01. Rela tion of the Negroes to the whites in the South. W. E. Burghardt DuBois. Annals of the American Academy. 49:32-7. S. 13. Negro and the immigrants in the two Americas ; an international aspect of the color problem. James B. Clarke. Atlantic. 103:389-97. Mr. 09. Heart of the race problem. Quincy Ewing. The heart of the race problem is the attempt to keep the Negro in ferior. *Century. 99:86-98. N. 19. Clash of color; the Negro in American democracy. Glenn Frank. Chautauqua. 38:223-34. N. 03. Racial composition of the American people. John R. Commons. *Current History Magazine. New York Times. 14:19-25. Ap. 21. Kuklux Klan revival. Frank Parker Stockbridge. * Forensic Quarterly. 1:144-77. Je. 10. Proposed solutions of the race problem. Charles Breckinridge Wilmer. Fortnightly Review. 85 : 909-19. My. 06. Negro problem stat ed. Wm. F. Bailey. English point of view. Forum. 49:193-201. F. 13. Negro problem as a southerner sees it. E. E. Miller. Conservative. *Harpers Monthly. 140:537-43. Mr. 20. Menace of race hatred. Herbert J. Seligmann. Independent. 56:500-4. Mr. 17, 04. Experiences of the race problem. By a southern white woman. Personal story of prejudice and dislike of the Negro. xx BIBLIOGRAPHY Independent. 62:181-6. Ja. 24, 07. What it means to be colored in the capital of the United States. Independent. 63:922-6. O. 17, 07. Negro and justice. A southern woman s protest against hypocritical southern attitude toward the Negro. Independent. 73:661-4. S. 19, 12. Contrasts at home and abroad. Negro clergyman. Lack of color prejudice abroad. Independent. 77:395-6. Mr. 23, 14. Negro question and its solution. Independent. 97:50. Ja. n, 19. With the buffaloes in France. Osceolo E. McKaine. Independent. 99:116-17. Jl. 26, 19. Negro is organizing. *Independent. 99 : 223. Ag. 16, 19. Race riots and their remedy. W. S. Scarborough. "Independent. 105:59-60. Ja. 15, 21. New Negro. Rollin Lynde Hartt. Independent. 105:109-10, 127. Ja. 29, 21. Without benefit of Jim Crow. Chester T. Crowell. Compares southern and northern attitudes toward the Negro. International Quarterly. 7:231-40. Mr. 03. Negro and public office. Joseph B. Bishop. Ex-President Roosevelt s stand on Negro appointees in public office. International Quarterly. 9 : 285-91. Je. 04. Problems of the Negro. Charles W. Eliot. Compares northern and southern opinion on social and political equal ity and education. International Quarterly. 11:6-23. Ap. 05. White man s burden at home. Sydney Olivier. Comparison of conditions in Jamaica and the United States. Journal of Race Development. 7:467-88. Ap. 17. Psychic factors in the new American race situation. George W. Ellis. Tendency and danger of re-enslavement. Living Age. 266:317-19. Jl. 30, 10. Racial conflict in Amer ica. *Nation. 99:738-40. D. 24, 14. Race problem. Oswald Gar rison Villard. *National Conference of Social Work. 1919 : 539-45. What does the Negro want in our democracy? R. R. Wright, Jr. New England Magazine, n. s. 43 : 222-8. O. 10. Special plea of a southerner. Esther Harlan. Holds that personal preference is not menaced by Negroes rightful claim to social and economic justice. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxi North American Review. 184:389-95. F. 15, 07. Acuteness of the Negro question. William Dorsey Jelks. Represents the intolerant attitude of the old southerner. North American Review. 185 : 645-50. Jl. 19, 07. West-Indian and the American Negro : a contrast. W. P. Livingstone. North American Review. 201 : 538-42. Ap. 15. Inferior and superior races. Booker T. Washington. Discusses superiority thru service and superiority of race won by war. Pan-American Magazine. 27:173-82. Ag. 18. Negro problem in the United States. L. E. Elliott. Popular Science Monthly. 79:474-85. N. n. World-wide color line. U. G. Weatherly. *Public. 20:571-2. Je. 15, 17. Negro in the north. Sewanee Review. 19:385-99. O. n. Evolution of the Negro problem. Philip Alexander Bruce. Discusses five enactments of constructive local statesmanship in the south, i. e., disfranchisement, prohibition of intermarriage, interdiction of co-education, separate public conveyance accommodations, and domiciliary segregation. South Atlantic Quarterly. 8:117-31. Ap. 09. Young southerner and the Negro. Carl Holliday. Concensus of student opinion on Negro. South Atlantic Quarterly. 19:302-10. O. 20. University com mission on Southern race questions. Josiah Morse. Southern Workman. 49:349-55. Ag. 20. National aspects of the Negro problem. Moorfield Storey. Southern Workman. 50:10-16. Ja. 21. Negro in America. William Howard Taft. Southern Workman. 50:35-7. Ja. 21. Inter-racial coopera tion. Constructive measures recommended by Southern white women. Survey. 29:576-81. F. I, 13. Civic problem and a social duty. George Packard. Survey. 44 :24i-3. My. 15, 20. Negro and white man : the proper basis of race relationship. A. M. Moore. *Yale Review. 10:384-95. Ja. 21. Problem of the American Negro. Franz Boas. AMALGAMATION American Journal of Sociology. 21 : 666-78. Mr. 16. Legal status of Negro-white amalgamation in the United States. Albert Ernest Jenks. xxii BIBLIOGRAPHY American Journal of Sociology. 23 : 83-106. Jl. 17. Superiority of the mulatto. E. B. Reuter. *American Magazine. 65 : 582-98. Ap. 08. Tragedy of the mulatto. Ray Stannard Baker. *Arena. 35 : 29-32, 274-8, 606-10. Ja. Mr. Je. 06. Heart of the race problem. Archibald H. Grimke. Humphrey, Seth K. America: the Negro-white. In Mankind; racial values and the racial prospect. p. 161-7. $1.50 Charles Scribner s Sons. New York. 1917. The Mulatto factor makes the problem hopeless. "Outlook. 106:409-11. F. 21, 14. Brazil and the Negro. Theo dore Roosevelt. Pan-American Magazine. 27:173-82. Ag. 18. Negro problem in the United States. L. E. Elliott. Popular Science. 82 : 573-82. Je. 13. Biological status and so cial worth of the mulatto. H. E. Jordan. Mulatto the leaven to lift the Negro race. Reuter, Edward Byron. Mulatto in the United States. 41 7P $2.50. Richard G. Badger. Boston. 1918. "An attempt to state one sociological problem arising when two races, divergent as to culture . . . are brought into contact under conditions of modern life . . . and produce a hybrid offspring." Shannon, A. H. Racial integrity and other features of the Negro problem. 305?. Author. Nashville, Tenn. 1907. Moral and ethical principles involved in the amalgamation of the white and black races. Westminster Review. 167:373-9. Ap. 07. Race in the making. C. H. Norman. Changing Negro type in the United States. EDUCATION Books, Pamphlets and Documents Coon, Charles L. Public taxation and Negro schools, up. Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Inter ests of the Negro Race, Cheyney, Pa. April, 1909. Confined to the investigation of the question, "Is the Negro public school in the South a burden on the white taxpayer, and if so, to what extent?" From servitude to service; history and work of southern in stitutions for the education of the Negro. 232p. American Unitarian Association, Boston. 1905. Berea, Howard, Tuskegee, Hampton, Atlanta, Fisk. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxiii Gardiner, Charles A. Constitutional and educational solution of the Negro problem. 224p. University of the State of New York. Albany. 1903. Holtzclaw, William H. Black man s burden. 232p. $1.50 Neale Pub. Co. New York. 1915. Utica Institute, Miss. Noble, Stuart Grayson. Forty years of the public schools in Mississippi. I42p. Teachers college, Columbia University. New York. 1918. Covers period 1870-1910. Study of a typically Southern state. Peabody, Francis Greenwood. Education for life; the story of Hampton Institute. 393p. Doubleday, Page & Co. New York. 1918. *Sutton, William Seneca. Education of the Southern Negro. 24?. University of Texas. Bui. no. 221. Mr. i, 21. Austin, Texas. Bibliography, p. 19-24. Washington, Booker T. Education of the Negro. Mono graphs on Education in the U.S. No. 18. Louisiana Pur chase Exposition Co. St. Louis. 1904. Development of education of the Negro in the U.S. before and after the civil war; with statistics. Washington, Booker T. My larger education. 313?. Double- day, Page & Co. Garden City, N.Y. 1911. Sequel to "Up from slavery." Washington, Booker T. ed. Tuskegee, its people: their ideals and achievements. 354p. D. Appleton & Co. New York. 1906. Woodson, C. G. Education of the Negro prior to 1861. 454P- $2. G. P. Putnam s Sons. New York. 1915. Bibliography, p. 399-434- Periodicals Annals of the American Academy. 33:1-12. Ja. 09. Relation of industrial education to national progress. Booker T. Washington. Atlantic Monthly. 90:289-97. S. 02. Training of black men W. E. Burghardt DuBois. Justifies education since the Civil War. Education. 28: 507-10. Ap. 08. Answer to the Negro question: education. Milledge L. Bonham, Jr. Editorial comment, p. 514-16. Solution is education of the Negro, the southern and the northern white, and, ultimately, voluntary emigration to Africa. xxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY Education. 36 : 234-40. D. 15. Practical value of the higher education of the Negro. Kelly Miller. Educational Review. 58:31-8. Je. 19. National responsibility for the education of the Negro. Kelly Miller. Journal of Education. 83:399-400, 428-9. 460, 484-5, 544-5, 596- 7. 84:8-9, 347-8, 488, 628. Ap 13-27, My. 4, 18, Je I, Jl. 6, O. 12, N. 16, D. 21, 16. Meaning of Tuskegee. W. J. But ton. Journal of Negro History. 5:1-21. Ja. 20. Negro in educa tion. Loretta Funke. Historical survey of Negro education in the United States. *National Education Association. 1918: 555-67. National responsibility for education of the colored people. With discussion. Kelly Miller and others. National Municipal Review. 7:53-7. Ja. 18. Negro education in the south. William H. Baldwin. New World. 9 : 625-39. D. oo. Negro education. Hollis Burke Frissell. Development of education since civil war. North American Review. 206:436-45. S. 17. Problems of Negro education. J. C. Hemphill. Based on U.S. Bureau of Education. Bui. 1916, no. 38. *Outlook. 117:602-4. D. 12, 17. Can the Negro be educated? Lyman Abbott. *Religious Education. 6:420-3. D. n. Higher education of the Negro. Wilbur P. Thirkield. School and Society. 7:669-71. Je. 8, 18. National aid to Ne gro education. James H. Dillard. Favors national aid. *Sewanee Review. 15:1-30. Ja. 07. Task of the leader. Ed gar Gardner Murphy. South Atlantic Quarterly. 16:14-20. Ja. 17. Education and crime among Negroes. Gilbert T. Stephenson. South Atlantic Quarterly. 18:116-24. Ap. 19. Educational values in schools for Negroes. Stuart Grayson Noble. United States. Bureau of Education. Bui. 1916, nos. 38 and 39. Negro Education. $i and $1.25. Supt. of doc. United States. Bureau of Education. Bui. 1919, no. 27. Re cent progress in Negro education. Thomas Jesse Jones. i6p. 5c. Supt. of doc. *Weekly Review. 3:52-3. Jl. 14, 20. Progress in the educa tion of the Negro. James Z. Gregg. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxv LYNCHING American Law Review. 44:200-20. Mr. 10. Lynching. Charles C. Butler. History, extent and remedies. Blackwood s Magazine. 181 : 48-60. Ja. 07. "But for the Grace of God ." John Marvyn. One man s justification of lynching. Collins, Winfield H. Truth about lynching and the Negro in the South. 163?. Neale Pub. Co. New York. 1918. Practically an extenuation of lynching. The author pleads that the South be made safe for the white people. International Quarterly. 8:199-208. S. 03. Lynching. Joseph B. Bishop. Menace of lynching spirit. Nation. 103:173-4. Ag. 24, 16. Casuistry of lynch law. Her bert J. Stewart. Refutes defences of lynching. Nation. 108:438-9. Je. 14, 19. Protecting southern woman hood. Herbert J. Seligmann. Author shows "protection of southern womanhood" is a mere phrase used to justify violence committed by reason of intense racial animosity. Editorial comment, p. 931 "The Negro at bay." National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Thirty years of lynching in the United States. I05p. 50C. 70 Fifth Ave., New York. 1919. North American Review. 178:33-48. Ja. 04. Lynching of Ne groes its cause and its prevention. Thomas Nelson Page. Negroes must be held accountable for the good order of their race. A conservative white man s view. *South Atlantic Quarterly. 6:125-34. Ap. 07. Practice of lynching in the United States. James Elbert Cutler. South Atlantic Quarterly. 18:191-6. Jl. 19. South and the lynching evil. Robert R. Moton. Urges constructive effort against lynching. RACE RIOTS *American City. 21 : 248-51. S. 19. Gunpowder of race antag onism. Mary White Ovington. *Current Opinion. 67:154-5. S. 19. What is behind the Ne gro uprisings? Herbert J. Seligmann. *Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 11:127-31. My 20. Lynching an evil of county government. W. E. Wimpy, in Manufacturer s Record, Aug. 24, 1916. xxvi BIBLIOGRAPHY *Lynching: a national menace. James E. Gregg, and others i7p. Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va. Nation. 19:173. Ag. 9, 19. Washington riots. Human side of the Negroes during the race riot at Washington, as seen by a white woman. *North American Review. 178:853-68. Je. 04. Lynching from a Negro s point of view. Mary Church Terrell. North American Review. 210 : 436-8. O. 19. Our own race war. States racial conflict is the natural outcome of causes foreseen in 1785 by the New York Council of Revision. Public. 22 : 848-9. Ag. 9, 19. What Negroes think of the race riots. George E. Haynes. Sandburg, Carl. Chicago race riots. 7ip. Harcourt, Brace and Howe. W. 47 St., New York. 1919. Survey. 38:331-3. Jl. 14, 17. East St. Louis pogrom. Oscar Leonard. *Survey. 42 : 697-9. Ag. 9, 19. Race riots in relation to democ racy. George E. Haynes. World Today. 11:1169-75. N. 06. Tragedy at Atlanta. John Temple Graves, and W. E. Burghardt DuBois. Contrasts the white and Negro point of view. PEONAGE *Challenge Magazine. 3:17-22. Je. 21. Economic interpreta tion of peonage. Independent. 56:409-14. F. 25, 04. New slavery in the south an autobiography. By a Georgia Negro peon. *New Republic. 26 : 223-4. Ap. 20, 21. Fruits of peonage. Nineteenth Century. 46 : 957-73- D. 99. Negro on the position of the Negro in America. D. E. Tobias. Survey. 46:43-4. Ap. 9, 21. Peonage and the public. Hast ings H. Hart. NEGRO IN THE SOUTH American Statistical Association Publications. 13 :65~7o. Mr. 12. Southern agriculture and the Negro farmer. H. B. Frissell. Discussion of Dr. Coulter s paper on "The Rural South," Washing ton, D.C. Dec. 28, 191 1. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxvii Evans, Maurice S. Black and white in the Southern states. 299p. Longmans, Green & Co. New York. 1915. Observations of a white South African travelling through the Southern states. An able and unbiased study. Review: Journal of Political Econ omy. 24:304-6. Mr. 16 Graham, Stephen. Soul of John Brown. 33ip. $3. Macmil- lan Co. New York. 1920. An English journalist s study of the Negro problem by a tour through the black states. Stresses the vital importance of improving race rela tions. Also published by Macmillan, London, under title "Children of the Slaves." *Hammond, L. H. In black and white; an interpretation of southern life. 244?. Fleming H. Revell Co. New York. 1914. Sociological aspects. Hammond, L. H. Southern women and racial adjustment. 32p. Trustees o the John Slater Fund. Occasional papers, no. 19. 1917. What the Southern white women are doing for the black woman. *Hart, Albert Bushnell. Southern South. 445p. D. Appleton & Co. New York. 1910. Independent. 72:196-200. Ja. 25, 12. More slavery at the south. Virtual enslavement of Negro women by low wages and inescapable conditions, as told by a colored nurse. ^National Conference of Charities and Correction. 1914:121-7. Rural Negro and the South. Booker T. Washington. National Conference of Social Work. 1917:273-6. Negro and the new economic conditions. R. R. Moton. Patterson, Raymond. Negro and his needs. 2i2p. Fleming H. Revell Co. New York. 1911. Waring, Robert L. As we see it. 233?. C. F. Sudwarth. Washington, D.C. 1910. Negroes who have done something, and the white "crackers" of the South. Woofter, Thomas Jackson, Jr. Negro migration. 195?. W. D. Gray. 106 7th Ave., New York. 1920. Changes in rural organization and population of the cotton belt. NEGRO IN THE NORTH *Daniels, John. In freedom s birthplace; a study of the Boston Negroes. 496p. Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston. 1914. Epstein, Abraham. Negro migrant in Pittsburgh. 74p. 50c. School of Economics, University of Pittsburgh. 1918. xxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY National Conference of Social Work. 1917:497-503. Program of work for the assimilation of Negro immigrants in northern cities. Forrester B. Washington. Ovington, Mary White. Half a man: the status of the Ne gro in New York. 236?. Longmans, Green & Co. New York. 1911. Wood, Junius B. Negro in Chicago. 3ip. IDC. Daily News, Chicago. D. 1916. World Outlook. 5: O. 19. Negro in the north. Whole num ber. *Way to racial peace, George E. Haynes, p. 3-4. NEGRO IN INDUSTRY *Academy of Political Science. Proceedings. 8:299-312. F. 19. Effect of war conditions on Negro labor. George Edmund Haynes. Annals of the American Academy. 49:19-27. S. 13. Negro in unskilled labor. R. R. Wright, Jr. Atlantic Monthly. 111:756-67. Je. 13. Negro and the labor unions. Booker T. Washington. ^Industrial Management. 58:75-6. Jl. 19. Negro and his op portunity. Ralph W. Immel. International Monthly. 2 : 672-86. D. oo. American Negro and his economic value. Booker T. Washington. Literary Digest. 61: 12. Je. 28, 19. Negro enters the labor- union. National Conference of Social Work. 1919:521-4. Conditions in industry as they affect Negro women. Helen Brooks Irvin. Outlook. 106:893-6. Ap. 25, 14. Eight months as a boss. .Samuel A. Derieux. Shows human side of Negroes. Survey. 45:420-1. D. 18, 20. Negro and the industrial peace. T. J. Woofter, Jr. Negroes status in industry. MIGRATION Annals of the American Academy. 27:559-78. My. 06. Mi gration of Negroes to the North. R. R. Wright, Jr. Journal of Political Economy. 25:1034-43. D. 17. Interstate migration of Negro population. Wm. O. Scroggs. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxix Literary Digest. 54:1914. Je. 23, 17. South calling Negroes back. Symposium of sentiment in South and North. *Scott, Emmet J. Negro Migration during the War. 189?. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. New York. 1920. Survey. 40:115-22; 41:455-61. My. 4, 18, Ja. 4, 19. Negroes move north. George Edmund Haynes. i. Extent and causes. 2. Conditions in the North. Survey. 43:183-5. N. 29, 19. Why southern Negroes don t go South. T. Arnold Hill. United States. Department of Labor. Division of Negro Eco nomics. Negro migration in 1916-17. Reports by R. H. Leavell, T. R. Snavely, T. J. Woofter, Jr., and Francis D. Tyson. Woodson, Carter Godwin. Century of Negro migration. 22ip. Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Washington, D.C. 1918. Bibliography, p. 193-221. Migration and colonization movements, 1815 to date. Also deals with the Negro in the North during the slavery period. NEGRO SUFFRAGE General References American Political Science Review, i : 17-43. N. 06. Negro suffrage: the constitutional point of view. John C. Rose. * Annals of the American Academy. 49:93-104. S. 13. Prob lems of citizenship. Ray Stannard Baker. Education and evolutionary influences will change the status of the Negro as a voter. Atlantic Monthly. 88 : 433-7. O. 01. Reconstruction and dis- franchisement. * Atlantic Monthly. 88:437-49. O. 01. Undoing of reconstruc tion. William A. Dunning. Beard, Charles A. Restoration of white dominion in the South. In Contemporary American History, p. 1-26. Mac- millan Co. New York. 1914. George, James Z. Political history of slavery in the United States. 343p. $3. Neale Pub. co. 1915. Gunton s Magazine. 27 : 453-62. N. 04. Shall we have a six teenth amendment? The disfranchisement of the Negro requires a new amendment reappor- tioning representation to Congress. xxx BIBLIOGRAPHY ^Hamilton, James Albert. Negro suffrage and congressional representation. 68p. Winthrop Press. New York. 1910. Bibliography, p. 61-8. International Monthly, i :34<>54. Mr. oo. Southern question. Edward P. Clark. Struggle for control of the ballot. Journal of Negro History. 6:1-53. Ja. 21. Fifty years of Ne gro citizenship as qualified by the United States supreme court. Carter G. Woodson. McClure s Magazine. 22 : 259-75. Ja. 04. Can the South solve the Negro problem? Carl Schurz. Nation. 111:372-3. O. 6, 20. Woman voter hits the color line. William Pickens. Obstructions imposed arbitrarily in the way of colored votes in the South. North American Review. 128 : 225-84. Mr. 79. Ought the Ne gro to be disfranchised? Ought he to have been enfran chised? Symposium. James G. Elaine and others. North American Review. 202:213-19. Ag. 15. South and the Negro vote. James C. Hemphill. Political Science Quarterly. 9:671-703. D. "94. History of Negro suffrage in the South. Stephen B. Weeks. 1715-1894. *Porter, Kirk Harold. History of suffrage in the United States. University of Chicago Press. 1918. Ringwalt, Ralph Curtis. Negro suffrage. In Briefs on public questions, p. 17-24. Longmans, Green & Co. New York. 1905. Robbins, E. C. Repeal of the fifteenth amendment (Negro suffrage) ; brief. In High School Debate Book. p. 168-76. A. C. McClurg & Co. Chicago. 1912. Bibliography, p. 173-6. Rose, J. C. Negro s right to vote : its denial. In Jones, Ches ter Lloyd. Readings on parties and elections in the United States, p. 244-50. Macmillan Co. New York. 1912. Smith, W. Roy. Negro suffrage in the South. In Studies in southern history and politics, p. 231-56. Columbia Univer sity Press. New York. 1914. "Southern Workman. 49:349-55. Ag. 20. National aspects of the Negro problem. Moorfield Storey. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxf Affirmative References American Political Science Association. Proceedings. 1905: 149-65. Realities of Negro suffrage. Albert Bushnell Hart. * Atlantic. 94:72-81. Jl. 04. Why disfranchisement is bad. Archibald H. Grimke. Atlantic. 106:612-19. N. 10. Negro suffrage in a democracy. Ray Stannard Baker. Same condensed. Review of Reviews. 42:724-5. D. 10. *Grimke, Archibald H. Ballotless victim of one-party govern ments. American Negro Academy. Occasional papers no. 16. i8p. Washington. 1913. Independent. 55 : 2021-4. Ag. 27, 03. Enfranchisement of the Negro no blunder. J. W. Hood. Nineteenth Century. 68:285-302. Ag. 10. American Negro as a political factor. Kelly Miller. Outlook. 123:52, 56. S. 10, 19. War and race feeling. E. E. Miller. The more intelligent of the Negroes should have a vote. Straker, D. Augustus. Negro suffrage in the South. 47p. Au thor. 29 State St., Detroit, Mich. A colored lawyer s defense of Negro suffrage. Negative References Adriaans, J. H. Has a Negro the right to vote? 26p. Author. 406 6th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 1908. Subtitle: The validity of the i4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution denied. *Arena. 31 : 481-8. My. 04. Has the fifteenth amendment been justified? James E. Boyle. Forum. 5 :383-95. Je. 88. What Negro supremacy means. Wade Hampton. South Carolina under Negro rule from 1868 to 1876. Forum. 14 : 797-804. F. 93. Negro suffrage a failure : shall we abolish it? John C. Wickliffe. Suggests repeal of isth amendment. Fry, Henry Peck. Voice of the third generation. 32p. 250. Author. Chattanooga, Tenn. Strongly biased against the Negro. Gunton s Magazine. 25 : 95-101. Ag. 03. Suffrage and repre sentation. Harvard Law Review. 26:42-63. N. 12. Latest phase of Ne gro disfranchisement. Julien C. Monnet. Holds the evasions of the Southern States are justified. xxxii BIBLIOGRAPHY Independent. 60:151-4. Ja. 18, 06. Southern representation in Congress. Sydney J. Bowie. Objections to the reduction of representation. Institute of Social Economics. Lecture Bulletin. 6 : 203-22. F. 16, 03. Is Negro suffrage a failure? George Gunton. Negro suffrage a failure from every aspect. North American Review. 154:401-13. Ap. 92. Southerner on the Negro question. Thomas Nelson Page. Opposed to suffrage. North American Review. 175:534-43. O. 02. Suffrage re striction in the South; its causes and consequences. Clar ence H. Poe. Opposed to federal interference. Scribner s Magazine. 36:15-24. Jl. 04. Disfranchisement of the Negro. Thomas Nelson Page. Represents the conservative Southern view. RACE SEPARATION Segregation * Annals of the American Academy. 49 : 105-19. S. 13. Con ditions among Negroes in the cities. George Edmund Haynes. Century. 79:390-400. Ja. 10. Pioneers of Mound Bayou. Hi ram Tong. A successful and exclusive Negro village and colony in Mississippi. *Hibbert Journal. 13 : 867-86. Jl. 15. Race segregation in the United States. Philip Alexander Bruce. *McClure. 33 : 324-38. Jl. 09. Black and white in the South. William Archer. Nation. 85 : 98-9. Ag. i, 07. Separate cars. F. D. Minor. Justifies segregation on railway cars. National Municipal Review. 3 : 496-504. Jl. 14. Segregation of the white and Negro races in cities by legislation. Gil bert T. Stephenson. ^National Municipal Review. 8:104-5. Ja. 19. Unconstitution ally of Negro segregation. John C. Rose. Also in South Atlantic Quarterly. 13:1-18. Ja. 14. New Republic. 5:88-90. N. 27, 15. Isolating the Negro. Louis B. Wehle. *New Republic. 5:113-14. D. 4, 15. My view of segregation laws. Booker T. Washington. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxlii New Republic. 6:176-8. Mr. 18, 16. Negro segregation in St. Louis. Roland G. Usher. New Republic. 13 1345-6. Ja. 19, 18. Unconstitutional segre gation. W. H. Baldwin, Jr. *North American Review. 198:800-7. D. 13. President and the segregation at Washington. Oswald Garrison Villard. Outlook. 122:604-6. Ag. 20, 19. What does the Negro want? R. H. Leavell. South Atlantic Quarterly. 13:107-17. Ap. 14. Segregation of the white and Negro races in rural communities of North Carolina. Gilbert T. Stephenson. *South Atlantic Quarterly. 13:207-12. Jl. 14. Rural land segregation between whites and Negroes. Clarence Poe. A reply to Mr. Stephenson in South Atlantic Quarterly for April. Survey. 33:375-7. Ja. 2, 15. Race segregation in the rural South. W. D. Weatherford. Colonisation *Arena. 40 : 62-5. Jl. 08. Future of the Negro. Wallace B. Conant. Fleming, Walter L. Deportation and colonization. In Studies in southern history and politics, p. 3-30. Columbia Univer sity Press. New York. 1914. *Same. Journal of American History. 4:197-213. Ap. 10. Historic attempts to solve the race problem by deportation. Forum. 27:114-19. Mr. 99. Negro and African colonization. O. F. Cook. African colonization under right protection. Johns Hopkins University Studies. 37:321-543. 1919. Amer ican Colonization Society 1817-1840. Early Lee Fox. Journal of Negro History. 1 : 276-301. Jl. 16. Attitude of the free Negro toward African colonization. Louis R. Mehl- inger. Opposition to American colonization society projects. Literary Digest. 48:644+. Mr. 21, 14. Chief Sam and the Negro exodus. Back to Africa movement of Kansas and Oklahoma Negroes. Living Age. 265 : 771-8. Je. 25, 10. Liberia and the powers. E. D. Morel. Favors a protectorate over Liberia, alleging its failure. *Survey. 39:141. N. 10, 17. Negro s fatherland. W. E. B. DuBois. xxxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY *World s Work. 41 : 264-70. Ja. 21. Garvey s Empire of Ethio pia. T. H. Talley. SOLUTION Books, Pamphlets and Documents *Burkholder, William. Practical application of Christianity to the American race problems. Kansas University News-Bul letin. 14: no. 5. p. 35-58. Duvall, C. H. Building of a race. 63?. 4OC. Everett Print. Boston. 1919. Race unity and strengthening of racial type as essentials for the future of the race. Eggleston, Edward. Ultimate solution of the Negro problem. 285?. Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press. Boston. 1913. Natural elimination by the survival of the fittest. Royce, Josiah. Race questions and prejudices. In Race ques tions, provincialism, and other American problems, p. 1-53. Macmillan Co. New York. 1908. Shaler, Nathaniel S. Problem of the African. In Neighbor : the natural history of human contacts, p. 126-91. Hough- ton, Mifflin Co. Boston. 1904. Stoddard, Lothrop. Rising tide of color. 3iop. Charles Scrib- ner s Sons. New York. 1920. Modifications of existing world race relationships. Townsend, Meredith. Future of the Negro, and, The Negro problem in America. In Asia and Europe, p. 354-69. G. P. Putnam s Sons. New York. 1904. Holds the Negroes will remain an inferior race. Washington, Booker T. Future of the American Negro. 244p. Small, Maynard & Co. Boston. 1899. Periodical References American Anthropologist. 21 : 410-20. O. 19. Future of the American Negro. George S. Painter. Argues that adaptation, amalgamation, natural selection and environment all tend to produce a lighter race and eliminate the extremes of color demarcation. American Journal of Sociology. 7 :539~56. Ja. 02. Social as similation. Sarah E. Simons. Negroes, p. 542-8. Annals of the American Academy. 49:47-57. S. 13. Work of the commission of southern universities on the race ques tion. Charles Hillman Brough. BIBLIOGRAPHY xxxv * Annals of the American Academy. 49 : 67-73. S. 13. White man s debt to the Negro. L. H. Hammond. *Arena. 36:364-9. O. 06. Object lesson in the solution of race problems. Frank Jewett Mather. Atlantic Monthly. 103:536-42. Ap. 09. Ultimate race prob lem. Kelly Miller. Century. 73 : 961-2. Ap. 07. Where the race problem has solved itself. Eliza Frances Andrews. ^Eclectic Magazine. 147:387-93. N. 06. Negro problem: a southern view. Stanhope Sams. * Forensic Quarterly. 1:145-77. Je. 10. Proposed solutions of the race problem. Charles Breckenridge Wilmer. National Education Association. Proceedings. 1900:114-23. Problem of the South. Booker T. Washington. North American Review. 188:50-61. Jl. 08. Outcome of the southern race question. Albert Bushnell Hart. Discusses fusion, race separation, legislation, violence, vassalage, and uplift. Concludes that the remedy is patience. North American Review. 200:661-2. N. 14. Nature solving a race problem. Census statistics showing Negroes are proportionately fewer in num bers. *Outlook. 123 : 44-5. S. 10, 19. Race problem. *Popular Science Monthly. 83 :368-74. O. 13. Psychological factor in southern race problems. James Bardin. The Negroes will evolve upon distinct racial lines. Public. 22:131-3. F. 8, 19. Negro and national reconstruc tion. George Edmund Haynes. Sewanee Review. 28:152-9. Ap. 20. Outlook for the Negro. Josiah Morse. World s Work. (London). 15:237-43. F. 10. Conflict of color. B. L. Putnam Weale. The black menace of the world, a possible problem of the future. *World s Work. 32:232-6. Je. 16. Gathering clouds along the color line. Ray Stannard Baker. World s Work. 41:153-66; *264-70. D. 20, Ja. 21. Marcus Garvey, the Negro Moses?; Garvey s Empire of Ethiopia. Truman Hughes Talley. ORGANIZATIONS American Negro Academy. Washington, D.C. Armstrong Association of Philadelphia. Fourth and Chestnut Sts., Philadelphia. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 70 Fifth Av., New York. National Urban League. 127 E. 23rd St., New York. Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Com munities League. 56 W. I35th St., New York. University Commission on Southern Race Questions. J. J. Doster, University of Alabama. Periodicals Challenge Magazine. 2305 Seventh Av., New York. Crisis. Published by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 70 Fifth Av., New York. Half-Century Magazine. Half-Century Co., Inc. 5202 Wabash Av., Chicago, 111. Journal of Negro History. 1216 You St. N.W., Washington, D.C. Messenger. Messenger Pub. Co. 2305 Seventh Av., New York. National Urban League Bulletin. 127 E. 23rd St., New York. Southern Workman. Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, Hampton, Va. Tuskegee Student. Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala. SELECTED ARTICLES ON THE NEGRO PROBLEM INTRODUCTION A human relationship is ever a matter of great interest. In the race problem of our country we have the drama of ten million souls being led along a way they know not, aspiring, toiling, many feeling the heights and depths of existence in their race life, thwarted and helped, hopeful and despairing, held down by prejudice or uplifted by Brotherhood, played upon by resig nation and resentment, pride and hate, as race was not often played upon before. It is not the less real that, absorbed in problems of our own, we so often ignore its very presence, until some crisis or conflict, that shames our civilization, brings it to our passing and often uncomprehending attention. Un comprehending since we have seldom tried to realize the deeper meanings of the lives of our black brothers. We have not often concerned ourselves to their civilization from its remote past, their status and capabilities of unfoldment for the future; on the other hand we have often let momentary expedience, and narrow views and fears, injustice and wrong, speak for us for the eternal principles of right, faith, evolution, justice and humanity. The race problem is a subtle, intangible part of our national life. It takes many forms. Fundamentally it is expressed by the question, in individual cases, What is the right relation of this man to myself? And in the national mind, What is the relation of my race to this other, and what its place in our country? The race problem is the attempt of many individuals and groups in many localities to answer these questions for themselves, each according to his light. And in the answers we have all the forms of antipathies and kindliness, social harmony and stress, outbreaks of violence and oppressions, propagandas and upliftments. It is not a unique problem to find friction between two races 4 SELECTED ARTJqLES living side by side, as in America. We likewise find it wherever two races come into conflict, striving, the one to maintain mastery, the other for rights. It is peculiar in that theoretically and constitutionally the races are presumed to be politically and civilly equal, which is denied in actual fact. The history of the Negro race in our country is familiar to most readers. His first appearance in the English colonies was in 1619. In 1662 sanction was given by statutory law to slavery. We note other salient points, his early practical concentration in the Southern states, his period of development during slavery, the contest for emancipation, the readjustments of Reconstruc tion with its period of carpet-baggers, Freedman s Bureau, political abuse and social fears, the gradual deprivation of rights, growth of race separation and prejudice lasting to our day, and the Negro s steady growth in the last decades in material progress and self-help. Du Bois has estimated possibly ten million Negroes expatriated in the total American slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries inclusive, or, counting the loss of life incident to the translation, a total of sixty million. The long period of Negro slavery and his position in our country accentuates a tendency to accord him a place as an/ inferior being. That the Negro race is below the development 1 of the white seems borne out by anthropological, biological V and ethnological studies. Authorities differ, however, in the exact status imputed to the race. The fairest thought seems to be that the inferiority is much less than is supposed. Allowing for wide variations within the race type, for the different levels of race stocks from which he is sprung, and the inadequacy so far of the desired environmental advantages, there is perhaps some reason both for the evaluations of his critics who persist in regarding him as still near the barbaric type, and those of his friends who see his finest and best capacities. Another point of view has been suggested, seeing races not as necessarily superior and inferior, but at different stages, older and younger, rising in one era of civilization and being eclipsed in another, representing the development of different characteristics according to need and to period, capable as individuals of progressing as fast as their consciousness is evolved. It may be well before a wholesale criticism of the Negro as a race is attempted to consider not alone the physical, but the spiritual places of races THE NEGRO PROBLEM 5 in our universe. One writer practically states there will persist inability to really understand the Negro race, its arrestment of development, etc., until we can accept the evolution of the soul. The problems connected with the race situation differ according to locality. In the Southern States they are an evolution from slavery days and the era of Reconstruction. The more acute aspects are perhaps lynching, "Jim Crowism," the denial by one means or another of suffrage, insufficient educational provisions, and the evils connected with tenancy and the criminal system. There is, too, a prevailing and exasperating "cock-sureness" of Southern opinion of the Negro a view, let us say frankly, narrow and intolerant in certain phases, and yet frequently sympathetic. The Negro is "made to know his place." The poor and ignorant white is his economic com petitor, and sometimes also his prejudiced critic and opposer. He is violently opposed, also, by politicians of a certain type, and by writers of the old school such as Dixon, whose novels are built on the perpetuation of Reconstruction ideas and wrongs. The practice of lynching on the flimsiest pretenses gives in stability to life ; "Jim Crowism" and practical social ostracism from any but their own race is felt as a constant insult to the better and more cultured class of Negroes a barrier no personal worth will wear down. The suffrage question is involved with the practical nullifying of the federal amendment by various state constitutional practices, such as the illiteracy, property and taxpaying qualifications, grandfather clauses (declared unconstitutional in 1915). and denial by direct or indirect fraud and intimidation where neces sary. It comprises also the question of the justification and right of the Negro to the ballot. There is in this rather more of a tendency to draw upon historical experience and opinion, especially of the ill-fated Reconstruction period, than to air the question primarily in the light of present day facts. Finally, it is held to involve consideration of Southern representation in Congress, and the effect of the democratic "solid South" main tained as a defense against Negro dominance from Recon struction. In the problem of education several facts are prominent. One is an existing, though not universal, prejudice against educating the Negro for fear of spoiling him for his allotted position as a laborer. Especially is there a prejudice toward higher education. 6 SELECTED ARTICLES To many Southerners the "airs" of an educated Negro are intol erable. The best opinion favors giving him every opportunity for betterment, but there are those who try to prove the Negro is mentally inferior and incapable of benefiting by higher educa tion, and who would limit his opportunities to the lower schools. Needless to say the higher white institutions of the South are closed to him. In the North he is admitted to the higher insti tutions to a limited degree on equal terms; so also in the public schools of the North where the numbers of Negroes are generally small. Industrial education, despised at first by him, but later so widely established, in particular through the efforts of Booker T. Washington, has won the acceptance and approval, in large measure, of both the white race and the black, and bids fair to prove, in the sure lifting of his economic status, a not incon siderable lever toward the enlargement of opportunity and the uplifting of the race. Another educational problem to be con sidered is the limited funds available for education in the South. It is contended that there is not enough as yet for a fair education of the Southern whites. The division of funds for separate schools for white children and for black, leaves a wide discrimi nation against the Negro child. The whites frequently can and do send their children to private schools. To the Negro such recourse is usually closed. They are thrown largely upon self- help, and such northern, philanthropic, and other aid as is ob tainable. The Negro s detractors advocate a division of school funds according to taxes contributed by each race. The Negroes point out that while their direct contribution to taxes may appear to lend color to the charge that the whites are subsidized for their education, yet their indirect contribution to taxes more than covers their educational outlay. On the other hand, Federal aid to education in the South has many advocates who see in that a means of giving the race the opportunity that is justly due. The problems in the North are more in the formative stage. Their manifestations are especially apparent in housing difficul ties, economic competition, race riots, and in the more limited and erratic expressions of discrimination. The general tendency in the North has been to ignore the problem except where the Negro has come in considerable numbers, or where his presence depreciates the value of residential property or he is used to underbid labor. The fairly recent migration North, beginning in 1916, had the effect of accentuating racial THE NEGRO PROBLEM 7 tension in this section, especially in centers where the Negro came to be present in large numbers. Separation of the races in one form or another has long had hold upon men s minds as a means of eliminating to some degree the recurring manifestations of racial conflict. Occu pational segregation, separation in transportation, public accom modations, governmental departments and school, residential or community segregation, to the extreme of race separation by home or foreign colonization, are some of the ways proposed or temporarily effected. Residential segregation first came to be an issue in 191 1 when Richmond, Va. passed a segregation ordinance, its example being followed by a number of other cities until the United States Supreme Court in 1917 declared it unconstitutional. Although no longer constitutional under law, there are still organized attempts and social compulsion to keep the Negroes out of certain neighborhoods. It seems apparent that the social stigma and inferior conditions of living are the principal hardships here. The Negroes have been content, in many instances, to carry out segregation of their own volition, as indicated by towns such as Mound Bayou, Miss. ; Buxton, Iowa ; Balor, Okla. ; Brooklyn, 111. ; Plateau, Ala. ; Petersburg, Md. ; Boley, Indian Territory; Long, Ohio; Titusville, and Gouldtown. An opposite extreme is instanced in Syracuse, Ohio, where it is j^p^orted no Negro may remain over night. Segregation has difficulties controversial and practical. Except by mutual consent or social compulsion it can seldom be en forced. Such arbitrary separation and discrimination has the effect of further stirring up racial animosity, rather than quelling it. Wholesale deportation by colonization, which has been thought upon since the slavery era and has had some notable advocates, is held both feasible and unfeasible by its supporters and critics. But except for the Garvey movement it does not appear to have much hold at present as a practical remedy. There are two minds among commentators as to the original bringing of the Negro to America. Many people look upon it as an unfortunate circumstance, or worse. Among these are included many Negroes who feel that the race should be recol- onized in an African home where it can secure opportunity and development denied it here. Others, including the late Booker T. Washington, have pointed out that the Negro s best possible place is in America. These acknowledge that the swift forcing 8 SELECTED ARTICLES of a backward race by close contact with our developed civiliza tion has done it immeasurable good. If we are to assume that the method of growth of the Negro race has been to have its race life played upon strenuously by a not too sympathetic civilization, psychologically first, and later mentally, its growing mind and leadership generating a greater pride and power, we can readily understand that it must feel the more intensely that its problems must be more emphasised by the very fact of this reaction and growth. The opportunity of the Negro was the more quickly to find itself, that of the white race, how ever blunderingly, to help ; and the white race has not been an entirely compassionate teacher, but has had the imperfections of its own nature. From the perspective of evolution we might see in the story of interracial relations extenuating circum stances; and might ignore for the moment fortuitious or de liberate wrongs and injustices to contemplate rather the in spiration of a racial tide of life moving through inevitable hindrances and shortcomings to its own best good. If the race was given its best opportunity in America, however dark the pages with slavery, crimes and prejudice, it must in the main be admitted that the larger purpose has been fulfilled. The European War, with the action of the government in drafting the Negroes into the army, and the meritorious part played by their regiments "over there" added a circumstance to their psychological growth that was far-reaching. To them, as to many of the white people, it seemed the beginning of a new era in their repressed and troubled race life, an era of the read justments of old injustices and wrongs. But the close of the war was marked by reactionary feelings, increased lynchings and race riots, the Ku Klux revival, pressure in Congress for discriminatory legislation, threats to cut off certain educational appropriations, and a steadily felt change of sentiment in the North. It is not wholly allaying that there might not be in reality, heavy pressure or menace behind these sentiments. The exaggeration alone, in the minds of those who feel them, works much harm. The Negro has a separate life of his own that we are not generally aware of, just as classes within our own race have their mutual centers. It is the normal way of growth, but, made too exclusive, it is the way, also, of unhealthy self-centeredness and agitation. There is both a radical and a conservative THE NEGRO PROBLEM 9 leadership. The Negro is finding himself, becoming articulate, attaining a new method and determination. There is a constant activity of the press and platform, national and international, congresses, conferences, conventions, intra-racial and interracial. Sometimes an observer realizes the rift in racial relationship, its difficulties, and growing strength. The danger, as Stephen Graham and others have pointed out, is that our non-realization and indifference to the problem may cover the smoldering resentment until too late. At the best there will be an evolution of mutual forbearance and kindlier feeling, based on a knowledge and respect for the needs of each race. At the worst there is the menace of white intolerance pressed too far, and of Negro retribution and hatred, disastrous to both. The theory that the difficulties between the races might be ignored has not proved altogether tenable. Aside from remedies heretofore mentioned, colonization and segregation, discussion recurs as to what will be the ultimate future of the Negro in our civilization whether it will be an increase of the race and inter-racial struggle, or a degeneration and dying out, amalgamation or extermination, a peasantry class upon the land or a parallel civilization without segregation. The Negro fre quently repeats that he wants but to be left alone. Carried to its conclusion there is even in this a loss presaged to both races in sympathy and understanding; it has been pointed out that the spiritual bond and richness of simple and dignified intimate contact of pre-Civil War times is disappearing and in danger of being replaced, if not already replaced, by an exclusiveness that generates misunderstanding, pride and strife. In the final analysis there is frequently a return to the solution of patience, a mutual attempt at understanding, the natural evolution of the problems by the process of time and earnest effort. Already there have been both mutual and independent constructive efforts afoot in the endeavor to promote better and more fundamentally just relations. Especially noteworthy was an international conference called by DuBois during the Peace Conference in Paris, which represented, also, a step in racial unity. The trend of the times is in larger social consciousness and brotherhood. There is room for the races to work inde pendently and at peace, to transmute strength not into aggres siveness, but into harmony and cooperation, and a goal for each race to carry its own growth and its responsibility to the J o SELECTED ARTICLES other to the highest point. It is to the credit of both races that the best elements of each repudiate the perpetration of wrongs on either side and courageously try to abate the race problem into ways that will not violate the rights, self-respect, and social consciousness of either race, but promote their natural attainment, evolution and worth. JULIA E. JOHNSEN. HISTORY ORIGIN OF THE NEGRO RACE 1 Before stating my theory as to the origin of the negro race, I should like to lead the reader in a general way from that period just preceding the legendary and historic period down to the pres ent condition of negro types found in Africa. At the outset I frankly confess my agreement with those savants who give an Asiatic origin to man, because, first of all, the very earliest rec ords, monumental or written, prove the influence of Asia on Africa, while there seems to be nothing to exhibit African influ ence on Asia. On the sculptures of Egyptian monuments, on the face of the Sphynx, in the features of the most ancient mummies, and in those of Egyptian wooden and stone statues, I see the Afro-Asiatic type as clearly as I see it in the faces of the fel laheen and nobles of the present day. Down to the fifth century before Christ, Egypt was commonly believed to belong to Asia; but though since that period she has been admitted to belong to Africa, because of her river and the land formed by it, moderns as well as the ancients have persisted in acting on the supposition that she is Asiatic. Before the later Asiatics crowded into Egypt, there was, no doubt, an earlier race which we distinguish by the term African, because we find com paratively little of that type in other continents; but it is clear that, whatever proportion of it sought refuge in the interior of Africa, enough individuals were left to make an indelible im pression on the newcomers, and form a separate race, which on account of its peculiar character came to be known as Egyptian. From the time when this new race founded the kingdom, formu lated its severe religion, and distinguished itself by its aloofness from other peoples, there appears to have been a perpetual strug gle as to whether Asiatic or African blood should predominate; and ancient writers were as much puzzled as moderns are as to what continent the old Egyptian race was originally derived from. 1 By Sir Henry M. Stanley. North American Review 170:656-65. May, 1900. 12 SELECTED ARTICLES Leaving the primitive African out for the present, let me say that we must go back to pre-Aryan times to find the ancestry of those early Asiatics who, entering Egypt, originated the peculiar Egyptian race. These people are commonly called Turanians, and they have been variously described as "dilsky, dark, black, black-skinned, and their hair as varying from coarse, straight, black hair," to "curly," "crinkly" and "woolly." The center of this race appears to have been in the neighborhood of Accad, where, it has been found, a King Sargon reigned about 3800, B.C. Sixteen hundred miles to the northeast there was developed in process of time a different race altogether, of light complexion, with blue or gray eyes, and "blood brown" and light hair. It was called "Arya," which means the noble or ruling race. Finding its habitat near the Hindoo Koosh too limited, it spread itself westward over the Iranic plateau, and across the Tigris into the Euphrates Valley. At what early date the Turanians near Accad first felt the pressure of the Aryan multitudes, history makes no mention ; but when the Aryans, still expanding, reached the Indus about 2000, B.C., they found India peopled by a Turanian population. There fore, by inference we may assume that, if the Indian peninsula from the Himalaya to the Deccan was already so well filled at 2000, B.C., Egypt, lying much nearer and smaller, must have been occupied some thousands of years previous. In the Mahabharata, the Aryan epic written about 1500, B.C., we find earnest invocations to the gods against the Turanians, and such allusion to their appearance as to leave no doubt of their color. The gods are implored to give the Aryans power over the "black-skinned" Dasyus, the black inhabitants of Him- avat (Himalaya) and the "Black Cudra of the Ganges." We cannot dogmatize upon the true date when the Turanian center at Accad was pierced by the Aryan wedge ; but it is natural to suppose that, as the Aryans were advancing from the East, the alarmed Turanians would take the direction furthest from the pressure. By the traces they left behind them we know that some fled to Egypt and to Southern Arabia, along the shore of the Persian Gulf, and others to the Armenian mountains the southern shore of the Black Sea toward the Caucasus on one hand and the Bosphorus on the other and so northward to Hyperborean climes in the tracks of a still earlier type of man. Long continued research by Egyptologists has fixed the age THE NEGRO PROBLEM 13 of Menes at about 5000, B.C., or 3000 years earlier than the Aryan descent upon India. As the consolidation of tribes into a nation would require 500 years at least, we must add about that number of years to the age of Menes to find the beginning of the people who consolidated themselves into natural strength. On the Asiatic continent there are still abundant evidences of the color of early man. In the Dravidian Hill tribes, in Eastern Assam, the Malacca peninsula, Perak, Cochin China, the Andaman, Sandal and Nicobar Islands, we find from a host of authorities that it was black, and that some of the people had decidedly woolly hair, others kinky or frizzly hair, others straight and coal black. A still earlier man may be represented by the Negrillos the Ainus, the Esquimaux and the Lapps. On the African continent may be found their congeners in the pure Negroes and the pigmies. Logan, a prolific writer upon Asiatic ethnology, appears to be convinced that early man s first home was in Africa. Sir Wm. Flower believed that he originated in Southern India and, spreading east and west, peopled Melanesia and Africa. Allen derived the African Negroes from Asia. Professor Seeley claimed that the Negro race occupied a belt of land extending from Africa to Melanesia, which has since been submerged. De Quatrofages* theory was that man originated in tertiary times in Northern Asia, that the glacial period caused a great migration, but that the greatest mass of primitive humanity grouped itself in the Central Asiatic highlands, when the three fundamental types, physical and linguistic, arose. The black race, he thought, appeared first in Southern Asia between the high lands and the sea. The earliest writers, such as Herodotus, Aristotle, Pliny and Pomponius Mela mention the countries which were peopled by the Asiatic blacks. Thus, at the eastern extremity of the Black Sea, Herodotus relates that he found the Colchians were "black- skinned," with "woolly black hair," and conjectured therefrom that they were of an Egyptian race. By inference wejearn that the Egyptians or some of them were of that type, "black and woolly haired," but, in his description of the troops under the Persian banner, he draws a distinction between the Eastern and Western Ethiopians. The first, he says, had ^straight, black hair," while that of the latter was "quite woolly." When the Aryans finally extended their conquests to Egypt, 14 SELECTED ARTICLES we may reasonably suppose that, however few or many of the primitive people had already started on their wanderings into unknown Africa, the shock of the Aryan advent must have then given those remaining a stronger impulse to scatter inland. It is clear from the tributes illustrated on the Theban monuments, that some of these fugitives from Egypt had prospered in the African interior; and it is just as clear from the brilliancy of their painted portraits in the tombs near Karnak, that the prisoners brought from Inner Africa resembled the average brown and black woolly-haired African of today. As early as 2500, B. C., Sankhara invaded Ophir and Punt (Somali Land) and brought much booty therefrom. In 2400, B. C., Osirtasen I. repeated the expedition. In 1600, B. C., Thothmes III. returned victorious from Punt; and in 1322, B. C., the great Sesostris inscribed his exploits in Ethiopia on the monuments. The Ethiopians built cities of renown, and grew into a proud and conquering nation, having at an early period found that across the Red Sea their Turanian congeners were settled in Southern Arabia, with whom they established a valuable trade. The ruins of Meroe, their ancient capital, between Berber and Khartoum, rival those of Egypt. The effect of these on Diodorus was such that he ascribed to the Ethiopians the origin of Egyptian religion and art ! A prince of Ethiopia the famous Menon lent aid to Troy in the thirteenth century before Christ. An army under Shiskak, of Ethiopia, invaded Palestine with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen. Zerah, an Ethiopian, had started to fight Asa, King of Judah, with "a thousand thousand" men. Tirhakah, the "Melek Cush," King of the Ethiopians, defeated Sennacherib. In the reign of Psammetichus I., successor of Tirhakah, 240,000 Egyptian soldiers affronted by their king emigrated to Ethiopia and were allotted lands in the region of the Automolii, probably near the modern Senaar. Until the seventh century. A. D., Ethiopia experienced the ups and downs of Egypt; but at this period the fanatic Arabs, unable to conquer the people of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), succeeded in isolating them, with the rest of the African continent to the south, from the civilized world. It will thus be seen that another barrier, no less rigid and strong than the first, was raised against the African race. The severe and exclusive Egyptians by their occupation of THE NEGRO PROBLEM 15 Egypt had blocked the return of the primitive settlers in Africa, at the northeastern end; the i,5oo-mile wide Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea prevented communication with the progres sive nations of Europe ; the Atlantic and Indian Oceans separated them from all mankind on the west, south and east. The Straits of Babel Mandeb had, however, afforded Ethiopia means of communication with the people of Arabia, the Sabaeans and the Jews, and the Ethiopians had profited in culture and wealth ; but the fanatical Arabs closed even this passage to the outside world. This is what makes Africa the best place in which to study primitive man, as he must have been in Asia, Europe and America, before history was conceived. It is only, in fact, within the last thirty years that civilization can be said to have obtained a sure footing in the interior, and that we have been enabled to take note of the effects of certainly 7,000 years of in-breeding, consequent upon the long segregation of the black people within their impassable boundaries. Today, the descendants of the primitive Africans are to be found south of the twentieth degree of north latitude; and, de spite the thousands of years during which they have been im prisoned within the continent, they have retained in a remarkable degree the physical characteristics of their primeval progenitors. The dwarfish tribes who captured the five Nasamonian explorers in the fifth century, B. C, near the Niger, are still represented by the pigmy Wambutti and the Akkas of the Congo forest, the Batwa of the Central Congo plains, the Akoas and Obongoes of the Gaboon, and the Bushmen of South Africa. The pure Negroes are in a great majority over all other races in Africa, and are almost as much scattered over the continent as we believe the Turanians were over the world ; but, wherever located, they are easily recognizable among their colored con geners. That the reader may not be wearied with African names, it is best to divide Africa into divisions. The first, beginning from the west, includes the Niger basin and its outskirts. The most prominent peoples in it are the Haussa, Yorubas, Fantis, Mandingoes, Wangara, Kanuri and Baghermis. These generally are of average height, but vary greatly in complexion, from dead black to dingy yellow. The darker are more often found along the coast, those on the desert 16 SELECTED ARTICLES border are much mixed with Berbers and Afro-Semitics from the east. The masses in the interior, though distinctly Negro in complexion and physical character, possess considerable aptitudes for progress, as if long ago a higher race had impregnated them. The second division comprises all that vast territory extend ing to the Nile from the fifteenth degree of east longitude, and southerly along the line of Nile waters and westward of the lake region down to the Zambesi River. The best known of these tribes are the Shilluks, Dinkas, Nuba, Niam-Niam, Mabode, Azange, Baris and the Congo tribes, such as the Manyema, Bakongo, Bateke, By-yanzi, Balunda, Balua and the Zambesi- Marotse, and others. In this division, the number of sub-tribes is immense. Except on the Nile shores, scarcely any of these tribes would be called black by an expert in African color, but rather a varying brown, between a light bronze and a brown verging on blackness. They are all, however, pure Negro in type and are probably the finest specimens of unmixed Negro human ity in Africa, being well developed and of great muscular strength. Few of these peoples in the central region have shown such advance in native manufactures as may be seen in Nigeria, but capacity for improvement is evinced by the beautiful brass and iron ornaments and weapons of the Mabode and By-yanzi, by the hut architecture and domestic utensils of the Monbuttu, the grass cloths of the Bateke and the trading shrewdness and enter prise of the By-yanzi. If we proceed now to the eastern division, which stretches from the Jub River to the Limpopo, and ta*ke a depth inland of about 300 miles, we find another set of Negro tribes remarkably like those met in the second division, of good height, well set, and admirably muscular. Where the land is low, as in the immediate hinterland, the climate is hot and moist and the tribes are of a livid black, but immediately the highlands are reached the com plexion lightens and the physique of the people improves. Many of the children, as in Ugogo and Unyamwezi, are almost fair in comparison with their parents. Nearer the coast land, many in dividuals among the tribes exhibit the effect of contact with a low-statured race. The eastern sea fringe is occupied by a very mixed race, wherein may be traced repeated blendings with migrants from foreign stocks. It requires no great discernment to perceive that the indigenous peoples have freely mixed with Somalis, Gallas, THE NEGRO PROBLEM 17 Abyssinians, Arabs, East Indians and perhaps Jews, Sabaeans and Phoenicians. The complexion of the people is of all shades from deep black to light olive, and the hair also proves the effects of foreign blood, though, as the foreigners were not in such numbers as to form a permanent race, there is a continued tendency toward reversion. The most interesting division is the eastern central, which lies between the lakes and the eastern division; because, without doubt, it marks the highway of the warrior tribes which advanced in repeated waves toward the south, absorbed whole tribes of the autochthonous peoples, blended with them, and formed a su perior and victorious Negroid race. It is easy to trace the march of this race through the ordinary Negro tribes, by the physical superiority, the taller stature, the courage, discipline, organiza tion and warring propensities of its descendants. The traditions of the natives also guide us as to the direction whence their an cestors came. In my opinion, two streams of migrants flowed from the base of the Abyssinian Mountains one from the direction of Senaar and Fazogl, and the other from Shoa. On approaching the Vic toria Nile, the first crossed into Unyoro, and thence south be tween the lakes; the second advanced by way of Turkan and Kavirondo and overspread what is called the Great Rift Valley. It is clear that the first stream was the largest, because all trace of the second seems to be lost about the sixth degree of south latitude, while the course of the other is perceptible among the Kafirs at the Cape and the Zulus of Natal. Before the conquering march of this host, the primitive peoples fled into the places of refuge which lay on either side of the route, such as the islands in the lakes, the higher slopes of Ruwenzori, and Mfumbiro mountains, the Congo forest, and other out-of-the-way resorts. It is among the descendants of these refugees that one may find customs and habits reminding us of the fish-eaters (the Ichthyophagi), the "Cave Dwellers," and the nomadic "Blemmyes" of Arabia. These tribes are always subordinate to the descendants of the conquerors who settled and occupied the lands, and who are today known as Wanyoro, Waganda, Wanyambu, Waha, Wafipa, Wangoni, Matabele, Zulu, etc. Some of these are more Negrified than others. They all have the woolly hair and many among them are as Negroid in i8 SELECTED ARTICLES feature as the purest Negro. But the majority still retain points in their physiognomies which stamp them as descendants of the old Ethiopian stock, which has fertilized this belt of African humanity. The Wanyambu further south than the Waganda, and the Wanyankori also, exhibit as close an affinity with the Abyssinians as the Wanyoro. In their lengthy limbs and their slender build, as well as in their refined features and small hands, they prove their descent. Among various tribes further south, such as the Wakaranga and Wanyamwezi, the Watusi herdsmen again main tain the tradition; and, though surrounded by powerful negro tribes, they refuse to be contaminated by intermarriage with them, and strike the traveller at once by their tall, slender, elegant figures, expressive eyes and delicate features. But for the hair, they might be taken for a tribe of Bishari lately imported into this region. As we proceed south, we enter a region where the Negro blood and type predominate, but a few hundred miles beyond it we pick up the trail of the Ethiopian again in the Wangoni country, only to lose it, however, beyond their boundary. Across the Zambesi in the Matabele country, we recognize the type once more, and behold the familiar features of Waha, Wakerewe and Waganda, whenever an Indaba is held. Beyond the Matabele are the Zulus, who resemble very strongly the best class of Waganda. In Cape Colony, the extremity of Africa, where humanity has whirled about considerably and formed curious mixtures, we see the Hottentots, Griquas, Namaquas and Korannas, a type formed by the average Negro blended with the primitive "earth diggers" or Bushmen, when the Bushmen were not so few or so much despised as they are today. This breed is not so tall as the Negro of the central regions, nor so dwarfish as the Bushmen. They have the clayey complexion and high cheek bones of the latter, as well as their tufted hair, but the muscular development and build of the true Negro. As regards North Africa, it is unnecessary to go into details respecting the Berber stock, which is the ancient "Barberi" of the Romans. The basic stock was, no doubt, that which peopled Egypt in the pre-historic age; but as its area was much larger. and as it formed itself into several independent tribes and nations, it was more exposed to the influence of the many European and Asiatic nations which in the course of time THE NEGRO PROBLEM 19 formed colonies, of which Dido s colony is an example. Among them, Greeks, Phoenicians, Goths, Gauls, Romans, Celtiberians, Arabs, Jews, French and Spaniards have left their traces freely on the mass of the peoples now found there, while the negro blood has not been wanting to give color and picturesqueness to their physiognomies. Darwin says in his "Descent of Man" : "Although the existing races of men differ in many respects, as in color, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, etc., yet, if their whole organiza tion be taken into consideration, they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points." No traveller who has penetrated Africa, with an open mind, can refrain from agreeing with this. I have endeavored to show the effects on the Africans of more than 7,000 years of in breeding, to which they were compelled by their peculiar environ ments, and the rigid natural and artificial barriers raised against them, by which the original type of African has been perpetuated by repetition. When this fact first dawns on the traveller, he is moved by an emotion as great as that which affects him when gazing on the mummy of Sesostris after it lay entombed for thirty-three centuries. He has viewed the physiognomies of his own prehistoric ancestors, who occupied Asia hundreds of centuries before Menes and Ninus existed; and if he has been led by his thought to trace the fortunes of those pre-historic dark men, conquerers of the African, who elected to wander through Asia and Europe, he will begin to realize what his own cave-dwelling ancestry, who were contemporaries of the mammoth and the lion, were like. There is no need to seek for traces of a submerged continent to locate the home of the first woolly-haired Negro, or the clay- colored Bushmen and darker pigmy. Asia is of sufficient ampli tude, provided we allow time enough to take into consideration its varieties of climate, for the strange divergences in the human races to have taken place within it. The continent that exhibits the almond-eyed Mongolian, the blue-eyed Circassian, the deep, black Gondas and Bhillas, the dark Paharias, the dwarfish Aeta, the hook-nosed Jew, and the short-nosed Tartar, could surely, in the very earliest ages of man, have produced such contracts as the woolly-haired Negro, and the silken-haired Aryan. But in all my travels I have seen nothing more wonderful than this, that, in whatever disguise I found man, something in him seems to justify the belief that "we are all the children of one Father." 20 SELECTED ARTICLES THE WORLD-POSITION OF THE NEGRO AND NEGROID 1 By Negro must also be understood Negroid, that is to say, any human race, nationality, or people sufficiently tinged with Negro blood to display the Negroid characteristics of a dark skin and a spirally coiled hair. No existing type of the human species is so markedly set off from the white or Caucasian division as the Negro. Any type of Mongol or Amerindian can mingle with a white race, and a hybrid in the first generation will not be so alien or repellant to the pure white type that it may not quickly and easily fuse into the white community; and, of course, the more the white intermarries with the Tartar, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Eskimo, the Amerindian, or the Malay, the more those races are approximated to the Caucasian group. Indeed, some comparative anatomists like Professor W. H. L. Duckworth scarcely pretend to discriminate anatomically between the white man, the Mongolian, or the Amerindian: merely between the Caucasian type and the Eskimo, which last, though specialised in some directions, may be held to represent very nearly the primitive Mongolian offshoot from the basal stock of Homo sapiens. There is less racial bar between the Caucasian and the Mongol than there is between the Australoid and the Caucasian. Yet these two last named have freely intermingled, though, according to anatomists, the Australoid type represents more nearly than any other living human variety the Neander- thaloid man of Palaeolithic Europe, and perhaps in a lesser degree the original basal form of Homo sapiens, from which all existing races, varieties, or subspecies have been derived. Thus we see in the peoples of Polynesia and of India the results, ancient and modern, of a direct mingling between the Caucasian and the Australoid, and these results, where they are more or less free from any intermixture with the Negro stock, constitute peoples that, when their social status has been raised, have fused without difficulty into the white world. For instance, a German planter in Samoa might have children by a native woman, a Frenchman likewise in Tahiti, or an Englishman by a 1 From article by Sir Harry H. Johnston, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.Sc., formerly British Commissioner and Consul-General in Africa, etc. Uni versal Races Congress. Papers on Inter-racial Problems, p. 328-36. 1911. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 21 New Zealand Maori, and their male offspring not find any sensible colour bar standing in the way of their marrying in turn white women of social status equivalent to their own. There is more difficulty in this respect in regard to India, simply because the whole Indian Peninsula (like some of the Malay Islands and New Guinea) is permeated with Negro blood of the original Asiatic Negro stock which we find subsisting in a more or less pure form in the Andaman Islands, in a few Nilgiri tribes of Southern India, in the Malay Peninsula and one or two Malay Islands, and, above all, in the great islands to the north-east of New Guinea and in New Guinea itself. The indigenes of Tas mania, before they were exterminated by the British settlers, probably exhibited the survival either of examples of the Negro stock in a stage very near to that at which it first diverged from the Australoid form, or a more recent hybrid between the Oceanic Negroid and the Australoid. The peoples of New Caledonia, of Fiji, the New Hebrides, many parts of New Guinea, the Philippine Islands, and even Annam and Burma, are more or less tinged with ancient Negro intermixture, the degree ranging from an almost pure Negro form to the very faintest indications of Negro affinities. Consequently, it happens that many of the Eurasians derived from a cross between certain Indian, South Asiatic and Western Polynesian types are distinctly less pleasing to the racial prejudice of the pure white man than would be an Amerindian half-breed or a cross between a European and a Samoan or Maori, or between Japanese and Chinese on the one hand and Europeans on the other ; but simply for the reason that in the cross between the average Indian or Malaysian and the white people, there is betrayed some Negroid characteristic which for deep-seated, unexplained reasons arouses an inherent dislike in the absolutely pure-blood white people of Central and Northern Europe, of North America, or of white Australia. Herein lies, indeed (I believe), the explanation of the nearly-extinct hatred of the Jew, and of the results of Jewish intermarriage, or of the similar desire to decry the appearance of the offspring proceeding from the rare unions between Nordic white men and Egyptian or Moorish women: simply the fact that in the Jew, as in the Egyptian and the Moor, there is a varying but still discernible element of the Negro, derived in the case of the Jew from the strong infusion of Elamite blood, and in the case^ of the Moor, from the obvious connection with Negro Africa. 22 SELECTED ARTICLES The same remarks apply in certain cases to the peoples of Southern Persia or Eastern Arabia, the Negro intermixture there being due not only to the Elamite element of ancient times, but to the importation on a large scale of Negro slaves during the whole Islamic period. Recent discoveries made in the vicinity of the principality of Monaco, and others in Italy and Western France all of them analysed in the monograph on the skulls found in the grottoes of Grimaldi, edited by Dr. Verneaux, of Paris, and published in 1909 by the Prince of Monaco would seem to reveal, even if some of their deductions are discounted and a few statements regarded as erroneous, the actual fact that many thousand years ago a Negroid race had penetrated through Italy into France, leaving traces at the present day in the physiognomy of the peoples of Southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Southern and Western France, and even in the western parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. There are even at the present day some examples of the Keltiberian peoples of Western Scotland, Southern and Western Wales, Southern and Western Ireland, of distinctly Negroid aspect, and in whose ancestry there is no indication whatever of any connection with the West Indies or with modern Africa. Still more marked is this feature in the peoples of Southern and Western France and of the other parts of the Mediterranean already mentioned. There is a strong Negroid element in the south of Spain and the south of Portugal, but we are not entitled in default of other evidence to assume that this is due to such an ancient Negroid immigration as seems to be indicated in France and Italy. Because, in the first place, the repeated Moorish invasions of Spain obviously brought thither a very considerable infusion of Negro blood from the Nigerian Sudan, while Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries deliberately imported Negro slaves to do the agricultural work of her southern provinces. Hitherto I speak under cor rection there has been discovered no deeply-buried skull in Portugal or Spain having the same obvious Negroid character istics as the skulls found in ancient burial-places in Italy or in France. Formerly, it was the fashion amongst anthropologists to attribute the black-avised peoples of Western or North-Western Europe their dark hair, brown eyes, tendency to a swarthy skin, and comparative length or shortness of limb bones and THE NEGRO PROBLEM 23 other anatomical features to the persistence in those regions of a strain of Neanderthaloid or Palaeolithic man. And it was assumed that because the modern black Australian is the nearest living representative of the Neanderthaloid type, and at the same time is more or less of a "black" man, the man of Neander thal, Spy, Heidelberg, Krapina, Galley Hill and the Correze must have been similarly black-skinned or of a very dark brown skin colour, possessing likewise black hair and brown eyes. It is permissible from the little we know to assume that Homo primigenius was black-haired and had a brown or hazel-coloured iris (blue-grey, no doubt, in newly-born children, as it is so often with infant Negroes and Asiatics), and there may have been in this primitive type of man an occasional outbreak of erythrism, or individuals with red hair and a light yellow iris; but I see no reason whatever to assume that the parent of the European white man the heavy-browed, slightly Simian type, which we now know ranged over parts of North Africa, of Spain, and the greater part of Europe had a black or a dark- brown skin or had hair which was flattened to an ellipse and inclined to be spirally twisted in its growth. On the contrary, Homo primigenius, or, at any rate, the Neanderthaloid type, may have had a skin like that of some chimpanzees or of the orang-utan, ranging in colour from a dirty-white to a yellowish- gray; while the hair of his head and body, though normally black, may have had a considerable tendency toward brown. If this was the case, then it would seem as though the dark strain of pigmented skin and curly hair which permeates so much of Europe and Asia is due not to the retention of the Home primigenius element, but to the invasion of those regions in ancient times by Negro peoples emigrating from Southern Asia: the original development area, as far as we can guess, of the Negro subspecies. Of course, in considering all points of view, we must bear in mind that a section of the Negro race the Bushman element in South Africa is not black-skinned, but yellow, or yellow- brown; while certain tribes of Congo pigmies are a clear reddish- yellow; and that the majority of Negro babies are born with a yellowish skin, which only darkens into brown or black a few weeks after birth. These facts, however, may only tend to show that the basal stock of humanity was yellow-skinned, and that in the case of the Negro and Negroid the yellow, as soon 24 SELECTED ARTICLES as the specialisation of this type began, deepened rapidly into dark-brown or black. We know that certain races of Amer indians absolutely devoid of any recent intermixture with the Negro, or of any other intermixture at any time, have under conditions of local environment developed very dark-coloured skins. The Bushman may possibly have retained the original light-coloured skin of the Negroid ancestor ; or, as in the case of those Congo pigmies dwelling in the densest forests, have under diverse conditions of environment eliminated much of the skin pigment and become in course of time yellow-skinned instead of dark brown. The tendency in the case of Congo pigmies is for their skin colour to darken in the next generation which is born under better conditions of life, and above all, away from the deep shade of the Congo forests. But it is probable that the light-coloured skin of the Bushman is a very ancient feature. There are sparse indications here and there that the Bushman type once inhabited the valley of the Upper Niger and the adjacent plateaus, and also parts of North-East and East Africa ; and native traditions regarding this vanished type assert that it was "red-skinned," that is to say, sufficiently light in colour to be a contrast to the black or dark-brown Negroes who dispossessed it, yet at the same time sufficiently sombre in tone to be remarked as "red-skinned" by the yellow- white Fulas. The nigrescence, therefore, of Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Oceania may be due to the Negro, who in many other respects is the opposite pole to the white man. Gradually we seem to see approaching a period in the segregation of humanity when there may be two rival camps, black and white, though the black may have been toned down to a pale brown and the white toned up to a warm yellow. But such an eventuality, with 800,000,000 of Dravidian or Mongoloid Asiatics and Amerindians to be absorbed into the white camp would occupy such a lengthy period that the results which might accrue from this division of the human species into two rival and diverging types need not occupy the attention of practical men and women at the present day. The point which this Congress may prefer to discuss is the degree to which the Negro and Negroid may make common cause with the white peoples, and the effect which might consequently be produced by any considerable extension of intermarriage. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 25 The matter of skin colour, facial outline, and of hair texture, is largely a question of aesthetics. If we could imagine some super-human agency looking down on this little planet with a knowledge and appreciation of things far superior to that possessed by the wisest human being, we might hold it conceivable that such an intelligence would either see that there was not a pin to choose between being pink-skinned or brown-skinned, that curly hair was no uglier than straight hair, or a Wellington nose not more beautiful than one of low bridge with wide- spreading nostrils: in short, that a well-developed Negro or Negress was no uglier than a well-developed white man or white woman, provided that both alike were good examples of physical and mental efficiency. Such a being might also happen to know that of which we are at present uncertain, namely, that the Negro originally say forty thousand to ten thousand years ago had a greater innate feeling for art and music than his white or yellow relations, equally with himself mere hunters of wild beasts. There are sufficient indications not to prove, but certainly to make not ridiculous, a theory which might attribute to the ancient Negroid permeation of Europe and Asia a love of music and a desire to reproduce in painting, engraving, or sculpture the striking aspects of beasts and birds or of human life. It may be also that the Negro has acquired in a severe struggle against the micro-organisms of the Tropics a power of resistance to certain diseases not as yet possessed by the white man or the yellow. He has certainly been endowed by nature with a degree of race-fertility probably surpassing that of the European, Asiatic, and Amerindian living under conditions similarly unfavourable to the struggle for existence. Those few scientific men in Britain, Germany, France, the United States, and Brazil who have striven to understand the anthropology of the Negro, and to compare it with that of the white man, are rather inclined than otherwise to argue now that the Negro and the Negroid have contributed in the past, and still more may contribute in the future, a very important quota to the whole sum of humanity, an element of soundness and stability in physical development and certain mental qualities which the perfected man of, let us say, twenty-two or twenty-three centuries after Christ cannot afford to do without. Such advisers would attempt to hold us back from furious raging against racial intermixture, and above all, from any policy of oppression or extirpation to which from 26 SELECTED ARTICLES time to time the white man is prone when he thinks that the Negro or Negroid gets in his way. Some people claiming to be equally farsighted and superior to the temporary prejudices of the human mind hold the theory that the Negro should never have been regarded as anything better than a slave to the white peoples and to the yellow; and that the enemies of the perfect man of the future those who would seek to delay the advance of human perfection are the philanthropists who in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used their great influence to forbid the slave trade, to abolish slavery, and to erect the Negro into the position of a citizen with no legal bar to his equality of standing with the white man. These open foes of the Negro are spiritually the brothers of the persons who hold, or who have held in their past writings, that we committed a fatal mistake when we introduced European ideas of education in India. These last are right, no doubt. When we commenced a hundred years ago to spread education broadcast amongst our subject black and yellow peoples, we sowed the dragon s teeth. We made it possible for generations to come into being who should see the world through our eyes, who should acquire our knowledge of good and evil that knowledge we had so painfully gained by a hundred thousand years of martyrdom, of unremitting struggle with natural forces and should seek to apply to their own social and racial troubles the solutions we had found so advantageous in our own case. But the fact is, if these persons are right, that the mischief began, not with the introduction of modern education into India fifty years ago, or a hundred years ago, or, first, the setting free, and, secondly, the missionary education of the natives of Africa and the Negroes of America, but with the mission and the teaching of Christ. This long martyrdom (for the two thousand years preceding the middle of the nineteenth century) of the brown and yellow peoples of Asia was due primarily to the attempts of the white man in the form of Persian, Greek, Arab, Afghan, Portuguese, Frenchman, Dutchman, and Englishman to push the stubborn Mongol before him, and to enslave more or less the weaker, more Negroid, Dravidian populations; a task in which the Buddhist Mongol, whenever he was permitted to take a hand, showed himself quite as ruthless as the Muhammadan or mediaeval-Christian white man. But, strange to say, the teaching of Christ and His apostles has possessed some unconquerable THE NEGRO PROBLEM 27 surviving influence which began to make itself felt from the end of the fifteenth century in the humanitarian teachings of both Catholic and Protestant. These doctrines prevailed sufficiently on the public opinion of the white world not only to hold back the white man (when he had the power) from exterminating or dehumanising the dark-skinned races which had become subject to him; but prevailed even to force him to extend the gospel of Christ to those peoples, to regard them theoretically as equally men with his own race, and, above all, to give them the advantages of a European education. For aught I know, the teaching of Christ may have been the work of reactionary Nature: judging from the writings of not a few amongst my fellow-countrymen and others in the United States and in Germany, it must have been a wrong idea, since its practical application would inevitably tend to draw all branches of the human race together, with the ultimate result of racial fusion, of equal privileges for all human beings possessing the same degree of education, of moral and physical worth. On the other hand, the coming and the teaching of Christ may have been the most remarkable event in the history of the human species since man emerged definitely from apehood ; and the logical carrying out of Christian principles may lead not only to the gradual extinction of race-hatred, envy, and malice, but more quickly to the formation of the perfect man than might be brought about under other religious systems. According to the nearest estimate one can make, there are at present about 135,000,000 of Negroes and Negroids in the world, as contrasted with 575,000,000 of white or Caucasian people, about 520,000,000 yellow or Mongolian, 300,000 Dravidians, &c. (dark-skinned, straight-haired, well-featured Asiatics, com pounded mainly of Caucasian and Australoid elements), and 10,000,000 Amerindians (who are probably an ancient mingling between the Caucasian and the Mongol). Of these 135,000,000 Negroes and Negroids, some 109,000,000 live in Africa, 24,000,000 in the New World, and perhaps 2,000,000 in India, the Andaman Islands, Malay Peninsula, Philippines, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Neu Pommern, and Oceania generally. It is noteworthy that with the doubtful exception of the Mongolian (as represented by the very mixed population of Japan, an Empire which contains much "white" blood of ancient stock over an Asiatic Negroid strain), the 28 SELECTED ARTICLES Negro is the only non-Caucasian race which has so far furnished rivals to the white man in science, the arts, literature, and mathematics. So far excepting a few Dravidians, Amerindians, and Japanese, all of these half-brothers of the white man the other peoples of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and aboriginal America have kept themselves to themselves, and have never ventured to compete with the white man in his own sphere. But a Negro has now been to the North Pole, and there are famous Negro or Negroid painters, musicians, novelists, botanists, legists, philologists, philosophers, mathematicians, engineers, and general officers whose work is done in the white world and in emulation with the first talent of Europe and America. Here on the French Riviera, where this paper is being finished, Negro chauffeurs are much en evidence because of their skilful and careful driving. The Negro will probably die out in Asia (though leaving in the new peoples of Polynesia and Malaysia and India an ineffaceable trace of his former presence in the land) ; but in Africa and in America he has a very important part to play, and he may even permeate the life of Europe in the coming centuries. France has become an African Power of the first magnitude, with a Negro army of forty thousand men. Britain and Germany look more and more to Africa for their commerce and the raw material of their industries. The ten million Negroes and Negroids in the United States occupy in that country a position of capital importance in industry and agriculture. BEGINNING OF SLAVERY 1 Some time in August of the year 1619 a strange vessel entered the mouth of the James River, in what is now the State of Vir ginia, and, coming in with the tide, dropped anchor opposite the little settlement of Jamestown. This ship, which carried the Dutch flag, had the appearance of a man-of-war, but its mission, as it turned out, was peaceful enough, for its purpose was trade, and among other merchandise it carried twenty Negro slaves. The Dutch man-of-war, which brought the first slaves to the first permanent English settlement in the new world, is, so far 1 From Story of the Negro, by Booker T. Washington. Chap. V. p. 85. Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co. New York, 1909. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 29 as the United States is concerned, the first slave-ship, for it was probably the first slave-trader to visit the North American conti nent. But the twenty Africans were not the first slaves to reach what is now the territory of the United States, and the oversea African slave-trade had been in existence for a century before this time. In fact, Negro slaves were known in ancient Greece and Rome and regular accounts of the African slave trade with Europe are in existence since 990, A.D. In 1422 Portuguese ships brought back Moorish prisoners from a voyage to the Coast of Africa. As ransom the Portuguese accepted a certain amount of gold and a number of "black Moors," with curled hair. When the Spanish explorers and adventurers came to Amer ica they brought many of these Spanish Negroes with them as, servants and as slaves. It is probable that a few Negroes were sent out to the West Indies as early as 1501. Soon after this date, as shown by a letter of King Ferdinand, dated September 15, 1505, a considerable number of slaves were introduced into Santo Domingo. In this letter the following sentence occurs: "I will send you more Negro slaves as you request. I think there may be a hundred." Here we have the beginning of African slavery in America, over a century before its introduction in James town, Va. The records show that Negroes, in 1516, worked with Balboa on the Isthmus of Panama, that Pizarro the conqueror of Peru, and Las Casas, the Dominican Bishop and missionary, had Negro bodyguards. Negroes also accompanied the expeditions of Vasquez de Ayllon, Narvaez, Coronado and De Soto. With the ill-fated ex pedition of Narvaez was the Negro Estevan, in English, Stephen. For eleven years, from 1528 to the year of his death, 1539, this Negro Stephen was with the Spanish explorers on the mainland of North America. He wandered hundreds of miles across what is now the southwestern part of the United States, two centuries or more before our western frontier touched that section of the country. He was a slave of one of the survivors of the Narvaez expedition and must have been a man far above the average type. In one of the folk-tales of the Zuni Indians he lives today, after a lapse of more than three and a half centuries, and one well- known writer of American history has called him the discoverer of Arizona. 30 SELECTED ARTICLES According to the Spanish historian, Oviedo, Negroes were among the settlers of the Spanish colony of Chicora, in 1526, on what is now the coast of South Carolina, and this, so far as known, was the earliest appearance of the black man on the soil of the United States. In 1526, when, under Vasques de Ayllon, eighty-one years before the English, the Spaniards tried to found a settlement on the James River near the present site of James town, Virginia, Negro slaves were employed in the work. An insurrection of the Negro labourers and the death of Ayllon were among the causes for the failure of the venture. African slaves accompanied the expedition of De Soto to Florida in 1539- Negro slaves were settled at St. Augustine, Florida, by Pedro Menendez, in 1565. These, however, were Spanish slaves who had been trained as artisans and cultivators of the soil and were of a different character from those fresh levies of labourers who were brought direct to America from Africa. Almost nothing is known of the history of the ship that brought the first slaves, in 1619, to the settlement of Jamestown; not even its name is remembered. The coincidence has often been noted, however, that the Mayflower, which is said to have brought to America the first seeds of civil and religious liberty, reached Plymouth a year later, 1620, so that Negro slavery is older than Anglo-Saxon liberty on the soil of the United States. In reading the early history of the United States, I have been impressed with the fact that religious animosities among Euro pean people were largely responsible for the settlement of America. Racial prejudice, has often been the source of those wild fears and vague suspicions by which one class of people in the com munity is sometimes incited to violence against another and weaker class. In spite, however, of the bitter animosities that once divided them, the people of the different religious creeds have since learned to live side by side in peace. Is there any sound reason why the white man and the black man, who, after all, understand one another here in America pretty well, should not do as much? I do not believe there is. In 1741, at the time of the "Negro Plot," the population of New York City numbered 10,000, of which 2,000 were Negroes. At this time the number of slaves in the whole colony of Massa chusetts did not amount to more than 3,000. The number in Pennsylvania had reached 11,000 in 1754, but in some of the more THE NEGRO PROBLEM 31 southerly colonies the number of slaves, particularly in propor tion to the number of inhabitants was considerably larger. In South Carolina, for instance, the Negroes were at one time in the proportion of 22 to 12 of the white population. In 1740 this state had 40,000 slaves. In spite of restrictions that were put upon it from time to time the slave-trade continued to flourish down to the time of the American Revolution, when for a time it ceased, only to leap into a more vigorous life at the close of the war. At the begin ning of the nineteenth century England held in all her colonies in the new world 800,000 slaves. France had 250,000; Denmark 27,000 ; Spain and Portugal 600,000 ; Holland 50,000 ; Sweden 600. There were about 900,000 slaves in the United States and about 2,000,000 in Brazil. The famous yacht, Wanderer, which carried 500 slaves into Georgia in 1858, is supposed to have brought 420 slaves more in 1860. But as late as 1862 a ship ran the blockade of Federal ships and landed slaves in Mobile. Far up the river in some remote part of that wilderness of swamp and water there still may be seen, I have been told, above the surface of the water portions of the iron work of the Lawrence, which was possibly the last ship to bring slaves into the United States. The ship was burned to keep it from falling into the hands of the "Yankees" during the war, but there are young men in the African colony who still remember to have played about the hull when they were boys. There are still people living in Mobile who were brought over as slaves upon it in 1862. No one will ever know how many thousands of Africans, during the progress of the slave-trade, were carried from their homes in Africa to be used as labourers in the opening up of the new and wild country in North and South America. It has been estimated that 270,000 slaves were brought into the United States between the years 1808 and 1860, from the time that the slave-trade was legally abolished to the time when it practically ceased. In view of the fact that other estimates indicate that fifteen thousand slaves were smuggled into the United States in 1858; that at another time fifteen thousand slaves were brought into Texas alone in one year, this may be taken as a low estimate. Even this is no indication of the number of slaves that were imported during this time and before into the West Indies and into South America. South America and the West Indies, like 32 SELECTED ARTICLES some of the states of the Far South, were slave-consuming countries, and it was necessary to constantly bring in new levies to keep up the supply. I have taken some pains to examine the different estimates made by different writers at different periods of the slave-trade and for different portions of North and South America, and I have reached the conclusion that the total number of slaves landed in the western world from the beginning to the end of the slave-trade cannot have been less than twelve millions, and was probably much more. ALIENATION OF THE RACES 1 The basis of the institution of the Freedmen s Bureau was the assumption stated: that the interests of the Blacks and of the Whites were necessarily opposed to each other, and that the Blacks needed protection against the Whites in all cases. Those who advised moderation and counseled with the Whites were set aside. No statement of any Southern white person, however, pure in life, lofty in morals, high-minded in principle he might be, was accepted. His experience, his position, his character, counted for nothing. He was assumed to be so designing or so prejudiced that his counsel was valueless. It is a phase of the case which has not yet wholly disappeared, and even now we have presented the singular spectacle of evidence being weighed rather by a man s geographical position than by his character and his opportunity for knowledge. The conduct of the Freedmen s Bureau mislead the Negroes and caused the first breach between them and their former masters. On the emancipation of the slaves, the more enlightened Whites of the South saw quite as clearly as any person at the North could have done, the necessity of some substitute for the former direction and training of the Negroes, and schools were started in many places by the old masters for the colored children. Teachers and money had come from the North for the 1 From article, Mr. Page s reply to Mr. Schurz. Current Literature. 36-526-8. May, 1904. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 33 education of the Negroes, and many schools were opened. But the teachers, at first, as devoted as many of them were, by their unwisdom alienated the good-will of the Whites and frustrated much of the good which they might have accomplished. They might have been regarded with distrust in any case, for no people look with favor on the missionaries who come to instruct them as to matters of which they feel they know more than the missionaries, and the South regarded jealously any teaching of the Negroes which looked toward equality. The new missionaries went counter to the deepest prejudice of the Southern people. They lived with the Negroes, consorting with them, and appearing with them on terms of apparent intimacy, and were believed to teach social equality, a doctrine which was the surest of all to arouse enmity then as now. The result was that hostility to the public school system sprang up for a time. In some sections violence was resorted to by the rougher element, though it was of short duration, and was always confined to a small territory. Before long, however, this form of opposition disappeared and the public school system became an established fact. The next step in the alienation of the races was the forma tion of the secret order of the Union League. The meetings were held at night, with closed doors, and with pickets guard ing the approaches, and were generally under the direction of the most hostile members of the Freedmen s Bureau. Without going into the question of the charges that it taught the most inflammatory doctrines, it may be asserted without fear of ques tion, that its teaching was to alienate the Negroes from the Whites ; to withdraw them wholly from reliance on their former masters, and to drill into their minds the imperative necessity of adherence to their new leaders, and those whom they represented. The Southern people, unhappily, acted precisely as this ele ment wished them to act; for they were sore, unquelled, and angry, and they met denunciation with defiance. Knowing the imperative necessities of the time as no North erner could know them; fearing the effects of turning loose a slave-population of several millions, and ignorant of the deep feeling of the Northern people, they hastily enacted laws regu lating labor which were certainly unwise in view of the conse quences that followed, and possibly, if enforced, might have proved oppressive, though they never had a trial. Most of these 34 SELECTED ARTICLES laws were simply re-enactments of old vagrant laws on the statute books and some still stand on the statute books ; but they were enacted now expressly to control the Negroes ; they showed the animus of the great body of the Whites, and they aroused a deep feeling of distrust and much resentment among the North erners. And, finally, they played into the hands of the politicians who were on the lookout for any pretext to fasten their grip on the South. The struggle just then became intensified between the Presi dent and his opponents in Washington, with the presidency and the control of the government as the stake, and with the South holding the balance of power ; and, unhappily, the Negroes ap peared to the politicians an element that could be utilized to ad vantage by being made the "permanent allies" of what Mr. Stevens, Mr. Wade, and Mr. Sumner used to term "the party of the Union." So the Negro appeared to the politicians a useful instrument, and to the doctrinaires "a man and brother" who was the equal of his former master, and, if he were "armed with the weapon" of the ballot, would be able to protect himself and would in evitably rise to the full stature of the White. Then came the crowning error: the practical carrying out of the theories by infusing into the body politic a whole race just emerging from slavery. The most intelligent and conservative class of the Whites were disfranchised; the entire adult Negro population were enfranchised. It is useless to discuss the motives with which this was done. No matter what the motives, it was a national blunder; in its way as great a blunder as secession. GENERAL NEGROES IN AMERICA 1 The following statistics are taken from what is described by Mr. Samuel L. Rogers, Director of Census, as the "most comprehensive statistical report ever published on the subject to which it relates." The great mass of the Negro population under the jurisdic tion of the United States is resident in the United States. Of the total Negro population enumerated in 1910, numbering 10,215,482 in the United States, Porto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, and in military and naval service abroad, 9,827,763, or 96.2 per cent., were returned from the States, and 385,437, or 3.8 per cent., from Porto Rico. The number returned from Hawaii and Alaska is relatively insignificant During the decade, 1900-1910, Negro population in the United States, including that of outlying terri tories, increased by more than a million, and of this increase, as of the population in 1910, only a small proportion was in the out lying possessions. The rate of increase in the States, 11.2 per cent., considerably exceeds the corresponding rate of 6 per cent, in Porto Rico, while the higher rates recorded for Hawaii and Alaska represent very small absolute population changes. Ac cording to the same government census re*port the percentage of Negroes in the population of States runs as follows : Less than one per cent, in Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, New Hampshire^ Maine. One to five per cent, in Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. Connecticut, New Jersey. Five to twelve and one-half per cent. in Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia. Twelve and one-half to twenty-five per cent, in Texas, Tennessee, Delaware, Mary land. Twenty-five to thirty-seven and one-half per cent, in Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina. Thirty-seven and one-half 1 Literary Digest. 63:40. December 20, 1919. 36 SELECTED ARTICLES to fifty per cent, in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia. Fifty per cent, and over in Florida, Mississippi, and South Carolina. SOME ADVANTAGES THE NEGRO ENJOYS IN THE UNITED STATES * The Negro has some disadvantages in the United States, but he has also some advantages. So much has been said about the disadvantages that the Negro suffers in this country, because of his color and his previous condition of servitude, that perhaps it will not be out of place to mention some of the advantages he enjoys. In writing thus I do not intend to minimize in any way the difficulties nor excuse the injustices which Negroes as a race frequently have to suffer. I intend merely to point out that in spite of our difficulties, at a time when the Negro is making real progress in this country, there is no reason why either the Negro people or their friends should become discouraged. In my opinion, it would be a fatal mistake at this time to sow doubts and suspicions among the masses of my people, which might lead them to believe that the majority of American people in any part of the country do not mean to do them justice, or which might teach them to seek for enemies among those who are trying to be their friends. The world has not always dealt justly with us as a people. There are frequently times when the world has taken advantage of our weakness to impose upon us unnecessary hardships. But it is a great thing for a people to have justice on its side. It is a great advantage to a people that is struggling to get on its feet to have its name identified with a cause that commends itself to the best and wisest men and women in the community. The Negro race has had that advantage in its struggle in this country hitherto, and it should take care that it does not lose it. In a very peculiar sense it can be said that every Negro in the United States who has made himself in any way useful to the community has widened the field of opportunity for the other members of his race, contributed something to the solution of a difficult national problem, and gained for himself the gratitude of all those who wish well of our country. We may 1 From article, American Negro of Today, by Booker T. Washington. Putnam s Monthly. 3:67-70. October, 1907. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 37 as a race congratulate ourselves that we live in a country whose fundamental principle is "All men up, no man down." We should also recognize the fact that probably to no race, white or black, which has risen from a position of slavery serfdom, has been granted, in so short a time, so large a measure j of freedom, or so great an opportunity for advancement, as isj now enjoyed by the American Negro. Germany did not abolish serfdom until 1807, and it was only gradually, after its abolition, that the ballot was granted the men who were formerly bound to the soil. It was for taking part in the political struggle that did away with the last vestiges of this serfdom that Carl Schurz was compelled to flee to America. Even today, I am told, the German laborer does not have the same opportunities to secure an education and acquire property that his brothers enjoy in America. Let me recall the fact that the Russian Government did not abolish serfdom throughout the empire until 1861, just two years before the signing of the emancipation proclamation in America; yet today, if we are to credit reports that come from that country, the position of the Russian peasant is vastly worse, in spite of the good intentions of the government, than that of the Negro in America has ever been, before or since the war. Alexander II. of Russia criticised the abolition of slavery in America because the freedmen were not given land, as were the Russian peasants when they were freed. And yet the condition of the Russian peasant seems to have grown steadily worse in freedom. On the other hand there is no question but that the condition of the Negro has steadily grown better. Statistics show that there has been a gradual decrease in the value of farm products and of the farm equipment among the peasants of Russia. The Negro, starting with nothing, now owns an area of land in this country nearly as large as Belgium and Holland combined. Unquestionably this is due to the greater freedom and the greater opportunity that the Negro enjoys in this country over that of the peasant in Russia. In the United States the Negro has never starved. The Russian famine is said to be more intense this year than it was in 1891, when 650,000 people died. And these famines, according to a recent writer, are directly due to the oppression of these people by their former masters, and to the special burdens laid upon them by the government. It is sometimes a subject for complaint, in this country, that 38 SELECTED ARTICLES the two races are separated on trains, in the schools, and in other places. No doubt this is a disadvantage in so far as it leads to discrimination against Negroes, and this is true particularly in regard to the schools in the South, where there is a disposition to deny them the same opportunities in the schools that are granted to the white people. But this division of the races is an advantage to us as a people, in so far as it permits us to become the teachers of our own people. No better discipline can be given to a people than that which they gain by being their own teachers. They can have no greater opportunity than that of developing within themselves the ideals and the leadership which are to make them not merely in law, but in fact, the masters of their own fortunes. It is sometimes spoken of as a special hardship that the world looks upon us, because of our color, as a people separate and apart, constituting a special problem in the body-politic. For my part, I can only repeat in regard to this what I have said elsewhere : "I would find no interest in living in an age when there were no weak parts of the human family to be helped, no wrongs to be righted. Men grow strong in proportion as they reach down and help others up. The farther down they reach in assisting and encouraging backward and unpopular races, the greater strength do they gather." I cannot regard it as a misfortune to be identified with a people that has its place to make in the world. I know people and believe in them, and am glad to have my share in the great task of building up the race to which I belong. I was never more proud of being a Negro that I am today. If I had the privilege of re-entering the world, and the Great Spirit should ask me to choose the people and the race to which I should belong, I would answer, "Make me an American Negro." PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEGRO AN EXPERI MENTAL STUDY * Interest in the psychology of the Negro has produced a voluminous literature, but the knowledge to be obtained from a reading of it is not commensurately extensive. It may be not unjustly said that until what is practically the present time 1 From article by George Oscar Ferguson, Jr. Archives of Psychology, v. 5, serial no. 36:1-138. 1915- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 39 our information as to the Negro s intellectual characteristics has been almost wholly a product of varying individual opinion and speculation. Here and there have appeared works of value based upon study and experience and presenting carefully drawn conclusions. But for the most part the literature consists of articles which have grown out of limited and untrustworthy observation, and of articles which have attacked the problem from the standpoint of preconceived theories and have reached conclusions a priori from the premises thus held. There has been no settled body of doctrine concerning the vastly important matter of the mental capacity of the Negro. One man has held that the Negro is the equal of the white in intellect; another has held that a great intellectual gulf separates the two races. And there have been many varieties of views between these two extremes. There have been no facts agreed upon and consequently no reliable generalizations. Yet social practices of far-reaching importance have been based upon these varying views. Some school systems have advocated giving precisely the same training to precisely the same radical minds; other systems have advocated a differentiation of school work to meet the needs of the mentally different races; the advocates of both views have put their beliefs into practice. Many social and political considerations have of course had their bearing upon these educational matters, but certainly ideas as to the nature of the mind of the Negro have not been without influence. And the social and political considerations themselves have had a psychological background. In the last few years a number of objective studies of the intellect of the Negro have been made; and they constitute a definite step toward the scientific answer to the vexed question upon which they bear. It is the purpose of the present chapter to review the experimental work which has been done in this limited field of race psychology and also some of that which has not been experimental. K* By way of summary of the various considerations which have come to light in this study; may we say that the average per formance of the colored population of this country in such intel lectual work as that represented by the tests of higher capacity, appears to be only about three-fourths as efficient as the per formance of whites of the same amount of training. It is prob able, indeed, that this estimate is too high rather than too low. 40 SELECTED ARTICLES The groups of whites and Negroes studied are not typical of the white and colored populations in general; their ability is un doubtedly considerably above the average. But the Negroes were probably farther above their racial average than were the whites. If one were to test the capacity of the unselected masses of Ne groes, with their much smaller percentage of white blood, and make a comparison with unselected masses of whites, the results would almost certainly reveal greater racial differences than those found herein. * In the present state of the advancement of science it does not seem possible to make adequate tests of those vastly im portant qualities which are included in the feeling and dynamic, rather than in the intellectual side of mental life. It is the com mon opinion that the Negro differs more from the white in such traits than in intellect proper. His emotions are generally be lieved to be strong and volatile in their manifestations; whether this is due to their intrinsic nature or to a lack of restraint, is the untouched problem. Instability of character is ascribed to the Negro, involving a lack of foresight, an improvidence, a lack of persistence, small power of serious initiative, a tendency to be content with immediate satisfactions, deficient ambition. But evidence that such characteristics constitute a true racial differ ence cannot be called conclusive, and the psychological causes underlying them have not been adequately investigated. Along with high emotional and instability of character, defective mo rality is held to be a Negro characteristic. This is as subject to debate as are the other qualities, though it is apparently sup ported by social statistics. The available evidence indicates that in the so-called lower traits there is no great difference between the Negro and the white. In motor capacity there is probably no appreciable racial difference. In sense capacity, in perceptive and discriminative ability, there is likewise a practical equality. It is in the central elaborative powers upon which thought more directly depends that differences exist, not in the simpler recep tive and discharging functions. It seems as though the white type has attained a level of higher development, based upon the com mon elementary capacities, which the Negro has not reached to the same degree. From the nature of the mental differences, one would infer that such neural differences as may be found will THE NEGRO PROBLEM 41 probably be mainly in the constitution of the cortical neurones, rather than elsewhere in the nervous system. The educational significance of the available facts is difficult to determine. The Negro s intellectual deficiency is registered in the retardation percentages of the schools as well as in mental tests. And in view of all the evidence it does not seem possible to raise the scholastic attainment of the Negro to an equality with that of the white. It is probable that no expenditure of time or of money would accomplish this end, since education cannot create \ mental power, but can only develop that which is innate. The movement toward industrial education for the Negro finds sanction in the studies of his psychology. Without great ability in the processes of abstract thought, the Negro is yet very ! capable in the sensory and motor powers which are involved in manual work. And economy would indicate that training should be concentrated upon those capacities which promise the best re turn for the educative effort expended. Social conditions, of course, have been the main incentive to the growth of industrial education among Negroes, and in themselves they are sufficient reason for emphasizing an intensely practical training. But the mental nature of the Negro gives reason for believing that this sort of education is the only one which will avoid great waste. Diminishing educational returns will be more serious in the intel lectual than in the industrial education of the Negro. But while it thus appears that for the colored population as a whole a manual is more practicable than a literary education, it must not be overlooked that there are individual colored persons of great ability. The widely held doctrine that the Negro s men tal growth comes to a comparative standstill at adolescence does not find corroboration in the results of tests. The groups so far tested, indeed, show that after adolescence the Negro more nearly approaches the white than before. This is probably due to the fact that the adolescent Negroes tested are a more closely selected group than those who have not reached adolescence. The adoles cent Negroes in the schools have more white blood in them. And racial differences at adolescence may exist in the feeling and dynamic sides of mental life, which have not been tested. If there are such differences they will most likely appear just here. But so far as has been demonstrated, the Negro s intellectual de velopment proceeds as rapidly after puberty as does that of the 42 SELECTED ARTICLES white. Then, too, the variability of the Negroes and the over lapping of ability in the two races, make it necessary to expect very able colored persons to be found in every large group. In the main, the most capable colored individuals will be mulattoes, although there are fewer mulattoes than pure Negroes. There are few more controversial subjects than that of the outlook for the Negro race in America, and it is not within the province of this monograph to attempt a discussion of the topic. But it may not be out of place to mention certain considerations that have presented themselves. Conclusions concerning the Negro s possibilities in this country are frequently drawn from a study of the various small Negro republics, such as Haiti, Santo Domingo and Liberia, and opinions so arrived at are not without their value. Yet there are differences between the position of the American Negro and that of the Negro in the isolated states in question. It should be noticed that the number of American Ne groes is larger than the number in any of the Negro republics. Progress depends upon the size of a group as well as upon its average capacity. Other things being equal, the larger group will produce more very able individuals, and such individuals, as was previously pointed out, furnish the ideas and the inspiration for the whole group. And the American Negro is in much closer contact with the white race than are the inhabitants of the inde pendent Negro countries. This contact gives him the advantage of white encouragement, achievement, example and control, and enables him to appropriate to his own use the products of white genius. Races, or nations, between which there is free intercom munication make greater progress than do isolated peoples, for the results of the ability of one race are more readily taken over and incorporated into the life of the other. Hence we may reasonably expect the colored people of America to show a higher type of civilization than those of their race who are differently situated, even though the native ability of the Negro is every where the same. In this connection Thorndike writes as follows : "The orig ination of advances in civilization is a measure of ability, but the abilities that have originated them have probably been confined to a very few men. A race that originated none of them may now possess them all. Even if a race has been completely isolated, its civilization has been originated by only a few of its members; and the chance of men of great gifts THE NEGRO PROBLEM 43 being born is the result not only of the central tendency of a race and its variability, but also of its size. Other things being equal, there is a far greater chance of the birth of a man of great ability in a tribe of a million than in one of a thousand. Since one such man may add to the knowledge and improve the habits of the entire group regardless of its size, civilization will progress more rapidly in large than in small groups, in a condition of isolation. Probably the greatest difference between the American Negro and the members of his race in the relatively isolated Negro communities elsewhere, will eventually be found in the greater amount of white blood which the American Negro will possess. In the course of generations, if the present or a similar rate of white admixture continues, there will be few if any pure Negroes remaining in the United States. The whole of our colored population will be Mulatto, and as time passes the proportion of white blood will increase. This will be inevitable from the fact that white blood once infused into the Negro community will remain there and be continued by intermarriage among the Negroes from generation to generation. The white blood in a mulatto does not return to the white race through intermarriage; the white stock will remain pure. It is among the Negroes that a Mulatto s white inheritance is diffused. Such a continued raising of the amount of white blood in the Negroes is of course dependent upon a continuance of some degree of race intermixture ; but there is no valid reason for believing that intermixture will wholly cease. This consideration will in time work a great change in the race problem in America, and it may both simplify and complicate the interracial situation. On the one hand, the Negro will have greater ability, and there will be less difference between the races. The standard of colored achievement will be higher. But on the other hand, race friction may be increased. The Mulatto is not as tractable or as submissive to white domination as is the pure Negro. He thinks and feels more nearly as does the white man. And he cannot be content with the social restrictions that are thrown around him. -In our own time these tendencies seem to be already evident. The very considerable progress that the Negro has made has been in large measure due to Mulattoes. And it is mainly the Mulattoes who have so largely done away with that type of Negro which was content 44 SELECTED ARTICLES to regard itself as the natural dependent of the whites. It seems probable, indeed, that the excessive criminal and immoral tendencies sometimes charged to the Mulatto may be due if they exist at all, to the fact of his recognition of his ability and his resentment at the position of inferiority in which he is placed. SERVING NEW YORK S BLACK CITY 1 It is in the community life of a great city that the library has its most challenging opportunity. The more homogeneous such a life the greater is the opportunity of becoming part of it, since all currents flow together, drawing one into the common whirl of experience while conflicting currents of thought and habit keep one tossing about on the surface. One of the most interesting and least-known of such com munities is New York s black city, extending approximately from Eighth Avenue to the Harlem River and from One hun dred thirtieth to One hundred fiftieth Streets. Picture to your selves a great town of some one hundred fifty thousand people, with a few alien whites as scattered shopkeepers, and old resi dents, clinging to their homes. This city has its own churches, its theaters, its newspapers, its clubs and social life. There are three churches, each with a parish numbering more than two thousand, in Harlem, and at least thirty others varying in size. The Sunday School of Mother Zion Church has a membership roll of seven hundred, and an average attendance of five hun dred. All denominations, from Baptist to Episcopalian, are represented ; there are a large Catholic parish, several Jewish churches, and a number of Eastern and African sects. The theaters have their own colored actors, and increasingly one sees posters featuring colored artists. There are colored Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., the latter with an entire resident apartment house. In "Liberty Hall," Harlem s town hall, of a Sunday, immense mass meetings are held. Does white New York know what is discussed there? Harlem supports six colored newspapers recognized as representing Negro thought, 1 From article by Ernestine Rose, Librarian, issth Street Branch, New York Public Library. Library Journal. 46:255-8. Mr. 15, 21. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 45 as well as a number of lesser sheets. This Negro world is swarming with clubs, societies, organizations of sorts, for the support of religious or political movements, as for instance, the Bahai faith, or Marcus Garvey s "Back to Africa" propaganda, as likewise for the mutual betterment or advancement of members. What gives all this point is the fact that these activities are sponsored and managed, to a large extent, by colored people. The offices of the Urban League are filled by Negroes, altho both races are represented on the national board of directors. The colored branches of the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. are managed entirely by colored people. The newspaper editors are Negroes, and represent Negro thought exclusively. The clergy are Negroes, except in the case of the Catholic parish. On the corner of One hundred thirty-fifth Street and Lenox Avenue a bank has just been erected, which is financed by colored capital, and is under colored control. A large new theater also financed by Negro funds is being erected. The read ing world knows of Marcus Garvey and his Black Star steamship line. Increasingly, real estate is coming under black control. Even the police and fire stations have colored men on their forces, altho the city-managed activities within the district are the most reluctant in succumbing to the inevitable tide. Until a few months ago the library had no colored assistants. Of the three public schools in this community two have colored teachers, one has fourteen on a teaching force of sixty-one, the other has only one. In this school, which faces the library on One hundred thirty-fifth Street, the registration is something over twenty-one hundred, of whom two thousand are colored. The community has also its literary and artistic life. Several artists of real worth work in Harlem, and there is a large music school, the colored director of which has given recitals at Carnegie Hall. All this seems to spell homogeneity. Yet, tho this great group is held together by the tie of color, and by the same bond is separated from its white neighbors, within itself it is crossed and divided by many conflicting lines of though, belief and hope. The most deeply-cut is that of nationality. Nearly half this population is foreign, from the British or Spanish West Indies or South America. From the British West Indies comes an 46 SELECTED ARTICLES educated, thinking and ambitious group, interpenetrated by white blood, unused to the color line and inexpressibly galled by it. They are perhaps, the library s best readers, but they form a separate, alien group, a bitter, proud people. Those from the Spanish possessions and from South America form as alien a group, but one which is indifferent rather than antagonistic. Both their language and their color exclude them from much of American life. Those from the Islands, unused to participation in political life, do not feel the need of naturalization privileges. They came to America for a livelihood, and that end accom plished, they are satisfied with their own native life with its clubs and gambling groups, its freedom. Police estimates place the number of such alien citizens as from twenty thousand to thirty thousand in this district. A second line of division is that of political thought. All colored people are not thinking alike about their problems, or their future. Distinct schools of thought exist, from that of the late Booker T. Washington, and his successor, Dr. R. R. Moton, of Tuskegee Institute, who believe in the slow advance ment of their race to equal opportunity thru an initial industrial training; to that incredible movement, or dream, rather, of Marcus Garvey. This great leader, who has gathered under his banners some four million colored people all over the world, stands for uncompromising race integrity, a return to Africa, and the establishment there of a black racial and political life. Between these two extremes is a smaller group which believes in equal opportunity along all lines, based on individual merit. The most distinguished exponent of this belief is Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, president of the National Association for the Ad vancement of colored People, and author of several powerful and arresting books. Such is a very sketchy picture of colored Harlem, New York s black city. The Negro editors are among the best friends of the library and it is thru them, the social workers, and other prominent individuals that the library is extending its influence slowly but surely thru the various strata of Negro life. That such strata exist I hope I have indicated. Those who wish to work effectively among Negroes must realize that besides the groups already mentioned, there exists among them a stable, very real social life, quite unlike "culled sassiety," and as unknown to most THE NEGRO PROBLEM 47 whites as "darkest Africa" was not long ago. The library must gain the interest and support of this social and professional, often wealthy, group before it can hope to become an integral part of Negro life. These people are among our best readers, and the books they read are similar to those of any cosmopolitan reading public. They are eagerly interested and curious about what the great world is doing, and keep closely in touch with it. As for the reading habits of the Negro group at large, poetry and music are immensely popular, but so also are philosophy, psychology and the speculative sciences. If there is one quality which is universally characteristic of the Negro in reading, as in all else, it is his love of the beautiful, as he conceives it. Rudimentary as it often is, it furnishes the very best basis for the teaching of good reading, and, I may add, of ethics and good conduct. The children, and adults too, respond to good manners because they are beautiful. I have stood on our stairway and said gently to a tumultuous group of children pelting up towards me, "Good afternoon," and have seen them quiet instantly, smile a happy response, and walk sedately on. A frown and harsh words would have caused whoops of derision. By the same token, Negroes want what is "best" in literature, even if they do not always understand it. In this sense they are ambitious, rather than in the intel lectual or material way of the Jews. An index to the constantly increasing race consciousness among Negroes is their intense interest in books by members of their own race, and in works on the Negro, his history, race achievements, and present problems. Dr. DuBois "Dark Water," and Lothrop Stoddard s "Rising Tide of Color," are almost equally popular. Books exploiting the old-time "darky," with his dialect and his antics, as for instance, E. K. Means, will be read, but they are resented by the thinking, self-conscious group. On the other hand, the "Uncle Remus" stories, and Dunbar s poems, are widely read and very popular. They represent the plantation Negro in his life with sincerity and loving faithfulness. A recent development in the thinking of Negroes is evidenced by their interest in economic and social literature. The economic unrest is seeping in among our colored people, and some of the most intelligent questions I have ever heard have been asked after the lectures at our Thursday night forum, devoted to social 48 SELECTED ARTICLES and racial problems. So much for Mr. Madison Grant s asser tion, "Negroes never become socialists." I trust that what I have said indicates that in working among Negroes, as in all other racial groups, one s preconceived opinions die of malnutrition ! One is naturally slow to form new ones, but gradually I am forming several conclusions about the Negro. Most deeply I am impressed with his tremendous reserve power, which, when fully called forth, will lead to ends we cannot now conceive. This is shown in his wonderful patience, in his per sistent grip on what is fine and beautiful, and in his deep sense of humor, which breeds a curious sort of broad-mindedness. I listened with wonder to James Weldon Johnson s account of the Haitian outrages, and to the questions which followed, pertinent, detached, many satirical, but none hot or bitter. The impulsive ness, high spirits, and "tomfoolery," so often evident are merely effervescence on the surface of a deep, slowly moving stream, surely gathering in volume. Such is my conviction. Another is that the race, in its developing self-consciousness, is becoming in creasingly sure of the necessity before it of working out its own destiny, of settling its own problems. The majority of colored people do not, I believe, hate the whites, but they are expecting less and less from them. And irrespective of divisions, of con flicting beliefs and plans for development here in America, or race integrity in Africa, the Negroes are standing together in a stead fast belief in their own destiny to be worked out within and by themselves. NEGRO IN LITERATURE AND ART * The Negro is primarily an artist. The usual way of putting this is to speak disdainfully of his sensuous nature. This means that the only race which has held at bay the life destroying forces of the tropics, has gained therefrom in some slight compensation a sense of beauty, particularly for sound and color, which charac terizes the race. The Negro blood which flowed in the veins of many of the mightiest of the Pharaohs accounts for much of Egyptian art, and indeed, Egyptian civilization owes much in its origins to the development of the large strain of Negro blood which manifested itself in every grade of Egyptian society. 1 By W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Ph.D. Editor, The Crisis. Annals of the American Academy. 49:233-7. September, 1913. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 49 Semitic civilization also had its Negroid influences, and these continually turn toward art as in the case of Nosseyeb, one of the five great poets of Damascus under the Ommiades. It was therefore not to be wondered at that in modern days one of the greatest of modern literatures, the Russian, should have been founded by Pushkin, the grandson of a full blooded Negro, and that among the painters of Spain was the Mulatto slave, Gomez. Back of all this development by way of contact, comes the artistic sense of the indigeneous Negro as shown in the stone figures of Sherbro, the bronzes of Benin, the marvelous handwork in iron and other metals which has characterized the Negro race so long that archaeologists today, with less and less hesitation, are ascrib ing the discovery of the welding of iron to the Negro race. To America, the Negro could bring only his music, but that was quite enough. The only real American music is that of the Negro American, except the meagre contribution of the Indian. Negro music divides itself into many parts: the older African wails and chants, the distinctively Afro-American folk song set to religious words and Calvinistic symbolism, and the newer mu sic which the slaves adapted from surrounding themes. To this may be added the American music built on Negro themes such as "Swanee River," "John Brown s Body," "Old Black Joe," etc. In our day Negro artists like Johnson and Will Marian Cook have taken up this music and begun a newer and most important development, using the syncopated measure popularly known as "rag time," but destined in the minds of musical students to a great career in the future. The expression in words of the tragic experiences of the Negro race is to be found in various places. First, of course, there are those, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote from without the race. Then there are black men like Es-Sadi who wrote the Epic of the Sudan, in Arabic, that great history of the fall of the greatest of Negro empires, the Songhay. In Amer ica the literary expression of Negroes has had a regular develop ment. As early as the eighteenth century, and even before the Revolutionary War the first voices of Negro authors were heard in the United States. Phyllis Wheatley, the black poetess, was easily the pioneer, her first poems appearing in 1773, and other editions in 1774 and 1793. Her earliest poem was in memory of George Whitefield. She was followed by the Negro, Olaudah Equiano known by 50 SELECTED ARTICLES his English name of Gustavus Vassa whose autobiography of 350 pages, published in 1787, was the beginning of that long series of personal appeals of which Booker T. Washington s Up From Slavery is the latest. Benjamin Banneker s almanacs represented the first scientific work of American Negroes, and began to be issued in 1792. Coming now to the first decades of the nineteenth century we find some essays on freedom by the African Society of Boston, and an apology for the new Negro church formed in Philadel phia. Paul Cuffe, disgusted with America, wrote an early ac count of Sierra Leone, while the celebrated Lemuel Haynes, ig noring the race question, dipped deeply into the New England theological controversy about 1815. In 1829 came the first full- voiced, almost hysterical, protest against slavery and the color line in David Walker s Appeal which aroused Southern legisla ture to action. This was followed by the earliest Negro conven tions which issued interesting minutes, and a strong appeal against disfranchisment in Pennsylvania. In 1840 some strong writers began to appear. Henry High land Garnet and J. W. C. Pennington preached powerful sermons and gave some attention to Negro history in their pamphlets; R. B. Lewis made a more elaborate attempt at Negro history. Whitefield s poems appeared in 1846, and William Wells Brown began a career of writing which lasted from 1847 until after the war. In 1845 Douglass autobiography made its first appearance, destined to run through endless editions up until the last in 1893. Moreover it was in 1841 that the first Negro magazine appeared in America, edited by George Hogarth and published by the A. M. E. Church. In the fifties William Wells Brown published his Three Years in Europe ; James Whitefield published further poems, and a new poet arose in the person of Frances E. W. Harper, a woman of no little ability who died lately; Martin R. Delaney and William Nell wrote further of Negro history, Nell especially making valuable contributions to the history of the Negro soldiers. Three interesting biographies were added in this decade to the growing number : Josiah Henson, Samuel G. Ward and Samuel Northrop; while Catto, leaving general history, came down to the better known history of the Negro church. In the sixties slave narrative multiplied like that of Linda Brent, while two studies of Africa based on actual visits were THE NEGRO PROBLEM 51 made by Robert Campbell and Dr. Alexander Crummell; Wil liam Douglass and Bishop Daniel Payne continued the history of the Negro church, while William Wells Brown carried forward his work in general Negro history. In this decade, too, Bishop Tanner began his work in Negro theology. Most of the Negro talent in the seventies was taken up in pol itics; the older men like Bishop Wayman wrote of their experi ences; William Wells Brown wrote the Rising Sun, and So- journer Truth added her story to the slave narratives. A new poet arose in the person of A. A. Whitman, while James M. Trot ter was the first to take literary note of the musical ability of his race. Indeed this section might have been begun by some refer ence to the music and folklore of the Negro race ; the music con tained much primitive poetry and the folklore was one of the great contributions to American civilization. In the eighties there were signs of unrest and different con flicting streams of thought. On the one hand the rapid growth of the Negro church was shown by the writers on the church sub jects like Moore and Wayman. The historical spirit was espe cially strong. Still wrote of the Underground Railroad ; Simmons issued his interesting biographical dictionary, and the greatest historian of the race appeared when George W. Williams issued his two-volume history of the Negro Race in America. The Po litical turmoil was reflected in Langston s Freedom and Citizen ship, Fortune s Black and White, and Straker s New South, and found its bitterest arraignment in Turner s pamphlets; but with all this went other new thought ; a black man published his First Greek Lessons, Bishop Payne issued his Treatise on Domestic Education, and Stewart studied Liberia. In the nineties came histories, essays, novels and poems, to gether with biographies and social studies. The history was represented by Payne s History of the A. M. E. Church, Hood s History of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Anderson s sketch of Negro Presbyterianism and Hagood s Colored Man in the M. E. Church ; general history of the older type by R. L. Perry s Cush- ite and the newer type in Johnson s history, while one of the secret societies found their historian in Brooks ; Crogman s essays appeared and Archibald Grimke s biographies. The race ques tion discussed in Frank Grimke s published sermons, while social studies were made by Penn, Wright, Mossell, Crummell, Majors and others. Most notable, however, was the rise of the Negro 52 SELECTED ARTICLES novelist and poet with national recognition ; Frances Harper was still writing and Griggs began his racial novels, but both of these spoke primarily to the Negro race ; on the other hand, Chestnut s six novels and Dunbar s inimitable works spoke to the whole nation. Since 1900 the stream of Negro writing has continued. Dun- bar has found a worthy successor in the less-known but more carefully cultured Braithwaite; Booker T. Washington has given us his biography and Story of the Negro; Kelly Miller s trench ant essays have appeared in book form ; Sinclair s Aftermath of Slavery has attracted attention, as have the studies made by At lanta University. The forward movement in Negro music is represented by J. W. and F. J. Work in one direction and Rosa mond Johnson, Harry Burleigh and Will Marian Cook in another. On the whole, the literary output of the American Negro has been both large and creditable, although, of course, comparatively little known; few great names have appeared and only here and there work that could be called first class, but this is not a peculiarity of Negro literature. The time has not yet come for the great development of American Negro literature. The economic stress is too great and the racial persecution too bitter to allow the leisure and the poise for which literature calls. On the other hand never in the world has a richer mass of material been accumulated by a people than that which the Negroes possess today and are becoming conscious of. Slowly but surely they are developing artists of technic who will be able to use this material. The nation does not notice this for everything touching the Negro is banned by magazines and publishers unless it takes the form of caricature or bitter attack, or is so thoroughly innocuous as to have no literary flavor. Outside of literature the American Negro has distinguished himself in other lines of art. One need only mention Henry O. Tanner whose pictures hang in the great galleries of the world, including the Luxembourg. There are a score of other less known colored painters of ability including Bannister, Harper, Scott and Brown. To these may be added the actors headed by Ira Aldridge, who played in Covent Garden, was decorated by the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia, and made a member of learned societies. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 53 There have been many colored composers of music. Popular songs like Grandfather s Clock, Listen to the Mocking Bird, Carry Me Back to Old Virginia, etc., were composed by colored men. There were a half dozen composers of ability among New Orleans freedmen and Harry Burleigh, Cook and Johnson are well known today. There have been sculptors like Edmonia Lewis, and singers like Flora Batson, whose color alone kept her from the grand opera stage. To appraise rightly this body of art one must remember that it represents the work of those artists only whom accident set free; if the artist had a white face his Negro blood did not militate against him in the fight for recognition; if his Negro blood was visible white relatives may have helped him ; in a few cases ability was united to indomitable will. But the shrinking, modest, black artist without special encouragement had little or no chance in a world determined to make him a menial. So this sum of accomplishment is but an imperfect indication of what the Negro race is capable of in America and in the World. RURAL NEGRO AND THE SOUTH 1 Of the nine million Negroes, or nearly that number, in the South, about seven million are in the rural districts. They are on the farms, the plantation, and in the small town. It is worth while to consider these numbers. Here is a population that is three times as large as that of Denmark. It includes eighty per cent of the whole Negro population in the South, the great bulk of the Negro population in America, in fact. Of this seven million it is safe to say that 2,200,000 persons are actually working, either as hired hands, tenant farmers, croppers, or renters and independent owners, upon the land. This number includes women and children, for, on the farm and the plantation, the unit of labor is not the individual but the family, and in the South today Negro women still do a large part of the work in the fields. Now, despite all that has been said about the efficiency or inefficiency of Negro farm labor, and putting aside all theories 1 By Dr. Booker T. Washington, National Conference of Charities and Correction. 1914:121-7. 54 SELECTED ARTICLES and all purely academic notions about the matter, people who live in the cotton growing states know that a very large part of the business of those states is based on the Negro and the mule. In some other parts of the world where land is scarce and labor is plenty, business in the agricultural districts is based on land ; but in the South, where, when the planter wants to borrow money, he finds his credit at the bank is usually determined by the number of reliable Negro tenants he can control, business is based on labor. In other words, the value of the land and of all that goes with it and depends upon it, is determined very largely, more largely, perhaps, than is true of any other part of the country, by the character and quantity of the labor supply. This, then, defines the problem of the rural Negro in his relation to the South. The two million and more Negroes who are employed in agriculture in the southern states have in their hands, either as renters or as owners, 40 per cent of the tillable land. Something like 100,000,000 of the 150,000,000 acres of improved land is cultivated by Negro labor, and of every eleven bales of cotton produced in the South, seven are raised \ by Negroes. The Negro is here and he is likely to remain. First, because after something like three hundred years he has adapted himself to the country and the people; because experience has taught him, that, on the whole, the vast majority of the Negroes are more at home and better off in the agricultural regions of the South than they are likely to be in any other part of the world ; and finally because the southern white man does not want him to go away. You may say what you please about segregation of the races, but when there is work to be done about the plantation, when it comes time to plant and pick the cotton the white man does not want the Negro so far away that he cannot reach him by the sound of his voice. These seven million black people occupying this vast territory representing so large a part of the working force, and having so large a share of the one great primary industry in their hands, constitute a very interesting and very serious problem, and one which deserves the thoughtful consideration and study, not only of the South, but of the whole country. The southern people, in particular, are bound to be concerned in the fortunes and progress of a people with whom their own progress and prosperity are so intimately bound. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 55 At the present time Negroes in the rural districts represent, in some respects, the best portion of the Negro race. They are for the most part a vigorous, wholesome, simple-minded people. They are, as yet, almost untouched by the vices of city life, and still maintain on the whole, their confidence in the good will of the white people by whom they are surrounded. These seven million people represent, therefore, tremendous possibilities for good and for evil, to themselves and the com munity in which they live. From an economic view alone, this large actual and potential labor force represents a vast store of undeveloped wealth. A gold mine of productive energy, in fact. Imported to this country at an enormous cost in suffering and in money; trained and disciplined during two hundred fifty years of slavery, and now waiting to be developed, under the influences of free institutions, the Negro is one of the great natural resources of this southern community. This being so, the prosperity of the South is very largely bound up with the latent possibilities of the Negro. Just in proportion as he becomes an efficient farmer and a dependable laborer, just to that extent will the whole country move forward and prosperity be multiplied. How is it possible to make the Negro farmer more efficient and the Negro laborer more dependable? I can perhaps best tell how to succeed with Negro labor by using some illustrations that have come under my observation which show how not to succeed. Some years ago, when I was in Mississippi, a planter asked me to visit his plantation. I found he had a large number of colored tenants, but I was surprised at the small acreage assigned to each family. In one case I remember there was one family that numbered three or four strong, sturdy hands, which was allowed to rent only about ten acres of land. When I asked the owner of the plantation why he did not let this family have more land he replied that the soil was so productive that, if he allowed them to rent more, they would soon be making such a profit that they would be able to buy land of their own and he would lose them as renters. This is one way to make the Negro inefficient as a laborer. If Negro labor is to become more efficient, every effort should be made to encourage rather than to discourage the Negro in his ambition to go forward, to buy land and plant himself perma- 56 SELECTED ARTICLES nently on the soil. In the long run the planter will not suffer from the existence in his neighborhood of Negro farmers who offer an example of thrift and industry to their neighbors. For example, Macon County, in which I live, was the only one of the Black Belt counties of Alabama which showed an increase of Negro population in the decade from 1900 to 1910. The reason was that a special effort had been made in that county to improve the public schools and this brought into the county a large num ber of progressive farmers who were anxious to own homes in the neighborhood of a good school. It not only did that, but it greatly increased the demand for tenant farms and so brought to the land what it needed, namely labor, efficient and dependable labor. From direct investigation I find that many valuable colored laborers leave the farm for the reason that they seldom see or handle cash. The Negro laborer likes to put his hands on real money as often as possible. In the city, while he is not so well off in the long run, as I have said, he is usually paid off in cash every Saturday night. In the country he seldom gets cash oftener than once a month, or once a year. Not a few of the best colored laborers leave the farms because of the poor houses furnished by the owners. The condition of some of the one room cabins is miserable almost beyond description. In the towns and cities, while he may have a harder time in other respects, the colored man can usually find a reasonably comfortable house with two or three rooms. No matter how ignorant a colored man may be himself, he almost always wants his children to have education. A very large number of colored laborers leave the farm because they cannot get an education for their children. In a large section of the farming district of the South, Negro schools run only from two to five months in the year. In many cases children have to walk miles to reach these schools. The school houses are, in most cases, wretched little hovels with no light or warmth or comfort of any kind. The teacher receives perhaps not more than $18 or $25 a month and as every school superintendent knows, poor pay means a poor teacher. In saying this, I do not overlook the fact that conditions are changing for the better in all parts of the South. White people are manifesting more interest each year in the training of colored people, and what is equally important, colored people THE NEGRO PROBLEM 57 are beginning to learn to use their education in sensible ways ; they are learning that it is no disgrace for an educated person to work on the farm. They are learning that education which does not somehow touch life is not education at all. More and more we are all learning that the school is not simply a place where boys and girls learn to read and cipher; but a place where they learn to live. We are all learning that education which does not somehow or other improve the farm and the home, which does not make a return to the community in some form or other, has no justification for its existence. That is why the movement for the improvement of rural life which has taken such hold upon the South in recent years has gone hand in hand with the movement for better schools. More and more we are beginning to learn that progress in agriculture is dependent in the last analysis on the progress of the man be hind the plow. The rural Negro is just now beginning to share in this improvement; he is just now beginning to feel the influ ence of the upward impulse in the life of the rural South. Denmark, to which I referred at the beginning of my address, has become, within a period of fifty years, the most prosperous agricultural country in the world. In no country in the world is agriculture so thoroughly organized and so efficiently carried on as there. Denmark has brought this result about because, sixty or seventy years ago, a movement was started in that country to educate the common people, to educate especially the people who worked on the soil. I believe with education of the right kind we can do as well in the South. The possibilities of the Negro farmer are indi cated by the progress that he has made in fifty years. In 1863 there were in all the United States only a few farms owned by Negroes. They now operate in the South 890,140 farms which are 217,800 more than there were in this section in 1863. Negro farm laborers and Negro farmers in the South now cultivate ap proximately 100,000,000 acres of land, of which 42,500,000 acres are under the control of Negro farmers. The increase of Negro farm owners in the past fifty years compares favorably with the increase of white farm owners. The Negroes of this country now own 20,000,000 acres or 31,000 square miles of land. If all the land they own was placed in one body, its area would be greater than that of the State of South Carolina. The Negro has made his greatest progress in agriculture dur- 58 SELECTED ARTICLES ing the past ten years. In that time the value of the domestic animals which they owned increased from $85,216,337 to $177,273,000, or 107 per cent; poultry from $3,788,792 to $5,113,756 or 35 per cent; land and buildings from $69,636,420 to $273,501,665 or 293 per cent. From 1900 to 1910 the total value of farm property owned by the colored farmers of the South in creased from $177,404,688 to $492,898,218, or 177 per cent. In view of all this it seems to me that it is part of wisdom to take hold of this problem in a broad, statesmanlike way. Instead of striving to keep the Negro down, we should devote the time and money and effort that is now used for the purpose of punish ing the Negro for crimes committed in many instances because he has been neglected and allowed to grow up in ignorance, with out ambition and without hope and use it for the purpose of making the Negro a better and more useful citizen. The Negro is not only capable of improvement but he is worth the effort. I have traveled in many parts of the old world and I have studied the condition and the prosperity of the working classes there. I am frank to say that I have never seen any part of the world where it seemed to me the masses of the Negro people would be better off than right here in these southern states. On the other hand, knowing the South as I do, I do not believe the Southern people will ever find a people who are able and willing to adapt themselves to the habits, traditions and the ambition of the southern people as the Negro has done. The two races in the South have grown up here together. There exists between them an understanding that the world out side can not know. Our situation is in many respects unique. But with mutual good will and the cooperation of the best ele ments in both races I believe we shall be able to solve all our problems and at the same time to give to the world an illustra tion of how two races, different in origin and color, can live to gether in peace and prosper. PROBLEM A NEGRO TO AMERICA How would you like to have us, as we are? Or sinking neath the load we bear? Our eyes fixed forward on a star Or gazing empty in despair? Rising or falling? Men or things? With dragging pace or footsteps fleet? Strong, willing sinews in your wings? Or tightening chains about your feet? FUSE, FIGHT OR FAIL 2 "Their angels do always behold the face of the Father." Angel of the Negro race speaks : "They say do the Aryan followers of Jesus, the Semite that the Negro peoples are the child-race of the world. If their word be aught more than sound, let mine be listened to, for children grow up in the fulness of time, and I am the voice of the Negro race speaking Caucasian language, the language of the adult races. Listen, then, O strong men of the earth, to the sacred voice of the Child! "I have no history. I have no country. I use borrowed flags and borrowed languages and borrowed religions. My own languages and religious are the wails of infants crying in the night. Do I wish to make my needs articulately known, I must essay to use adult words of the great powers. Forgive me if my language seem only childish prattle. "Some speak contemptuously and others pessimistically about my hope of growing up, because during the long ages of Survey. 39:709. March 30, 1918. 2 From Race Orthodoxy in the South by Thomas Pearce Bailey, Ph.D. Formerly Associate Professor of Education in the University of Cali fornia. Chap. vii. Copyright by Neale Publishing Co., New York. 1914- 60 SELECTED ARTICLES my existence I have not reached man s stature. Others believe that my blood enters somewhat into the make-up of that great Mediterranean race which conquered the world through culture and law and arms, and established western civilization. But I am making no speculative claims : howbeit I might be permitted to develop for a few centuries under favorable circumstances before final judgment is passed on my possibilities of adultship. The Teutons were quite childish two thousand years ago, and had to borrow religion, arts and almost everything else of cultural value from the Mediterranean peoples. "This is an age when men talk greatly of evolution, of natural and artificial selection, of the imperceptibly slow processes of nature, of use and disuse of the brain, of the effects of environment on the speed of change, of the apparent arbitrariness of spontaneous variations. Give me time, without coddling and without intimidation. Then, if I fail to grow to man s estate, let me die the death of a child whose guardians have done the best they could for him. It may be that Nature has cruelly caused premature closing of my skull sutures, and that such a condition will always obtain. But men of science have not yet killed my hopes by fastening this accusation on Nature. It may be that what has not yet been done can never be done, and that my development is doomed to arrest because I have thus far failed to grow as fast as some other races. But philosophy has not yet declared that what has not yet been can never be. Nor have European Teutons undergone their comparatively late development in the jungles of torrid Africa as my people have. Even my deficient brain weight does not unduly distress me when I realize that my brain is that of a man, not that of an ape, and that my association centers have hardly had sufficient opportunity for growth. Men of science tell me, indeed, that the brain may yet prove itself to be the most plastic organ in the body, as it is undoubtedly the educable organ. "Remember, too, O Caucasian, that there is an education in social and political life ; that there is education in racial self- respect, in hope, in the encouragement of one s fellowman. Shall we not have such education somehow, somewhere? Do not quench the smoking flax, most Christian Caucasians. I have looked the white man in the face and lived. Give me credit for ability to survive, and help me rather than discourage me. You are not afraid of my competition and you can take no THE NEGRO PROBLEM 61 pleasure in depriving me of hope; therefore give me a chance, give me a trial, give me time and space, faith and hope, as my allies. "My achievements under tutelage during slavery and freedom have been exaggerated by some and underrated by others. So it is always with children s performances. I am, however, hopeful, for my Heavenly Father s face is still lovely to look upon. "America, you have partially adopted an orphan child. Will you educate it? Will you give it a start in life, or will you use it only as a drudge in your service? Will you equip it well and send it to seek its fortunes, or will you adopt it fully into your family? Will you at least make up your mind zvhat you are going to do with this orphan, which is now old enough to take an active interest in its own welfare? "Don t call me a child and yet expect from me the morality and mentality of a man. Don t say that I am a problem because I am a man, and then act as if you destined me to serve your interests rather than my own. DorfJ^lameme for my backward ness and then begrudge any forward movement in my behalf. Don t leave me to be the prey of undiscriminating doctrinaires on the one hand and of self-deceiving exploiters on the other. "Am I a human being? Then treat me as such. Are democratic and Christian doctrines true for all men? Then have them apply to me. Ought every child to be educated for its own sake and up to the limit of its powers? Then give me such an education. "I do not ask that manhood s rights be given to me while in child s estate. But assure me, white friend, that my manhood is to be complete and free. "You admit that I am not your property but your charge. Then help to free my mind from ignorance, my hand from sloth and awkwardness, my soul from superstition and cringing acquiescence in my fate. Remember your own childhood. Forget not your Declaration of Independence. Be mindful of your Christ s commands. Those who are meek and patient enough to eat the crumbs that fall from the master s table ought some time, somehow, somewhere gain a child s portion, cannot be Isaac, let me at least be a better-cared-for Ishmael. If you send me away, let the protecting, self-sacrificing generosity of a mother spirit go with me. 62 SELECTED ARTICLES "But why should I go? True, I am only a waif. But here was I born. This is all the native land that I have. Why am I an alien in this land of my birth? Why am I not part of the community? Why is it that in your heart of hearts you have solemnly sworn that I shall not be a complete citizen? Why do you begrudge me an education, and are willing that some of your children should remain uneducated rather than that I should be compelled to go to school? "May I be allowed to study the workings of the white man s mind? May I try to understand why you will not permit me to attain unto full-orbed manhood? Let me confess that I desire nothing less than complete personality and citizenship. I do not seek social equality if by that expression you mean social mingling with the whites. I do not ask to exercise all of my rights under the law of the land and the moral law, but rather I want the assurance that all of manhood s rights will come to me in time, as I prove myself worthy. "To deny natural inequality would be false and futile. But should human beings be treated as representatives of a race rather than as free, self-respecting persons? And should a child race be forbidden to grow up just because it has had a retarded development, or because of the exigencies of the white man s labor market?" THE NEGRO IN RELATION TO OUR PUBLIC AGENCIES AND INSTITUTIONS x The Negro problem, public or private, industrial or institu tional, is a human problem. Until we face the issue as human in its human relations; until we think of all citizens as human beings with human rights, human interests and human possi bilities ; until we insist upon equality of opportunity, economic, industrial, educational, equality before the law, equal sanitary provision, equal protection of person and property; until we become conscious of a common brotherhood and cease to exploit the weak and to treat them as chattels and property; until we put democracy into our own life as we speed its splendid hope i By J. L. Kesler, Dean, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. American City (City ed.) 19:151-7. August, 1918. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 63 to the world we are not even in sight of a solution, and futility faces our tasks of reform. It is not simply a Negro problem; it is also a Caucasian problem. It is not simply the "white man s burden"; it is also the black man s burden. It is a problem of both races. Its solution means mutual understandings and readjustments. It means mutually a more generous sympathy and respect, without which there can be no common standing ground. This new attitude must not only be intellectually allowed by the white people; it must be consciously felt and communicated, so that a new atmosphere of dignity and freedom and possibility shall meet and strengthen the aspiration of the Negro race and superinduce a conscious self-respect and hope. By some such means alone may the perils of two segregated races with mutual interrelations, living in the same territory, be reduced to a minimum. Of the 10,000,000 Negroes in the United States, about 9,000,000 live in the South. They constitute about one-tenth of the population of the United States and about one-third of the population of the South. There is no hope for the South if one-third of its population is to remain undeveloped and inefficient. If the submerged third is to remain ignorant, the South will not only fail of one-third of its potential, but the other two-thirds will descend in the scale. If unsanitary condi tions and disease are allowed to plague one-third of the popula tion, and other two-thirds cannot escape the contagion. There are two kinds of white people in the South and two kinds of black people. The better class of white people, people of culture and capacity, have generous sympathies for the black people and give them a fair deal. The other class make up the mobs, are ignorant, often vicious, many of them guilty of or capable of the crimes of the brutes they lynch. Among black people, too, there are good and bad. Some are criminal^ and degenerate, just as some white people are. Some are intelligent and clean and moral and progressive and splendid. The criminal Negro is not to be taken as the representative of the race any more than the criminal white man. Taking them all in all, they have made a worthy record in this first half century out of slavery. They began with 90 per cent illiteracy and have reduced it to 30 per cent. Starting with nothing, they own 64 SELECTED ARTICLES 20,000,000 acres of farm lands and farm property worth $500,000,000. They cultivate as farmers and tenants 41,000,000 acres and as laborers 60,000,000 more. Numerically one-third of the population, they till two-thirds of the land in the South. Their total property is valued at $700,000,000. Fifty thousand of them are engaged in professional work as lawyers, dentists, physicians, teachers. About 25,000 of them are in government positions. They print over 400 newspapers and periodicals, have over loo insurance companies, their 64 banks do a $20,000,000 business. Our educational policy is fundamental. We have been accus tomed to consider all moneys spent on Negro education as a gift, and to congratulate ourselves on our generosity, since in the last fifty years his taxes were but a small part of his educational apportionment. This attitude is changing. Education is an investment according to needs and not according to tax receipts. As a citizen the Negro deserves and necessity requires that he should have equal educational opportunity with white citizens. In the last fifty years the South has but meagerly provided for any of her schools. Even now the scholastic per capita of California is $36.30, while that of North Carolina is only $4.16. Still this does not relieve us entirely from censure for the too great discrimination between the races. The average educational per capita between the ages of six and fourteen in the South for white children is $10.32, for the black children $2.89. The greatest discrepancy is in Louisiana, where it is $13.73 for every white child and only $1.31 for every black child. Here, too, illiteracy is highest for both races, 14.4 per cent for the white and 48.4 per cent for the black. Money has been contributed generously, largely by men of the North, to private and denominational schools. These have in property and permanent funds over $28,000,000, with an income of $3,000,000. But only 4 per cent of Negro children attend these schools and only 7 per cent of the children who are in school attend schools thus provided. What does this mean? It means that if Negro children are ever to be educated, they will have to be educated in public schools provided by public taxes, and made effective by compulsory attendance. This is the heaviest responsibility and obligation of the educational forces of the South providing adequate schoolhouses, equipment, THE NEGRO PROBLEM 65 money, teachers, and keeping the standards high, not alone to eliminate illiteracy, but to overcome ignorance and to provide training for appreciation, character, efficiency; to develop good citizenship in the Negro not simply for safety and suppression of crime, but for race realization in sanitary, moral, and industrial progress making crime impossible by eradicating or leaving behind the criminal instincts. Those who want to keep the Negro down need to get up themselves. Those whose social position is unquestioned need not be concerned about "social equality." General social equality is an ignis fatuus. There isn t any such thing anywhere in any race. In all races there are higher and lower, according to merit, and social intermingling is attracted by compatability, congeniality, genuine community of interest, or it is pure social camouflage and sham. In the South neither the Negroes nor the white people want to intermingle socially. Racial integrity and social separateness are desired by both. To raise the question, therefore, of racial equality, or social equality between the races, to say the least, is an incongruity and an impertinence. What the Negro does want, and what the best white people of the South want for him, is an equal chance for personal and social development, equal protection and security under the law, equal opportunity, economic, industrial, educational, equal con veniences and comforts in street cars, railway coaches, Pullman and dining cars. And this he has never had. When he pays the same fare he wants the same service. He ought to have it. He likes a separate coach among his own people, just as we do, but he does not want an inferior coach. What he loathes and detests is the constant reminder that he is inferior, that anything is good enough for a "nigger"; that sanitation and sewerage and police protection and paved streets and parks are not necessary for him; that moral leprosy and segregated vice may preempt territory in his community and be immune to civic interest and disturbance; that he is discriminated against not on account of merit but on account of color; that his wife or his daughter, if they are beautiful and some of them are are not safe from insult on account of the lack of racial respect and honor. Respect! Here is the solution interracial respect. For lack of it both races are in peril. Moral safety demands a deep and abiding respect for personality interracial and among all inter- 66 SELECTED ARTICLES graded social levels, if we are to escape the moral backwash between races and classes of society. Here we need a broader and deeper democracy. We may be separate as races or classes, but one as human beings and citizens. This conscious democracy of the rights of mankind, as human beings, is fundamental and final. A large number of the Negroes are accumulating property, and living in good homes, clean, sanitary, with the comforts and some of the luxuries of life. They love music, they appreciate art, they are educating their children, they want a clean, moral and wholesome community in which to rear their children and enjoy the safety and comforts of home life. They expect this, and as citizens they have a right to expect it. It is coming. As they prove themselves capable of laying hold of and improving opportunities, there is a company of white men and women, daily growing larger, who are demanding these opportunities for them. More than that, they are helping them to become capable and to take advantage of these opportunities for the benefit of the whole community and the whole nation. CHANGED ATTITUDE OF THE NEGRO 1 There is a "changed attitude" on the part of the Negro toward the question of methods for advancing his social and industrial interests. The Chicago "Defender," which is a Negro periodical, apropos of this says: The younger generation of black men are not content to move along the lines of least resistance, as did their sires. . . We have little sympathy with lawlessness, whether those guilty of it be black or white, but it cannot be denied that we have much in justification of our changed attitude. W. E. Burghardt DuBois, the brilliant, but bitter, Negro editor of "The Crisis," has been lately indulging in unrestrained counsel of "fight" to his constituency. There is clear evidence that one wing of Negro leadership is inclined to counsel violence if the aspirations of the race find the road toward realization blocked. These leaders would probably experience little difficulty in finding a casus belli in the present strained relations. I intend iFrom article, The Clash of Color, by Glenn Frank. Century. 99:86-98. November, 1919. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 67 no wholesale charge that the Negro leadership of the country has turned revolutionary. That is not true. But I must, in the interest of accuracy, list this germinal idea at work in the Negro mind as one of the elements in our immediate race situation. There is being carried on, beyond doubt, a propaganda in behalf of the tactics of violence. This propaganda is fostered not only by one type of Negro leader, but also by those social revolutionaries who vulture-like hover over every field of dis content. There is undoubtedly an attempt being made to capitalize colored disaffection in the interests of the social revolution. Here, then, are the more important of the factors that enter into our post-war race problem in the United States : (1) The great influx of Southern Negro labor into Northern industrial centers. (2) Inadequate housing facilities for the new Negro popu lation in the centers to which the migration has led, with the usual results of congestion in the breeding of those types and qualities that readily yield to the rioting impulse. (3) The overflow of Negroes from crowded colonies into white residential blocks, with a resulting depreciation of property values as far as white occupancy is concerned, and the inevitable inter-race irritation. (4) The exploitation of Negroes by real-estate agents, both black and white, in the boosting of rentals and purchasing prices. (5) The impressions left upon the minds of our returning Negro soldiers by the measure of social equality which they enjoyed in France, and the inevitable contrast they are drawing between that attitude and the attitude they find upon their return. (6) An intensified race consciousness and race pride on the part of the American Negro resulting from his having done his share, as soldier and civilian, in the war. (7) A new sense of the possibility and freedom of movement which the Negro has acquired from having learned that a Southern Negro apparently can stand the Northern climate and make a living in the new surroundings. (8) A freshened resentment on the part of the ^ Negro against his social and industrial limitations when he thinks of them in the light of the ideals of freedom, democracy, an< equality for which he fought during the war. (9) The stimulus to social-equality aspirations growing c 68 SELECTED ARTICLES of the relations between blacks and white prostitutes who have moved into Negro districts following the breaking up of segre gated vice districts in cities, as in Chicago, together with the resentment aroused among near-by whites. (10) The irritation of many of our returned soldiers when they find their old jobs being held by Negroes, while they are having difficulty in getting back to work. (u) A conflict of interests between non-union Negro labor and organized white labor. (12) A "changed attitude" on the part of the Negro that nourishes the idea of revolutionary methods for the attainment of his aspirations an attitude fostered by one wing of Negro leadership, and cultivated by ultra-radicals who dream of a social revolution in the United States. Much will depend upon the type of leadership the mass of American Negroes choose to follow. Speaking in the broad, there are three types of Negro leadership today bidding for the allegiance of the race. These are: First, the ultra-radical or revolutionary type of leadership to which reference has already been made. This type of leadership is clearly described in a recent issue of "Unity," a Chicago periodical, in a paragraph which reads: Long years of oppression through disfranchisement, "Jim Crow" laws, segregation policies, lynching, economic discrimination, and so forth, coupled with the bitter experiences incident to the great war, have raised up a group of young men and women in the negro ranks who are im patient with the old leaders of the race, of both the Booker Washington and DuBois school, and are clamoring for more aggressive action along lines of uncompromising social radicalism. These militants . . . rep resent not only extreme revolt against racial oppression, but also the appearance among negroes of that same movement of political and eco nomic revolution which is now sweeping the world from end to end. It is too early, as yet, to estimate the significance of this sudden appearance among colored people of this movement for radical social change, but that it marks the entrance of the negro problem upon a wholly new period of development is not altogether unlikely. It will be unfortunate if the American Negro to any marked extent follows these leaders. It would inevitably bring down upon the Negro the wrath of the conservative white world and make more difficult his fight for even the most elementary justice. And it appeals to me as very short-sighted policy upon the part of ultra-radicals to attempt the winning of the Negro to their side. They will succeed only in confusing their social and economic issues with the unreasoning hatreds, prejudices, and passions that cluster around the race question. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 69 Second, there is the DuBois school of leadership, which urges the Negro to wage an uncompromising fight for the full and unqualified rights of American citizenship. This school would transplant in America the European conception of the Negro as a white man with an accidental blackness of skin. This school, in the main, is no more averse to aggressive methods than the first sort of leadership mentioned, but is more concerned with the dogma of equality than with radical social revolution as an economic consideration. DuBois, in the earlier days of his public career as scholar and writer, wrote in a style of liquid beauty his protests against the color line in American life. His writings were touched with an appealing sadness. The poet in him spoke in those days. But in these later days hate has rusted upon his pen. He speaks more bluntly. He snarls as a wolf at bay. The poet has abdicated in favor of the propa gandist. He tells the Negro soldier that he went to Europe as a fighting man and that he must return fighting, fighting, fighting for the unqualified rights of an American citizen. He is an apostle of impatience. Third, is what may best be called the Booker Washington school of leadership. This type of leadership covets the best for the race no less than do the two schools just mentioned, but frankly recognizes the existence of race prejudice and puts its faith in evolution rather than in edicts. RELATIONS OF THE ADVANCED AND THE BACKWARD RACES OF MANKIND 1 When two races differing in strength, that is to say, either in numbers, or in physical capacity, or in mental capacity, or in material advancement, or in military resources, come into polit ical or social contact some one of four possible results follows. Either the weaker race dies out before the stronger, or it is absorbed into the stronger, the latter remaining practically unaffected, or the two become mingled into something different from what either was before, or, finally, the two continue to dwell together unmixed, each preserving a character of its own. 1 From Romane s lecture by James Bryce, D.C.L., delivered in the Sheldonian Theater, Oxford, June 7, 1902. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1902. 70 SELECTED ARTICLES These cases of Contact without Fusion arise in three ways. Sometimes an Advanced Race conquers a territory inhabited by a race far beneath itself in military force, and rules that territory as a dependency without settling its own people there. This happens in the case of tropical countries, which are either ill-suited to the natives of cold climates or are already thickly peopled. The conspicuous instance is India, to which England sends no more of her children than are needed to administer and to garrison it, to plead causes and supervise commercial business. Java under the Dutch, Madagascar under the French, East Africa under the Germans, Luzon under the Americans, are other familiar examples. Another class of cases arises when into a country already inhabited by a civilized people there come in quest of work groups of immigrants belonging to a much more backward race which has begun to overflow its own borders. The influx of the Chinese into Western America and Australia is the most familiar but not the only instance. Thirdly, there are the cases in which an Advanced and a Backward race find themselves living side by side in large masses upon the same soil, having entered it at different times. Instances are found in the former Slave States of North America, where seven millions of Negroes and fourteen millions of whites dwell together; in Algeria, in British South Africa, and in Western South America, in both of which latter regions the numerical preponderance of the Backward races is very great, though for South America no trustworthy statistics exist. To whichever of these categories the contact of races refusing to blend belongs, such contact is calculated to give trouble, and the more frequently individual members of the races come across one another, the greater is that trouble likely to be. Where the two races occupy different parts of the country, or where one is mainly rural, the other mainly urban, or where the habits of life are so dissimilar that opportunities for social intercourse occur but sparingly, occasions for collision may be few. This has been the case over most of Spanish America, and is to a great extent true also of Algeria. But where the races live in the same towns and villages, and follow the same pursuits, antagonism is sure to arise. It arises from Inequality, because as one of the races is stronger in intelligence and will, its average members treat members of the weaker race scornfully THE NEGRO PROBLEM 71 or roughly, when they can do so with impunity. It arises from Dissimilarity of character, because neither race understands the other s way of thinking and feeling, so that each gives offence even without meaning it. It arises from Distrust, because the sense of not comprehending one another makes each suspect the other of faithlessness or guile. The Backward race, being the weaker, is usually that which tries to protect itself by guile, while the more advanced race relies upon the prestige of its knowledge, the force of its will, and its ingrained habit of dominance. Violence, when once it breaks out, is apt to spread, because the men of each race take sides in any tumult, and apt to be accompanied by cruelty, because pity is blunter toward those who stand outside the racial or social pale, and the passions of a racial conflict sweep all but the gentlest natures away. Every outrage on one side provokes an outrage on the other: and if a series of outrages occur, each race bands itself together for self-defence, awaiting attack, and probably provoking attack by the alarm its combination inspires. Nor are difficulties in the sphere of industry wanting, for the more advanced race may refuse to work in company with the Backward one, or may seek to relegate the latter to the basest and worst-paid kinds of work. So too the Backward race may give offence by working for lower wages and thus reducing the general scale of payment. These troubles may be apprehended whatever the form of government, for they spring out of the nature of things. But others vex the political sphere. If one race enjoys privileges denied to the other, it is sure to abuse its power to the prejudice of the Backward people, placing them, it may be, under civil as well as political disabilities, or imposing heavier taxes upon them, or refusing them their fair share of benefits from the public revenue. If, on the other hand, both races are treated alike, granted the same suffrage, made eligible for the same offices, each will be disposed to organize itself separately for political purposes, so that a permanent separation of parties will be created, which, because irrespective of the issues that naturally arise from time to time, may prevent those issues from being dealt with on their merits, and may check the natural ebbs and flows of political life. The nation will, in fact, be rather two nations than one, may waste its force on internal dissensions, may lose its unity of action at moments of public 72 SELECTED ARTICLES danger. Evils of this order tend to be more acute the more democratic a government becomes. Two courses are open, but each will have elements of danger. If political privileges are refused to the Backward race, the contrast between principle and practice, between a theoretic recognition of the rights of man as man and the denial of them to a section of the population, will be palpable and indefensible. If that lower section be admitted to share in the government, an element will be admitted the larger part of which will be unfit for the suffrage, being specially accessible to bribery and specially liable to intimidation. So, too, though the evils described may exist whatever be the condition of the lower race, they will become, in one sense at least, more accentuated the more that race advances in intelligence and knowledge. Slaves or serfs who have been bred up to look upon subjection as their natural lot bear it as the dispensation of Nature. When they have attained a measure of independence, when they speak the tongue and read the books and begin to share the ideas of the dominant race, they resent the inferiority, be it legal or social, to which they find themselves condemned. Discontent appears and social friction is intensified, not only because occasions for it grow more frequent, but because the temper of each race is more angry and suspicious. These phenomena, present even where the races are not very diverse in habits of life or level of culture, as is the case with Greeks, Armenians, and Turks in various parts of the East, or with Moors and Jews in Morocco, may become of graver import as between races so far apart as whites and Negroes in the Gulf States of North America, or whites and Malays in the Philippine Isles, or Europeans and native fellahin in Egypt. Although the troubles which follow upon the contact of peoples in different stages of civilization are more serious in some countries and under some conditions than they are likely to prove in others, they are always serious enough to raise the question of the best means of avoiding such a contact, if it can be avoided. That contact can be averted by inducing European peoples to forbear from annexing or settling in the countries inhabited by the coloured races is not to be expected. The impulses which move these peoples in the present will not be checked by the prospect of evils in the future. Besides, the work of annexation THE NEGRO PROBLEM 73 is practically done already. 1 Neither can it be suggested that one of two disparate races already established should be removed to leave the ground free to the other. No one proposes that the French should quit Algeria, or the English India, or the Russians Western Turkistan, not to add that the mischiefs likely to follow such a withdrawal would be greater than the diffi culties which the presence of the conquerors at this moment causes. Men talked at one time of deporting the seven millions of Negroes from the Southern States of America to Africa, but this utterly impracticable scheme has been dropped. The only case in which the question of preventing contact arises in a practical form is where immigrants of a Backward race are found swarming into a country already peopled by a European stock. Such a case has arisen in California and British Columbia, whither Chinese have migrated, as also in Australia as respects Chinese, and Japanese, and Indian coolies, and in Natal. In all these cases statutes have been passed intended to arrest or to limit the influx of the Backward race : and in California and Australia, where the methods have been most stringent, the desired result is being attained. NEGRO PROBLEM 2 The American Negro problem is the question of the future status of the ten million Americans of Negro descent. It must be remembered that these persons are Americans by birth and descent. They represent, for the most part, four or five American born generations, being in that respect one of the most American groups in the land. Moreover, the Negroes are not barbarians. They are, as a mass, poor and ignorant; but they are growing rapidly in both wealth and intelligence, and larger and larger numbers of them demand the rights and privileges of American citizens as a matter of undoubted desert. Today these rights are largely denied. In order to realize the disabilities under which Negroes suffer regardless of 1 Except, as already observed, in the Near East and in China. *From article, Negro race in the United States of America, by Dr. W. E. B. DuBois New York, late professor of history and political economy in Atlanta University. Universal Races Congress. Papers on inter-racial problems, p. 348-64. July, 1911. 74 SELECTED ARTICLES education, wealth, or degree of white blood, we may divide the United States into three districts. (a) The Southern South, containing 75 per cent, of the Negroes, (ft) The border States, containing 15 per cent, of the Negroes, (c) The North and West, containing 10 per cent, of the Negroes. In the Southern South by law or custom Negroes *-"" i. Cannot vote, or their votes are neutralised by fraud. 2. Must usually live in the least desirable districts. 3. Receive very low wages. 4. Are, in the main, restricted to menial occupations or the lower grades of skilled labour and cannot expect preferment or promotion. 5. Cannot by law intermarry with whites. 6. Cannot join white churches or attend white colleges or join white cultural organisations. 7. Cannot be accommodated at hotels and restaurants or in any place of public entertainment. 8. Receive a distinct standard of justice in the courts and are especially liable to mob violence. 9. Are segregated as far as possible in every walk of life in railway stations, railway trains, street-cars, lifts, &c., and usually made to pay equal prices for inferior accommodations. 10. Are often unable to protect their homes from invasion, their women from insult, and their savings from exploitation. n. Are taxed for public facilities like parks and libraries, which they may not enter. 12. Are given meagre educational facilities and sometimes none at all. 13. Are liable to personal insult unless they appear as servants or menials or show deference to white folks by yielding the road, &c. To many of these disabilities there are personal and local exceptions. In cities, for instance, the chance to defend the home, get an education, and somewhat better wages is greater, and mob violence less frequent. Then there are always some personal exceptions cases of help and courtesy, of justice in the courts, and of good schools. These are, however, exceptions, and, as a rule, all Negroes, no matter what their training, THE NEGRO PROBLEM 75 possessions, or desert, are subjected to the above disabilities. Within the limits of these caste restrictions there is much good will and kindliness between the races, and especially much personal charity and help. The 15 per cent, of the Negro population living on the border States suffer a little less restriction. They have some right of voting, are better able to defend their homes, and are less discriminated against in the expenditure of public funds. In the cities their schools are much better and public insult is less noticeable. In the North the remaining 10 per cent, of the Negro popu lation is legally undiscriminated against and may attend schools and churches and vote without restriction. As a matter of fact, however, they are made in most communities to feel that they are undesirable. They are either refused accommodation at hotels, restaurants, and theatres, or received reluctantly. Their treatment in churches and general cultural organisations is such that few join. Intermarriage with whites brings ostracism and public disfavour, and in courts Negroes often suffer undeservedly. Common labour and menial work is open to them, but avenues above this in skilled labour or the professions (save as they serve their own race), are extremely difficult to enter, and there is much discrimination in wages. Mob violence has become not infrequent in later years. There are here also many exceptional cases ; instances of pre ferment in the industrial and political world ; and there is always some little social intercourse. On the whole, however, the Negro in the north is an ostracised person who finds it difficult to make a good living or spend his earnings with pleasure. Under these circumstances there has grown up a Negro world in America which has its own economic and social life, its churches, schools, and newspapers; its literature, public opinion, and ideals. This life is largely unnoticed and unknown even in America, and travellers miss it almost entirely. The average American in the past made at least pretence of excusing the discrimination against Negroes, on the ground of their ignorance and poverty and their tendencies to crime and disease. While the mass is still poor and unlettered, it is admitted by all today that the Negro is rapidly developing a larger and larger class of intelligent property-holding men of Negro descent; notwithstanding this more and more race lines 76 SELECTED ARTICLES are being drawn which involve. the treatment of civilised men in an uncivilised manner. Moreover, the crux of the question today is not merely a matter of social eligibility. For many generations the American Negro will lack the breeding and culture which the most satisfactory human intercourse requires. But in America the discrimination against Negroes goes beyond this, to the point of public discourtesy, civic disability, injustice in the courts, and economic restriction. The argument of those who uphold this discrimination is based primarily on race. They claim that the inherent characteristics of the Negro race show its essential inferiority and the impojsi- ETlity of incorporating its descendants into the American nation. TH^"liHmTt IMTTh^^^ to tht5"Tute~i5f interionty, but claim that these but prove the rule. .They say that amal gamation of the races would be fatal to civilisation and they advocate therefore a strict caste system for Negroes, segregating them by occupations and privileges, and to some extent by dwelling-place, to" the end thafthey (a) submit permanently to an inferior" position, or (&) die out, or (c) migrate. This philosophy the thinking Negroes and a large number of white friends vigorously combat. They claim that the racial \ differences between white and black in the United States offer \ no essential barrier to the races living together on terms of J mutual respect and helpfulness. They deny, on the one hand, c\ that the large amalgamation of the races already accomplished has produced degenerates, in spite of the unhappy character / of these unions; on the other hand, they deny any desire to / lose the identity of either race through intermarriage. They / claim that it should be possible for a civilised black man to be ! treated as an American citizen without harm to the republic, I and that the modern world must learn to treat coloured races \^ as equals if it expects to advance. They claim that the Negro race in America has more than ( vindicated its ability to assimilate modern culture. Negro blood \ has furnished thousands of soldiers to defend the flag in every c< war in which the United States has been engaged. They are a ) most important part of the economic strength of the nation, and / they have furnished a number of men of ability in politics, literature, and art, as, for instance, Banneker, the mathematician ; V_Phillis Wheatley, the poet; Lemuel Haynes, the theologian; Ira ~Aldridge, the actor; Frederick Douglass, the orator; H. O. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 77 Tanner, the artist; B. T. Washington, the educator; Granville Woods, the inventor, Kelly Miller, the writer; Rosamond John son and Will Cook, the musical composers; Dunbar, the poet; and Chestnut, the novelist. Many other Americans, whose Negro blood has not been openly acknowledged, have reached high /distinction. The Negroes claim, therefore, that a discrimination] \ which was originally based on certain social conditions is rapidlyC "i becoming a persecution based simply on race prejudice, and thatl / no republic built on caste can survive^^ J p< At the meeting of two such diametrically opposed arguments it was natural that councils of compromise should appear, and it was also natural that a nation, whose economic triumphs have been so noticeable as those of the United States, should seek an economic solution to the race question. More and more in the last twenty years the business men s solution of the race problem has been the development of the resources of the South. Coincident with the rise of this policy came the prom inence of Mr. B. T. Washington. Mr. Washington was con vinced that race prejudice in America was so strong and the economic position of the freedmen s sons so weak that the Negro must give up or postpone his ambitions for full citizenship and bend all his energies to industrial efficiency and the accumu lation of wealth. Mr. Washington s idea was that eventually when the dark man was thoroughly established in the industries and had accumulated wealth, he could demand further rights and privileges. This philosophy has become very popular in the United States, both among whites and blacks. The white South hastened to welcome this philosophy. They thought it would take the Negro out of politics, tend to stop agitation, make the Negro a satisfied labourer, and eventually convince him that he could never be recognised as the equal of the white man. The North began to give large sums for industrial training, and hoped in this way to get rid of a serious social problem. From the beginning of this campaign, however, a large class of Negroes and many whites feared this programme. They not only regarded it as a programme which was a dangerous com promise, but they insisted that to stop fighting the essential wrong of race prejudice just at the time, was to encourage it. This was precisely what happened. Mr. Washington s pro gramme was announced at the Atlanta Exposition in 1896 7 SELECTED ARTICLES Since that time four states have disfranchised Negroes, dozens of cities and towns have separated the races on street cars, 1,250 Negroes have been publicly lynched without trial, and serious race riots have taken place in nearly every Southern State and several Northern States, Negro public school education has suffered a set back, and many private schools have been forced to retrench severely or to close. On the whole, race prejudice has, during the last fifteen years, enormously increased. This has been coincident with the rapid and substantial advance of Negroes in wealth, education, and morality, and the two movements of race prejudice and Negro advance have led to an anomalous and unfortunate situation. Some, white and black, seek to minimise and ignore the flaming prejudice in the land, and emphasise many acts of friendliness on the part of the white South, and the advance of the Negro. Others, on the other hand, point out that silence and sweet temper are not going to settle this dangerous social problem, and that manly protest and the publication of the whole truth is alone adequate to arouse the nation to its great danger. Moreover, many careful thinkers insist that, under the circum stances, the "business men s" solution of the race problem is bound to make trouble: if the Negroes become good cheap labourers, warranted not to strike or complain, they will arouse all the latent prejudice of the white working men whose wages they bring down. If, on the other hand, they are to be really educated as men, and not as "hands," then they need, as a race, not only industrial training, but also a supply of well-educated, intellectual leaders and professional men for a group so largely deprived of contact with the cultural leaders of the whites. Moreover, the best thought of the nation is slowly recognising the fact that to try to educate a working man, and not to educate the man, is impossible. If the United States wants intelligent Negro labourers, it must be prepared to treat them as intelligent men. This counter movement of intelligent men, white and black, against the purely economic solution of the race problem, has been opposed by powerful influences both North and South. The South represents it as malicious sectionalism, and the North misunderstands it as personal dislike and envy of Mr. Washington. Political pressure has been brought to bear, and this insured a body of coloured political leaders who do not THE NEGRO PROBLEM 79 agitate for Negro rights. At the same time, a chain of Negro newspapers were established to advocate the dominant philosophy. Despite the well-intentioned effort to keep down the agitation of the Negro question and mollify the coloured people, the problem has increased in gravity. The result is the present widespread unrest and dissatisfaction. Honest Americans know that present conditions are wrong and cannot last ; but they face, on the one hand, the seemingly implacable prejudice of the South, and, on the other hand, the undoubted rise of the Negro challenging that prejudice. The attempt to reconcile these two forces is becoming increasingly futile, and the nation simply faces the question: Are we willing to do justice to a dark race despite our prejudices? Radical suggestions of wholesale segre gation or deportation of the race have now and then been suggested; but the cost in time, effort, money, and economic disturbance is too staggering to allow serious consideration. The South, with all its race prejudice, would rather fight than lose its great black labouring force, and in every walk of life throughout the nation the Negro is slowly forcing his way. There are some signs that the prejudice in the South is not immovable, and now and then voices of protest and signs of liberal thought appear there. Whether at last the Negro will gain full recognition as a man, or be utterly crushed by prejudice and superior numbers, is the present Negro problem of America. PROPOSED SOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM 1 The race question is not at all what is generally understood by an "academic question," one, that is, having no direct bearing on our everyday life. It comes home to us all in the South everyday, and in a thousand ways; ways too subtle to be seen without close observation; others also too evident to be overlooked by even the most obtuse. Institutions of learning are being brought into closer relations with our everyday life, and in these academic shades we ought to be able to study subjects more nearly in what Lord Bacon calls the "dry light of reason." 1 From address by Dr. Charles Breckenridge Wilner in the Conference on Southern Problems, held at Sewanee, Tenn., July 4-?, 1909. 1-lorensic Quarterly. 1:144-77. June, 1910. 8o SELECTED ARTICLES And what subject stands for its right consideration, in so great need of such "dry-light" such freedom from all prejudice as the "Race Problem?" or more requires that we bear in mind those weighty words of Bishop Butler that moved Matthew Arnold to so much admiration ; "Things are what they are and the consequences will be what they will be ; why should we deceive ourselves?" In the language of another great man, "it is a condition and not a theory that confronts us" in the South. The consequences of doing or neglecting to do certain things are going to be determined, not only by our wishes or prejudices, but by the operation of that great law, which no man may control, of Cause and Effect. I say this particularly of and for us Southerners. Yet the common remark that the race problem is the Southerner s problem, is both true and false. It is ours in the sense that we know the facts of the situation at first hand; that we must agree on what to do and do it; that the consequences of right or wrong action, wise or unwise policies, will be visited more especially upon us and our posterity. But it is not true in the sense that the North has no legitimate interest in the right or wrong settlement of our difficulties, or that we do not need advice from anybody but ourselves. We may object, and I think rightly, to having any policy forced upon us from outside. But I am free to say that I want the advice of intelligent, sympathetic, students of social problems East and West People standing too close to an object may fail to see some things as well as people standing at a little distance. If it seems to some of us in the South that the people of the North see a little too much of the millennium and too little of the actual Negro, it may be that, reversing the case, the pressure of practical everyday problems, and contact and conflict with the Negro as he is may cause us to lose or lower our ideals for the human race. It ought also to be pointed out to the people of the South that the race problem, the question of how the different races of the world are to get along amicably, is a world problem. And there is no problem so local or so small, that will not be illuminated by being looked at in the light of universal experi ence and universal need. The mental attitude in which we must approach the subject is all important and I should say that the correct mental atti tude must at least include such truths as the following: THE NEGRO PROBLEM 81 First, a recognition of the great truth stated by Bishop Butler to which I have already referred, viz., that "things are what they are, and the consequences will be what they will be. Why deceive ourselves?" There is a lack of recognition among us, I am venturing to observe, of such a science as sociology. There is much hope for the future in the individuality of Southern men. But in order that such hope may be realized, we need to wake up to the operation of the law of cause and effect in human society. Little things that we are apt to think of as beginning and ending with the individual, or with a few indi viduals, really ramify throughout the whole social structure. An unjust word, an unkind word spoken by a white person in the presence of a colored person, and about that person, does not end there. He or she tells somebody else. It gets to the cook in the kitchen, the butler in the dining room, the driver out in the stable, and their friends and their friends friends, and widens in ever expanding circles, like the ripples in a lake when a pebble is dropped in the midst. Many a crime has shocked a community which had its origin, beyond doubt, if the whole truth were known, in some such pebble. Let us have regard to the law of social consequence. A second truth we need to recognize is that in the final out come of human affairs, merit is going to win; individual merit. We believe in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. Some Southerners are given to calling attention to this superiority rather frequently and rather loudly. Mr. Alfred Holt Stone (I think it was) has well said that "Only the white man writes volumes to establish on paper the fact of a superiority which is either self-evident and not in need of demonstration on the one hand; or is not a fact and is not demonstrable on the other." Underneath much of the talk about the inferiority of the Negro lies but ill concealed the fear of a greater capacity than we have been in the habit of allowing to him, and a fear that he will "make good" beyond our expectations or desires. Per sonally I have no fear about the continued supremacy of the white race, but rather that we may seek for supremacy in false ways. We must face the problem of individual merit more largely and more honestly than we have hitherto done, although I believe we are not as culpable in that respect as we are some times thought to be. Mr. Lecky has well said that one of the greatest forces for the moral uplift of any race lies in an outlet 82 SELECTED ARTICLES at the top for its men of talent and character. We must teach our young men not to claim superior capacity, and also expect special privileges. A race horse that claims the ability to out run his rival has surely no need to hamstring that rival. And for us of the South, as for the whole world, the recognition and reward of merit is the true touchstone of civilization. It is the rock on which we will build and be safe, or on which we will fall and be broken. The third element that should enter into our mental attitude, is, that true loyalty to the South is loyalty to the Truth, what ever that is, or wherever it may be found. There was a man once who was so well satisfied with having been born in his State that he could with difficulty be persuaded of the necessity of being born anew. But we need, all of us everywhere, to be born anew of the truth. And he only is a true friend to the South who understands that there is no loyalty worthy the name that is not loyalty to the truth. There is no enemy like a flat terer. Blind partisanship is the foe of loyalty and of wisdom. No true and lasting solution is to be found for any problem of importance that is not based on religion, on God s Will. I know this belongs to sermons, and I have not been asked to preach. I know also that religion is not popularly supposed to have very much to do with this present world. But I do not share that view. "Be not unwise," wrote the Apostle Paul, "but understanding what the Will of the Lord is." The Will of the Lord is that force which is carrying on this universe. It is the "infinite and eternal energy from which all things pro ceed." In what consists wisdom if not in finding out what is that "One far off divine event to which the whole creation moves" and getting into line with the process leading to it? Can we do that, and leave God out? Now I take it, that God has a purpose in all that He does, and that He must have a place for every race and tribe of men that He has made. The Negroes, then, are on this earth by the creative Will of God, just as the rest of us. Wisdom would seem to dictate, that instead of trying to force our will on the situation, we try to find out what God s Will is, and conform thereto. And in try ing to find out what it is, we will seek it not only in the general principles of religious humanitarianism, but in all the anthro pological evidence afforded by the history and nature of the Negro. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 83 So much for the general mental attitude which we should assume in approaching this great subject. But there are special reasons why we of the South should be on our guard. We have every temptation to think with our prejudices, instead of thinking with our heads. The truth is, we have had "a hard time." We may have been wrong, but no man can deny that we have suffered. We were permitted by the Constitution to own slaves. The slaves then were taken from us by the sword. Against all our entreaties and warnings, liberty was suddently thrust upon four millions of unprepared Africans. And that was the least of all. The attempt was made to force up these people (not long emerged from barbarism and dazzled with the light of liberty to which their eyes were as yet unaccus tomed) to a plane of civic equality with the Anglo-Saxon race. Done at the point of the bayonet, after surrender in good faith of the defeated South, it was one of the greatest crimes of all history against civilization, and is now being more and more acknowledged to have been such. I am referring to all this sad history, only for the purpose of putting ourselves on our guard. We think we have been wronged. Well, suppose we have been; is that a good reason why we should be foolish? We have one of the greatest oppor tunities ever afforded a people to rise above controversy and passion, and prove our superiority by gaining a victory over ourselves. Nor let us be resentful against the Negro just for being a Negro. He can t help that. Probably if he had been consulted he would have elected to be something else. Whoever is responsible for the Negro s presence in this country, of all America s polyglot population, the Negro element alone did not come here of its own volition. Neither let us cherish resent ment against the North. Such resentment may be natural, but it is not spiritual, neither does it help matters. Besides, every year brings the North into sympathetic relations with the South. Let us permit the dead past to bury its dead, and address ourselves to living issues. It is astounding how many "solutions" and suggestions toward solution of the Race Problem at the South are offered, without any attempt to state what the Problem is. Often what is in the mind of those who speak of the Race Problem is virtu ally how to keep the Negro down, or "in his place," whatever 84 SELECTED ARTICLES that may mean. Again, in another quarter, it is sometimes said, that there is no "race problem" ; only a human problem ; a proposition which is either a truism or not true at all. In the sense in which it is true, it is remarkably unilluminating. Of course it is a human problem ; a problem concerning human beings, to be solved by human beings. But if the meaning be that the human problem is everywhere the same, the proposition is not at all true. The human problem, I suppose, is how we are to get along peaceably with one another on the earth. But this essentially human problem assumes certain distinctive characteristics in different parts of the earth; and here in the South today it may be stated as follows: two alien races must get along peaceably together under one government, and that a government of the people. As regards the Negro, the problem is : How to carry through the wilderness, that always lies between Egypt and the Promised Land, the present gener ation, which has not enjoyed the advantages of training under slavery, nor yet been subjected to such discipline as would train them to adapt themselves to their new situation, with all its responsibilities ; in a word, to induce the Negro to use his liberty so as to become really free, and not mistake liberty for license, much less crime ! As regards the whites, the problem is, to adapt ourselves to the changed and changing situation. The upper-class whites must make a sociological extension of their old-time kindly private feeling toward the Negro, being willing not only to hand him cheerfully a quarter now and then, and be kind to him as he serves them in various capacities, but also { to give him "a square deal" in life, with a chance to make the most of himself. For the lower class of whites, between whom and the Negro f : the relations are strained, and who are more or less in industrial competition with the Negro, the problem is specifically how to [find work for both, and how to keep the peace between them. Politically speaking, the problem is how two such diverse races can live under a republican form of government, which denies to a State the privilege of disfranchising a man on account of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," and at the same time maintain Anglo-Saxon supremacy without any violation either of the Constitution of the United States or of the Ten Commandments. In addition to all this, it should be pointed out that many other problems, common to the human race in a state THE NEGRO PROBLEM 85 of civilization and progress, are with us, complicated by race feeling, such as the relations of labor and capital, strikes, union and non-union labor, etc. The races, moreover, are rapidly drifting apart, and the problem is to conserve as well as possible the good feeling there is, and to build up, on the basis of our present relations, mutual respect and good will. As regards crime, our problem is, not only its prevention, by a proper training of the young, but by the avoidance of making matters worse through retaliation. NEGRO IN THE NORTH * The present drift of Negroes from the Southern to the Northern States, in response to the acute demand for labor, is raising political, social and economic questions that lay bare the tie that binds them to their more fortunate brethren. The Cincinnati Post describes conditions in that city that can be duplicated in most of the large Northern cities. Negro immi grants are crowding tenements from cellar to garret. In one ward 2,793 between the ages of 21 and 31 registered, exceeding the number in the next most thickly populated ward by more than 600. These men, the Post goes on to say, will be voted en bloc, and so determine the city s mayor, its judges and other officials. The social problem is still worse. Overcrowding produces a death rate of 675 from tuberculosis among the Negroes, as compared with 224 among the whites. Some prog ress had been made by the social workers who had succeeded in reducing the Negro death rate, but they are in despair in face of the present immigration. Is it not a little strange that such a problem should have risen at all? How is it possible that in the richest nation in the world there should be enough native-born citizens lacking an understanding and appreciation of our institutions to threaten their stability? These men are not the neglected of other nations thrust upon us full grown, but are men born and nurtured upon American soil, and subject throughout their lives to the influence of American institutions. There is not the excuse even that they were formerly slaves, for not one of these immigrants was born a slave. 1 Public. 20:571-2. June 15, iQi7- 86 SELECTED ARTICLES Is it not another instance of Carlyle s beggar? Organized labor mobs the Negroes brought into strike regions because they are unorganized and lack the spirit of solidarity. Yet organized labor has been rather tardy in taking in the black brother. Social workers despair at the Negro s indifference to hygienic laws, and the better classes lament the possibilities for evil from having such citizens congregate within control of unscrupulous politicians. But these neglected human beings have been all the time within our borders, and these inevitable evils should long ago have been foreseen by our leaders. The ignorant, shiftless, unambitious Negro, like the ignorant, shiftless, unambitious man of any other race, is a menace. And since a common sense of decency prevents their forcible removal, there is nothing left for the better classes to do but to put them in the way of catching up with their more fortunate brethren. Organized labor must make provision for them. The educated classes must see to it that their schooling opportunities are increased. But most of all must opportunities for employment and self-employment be opened for the Negro. So long as the Negro is a laborer, union labor should see that he is organized. So long as he is a citizen and a voter, publicists and men of affairs must see that he is raised to the level of his fellows. The strength of society is the strength of its lowest citizens. A state may continue indifferent to the demands of a large class of its people and appear for a long time to suffer no harm; but ultimately a condition will arise in which the failure of this neglected element to respond to the demands made upon it may bring ruin upon all. THE MENACE OF RACE HATRED * There are strong motives for misinforming the nation about the Negro, for creating a mythology which paints him as inferior, diseased, criminal, slack, shiftless, irresponsible. All the force of public sentiment formed upon, and fed by, this mythology will resist his endeavors to lift himself intellectually and socially. The public opinion so formed will tend to keep him at the disadvantage which makes him a subject for exploit- 1 From article by Herbert J. Seligmann. Harper s Monthly. 140:537-43. March, 1920. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 87 ation. And it is always possible to discredit his efforts by spreading charges that he is preparing to revolt under the tutelage of the I. W. W. Such reckless and harmful accusations were actually made by Southern members of the House of Representatives and were also attributed to officers of the Depart ment of Justice. The largest newspapers in the land published them repeatedly, maintaining the while a discreet silence as to ground for the agitator s sowing. Those who assert that the Negro is racially inferior do so in the absence of substantiating fact. They, and all the forces which create an unfavorable public opinion through the press by charging the Negro with crime in bold head-lines, are doing the greatest possible disservice to the United States. It is the press which spreads rumor and accusation about Negro crim inality such as the entirely mythical "massacre of whites" in Arkansas which no correction can ever set right. If the crea tion of an alien, race-conscious group within the United States, resentful, and justly so, of grave injustice and discrimination, is not to loom as a threat against the progress and continuance of our civilization, there must be some honest attempt to overtake with fact the current mythology about the Negro and about race relations. Basic problems of the relations of races must be attacked in this country. It is a question if the antagonism between men, which springs from superficial differences like skin coloration, is not too strong to make it possible for such men ever to live harmoniously together. Precisely what are the effects of race mixture is another question almost unexplored except for the vociferous doctrinaire who rushes in where the scientist has not yet trodden. These questions are not now in the way of being attempted. To the extent that the Negro is bandied be tween his defamers and his few impassioned protagonists public discussion becomes impossible. Race problems should be the subject of study to determine what are the possibilities of co operation and living together in one community remain in the fog of passion, where the person of ulterior motives uses them for his own, generally anti-social, purposes. For the present the Negro is in the position of the most exploited class in America. Not only is he in many places denied education, the vote, assertion of his common humanity and manhood, but he is held in subjection by social organization which makes that 88 SELECTED ARTICLES procedure a fundamental dogma of its Kultur. Intelligent minds in the South oppose the cast-iron mold into which public opinion is forced, the ostracism and intimidation of the man who dares to speak and act for the real betterment of the Negro. But those voices are few and discussion must therefore come from the North. From the North the approach must necessarily be less sympathetic with the Southern white man s difficulties than if free discussion were tolerated in the South. Meanwhile, if the Negro is in bonds that must eventually make him attempt to destroy the society that forges them, the nation is equally in bonds. Its mind is restricted because a white man from the North cannot speak his mind to a white man from the South. Civilizations before those of this age have crumbled because the strains within them have proven too great for their cohesive forces. To add the strain of avoidable hatreds to the dangerous impulses with which modern society must contend is to threaten disintegration. As a matter of self-protection, then, and of protection for some sort of society and political organization, Americans must take the first steps toward dealing in an orderly way with race problems. Those steps, without which no order or peace will ever be possible, are, first, to ascertain the facts; second, to make them available to the citizens of the country. That is a problem for scientists, protected by tolerance. Americans have made and connived at a mythology about the Negro which not only cloaks excesses and brutalities that parallel the worst horrors in history and debase their nation before the world; but they are adding to the forces of destruction within their nation and within themselves forces which will some day claim an exorbitant price. SOCIAL COST OF SOUTHERN RACE PREJUDICE * In the end the solution of the southern race problem will come chiefly through education; but it will come primarily through the education of the white race. This may seem a hard saying; yet it is the conclusion reached after a conscientious study of the culture-standards of the white people of the Old 1 From article by George Elliott Howard, University of Nebraska. American Journal of Sociology. 22:577-93. March 1917. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 89 South as tested by the criteria of world-culture. It is of course \ essential that the Negro be efficiently educated ; that he have j and use the best means for the training of his hand and mind, j He must have free opportunity to claim a full share in the | spiritual and material heritage of the past. Only in that way can arise the new cravings, the new wants and ideals, which spell advancing civilization. At the best the raising of a people s ideals is a slow process; but what if through ignorance and mob-mind the dominant race erect a formidable barrier against the ascent of the race lower down on the culture ladder? The white people of the South hold the point of vantage, and they must therefore bear the higher responsibility. They possess the superior intelligence and the greater wealth which their vastly larger opportunity has yielded. They should be wise leaders in the mighty task of race-adjustment. That they have thus far decidedly failed in the function of wise leadership is due to their retarded culture. Blind devotion to the dogma of the natural inferiority of the black race has cost the white race dearly. Perforce it has thus become a laggard in moral, eco nomic, social and scientific progress. That result was inevitable under the condition just mentioned. Southern writers, with curious persistence, continue to exalt the quality of the culture-standard of the good old slavery days. "The finest civilization, Sir, that the world has ever seen !" Who has not heard it? This is a grave mistake. Relatively, a slaveridden society cannot attain the finest civilization. The terms cancel each other. Its social ideals and customs are necessarily backward; and how can a noble literature arise in a community when all that is finest in the literature of the outside world is a reproach to its basic morals? In fact, for nearly a hundred years the intellectual energy of the South has been absorbed in the defense or protection of its cherished race- dogma; and the resultant sterility of thought in other directions has not yet been entirely remedied. The writer s views have been molded chiefly by his experi ences in five states of the South. One cannot dwell long in such centers as New Orleans, Savannah, or Charleston without becoming aware of the singular obsession of southern thought. One s sympathy is quickened by the near view of the hard lot of the whites resulting from the catastrophe of the Civil War. Estates ravaged, fortunes ruined, pitiful makeshifts of gentle 90 SELECTED ARTICLES men and women to gain the daily bread ! The situation is often pathetic. Far more pathetic, even tragic, because of its evil consequences, is the incessant harking back to the injustice and suffering caused by the northern invasion and conquest. These grievances are almost sure to be the burden of every conversation. Public discussion and even books of literary worth, such as those of Thomas Nelson Page, are pervaded by the sad lament or the indignant protest. With almost childish helplessness and inconsequence the "carpetbagger" and the "scalawag" are raised as a shield whenever the failures of the present, whether eco nomic, social or ethical, are alluded to. In fact, the South is facing the past. While it is looking backward the possibilities of the future are not perceived. While it is fighting over again the battles of the Civil War the many-sided fight for social regeneration is feeble or misdirected. The majority of the leaders of white society in the South are attempting the hard feat of advancing backward while heart and mind are turned toward the dead issues of the past. With almost religious fervor they persist in reopening the closed chapter. Perfectly natural, of course. Possibly any other people under similar conditions might yield to the same weakness. That is not the important lesson which the situation teaches. Seeing that it is a weakness, however human, a weakness which is hindering the progress of the South, why not make a heroic effort to overcome it by facing the other way? At least, why not join the group of new statesmen who, in opposition both, to the old aristocracy and to the new democracy led by Hoke Smith, Tillman, and Vardaman, are earnestly striving to do this very thing through exercising the fatal obsession? Such a revolution must be preceded by a sounder education of the whites. In reality southern thought is vitiated by a strangely perverted psychology. Straight thinking is the essential condition of straight acting. Nevertheless, the white southerner is cocksure that the Negro is a lower order of creation. However else they may differ in opinion, all parties and sects, from Virginia to Florida and from Georgia to Louisiana, are agreed that God made the black race of poorer clay. True, in the last quinquennium there have appeared a small number of southern men and women with .trained minds who are releasing themselves from the iron grip of this paralyzing sectional tradition. A literature revealing the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 91 world-standard of scientific thought is slowly arising. Under leadership of educational statesmen, such as those constituting the "University Commission on Race Questions," the emancipa tion of the whites from their mental bondage may sometime take place. As yet the swag of tradition is practically unbroken. The writers that are molding public opinion in the South seem to be untouched by modern research in ethnology, anthropology and race-psychology. In this respect the polished Thomas Nel son Page is at one with the violent Shufeldt, the cruel and reckless Dixon, the bold and unflinching Tillman or Vardaman. In concluding his study of the Negro; The Southerner s Problem a book whose deft but superficial arguments are shaping the stock phrases of southern conversation he affirms as the first principle in the solution of that problem "the absolute and unchangeable superiority of the white race a superiority . . . not due to any mere adventitious circumstances, such as superior educational and other advantages during some centuries, but an inherent and essential superiority, based on superior intellect, virtue and constancy." He does not "believe that the Negro is the equal of the white, or ever could be the equal"; for, as he boldly asserts, "race-superiority is founded on courage (or, perhaps, constancy is the better word), intellect, and the domestic virtues, and in these the white is the superior of every race." Here we have an authoritative expression of the race-cult of the southern white caste. Yet if one would but lift his gaze above Mason and Dixon s line he might find some curious facts hard to reconcile with his belief. Was not the French feudal lord as firmly convinced of his "absolute and unchangeable" superiority to the white hind that served and fed him? Does not the haughty Russ contemn, hate and persecute the Jew, once the chosen of the Lord? In solving his race problem does not the landowning descendant of the old feudal baron in Sicily insist on the same basic principle of his heaven-born superiority to the starving peasants whom he despises and pitilessly exploits, although they may be as white as himself? Is not the proud Magyar of Hungary just as cocksure as is his brother in Virginia that the solution of his race problem depends on holding sacred the principle of his "absolute and unchange able" superiority to the Croatian, the Slovak, even the Rumanian, although Kossuth was a Slovak and the Rumanian in large part 92 SELECTED ARTICLES derives his blood and his speech from the old Roman masters of the world! This is the so-called "state-idea" upon which the dominant Magyar aristocrat stakes his future social welfare. To him the other peoples of Hungary are "inferior" and not competent to govern themselves. According to one of his sayings, "a Slovak is not a human being" a "notion," remarks Booker T. Washington, "that seems to spring up quite naturally in the mind of any race which has accustomed itself to the slavery and oppression of another race." So far from its being the essential factor in the solution of the southerner s problem, the dogma of race-inferiority is proving an almost insuperable barrier to its right settlement. If the criteria of world-culture and world-experience may be trusted for guidance, the first principle of race-adjustment is not a fixed formula of relative race-values. Rather it is such an organization of the community life as shall develop all the faculties of the composite population to their highest point of efficiency and permit their harmonious employment in doing the community s share of the world s work. RELATION OF NEGROES TO THE WHITES * If one notices carefully one will see that between these two worlds, despite much physical contact and daily intermingling, there is almost no community of intellectual life or points of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come with direct contact and sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the other. Before and directly after the war when all the best of the Negroes were domestic servants in the best of the white families, there were bonds of intimacy, affection, and sometimes blood relationship between the races. They lived in the same home, shared in the family life, attended the same church often and talked and conversed with each other. But the increasing civilization of the Negro since has naturally meant the development of higher classes: there are increasing numbers of ministers, teachers, physicians, merchants, mechanics and independent farmers, who by nature and training 1 From article by Professor W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Ph.D., Atlanta University. Annals of the American Academy. 18:121-40. July, 1901. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 93 are the aristocracy and leaders of the blacks. Between them, however, and the best element of the whites, there is little, or no intellectual commerce. They go to separate churches, they live in separate sections, they are strictly separated in all public gatherings, they travel separately, and they are beginning to read different papers and books. To most libraries, lectures, concerts and museums Negroes are either not admitted at all or on terms peculiarly galling to the pride of the very classes who might otherwise be attracted. The daily paper chronicles the doings of the black world from afar with no great regard for accuracy; and so on throughout the category of means for intellectual communication; schools, conferences, efforts for social betterment and the like, it is usually true that the very representatives of the two races who for mutual benefit and the welfare of the land ought to be in complete understanding and sympathy are so far strangers that one side thinks all whites are narrow and prejudiced and the other thinks educated Negroes dangerous and insolent. Moreover, in a land where the tyranny of public opinion and the intolerence of criticism is for obvious historical reasons so strong as in the South, such a situation is extremely difficult to correct. The white man as well as the Negro is bound and tied by the color line and many a scheme of friendliness and philanthropy, of broad-minded sympathy, and generous fellowship between the two has dropped still-born - because some busybody has forced the color question to the ^ front and brought the tremendous force of unwritten law against the innovators. It is hardly necessary tor me to add to this very much in regard to the social contact between the races. Nothing has come to replace that finer sympathy and love between some masters and house servants, which the radical and more uncompromising drawing of the color line in recent years has caused almost completely to disappear. In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him; to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches, one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separa tion extends even to parks and street cars. Here there can be none of that social going down to the 94 SELECTED ARTICLES people; the opening of heart and hand of the best to the worst, in generous acknowledgment of a common humanity and a com mon destiny. On the other hand, in matters of simple alms giving, where there be no question of social contact, and in the succor of the aged and sick, the South, as if stirred by a feeling of its unfortunate limitations, is generous to a fault. The black beggar is never turned away without a good deal more than a crust, and a call for help for the unfortunate meets quick response. I remember, one cold winter, in Atlanta, when I refrained from contributing to a public relief fund lest Negroes should be discriminated against; I afterward inquired of a friend : "Were any black people receiving aid ?" "Why," said he, "They were all black." And yet this does not touch the kernel of the problem. Human advancement is not a mere question of almsgiving, but rather of sympathy and cooperation among classes who would scorn charity. And here is a land where, in the higher walks of life, in all the higher striving for the good and noble and true, the color line comes to separate natural friends and co-workers, while at the bottom of the social group in the saloon, the gambling hell and the bawdy-house the same line wavers and disappears. WHAT DOES THE NEGRO WANT IN OUR DEMOCRACY? 1 The Negroes wants in our democracy are simple and fundamental. The Negro wants a democracy not a "whiteocracy." At present the United States of America is more a "whiteocracy" than a democracy. The Negro wants the sign "For Whites Only" erased from the banner and spirit of "our democracy." In other words, all the Negro wants is democracy in the fundamental sense of the terms as explained by the immortal Lincoln in "A government of the people for the people and by the people" (not white people only). All the Negro wants in our democracy, is for the spirit of the Declaration of Inde pendence, and of the Constitution of the United States to be 1 From article by R. R. Wright, Jr., Ph.D., Editor "Christian Re corder," President Colored Protective Association, Philadelphia. National Conference of Social Work. 1919: 539-45- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 95 applied to all citizens without fear or favor. That is not done in the United States today and in so far as it is not, we fall short of anything like a democracy in America. Some of the funda mental things which "Our Democracy" should hold out to all able-bodied, sound-minded men (and women also) should be the right to help make, interpret and execute the laws of democracy, directly or through the representatives they elect; that is, there should be political equality. There should be the equal oppor tunity of all children to become educated so as to preserve the democracy; there should be equitable conditions of living, includ ing a just division of the products of capital and labor so that there may be progress in democracy. But these things are so fundamental and elemental that the whole nation accepts them in theory at least but for whites only. Let me be more specific. What does the Negro want in "Our Democracy?" I answer specifically as follows: 1. A Chance to Vote. The right to express opinion as to what laws shall govern the democracy and who shall execute them is fundamental. It is notorious that where nine-tenths of the Negroes live they are denied the right to vote, and in defiance of the spirit of our democracy. When the draft law was applied in the South, there was no distinction on account of color (except in the cases where Negroes were sent to fill the quotas for which whites should have been sent). Why should there be distinction when it comes to applying the election law? The Negro who enrolled over one million strong and went to France over two hundred and fifty thousand strong the Negro who presented himself in the defense of his country in larger proportion than the white man of the South wants to know why he should work and fight for democracy and cannot vote for it? And this Negro will not be satisfied until he gets a fair chance to vote. And until that chance is given, "Our Democracy" is merely a sham and a farce. For the Negro is the acid test of our democracy. 2. Justice in the Courts. Next to the right to vote, "Our Democracy" should give to all equal justice before the courts. But justice in a large part of America is labeled "for whites only." In cases of Negroes 96 SELECTED ARTICLES versus Negroes, there is fair enough justice; when a Negro is on one side and a white man is on the other, it is rare except in trivial cases, for the Negro to get justice. Justice is usually on the side of the voters in "Our Democracy." Practically every intelligent Negro knows (whether he thinks it politic to state it publicly or not is another matter) that the courts of the South make mockery of justice, so far as the protection of the rights of Negroes against the aggression of lawless whites is concerned. And they forfeit millions of dollars every year because they know the courts are against them. ("What s the use?" is the question of despair so often heard when a Negro knows he is right, but also knows the courts are against him.) So the Negro wants justice in the courts. 3. Representation on Jury. The right of trial by one s peers is a cornerstone in "Our Democracy," but the Negro does not have it. Every year in "Our Democracy" hundreds of thousands of Negroes are tried, but no Negro who knows Negro life, social conditions, Negro psychology, etc., is ever called to sit on their cases ; but men who never enter a Negro home, who never sit in a Negro church, who have nothing but contempt for Negroes and at the very best are ignorant of Negro soul-life, are their jurors. Do you wonder that so many are condemned? Do you wonder that justice is so often miscarried? Do you wonder that there is growing mistrust of the courts? Do you wonder that a leading and powerful Negro paper refers often to the "Department of Justice" as the "Department of Injustice!" So the Negro wants to be and ought to be on the juries of "Our Democracy" to preserve justice. 4. Representation in the Government. There are twelve million Negroes in this country. They are about 10.5 per cent of the nation s population. In the states south of the Ohio river there are nearly ten million who are about 30 per cent of the population. Yet, there is not a single Negro in Congress, there is no representation in any Southern state legislature or city council. In sections where a large majority of the vote is Negro, there is no representation. This not only hurts the Negro, but it hurts "Our Democracy." No government, however powerful it may be, can endure upon THE NEGRO PROBLEM 97 a basis of insincerity, subterfuge and fraud. And only upon this basis is the Negro kept out of the law-making bodies of the South. Understand, the Negro does not want to "dominate," he only wants to be heard. If he is to obey the law, he wants the right to express himself about it. And not only in the making of law, but in the administering of law, the Negro wants a share. A great deal of friction of race in the local community is due to the fact that the Negro has rro chance to help administer the law not even to do police duty in Negro neighborhoods. More than one race riot would have been averted if the community had been democratic enough to give the Negro a part in administering the law instead of having people do that duty who feel they should cower the Negro. So I repeat, the Negro wants representation in the legislative and executive branches of our local, state and national governments, which their labor and their valor have helped to create. They want it for themselves; they want it that our democracy, as a democracy, shall not perish from the earth. 5. Better Living Conditions. In every community in the South, notwithstanding Negroes pay comparatively higher rents than whites, and notwithstanding their property is often assessed higher in proportion than the whites, they are shamefully discriminated against in the sharing of public utilities. They are forced to live upon the undrained and unpaved and unlighted streets. They rarely have garbage collection. It is impossible to put sanitary toilets, bath tubs and other improvements their taxes pay for in their homes. They pay higher insurance because the city will not give them water and fire protection. I know the terrible strain many Southern communities are under, but that strain is no excuse for such unfairness which amounts to even robbery in "Our Democracy." Of course, if the Negro had a ballot, he could not be robbed of his proportion of city improvements as he now is. But when the fundamental right to vote is denied in "Our Democracy" you may expect any other injustice. 6. Fairer Wages. In a democracy there should be an equitable distribution of the combined products of labor and capital. To the laborer this is usually wages. The Negro does not get fair wages. He 98 SELECTED ARTICLES pays more for rent, more for food, and more for clothes, comparatively, than the white man, but as in the case of the white woman, as compared with the white man, the Negro does not get for the same work the same wages that the whites get. 7. Better Educational Advantages. Wherever separate schools exist, they exist to the detriment of the Negroes in the length of term, equipment, preparation and pay of teachers. Notwithstanding the Negroes are largely engaged in agriculture, and agriculture is one of the chief supports, states like Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Ala bama, Arkansas and others of the South make almost no provision for the training of Negroes as compared with whites. Not only do they neglect to do their duty from the funds of their own treasury, some of them actually steal from the Negro the share which the government appropriates for education. In "Our Democracy" there is not a single state which has a separate system of schools which does anything like half-way justice (not ideal justice, but in comparison with what is done for other children) to Negro education. The foreigner who has never done a thing for the country gets for his children opportunities for education which the Negro whose ancestors have given ten generations to help the country is denied. Think of it ! For ten millions of Negroes there is not a single full- fledged college or technical school of a higher order, supported by public funds, in the whole Southland, and in all of these states Negroes are denied entrance into those technical schools which the states support. Think of it; there are not ten high schools of equal grade with the whites of the Southern states, and one million five hundred thousand Negro children are out of school today in "Our Democracy." The Negro wants a chance to educate his children. 8. Protection of Colored Women. The Negro wants his women protected. If a Negro commits rape upon a white woman, he is lynched, if a mob can get him. "Our Democracy" has a just horror of the rape of white women, and some have gone so far as to justify lynching for that cause. But the most prevalent form of rape in this country is the rape of Negro women by white men but as yet the conscience of "Our Democracy" is asleep to the rape of Negro THE NEGRO PROBLEM 99 women; one rarely ever hears of a white man being brought to trial for that crime. The Negro wants fornication and bastardy laws which will make white men support their bastard children and will give a colored woman who is betrayed by a white man some standing in court. Negroes object to anti-intermarriage laws, not because they want to marry white women, but because they know such laws are made purely for the degradation of Negro women and protect white men in their attacks upon our womanhood. I believe every Negro of intelligence would welcome an anti- miscegination law, which would keep down inter-breeding. Be cause Negroes have no vote, the white voters permit whore houses and low dives to thrive in Negro neighborhoods. In deed, the city council has designated such a district where a Negro school was. In many cities the brothels for white men are in Negro neighborhoods not by invitation, however, but because a voteless people cannot protect themselves, and a democracy which disfranchises any part of its citizens makes them the logical prey of the vicious ones of the enfranchised group. 9. Abolition of Lynching. There have been over 3,500 in our country; many of them have been for causes more or less trivial ; such as "talking back to a white person," disputing about money, theft, resisting arrest, etc., for which the offender would have received a light sentence if convicted in a court by trial. But a democracy which disfranchises a part of its citizens may expect lynching. Sheriffs are slow to protect those who do not vote for them. 10. Abolition of Special Laws. Practically all of the older states, at one time, saw fit to have special laws for the control of Negroes. These laws existed in Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. But fortunately, most of them have been abolished. The Negro wants them all abolished, for they do not help the Negro and only harm and degrade the white man. They are instruments to legalize community robbery and oppression. At present the separate car law is not an instrument of justice, but a mere subterfuge to tax Negroes for^comforts for whites. Negroes pay the same as whites for their tickets, TOO SELECTED ARTICLES but do not get the same accommodation as whites, which is mere robbery. This injustice the Negro wants abolished. 11. The Use of Public Privileges for Which They Pay. Negroes pay taxes, often special assessments for public parks, public libraries, public schools and other public conveniences, even public toilets, from which they are excluded and no provision is made for them. This is not the ideal of democracy and yet there are millions of people today who not only do not contend against it but think it right. 12. Negroes Want the Fruits of Victory as Well as the -Burdens of War. On every hand we have heard the Negro applauded for his loyalty in the war. Only a few days ago a governor of a great Southern state complimented a Negro audience on its loyalty. Said he : "You did everything we asked ; you were every bit as loyal as the white people. You showed you were Amer ican to the core. When we called for the boys to go to the war, you answered with twenty-six thousand; when we called for the Liberty Loan, you gave your hundreds of thousands. You gave to the Red Cross, for the Y. M. C. A., for the Armenian and Syrian Christians. You bought thrift stamps and war savings certificates ; your women organized ; your churches rallied, and at home you held your own as workers in the home trenches. I say we are proud of your patriotism. And of the two hundred fifty boys of this state who gave their lives for our nation, in camp or hospital or transport or in trenches, of these two hundred fifty brave boys whom this state and nation must forever honor, you, my splendid colored friends, gave more than one hundred of your boys, your sons, your fathers and brothers to pay the last and greatest price of liberty." I asked myself as I heard this eloquent governor: "Is this sacrifice not worth the ballot and the privilege of a citizen?" Now that the Negro has helped win the war he wants some of its fruits. 13. Negroes Want the Church to be Democratic; Particularly Do They Want the Christianity of Jesus as Applied to Social Questions. Even though the mass of Negroes are untrained in social science or theology, next to the denial of the right to vote, the THE NEGRO -PROBLEM 7 101 greatest resentment is felt toward the organized church, which is regarded as either weak or hypocritical in its attitude towards the social welfare of the Negroes. Somehow, the Negro feels that the church ought to be concerned with the things of earth such as legal justice, protection of womanhood, education and conservation of child life, prevention of crime and disease, train ing and adequate returns for labor, and equal ballot, fair admin istration of the law as applied to the Negro. But the church seems to have assumed the position of the priest and the Levite in its relation to the Negro who has fallen among political and economic thesans in "Our Democracy." 14. The Negro Wants Recognition of Real Negro Leadership. In our democracy we shall not be safe if employers or those whom employers pay are the only spokesmen for labor; or if men or those whom men pay represent women; if English or those dependent upon the philanthropy or the politics of the English, represent the Irish. So if white men or those dependent upon the philanthropy of white men are to be the sole spokes men to the white world for the Negro race, the Negro will not be fairly represented and will distrust our democracy. The democracy needs the Negro as represented by the Negro leader ship. The Negro churches, newspapers, business and fraternal organizations are developing Negro leaders. The day of the hand-picked leaders is over. The man or the woman who sits at the council table for the Negro, who is to represent the Negro point of view, must be a genuine Negro leader, who is put up by Negroes, supported by Negroes and may be taken down by Negroes when he fails to represent them. Our real leaders are not those gentlemen whose hands are held out for the alms of white people and who live in their "philanthropy." 15. Negroes Want Democracy and Mutual Self-Respect Among the Races Which Make Up Our Great Country. Negroes do not want to dominate anybody; they merely want representation; they do not want to hate the white people. They do not want bolshevism. They do not want anarchy. They want to be American citizens in the greatest democracy of the world. They are not aliens they were born here. Do you think the Negro wants too much? 102 SELECTED ARTICLES THE NEW NEGRO * There are friends of the South who, having studied the evolution of the new Negro, harbor serious misgivings. No mere fanciful bugaboo is the new Negro. He exists. More than once I have met him. He differs radically from the timorous, docile Negro of the past. Said a new Negro, "Cap n, you mark my words; the next time white folks pick on colored folks, something s going to drop dead white folks." Within a week came race riots in Chicago, where Negroes fought back with surprising audacity. Another new Negro, from overseas said, "We were the first American regiment on the Rhine Colonel Hayward s, the Fight ing Fifteenth; we fought for democracy, and we re going to keep on fighting for democracy till we get our rights here at home. The black worm has turned." I said, "There is a high mortality among turning worms. We ve got you people eight to one." He answered, "Don t I know it? Thousands of us must die ; but we ll die fighting. Mow us down slaughter us ! It s better than this." I remembered seeing a Negro magazine shortly after the Chicago riots; a war-goddess on its cover brandished aloft her sword. "They who would be free," ran the legend, "must themselves strike the blow." I remembered a telegram from a Negro editor, "Henceforward, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life." Here, in this colored veteran, was the same spirit the spirit, that is, of the new Negro. Hit, he hits back. In a succession of race riots, he has proved it. "When they taught the colored boys to fight," says a Negro paper, "they started something they won t be able to stop." This is apparently no transient mood. The evolution of the new Negro has been in progress since 1916, when southern Negroes began to move North. That huge, leaderless exodus a million strong, according to Herbert J. Seligmann, author of "The Negro Faces America" stronger by far, according- to some authorities meant that for the first time in history the Negro had taken his affairs into his own hands. Until then, 1 From article by Rollin Lynde Hartt. Independent. 105:59-60. January 15, 1921. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 103 things had- been done to the Negro, with the Negro, and for the Negro, but never by the Negro. At last, he showed initiative and self-reliance. Despite the lure of big wages "up North," it required no little courage. If the vanguard was exploited, the exploitation continued and still continues. In an article on "The High Cost of Being a Negro," the Chicago Whip declares, "In Chicago, Kansas City, New York and Detroit, where Negroes are working, they have to pay twice the rent, and in neighborhood clothing and grocery stores recent investigations show that for the same goods the Negro has to pay a color tax sometimes as high as 50 per cent. Thus the net earnings, if any at all, are 50 per cent less than those of the white workers." Yet the exodus from Dixie goes on. Few astonishingly few return. "The exodus is a great mark of progress," thinks Dr. Hawk; "Negroes are saying, We can do this thing ourselves. " They had not been doing it long when a new and still more tremendous influence came into play. America declared war. Negroes by scores of thousands joined the colors. Nor was that all. On the fourteenth of March, President Wilson "put the devil into the Negro s head," as a southern newspaper phrases it, by receiving a deputation of colored clergy at the White House and making a speech thus reported in the Negro press the country over : I have always known that the negro has been unjustly and unfairly dealt with; your people have exhibited a degree of loyalty and patriotism that should command the admiration of the whole nation. In the present conflict your race has rallied to the nation s call, and if there has been any evidence of slackerism manifested by negroes, the same has not reached Washington. Great principles of righteousness are won by hard fighting and they are attained by slow degrees. With thousands of your sons in the camps and in France, out of this conflict you must expect nothing less than the enjoyment of full citizenship rights the same as are enjoyed by every other citizen. How as a matter of precise, historic fact did the Negro acquit himself in France? Accounts by white men vary. Accounts by black men don t. Exclaims a Negro paper, "Are you aware that a Negro was the first American to receive the Croix de Guerre with palm and gold star? That three Negro regiments and several battalions and companies were cited and had their flags decorated for valorous conduct? That Negroes placed for the first time in artillery and signal corps won high distinction? That Negroes in the early part of the war held 104 SELECTED ARTICLES 20 per cent of all territory assigned to Americans? That the Negro army was the healthiest on record? That out of 45,000 Negroes engaged in battle only nine were taken prisoners? That the Negroes established a record for continuous service in the trenches 191 days?" "Under similar circumstances," comments the New York Crisis, "we would fight again. But, by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if, now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land." "Back again, to be lynched, bombed, and riot- frenzied and segregated !" cries the . Chicago Whip. "The black man fought to make the world safe for democracy; he now demands that America be made safe for black Americans." In other words, the Negro thinks as in identical circum stances a Caucasian would think. Having learned initiative, having heard from his President the promise of "freedom," and having served his country on the battlefield, he is determined henceforth to act as in the circumstances a Caucasian would act. For once to that extent black is white. "You have now with you a new Negro," declared the editor of the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch in addressing a white audience. "This new Negro, who stands today released in spirit, finds himself physically bound and shackled by laws and customs that were made for slaves." Is he then seeking "social equality?" "What we want is social justice, none of my race is dreaming of social equality. " Once in the World, Mr. Dooley could remark to Mr. Hennessy, "Th nayger has manny fine qualities he is joyous, light-hearted, and aisily lynched." The new Negro has deter mined to change all that. Says the Kansas City Call; "The white man will learn in time that he has in this new type of Negro a foeman worthy of his steel. If we are driven to defend our lives, our homes, our rights, let us do it man-fashion. How better can we die than in defending our lives, our homes, our rights from the attacks of white men obsessed with the idea that this world was made for Caesar and his queens?" I once heard Booker Washington say, "The Negro can afford to be wronged ; the white man can t afford to wrong him." Patience was the watchword then. It is seldom the watchword THE NEGRO PROBLEM 105 now. Entirely typical of widespread Negro sentiment today is this from the Crisis : "For three centuries we have suffered and cowered. No race ever gave passive resistance and submission to evil longer, more piteous trial. Today we raise the terrible weapon of self-de fense. When the murderer comes, he shall no longer strike us in the back. When the armed lynchers gather, we too must gather armed. When the mob moves, we propose to meet it with bricks and clubs and guns. If the United States is to be a land of law, we would live humbly and peaceably in it; if it is to be a land of mobs and lynchers, we might as well die today as tomorrow." So, likewise, the New York Age : "Every day we are told to keep quiet. Only a fool will keep quiet when he is being robbed of his birthright. Only a coward will lie down and whine under the lash if he too can give back the lash. America hates, lynches and enslaves us, not because we are black, but because we are weak. A strong, united Negro race will not be mistreated. It is always strength over weakness, might over right." Mean while a colored preacher writer in the Cleveland Gazette : "Don t start anything, but when something is started make it hot for them and finish it." RACE RIOTS AND THEIR REMEDY 1 /- The Negro officers and men now returning have but one story to tell, and they tell it with bitterness and in tears. Yet there is no redress, there is nothing that the Negro can do, but wait. He dares not he must not take the law into his own hands. That is anarchy and leads to riots and lawlessness. The higher and better classes of colored people, like the higher and better classes of white people, are not in sympathy with mob law or anything that is destructive of good government. The war is now over, the Negro soldier has returned. Note his treatment on the railroads, all of which are under Govern ment control. Many of these men in going to their homes with laurels of victory won in their country s defense are not permitted 1 From article by W. S. Scarborough, D.D., President of Wilberforce University. Independent. 99:223. August 16, 1919. io6 SELECTED ARTICLES to ride in other than the Jim-crow cars. Many of them have been assaulted and thrown off the cars by Government officials notwithstanding their record across seas simply because of their color. Many of them have not only suffered in this way, but have met death, because they sought better treatment. This is a terrible chapter in our American life, and only the Negro s love for good government prevents serious trouble. The Negro is law-abiding and only occasionally shows a retaliatory spirit. Will not the American white people come halfway put aside their prejudices and play fair with this people that has done so much to help win this war? Negroes are not rioters, but can be made so. It is a heavy burden they carry. They ask no favors, but simply a man s chance in the race of life, and an opportunity to develop the powers that God has given them. RACE PROBLEM * Is it not incredible, in view of the magnitude and threatening character of the problem, that it remains practically untouched from an administrative point of view, that it is almost wholly overlooked by our governmental agencies, that our statesmen are indifferent to it? Even President Wilson, with his keen constructive mind, his readiness to tackle every other problem and to offer a solution for it, is content to pass this by when he can, or if he cannot, to lose his temper over a rudely aggressive recital of the race s wrongs, or to dismiss the question with a story as he did the other day when a group of Southern investigators called upon him. If it is the despair of our statesmanship, it is the despair of neglect and of cowardice. Republicans and Democrats alike shirk the issue, partly for lack of vision or a constructive programme, but always in dread of a prejudice which must be made to yield before the majesty of the laws of the land and o.f justice itself. Serious authors follow suit to the extent of treating the issue from every point of view save that of government ; they rarely deal with it as a domestic and social problem for which remedies must as cer tainly be found as for those concerning labor and capital or any 1 From article by Oswald Garrison Villard. Nation. 99:738-40. Decem her 24, 1914. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 107 others which menace the peace and happiness of the people of the United States. Instead we hear solemnly that the only way out is to govern the inferior race by violence, by defiance of law and order, by the Negro s exclusion from a share in government as from its benefits. It is true that we have such helpful and valuable studies as Albert Bushnell Hart s "The Southern South." But the writer has yet to appear who can analyze the situation with that firmness of grasp which is characteristic of Lord Bryce s treatment of most of our difficult problems and at the same time throw down the gauntlet to our dormant statesmanship. Dormant it plainly is, for Washington is content either to approach the subject from the unblushing standpoint of prejudice, as illustrated by the scarcely checked effort to segregate the colored employees in the Federal departments and by the familiar Congressional diatribes of the professional negrophobes, or to ignore it ; while our Federal courts have been as adept in dodging questions involving fundamental civic rights as our public is blind to the flat and defiant Southern violation of the Constitution. We have had President s commissions to deal with the rural-life problem and farmers credits and banks. A new bureau concerns itself exclusively with children; and our forests have their especial Federal guardian. But there is no Government agency which devotes itself to studying scien tifically the racial problems that have lately driven no less able a foreign observer than Sir Sydney Olivier, for five years Governor of Jamaica, and all his life close to the Negro problem, to the belief that this country is again headed straight for civil war unless our responsible statesmen turn squarely about and move in the contrary direction from that which is marked for the wayfarer by disfranchisement, the Jim Crow car, and latterly the establishment of black ghettos in our Southern cities. And so race friction grows apace, South and North; in the South economic pressure, the upward strivings of blacks and poor whites, the machinations of the pothouse politicians who misgovern them both; the shocking failure to give a real educa tion to the children of the South, and particularly to those of the freedmen; the constant wedging apart of the races in their social life by new restrictive legislation planned, passed, and enforced by the white men to suit their will these developments are full of menace, since they are conceived by passion and io8 SELECTED ARTICLES prejudice. Only in some of the Southern colleges is there beginning a movement to find a way out of the terrible morass of hatred and injustice into which both races are sinking. In the North the influx of colored multitudes finds us less willing, if anything to give a square deal to the individual than in the South ; finds our labor unions bitterly hostile ; our cities unready to take them in hand, to render them useful citizens, to mould them to their commercial needs, we shudder at their squalor and then deny them the means of livelihood to rise beyond it; we too, would restrict their habitat if they depress our land values and so touch our pocket nerve. But to take them up as a burden and as a study, whether we dread, or despise or like them there are few individuals of us, indeed, who are ready to take the trouble, our invaded municipalities least of all. KUKLUX KLAN REVIVAL 1 The Kuklux Klan crossed Mason and Dixon s line in the Winter of 1920-21. Revived in the South some five years ago, this secret, oath-bound organization that had its origin in the troublous times of the Reconstruction period following the Civil War in America, began during the Winter just past to extend its activities into the North and West, with the avowed intention of uniting native-born white Christians for concerted action in the preservation of American institutions and the supremacy of the white race. In New York City and in other centres even further distant from the region in which the original Kuklux Klan was active there have been planted nuclei of the revived organization, according to the statements of its officials. How many such centres have been established in the North and West and the extent of the membership are not revealed. As in the original Kuklux Klan, members are known only to each other; the general public is permitted to know only certain national officers connected with the organization. To the average American the mention of the name suggests terrorism. The mental picture of the Kuklux, to those to whom the words conjure up any mental picture at all, is of a band 1 From article by Frank Parker Stockbridge. Current History Maga zine. New York Times. 14:19-25. April 1921. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 109 of white-robed, hooded riders, appearing mysteriously out of the darkness and proceeding, silently and with complete discipline, to execute some extra legal mission of warning or of private vengeance. That, at least, is the reaction of the average Northern white man, whose knowledge of the Kuklux Klan is derived entirely from reading or the "movies." To him it is something like the vigilantes of early California days or the "Night Riders" of the Kentucky tobacco war of the early twentieth century; the words carry to his ears an unmistakable flavor of lynch law, and, if he be old enough to have read the writings of Albion W. Tourgee and other Northern authors who wrote of the South in the Reconstruction period, he cannot escape the implication of lawless oppression of the Negro by the white. To the Southern white man, however, the name of this organization brings up a different picture. "The Kuklux saved the South" is the expression in which he sums up in a phrase a point of view which has grown into a fixed tradition in the States of the former Confederacy. To the average Southern white man of today the name of the Kuklux Klan after the lapse of half a century, typifies all that was best and finest in the chivalry of the old South. It conveys to him the impression of valiant men resisting tyranny, of the salvation of the white race from threatened Negro domination (with all that that implied socially as well as politically), and of the rescue of the white womanhood of the South from a frightful and ever-present peril. Formed in 1865 at Pulaski, Tenn. as a social club of young white men, with what Dr. Fleming calls "an absurd ritual and a strange uniform," it was soon discovered by the members that "the fear of it had a great influence over the lawless but super stitious blacks." In the difficult situation confronting the con quered South, it was inevitable that this power to terrorize should be availed of. "Soon," says Dr. Fleming, "the club expanded into a great federation of regulars, absorbing numerous local bodies that had been formed in the absence of civil law and partaking of the nature of the old English neighborhood police and the ante-bellum slave patrol." Among the conditions and causes that enabled the Kuklux Klan to develop in two or three years into the most powerful instrument of regulation in the whole South, Dr. Fleming enumerates these : i io SELECTED ARTICLES "The absense of stable government in the South for several years after the Civil War; the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the alien, renegade and Negro; the disfranchisement of whites; the spread of ideas of social and political equality among the Negroes ; fear of Negro insurrections ; the arming of the Negro militia and the disarming of whites ; outrages upon white women by black men ; the influence of Northern adventurers in the Freedmen s Bureau and the Union League in alienating the races; the humiliation of Confederate soldiers after they had been paroled in general, the insecurity felt by Southern whites during the decade after the collapse of the Confederacy." The constitution of the Kuklux Klan, like that of the similar though larger organization, the Knights of the White Camelia and several smaller groups having the same general purposes, contained certain declarations of principles which Professor Fleming thus summarizes: "To protect and succor the weak and unfortunate, especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers; to protect members of the white race in life, honor and property from the encroachments of the blacks; to oppose the Radical Republican Party and the Union League ; to defend constitutional liberty, to prevent usurpation, to emancipate the whites, maintain peace and order, the laws of God, the principles of 1776 and the political and social supremacy of the white race in short, to oppose African influence in government and society and to prevent any intermingling of the races." Native whites, largely disfranchised because of their active participation in the rebellion, formed one moiety of the social structure of the South at the close of the Civil War; the other part was composed of the newly enfranchised blacks, the Northern White men (called "carpet-baggers") who participated in the effort to get up a Negro government in the Southern States and a modicum of native whites who cooperated with them, known as "scalawags." The Kuklux Movement was an effort of the first class to destroy the control of the second class. "To control the Negro," says Professor Fleming, "the Klan played upon his superstitious fears by having night patrols, parades and drills of silent horsemen covered with white sheets, carrying skulls with coals of fire for eyes, sacks of bones to rattle and wearing hideous masks. Mysterious signs and THE NEGRO PROBLEM in warnings were sent to disorderly Negro politicians. The whites who were responsible for the conduct of the blacks were warned or driven away by social or business ostracism or by violence. Nearly all Southern whites * * * took part in the Kuklux movement. As the work of the societies succeeded they gradually passed out of existence. In some communities they fell into the control of violent men and became simply bands of outlaws * * * and the anarchial aspects of the movement excited the North to vigorous condemnation." The United States Congress in 1871-72 enacted laws intended to break up the Kuklux and other secret societies; several hundred arrests were made and several convictions followed. Much of the violence was checked, but the movement undoubt edly accomplished its prime purposes of giving protection to the whites, reducing the blacks to order, driving out the "carpet baggers" and nullifying the laws that had placed the Southern whites under control of the party of the former slaves. It is easy to see from the above sketch whence both the Northerner and the Southerner derive their contrary impressions of the organization. The former remembers the congressional investigations and trials of the Kuklux leaders, the evidence adduced of violence and law-breaking, of the whipping of Negroes and of carpet-baggers and even of men being dragged from their beds and slain; the latter remembers, or has had handed down to him the story of the time when, to quote from Woodrow Wilson s "History of the American People," "adven turers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the Negroes. The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country." That the occasion which gave rise to the original Kuklux movement was a real crisis, affecting the welfare and happiness of a whole people, the impartial historian of today may well concede; that in meeting the crisis by the means that were used the South was fighting for the preservation of what it deemed right, even holy, with the only weapon at its command, is hardly to be controverted. What crisis, what menace to the ideals and the civilization of any considerable body of people exists today to give vitality to the revival of the Kuklux Klan after the lapse of fifty years? ii2 SELECTED ARTICLES Unless some satisfying answer can be made to that question, the subject is hardly one to be treated seriously; unless there exists (or it is believed by a great number of persons that there does exist) a real need for the banding together of native-born white Christians in a militant organization for mutual protec tion, any organization based on such a premise must inevitably fall to pieces of its own weight. And while the original Kuklux Klan was purely sectional in its activities, whereas the revived Kuklux Klan is extending its field to the entire United States, the ground for its existence and continued growth must be sought in national rather than in local conditions. Part of the answer to this question just propounded is not difficult to deduce from such of the literature of the Kuklux as is permitted to be distributed to those not affiliated with the organization ; part of it is contained in statements by high officials of the organization or published with their sanction. Five classes of persons are at once barred by the pro nouncement. They are: (i) Negroes, (2) Japanese and other Orientals, (3) Roman Catholics, (4) Jews, (5) all foreign-born persons. Without questioning the right of the Kuklux or of any other organization to set up its own qualifications for membership and to exclude any individual or any group of individuals, it is of interest to note that the four groups particularly excluded in this instance are, each in degrees varying with local conditions, the storm-centres of present-day racial antagonisms in the United States. Anti-Semitic propaganda is more open and active in America than at any time in recent history. To the mass mind of America the Irish question is chiefly a religious question; the issue at stake the control of Ireland by the Roman Catholic Church, and the persistent effort of the American supporters of Sinn Fein to arouse antagonism in this country toward England a subtle piece of religious propaganda. Quite regardless of its truth or falsity, there can be no doubt of the wide acceptance of this view by a large proportion of Protestant Americans. That the Japanese question is a tremendously vital issue west of the Rockies is a familiar fact to every newspaper reader ; it is equally true that the anti-Japanese sentiment of the Pacific Coast is shared by a large proportion of Americans in other THE NEGRO PROBLEM 113 sections, who have become convinced that the interests of the nation are seriously menaced by Japanese occupation of California lands and that war with Japan may occur at any time. New impetus has been given to the Negro question, more particularly in the South, but to some extent throughout the country, by conditions arising from the war. The great demand for labor during the war brought about the greatest migration in history of Negroes from the South to the North. High wages, North and South, raised the Negro for a time to unheard-of pinnacles of affluence. Then the sudden slump in business threw back into idleness thousands who had become accustomed to "easy money." Many of these found themselves hundreds of miles from their homes with no means of returning; large fractions of the whole number had forgotten their old habit of docility in their brief period of financial independence and ventured to assert their rights as citizens in a manner offensive to the dominant white race. Renewed agitation for the recognition of the Negro on the plane of complete equality with the whites was one of the inevitable results of the war conditions that put the Negro worker on the same economic plane with the white workman; the Negro soldier and officer into the same uniform and the same service as the white soldier. The demands of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People for the abolition of segregation of the races in the Government departments at Washington, the reduction of Congressional representation in the Southern States in proportion as the Negro is disfranchised, the pardon of the imprisoned soldiers of the Twenty-fourth Infantry held in Leavenworth for the Houston riots, the abolition of "Jim Crow" cars on interstate railroad trains and the appointment of Negro Assistant Secre taries of Labor and Agriculture are pointed to by officials of the Kuklux Klan as proof that white supremacy is now acutely and nationally menaced. The N. A. A. C. P., in turn, has included in its published statement of purposes "The defeat, by every legitimate means, of the nefarious Kuklux Klan, both South and North." So the issue here, at least, is squarely joined. It is on such grounds as those just enumerated that the revived Kuklux Klan bases its expectation of extending beyond the boundaries of the South. It has been in existence, this present-day successor of the old Kuklux, since the latter part ii 4 SELECTED ARTICLES of 1915, when it was chartered as a legitimate fraternal organ ization by the State of Georgia. The originator of the idea of reviving the old institution under the old name was Colonel William Joseph Simmons of Atlanta, now Professor of Southern History in Lanier University. Associated with him in the application for the charter from the State of Georgia were three surviving members of the old Kuklux Klan. By virtue of this fact the new Klan declares itself, in its constitution, to be the only legitimate heir of the original organization, with sole rights to all its signs, symbols, regalias, etc. It is organized on similar lines to the original Kuklux Klan, with similar though slightly different titles for its officers. Colonel Simmons is the "Imperial Wizard" or supreme head of the order, the full title of which is "The Invisible Empire, Knights of the Kuklux Klan." The old regalia of white robe and pointed cap covering the face of the wearer is retained by the new organization, which claims to be fully organized throughout the South and to have a considerable number of local nuclei planted in half or more of the states. Cooperation with the authorities of the law is set forth as one of the tenets of the revived Kuklux Klan. "Because certain individuals at various times have committed acts of violence under cover of darkness and shielded by masks and robes somewhat resembling the official regalia of the Kuklux Klan," says one of the organization s official pronouncements," they have been classed as members of this organization. The Kuklux Klan is a strictly law abiding organization, and every member is sworn to uphold the law at all times and to assist officers of the law in preserving peace and order whenever the occasion may arise, and any member violating this oath would be banished forever from the organization. "Among the principles for which this organization stands are : Suppression of graft by public office holders ; preventing the causes of mob violence and lynchings ; preventing unwarranted strikes by foreign agitators; sensible and patriotic immigration laws, sovereignity of State rights under the Constitution ; separa tion of Church and State, and freedom of speech and press, a freedom such as does not strike at nor imperil our Govern ment or the cherished institutions of our people." Among the membership of the Old Kuklux Klan were many THE NEGRO PROBLEM 115 Northern soldiers, members of the Army of Occupation sent into the South after the Civil War to preserve order and main tain the reconstruction governments in power. In the new Kuklux Klan it is stated are to be found State, county and municipal officials of every degree, police officers and men, as well as a number of United States officials, Senators and Mem bers of Congress. How the Klan operates may best be indicated by quoting from statements publicly made by authority of its national officials. Birmingham, Ala., recently had a "wave of crime." The Kuklux Klan offered its services to the city officials to help stamp out evil conditions. The offer was accepted, and the seven hundred local members directed their efforts, in secret, against criminals and "undesirables" of both races. Their claim that they rendered valuable assistance to the police is supported by the fact that they assert that the Chief of Police of Birming ham sent a telegram to the Chief of Police of Nashville, Tenn. when he learned that a branch of the organization was to be established there, heartily endorsing the Kuklux movement. They claim that many such letters and telegrams of endorsement from Mayors, Sheriffs, and Chiefs of Police of Southern cities are on file in the Klan s headquarters. The power of the Kuklux Klan today like that of its prototype of half a century ago, lies in the secrecy of mystery with which it and its operations are surrounded. Its members are known only to each other and may not disclose the fact of their membership to outsiders. Outside the Klan none can know whether its warnings are backed by ten men or thousands in any community. To the assertion that there is no need and no room for such an extra-legal institution to enforce law and order, the officers of the Klan point to the newspaper chronicles of crime and disorder in every part of the country. To the charge that they are a Negro-whipping organization, thriving on race prejudice, they reply that no law-abiding person of any race, creed or color has anything to fear from them; they assert that they are the friends of every self-respecting man, black or white, but that they maintain the inherent superiority of the Caucasian stock, and that their order intends to use every legitimate means to retain it in control of America. ii6 SELECTED ARTICLES SOCIAL BASIS OF RACE PREJUDICE Even if there is neither a biological nor a psychological justification for the popular belief in the inferiority of the Negro race, the social basis of the race prejudice in America is not difficult to understand. The prejudice is founded essen tially on the tendency of the human mind to merge the individual in the class to which he belongs, and to ascribe to him all the characteristics of his class. It does not even require a marked difference in type, such as we find when we compare Negro and white, to provoke the spirit that prevents us from recognizing individuals and compels us to see only representatives of a class endowed with imaginary qualities that we ascribe to the group as a whole. We find this spirit at work in anti-Semitism as well as in American nativism, and in the conflict between labor and capitalism. We have recently seen it at its height in the emotions called forth by the World War. It is not by any means the class consciousness of the segre gated group that determines this feeling. It is rather the consciousness of the outsider who combines a large number of individuals in a group and thus assigns to each the same character. The less feeling of unity the heterogeneous members of the group possess, the harder it is for them to bear the discrimination under which they suffer. This is obviously the psychological basis of the present situation of the American Negro. To the popular mind, the Negro appears as a class, and the impressions made by the life of the poor Negro are generalized by the white man and are combined with dogmatic beliefs regarding the physical and hereditary mental make-up of the race. The consciousness that the Negro belongs to a class by himself is kept alive by the contrast presented by his physical appearance with that of the whites. For the descendants of the Teutonic peoples of Northern Europe, this consciousness has attained a high emotional value. It is natural that the stronger the individuality of a person who is thus assigned to a class with which he has little in common, the stronger must also be his resentment against those who refuse to take him at his individual worth. Every moment of his life, the self-respecting Negro feels the strain of his inability 1 From article, Problem of the American Negro, by Franz Boas. Yale Review. 10:384-95. January, 1921. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 117 to overcome the prejudices that merge him in a type. This resentment will grow in extent as individual achievement develops among the Negroes while they are still not valued as individuals. It is easier to point out the causes of conflict between whites and Negroes than to formulate a remedy. If my view is correct, it is clear that the only fundamental remedy for the situation is the recognition that the Negroes have the right to be treated as individuals, not as members of a class. But how can this be brought about in a population that is so deeply saturated with class consciousness as our own? Even if, in the education of the young, the importance of individual differences were empha sized so that an intelligent understanding could be attained of the irrationality of the assumption that all Negroes are inferior, we should not effectively overcome the general human tendency of forming groups that in the mind of the outsider are held together by his emotional attitude toward them. In other words, the hostile feeling of each individual to foreign social groups would not be eradicated. Mankind has travelled a long road from the time when every stranger was an enemy. According to our modern theo retical standards, we maintain that justice should be given to the individual, that it should not be meted out to him as to a representative of his class. And still, how very far removed are we from the realization of this ideal ! The natural habit of protecting ourselves against a supposedly hostile foreign group determines our life in great matters as well as in small details, and the life of nations as well as the life of the individual and of the family. For this reason there is no great hope that the Negro problem will find even a half-way satisfactory solution in our day. We may, perhaps, expect that an increasing number of strong minds will free themselves from race prejudice and see in every- person a man entitled to be judged on his merits. The weak- minded will not follow their example. THE HEART OF THE RACE PROBLEM 1 One wrong produces other wrongs as surely and as naturally as the seed of the thorn produces other thorns. Men do 1 From article by Archibald H. Grimke, A.M. Arena. 35=29-32. Jan uary, 1906. n8 SELECTED ARTICLES not in the moral-world gather figs from a thorn-bush any more than they do in the vegetable-world. What they sow in either world, that they reap. Such is the law. The earth is bound under all circumstances and conditions of time and place to re produce life, action, conduct, character, each after its own kind. Men cannot cause what is bad to bring forth what is good. Truth does not come out of error, light out of darkness, love out of hate, justice out of injustice, liberty out of slavery. No, error produces more error, darkness more darkness, hate more hate, injustice more injustice, slavery more slavery. That which we do is that which we are, and that which we shall be. The great law of reproduction which applies without shadow of change to individual life, applies equally to the life of that aggregation of individuals called a race or nation. Not any more than an individual can they do wrong with impunity, can they commit a bad deed without reaping in return the results in kind. There is nothing more certain than that the wrong done by people shall reappear to plague them, if not in one generation, then in another. For the consummation of a bad thought in a bad act puts what is bad in the act beyond the control of the actor. The evil thus escapes out of the Pandora- box of the heart, of the mind, to reproduce and to multiply itself a hundredfold and in a hundred ways in the complex relationships of men with men in human society. And then it returns not as it issued singly, but with its related brood of ill consequences : "But in these cases, We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips." The ship which landed at Jamestown in 1619 with a cargo of African slaves for Virginia plantations, imported at the same time into America with its slave-cargo certain seed-principles of wrong. As the slaves reproduced after their kind, so did these seed-principles of wrong reproduce likewise after their kind. Wherever slavery rooted itself, they rooted themselves also. The one followed the other with the regularity of a law of nature, the invariability of the law of cause and effect. As slavery grew and multiplied and spread itself over the land, the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 119 evils begotten of slavery grew, and multiplied, and spread them selves over the life of the people, black and white alike. The winds which blew North carried the seeds, and the winds which blew South ; and wherever they went, wherever they fell, whether East or West, they sprang up to bear fruit in the characters of men, in the conduct of a growing people. The enslavement of one race by another produces necessarily certain moral effects upon both races, moral deterioration of the masters, moral degradation of the slaves. The deeper the degradation of the one, the greater will be the deterioration of the other, and vice versa. Indeed, slavery is a breeding-bed, a sort of compost heap, where the best qualities of both races decay and become food for the worst. The brute appetites and passions of the two act and react on the moral natures of each race with demoralizing effects. The subjection of the will of one race under such circumstances to the will of another begets in the race that rules cruelty and tyranny, and in the one that is ruled, fear, cunning and deceit. The lust, the passions, of the master-class act powerfully on the lust, the passions, of the slave-class, and those of the slave-class react not less power fully on those of the master-class. The greater the cruelty, tyranny and lust of the one, the greater will be the cunning. deceit and lust of the other. And there is no help for this so long as the one race rules and the other race is ruled, so long as there exists between them in the state inequality of rights, of conditions, based solely on the racehood of each. TRAGEDY OF COLOR 1 I seem to find the same hastiness and something of the same note of harshness that strike me in the cases of MacQueen and Gorky in America s treatment of her colored population. I am aware how intricate, how multitudinous, the aspects of this enormous question have become ; but looking at it in the broad and transitory manner I have proposed for myself in these papers, it does seem to present many parallel elements. There is the same disposition toward an indiscriminating verdict, the same disregard of proportion as between small evils and great iFrom article, Future in America, by H. G. Wells, Harper s Weekly. 50:1317-19. September 15, 1906. 120 SELECTED ARTICLES ones, the same indifference to the fact that the question does not stand alone, but is a part and this time a by no means small part in the working out of America s destinies. In relation to the colored population, just as in relation to the great and growing accumulations of unassimilated and increasingly unpopular Jews, and to the great and growing multitudes of Roman Catholics whose special education contra dicts at so many points those conceptions of individual judgment and responsibility upon which America relies, I have attempted time after time to get some answer from the Americans I have met to what is to me the most obvious of questions. "Your grandchildren and the grandchildren of these people will have to live in this country side by side ; do you propose, do you believe it possible, that they should be living then in just the same relations that you and these people are living now; if you do not, then what relations do you propose shall exist between them?" It is not too much to say that I have never once had the be ginnings of an answer to this question. Usually one is told with great gravity that the problem of color is one of the most diffi cult that we have to consider and the conversation then breaks up into discursive anecdotes and statements about black peo ple. One man will dwell upon the uncontrollable violence of a black man s evil passions (in Jamaica and Barbadoes col ored people form an overwhelming proportion of the popula tion, and they have behaved in an exemplary fashion for the last thirty years) ; another will dilate upon the incredible stupidity of the full-blooded Negro (during my stay in New York the prize for oratory at Columbia University, oratory which was the one redeeming charm of Daniel Webster, was awarded to a Zulu of unmitigated blackness) ; a third will speak of his physical offensiveness; his peculiar smell which necessitates his social isolation (most well-to-do-Southerners are brought up by Negro "mammies") ; others, again, will en ter upon the painful history of the years that followed the war, though it seems a foolish thing to let those wrongs of the past dominate the outlook for the future. And one charm ing Southern lady expressed the attitude of mind of a whole class very completely, I think, when she said, "You have to be one of us to feel this question at all as it ought to be felt." THE NEGRO PROBLEM 121 There, I think, I got something tangible. There emotions are a cult. My globe-trotting impudence will seem, no doubt, to mount to its zenith when I declare that hardly any Americans at all seem to be in possession of the elementary facts in relation to this question. These broad facts are not taught, as of course they ought to be taught, in school; and what each man knows is picked up by the accidents of his own untrained observation, by conversation always tinctured by personal prejudice, by hastily read newspapers and magazine articles and the like. The quality of this discussion is very variable, but on the whole pretty low. While I was in New York opinion was very much swayed by an article in, if I remember rightly, the Century Magazine, by a gentleman who had deduced from a few weeks observation in the slums of Khartoum the entire incapacity of the Negro to establish a civilization of his own. He never had, therefore he never could, a discouraging ratiocination. We English, a century ago, said all these things of the native Irish. If there is any trend of opinion at all in this matter at present, it lies in the direction of a generous decision on the part of the North and West to leave the black more and more to the judgment and mercy of the white people with whom he is locally associated. This judgment and mercy points, on the whole, to an accentuation of the colored man s natural inferiority, to the cessation of any other educational attempts than those that increase his industrial usefulness, (it is already illegal in Louisiana to educate him above a contemptible level), to his industrial exploitation through usury and legal chicane, and to a systematic strengthening of social barriers between colored people of whatever shade and the whites. Meanwhile, in this state of general confusion, in the absence of any determining rules or assumptions, all sorts of things are happening according to the accidents of local feeling. In Massa chusetts you have people with, I am afraid, an increasing sense of sacrifice to principle, lunching and dining with people of color. They do it less than they did, I was told. Massachusetts stands, I believe, at the top of the scale of tolerant humanity. One seems to reach the bottom at Springfield, Missouri, which is a county seat with a college, an academy, a high school, and a zoological garden. There the exemplary method reaches the 122 SELECTED ARTICLES nadir. Last April three unfortunate Negroes were burnt to death, apparently because they were Negroes, and as a general corrective of impertinence. They seem to have been innocent of any particular offence. It was a sort of racial sacrament. The edified Sunday-school children hurried from their gospel- teaching to search for souvenirs among the ashes, and competed with great spirit for a fragment of charred skull. It is true that in this latter case Governor Folk acted with vigor and justice and that the better element of Springfield society was evidently shocked when it was found that quite innocent Negroes had been used in these instructive pyrotechnics ; but the fact remains that a large and numerically important section of the American public does think that fierce and cruel reprisals are a necessary part of the system of relationships between white and colored men. In our dispersed British com munity we have almost exactly the same range between our better attitudes and our worse I m making no claim of national superiority. In London, perhaps, we outdo Massachusetts in liberality; in the National Liberal Club or the Reform a black man meets all the courtesies of humanity as though there was no such thing as color. But, on the other hand, the Cape won t bear looking into for a moment. The same conditions give the same results; a half-educated white population of British or Dutch or German ingredients greedy for gain, ill controlled and feebly influenced, in contact with a black population, is bound to reproduce the same brutal and stupid aggressions, the same half honest prejudices to justify those aggressions, the same ugly, mean excuses. "Things are better in Jamaica and Bar- badoes," said I, in a moment of patriotic weakness, to Mr. Booker T. Washington. "Eh!" said he, and thought in that long silent way he has . . . "They re worse in South Africa much. Here we ve got a sort of light. We know generally what we ve got to stand. There." His words sent my memory back to some conversations I had quite recently with a man from a dry-goqds store in Johannes burg. He gave me clearly enough the attitude of the common white out there; the dull prejudice; the readiness to take advantage of the "boy" ; the utter disrespect for colored woman kind; the savage, intolerant resentment, dashed dangerously with fear, when the native raises his head. (Think of all that THE NEGRO PROBLEM 123 must have happened in wrongful practice and wrongful law and neglected educational possibilities before our Zulus in Natal were goaded to face massacre, spear against rifle). The rare and culminating result of education and experience is to enable men to grasp facts, to balance justly among their fluctuating and innumerable aspects, and only a small minority in our world is educated to that pitch. Ignorant people can think only in types and abstractions, can achieve only emphatic absolute decisions, and when the commonplace American or the common place colonial Briton sets to work to "think over" the Negro problem, he instantly banishes most of the material evidence from his mind clears for action, as it were. He forgets the genial carriage of the ordinary colored man, his beaming face, his kindly eye, his rich, jolly voice, his touching and trusted friendliness, his amiable, unprejudiced readiness to serve and follow a white man who seems to know what he is doing. He forgets perhaps he has never seen the dear humanity of these people, their slightly exaggerated vanity, their innocent and delightful love of color and song, their immense capacity for affection and warm romantic touch in their imaginations. He ignores the real fineness of the indolence that despises servile toil, of the carelessness that disdains the watchful aggressive economics, day by day, now a wretched little gain here and now a wretched little gain there, that make the dirty fortune of the Russian Jews who prey upon color in the Carolinas. No ; in the place of all these amiable every-day experiences he lets his imagination go to work upon a monster, the "real nigger." "Ah ! you don t know the real nigger," said one American to me when I praised the colored people I had seen. "You should see the buck Nigger down South, Congo brand. Then you d understand sir." His voice, his face had a gleam of passionate animosity. One could see he had been brooding himself out of all rela tions to reality in this matter. He was a man beyond reason or pity. He was obsessed. Hatred of that imaginary diabolical "buck Nigger" blackened his soul. It was no good to talk to him of the "buck American, Packingtown brand," or the "buck Englishman, suburban race-meeting type," and to ask him if these intensely disagreeable persons justified outrages on Sen ator Lodge, let us say, or Mrs. Longworth. No reply would have come from him. "You don t understand the question," 124 SELECTED ARTICLES he would have answered. "You don t know how we Southerners feel." Well, one can make a tolerable guess. I certainly did not begin to realize one most important aspect of this question until I reached America. I thought of those eight millions as of men, black as ink. But when I met Mr. Booker T. Washington, for example, I met a man certainly as white in appearance as our Admiral Fisher, who is, as a matter of fact, quite white. A very large proportion of these colored people, indeed, is more than half white. One hears a good deal about the high social origins of the Southern Planters, very many derive indisputably from the first families of England. It is the same blood that flows in these mixed colored people s veins. Just think of the sublime absurdity, therefore, of the ban. There are gentlemen of education and refinement, qualified law yers and doctors, whose ancestors assisted in the Norman Con quest, and they dare not enter a car marked "white" and intrude upon the dignity of the rising loan-monger from Esthonia. For them the "Jim Crow" car. . . One tries to put that aspect to the American in vain. "These people," you say, "are nearer your blood, nearer your temper, than any of those bright-eyed, ringleted immigrants on the East Side. Are you ashamed of your poor relations? Even if you don t like the half, or the quarter of the Negro blood, you might deal civilly with the three-quarters white. It doesn t say much for your faith in your own racial prepotency, any how. . ." The answer to that is usually in terms of mania. It is to the tainted whites my sympathies go out. The black or mainly black people seem to be fairly content with their inferiority; one sees them all about the States as waiters, cab- drivers, railway porters, car attendants, laborers of various sorts, a pleasant-smiling, acquiescent folk. But consider the case of a man with a broader brain than such small uses need, conscious, perhaps, of exceptional gifts, capable of wide interests and sustained attempts, who is perhaps as English as you or I, with just a touch of color in his eyes, in his lips, in his finger-nails, and in his imagination. Think of the accumulating sense of injustice he must bear with him through life, the perpetual slight and insult he must undergo from all that is vulgar and brutal among the whites ! Something of that one may read in the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 125 sorrowful pages of DuBois s The Souls of Black Folk. They would have made Alexandre Dumas travel in the Jim Crow car if he had come to Virginia. But I can imagine some sort of protest on the part of that admirable but extravagant man. . . . They even talk of "Jim Crow elevators" now in Southern hotels. I argued strongly against the view he 1 seems to hold that black and white might live without mingling and without injus tice, side by side. That I do not believe. Racial differences seem to me always to exasperate intercourse unless people have been trained to ignore them. Uneducated men are as bad as cattle in persecuting all that is different among themselves. The most miserable and disorderly countries of the world are the countries where two races, two inadequate cultures, keep a jarring, continuous separation. "You must repudiate separation," I said. "No peoples have ever yet endured the tension of inter mingled distinctness." . May we not become a peculiar people like the Jews? he suggested. "Isn t that possible?" But there I could not agree with him. I thought of the dreadful history of the Jews and Armenians. And the Negro cannot do what the Jews and Armenians have done. The colored people of America are of different quality from the Jew alto gether, more genial, more careless, more sympathetic, franker, less intellectual, less acquisitive, less wary and restrained in a word, more Occidental. They have no common religion and culture, no conceit of themselves to hold them together. The Jews make a ghetto for themselves wherever they go; no law but their own solidarity has given America the East Side. The colored people are ready to disperse and interbreed, are not a community at all in the Jewish sense, but outcasts from a community. They are the victims of a prejudice that has to be destroyed. These things I urged, but it was, I think, empty speech to my hearer. I could talk lightly of destroying that prejudice, but he knew better. It was the central fact of his life, a law of his being. He has shaped all his projects and policy upon that. Exclusion is inevitable. So he dreams of a colored race of decent and inaggressive men silently giving the lie to all the legend of their degradation. They will have their own doctors, their own law yers, their own capitalists, their own banks because the whites 1 Booker T. Washington. 126 SELECTED ARTICLES desire it so. But will the uneducated whites endure even so submissive a vindication as that? Will they suffer the horrid spectacle of free and self-satisfied Negroes in decent clothing on any terms without resentment? Whatever America has to show in heroic living today, I doubt if she can show anything finer than the quality of the resolve, the steadfast effort hundreds of black and colored men are making today to live blamelessly, honorably, and patiently, getting for themselves what scraps of refinement, learning and beauty they may, keeping their hold on a civilization they are grudged and denied. They do it not for themselves only, but for all their race. Each educated colored man is an ambassador to civilization. They know they have a handicap, that they are not exceptionally brilliant or clever people. Yet every such man stands, one likes to think, aware of his representative and vicari ous character, fighting against foul imaginations, misrepresenta tions, injustice, insult and naive unspeakable meannesses of base antagonists. Every one of them who keeps decent and honorable does a little to beat that opposition down. f * But the patience the Negro needs. He may not even look contempt. He must admit superiority in those whose daily conduct to him is the clearest evidence of moral inferiority. We sympathetic whites, indeed, may claim honor for him ; if he is wise he will be silent under our advocacy. He must go to and fro self-controlled, bereft of all the equalities that the great flag of America proclaims that flag for whose united empire his people fought and died, giving place and precedence to the strangers who pour in to share its beneficence, strangers ignorant even of its tongue. That he must do and wait. The Welsh, the Irish, the Poles, the white south, the indefatigable Jews may cherish grievances and rail aloud. He must keep still. They may be hysterical, revengeful, threatening, and perverse; their wrongs excuse them. For him there is no excuse. And of all the races upon earth, which has suffered such wrongs as the Negro blood that is still imputed to him as a sin? These people who disdain him, who have no sense of reparation toward him, have sinned against him beyond all measure. . . ^ No, I can t help idealizing the dark submissive figure of the Negro in the spectacle of America. He, too, seems to me to sit waiting and waiting with a marvelous and simple-minded patience for finer understandings and a nobler time. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 127 HOSTILITY TOWARD THE NEGRO l No language is sufficiently caustic, bitter and severe, to express the disgust, hatred and scorn which Southern gentlemen feel for what is called the "New Issue," which, being interpreted, means, Negroes who aspire to knowledge and culture, and who have acquired a taste for the highest and best things in life. At the door of this "New Issue," the sins and shortcomings of the whole race are laid. This "New Issue," is beyond hope of redemption, we are told, because somebody, nobody knows who, has taught it to believe in social equality, something, nobody knows what. The alleged fear of social equality has always been used by the South to explain its unchristian treatment of the Negro and to excuse its many crimes. How many crimes have been committed, and how many falsehoods have been uttered, in the name of social equality by the South! Of all these, the greatest is the determination to lay lynching at its door. The hostility which has always existed between the poor whites and the Negroes, of the South has been greatly intensified in these latter days, by the material and intellectual advancement of the Negro. The wrath of a Spanish bull, before whose maddened eyes a red flag is flaunted, is but a feeble attempt at temper compared with the seething, boiling rage of the average white man in the South who beholds a well-educated Negro dressed in fine or becoming clothes. In the second place, lynching cannot be suppressed in the South until all classes of white people who dwell there, those of high as well as middle and low degree, respect the rights of other human beings, no matter what may be the color of their skin, become merciful and just enough to cease their persecution of a weaker race and learn a holy reverence for the law. x-^lt is not because the American people are cruel, as a whole, | or indifferent on general principles to the suffering of the wronged or oppressed, that outrages against the Negro are per- \ mitted to occur and go unpunished, but because many are ignorant 1 of the extent to which they are carried, while others despair \ * From article, Lynching, from a Negro s Point of View, by Mary Church Terrell, Honorary President of the National Association of Col ored Women. North American Review. 178:853-62. June, 1904. 128 SELECTED ARTICLES of eradicating them 3 The South has so industriously, persistently and eloquently N pftfached the inferiority of the Negro, that the North has apparently been converted to this view the thousands of Negroes of sterling qualities, moral worth and lofty patriotism to the contrary notwithstanding. The South has insisted so continuously and belligerently that it is the Negro s best friend, that it understands him better than any other people on the face of the earth and that it will brook interference from nobody in its method of dealing with him, that the North has been persuaded or intimidated into bowing to this decree. IN TERMS OF HUMANITY 1 I would not appear to overlook the existence of race con sciousness and of race prejudice, nor to blink at the fact that the latter gravely complicates our portion of the world problems of the unprivileged. Yet race prejudice, though necessarily local in its manifestations, cannot be charged upon the South alone: it is as wide as humanity, and as old as time. It is not confined, in the South, to either race. A thing so widespread, so deeply human, so common to all races, should move no man to bitter ness, but to patience. And we are not denied the hope that humanity will one day rise above it. Race consciousness is another matter. In every highly developed branch of the great human race-stocks there exists a desire for the integrity of that stock, an instinct against amalgamation w r ith any very distantly related race. It is true that with the majority of any such people the instinct shows itself chiefly as race-antagonism and race-prejudice; yet it is shared by those who are free from these lower manifestations of it. Despite individual exceptions this law holds good, the world around ; and its violation, in the marriage of individuals of widely-different race-stocks, involves disastrous penalties. An instinct so widespread and so deep may be safely credited to some underlying cause in full harmony with the great laws of human development. The instinct for racial integrity, with its corollary of separate social life, will doubtless persist in a world from which race prejudice has vanished. If one believed 1 From In Black and White, by L. H. Hammond, p. 42-5. Copy right by Fleming H. Revell Company. New York, 1914. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 129 in an Ultimate Race which would 1 be a blend of all races a belief frequently adopted when one recognizes the real oneness of humanity one would necessarily regard this desire for racial integrity as but another manifestation of race prejudice, doomed, as such, to pass. But the wider and deeper one s association with life the more clearly seen is the law of differentiation in all development. In the light of this law the ultimate physical oneness of human races becomes as chimerical as the ultimate oneness of all species of trees, or the disappearance of the rich diversity of winged forms of life in favour of an Ultimate Bird. Life does not develop toward uniformity, but toward rich ness of variety in a unity of beauty and service. Unless the Race of Man contradicts all known laws of life it will develop in the same way, and whether white, or yellow, or black, they who guard their own racial integrity, in a spirit of brotherhood free from all other-racial scorn, will most truly serve the Race to which all belong. What we white people need to lay aside is not our care for racial separateness, but our prejudice. The black race needs, in aspiring to the fullest terms of possible development, to foster a fuller faith in its own blood, and in the world s need for some service which it and it alone, can render in richest measure to the great Brotherhood of Man. TRAGEDY OF THE MULATTO 1 I had not been long engaged in the study of the race problem when I found myself face to face with a curious and seemingly absurd question: "What is a Negro?" I saw plenty of men and women who were unquestionably Negroes, Negroes in every physical characteristic, black of countenance with thick lips and kinky hair, but I also met men and women as white as I am whose assertion that they were really Negroes I accepted in defiance of the evidence of my own senses. I have seen blue-eyed Negroes and golden-haired Negroes ; one Negro girl I met had an abundance of soft straight red hair. I have seen Negroes I could not easily distinguish from the Jewish or French types; I once talked with a man I 1 From article by Ray Stannard Baker. American Magazine. 65:582-98. April, 1908. 130 SELECTED ARTICLES took at first to be a Chinaman but who told me he was a Negro. And I have met several people, passing everywhere for white, who, I knew, had Negro blood. Nothing, indeed, is more difficult to define than this curious physical color line in the individual human being. Legislatures have repeatedly attempted to define where black leaves off and white begins, especially in connection with laws prohibiting marriage between the races. Some of the statutes define a Negro as a "person with one-eighth or more of Negro blood." Southern people, who take pride in their ability to distinguish the drop of dark blood in the white face, are themselves fre quently deceived. Several times I have heard police judges in the South ask concerning a man brought before them : "Is that man colored or white?" Few people realize how large a proportion of the so-called Negro race in this country is not really Negro at all, but Mulatto or mixed blood, either half white, or quadroon, or octoroon, or some other combination. In the last census (1900) the government gave up the attempt in discouragement of trying to enumerate the Mulattoes at all, and counted all persons as Negroes who were so classed in the communities where they resided. The census of 1870 showed that one-eighth (roughly) of the Negro population was Mulatto, that of 1890 showed that the proportion had increased to more than one-seventh. But these statistics are confessedly inaccurate: the census report itself says: "These figures are of little value. Indeed, as an indication of the extent to which the races have mingled, they are mis leading." From my own observation, and from talking and cor responding with many men who have had superior opportunities for investigation, I think it safe to say that between one-fourth and one-third of the Negroes in this country at the present time have a visible admixture of white blood. At least the proportion is greater than the census figures of 1870 and 1890 would indicate. It is probable that 3,000,000 persons out of the 10,000,000 population are visible Mulattoes. It will be seen, then, how very important a matter it is, in any careful survey of the race problem, to consider the influence of the mixed blood. In the North, indeed, the race problem may almost be called a THE NEGRO PROBLEM 131 Mulatto problem rather than a Negro problem, for in not a few places the mixed bloods are in excess of the darker types. Many Mulattoes have a mixed ancestry reaching back to the beginning of civilization in North America; for the Negro slave appeared practically as soon as the white colonist. Many Negroes mixed (and are still mixing in Oklahoma) with the Indians, and one is today often astonished to see distinct Indian types among them. I shall never forget a woman I saw in Georgia as perfect of line as any Greek statue erect, lithe, strong, with sleek straight hair, the high cheek-bones of the Indian, but the lips of the Negro. She was plainly an Indian type but had no memory of anything but Negro ancestry. A strain of Arab blood from Africa runs in the veins of many Negroes, in others flows the blood of the Portuguese slavers or of the early Spanish adventurers or of the French who settled in New Orleans, to say nothing of every sort of American white blood. In my classification I have estimated 3,000,000 persons who are "visibly" Mulattoes: the actual number who have some strain of blood Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Indian other than Negro, must be considerably larger. All these strange-blooded people are classed roughly together as Negroes. I remember sitting once on the platform at a great meeting at the People s Tabernacle in Atlanta. An audience of some 1,200 colored people were present. A prominent white man gave a brief address in which he urged the Negroes present to accept with humility the limitations imposed upon them by their heredity, that they were Negroes and that therefore they should accept with grace the place of inferiority. Now as I looked out over that audience, which included the Best class of colored people in Atlanta, I could not help asking myself: What is this blood he is appealing to, anyway? For I saw comparatively few men and women who could really be called Negroes at all. Some were so light as to be indistinguishable from Caucasians. A bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who sat near me on the platform was a nephew of Robert Toombs, one of the great men of the South, a leader of the Confederacy. Another man present was a grandson of a famous senator of South Carolina. Several \ others that I knew of were half brothers or sisters or cousins of lore or less well-known white men. And I could not hear this 132 SELECTED ARTICLES appeal to heredity without thinking of the not at all humble Southern blood which flowed in the veins of some of these men and women. How futile such advice really was, and how little it got into the hearts of the audience, was forcibly impressed on me afterwards by the remark of a Mulatto I met. "They ve given us their blood, whether we wanted it or not," he said, "and now they ask us not to respond to the same ambitions and hopes that they have. They have given us fighting blood and expect us not to struggle." With the Emancipation Proclamation the aristocratic "free person of color" who had formed a sort of third class as between the white above and the black below, lost his unique position: the line was drawn against him. When I went South I expected to find a good deal of aloofness between the Mulatto and the black man. It does exist, but really less today in the South than in Boston! The prejudice of white people has forced all colored people, light or dark, together, and has awakened in many ostracised men and women who are nearly white a spirit which expresses itself in the passionate defense of everything that is Negro. And yet, with what pathos! What is this race? The spirit and the ideals are not Negro : for the people are not Negro, even the darkest of them, in the sense that the inhabitants of the jungles of Africa are Negroes. The blackest of black American Negroes is far ahead of his naked cousin in Africa. But neither are they white! Give a colored man or woman white blood, educate him until he has glimpses of the greater possibilities of life and then lock him forever within the bars of color, and you have all the elements of tragedy. Dr. DuBois in his remarkable book, "The Souls of Black Folk," has expressed more vividly than any other writer the essential significance of this tragedy. I read the book before I went South and I thought it certainly overdrawn, the expression of a highly cultivated and exceptional Mulatto, but after meeting many Negroes I have been surprised to find how truly it voices a wide experience. If space permitted I could tell many stories illustrative of the daily tragedy which many Mulattoes are meeting in this country, struggles that are none the less tragic for being inarticulate. Here is a letter which I received not long ago from a Mulatto professor in a Western Negro college: THE NEGRO PROBLEM 133 "I wonder how you will treat that point to which you have thus far only referred in your articles, Where does the color line really begin? What is to become of that large class of which I am a part, that class which is neither white nor black and yet both? There are millions of us who have the blood of both races, and, if heredity means anything, who have the traditions, feelings and passions of both. Yet we are black in name, in law, in station, in everything save face and figure, despite the over whelming white blood. And why? Certainly not because we have to be. America is a big country: it is easy to get lost, even in a neighboring state. Some of us do, and the process has been going on so long in certain large cities of the North that we cease to think about it. But the majority of us stay and live and work out our destiny among the people into whom we were born, living oft-times side by side with our white brothers and sisters. When I go back to Atlanta after an absence of two years, I can, if I wish, go back in a Pullman, go out of the main entrance of the station, get my dinner at the Piedmont Hotel, and when I am tired 1 of being Mr. Hyde, I can stroll down Auburn Avenue with my friends in the full glory of Dr. Jekyll. As a matter of fact I shall doubtless avail myself of the privi lege of a sleeper, sneak out the side entrance, get on the last seat of the car, despite the conductor s remonstrance, go on to my friends at once and be myself all the time I am there. I wouldn t be a white man if I had to. I want to be black. I want to love those who love me. I want to help those who need my help. And I know hundreds just like me: I know others who are not. "I wonder if you can decide: Where does the color line really end? " I don t know how many times I have heard Mulattoes speak of the French novelist Dumas as having Negro blood, and they also claim Robert Browning and Alexander Hamilton (how truly I do not know). But the cases which interest them most are those in this country; and there must be far more of them than white people imagine. I know of scores of them. A well- known white actress, whose name, of course, I cannot give, when she goes to Boston, secretly visits her colored relatives. A New York man who holds a prominent political appointment under the state government and who has become an authority in his line, 134 SELECTED ARTICLES is a Negro. Not long ago he entered a hotel in Baltimore and the Negro porter who ran to take his bag said discreetly: "Hello, Bob." As boys they had gone to the same Negro school. "Let me carry your bag," said the porter, "I won t give you away." In Philadelphia there lives a colored woman who married a rich white man. Of course, no white people know she is colored, but the Negroes do, and do not tell. Occasionally she drives down to a certain store, dismisses her carriage and walks on foot to the home of her mother and sisters. Some Mulattoes I know of, one a prominent Wall street broker, have "crossed the line" by declaring that they are Mexicans, Brazilians, Spanish or French; one says he is an Armenian. Under a foreign name they are readily accepted among white people where, as Negroes, they would be instantly rejected. No one, of course, can estimate the number of men and women with Negro blood who have thus "gone over to white" ; but it must be large. One of the first questions that always arises concerning the Mulatto is whether or not the mixture of blood still continues and whether it is increasing or decreasing. In other words, is the amalgamation of the races still going on and to what extent ? Intermarriage between the races is forbidden by law in all the Southern states and also in the following Northern and Western states : Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah. In all other Northern and Western states marriage between the races is lawful. And yet, the marriage laws, so far as they affect the actual problem of amalgamation, mean next to nothing at all. No legal marriage existed between the races in slavery times and yet there was a widespread mixture of blood. The great body of Mulattoes now in the country trace their origin to such relationships. So much for Southern conditions. How is it in the North where intermarriage is not forbidden by law? I have made a careful investigation of the facts in several Northern cities, and I have been surprised to discover how little intermarriage there really is. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 135 If intermarriage in the North were increasing largely, Boston, being the city where the least race prejudice exists and where the proportion of Mulattoes is largest, would show it most plainly. As a matter of fact, in the year 1902, when, according to Senator Money, 2,000 white women married colored men, there were in Boston, which contains the great bulk of the Negro population of Massachusetts, just 29 interracial marriages. The white woman who marries a Negro is speedily declassed : she is ostracised by the white people, and while she finds a certain place among the Negroes, she is not even readily ac cepted as a Negro. In short, she is cut off from both races. For this reason, although there are no laws in most Northern states against mixed marriages, and although the Negro popula tion has been increasing, the number of intermarriages is not only not increasing, but in many cities, as in Boston, it is decreasing. It is an unpopular institution! BRAZIL AND THE NEGRO 1 If I were asked to name the one point in which there is complete difference between the Brazilians and ourselves, I should say that it was in the attitude toward the black man. As the Indian becomes civilized he is absorbed into the popula tion, as is the case with us in Oklahoma, and whoever has Indian blood in him is proud of the fact. The President of Brazil is one of these men, and there are a number of others among the leaders whom I met. It is an entire mistake to speak as if the population of Brazil were so mixed as to be wholly unlike that of Europe or the United States. It is mixed only in the sense in which the populations of Italy and Spain, as the population of southern France is mixed, as the population is mixed in many parts of the United States. As regards the major part of the population, "mixed race" is such only in the sense in which that is also true of the United States, and of most of the advanced nations of mankind. There is one real differ ence, however. This difference between the United States and Brazil is the tendency of Brazil to absorb the Negro. My obser vation leads me to believe that in "absorb" I have used exactly 1 By Theodore Roosevelt. Outlook. 106:409-11. February 21, 1914. 136 SELECTED ARTICLES the right expression to describe this process. It is the Negro who is being absorbed and not the Negro who is absorbing the white man. The great majority of the men and women of high social position in Rio are of as unmixed white blood as the corresponding class in Paris or Madrid or Rome. The great majority of the political leaders are pure whites, with an occa sional dash of Indian blood. But any Negro or mulatto who shows himself fit is without question given the place to which his abilities entitle him. I met one or two colored Deputies. At one military school I met a Negro professor. At one great laboratory I saw a colored doctor. All of these men were accepted quite simply on their worth, and apparently nobody had any idea of discriminating against them in any official or busi ness relations because of their color. A very great majority of the Negroes, and most of the colored people that is, the mulat- toes and quadroons do not make their way up to the highest positions, and they are proportionately most plentiful in the lower ranks. Among the working people, for instance, and among the enlisted men of the army and navy, I saw many Negroes, many colored men, working side by side in the same organizations with the whites, and apparently without any dis crimination being made against them. In Bahia there is a very large Negro element among the working class. In parts of Brazil it is somewhat larger. In Rio it is noticeable, but far less so than in most of the cities of the Southern United States. Brazil is most fortunate in the fact that its white working population has nothing of the parasite about it. The whites do not endeavor to live on the labor of the blacks, the inevitable result of which, as shown in all other communities, is that ultimately the blacks crowd out of existence those who live on their labor. On the contrary, the bulk of the work, even in Rio, is done by white men. But these white men draw no line against the Negro, and in the lower ranks intermarriages are frequent, especially between the Negroes and the most numerous of the immigrant races of Europe. In the middle class these intermarriages are rare, and in the higher class almost unknown so far as concerns men and women in which the black strain is at all evident. But even in the higher ranks there is apparently no prejudice whatever against marrying a man or girl who is, say, seven-eighths white, the remaining quantity of black blood being treated as a negligible element The men and women with THE NEGRO PROBLEM 137 whom I closely associated were in the very great majority of cases pure white, save in the comparatively rare instances where they had a dash of Indian blood. But they naturally and uncon cernedly told me the facts as I have above related them. Perhaps the attitude that the Brazilians, including the most intelligent among them, take is best symbolized by a picture we saw in the art museum of Rio. It portrayed a black grand father, a mulatto son, and white grandchild, the evident intention of the painter being to express both the hope and the belief that the Negro was being absorbed and transformed so that he would become a white man. It is idle to prophecy for any remote future, and it is a very doubtful thing to prophecy even about the immediate future, but my impression is that the guiding or ruling classes of Brazil will continue to be almost absolutely white, that in the classes immediately below them there will continue to be a certain absorption of Negro blood and that among the ordinary people this absorption will be larger large enough to make a slight difference in the type. From the above it will be seen that the ideals of the United States and of Brazil as regards the treatment of the Negroes are wholly different. The best men in the United States not only among the whites but among the blacks also, believe in the complete separation of the races so far as marriage is con cerned, while they also believe in treating each man of whatever color absolutely on his worth as a man, allowing him full opportunity to achieve the success warranted by his ability and integrity, and giving to him the full measure of respect to which that success entitles him. In Brazil, on the contrary, the idea looked forward to is the disappearance of the Negro ques tion through the disappearance of the Negro himself that is, through his gradual absorption into the white race. This does not mean that Brazilians are or will become the "mongrel" people that they have been asserted to be by certain writers, not only French and English, but American. The Brazilians are a white people, belonging to the Mediterranean race, and differing from the Northern stocks only as such great and civilized old races as the Spaniards and Italians, with their splendid historic past, differ from these northern stocks. The evident Indian admixture had added a good, and not a bad, element. The very large European immigration of itself tends, decade by decade, to make the Negro blood a smaller element 138 SELECTED ARTICLES of the blood of the whole community. The Brazilian of the future will be in blood more European than in the past and he will differ in culture only as the American of the North differs. The great majority of the men and women I met, the leaders in the world of political and industrial effort and of scientific accomplishment, showed little, if any, more trace of Negro blood than would be shown by the like number of similar men in a European capital. Yet not only is there in some classes a considerable infiltration of Negro blood with a corresponding tendency of the pure Negro type to disappear, but this process is regarded with hearty approval by the most thoughtful states men of the country. Their view, so different from our own, can perhaps best be expressed in the words of one of these very statesmen, himself of pure white blood, who said to me substantially : "Of course the presence of the Negro is the real problem, and a very serious problem, both in your country, the United States and in mine, Brazil. Slavery was an intolerable method of solving the problem and had to be abolished. But the prob lem itself remained, in the presence of the Negro. It was not the slave-owner who inherited his slaves who was responsible for the problem. The slave-trader who brought the slaves into the country was the man who inflicted the ghastly wrong, not only upon the blacks but upon the whites. We, like you, have merely inherited the problem. "Now comes the necessity to devise some method of dealing with it. You of the United States are keeping the blacks as an entirely separate element, and you are not treating them in a way that fosters their self-respect. They will remain a menacing element in your civilization, permanent, and perhaps even, after a while, a growing element. With us the question tends to disappear, because the blacks themselves tend to dis appear and become absorbed. You speak of Brazil as having a large Negro population. Well, in a century there will not be any Negroes in Brazil, whereas you will have twenty or thirty millions of them. Then for you there will be a real and very uncomfortable problem, while for us the problem in its most menacing phase will have disappeared. You say that this result will be accomplished only by an adulteration, and therefore a weakening, of the pure white blood. I grant that this will have happened as regards a portion, perhaps a third, of our population, THE NEGRO PROBLEM 139 I regret this, but it is the least objectionable of the alternatives. We treat the Negro with entire respect, and he responds to the treatment. If a Negro shows capacity and integrity, he receives the same reward that a white man would receive. He has therefore every incentive to rise. In the upper ranks of society there is no intermarriage with the Negro of pure or nearly pure blood; but such intermarriage is frequent in the lower ranks, especially between the Negro and many classes of immigrants. "The pure Negro is constantly growing less and less in numbers, and after two or more crosses of the white blood the Negro blood tends to disappear so far as the physical, mental, and moral traits of the race are concerned. When he has disappeared his blood will remain as an appreciable, but in no /way a dominant, element in perhaps a third of our people, while the remaining two-thirds will be pure whites. Granted that this strain will represent a slight weakening in one-third of our population, the result will be that in our country two-thirds of the population will have kept its full strength, with one-third slightly weakened, while the Negro problem will have entirely disappeared. In your country all the white population will have been kept in its original race strength, but the Negro will remain in increased numbers and an increased and bitter sense of his isolation so that the problem of his presence will be more menacing than at present. I do not say that ours is a perfect solution, but I regard it as a better solution than yours. We and you have to face two alternatives, neither of them without drawbacks. I believe that the one we Brazilians have chosen will in the long run, from the national standpoint, prove less disadvantageous and dangerous than the one you of the United States have chosen." VIOLENCE LYNCHING, RACE RIOTS AND PEONAGE LYNCHING RECORD FOR 1920 1 According to the records compiled by Monroe N. Work, of the Department of Records and Research of the Tuskegee In stitute, there were 56 instances in which officers of the law prevented lynchings. Of these, 10 were in Northern states and 46 were in Southern States. In 42 of the cases, the prisoners were removed or the guards were augmented or other precau tions taken. In 14 instances armed force was used to repel the would be lynchers. In 4 of these instances the mobs were fired upon and as a result, 7 of the attackers were killed and several wounded. There were 61 persons lynched in 1920. Of these, 52 were in the South and 9 in the North and West. This is 22 less than the number, 83, for the year 1919. Of those lynched 53 were Negroes and 8 were whites. One of those put to death was a Negro woman. Eighteen, or less than on-third of those put to death, were charged with rape or attempted rape. Three of the victims were burned to death. The charges against those burned to death were:, rape and murder, i; killing landlord in a dispute, 2. The offenses charged the whites were: murder, 5; insulting woman, I ; no charge except being a foreigner, i ; killing officer of the law, i. The offenses charged against the Negroes were: murder, 5; attempted murder, 4; killing officer of the law, 5; killing landlord in dispute, 6; rape, 15; attempted rape, 3; assist ing fugitive to escape, 3 ; wounding another, 2 ; insulting woman, 2 ; knocking down guard, escaping from chain gang and then returning and surrendering, 2; jumping labor contract, i; threat ening to kill man, i ; cutting a man in a fight, i ; for receiving stay of death sentence because another confessed crime, i ; peep ing through window at woman, I ; insisting on voting, I. 1 Letter issued by Tuskegee Ngrmal and Industrial Institute, December 31, 1930, 142 SELECTED ARTICLES The states in which lynchings occurred and the number in each state are as follows : Alabama, 7 ; Arkansas, I ; California, 3 ; Florida, 7 ; Georgia, 9 ; Illinois, I ; Kansas, I ; Kentucky, i ; Minnesota, 3 ; Mississippi, 7 ; Missouri, I ; North Carolina, 3 ; Ohio, i ; Oklahoma, 3 ; South Carolina, I ; Texas, 10 ; Virginia, i ; West Virginia, I. PRACTICE OF LYNCHING IN THE UNITED STATES l Very early in the history of the settlement and colonization of the territory of the United States, measures which were not wholly legal in their nature were occasionally adopted in the punishment of public offenders. During the colonial period, in places where the provincial governments were well organized, Indians accused of murdering whites were, upon capture, not only put to death without any legal formality whatsoever, but were, even after arrest and confinement in a perfectly legal way, sometimes forcibly taken from the officers of the law, and from jails, and mercilessly killed by private citizens. During the colonial period, also, there was recourse to the practice of "regu lating" public offenders and public grievances, of inflicting, semi- privately, corporal punishment for reformatory or corrective purposes upon persons considered inimical to the interests of the community. In North Carolina, by means of a more or less for mal organization of Regulators, during the years 1765-1771, resistance was offered to what were considered oppressive exac tions on the part of the government officials. In South Carolina, at about the same time, in the part remote from the sea-coast, a similar organization of Regulators attempted, by whipping and banishing the undesirable inhabitants, to protect property and preserve order until an adequate judiciary could be estab lished. Throughout the period of the Revolutionary War conditions were such as to offer abundant opportunity for the use of extra- legal methods of punishment. There were the usual unsettled conditions and the disorganization incident to a war. Further- 1 By James Elbert Cutler, Assistant Professor of Economics, Univer sity of Michigan, South Atlantic Quarterly. 6:125-34. April, 1907. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 143 more, in almost every community there were persons holding i Tory sentiments who frequently sought, openly or secretly, to hinder in every possible way the successful outcome of the move ment for independence. Tarring and feathering, with accompany ing indignities, was the characteristic and popular method of dealing with customs informers and importers of British goods, tea consignees, and Tories in general who, by words or acts, aroused patriotic indignation. At the same time, summary punishment was not infrequently visited upon other public offenders ; usually it was a coat of tar and feathers, but often it took the form of a whipping, merely, followed by banishment after a specified time. There was, in addition, an occasional infliction of the death penalty by these self-constituted adminis trators of law and justice during the period of the Revolution. When the tide of emigration rolled westward over the Alle- ghanies, after the close of the Revolutionary War, it carried with it the extra-legal methods of punishment adopted during colonial times and the summary practices of the time of the Revolution; and, amidst the dangers and vicissitudes of frontier life, they were revived and put into use again and again by the pioneers of the West. It is to be remembered, too, that it was mainly against white men of desperate character highway robbers, counter feiters, swindlers, horse-thieves, cattle-thieves, desperadoes that these summary proceedings were invoked by the emigrants from the original colonies as they pushed the line of the frontier further and further to the westward. Generally, the punish ments administered consisted of nothing more serious than a whipping, or some other form of corporal punishment. Frequent occasion was found on the frontier for the use of such methods to curb the activity of the lawless and the vicious. During the colonization of the territory west of the Mississippi River, how ever, more extreme measures were commonly taken. In the fifties, particularly, the punishment inflicted by the "vigilance" organizations which were then common in that section of the country was, almost invariably, death by either hanging or shooting. Not long after the year 1830, when the slavery controversy began to stir up much animosity and dissension, popular suspicion was directed particularly against the abolitionist. Since the abolitionist advocated the liberation of the slaves and worked zealously toward that end, he was declared to be undermining 144 SELECTED ARTICLES the right of private property, to be attempting to overthrow the established order of society. This seemed to many people ample justification for summary punishment. In the slave states such punishment was generally a whipping or flogging, which was often followed by tarring and feathering, and banishment after a few hours, with a penalty of like treatment or worse for non- compliance. In cases of suspected conspiracy for an insurrection among the slaves the supposed leaders were often summarily punished, sometimes by the infliction of the death penalty. But previous to the abolition of slavery in the United States comparatively few Negroes were put to death in any other than a perfectly legal manner. The fact that the slaves were property, and in that capacity were amenable to the laws, made recourse to unlawful procedure against them unprofitable, as well as unnecessary. After the close of the Civil War, however, when the Negroes had ceased to be chattels and the whites were threatened with Negro domination, summary methods were widely adopted against the Negroes. Indeed, to so great an extent have extra-legal methods of punishment been followed, throughout the Reconstruction Period and subsequently, in dealing with Negroes accused of crime, that the word lynching is now associated in the minds of many people almost exclusively with the killing of Negroes in a summary fashion. It will be seen that numerous conditions and circumstances have combined to breed in the American people a traditional inclination to disregard, upon occasion, all the law and legal procedure that have been established. For no considerable period of time since the early settlement of this country can it be said that extra-legal methods of punishing crime have been wholly unknown. From colonial times down to the present day, in some one or more parts of the country, frontier conditions have existed where the civil regulations were not sufficiently estab lished to insure the prompt and effective punishment of public offenders. At the same time, in the older, better settled sections of the country, though the judiciary was well established and the apprehension and punishment of public offenders was well pro vided for in the law, circumstances have arisen, time after time, of such a nature that the regular and legal administration of justice was deemed inadequate or defective, and was therefore disregarded. The resourceful self-reliant spirit necessarily pos- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 145 sessed by the early settlers and the western pioneers, combined with the turbulent, rebellious and seditions elements which the Revolution set loose, have, under varying circumstances, borne fruit a hundredfold throughout the subsequent history of the growth, expansion and development of this country. In the last few years, most of the writers who have discussed the lynchings that have occurred, have attributed them to race prejudice and the uncontrollable actions of crowds or mobs. Not all lynchings can be attributed to either of these causes, however. In the lynching of 1,169 whites during the twenty-two years, 1882-1903, no trace of race prejudice can be discerned. Neither is it possible to discover in the manner in which many lynchings are carried on any of the characteristics essentially belonging to the psychology of the crowd or the mob. It is true that in numer ous particular instances race prejudice appears as the most prominent inciting cause and that in many cases, also, individ uals seem to lose their identity for the time being in an excited crowd where impulse controls rather than reason and intelli gence, and men who are ordinarily law-abiding citizens unhesi tatingly disregard all that the law guarantees to men accused of crime; but an explanation along either of these lines is wholly inadequate for a proper understanding of the existence of lynch ing as an American practice. Neither can any single crime be assigned as the cause of lynchings, so that it would be safe to say that were the crime no longer committed lynchings would cease. The men and women who were lynched during the twenty-two years, 1882- 1903 more than 3,300 by actual count were charged, not with a single crime or set of crimes, but with almost every variety of offense from most brutal and inhuman murder down to mere obnoxiousness. Of the Negro men who were lynched during this period not more than 34 per cent, were lynched for the crime of rape against white women, and this percentage includes all cases where this crime was merely alleged to be the cause of the lynching as well as all cases where there was unquestioned evidence that this crime had been attempted or actually committed by the individual who was lynched. It will be found, if the history of the practice of lynching in this country be carefully noted, that the only contributory factor that is always and invariably present is an unorganized or dis organized state of society, or a condition of popular excitement 146 SELECTED ARTICLES and resentment, when reliance on ordinary legal procedure is at a minimum. Lynchings take place, primarily, because certain of the citizens conceive that the ends of justice and order can be better served in that way than by the legal procedure which is available. No punishment is given the lynchers, ordinarily, for the reason that a majority of the rest of the citizens believe that the victim or victims suffered only what was really deserved, and, while they deprecate the method adopted, it is not in accord with their sense of justice to impose a penalty up on assistance given in the infliction of a deserved punishment, even though the majesty of the law and the government has been temporarily set at naught. That lynching, though it may be the infliction of a deserved punishment, is at the same time and must always be a serious crime against society and against all that a stable government guarantees its citizens, is commonly overlooked and practically disregarded. What is conceived to be the badness of the victim completely overshadows the direct violation of all the standards of justice and of punishment to which civilization has given its sanction. This failure on the part of the American people to view the practice of lynching in both, as well as one, of its important aspects is peculiarly significant when it is coupled with a fact long recognized by students of political science. It is precisely under a democratic form of government, where the people, either directly or through their representatives, make the laws and then elect the officers who are to enforce them, that it is most difficult to establish a legal system capable of controlling popular excitements. A highly decentralized government, a government that grants a large degree of autonomy to its local units and at the same time gives them full representative power in national affairs, is far less effective in organizing and administering that coercive force, that compulsion and overpowering authority, which is indispensable for insuring domestic peace and for which there is no substitute in the suppression of rioting and mob vio lence, when unusual or exasperating circumstances arise. That this fundamental principle of political science should not have been more widely recognized by the citizens of the United States is extremely unfortunate. It is certain that too great reliance has been placed upon the freedom and self-direction of a democratic form of government and far too little recog nition given to the necessity of training a vigilant and respon- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 147 sible citizenship which shall insist, upon all occasions and under all circumstances, that the government federal, state, city, county, town and village be thoroughly and effectively admin istered. Administratively, the weakness of the government of the United States is shown no more clearly than in connection with the inability of the federal government to stamp out the practice of lynching. During the last twenty years the federal govern ment, through its Department of State, has paid to foreign countries over $400,000 in the form of indemnities for the lynching of aliens in this country; yet it cannot in the several states legally undertake to prevent the occurrence of lynchings, nor can it in any way hold the state governments responsible, after lynchings have occurred within their boundaries, for any obligations to foreign countries, which the Department of State feels bound to recognize. Neither has the criminal prosecution of lynchers been held to be within the jurisdiction of federal authority. Shall lynchings continue, therefore? What the answer is to be depends ultimately, and indeed primarily, upon the character and the quality of the American citizenship that is being devel oped. Enough has already been said to indicate how little is to be gained, in this country, from prohibitive legal enactments which have no effective public sentiment behind them. The results actually obtained under the anti-lynching statutes adopted thus far bear this out. Ten states have upon their statute-books measures directed specifically against lynching. Most of these measures have remained entirely inoperative. The few that have received an attempted enforcement do not inspire confidence in their efficacy. The course taken by the debate, in the 57th Con gress of the United States, on a proposed inquiry into the subject of lynching, is fairly conclusive evidence that no federal action can be taken on the subject without reviving the sectionalism and many of the evils of the Reconstruction Period. However much we may regret the fact and however reluctant we may be to face the situation, it must be admitted that there is no panacea for the practice of lynching. The history of the practice shows how deeply it is rooted in American life and tradition, and in how far, also, it is a matter that is controlled by public sentiment. The conclusion is therefore forced upon us that nothing can, under the limitation of our form of government, effectually stop 148 SELECTED ARTICLES lynchings except a radical change in public sentiment. A lynch ing is best defined as a summary and illegal execution at the hands of a mob, or a number of persons, who have in some degree the public opinion of the community behind them, i The support of public opinion is what distinguishes Iynchings7~6n the one hand, from assassination and murder, and, on the other hand, from insurrection and open warfare. Upon American citizenship rests the responsibility of withdFawing this popular support and justification without which the practice of lynching cannot exist. There is an opinion, widely held. at the present time, that a "right to lynch" exists, a right which is closely akin to the right of self-defense. The argument seems to run in this way. If it is justifiable, by the right of self-defense, for a husband to take the life of an assailant who threatens his wife, or for a parent to commit murder in the defense of his child, it is equally justifiable for the neighbors and friends of a man who has been murdered, or whose wife or daughter has been criminally assaulted, wantonly and brutally, by ^some individual of bad reputation, to take the life of that individual in a summaryf^-shion with only the merest semblance of judicial procedure. |{Lynching is re garded as a crime only in the sense that if "Is a" crime against the individual lynched and, as the individual in question is of no consequence, the crime of lynching is of no consequenceM This belief in a right to lynch affords some explanation of the fact that lynchers, so far, ordinarily, from suffering any legal penalty for their crime, rarely even Jose caste or character in the com munities in which they live. The facts in regard to the practice of lynching, its history and its alleged justification, must be known. No one should deceive himself by thinking that because, for the last two or three years, a smaller number of lynchings has been recorded annually than for several preceding years, the practice is likely soon to be dis continued altogether. As long as there is a "race problem" in this country, frequent occasion will certainly be found for a recourse to summary procedure, for which it will be compar atively easy to secure a measure of popular justification. Only an aroused public sentiment, condemnatory to the last degree, formed on the widest possible knowledge and intelligence, and actively manifested with the utmost wisdom and foresight under THE NEGRO PROBLEM 149 trying circumstances, can enable the American people to blot out what has rightly been called their national crime. Shall the United States enter a protest against massacres in Armenia, or in Russia, or against butcheries in Central Africa, or the Philippines? By all means. But the American people should not forget that fully 3,500 residents of the United States have been put to death since the year 1880, by violent and wholly illegal methods. Some of these victims suffered extreme torture before death came to their relief, and their sufferings were witnessed by crowds in which were women and children. In the period 1891-1904, it is on record that 25 persons were lynched by burning alive, some of them under circumstances too horrible to contemplate. All of these victims of burning alive, during this period, were Negroes, with the exception of two who were Indians, and one of the Negroes was a woman. Possibly these individuals were, every one, worthless wretches and the perpetrators of most despicable crimes, but no matter how great the depravity of the accused or how atrocious the crimes com mitted, this country cannot afford to allow suspected criminals to be dealt with after such a fashion. LYNCHING: A NATIONAL MENACE 1 In any discussion of a subject which, as we commonly see it, is strongly colored by our instincts, our feelings, our prejudices, and our habitual motives, we shall gain much if we can begin, at least, by viewing it in the clear white light of truth. Let us try so to consider the matter of lynching. Let us be as dis passionate as we can. Let us be sure that our indignation, when it rises, comes as a result of the facts, and not in defiance of them. The first important circumstance to be noted and remem bered is that lynching is not a Southern, but an American habit. A philosophical friend of mine once remarked to me, after a year spent in France, England, Germany, and Russia, that every nation has its own kind of violence, of which it thinks little or nothing, while it shudders at the violence of other nations. -In otrrse*4eriy United States, we express amazement over the 1 By James E. Gregg, Principal of Hampton Institute. Reprinted from The Southern Workman, published by Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va. SELECTED ARTICLES turbulence of British public meetings ; we still are horrified when we read of the bloody guillotines of the French Revolution; we do not forget the general outburst of righteous wrath against King Leopold of Belgium for his abominable cruelties in the Congo; our detestation of the cold-blooded Russian bureaucrats who sent thousands of martyr-exiles to Siberia was quite as deep as our present angry contempt of the Bolsheviki; and our blood has boiled many times because of Turkish brutality and fiendishness. All this time, every one of these peoples has been shocked, and has not hesitated to say so, by our national fondness for putting supposed criminals to death without trial or other process of law. Our attitude toward German atrocities in Bel gium and Northern France and the German retorts are simply the latest instance of this curious symptom. If anyone is disposed to deny that lynching is national ratheV than regional, the riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, resulting in the death of over two hundred Negroes, and the horrible lynching at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, in 1911, should be sufficient to show that the burden of guilt does not rest on the South alone. A second significant and usually unnoticed fact is that com paratively few of the persons lynched are even charged with assault or attempted assault in 1918, sixteen out of sixty- two. This disposes of the idea that the motive of the mob is a chivalrous determination to protect the honor of white women. A third fact to be observed is that lynchings commonly occur in neighborhoods where education is backward and com munity standards are low. If Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and other Southern states have won a bad eminence in their record of lynchings, the reason may largely be found in the unen lightened conditions under which too many of their people, white and black, have been allowed to live. A fourth fact is that the best men and women of the South are more and more realizing the shame of this evil. No Northerner has denounced it more fiercely than has ex-Governor Emmet O Neal of Alabama. At the meeting of the Southern Sociological Congress in May at Knoxville, Professor Edwin Mims of Vanderbilt University spoke out with fiery eloquence. "Lynching," he said, "is unjustifiable under all circumstances. It is wrong in the sight of man and God. It is a blot on our THE NEGRO PROBLEM 151 National escutcheon and is a menace to the whole country. It is an economic peril to the South. It is inexpedient, unwise, and a political mistake. Above all, it is a community and a National sin. "When one set of people sets up a crime for which a lynch ing is justifiable, there is nothing to prevent another group of people from setting up another crime for which it considers lynching equally justifiable. A mob in action knows no law. It knows no reason. It is governed only by its passion at white heat. If the community cannot stop lynching, then the State can. If the State cannot stop lynching, then the Nation can and WILL." There are multitudes of Southerners who are thinking like wise more than any of us realize. For several years past they have been worthily, bravely, and effectively represented by the University Commission on Southern Race Questions, a notable group of Southern collegiate teachers, whose utterances, re strained and reasonable, yet glowing with the fire of patriotism and conscience, are doing much to sober, enlighten, and educate the thoughtful people of the South. The Commission s "open letter" of January 5, 1916, declares that "lynching does more than rob its victims of their constitutional rights and of their lives. It simultaneously lynches law and justice and civilization, and outrages all the finer human sentiments and feelings. The wrong that it does to the wretched victims is almost as nothing compared to the injury it does to the lynchers themselves, to the community, and to society at large. Lynching is a contagious social disease, and as such is of deep concern to every American citizen and to every lover of civilization. Civilization rests on obedience to law, which means the substitution of reason and deliberation for impulse, instinct, and passion." Fifth, and finally, we should all remind ourselves that not superciliousness, nor self-congratulation, nor any sort of Phar isaic self-righteousness, nor any wholesale condemnation of others is going to cure this public disease, this social wickedness, this horrible perversion of loyalty to the common welfare. The only remedies are a sounder and broader education, made possible for all, a purer and truer religion, a more courageous public spirit on the part of civil officers, and a wiser, juster, more humane, feeling in the hearts of all the people. Northerners and 152 SELECTED ARTICLES Southerners, white men and Negroes, all of us have been at fault; all of us can do better; each of us can help the rest. The only way out is the way of mutual trust and good will. CONCERNING LYNCHING 1 It is, of course, first the duty of the citizen to refrain from lawlessness, and thereby deprive the general government of excuse for this interference with state laws. It is next the duty of the state to so order its laws that the insufficiency of them will not be so glaring and atrocious. No one who has the slightest knowledge of the subject doubts but that the laws of this state are inadequate to the subject, both as to enactment and administration. The system is such that they always will be inadequate in administration unless they are materially altered. There is usually much public sentiment against the accused who is lynched; the sheriff is elected by the people and becomes thoroughly awakened to the demands of the constituents ; if he fails in the discharge of his duties in this respect, the triors are to be selected from the lynchers and their friends ; if he dis charges his duty, he will incur the enmity of those whom he opposes and their friends. So he reasons that it is better to be overpowered, to be surprised or to be away from the jail. No serious attempt made by a jailer to prevent a lynching in Georgia has been brought to light in a long time. This does not mean that there are not, and have not been, in Georgia jailers who would discharge their duties in this behalf. No doubt there have been, and are many such. The very fact that there are such is sufficient in and of itself to often prevent the crime in the jurisdiction of such officers. This defect in the state s laws is glaring and has existed for a long time in spite of much provocation. The first authority to give heed to this condition is the state. By its own enactment it should reserve this source of initiative. Sheriffs form a part of the administrative or executive departments of the state. They should be made accountable to the executive head of the 1 From address delivered before the Georeria Bar Association, by Mr. Robert C. Alston, in article, Lynching, An Evil of County Government. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 11:127-31. May, 1920. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 153 state in such matters; or, if not to him, then they should, in such cases, be amenable directly to the Supreme Court exercising original jurisdiction. The governor can remove a railroad commissioner; why not a sheriff? The power need only be written into law. No one who feels himself the guardian of state rights will for one moment dare arouse the power of the Federal Govern ment to exercise its power to guarantee, by appropriate legis lation, that the state will not deprive a citizen of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny him the equal protection of the law. I have not spoken of those powers that a way may be pointed out to the Federal Government by which its powers may be extended. No man desires more than I that those powers be not extended over the domestic citizenship of the people ; no one realizes more than I that the future prosperity of the southern part of this country rests upon the rights of the state to finally and fully deal with this question without interruption. No one desires more than I that it be dealt with wisely and frankly and generously. But it is intended by what has been said to point out to you, and to those whom I desire to think of as my people, that the rights most deeply cherished and privileges which are of the very essence of our lives are being endangered by a surrender to passions which are base and to a wilfulness which exchanges the desire of the moment for the very fundamentals of our domestic life. Who will deny that even selfish wisdom dictates that justice and moderation should prevail over lawless passion, which in its fury destroys the victim, yet doubly makes victims of its devotees? What excuse has the state for failing to adequately protect the prisoner under its lock and key or in its custody? What reason is there for withholding the enactment of laws which will make the sheriff and his deputies amenable to a jurisdiction which is composed of persons other than the of fenders and their sympathizers? No one believes that any lyncher will be punished, and experience shows that no real effort will be made to find who the lynchers are. It can no longer be said that lynching is committed for one 154 SELECTED ARTICLES crime ; it is only a few months ago that two Negroes were lynched for killing a mule. Everybody knows that that condition ought not to exist, and yet none raises his hand to its cure. Does not this all but invite the Federal Government to ake cognizance of the guarantee? The legislator has felt that he would antagonize local feeling if he promoted laws which would give the state a real means of redressing and preventing this crime. He would encounter the argument that the locality should govern itself. But he should know that by withholding such laws and by denying such protection to the persons who are in the custody of the law he participates in perpetuating a situation which demands remedy and which, if unremedied, invites the inter ference of the central government, and threatens, to a degree which we do not like to contemplate, the rights of the state over matters absolutely essential to our welfare. The legislator will find that the real enemy of local self- government is he who persists in the maintenance of a system of laws which do not, in fact, govern, but which offer the shadow for substance. The man who most imperils the right of the state to govern its own affairs is he who aids it to govern wrongfully. RACE RIOTS IN RELATION TO DEMOCRACY 1 The conditions in the local community, the change in the mind of the Negro, and America s new relation to oppressed and liberated peoples give the recent race riots a serious im portance to our democracy. Our democracy must be safe at home, or we shall be humiliated in our efforts for democracy abroad. We have overthrown the despotism of the few. Let us beware lest we be overcome by the tyranny of the many. Race riots grow out of complex conditions which may be seen and remedied. Sensational newspaper publicity about crimes of Negroes, unpunished lawless acts of white persons against Negroes, misunderstandings, fears and suspicions of the two races that live almost in two separate worlds are all breeders of racial antagonism and conflict. Careful examination of these 1 By George E. Haynes, Director of Negro Economics, United States Department of Labor. Survey. 42:697-9 August 9, 1919. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 155 factors is of imperative importance to every thoughtful Amer ican. Briefly considering the conditions in the local community, one finds the growing town and city Negro populations segregated into districts and neighborhoods. In such districts, Negroes are neglected in public schools, public sanitation and health, fire and police protection and other public facilities. Often the red light element of the white world is crowded among or near them. Many Negroes feel that by the methods of competition, fair or unfair, they have been kept out of the most desirable jobs and economic advantages. They believe that much of the antipathy toward them has its origin here. New York has its segregated Harlem and Columbus Hill districts, Washington has its northwest and southwest areas (the scene of many of the recent race riots), Chicago has its State street, Atlanta its Auburn avenue and its West End. When the United States Supreme Court declared segregation ordinances void, real estate understandings and gentlemen s agreements remained valid. These restrictions on property rights of Negroes are not always confined to residential districts but often to business properties as well. Besides the separation into neighborhoods, an increasing number of Negroes have little or no occasion for business or professional dealings with white people. With the additional separation in churches, schools, railways, street-cars and other public places, even hospitals and cemeteries, there is developing a racial cleavage from the cradle to the grave. This cleavage leaves little or no personal contact for the growth of mutual understanding and mutual good-will. Without sufficient contacts for knowledge to the contrary, popular opinion of white people classified the law-abiding, thrifty, industrious and intelligent Negroes indiscriminately with the lawless and the undesirable. The entire race is popularly charged with the criminal acts of the individual Negro. Thus misunderstanding, fears, suspicions, prejudices are lighted. They smolder. A crime or a street fight occurs, and the slumbering racial feelings on both sides burst into flames. This lack of contact has increased with the years. Older residents of Washington and Chicago tell you of the growing racial antagonism with the growth of separation. Only a few weeks before the riots in both cities, some leading people of 156 SELECTED ARTICLES Washington were discussing the fact that in former years the white and colored representatives of various philanthropic and community agencies were accustomed to meet more frequently than now for the exchange of views and plans on matters of community interest. The holding of such meetings has grown more difficult and less frequent. This situation is a good seed-bed for the sensational news paper publicity about Negro criminals. Several Negroes within as many months may commit or be accused of crimes in a community. The newspapers play upon these with flaring head lines and minute descriptions suggestive of racial turpitude and criminal tendencies. Some newspapers have been known to manufacture suggestive news. During the Washington riots, one newspaper went so far as to give the announcement of the time and place for the rendevous of men in the service for a "clean-up that will cause events" of the preceding days "to pale into insignificance." It is common knowledge that nearly every one of the serious city race riots in the last ten years was preceded by a period of sensational newspaper publicity. Thousands of peaceable, law-abiding Negro citizens of sterling character in city after city had life, limb and property destroyed or put in jeopardy partly because of the excitement aroused by sensational news paper publicity. Further, events that have transpired, while they may not be different from those happening among other defenseless classes, serve to make Negroes doubt that the law will be impartially enforced for them. For the last four montns the repeated bombing of Negro homes with little or no appre hension of the perpetrators was reported from Chicago. Negroes claim that sometimes abuses and injuries by officers of the law are passed without much redress. They point out that lynchings have continued for a generation in spite of much protest. One of the leading Negro newspapers said recently: "The failure of authorities to enforce the law has created a feeling of distrust and resentment on the part of American Negroes which should not be a source of surprise to those who reason from cause to effect. This state of mind is not confined to Washington." The discussion and anxiety about these things are ever present and are changing the Negro s attitude. He says his safety demands that he protect himself and his home. This new understanding of the meaning of liberty has been THE NEGRO PROBLEM 157 driven deep into the consciousness of the masses of Negroes. The thinking and feeling of the Negroes themselves, therefore, when in contact with the white community, has assumed a new aspect. The new experiences in the migration, in the war services and in the new economic opportunities has developed a new Negro. It is not to be denied that in shuffling off the coil of servility, the Negro will pass through a transition period of awkwardness to achieve civility. This calls for sympathetic understanding and guidance, not scolding and censure; for all kinds of .education ; for poised, respected Negro leadership ; for community contacts and cooperation ; for opportunities, not restrictions. Withal, there is need of reckoning with the opinions of this new Negro, who is doing some thinking and speaking for himself. WHAT IS BEHIND THE NEGRO UPRISINGS? 1 The riots in Washington and in Chicago following upon disturbances in St. Louis, accompanied by racial bitterness in Pennsylvania and a strained situation throughout the South, with riots barely averted in Memphis and Birmingham, have forced upon the attention of the country the fact that the relation of the races is a national problem. The Negro does not constitute that problem, but the attitude of the white man toward him. The white South is still very largely envisaging that problem in terms of "racial inferiority," "social equality," "Negro criminality," and "rape." In the North the problem, as was well shown by the riot in Chicago, beginning Sunday, July 27, and continuing for three days, is almost entirely economic. Hoodlums and perverts can, of course, be relied upon to make racial or any other superficial difference between men the occasion of brutal assault and bloody violence. But in Chicago the words most often used in accounting for the bitter feeling which existed were not "Negro criminality," "brutal assaults upon women," but "decline of real estate values," "invasion of white residential districts by Negroes," "housing," "friction between union men and unorganized Negroes." 1 From article by Herbert J. Seligmann, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Current Opinion. 67:154-5. September, 1919. 158 SELECTED ARTICLES The civilization of the South has been a Jim Crow civiliza tion. That is, the Negro has not only been denied equal treat ment in the courts, proper policing, lighting and housing, but, as oft-cited statistics show, provision for education of his children and for his health has been in many sections lament ably deficient. The means used to "keep the Negro in his place" in the South has been lynching and mob violence or a threat of violence, a form of Prussianism which is coming to be increas ingly condemned by Southerners themselves. Temporarily at least, the reflex of the Negro s increasing prosperity as. a result of the war, his feeling that he must have his rights even if it is necessary to fight for them, have intensified race hatred through out the South. It is not unlikely that there will be a number of severe clashes. Eventually it will be necessary to recognize his status as a citizen upon which the Negro is going to insist and to cooperate with him through proper education and sanitation. The Washington and the Chicago riots are expressions of these two phases of the race problem in the United States. There are two types of race riots. The first is the chiefly sentimental or passional riot which was exemplified in Wash ington and occurs most frequently in the South. The second is. the preponderantly business or economic race riot, of which Chicago was typical. In many respects the Washington race riot was similiar to the Atlanta riot which occurred in Sep tember, 1906. For months before Saturday, July 19, when the outbreak in Washington occurred, newspapers had been featuring Negro crime in bold headlines. So dangerous had the state of the public mind in Washington become early in July that on the Qth of that month the Washington Branch of the Na tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People wrote to the four leading Washington newspapers calling the attention of the editors to the menacing situation which their journals were instrumental in creating. The letters predicted race riots unless the newspaper headlines and news articles were made more moderate. One of these newspapers, the Wash ington Star, acknowledged the justice of the warning. The alleged "crime wave" in Washington, like most crime waves and other hysterical fictions, dwindles upon close scrutiny. The records of the Washington Police Department furnished by Major Pullman, Chief of the Washington Police, showed THE NEGRO PROBLEM 159 three attempted assaults and one case of rape from June 25 to July 18 in the District of Columbia, the man suspected of three of the assaults being at the time of the riots a prisoner. Never theless, newspaper reports sent all over the country from Wash ington ascribed the riots to "many assaults" upon white women in Washington by Negroes. One of the Washington news papers, the Washington Post, went so far as to announce an unofficial "mobilization" of service men for a "clean-up," a direct invitation to attack upon Washington Negroes. There was no question as to the initial aggression of white men upon Negroes in Washington. Commissioner Brownlow of the District of Columbia characterized the attacks, most of them led by men in the uniform of the United States, as wanton and uncalled for. The Washington difficulties were accentuated by an inadequate police force, and it was only rain and the advent of General Hann in command of the federal troops that put an end to the disorder. One of the most striking features of both the Washington and Chicago race riots was what journalists call the score. It was not simply Negroes in these riots that were hounded and beaten and shot; white men, too, suffered severely. The majority of casualties were among the Negroes, it is true, but the Negroes fought back. Distrusting white men, distrusting a white police which permitted attacks on them, distrusting an administration which delayed three days while bloody riots were in progress, Negroes in Washington armed. On the night of Monday, July 21, the life of any unaccompanied white man in the Negro residential districts along U Street in Washington was in danger. Mainly, Negroes armed because they were afraid the police would permit white mobs to burn their homes, assault their families. But a new spirit was manifest among them and, as one prominent Negro said in the office of Commissioner Brownlow, the members of his race were beginning to realize that it might be necessary to fight and to die in defense of their manhood in this country as they had fought and died in defense of democracy on the battlefields of Europe. The same fighting spirit was manifest in Chicago. Here again aggression had come from white men. When 50,000 Negroes overtaxed the so-called "Black Belt" of Chicago, having been invited to come there by labor agents, or having come on their own accord to take their place in industry, no provision 160 SELECTED ARTICLES was made to house them. White property owners denounced colored people who sought a place to live as "undesirables." It is true that property values did decline and many white residents who moved out of districts adjacent to the "Black Belt" sold their homes at a loss; but such property often im mediately thereafter rose in value because the real estate men, into whose hands it passed, found the migrant Negro a rich field for exploitation and charged him anywhere up to double what had been charged whites. Unquestionably, race antagonisms were fomented for busi ness purposes in Chicago. In the absence of any measure to deal with the problems created by the abnormal influx of southern Negroes, racial tension grew constantly more threat ening. Out of the bitterness of white property-owners came bombings of houses inhabited by or let to Negroes in white districts. Two men arrested charged with these bombings were granted several extensions in the Chicago court. One was a clerk in a real estate concern. To the housing difficulty was added that of the political exploitation of the Negro by the Thompson administration which owed its election to the Negro vote of the Second Ward. In return for the Negro vote the Thompson administration permitted the "Black Belt" to become a center of vice, and Negro politicians cooperated in exploiting the members of their own race. Within an hour of the initial aggression by white men, Chicago was in an uproar. Thereafter for three days it was unsafe for Negroes to leave their own district, and two unof- tending colored men were killed in the down-town business and shopping district known as the "Loop." The fact that trouble was confined to the "Black Belt" shows that colored men were not aggressors, but that the trouble came from white hoodlums wlio invaded the colored residence district on foot, and when they were prevented, in automobiles, shooting promis cuously. As soon as the state militia barred the colored district to white hoodlums, disorders ceased. No conclusion drawn from either or both of the types of riot represented by the occurrences in Washington and in Chicago will bring about an immediate solution of the race problem in this country, involved as it is in emotion, economic and political motives, but those two riots have made certain facts intolerably THE NEGRO PROBLEM 161 obvious.- One of these facts is that newspapers are responsible for violence which arises out of the hysteria stimulated by ex aggerated and misleading reports of crime waves, and that crime must be treated as an individual and not a racial matter. The superstition fostered in the southern press that the Negro is a criminal and a rapist is being steadily met by indisputable facts and statistics which show that a relatively small number of lynchings are even ascribed to attacks upon white women. The Chicago riots show that it is unsafe to leave the delicate problem of race relations, aggravated as it is by the necessity for assimilating large quantities of immigrants, to those groups of the community mainly interested in exploiting the newcomers. What the race question needs more than anything else is ra tional discussion, a stripping away of the emotional phrases, the sentimentality and the deliberate misrepresentation which obscure the real issues. THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF PEONAGE * With the unexpected conviction of John S. Williams, owner of the Georgia "murder farm," for the killing of one Negro, the subsequent indictment of his sons and of several field hands in Newton County there has come to light peonage and its sinister operations. What the ultimate outcome of further investigations now contemplated by Federal authorities will be it is extremely difficult to say, for Governor Dorsey recently stated in the course of an address in New York that "Peonage is not confined alone to Georgia ... it exists in greater, or less, mostly less, measure wherever there are large masses of Negroes." At the same time it does not appear that these investigations will be extended beyond a few backward counties in Georgia. The first peg in abolishing peonage, nevertheless, has been entered successfully and with continual agitation against it such as is being waged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People we may look expectantly forward to the time when every vestige of the new slavery is expugned from the United States. Indictments against additional offenders have been obtained 1 Challenge Magazine. 3:17-22. June, 1921. 162 SELECTED ARTICLES in both Jasper and Newton counties, but the vital object to be aimed at in connection with further prosecutions is the basic cause of an industrial maladjustment to which both the baron, Williams, and his slaves became victims. To get at this cause an understanding of the economic foundation of peonage is neces sary, and a knowledge of the conditions as they obtain in those sections of Georgia where the Federal powers have been, and apparently still are, diligently at work. The census of 1910 gives to Jasper county a Negro population of 11,484, all mostly landless serfs. Since 1910 this population has probably shifted to other parts of the country in the great exodus that started out of the South for the North during the war, a fact that is most significant in that no matter how few were drained off by this unprecedented industrial readjustment, the vacuum thus created operated as an incentive to the further promotion of peonage in that particular county by decreasing its supply of labor. Similar reactions to the same events prevailed throughout the entire South, which means that the Negroes who came out of the South did secure a mite more of security and a considerably increased wage, but those left behind became more insecure and sank deeper into slavery. There was distributed among Jasper county s Negro popula tion, in 1910, 119 farm homes of which 92 were unencumbered, 27 being tied up with some sort of lien, 695 other homes of which only 42 were owned free and clear, n others owned but en cumbered, 642 being rented. The actual ownership of homes by this large Negro population numbered only 134, which indicates that even at that time when conditions in America were normal and poor people had less difficulty than now in procuring suffi cient food and clothing that the Negroes of Jasper county were moving along the dead line of starvation. It will, perhaps, be argued that the fact that Negroes showed so little progress in property ownership is because as a race they are thriftless, inclined to dissipate their earnings as soon as received. Such an argument, however, when applied to the South has no foun dation ; for it is in the South particularly where they are most thrifty and amenable to almost every advantage offered them to purchase their own homes. On the other hand further statistics selected from the same census as those above tend to prove conclusively that such a fact even in Jasper county, and it is this contradiction that opens for us a wide aperture for analysing THE NEGRO PROBLEM 163 the fundamentally economic fabric so deftly interwoven into the structure of peonage. . . In 1910 Negro farmers had under cultivation in Jasper county 100,652 acres of land to 70,163 of the whites ; the former produced 16,943 bales of cotton, the latter 8,905; the former produced in 1909 127,017 bushels of corn, the latter 92,951 ; the former owned 1,939 work mules, the latter 1,153; the former 1,466 cows, the latter 1,051; the former, machinery and farm implements valued at $68,283; the latter, identical accessories, valued at $88,278. In two instances only, according to the census compiled by the Department of Com merce, is Negro wealth overtopped by that of white people, consisting in the ownership of homes of all sorts and farm machinery. In all else the Negro leads. On the face of mere figures such is the case. Considering facts, it is just the contrary as I shall now show. Although the census credits Negro farmers with the owner ship of all land under cultivation by them in 1910, with the pro duction of 8,039 more bales of cotton, 27,017 more bushels of corn, with the ownership of 786 more mules, 415 more cows than the whites, the fact is that the big bulk of this reputed ownership of property and production of farm-stuffs did not carry with it any title. The majority of these Negroes were tenants under one or the other of the various oppressive agricultural systems that prevail throughout all the rural South. The system works in this fashion. Illiterate white and black men in some instances, in others intelligent white men and illiterate Negroes enter into contracts which the whites soon come to consider as binding only on the Negroes. White land owners either too lazy or indifferent to cultivate and plant their own land, agree to let it at so many bales of cotton or at so many bushels of corn, etc., per acre. A Negro is usually the renter, although there are thousands of white tenants also. If the season is flourishing the landlord who has not planted a seed nor touched the ground with a plow demands and gets a great deal more in compensation than the contract originally stipulated he should get. If the tenant be a Negro he dare not refuse to comply with these demands unless he desires to invite complete confiscation of his entire crop. His sole protection is in his obedience to the white man from whom he has rented his farm. If the season be disastrous and the cotton or corn crop is destroyed by boll-weevil or beetle the Negro tenant unable 164 SELECTED ARTICLES to meet his obligations finds himself further in debt to meet which he must sign another contract agreeing to pay it out in work. From tenant farmer he now becomes a peon. The new contract may call for a year s labor or two years or forever because the peon being absolutely dependent on the landlord for food, clothing and shelter, continues to slip further and further into the inextricable meshes of debt. "In one extreme case," states Ray Stannard Baker in his book, "Following the Color Line," "a Negro tenant, after years of work, decided to leave the planter. He had had a place offered to him where he could make more money. There was nothing against him; he simply wanted to move. But the landlord informed him that no wagon would be permitted to cross his (the planter s) land to get his household belongings. The Negro, being ignorant, supposed he could thus be prevented from moving, and although the friend who was trying to help him assured him that the landlord could not prevent his moving, he dared not go." Here we have peonage in all of its rottenness and you thought slavery was dead. And it is the crops of these peons that creep into agri cultural census just as they crept in in 1910 giving the Negroes of Jasper county an abundance of wealth over the white popula tion. There is still another side. Whenever the wealthy planter with a wish to work his own plantation and to reap from it in profits all that the traffic will bear without entering into any business transactions with "nig gers or poor white trash," other methods are easily employed. Peonage is the result just the same. Enforced labor in payment of debt is generally the interpretation given to it, but peonage in every form would be impossible if the present profit system did not exist. John S. Williams was a large plantation owner, one of a diminutive agricultural oligarchy that has taken the place of that larger and more powerful oligarchy of slavery, the holdings of which in rural Southern centers and especially in those so geo graphically situated as Jasper and Newton counties influence to an alarming degree their legal machinery throughout. This legal control is entirely necessary to the successful maintenance of peonage which is a Federal offense and was first viciously attacked by Judge Emory Speer during the regime of Theodore Roosevelt. Plainly, to obtain the desired protection for them in their unconstitutional practices these wealthy planters are instru- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 165 mental in selecting the sheriffs and justices of the peace, or other officers, of their communities who can be relied upon at all times to assist them (the planters) in furthering their aims. The achievements of these ends are by no means difficult in back woods counties like Jasper and Newton where each white man is known by the other. The sheriff when elected is required to arrest Negroes continually on the slightest pretenses; the justice is required to sentence them to the convict camps and peniten tiaries and, if not this directly, to impose upon them such fines as they cannot pay, which means the same as a sentence ; for if a Negro offender is paid out by a white man, he must work out the fine with no definite limit set as to the time in which this may be done. "One reason for the very large number of arrests in Georgia particularly lies in the fact that the State and counties make a profit out of the prison system. No attempt is ever made to reform a criminal, either white or colored. Convicts are hired out to private contractors or worked in the public roads. Last year (1907) the net profit to Georgia from its chain-gangs, to which the prison commission refers with pride, reached the great sum of $354,853.55. The demand for convicts by rich saw mill operators, owners of brick-yards, large farmers, and others, is far in advance of the supply. The natural tendency is to convict as many men as possible it furnishes steady, cheap labor to the contractors and a profit to the State. . . Some of the large fortunes in Atlanta have come chiefly from the labor chain-gangs or convicts leased from the State." It was from this vast reservoir of unfortunate human beings that Williams drew most of his labor and from which the feudal barons forming the oligarchy to which he belonged, still draw theirs at the astounding figure of from $5 to $11 per head per year with the guarantee that for each laborer that dies another will be fur nished without added expense. Others are procured by paying them out of their difficulties with the law. The incalculable advantage accruing to the barons from the mathematically pre cise operations of such reprehensible profit making machines signalize most surprisingly a degree of intelligence of and a firm grasp on the inverted ethics of capitalistic exploitation that is ordinarily looked for in the large industrial spheres of the North, West and Middle West where the wage-slave is found instead of the peon. They reason that since no one can safely 166 SELECTED ARTICLES predict what nature of crop the season will bring out, or that it will bring any crop at all, it is infinitely more profitable to reduce Negroes and poor whites to peonage via the contract habit, paying jail fines, or hiring them from the convict camps than it is to hire them legitimately all year round at 50 cents per day. There are certain responsibilities incident to the latter which it is no part of the tyrannical planter s economic tempera ment to assume willingly. Peonage alone is the key to the prob lem and that problem is to reap profits without unnecessary taxation. The rapacious exploitation of ignorant Negroes and poor whites in the South purely in response to an unquenchable appetite for abnormal economic gain by an almost negligible group of agricultural lords whose avaricious and far-flung influence envelops and subverts the active police agencies within and around their communities is not totally new. It is but the fruits sprung from seeds planted deeply in the soil of the old slavery; fruits nurtured, nevertheless, by the same capitalistic method of production and distribution that nurtured the old slavery. The conviction of Williams, therefore, for any benefits he derived from them may be encouraging to every person who desires and asks that the Negro receive a squarer deal every where, but it cannot be regarded as exceptionally vital in uproot ing peonage, which is undoubtedly economic, no more than the maintenance of hospitals and coffee houses by the State can be regarded as a useful instrument in abolishing wage slavery. The causes must be removed. FRUITS OF PEONAGE 1 Forced labor is tolerated today because it is generally con ceived, in many parts of the country, that its only alternative would be an idleness far more demoralizing than the sporadic abuses of compulsion. In the South it is widely believed that a large part of the Negro population will not work steadily without the application of some kind of compulsion. And men who do not work steadily whatever their race are regarded by sober citizens as a menace. The menace is much more keenly felt when the problem is complicated by a race issue. Hence 1 New Republic. 26:223-4. April 20, 1921. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 167 the popular approval of a scheme of wages payment which never leaves the Negro worker means enough to maintain him self in idleness, of a scheme of tenancy which keeps him perpet ually chained up with debt, and of an administration of the vagrancy laws which makes it hazardous for a Negro workman to remain long outside of the protection of an employer. The average citizen approves the result, a Negro population held pretty steadily to regular employment, and does not waste much thought on the means. Nor does he inquire minutely into the material advantages that flow to the employers and traders and large landholders from a system which reproduces the condi tions of mediaeval serfdom. At least he does not inquire except when some incidental atrocity strikes his attention, and even then he is most likely to be drawn off the track by the search for personal guilt. The system of forced labor is essentially a continuation of the system of slavery. Neither war nor constitutional amend ments abolish the essentials of slavery. Those essentials will not be abolished merely by enacting a new law, nor by more rigidly enforcing existing laws. Nothing will change the situa tion except the substitution of the incentives of free labor for the compulsion that goes with labor that is unfree. Where the conditions of life have been reasonably fair the Negro has shown himself quite capable of responding to the incentives of free labor. His progress in the accumulation of property has been notable, in spite of the fact that almost every where, South or North, he has found the dice loaded against him. He has also made notable progress in the trades and the professions, in spite of every disability. But the Negroes as a race can not be expected to exhibit the economic stability of other classes until they are freed from the operation of special disabilities in the economic field. It may appear at first sight that the plantation owner or merchant who maintains a paternal relation to his hands or cus tomers, taking care that they never actually want, but exerting steady pressure on them to keep them at work, has no part in the atrocities that are committed in the course of the exploit ation of the Negro. He has indeed, no direct part. But the more smoothly he manages his Negro dependents the more successfully he combats every tendency toward independence and the development of incentives that will keep the Negro i68 SELECTED ARTICLES industrious though free. The more genuine his benevolence, the more plausible is it made to seem that the Negro race will fare best under a condition of permanent dependence. Dependence, however, means peonage ; and peonage produces sporadically, but not rarely, such outrages as that of Jasper County. It is asserted by men of Southern origin that the Negro s best friends are the Southern white men. Sentimentally that is certainly true. Whether they are good friends in any other than a sentimental sense can be put to a simple test. Are they willing to see the Negroes make progress toward genuine economic independence? Will they see that he is not over charged on his supplies, taxed exorbitant rates of interest, that property he acquires is as secure in his hands as any property under the law? In so far as they do these things, they are working toward a state in which such an institution as a "murder plantation" will be unthinkable. EDUCATION THE EDUCATION OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO The education of Negroes in our section of the country began long before the Revolutionary War, when they were brought as slaves into the Southern Colonies. Not a few of them were taught to read and write by Southern white women and children, many a wife of a slave-owner taking an unfeigned interest in this philanthropic work. It has been estimated that, about the time of the opening of the Civil War, 10 per cent of the adult slaves had, by the benevolent offices of their white owners, been elevated out of the class of illiterates. Negroes who had obtained their freedom, either by gift or by purchase, enjoyed educational privileges to an even greater degree. It is true that, after the Revolutionary War and after the adoption of the constitution and establishment of the national government, there existed in some of the Southern states statu tory provisions against the education of Negroes, even free Negroes. To cite one example: Mrs. Margaret Douglass, who lived in Norfolk, Virginia, was, in 1853, arrested for teaching a school attended by free Negro children, the offense being "against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia." Being duly tried, she was convicted, and a sentence of thirty days imprisonment was imposed upon her, a punishment which the trial judge declared was to "serve as a terror to those who acknowledged no rule of action but their own evil will and pleasure." Nevertheless, these statutory enactments denying the privileges of schooling to the Negroes, did not arrest the develop ment of the black race in the South. Everywhere education along many vocational lines was compulsory. The Negro was taught to speak, and in many instances to read and to write the English language, and not infrequently his conversation with his white master was directed along lines both wholesome and 1 From article by William Seneca Sutton, LL.D., Dean of the Depart ment of Education, University of Texas. Bulletin of the University of Texas. No. 221. 24p. March i, 1912. i?o SELECTED ARTICLES stimulating. He was permitted, and even encouraged, to ex change the traditions of African superstition for the inspiring truths of the Christian religion, and to become acquainted with the English Bible, the greatest of the world s classics. When it is remembered that the greater part, and the more substantial part, of education consists in doing, rather than in knowing, in the formation of right habits rather than in the memorizing of mere word-forms, one easily reaches the conclu sion that the educational regimen of the Negro prior to the Civil War produced splendid results, arming him with the intelligence and the power that come from the mastery of various forms of industrial activity and endowing him with the elemental habits of civilized society. Whatever may have been the sins of the old South and every well-informed Southerner is now willing to confess at least some of them, and that, too, without any degree of dis loyaltyher development of the Negro slaves, as described above, is convincing evidence of her intelligence and philanthropy. In those old days the love of money, which is the root of more than one grievous evil, had certainly not taken possession of our fathers, and had not blinded them to the discharge of their duties toward a race which, in the providence of God, had been placed in their keeping. During the Civil War the education of the Negro, as well as of the white, children, was sadly interrupted. Nevertheless, his experience in caring for his master s family and property confirmed some habits the Negro had already acquired. There were, furthermore, philanthropic people in the North who established some schools for Negroes who had refugeed to Union camps, and the United States Government also established schools more or less effectively in various places, and provided the means for conducting them. They were, at best, most elementary in their nature, and were administered without either expert teaching or supervision. Inspired by the efforts of the Emancipation League of Boston and by other freedman s aid associations, Congress, on March 3, 1865, passed the bill which established the Freedman s Bureau. General Oliver O. Howard, the commander of the Army of Ten nessee, was appointed Commissioner, and, in compliance with the statute, he appointed ten assistant commissioners, who severally had charge of the ten districts into which the South was divided. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 171 The work of the Bureau was divided into four departments: (i) Land; (2) Official acts relating to labor, schools, quarter master and commissary supplies; (3) Financial matters; (4) Medical and hospital service. The educational functions- of the Bureau were under the general direction of a special officer in Washington; but the ten assistant commissioners appointed su perintendents of education to supervise the schools of their re spective districts. When the Bureau was established, there were already in existence some schools attended by freedmen and refugees. Some of them were day schools for the younger Negro children ; others were night schools, in which older boys and girls, as well as adults, were instructed. There were also some indus trial schools, in which women were instructed as seamstresses, and Sunday-schools, in which the elements of secular and re ligious education were taught. The Bureau sought to cooperate with the individuals and the benevolent associations by whom these schools had been founded. Still greater powers relating to education were given to the Bureau by the act of July 16, 1866, the Commissioner being di rected to lease buildings for school purposes whenever teachers and means of instruction could be provided without cost to the government, and he was to furnish such protection as might be required for the safe conduct of these schools. Congress appro priated $521,000.00 for school expenses, and also provided addi tional funds to be derived from the sale and lease of property which had formerly belonged to the Confederate Government, but which the United States had acquired by confiscation or otherwise. Another act, passed June 24, 1868, directed that all unexpended balances in the hands of the Commissioner, not re quired for the due execution of the law, might, in his discretion, be devoted to the education of freedmen and refugees. In 1872 the Bureau was abolished by law ; its work had ceased to be effective in 1870, the last year for which Congress granted it an appropriation. In the year last named the Bureau received reports from 2677 day and night secular schools, in which were 3300 teachers and about 150,000 pupils, and from 1562 Sunday- schools with 6007 teachers and about 100,000 pupils. It is easy to demonstrate that the efforts of the Commissioner and his subordinates to educate the Negroes in the South were far from successful. The greater part of the instruction given 172 SELECTED ARTICLES was confined to exceedingly elementary phases of education, and th e instruction, itself, was too often decidedly poor in quality. The Negro scholastic population in the South in 1870 was nearly 1,700,000, while only about 150,000 were in the secular schools. With less than one-tenth of the children at school, with almost the entire adult Negro population grossly ignorant, with teachers ill-prepared for their duties, the education of the Negro was in an exceedingly crude, not to say lamentable, condition. In this connection, however, one should not forget that the ravages of war and the even more grievous afflictions visited upon the South during the days of Reconstruction, made it well-nigh im possible to establish an efficient system of public education for her white children, not to speak of the children of the former slaves. Dr. J. L. M. Curry, who was a valiant Confederate soldier, who was for many years general agent of the trustees of the Peabody fund, who was the consistent and courageous friend of the Negro, and whose name is a household word in educational circles in the South, thus sums up the value of the educational work of the Bureau: I "What was done locally and individually was almost univer- sally short-lived and in utter misapprehension of conditions and methods." The same mistake was made in education as in the political treatment of the South the powers in control overlooked the fact that the first indispensable requirement for success in any social undertaking is a thorough understanding of the conditions that obtain. On this point Booker T. Washington, one of the really great leaders of his race, remarks, "Men have tried to use with these simple people just freed from slavery and with no past, no inherited traditions of understanding, the same methods of education which they have used in New England, with all its inherited traditions and desires." The Bureau should surely not be held entirely responsible for the mistaken policy which resulted in giving the Negro a mere smattering of culture, for the teachers and the benevolent so cieties very largely determined the methods actually employed, the Bureau s activities being confined chiefly to the financial side of the difficult problem, the annual amounts distributed for educational purposes ranging from $27,000 in 1865 to more than THE NEGRO PROBLEM 173 $1,000,000 in 1870, and the total sum apportioned from June I, 1865, to September I, 1871, being more than $5,000,000. While it is true that the schools under the control of the Bureau could not, by any grace of courtesy be regarded as effi cient, yet there is unquestioned evidence that its work emphasized the necessity for elementary education, that it demonstrated the importance of systematic administration, and that it aided in the development of public opinion in the direction of higher education, especially for the men and women to be employed as teachers. It is in the higher institutions, such as Fisk Univer sity, Howard University and Hampton Institute, the founding of which was encouraged by the Bureau, and in similar institu tions founded since 1870, that the Southern Negro finds oppor tunity to fit himself for genuine service. Public education for the Negro at public expense in the sev eral Southern states during the era of Reconstruction requires no extended treatment, for, while the constitution adopted by the carpetbag governments included articles relating to the or ganization and conduct of systems of public free schools, these educational measures did not become effective. The antipathy of the Southern people to the rule of the carpetbaggers inspired resistance, both passive and active, to educational, as well as to other governmental policies the Reconstructionists attempted to establish. The free schools were generally regarded by the white man as part and parcel of that system which sought to enslave him and place him under the domination of his former slaves and their abolition friends. The Reconstruction era. which was responsible for more evils and which engendered fiercer passions and more deep-seated prejudices than the Civil War, was fortunately brought to a close early in the seventies of the last century, and the people of our common country, North and South, are now practically unanimous in the opinion that the effort to restore the Union by reducing one-half of its people to a state of vassalage and by seeking to keep them in subjection by force, was the greatest political blunder made by the party that had been victorious in war, and had destroyed the institu tion of slavery in the United States. When the white people in each of the Southern states regained their liberty and took charge of their own State governments, they at once began the stupendous task of providing for a system 174 SELECTED ARTICLES of public free schools, and, to their credit be it said, oppor tunities for free education were extended to whites and blacks alike, at least so far as constitutional and statutory measures are concerned. It is true that, immediately after the close of the Reconstruction era, there was some opposition to popular educa tion, especially for Negroes; yet the public school idea steadily won its way, and today no people in the wide world are more devoted to the democratic ideal manifested in public education at public expense than are to be found in America south of Mason and Dixon s line. Nowhere does there exist a stronger, a more militant conviction that the safety and perpetuity of democ racy is dependent upon popular intelligence and virtue. The South is today irrevocably committed to the doctrine that, as President Lamar once wrote in a message to the Congress of the Republic of Texas, "cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator which freemen acknowledge and the only security which freemen desire." Thirty or forty years is a very short time in the life of a people, and it is an exceedingly brief period in the evolution of a great institution like a system of public education. The South, however, in this short space of time has accomplished educational results that are, indeed, not far from marvelous. The testimony to support this view is strong and abundant. The late United States Commissioner of Education, Dr. William T. Harris, declared at a National Congress of Education, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895, that "the Southern people in the or ganization and management of systems of public schools manifest wonderful and remarkable self-sacrifice." Concerning educational advantages supplied to the Negro, competent witnesses living North, as well as South, men of African, as well as of Caucasian, descent, are agreed that in all the history of the world there has been no higher mani festation of justice and liberality by a superior to an inferior race than the South has shown in its efforts to improve the intellectual condition of the black population. Of the many men who have spoken on this point is Dr. Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook. Below I give this opinion, an opinion which is typical, and which is to be found in an article written by him and published in Volume 83, pp. 634-639 of that journal: "While Northern benevolence has spent tens of thousands of dollars in the South to educate the Negroes, Southern patriotism THE NEGRO PROBLEM 175 has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same pur pose. This has been done voluntarily and without aid from the Federal Government." Out of their poverty the Southern states have contributed millions of dollars to educate the Negroes. It is impossible to determine the exact amount of this expenditure, because sepa rate accounts for Negro education have not been kept by the several state governments. In only two or three of the states are they so kept at this time. The state of Texas, from 1870 to the close of the scholastic year ending August 31, 1911, ex pended upon common school education for Negroes about $23,500,000, and for the support of the Prairie View Normal School, an institution for the training of Negro teachers, there has been expended since 1879, $715,382. The estimated value of school houses and school property used by the Negro schools of that state is $1,500,000, the greater portion of which was derived from taxes paid, and from donations made, by white citizens. In the state of Virginia there has been spent since 1871 between fifteen and eighteen millions of dollars upon the common school education of the Negro, and that state is now spending about $600,000 a year therefor. The figures given for Texas and Virginia may be properly regarded as fairly representative of all the Southern states. Not one of these states has failed to provide for common school education for Negroes on substantially equal terms with the whites, and in addition, normal schools have been founded and maintained in order that competent teachers may be trained for work in the Negro schools. In a letter I received some days ago from Monroe N. Work, who is in charge of the De partment of Research and Records in the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, he estimates that the amount devoted to Negro education in the South for the forty years ending with the academic session of 1910-11 is, approximately, one hundred and sixty-six millions of dollars. When it is remembered that the Negroes own a very small per cent of the taxable property in the South, the figures given above are convincing evidence of the sincere desire of the Southern white man to give to the Negro the blessings of at least a common school educa tion. It should, furthermore, be remembered that, while the Negro schools, even today, are not as efficient as they should be, and while many of the Negro children are not matriculated 1 76 SELECTED ARTICLES in even these inferior schools, the public schools for the white children, especially in rural districts, are themselves far from ideal. There is reason for believing, however, that in the full ness of time, with the continuance of that progress which forms a bright page in the educational history of our country, the public schools for blacks, as well as whites, will function with such efficiency as will guarantee reasonably satisfactory results. TASK OF THE LEADER 1 Many of our sincerest spokesmen were persuaded that there was no anti-Negro feeling in the demand that the Negro should be excluded from the suffrage. They knew that the illiterate vote should be restricted, and while they were aware that the movement of restriction might exclude many of the intelligent, they thought the exclusion of the intelligent less disastrous than the continued admission of the ignorant. They sincerely desired to end the excuses for violence and fraud by establishing all the conditions of suffrage under the forms of law; and they seriously believed that if the Negro could be "excluded from politics" the chief occasion of public appre hension would be so completely dispelled that the popular temper would do larger justice to the Negro educationally and industrially. These men were convinced that if the fear of the Negro s vote were once removed the prevailing attitude toward the black population would be more sympathetic and more helpful. Their sincerity and earnestness are unquestionable. But the campaign for suffrage limitations became, upon the hustings, far different from the campaign which they had con ceived in their committee rooms. It soon degenerated, for the most part, into an anti-Negro agitation in which the wiser and kindlier spirits were forced to give place to the masters of diatribe, and in which a movement toward justice for the white race became changed into a movement of hatred and op pression to the black. There were creditable and notable ex ceptions ; but no reader of the press of the period and no attendant on the average political gathering could fail to miss 1 From article bv Edgar Gardner Murphy, Montgomery, Ala. Sewanee Review. 15:1-30. January, 1907. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 17? the fact that a sincere effort for an indispensable social re form had been captured by the demon of racial animosities. The reform will work its benefits, but the demon has never been appeased. No sooner had the new laws been enacted than the cry arose, "Down with the Negro school !" The passage of the suffrage regulations, so far from resulting in a more general willingness to afford the Negro an educational opportunity, has been followed by an attack on practically every privilege he possesses. Let me hasten to say that these attacks have thus far been unsuccessful. The deeper heart and the better sense of the South have offered overwhelming resis tance. And yet the proposal to take from the Negro public schools all revenues save the Negro s meagre contribution in direct taxes is everywhere in the air. The suggestion has been advocated by the Governor of one State; in two other States it has passed one or both houses of the legislature. It is un constitutional in the judgment of the Supreme Court of two of our own commonwealths of the South; it is impracticable, as there is no way to fix a racial division of the receipts and taxes of corporations (such as railroads) ; it is unjust inas much as in countless cases the rents upon the lands (out of which the taxes are paid) are contributed by Negro tenants the rents pay the taxes and the negro pays the rents ; it is un-American, inasmuch as our institutions do not anywhere draw their revenues from direct taxation only. Indirect taxa tion must be taken into account or the poor would be every where unschooled. The proposal represents, however, no serious legislative or educational policy. It is merely the ex pression of an anti-negro sentiment. Its agitation is a political expedient. That it may be enacted in some of our Southern States is not impossible, but it will be found unconstitutional and unworkable; and its significance will not be educational but racial a symptom of that relentless passion of our lower selves a passion which under like occasions has leaped to ut- terence at the North which is ever saying, in the sequence of its logic, the Negro shall have no vote; the Negro shall have no school; the Negro shall have no work; the Negro shall have no existence on this soil. For the attack has not ceased with the denial of educa tional opportunities. Those who attacked the political posi tion of the Negro were sure that education and industry would i?8 SELECTED ARTICLES be left to him. Those who have opposed the black man s school have said at this point we will rest in our advance. The Negro should not be educated; he should work; we will destroy his schools, but we will protect him in his work. Here again, however, the demon that lurks within the social antip athies of men will not allow its votaries to say, "Thus far and no farther." The animus against the Negro as a laborer is slowly but surely invading us from the North. It finds its lodgment in rich soil. It will be echoed with increasing volume as our changes of population, coincident with the changes in our industrial situation, bring into the South still more of the white labor of our industrial and agricultural classes. Thus the demon of our divisive fate, having said to the Negro, you shall not vote, you shall not know, you shall not labor, and having made honorable life impossible, why should it not also say, you shall not Jive? In fact and in effect, has it not been already said, in spirit and in intent, by hundreds North and South? For it is idle to pretend to bestow life, when all that gives life significance has been destroyed. CAN THE NEGRO BE EDUCATED? 1 The South is convinced that the two races must not be edu cated together in the same schools. Apparently the Northern teachers working in the South entertain the same opinion. With very rare exceptions, they educate their children while young in their own homes, and as soon as the children reach a suitable age send them North to white schools for their education. In this the Southern conviction and the Northern practice are both founded on a sound principle. On this principle missionaries in pagan lands have generally acted, sending as early as practic able their children to America to school and college. Education is not all furnished by teachers and text-books. More potent than both combined in influence upon the character is school companionship. Whatever the future may have in store for us, at present the children of Negro parents are generally not such as exert an elevating influence upon white companions. Slavery would not be the evil thing which now practically all Americans 1 From article by Lyman Abbott. Outlook. 117:602-4. December 12, 1917. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 179 believe it to have been if the children of slave parents were the best companions for the children of an always free people. In towns and cities the existence of separate schools for the two races is not accompanied with very great disadvantages, for in the towns and cities there is generally a sufficient number of the people of each race to give each school a fairly adequate support. But in rural communities this is not the case. The necessity for two schools, where the school population and the school income are barely sufficient to give adequate support to one school, is a serious handicap to the community. The money is rarely enough for one good school; when divided between two, it furnishes poor buildings, poor teachers, and short school terms. Nor is the money always equitably divided. The State school funds are apportioned to counties and cities on the basis of population, without reference to race. The school officers in the counties supplement the State appropriation by the proceeds of the local tax, and then divide the State and local taxes between the races according to their own interpreta tion of the needs of each group. In counties where the propor tion of Negro population is small the amount is fairly equally divided between the two; but where the Negro population is large such division would leave the white children almost unpro vided for. The inevitable result is that the Negro children are almost unprovided for. In the fifteen States and the District of Columbia for which the amount paid in teachers salaries for the schools of each race could be obtained, a comparison of the amounts shows $10.32 for each white child and $2.89 for each colored child. Without attempting to determine how far this disproportion is the fault and how far it is only the misfortune of the Southern States, it is certainly a misfortune for the Negro children, and one that can be cured only by either pri vate charity or National appropriations. The great missionary movement in the North to provide for the education of the Negro race in the South has therefore certainly been called for, and as certainly should be continued. To criticise a movement which has been inspired by such gen erosity and sustained and carried on by such patient and con tinuous self-sacrifice may seem to some of my readers hyper critical. But one may applaud the splendid spirit which has inspired this great movement without being blind to the defects i8o SELECTED ARTICLES which have unfortunately accompanied it. Every Christian denomination has had its agency working in the South for the education and elevation of the Negro race, but they have worked without a common plan or any effective cooperation. In some localities they have multiplied competing educational agencies, while other localities have been left unprovided for. With a zeal not always directed by good judgment, they have tried to do everything at once. They have endeavored to trans plant from the North a complete system of education, including everything from the kindergarten to the university. But out of a list of thirty-three institutions bearing the name of college or university we are told that only three "have student bodies, teaching force and equipment, and income sufficient to warrant the characterization of college. " NEGRO EDUCATION * For Negro education as for white, but perhaps with more reason, it is urged that the federal government ought to come in with its powerful aid. The argument somewhat res-embles that of the blind Chinese beggar who was sent to the hospital where he recovered his sight, and then insisted that, having lost his livelihood, he must be made porter to the hospital. Aside from any claim to right, it is true that the problem of elevating the Negroes concerns the whole nation, and is a part of the long process of which emancipation was the beginning. Federal aid for colored schools, however, can never be brought about with out the consent of the Southern states, and they are not likely to ask for or to receive educational funds intended solely for the Negroes; while Northern members of Congress are not likely to vote for taxing their constituents who already pay two or three times as much per capita for education as the South, in order to make up the deficiencies of the other section. It is impossible to discover any way in which federal aid can be given to the Negroes without reviving sectional animosity, and it is a fair question whether such gifts could be so hedged about that they would not lead to a corresponding diminution in the amount spent by the Southern states. The Government grants to state 1 From The Southern South, by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of His tory, Harvard University. Chap. 22-23. Copyright by D. Appleton & Co. New York. 1910. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 181 agricultural colleges and experiment stations inure almost wholly to the advantage of the Whites; if a part of that money could be devoted to the education of the Negro, it might be helpful. The first objection to Negro education is that the race is incapable of any but elementary education and that all beyond it is wasted effort. Has the Negro as a race an inferior intel- lectuaL<ia4ity, a disability to respond to opportunities ? With all the effort to educate the race, and with due regard to the fact that the proportion who can read and write is rapidly rising, the Negroes are alarmingly ignorant, the most illiterate group in the whole United States; and therefore they need special atten tion. In addition, they are subjected to the smallest degree of home training, and enjoy the smallest touch with those concen trated forces of public opinion which force the community upward. On the other hand, the history of the last thirty-five years proves conclusively that the great mass of Negro children can assimilate the ordinary education of the common schools. Mr. Glenn, recently Superintendent of Education in Georgia, declares that "the Negro is ... teachable and susceptible to the same kind of mental improvement characteristic to any other race," and Thomas Nelson Page admits that the "Negro may individually attain a fair, and in uncommon instances a considerable degree, of mental development." About three- fourths of the young people have already learned to read. Many people intimately acquainted with the race assert that, although about as quick and receptive as white children up to twelve or fourteen years of age, the Negro children ad vance no further; that their minds thenceforward show an arrested development. Certainly anyone who visits their schools, city or rural, public or private, is struck with the slow ness of the average child of all ages to take in new impres sions, and with the intellectual helplessness of many of the older children. Whether this is due to the backwardness of the race, or to the uncouthness of home life, or to the want of other kinds of stimulus outside of school, is hard to deter mine. That there is any general arrested development is con tradicted by thousands of capable youths, mulatto and full-blood. The very slowness of the black children is a reason for giving them the best educational chance that they can take 182 SELECTED ARTICLES That is why the Southern Education Association which met in 1907 passed a unanimous resolution that: "We endorse the accepted policy of the States of the South in providing edu cational facilities for the youth of the Negro race, believing that whatever the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education must be an important factor in that solution." Another point of view is represented by the statement of Thomas Nelson Page that the great majority of the Southern Whites "unite further in the opinion that education such as they receive in the public schools, so far from appearing to uplift them, appears to be without any appreciable beneficial effect upon their morals or their standing as citizens." Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, as late as 1908 recommended the legislature to strike out all appropriations for Negro schools on the ground that "Money spent today for the maintenance of the public school for Negroes is robbery of the white man and a waste upon the Negro. It does him no good, but it does him harm. You take it from the toiling white men and women ; you rob the white child of the advantages it would afford him, and you spread it upon the Negro in an effort to make of the Negro that which God Almighty never intended should be made, and which man cannot accomplish." He asserts that the most serious Negro crime is due to "The manifestation of the Negro s aspiration for social equality, encouraged largely by the charac ter of free education in vogue, which the State is levying tribute upon the white people to maintain." A superintendent of schools in a Southern city holds that even grammar school education unsteadies the boys so that they leave home and drift away ; though he candidly acknowledges that it keeps the girls out of trouble and provides a respectable calling as teachers to many Negro women. Side by side with this feeling of disappointment or hos tility, as the case may be, is the conviction of most South ern people that enormous sacrifices have been made for the Negro schools. The estimate of the Bureau of Education is that in the thirty-five years since 1870 about $155,000,000 has been spent to support common schools for the Negro race, which is about a fifth of the amount spent on the white common schools in the same period, and not a hundredth of the supposed present wealth of the South ; in addition, heavy expenditures are THE NEGRO PROBLEM 183 made out of the public treasury for secondary and higher edu cation in which the Negro has a slender share. Another more specious complaint with regard to Negro education is that it is an unreasonable burden on the Whites to make them pay lor Negro education, and repeated at tempts have been made to lay it down as a principle that the Negroes shall have for the schools only what they pay in taxes. Thus Governor Hoke Smith, of Georgia, says : "Is it not folly to tax the people of Georgia for the purpose of con ducting a plan of education for the Negro which fails to recognize the difference between the Negro and the white man? Negro education should have reference to the Negro s future work, and especially in the rural districts it is prac ticable to make that education really the training for farm labor. If it is given this direction it will not be necessary to tax the white man s property for the purpose. A distribution of the school fund according to the taxes paid by each race would meet the requirements." This point of view involves a notion of the purpose of education and the reason for public schools so different from that which animates the North that it is hard to deal with the question impartially Massachusetts makes the largest expen diture per capita of its population in the whole Union, almost the largest expenditure per pupil, and certainly the largest ex penditure, except the more populous states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio ; Massachusetts spends on schools two-fifths as much every year as all the fifteen former slaveholding states put together. In that state people think that school taxes are not money spent but money saved : that they get back every cent of their $17,000,000 a year, several times over, in the increased efficiency of the people, in the diminution of crime, in the addition to the happiness of life. Schooling is insurance, schooling is the savings bank that can t break, schooling is that same kind of poor relief which prevents poverty. The last thing which any Massachusetts community thinks of reducing is school expenditure ! Furthermore, no principle is so ingrained in the North ern mind as that since education is for the public benefit, every taxpayer must contribute in proportion to his property. The rich corporations in New York or Pittsburgh, childless old 184 SELECTED ARTICLES couples, bachelor owners of great tracts of real estate, wealthy bondholders educating their children in private schools, never dream of disputing the school tax on the ground that they, as individuals, make no demands on the school fund. Still less would it enter the mind of any Northern com munity to divide itself into social classes, each of which should maintain its own schools. Such a proposition would go near to bring about a revolution. First of all, the non- taxpayer is a taxpayer ; it is the pons asinorum of finance that the poor are more heavily taxed in proportion to their means than any other class of the community, through indirect taxes and the enhanced rents of the real estate which they occupy. As a matter of fact, all the taxes eventually paid by the Negroes in the South probably amount only to a third or a half of the three millions or so spent upon their schools. What of that? Are the Southern states the only communities in the country in which a comparatively small part of the population pays most of the taxes; it is altogether probable that in Boston or New York the payers of nine-tenths of the taxes do not furnish one-tenth of the school children. Who educates the Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Greek, and Syrian children of those cities? The well-to-do part of the community, and it likewise is educating the Negroes principally for the advantage does it uncomplainingly, with its eyes open, gladly. The South of the white race, for the efficiency of the whole region in which the Whites have the greatest stake, and from which they derive the greater benefit, material and moral. A hot discussion has raged as to which of the two systems is most necessary to the Negro. The champions of the academic side dwell upon the right of the Negro to the same type of education as the white man. In many white minds lies a lurking feeling that academic training leads to discontent with present conditions; that industrial training is more likely to bring about contentment with the things that are. In fact, both types are most necessary. The fifty millions poured into the South by Northern generosity would have been worth while if they had done no more than maintain a Hampton which could train a Booker Washington. His ideas of thrift, attention to business, building decent houses, putting money into banks, are ideals specially needed by the Negro race ; but they also need the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 185 DuBois ideal of a share in the world s accumulated learning; of the development of their minds; of preparation to educate their fellows. That a supply must be kept up of people acquainted with the humanities, having some knowledge of literature, able to express themselves cogently, competent to train the succeed ing generations, is as true for the Negro race as for any other; if it is a low race it has the greater need for high training for its best members. In the last analysis most of the objections to Negro educa tion came down to the assertion that it puts the race above the calling where-unto God hath appointed it. The argument goes back to the unconscious presumption that the Negro was created to work the white man s field, and that even a little knowledge makes him ambitious to do something else. On the side of the Negro there are other complaints. One is that his education has not had a fair trial; that the dom inant South which lays and expends the taxes has not dealt with the Negro on an equal footing with white children; that the per capita expenditure on the black children in school is probably not more than a third of that for white children ; that the Negro schools have often been exploited by white politicians who have put in their own favorites as teachers ; that even where the best intentions prevail, the schools are manned by incom petent teachers; nowhere do the rural colored people enjoy an education to a degree and with the kind of teachers and ap pliances common in the country districts of the North; the race can hardly be spoiled by education, for it has never had it, not for a single year. Only about a third of the Negro children are at school on a given school day. Few of their rural schools hold more than five months, many not more than three, some not at all, and not over sixty to one hundred days in the year, irregularly placed, with teachers on the average not competent for the exceedingly elementary work that they do, the wonder is that children ever go a second day or acquire the rudiments of learning; yet many of them learn to read fluently, to write a good hand, and to do simple arithmetical problems. A race must have some intellectual quickness to pick up anything much with such a poor system. The arguments in favor of Negro education have so far been convincing to every Southern com munity, since Negro common schools are maintained and con siderable amounts are spent for secondary and higher education. i86 SELECTED ARTICLES 4 The arguments against Negro education destroy each other; they assume both that the Negro is too little and too much affected by the education that he receives. On one side we are told that he is incapable of anything more than the rudiments; on the other side, that education is a potent force making the Negro dangerous to the world. The incompetent can never be made dangerous by training into competence. Education can not change the race weaknesses of the Negro ; but it can give a better chance to the best endowed. ^ v NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR EDUCATION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE 1 We are likely to be misled by statistics of illiteracy showing the remarkable rapidity with which the Negro is acquiring the use of letters. Beginning practically at the zero point of literacy, at the time of his emancipation, the rate of literacy had arisen to 70.6 per cent in 1910. The rapidity with which the Negro race has progressed in literacy has been considered the most marvelous attainment of the past century. In the period of fifty years a considerable majority of its members have learned the use of .letters. This is a much larger percentage than is shown by many of the historic races of the Old World. Altho 70 per cent of the Negro race can read and write, com paratively a small fraction of that number actually make an efficient use of their attainments. In the states which require a literacy test for the exercise of franchise a great majority of Negroes are excluded because of their inability to meet this simple test, albeit the statistics of such states show a high average of Negro literacy. Statistics of illiteracy are misleading because the individual pride which indisposes him to have his ignorance acknowledged and recorded often leads the Negro to render a misleading answer to the query of the enumerator. At Camp Dodge, where there were thirty-six hundred Negro conscripts from Alabama, no one of whom, under the terms of conscription was over thirty-one years of age, the Young Men s Christian Association found that over 50 per cent of them were unable to read or write, notwithstanding the fact that the rate 1 By Kelly Miller, Dean of Howard University, Washington, D. C. National Education Association. Proceedings. 1918:555-8. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 187 of Negro illiteracy in Alabama, according to the federal statistics is only 41.1 per cent. There is one conspicuous outstanding fact, that the great majority of the Negro race are not able to make use of literary knowledge to improve their efficiency, or measure up to the standard of an enlightened citizenship. When we consider the woeful inadequacy of provision made for Negro education there is left no room to marvel because of this alarming result. According to reports just issued by the Bureau of Education, the state of Alabama expends $1.78 per capita for each Negro child, the state of Georgia $1.76 and Louisiana $1.31. These states expend from five to six times this amount per capita for the schooling of white children. It is conceded that even the provision for the education of the white children of the south is scarcely more than one-third of that for the education of a child in the North and West. If, for the duties of citizenship in the North, it requires $25 per capita to prepare a white child whose powers are reinforced by racial and social heredity, by what law or logic or common sense can it be expected that $1.31 will prepare a Negro child in Louisiana, who misses such reinforcement for the exercise of like functions? Without national aid to Negro education the Southern States must continue for generations under the heavy handicap of a comparatively ignorant and ill-equipped citizenship. It is a fatal mistake to suppose that the efficient education of the Negro can be conducted on a cheaper scale than that of the whites. The fact that his home environment and his general grade of life are lower, makes adequate educational facilities all the more expensive. Philanthropy, to a commendable degree has served to supple ment the deficiencies of the Southern States for Negro education. But neither the individual state nor the United States has the moral right to depend upon voluntary philanthropy to prepare its citizens for the responsible duties and obligations of citizenship. At best, philanthropy is only a temporary and inadequate make shift. As high as philanthropic contribution seems to be in the aggregate, it amounts to little more than one dose of medicine in the hospital, when compared to the magnitude of the task to which it is applied. It was unfair to the Southern States to require them, unaided to prepare the Negro for duties of citizenship at the time of his enfranchisement. The nation as a whole was responsible i88 SELECTED ARTICLES for the condition of the Negro. The fact that slavery became a localized institution was not due to the inherent deviltry of the South nor to the innate goodness of the North. Slavery was a national institution and became localized under the opera tion of climatic and economic law. It is equally unfair today to require the South to bear the heavy burden alone. The Negro problem is the nation s problem ; the remedy should be as com prehensive as the need. So far I have dealt with the demands for federal assistance to primary and elementary education, which imparts to each citizen a more or less well-understood minimum of necessary knowledge and standard of efficiency. But there is a higher sense in which the nation is obligated to the cause of Negro education. At the time of his emancipation the Negro was left wholly without wise guidance and direction. The sudden severance of the personal relation which had existed com placently under the regime of slavery left the Negro dependent upon his own internal resources for the leadership of his higher and better life. The discipline of slavery had illy fitted him for this function. It has imparted to him the process without the principle, the knack without the knowledge, the rule without the reason, the formula without the philosophy. If the blind lead the blind they will both fall into the ditch. For want of vision people perish. The professional class con stitutes the higher light of the race, and if that light within this race be darkness, how great is that darkness. The federal government should make some provision for those who are to stand in the high places of intellectual and moral authority. In the Western States, where philanthropical millionaires are scarce and where the average citizen is not able to support the system of education on the higher level, the state undertakes the task of maintaining higher institu tions of learning for the leaders in the various walks of life. The Negro is unable at present to maintain such institutions for his own race; he is dependent upon a remote and vicarious philanthropy. Already thru land-grant and other federal funds, the govern ment, in cooperation with the several states, is supporting agri cultural and mechanical colleges for white youth. Some pro vision is also made for the Negroes in the states where there is scholastic separation of the races. But these agricultural THE NEGRO PROBLEM 189 and mechanical colleges are essentially schools of secondary grade and cannot be maintained on a high level of collegiate basis. It is easy for the federal government to extend the application by establishing and maintaining at least one insti tution of technical character and collegiate grade which might serve as a finishing school for the work done in the several states. The Negro needs to be rooted and grounded in the principles of knowledge on the highest collegiate basis. The federal government has already acknowledged this responsi bility in the moderate support which it gives to Howard Uni versity as the national institution of the Negro race. This acknowledgement of a national responsibility, let us hope, augurs early ample provision for the education of a race in its up ward struggle to the stature of American citizenship. PROGRESS IN THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 1 The history of Negro education in the United States has been, until recently, largely the story of the planting of schools and colleges in the South by Northern missionaries, such as the agents of the Freedmen s Bureau, the American Missionary Association, etc., and their sustenance and varying success through Northern benevolence. Not unnaturally, these pioneer teachers were commonly regarded by the white Southerners as uninvited foreigners, meddlesome interlopers, and general trouble-makers, who spoiled good field hands and contented house servants by putting foolish notions into their heads. Yet, in spite of prejudice and opposition, the "Yankee" teachers held their ground, and have done their share in gradually con vincing the thoughtful people of the South that the Negro must be educated; that, as Dr. J. L. M. Curry, himself a Con federate soldier, tersely remarked, ignorance is not a cure for anything; that the illiterate Negro is a menace to his commun ity; that if people do not know enough to avoid the con taminations of disease and vice, they will frequently become diseased and vicious, and thus the carriers and disseminators of every kind of evil. Tt is now increasingly perceived that the Negro race has 1 By James Z. Gregg. Weekly Review. 3:52-3. July 14, 1920. IQO SELECTED ARTICLES always had and always will have its own leaders; and that the better trained these leaders are, intellectually and morally, the better for their race, for the South, and for the nation. Ac cordingly, such institutions as Fisk at Nashville, Howard at Washington, Shaw at Raleigh, Spelman and Morehouse at At lanta, and Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes have won a measure of Southern sympathy and support which was denied to them in the earlier days. Still further, in the field of pub lic education, the support given to Negro schools from the tax funds is distinctly more generous than it used to be. The dis tribution of public money for school purposes is still regret tably unequal, the per capita expenditure in the Southern States for white children being four times that for colored children ($10.32: $2.89). But the tide, happily, is turning; with the encouragement and help of the General Education Board, the Slater Fund, the Jeanes Fund, the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Daniel Hand Fund (administered by the American Missionary Association), and similar agencies, a great broadening and deepening of the whole work of Southern Negro education is in progress, and the States, counties, and municipalities of the South are appro priating larger and larger sums for the maintenance of colored public schools. Lake Charles, Louisiana, not long ago voted school bonds to an amount of $200,000, of which $150,000 are to be spent for the improvement of Negro schools. The larger cities of the South are ceasing to depend wholly upon denomi national and other private institutions for the providing of secondary instruction for Negroes, and one after another are establishing colored high schools. The Jeanes Fund, whose special object is the aiding of small rural colored schools, par ticularly through the employment of "supervising industrial teachers" who visit the schools and homes of their counties, is expending this year (1919-20) $47,634, to which the public authorities are adding for the same purposes $44,813. These county supervising teachers introduce simple home industries such as matweaving, the making of rudimentary house furni ture, needlework, better cooking, etc. ; give lessons in sanitation and personal cleanliness; encourage the painting and white washing of houses, barns, and fences, the improvement of school houses and school grounds, the extension of school terms (which are often not more than four or five months), THE NEGRO PROBLEM 191 gardening, clubs for pig raising, canning, and many other worthy purposes. They are commonly the leaders in every enterprise for community betterment; in 1918-19 they raised for various school improvements no less than $324,896. This year there are 210 of them in 204 counties of 13 Southern States, not including 65 other counties where similar work is now being maintained without the assistance of the Jeanes Fund. The Slater Fund in like manner cooperates with the public school authorities in the maintenance of the so-called "county training schools," which are rural high schools emphasizing industrial training. The first three of these schools were estab lished in 1911-12. There were seventy last year; there are one hundred seven this year; next year there will probably be one hundred fifty. This year the Slater Fund is contributing for salaries in these county training schools $53,060; and the public authorities $239,252. The General Education Board is giving liberally toward the equipment of these county training schools ($61,290 in 1919-20) ; it supplements the resources of the Jeanes Fund, aids some fifty summer schools for Negro teachers, contributes annually to about sixteen colored colleges and normal schools, and provides the salaries of the State agents for rural colored schools in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. These State agents are representative white men of progressive spirit, appointed by the State govern ments and working under the State superintendents of public instruction. They are responsible for the care and improve ment of the Negro rural schools, and have a large influence for good. In one way and another the General Education Board is disbursing almost a million dollars annually for the benefit of Negro education. The income of the Daniel Hand Fund is expended under the direction of the officers of the American Missionary Asso ciation for the maintenance of its various schools and colleges for Negroes. The Phelps-Stokes Fund has expended more than half of its income for objects connected with Negro education. Among these are the preparation and publication in cooperation with the United States Bureau of Education of the exhaustive and authoritative Report on Negro Education by Dr. Thomas Jesse 192 SELECTED ARTICLES Jones, issued in two volumes in 1916 (Bulletins 38 and 39 of the Bureau of Education) ; the establishment of fellowships at the University of Virginia and the University of Georgia for the study of Negro sociology; the gift of $10,000 to the George Peabody College for Teachers at Nashville to promote "direct and helpful contact with the actual work of representative institutions of Negro education"; and financial assistance of the Southern University Race Commission, the Southern Publicity Committee, and other organizations engaged in constructive work for the betterment of interracial relations. Mention should also be made of the generous gifts of Julius Rosen wald, of Chicago, particularly those for the erection of a better type of Negro school house. In 1914, Mr. Rosenwatcl offered to give a sum not exceeding $300 to any community toward the cost of a new school building for colored children, provided the people of the community, out of public or private funds, should raise an equal sum. Under this plan, up to June i, 1919, 751 school houses had been built in eleven Southern States at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars. The Smith-Hughes law for the promotion of vocational training and the Smith-Lever law for the support of "extension work" (i.e. instruction in agriculture and home economics out side the schools) are operating with increasing effectiveness for the benefit of the Negroes in the rural districts. Those persons who are most familiar with the conditions realize that the chief hope of the South, so far as its agricultural prosperity, is con cerned, lies in increasing the efficiency of its Negro farm labor. This means not only more and better education in the schools, but a general lifting of the standards of household life. Another serious need, to which Monroe N. Work of Tuskegee has recently called attention, is that of more careful provision for the education of the large Negro population that is neither strictly rural nor urban, being gathered in incorporated towns and villages of less than 2,500 people. There are more than 3,000 of these quasi-urban communities in the South, containing at least a third of the whole number of Negro children living below Mason and Dixon s line. Several especially hopeful signs may be noted in conclusion. First, the old antagonism between industrial and classical edu cation is fading away. People now understand more commonly that the majority of every race need to be trained for skillful THE NEGRO PROBLEM 193 handwork and also to be given such discipline of the mind and conscience as shall insure thoughtfulness and trustworthiness. This statement obviously carries the corollary that in every race the especially talented minority should rise into the professions of teaching, preaching, law, medicine, engineering, etc., and that for their work they too should be well trained. Second, the Negroes themselves are supporting and improving their schools and colleges, public and private, with remarkable gen erosity, energy, and intelligence. The progress in this respect which has been made within the past five years is surprising. Third, the best white people of the South, as of the North, are giving proof of their belief in Negro education by their deeds as well as by their words. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 1 "Education is leading souls to what is best and making what is best out of them," says Ruskin. So also Emerson: "Man is an endogenous plant, and grows like the palm, from within outward; his education, his life, are his unfolding." If God is the author and maker of men, it certainly must be the natural thing, the Christian thing, to draw forth, to help unfold all that is highest and most august in every man physical, intel lectual, moral. And this evolution of the man ; this making ready of the whole man for his best in life in however lowly a sphere, is what we mean by the higher education. The Negro is a man. Therefore, educate him as a man. Do not force education upon him. Do not veneer him. Simply open the door to highest opportunity in the intellectual life. Let him have a man s chance. The capacity of the Negro for the higher education has been settled. We have learned, however, to distinguish between the intellectual capacity with which God has endowed all races, and the intellectual and moral equipment of a race which is the outcome of civilization and environment. The last danger is the over-education of the Negro. We have only touched the fringes of the race. His real education is a task of generations. However, although the capacity of the exceptional Negro for 1 By Wilbur P. Thirkield, D.D., LL.D. President, Howard University, Washington, D.C. Religious Education. 6:420-3. December, 19 n. 194 SELECTED ARTICLES higher education has been demonstrated, the trend of opinion in some quarters has set strongly away from college education, to elementary and industrial training for the race. This may furnish reason for setting forth at this time some arguments in favor of the higher education, not as opposed to, but as really essential to, permanent and effective results in elementary training and to the industrial and civic future of the race. 1. On the higher education the very existence of any educa tion depends. No people will long maintain common schools for primary education, that does not possess and sustain colleges for the higher education. The fountain head of learning is not the common school, but the college. The college not only fur nishes the trained teacher, but gives motive and inspiration for the common school. Without these trained teachers, millions expended by the State for public education must largely go to waste. The Negro is fast becoming his own teacher. The common schools in every Southern State are now largely under his control and direction. Teachers Institutes are conducted by him. Many of the normal schools, academies, and colleges are now in his hands. How imperative, therefore, that men of disciplined mind and tested scholarship lead in this epochal work that is to mold the thought and shape the character of the rising generation. 2. In the interest of pure industrialism for the Negro, this higher training is a necessity. He needs the best discipline of his mental powers to fit him for the inevitable era of strenuous competition in the South, with which he must soon battle. If the Negro is to hold his own, he must have behind his brawny hand and strong right arm, the trained mind to direct the hand, and the disciplined soul to control the arm for highest issues. Is every Negro to be forever content to remain a hewer of wood and never a drawer of dividends? Is every Negro to be ever led and never a leader? For his leaders and teachers in the industries, this discipline of mind and spirit is imperative. To train the mechanics of a race of nine millions, is an endless task. But it is possible to train the master mechanics, who may go forth with thoroughly disciplined minds, as the teachers of mechanics, and as the organizers and inspirers of their people on higher industrial lines. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 195 Besides all this, even the industrial schools, for which we may well plead as essential to the equipment of a race for the struggle of life on a footing of equality of opportunity with other races, are dependent for their teachers upon the colleges which offer the higher training to the exceptional men and women of the race. Nearly all of the most effective mem bers of the faculty in the most famous of these industrial schools in the South, are graduates of the colleges which have given opportunity for their equipment as teachers. 3. The higher education is necessary for the raising up of a trained leadership for the race. The words of Dr. Henry Drummond are especially applicable to the Negro at this time: "God is all for quality; man is for quantity. But the im mediate need of the world at this moment is not more of us, but, if I may use the expression, a better brand of us. To secure ten men of an improved type would bd better than if we had ten thousand of the average Christians distributed all over the world." Ten Negroes of an improved type can do more for their race and that means for humanity than ten thousand average Negroes distributed over America. Every race is dependent on its leaders. No race among us is so much so as the Negro. For the masses there are no libraries ; no highly developed press ; no superior schools ; no large learned class. Therefore, for their opinions, the masses are dependent upon their leaders. The Negro must either take his opinions ready-made from the white man, or be so educated as to be capable of originating and enforcing his own opinions. And the leader needs to be taught to think; not to think about things, but to think through things; to form independent judgments; to reach logical con clusions; to know really for himself; to achieve his destiny; to inspire and lead his fellows on to larger life and nobler usefulness through unselfish service. This small body of men of trained intellect, of balanced judgment; the educators of their fellows, their teachers along higher industrial lines; the keen students of the sociological problems of the race; the masterful defenders of the rights and hopes of their people these few are to determine the destiny of their race. As the result of personal observation, over a score of years largely spent in the South, I would affirm that the sanest and ip6 SELECTED ARTICLES safest leaders and helpers of the Negro race are the men and women who have come from our colleges and professional schools. Go into any Southern city where colored teachers, preachers, and physicians are engaged in work among their people, and you will find them, in most instances, by their conservative attitude and constructive work, standing for the best interests of both races. The Negro race needs men of higher training for the pro fessions. Broad-minded men of the South who have the best interests of both races at heart, recognize this fact. It must be self-evident that a race of millions, of whom thousands are gaining wealth and property, must have legal advisers among their own people lawyers who will teach them to avoid litigation in which they love to indulge; honest, capable lawyers intent on protecting them in their ignorance and help ing them to their rights. For physicians the race needs the best men; scholarly men with clear heads, trained faculties, accurate judgment, balanced powers. To gain the confidence of their own race, to com mand the respect of white physicians, the highest ability and training are demanded. Furthermore, the awful mortality of the race calls loudly for physicians prepared by the higher training for the most careful study of the diseases peculiar to the Negro. Physicians who come in close touch with their own people are needed for the investigation of their environment and physical condition, and for the application of preventives for the lessening of disease and for stopping the frightful mortality that decimates the race. The demand for a trained and consecrated ministry is im perative. The most serious problem before the race is to hold the progressive, aspiring Negroes of the rising generation to the Church, through a ministry, too large a percentage of whom, according to Dr. Booker Washington, are not fitted morally or intellectually for that office. The highest qualities of leader ship are required to meet the demands for the religious, civil and social reforms that must come for the redemption of the race. The minister is the center of power. The preacher now is their constituted leader. To hold this leadership de mands a ministry that proves by its masterful grasp and brave treatment of all questions that make for the civil and moral THE I,EGRO PROBLEM 197 uplift of the people, its right to leadership. As teachers of the Word, and as leaders of their people into larger faith and truth and righteousness of life, ministers of intellectual breadth and spiritual vision are needed. To what extent, then, shall the higher education be at tempted? We answer, only to that extent that shall give to- all those who are thoroughly equipped in the preparatory schools and have the ambition and the capacity for the higher train- \ ing opportunity to unfold the best and divinest that is in them. Say not to any man or set of men, nor to any race: This or that kind of education is good enough for thee and thine. This is unphilosophical, unjust, un-American. Let the gates to largest knowledge and culture be thrown wide open. Let each man for himself enter. Set no limits. Let each man, by his active brain and aspiring soul, set his own limits. And, further, let us not forget that it is only generations of discipline and patient education of the people through thoroughly equipped teachers, that will lift the masses into the larger and higher fellowship of the intellectual life. We have too often made the mistake of confounding the educa tion of the individual with the mental and moral equipment of a race. The teaching of sociology is that, while we may educate the individual in a few years, the intellectual and moral equipment of a race is a question of generations, and it may be of centuries. NEGRO SUFFRAGE DISFRANCHISING THE NEGRO x The misery of the South in the decade following the war was largely trareaijte to Negro suffrage and, what is more significant, laid the foundation for successful attacks against the whole policy of Negro suffrage. The spectacle of the South during those years caused sober men to wonder if de mocracy was a failure and if true democracy did really involve universal suffrage. And if it did, was not the price paid alto gether too great when measured in terms of political vice, cor ruption, villainy, and outrage? As things turned out it seemed that the term "democracy" was no less a mocking word when applied to southern commonwealths dominated by thieving, irre sponsible, hopelessly ignorant blacks than it was in earlier times when those same blacks were slaves. An account of this riot of corruption cannot be given here. The Negroes, aided .by vicious carpetbaggers from the North, got possession of the state legislatures, and the powers of the government were prostituted to most unholy purposes. Most of the wrongdoing consisted in various methods of pil fering the state treasury and exploiting available resources. But every evil deed simply made more certain the coming of that reaction destined to drive the Negro from the polls. His enfranchisement had been secured by artificial means and not by the normal process of building up a popular support. And how very significant it is that such artificial methods were unable to establish a condition that would endure! It is not proper to lay all the unfortunate results of Negro suffrage at the door of the Negro. His gullibility and ignorance were frequently exploited by designing whites with ulterior motives. It has been pointed out before that many politicians were no doubt seeking the good of their party and their own political future rather than abstract justice for the Negro. 1 From History of Suffrage in the United States, by Kirk Harold Porter, p. 191-227. Copyright by the University of Chicago Press. 1918. 200 SELECTED ARTICLES Respectable statesmen, of course, did not countenance the gross corruption in the southern legislature, but they were slow to disapprove the actions of faithful henchman such as the Negroes proved to be. In order to maintain ascendancy it was desirable and ex pedient to keep the Negro from exercising the suffrage. This the southerner set out to do by various interesting methods. The activities of the Ku Klux have been immortalized in book and play. Less dramatic were the practices of brute violence and intimidation, clever manipulation of ballots and ballot boxes, the deliberate theft of ballot boxes, false counting of votes, repeating, the use of "tissue" ballots, illegal arrests the day before election, and the sudden removing of the polls. All the many expedients that clever men could devise were used to render ineffective the attempted voting of the Negro. By one means or another the desire of Congress to secure suf frage for the Negro was utterly defeated. The South sought to justify this process of exclusion. The firm conviction grew and crystallized in the minds of the southerners that the Negro, being of an inferior race, suffered under a natural incapacity to perform political duties. Here is found the beginning of the Negro problem as it exists today. The real objection to Negro suffrage was not a dislike of an ignorant electorate but a keen apprehension that Negroes en joying political power would utterly demoralize the state. Some leading Negroes have concurred in this belief and have urged their fellows not to insist upon exercising political power. They emphasize the evil results of Negro suffrage and active participation in politics and deplore the fact that good laborers and artisans are spoiled to make wretched politicians. Another purely utilitarian consideration from the Negro s point of view is that he would probably gain more in the long run by sub mitting to white control. Another argument in defense of the policy of driving out the Negro is developed by certain writers. It is said that many of the better element in southern states wanted the Negro dis franchised in order that they might overcome the corrupt group of professional politicians in their own party. It was absolutely necessary for all whites to stand together if the Negroes voted, in order to avoid the menace of black control. But the solid white group was. manipulated by corrupt politicians. If the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 201 Negro were disfranchised, the better element of whites could cope with these undesirables and clean up politics. Until that time the need of self-preservation required them all to stand together. And a very significant outcome of the suppression of the Negro vote was the break from white bosses. The better class no longer was obliged to submit to corrupt domi nation in order to save itself from the Negroes. Champions of the Negro, on the other hand, pointed out that the men of the South had failed to prove that they were the Negro s best friends. It was said that the Negro needed the suffrage in order to defend themselves from persecution. The South was his best friend only when he consented to be a virtual slave. A comment on the activities of white men in driving out the Negro vote occurs in a paper of the American Negro Academy and is summed up in this way: "The significance of the undoing of the reconstruction is that ... it marked the arrogant reassertion of the malignant and desperate purpose of the southern oligarchy, trained in the absolution of slave- mastery, to despoil the Negro of the rights of citizenship, and to reduce him to a state of serfdom." Tn fact, the war had scarcely ended when southern states began to manifest their friendly attitude toward the Negro and pass legislation for his special benefit. In Florida in 1866 Negroes could be arrested if they had no visible means of support, or led an "idle, immoral, or profligate course of life." They could be whipped, put in pillory, and bound out in service by the courts. In Virginia any justice of the peace could issue a warrant for a Negro to be brought before him, and if the court found him to be a vagrant he could be bound out to service. A vagrant was one who lived idly and refused to work for current wages. In Louisiana any justice of the peace could have a Negro brought before him, and if the courts were satisfied by "competent testimony" that the fellow was a vagrant he could be bound out. Of course such acts as these did prevail after the recon struction governments were in control, but when the whites got back in power the same spirit manifested itself in somewhat less offensive and more covert ways. The inferior courts of justice, the pettiest officials, and those representatives of the government with whom the Negro was in constant and intimate contact were much inclined to persecute and discriminate against him 202 SELECTED ARTICLES in all his petty conflicts with the state, and all this chiefly because he came to have no power at the polls. But the question arises at once: How did the South succeed in excluding the Negro from the polls in view of the war amendments? Did these illegal practices persist and effectively achieve their end? In brief, they did succeed. They succeeded for twenty years or more or until the southern states undertook to revise their constitutions and make the exclusion of Negroes really legal. However, these extra-legal or illegal practices could not have persisted had it not been for the attitude of the federal courts. Tribunals very early began to exhibit a tendency to keep "hands off" the southerners and not force the issue with them. All the burden of proof was laid upon the Negro to show that he was being denied a right, and the courts took advantage of technicalities and ambiguities to make the Negro s problem all the harder. To return to the new phase of the Negro suffrage issue the demand for reduction of representation in proportion to the number of Negroes disfranchised. Since the movement for Negro suffrage has been diverted into this channel and lost, as it were, it is appropriate to consider the merits of the problem. In the first place the question is whether the Fourteenth Amendment is intended to operate literally whenever suffrage is reduced. It has been argued very ably that such is not the case, that it cannot be that anyone intended to reduce repre sentation when suffrage was denied on account of crime, illit eracy, etc. Other writers have developed the proposition that it makes no difference what was meant, for the Fifteenth Amendment has superseded and made imperative that clause of the Fourteenth. However, if the Fourteenth Amendment intended only to reduce representation when suffrage was denied on account of race, color, etc., the Fifteenth Amendment, if not abrogating it, at least paralyzed it, and the Fourteenth could not operate, for its operation would imply the existence of an unconstitutional state of affairs. But if one looks at the Fourteenth Amendment and merely considers exactly what it says, not what it may mean, but what it says in plain, blunt English, there is no argument left. It then looms as a very unwise measure, practically impossible of being put into effect- but there nevertheless. The situation has aroused violent protest in the North. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 203 Magazine writers have written about it, speakers have discussed it in public, and civic clubs have passed resolutions about it. In fact, the cause of Negro suffrage has been swallowed up in the argument over the practical political effect of his dis- franchisement. The South is grossly over-represented. The number of voters in the South electing representatives to Congress is very much smaller than the number of voters in the North electing an equal number of representatives. The southerner, however, says that congressmen do not represent voters alone, as the northerner s argument implies, but all the people and hence all should be counted whether they vote or not. It is none of the northerner s business how the southern districts select their representatives. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment probably never foresaw the overwhelming difficulties in the way of enforcing it. These problems can only be hinted at and references made to fuller treatments of the case. It is almost impossible to discover how many men are really disfranchised. Many do not vote because of choice. And when it is attempted to enumerate those disfranchised for some specific cause the problem is intensified. A literal application of the amendment would rad ically alter our political concept of representation, involving representation based on voting population and not on the actual population. The bills introduced in Congress demanding the application of the Fourteenth Amendment exhibit an utter lack of appre ciation of the difficulties involved, and no solution has yet been offered. It is one of the most serious problems of the day and threatens much trouble, especially if the Democratic party remains in power. The Republicans would be likely to become more and more restive under the conviction that Democratic power is being supported by unfair methods. UNDOING OF RECONSTRUCTION In the meantime, a process had been instituted in the Southern states that has given the most distinctive character to the last period in the undoing of reconstruction. The gen- 1 From article by William A. Dunning. Atlantic Monthly. 88:437-49- October, 1901. 204 SELECTED ARTICLES eration-long discussions of the political conditions in the South have evoked a variety of explanations by the whites of the disappearance of the black vote. These different explanations have of course all been current at all times since reconstruction was completed, and have embodied different degrees of plausi bility and truth in different places. But it may fairly be said that in each of the three periods into which the undoing of reconstruction falls one particular view has been dominant and characteristic. In the first period that of the Ku Klux and the Mississippi plan, it was generally maintained by the whites that the black vote was not suppressed, and that there was no political motive behind the disturbances that occurred. The victims of murder, bulldozing, and other violence were repre sented as of bad character and socially dangerous, and their treatment as merely incident to their own illegal and violent acts and expressive of the tendency to self-help instead of judicial procedure, which had always been manifest in Southern life, and had been aggravated by the demoralization of war time. After 1877 when the falling off in the Republican vote became so conspicuous, the phenomenon was explained by the assertion that the Negroes had seen the light, and had become Democrats. Mr. Lamar gravely maintained, in a famous contro versy with Mr. Elaine, that the original Republican theory as to the educative influence of the ballot had been proved cor rect by the fact that the enfranchised race had come to recognize that their true interests lay with the Democratic party ; the Republicans were estopped, he contended, by their own doctrine from finding fault with the result. A corollory of this idea that the Negroes were Democrats was generally adopted later in the period, to the effect that since there was practically no opposition to the democracy, the Negroes had lost interest in politics. They had got on the road to economic prosperity, and were too busy .with their farms and their growing bank accounts to care for other things. Whatever of soundness there may have been in any of these explanations, all have been superseded, during the last decade, by another, which, starting with the candid avowal that the whites are determined to rule, concedes that the elimination of the blacks from politics has been effected by intimidation, fraud, and any other means, legal or illegal, that would promote the desired end. This admission has been accompanied by expres sions of sincere regret that illegal means were necessary, and by THE NEGRO PROBLEM 205 a general movement toward clothing with the forms of law the enfranchisement which had been made a fact without them. In 1890 just when the Republicans in Congress were pushing their project for renewing the federal control of elections, Mississippi made the first step in a new direction. Her consti tution w r as so revised as to provide that, to be a qualified elector, a citizen must produce evidence of having paid his taxes (includ ing a poll tax) for the past two years, and must, in addition, "be able to read any section in the constitution of this state, or ... be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof." Much might be said in favor of such an alternative intelligence qualification in the abstract: the mere ability to read is far from conclusive of intellectual capacity. But the peculiar form of this particular provision was confessedly adopted, not from any consideration of its abstract excellence, but in order to vest in the election officers the power of disfranchising illiterate blacks without dis franchising illiterate whites. In practice, the white must be stupid indeed who cannot satisfy the official demand for a "reasonable interpretation," while the Negro who can satisfy it must be a miracle of brilliancy. Mississippi s bold and undisguised attack on Negro suffrage excited much attention. In the South it met with practically unanimous approval among thoughtful and conscientious men, who had been distressed by the false position in which they had long been placed. And at the North, public opinion, accepting with a certain satirical complacency the confession of the South erners that their earlier explanations of conditions had been false, acknowledged in turn that its views as to the political capacity of the blacks had been irrational, and manifested no disposition for a new crusade in favor of Negro equality. The action of Mississippi raised certain questions of constitutional law which had to be tested before her solution of the race problem could be regarded as final. Like all the other seceded states, save Tennessee, she had been readmitted to representation in Con gress, after reconstruction, on the express condition that her constitution should never be so amended as to disfranchise any who were entitled to vote under the existing provisions. The new amendment was a most explicit violation of this condition. Further, so far as the new clause could be shown to be directed against the Negroes as a race, it was in contravention of the 206 SELECTED ARTICLES Fifteenth Amendment. These legal points had been elaborately discussed in the state convention, and the opinion had been adopted that, since neither race, color, nor previous condition of servitude was made the basis of discrimination in the suffrage, the Fifteenth Amendment had no application, and that the prohibition to modify the constitution was entirely beyond the powers of Congress, and was therefore void. When the Supreme Court of the United States was required to consider the new clause of Mississippi s constitution, it adopted the views of the convention on these points, and sustained the validity of the enactment. There was still one contingency that the whites had to face in carrying out the new policy. By the Fourteenth Amendment it is provided that if a state restricts the franchise her representation in Congress shall be proportionately reduced. There was a strong sentiment in Mississippi as there is through out the South, that a reduction of representation would not be an intolerable price to pay for the legitimate extinction of Negro suffrage. But loss of Congressmen was by no means longed for, and the possibility of such a thing was very carefully considered. The phrasing of the franchise clause may not have been actually determined with reference to this matter; but it is obvious that the application of the Fourteenth Amendment is, to say the least, not facilitated by the form used. Incidentally to the conditions which produced the Populist party, the whites of South Carolina, in the years succeeding 1890, became divided into two intensely hostile factions. The weaker manifested a purpose to draw on the Negroes for support and began to expose some of the devices by which the blacks had been prevented from voting. Instead of competing with its rival for the black vote, the stronger faction, headed by Mr. Tillman, promptly took the ground that South Carolina must have a "white man s government," and put into effect the new Mississippi plan. A constitutional amendment was adopted in 1895 which applied the "understanding clause" for two years and after that required of every elector either the ability to read and write or the ownership of property to the amount of three hundred dollars. In the convention which framed this amendment, the sentiment of the whites revealed very clearly, not only through its content, but especially through the frank and emphatic form in which it was expressed, that the aspira- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 207 tions of the Negro to equality in political rights would never again receive the faintest recognition. Since the action of South Carolina, two other states, Louis iana and North Carolina have excluded the blacks from the suffrage by analogous constitutional amendments; and in two others still, Alabama and Virginia, conventions are considering the subject as this article goes to press (August 1901). By Louisiana, however, a new method was devised for exempting the whites from the effect of the property and intelligence tests. The hereditary principle was introduced into the franchise by the provision that right to vote should belong, regardless of education or property to every one whose father or grand father possessed the right on January I, 1867. This "grand father clause" has been adopted by North Carolina, also, and in a modified form and for a very limited time, by the conven tion in Alabama. The basis for the hereditary right in this latter state has been found, not in the possession of the fran chise by the ancestry, but in the fact of his having been a soldier in any war save that with Spain. As compared with the Mississippi device for evading the Fifteenth Amendment the "grandfather clause" has the merit of incorporating the dis crimination in favor of the whites in the written law rather than referring it to the discretion of the election officers. With the enactment of these constitutional amendments by the various states the political equality of the Negro is becoming as extinct in law as it has long been in fact, and the undoing of reconstruction is nearing completion. PROBLEMS OF CITIZENSHIP l Let me lay down this general proposition: Nowhere in the South today is the Negro cut off legally, as a Negro, from the ballot. Legally, today, any Negro who can meet the comparatively slight requirements as to educa tion, or property, or both, can cast his ballot on a basis of equality with the white man. I have emphasized the word legally, for I know the practical difficulties which confront the Negro voter in many parts of the South. In the enforcement 1 From article by Ray Stannard Baker, Amherst, Mass. Annals of the American Academy. 49:93-104. September, 1913. 208 SELECTED ARTICLES of the law, the legislative ideal is still pegged out far beyond the actual performance. Now, then, if we are interested in the problem of democ racy, we have two courses open to us. We may think the laws are unjust to the Negro, and incidentally to the poor white man as well. If we do we have a perfect right to agitate for a change, and we can do much to disclose, without heat, the actual facts regarding the complicated and vexatious legislative situation in the South, as regards the suffrage. Every change in the legislation upon this subject should, indeed, be jealously watched that the principle of political equality between the races be not legally curtailed. The doctrine laid down in the fifteenth amendment must, at any hazard, be maintained. But personally, and I am here voicing a profound conviction, I think our emphasis at present should be laid upon the prac tical rather than upon the legal aspect of the problem. I think we should take advantage of the widely prevalent feeling in the South that the question of suffrage has been settled, legally, for some time to come ; of the desire on the part of many Southern people, both white and colored, to turn aside from the discussion of the political status of the Negro. In short, let us for the time being accept the laws as they are, and* build upward from that point. Let us turn our attention to the practical task of finding out why it is that the laws we already have are not enforced, and how best to secure an honest vote for every Negro and equally for every "poor white" man, (and there are thousands of him) who is able to meet the require ments, but who for one reason or another does not or can not exercise his rights. Taking up this side of the question we shall discover two entirely distinct difficulties: First, we shall find many Negroes, and indeed hundreds of thousands of white men as well, who might vote, but who through ignorance, or the inability or unwillingness to pay poll taxes, or from mere lack of interest, disfranchise themselves. The second difficulty is peculiar to the Negro. It consists in open or concealed intimidation on the part of the white men who control the election machinery. In many places in the South today no Negro, no matter how well qualified, would dare to present himself for registration. When he does he is often rejected for some trivial or illegal reason. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 209 Thus we have to meet a vast amount of apathy and ignorance and poverty on the one hand, and the threat of intimidation on the other. First of all, for it is the chief injustice as between white and colored men with which we have to deal an injustice which the law already makes punishable how shall we meet the matter of intimidation? As I have said already the door of the suf frage is everywhere legally open to the Negro, but a certain sort of Southerner bars the passageway. He stands there and, law or no law, keeps out many Negroes who might vote, and he represents in most parts of the South the prevailing public opinion. Shall we meet..,ihis situation by force? What force is avail able? Shall the North go down and fight the South? But the North today has no feeling but friendship for the South. More than that, and I say it with all seriousness, because it represents what I have heard wherever I have gone in the North to make inquiries regarding the Negro problem, the North, wrongly or rightly, is today more than half convinced that the South is right in imposing some measure of limita tion upon the franchise. There is now, in short, no disposition anywhere in the North to interfere in the internal affairs of the South not even with the force of public opinion. What other force, then, is to be invoked? Shall the Negro revolt? Shall he migrate? The very asking of these questions suggests the inevitable reply. We might as well, here and now, dismiss the idea of force, expressed or implied. There are times of last resort which call for force (and the time may come in the future when force will again have to be applied to cure injustice) ; but this plainly is not such a time. What other alternatives are there? Accepting the laws as they are, then, there are two methods of procedure, neither sensational, nor exciting. The underlying causes of the trouble in the country being plainly ignorance and prejudice, we must meet ignorance and prejudice with their antidotes : education and association. Every effort should be made to extend free education both among Negroes and white people. A great extension of educa tion is now going forward in the South. The Negro is not by any means getting his full share (indeed he is getting shame- 210 SELECTED ARTICLES fully less than his share), but as certainly as sunshine makes things grow, education in the South will produce tolerance. That there is already such a growing tolerance no one who has talked with the leading white men of the South can doubt. The old fire-eating, Negro-baiting leaders of the Tillman- Vardaman type are passing away: a far better and broader group is coming into power. From an able Southern white man, a resident of New Orleans, I received only recently a letter containing these words : "I believe we have reached the bottom, and a sort of quiescent period. I think it most likely that from now on there will be a gradual increase in the Negro vote. And I honestly believe that the less said about it, the surer the in crease will be." Education, and by education I mean education of all sorts, industrial, professional, classical, in accordance with each man s talents will not only produce breadth and tolerance, but it will help to cure the apathy which now keeps so many thousands of both white men and Negroes from the polls : for it will show them that it is necessary for every man to exercise all the political rights within his reach. For if he fails voluntarily to take advantage of the rights he already has, how shall he acquire more rights? As ignorance must be met by education, so prejudice must be met with its antidote, which is association. Democracy does not consist in mere voting, but in association, the spirit of common effort, of which the ballot is a visible expression. When we come to know one another we soon find that the points of likeness are much more numerous than the points of difference. And this human association for the common good, which is democracy, is difficult to bring about anywhere, whether among different classes of white people, or between white people and Negroes. After the Atlanta riot I attended a number of conferences between leading white men and leading colored men. It is true these meetings bore evidence of awkwardness and em barrassment, for they were among the first of that sort to take place in the South, but they were none the less valuable. A white man told me after one of these meetings: "I did not know there were any such sensible Negroes in the South." And THE NEGRO PROBLEM 211 a Negro told me that it was the first time in his life that he had ever heard a Southern white man reason in a friendly manner with a Negro concerning their common difficulties. More and more these associations of white and colored men, at certain points of contact, must and will come about. Already, in connection with various educational and business projects in the South, white men and colored men meet on common grounds, and the way has been opened to a wider mutual under standing. And it is common enough now, where it was unheard of a few years ago, for both white men and Negroes to speak from the same platform in the South. I have attended a num ber of such meetings. Thus slowly, awkwardly at first for two centuries of prejudice are not easily overcome the white man and Negro are coming to know each other, not as master and servant, but as co-workers. These things cannot be forced. One reason why the white man and the Negro have not got together more rapidly in the South than they have, is be cause they have tried always to meet at the sorest points. When sensible people-, who must live together whether or no, find that there are points at which they cannot agree, it is the part of wisdom to avoid those points, and to meet upon other and common interests. Upon no other terms, indeed, can a democracy exist, for in no imaginable future state will in dividuals cease to disagree with one another upon something less than half of all the problems of life. "Here we all live together in a great country," say the apostles of this view, "let us all get together and develop it. Let the Negro do his best to educate himself, to own his own land, and to buy and sell with the white people in the fairest possible way." Now, buying and selling, land ownership and common material pursuits may not be the highest points of contact be tween man and man, but they are real points, and they help to give men an idea of the worth of their fellows, white or black. How many times, in the South, I have heard a white man speak in high admiration for some Negro farmer who had been successful, or of some Negro blacksmith who was a worthy citizen, or some Negro doctor who was a leader of his race. Out of crude points of contact will grow an ever finer and finer spirit of association and of common and friendly knowl edge. And that will lead inevitably to an extension upon the 212 SELECTED ARTICLES soundest possible basis of Negro franchise. I know cases where white men have urged intelligent Negroes to cast their ballots, and have stood sponsor for them out of genuine respect. Today, Negroes who vote in the South are as a class, men of sub stance and intelligence, fully equal to the tasks of citizenship. Thus I have confidence not only in the sense of the white man in the South but in the innate capability of the Negro and that once these two really come to know each other, not at sore points of contact, nor as mere master and servant, but as workers for a common country, the question of suffrage will gradually solve itself in the interest of true democracy. Another influence also will tend to change the status of the Negro as a voter. That is the pending break-up of the political solidarity of the South. All the signs point to a political re alignment upon new issues in this country, both South and North. Old party names may even pass away. And that break up, with the attendant struggle for votes, is certain to bring into politics thousands of Negroes and white men now dis franchised. The result of a real division on live issues has been shown in many local contests in the South, as in the fight against the saloons, when every qualified Negro voter, and every Negro who could qualify, was eagerly pushed forward by one side or the other. With such a division on new issues the Negro will tend to exercise more and more political power, dividing not on the color line, but on the principles at stake. Still another influence which is helping to solve the problem is the wider diffusion of Negroes throughout the country. The proportion of Negroes to the whites in most of the Southern States is decreasing, thereby relieving the fear of Negro domi nation, whereas Negroes are increasing largely in Northern communities, where they take their place in politics not as an indigestible mass, but divide along party lines even more readily than some of the foreign-American groups in our population. A study of the Negro vote in November, 1912, would show that many Negroes broke their historic allegiance with the Repub lican party and voted for Roosevelt, while some even cast their votes for Wilson; and in local elections the division is still more marked. Thus in spite of the difficulties which now confront the Negro, I cannot help looking upon the situation with a spirit of optimism. I think sometimes we are tempted to set a higher THE NEGRO PROBLEM 213 value upon the ritual of a belief than upon the spirit which underlies it. The ballot is not democracy; it is merely the symbol or ritual of democracy, and it may be full of pas sionate social significance, or it may be a mere empty and dan- generous formalism. What we should look to, then, primarily, is not the shadow, but the substance of democracy in this coun try. Nor must we look for results too swiftly; our progress toward democracy is slow of growth and needs to be culti vated with patience and watered with faith. WHY DISFRANCHISEMENT IS BAD 1 If the disfranchisement of the Negro by the South could settle permanently the Negro question, I think that the action of that section would find its justification in that achievement, according to the Jesuitical principle that the end justifies the means. But can disfranchisement of the Negro settle the Negro question? First: Can it do so for the Negro? Second: Can it do so for the South? Third: Can it do so for the rest of the nation? I do not think that it can do so for the Negro, or for the South, or for the rest of the nation. And unless disfran chisement of the Negro settles this question in its three-fold aspect, it will not settle it in such a way that it will long stay settled. If the Negro refuse to abide by such a settlement, the question will not be so settled merely because the South has decided so to settle it. Neither can the South of today settle the question by disfranchisement, if disfranchisement of the Negro be found in operation to injure the South of tomorrow much more deeply than it does the Negro. For what is bad for the Negro today will be found to be still worse for the South tomorrow. The South must, therefore, awake some time to this fact, unless she is indeed stricken with that hopeless madness by which the gods intend to destroy her. But even if the South and the Negro agree so to settle the question, the question will not be permanently settled in the North, if the rest of the nation, refuses eventually to form a party to the compact. For. the rest of the nation, quite independently of the action of the South and the acquiescence of the Negro, will have something, something very decisive to say ultimately 1 By Archibald H. Grimke. Atlantic. 94:72-81. July, 1904. 214 SELECTED ARTICLES about the settlement of this question. The North has, in reality, quite as much at stake in its settlement as either the Negro or the South. Disfranchisement will not, therefore, prove a per manent settlement of the Negro question if it be found in operation to affect injuriously Northern and national interests, to work badly in the conduct of governmental affairs in respect to those interests. Can disfranchisement settle the question for the Negro? I do not think it can; I am sure that it will not, for the simple and sufficient reason that the Negro will not consent to such a settlement; a settlement which virtually decitizenizes him, and relegates him to a condition of practical servitude in the republic. He has tasted freedom, he has tasted manhood rights, he has tasted civil and political equality. He knows that his freedom, his American citizenship, his right to vote, have been written into the Constitution of the United States, and written large there in three great amendments. He knows more; he knows that he himself has written his title to those rights with his blood in the history of the country in four wars, and he is of the firm belief that his title to them is a perfect one. No party, no state, no section, can therefore, deprive him of those rights without leaving in his mind a sense of bitter wrong, of being cheated of what belongs to him, cheated in defiance of law, of the supreme law of the land, and in spite of his just claim to fairer treatment at the hands of his fellow countrymen. He will understand that this enormity was com mitted against him on account of his race and color. He will see that it was done by the white race a race that has ever wronged him, that has never failed to take from him, because it had the power, whatever he cared most for in the world; Nothing could possibly make him, under such cruel circum stances, love such a race, such an enemy. He will learn to hate the white race, therefore, with all the strength and rancor of centuries of accumulated outrages and oppressions. The relation of the two races in the South could not, then, be one of mutual respect, confidence, and good will. It would become, on the contrary, one of mutual fear, distrust and hatred. The whites would fear, distrust and hate the Negro, and that increasingly, because they had so deeply wronged him ; and the Negro would return his fear, distrust and hatred with a measure heaping up and running over, not openly, like the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 215 whites, to be sure, but covertly, cunningly, because of his weak ness. He would live his life, his deeper life, more and more apart from the whites, live it in an underworld of which no white man would be able to get more than a glimpse, and that at rare intervals. It would be an underworld in which his bitter sense of wrong, his brooding miseries, his repressed faculties of mind, his crushed sensibilities, his imprisoned aspirations to be and to do as other men, his elemental powers of resistance, his primitive passions, his savage instincts, his very despair, would burn and rage beneath the thin crust of law and order which separates him from the upper world of the white race, his implacable foe and oppressor. Through this thin crust of law and order there will perforce break at times some of that hidden fire, some of that boiling lava of a race s agony and despair. There will be race feuds, race conflicts, as certainly as winds will blow, but no one will be deeply enough versed in the movements of these stormy, these fiery currents and visitations from the abysses of that underworld of the Negro, to be able to discover their formation, to foretell their coming, or to forecast their extent and duration. So far as the Negro is concerned, then, to disfranchise him will not settle the Negro question. It will do anything else better thatr that. For it will make trouble, and no end of it. It will certainly make trouble if he rise in the human scale in spite of the wrong done him. Does any one think that he will ever cease to strive for the restoration of his rights as an American citizen, and all of his rights, if he rise in character, property, and intelligence? To think the contrary is to think an absurdity. But if he fall in the human scale in consequence of the wrong done him, he will surely drag the South down with him. For he and the South are bound the one to the other by a ligament as vital as that which bound together for good or bad, for life or death, the Siamese twins. The Enceladian struggles of the black Titan of the South beneath the huge mass of the white race s brutal oppressions, and of his own imbruted nature, will shake peace out of the land and prosperity out of the Southern states, and involve, finally, whites and blacks alike in common poverty, degradation, and failure in the eco nomic world, in hopeless decline of all of the great social forces which make a people move upward and not downward, forward and not backward in civilization. 216 SELECTED ARTICLES Disfranchisement of the Negro is bad for the South. It is bad for her, in the first place, on account of the harmful effect produced by it on her black labor. It makes a large proportion of her laboring population restless and discontented with their civil and social condition, and it will keep them so. It makes it well-nigh impossible for this restless and discontented labor class to make the most and the best of themselves with the limited opportunities afforded them, with the social and political restrictions imposed by law upon them. It hinders employers of this labor from producing the largest and the best results with it, for the same cause. For to obtain by means of this labor the largest and best results, employers of it ought to do the things, ought to seek to have the state do the things, which will tend to reduce the natural friction between labor and capital to its lowest terms, to make labor contented and happy, surely not the things which will have the opposite effect on that labor. Otherwise, the energy which ought to go into pro duction will be scattered, consumed, in contests with capital, in active or passive resistance to bad social, and economic conditions, in effective or in ineffective striving to improve those conditions. Every labor class has but a given amount of energy, I take it, to devote to production. How much of this energy may be available for productive purposes depends on its social condi tions, whether it is contented or discontented, getting on in the world, getting ahead in material well-being and well-doing; on its economic condition, whether it is intelligent or ignorant, efficient or in efficient; on its civil condition, its legal status, whether it enjoys equal laws and equal opportunities with other labor classes in the struggle for existence, in the battle for bread, or whether it is crippled, obstructed instead, by unequal laws, by artificial restrictions which are made to apply to its activity alone. The grand source of wealth of any community is its labor. The warfare which nation wages against nation today is not military, but industrial. Competition among nations for markets for the sale of their surplus products is at bottom a struggle of the labor of different nations for industrial possession of those markets, for the industrial supremacy of the labor of one country over the labor of other countries. Industrialism, com mercialism not militarism, mark the character of our twentieth- century civilization. That country, therefore, which takes into THE NEGRO PROBLEM 217 this industrial rivalry and struggle the best trained, the most completely equipped, the most up-to-date labor, will win over those other countries which bring to the battle for world markets a body of crude, backward, and inefficient labor. Edu cation, skill, quality, tell in production; tell at once, and tell in the long run. It is now well understood that the most intelligent labor is the most profitable labor. Ignorant labor is certainly no match in world markets for intelligent labor. It is no match in home markets either. Quality, intelligence, will prevail in such an industrial contest, whether in agriculture, manufactures, mining, or commerce. But to get the best and the most out of labor, it must not only be intelligent, it must also be free free to rise or sink in the social scale. It must have a voice in making the laws under which it lives. Otherwise those laws will operate to hinder, not to help it to make the best fight of which it is capable for possession of home and foreign markets. Without this voice the laws will become more and more unequal and oppressive. A labor class deprived of freedom, of a voice in government, cannot maintain the advantage which mere intelligence and skill may have gained for it in the struggle for existence. As it loses freedom, a voice in government, it will lose ultimately its skill, its intelligence as an industrial factor. For it will become, in effect, subject to, if not exactly the slave of, the capitalistic and labor classes which are free, which make the laws. And these classes will invariably act on the assumption that the more ignorant such a subject labor class is, the less trouble it will cause. In their opinion slave labor is more manageable than free labor, gives rise to simpler social conditions, to problems less complex and difficult to handle. Instead of establishing schools for the education of a labor class deprived of the right to vote, the class which possesses the right will not establish new ones, and will, in addition, endeavor to lower the standard of those already established and then to do away with them entirely. The chief end and purpose of the classes with the right to vote will be, not to raise the average of literacy, of intelligence of the class without that right, but to lower the same in order the better to keep it in a state of permanent industrial subordination and inferiority to themselves. And so the Negro labor of the South, deprived of the right to vote, will see its schools diminish in numbers and quality, will 218 SELECTED ARTICLES get, in one state and then in another, fewer schools and shorter terms, until they reach the vanishing point, where in large portions of the South Negro schools will disappear altogether. Under such circumstances Negro labor instead of advancing in intelligence and skill, in economic efficiency will steadily lose the ground gained by it in these respects since the war, and will retrograde to the condition of dense ignorance, of eco nomic inefficiency, which characterized it before that event. Surely slave labor is the most unproductive, the most wasteful labor in the world. As it was not able to compete successfully with the free and intelligent labor of the North before the war, it will not be able to do so today or tomorrow. Ignorant Negro labor must weight the South down heavily, therefore, in that industrial struggle in which it is now engaged, not alone with the rest of the nation, but with the world. And this means for Southern labor industrial inferiority to the labor of the rest of the nation and of the world. It means for the Southern states ultimate industrial feebleness and subordination to the rest of the nation, and a low order of civilization. Thus it will be found that disfranchisement which was intended to make the Negro a serf, to degrade him as a man, to extinguish his ambition, to extinguish his intelligence, to fix for him in the state, in society, a place of permanent inferiority and subordination to the white race, has degraded the whole South industrially at the same time and fixed for her likewise a place of permanent economic inferiority and subordination to the rest of the nation. The huge body of her black ignorance, poverty, and degradation will attract to itself by the social laws of gravitation all of the white ignorance, poverty and degradation of the entire section. The stupendous mass of this social and industrial wreck, of the ensuing barbarism and crime, and of race hatred and oppression, will, in the end, whelm in common misery and ruin whites and blacks alike, the whole labor of the South. It is hard to believe that that section is knowingly, deliberately invoking such a fate, merely for the sake of gratifying its race prejudice against the Negro. But whether it knowingly invites such consequences or not, its action invites them. For disfranchisement of the Negro means, with out doubt, degradation of its black labor, and this, in turn, the certain degradation of its white labor and this, in turn, inevitable industrial feebleness and inferiority, and this, in turn, ultimate I THE NEGRO PROBLEM 219 sectional retrogression, poverty and a low order of civilization. Is the South ready to pay such a ruinous price for disfran- chisement of the Negro for the sake of keeping him forever the servitor of the white race? Perhaps she is. It looks so; yet time alone can tell whether that section on this question is, at bottom, wise or foolish, sane or insane. If it shall turn out that it is really foolish, incurably mad on the Negro question, then there is no hope for it within itself. It will persist in running straight upon its destruction. For alas, "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." It has been shown that disfranchisement of the Negro is bad for the Negro and for the South. It remains to consider why it is bad for the North, for the rest of the nation. But if it has been demonstrated that disfranchisement is bad for the Negro and for the South, it will follow as a logical conclusion that it is bad for the rest of the nation. For whatever injures a part injures the whole. The Negro is a part of the South, the South a part of the nation, in as real, as vital, a sense as feet and hands are parts of the human body. Hurt a hand, lame a foot and the whole body is hurt, lamed at the same time and for the same cause. This is not sentiment. It is fact, it is common, sense, it is science. The old fable of the Members and the Belly is as true and timely today as it was in ancient Roman days. Starve the belly and the whole body is starved, suffers in consequence. Wither an arm, shrivel a leg, dim an eye, and the whole body goes maimed and halt and darkened. Whatever, therefore, renders it impossible for the Negro of the South to make the most and the best of himself injures that section, and this injury to the South hurts, in turn, the whole country. For social and economic laws draw no color line, exempt from their impartial operations no race because it happens to be white, but fall equally on all, regardless of artificial distinctions and discriminations of rich and poor, on strong and weak, on white and black. Southern law and opinion discriminate against the black man and in favor of the white man. Not so the laws of Nature. What harms the Negro s body will harm the white man s body. What degrades Negro labor will degrade white labor likewise. What heals the white man s body will heal the black man s body. And what elevates white labor will elevate black labor also. This is the higher law, a law beyond the reach of revised constitutions and American 220 SELECTED ARTICLES colorphobia to change or nullify, a law which a greater than the Supreme Court interprets and will execute with strict im partiality neither for nor against the Negro, neither for nor against the South, but on whose decision, on whose operation, hang verily the fate of the Negro, the fate of the South, and the fate of the nation, at one and the same time. The means which have raised the labor of the rest of the nation to its present high state of productivity can rais-e Southern labor, will raise it in due time, if utilized by that section, to a state of equal economic value and industrial efficiency. The things which have made the labor of the North superior will not do less for Negro laborers in the South, freedom, edu cation, equality. Freedom to make the most and the best of themselves as men, as Americans; freedom to fall or rise in the social scale according to merit, not color; education as children in the common schools; education as citizens at the polls; and equality of rights and opportunities with other labor classes, with other groups of Americans regardless of race. When the Negro progresses in industrial efficiency, in social well-being and well-doing, the South will progress in these important respects and in others. That section will gain im measurably, not only in the improved character of its labor, in its heightened value as a producer of wealth, but in its heightened value as a consumer of the staple products of those states and of the commodities exchanged for them in other markets. It is needless to add that the North, the rest of the nation, would gain enormously in wealth in the volume of its Southern trade, from the same causes. It is, then, wisdom to look carefully after every hen, whether black or white, in our national barn yard, after every hen which lays for the republic golden eggs, as well as to look out for the acquisition of new markets abroad for the sale of those eggs. The national hen is of more value than her eggs, American labor than its products. In conclusion, there is yet another view of the subject in which the rest of the nation is vitally interested, and that is its politico-sectional side. No discussion of the question of the dis- franchisement of the Negro by the South is complete which ignores this aspect of it. For it is an aspect which promises eventually to come very much into notice at the North. At some time in the near or distant future it is going to occupy Northern attention to the exclusion of all other phases of the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 221 vexed question, and perhaps of all other questions of national importance besides. For, at bottom, it involves no less an issue than the old one of political domination between the sections. Possession or control of the government in its three coordinate branches has from the adoption of the Constitution been a cause of difference between the North and the South, with their contrary interests and institutions to be protected and promoted by means of the joint action of those branches. Before the war, slavery as it affected the Negro was not objectionable to the free states, but slavery as it affected those states was. It was not slavery as a moral wrong, but slavery as a political evil to which they were opposed. When they came into conflict over this subject with the slave states, it was not for the sake of helping the slaves, but themselves it was to prevent the evil from growing as a political power, to prevent it from increasing its vote in Congress and in the electoral college, to prevent it from dominating in national affairs, in national legislation. Such domination, the free states had [earned by bitter experience, acted injuriously upon their inter ests. Hence Northern opposition to the extension of slavery, to the admission of new slave states. Nor will the rest of the nation interfere today in the matter of Southern disfranchise- ment of the Negro for the sake of the Negro that is, because it is more friendly to him than to the South. Not at all. When the rest of the nation interferes in the final settlement of this question, as it will surely interfere, its interference will have regard solely to itself, to its own interests which shall at that time demand such action. But the North cannot interfere politically in the settlement of this question, whether in behalf of the disfranchised Negro or in protection of its own sectional interests, without mortally offending its sister section, without reviving with new-born bitterness and added intensity the old and fierce rivalry between them, which played such a leading and, at times, violent part in the history of the country for a period of seventy years say from 1815 to 1885. Not the wrong which slavery inflicted upon the Negro was, then, the nub of the controversy between the two halves of the Union before the war of the Rebellion, but the undue influence in government which, in the opinion of the Northern, it gave to the Southern half. This undue political influence had its rise in the right of the South under the Constitution to count 222 SELECTED ARTICLES in the apportionment of representatives among the states five of her slaves as three freeman. This feature of the Constitution was distinctly aristocratic. It certainly was not democratic. For it gave a Southern white man who owned five Negro slaves an electoral value in the republic four times greater than that of a Northern white man. This unrepublican, this dispropor tionate political importance of a Southern slave owner over a Northern freeman produced no end of trouble between the two classes of men. And when it is remembered that the ideas and interests of these two classes of men were far from being identical, that there was, on the contrary no way of bringing about an identity of ideas and interests between them, for while one of these groups was born and bred under the aristo cratic idea with a corresponding labor system which rooted itself in that idea, the other group was born and bred under the democratic idea with a corresponding labor system which rooted itself in that idea, persons living today may get some notion of the fierceness and depth of the ante-bellum rivalry which waxed and waned, and waned and waxed for a half century, between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding states, for possession of the general government, as a coign of vantage in the struggle between them for domination in the republic. This strife, with alternations of reverses and triumphs, first for one side and then for the other, went on until 1861, when the rivals resorted to force to settle their differences. The war for the Union decided the momentous conflict in favor of the democratic idea and its system of the free labor. The Thirteenth Amendment destroyed slavery and the slave power; or such, at least, was its purpose. The Fourteenth Amendment provided forever against a revival of the old aristocratic idea of inequality of civil conditions between the races in the South the real ground of difference between the sections by declaring all persons born or naturalized in the United States to be citizens of the United States. There was not again to exist in the Southern states any system of labor to take the place of the old slave labor system except that of free labor, and there was not again to appear any corresponding political power in the South to take the place of the defunct slave power; or such, at least, was the plain purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in order to make assurance doubly sure on this vital point, a THE NEGRO PROBLEM 223 supplementary provision was incorporated into the amendment, to reduce the representation in Congress of any state which shall deny to any portion of its voting population the right to vote in the proportion which the number of such disfranchised citizens "shall bear to the whole number of citizens twenty-one years of age in such state." The rest of the nation intended by these two great acts to destroy, root and branch, the old constitutional provision which entitled the South to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives among the states. It was determined to rid the country for all time of any future trouble from that cause. The reconstruction measures attempted to introduce into the old slave states the democratic idea and a labor system corresponding to that idea. But in the event of failure in these regards, and the ultimate revival on the part of those states of the aristocratic idea and a labor system cor responding to that idea it was carefully provided that such revival of the old aristocratic idea and labor system should be accompanied by an equivalent loss of political power on the part of those states. They were no longer to eat their cake, meta phorically speaking, and keep it too. For this eating and keep ing something at one and the same time means that the some thing kept belongs to some one else than the eater. The political power which the South manages to retain in spite of her dis- franchisement of the Negro does not, therefore, belong to her. If she deprives the Negro of the right to vote without being deprived in turn of a proportionate share of her representation in Congress, she has possessed herself wrongfully of a power in national politics, in national legislation, which rightfully belongs to the Negro. And this power she may and does exer cise against the Negro and the North at the same time. It will be seen by the North some day, as it is seen today by the Negro, that while her old rival has lost on paper, the old three-fifths slave representation under the constitution to which she was entitled before the war, she has not practically suffered any loss at all in this respect, but the contrary. She has actually gained since the war the other two-fifths in the apportionment of representatives among the states. For five of her disfran chised colored citizens count today the same as five Northern voters instead of a proportion prevailing in ante-bellum times 224 SELECTED ARTICLES when it took five slaves to equal three freemen in Federal numbers. Following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the North seemed still uneasy on this head. For very early, coming events in the South were casting shadows before them to the manifest disturbance of the Northern mind. Heeding these shadows of ill omen along the Southern horizon, the North decided to clear the national sky of every shadowy possibility of a return of conditions which existed before the war and which vexed her sorely during those bitter years. Apprehen sive, then, lest the Fourteenth Amendment had not made a repetition of this history impossible, the nation adopted the Fifteenth Amendment, which ordains that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Each of those three great steps was taken by the North to rid the country of the Southern aristocratic idea, and of its corresponding labor system ; to plough into Southern soil the democratic idea and its cor responding system of free labor ; to purge the Constitution of its hateful three-fifths slave representation principle; to redress, in short, the old balance of political power between the sections in order to secure forever the domination of our Northern industrial democracy in national affairs. The democratic idea of government has been put to rout in every Southern state by the old aristocratic idea founded in race prejudice and race distinctions. A labor system is fast grow ing up about this idea a labor system as much opposed to the labor system of the rest of the nation, as was the old slave system to the free labor of the North. There can be no lasting peace between them now, any more than such peace was possible between them in the period before the war. The political and industrial interests of the sections are not the same, and cannot be made the same so long as differences so fundamental in respect to government and labor exist between them. The conflict of the two contrary ideas of government of the two con trary labor systems, for survivorship in the Union, may be postponed as it is today, but it cannot be extinguished except by the extinction of one or the other of the old rivals. For they are doomed in one form or another, by economic and social laws, to ceaseless rivalry and strife. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 225 In this strife the disfranchisement of the Negro by the South is a distinct victory for the Southern idea, for the Southern rival, over the Northern idea, the Northern rival. The southern idea has taken on new life, is re-sowing itself, striking powerful roots into Southern soil. And while it is steadily strengthening its ascendency over those states, its pollen dust is slowly spreading in many devious ways, blown by winds of destiny beyond the limits of those states, attacking with subtle, far-reaching, and deep-reaching influences the democratic idea of the rest of the nation, giving aid and form to all those feelings, thoughts, purposes, hidden or open, but active, in the republic, hostile to popular government, to the democratic prin ciple of equality and universal suffrage. The South has thrown down its gage of battle for the aristocratic idea, for the labor system which grows out of that idea. This gage of battle is the disfranchisement of the Negro because he is a Negro and the consequent degradation of him as a laborer. Will the North accept the challenge of its old rival, will it pick up the gage of battle thus thrown down? I think that it will. I am sure that it will. When? I confess frankly I do not know. But of this I have no doubt, when this time comes, as come it must, the Negro will mark again, as he did formerly, the dead line between the combatants between the aristocratic idea of the South and the democratic idea of the rest of the nation; between the labor system of the South and the labor system of the rest of the nation. THE BALLOTLESS VICTIM OF ONE-PARTY GOVERNMENTS 1 The legal status of the Negro in the United States is dif ficult to define or describe, because on paper he is an American citizen, entitled to the rights of an American citizen, but in practice lie does not get what he is entitled to or anything like it in certain parts of the Republic. His life is safe-guarded by written law, and so is his liberty and his activities in pur suit of happiness and to better his condition. Moreover in order that he may protect himself against the predatory aggres- 1 From article by Archibald H. Grimke. American Negro Academy. Occasional papers no. 16. i8p. Washington, 1913. 226 SELECTED ARTICLES sion and greed of other citizens he is invested by the supreme law of the land with the right to vote, with a voice in the Government, to enable him to defend himself against the enact ment of bad and unequal laws and against their bad and une qual administration. Certainly the Negro seems to be the equal in rights of any other American. That he is on paper there is not a doubt, but that he is not in reality there is not a doubt either. What he is entitled to does not anywhere in the South and in some states of the North square itself with what he actually enjoys. There is an enormous discrepancy in his case between National promise or guarantees and National per formance or possessions. He is an American citizen under the National Constitution. To be sure he is, but with a big qualification. He has the right to reach up and out and to grow in every direction like other American citizens whose race and color are different from his own. Not a doubt of it in legal theory but when he puts his theoretical rights to the test of fact he finds that he is different, that he may not do many of the things which white men all about him are doing all the time. He finds that even the Chinese who are denied citizenship in the Republic, receiver better treatment, are accorded larger liberties as men than are allowed him in the South. A citizen without the ballot in America is in fact, whatever he may be in law, a de-citizenized man exposed in consequence to the enmities, the jealousies, the insults and the violence of other citizens who are more fortunate in this regard. He is, whatever may be his legal status on paper, a proscribed man, subject to unmerited and unmeasured ignominies and injus tices at the hands of his country, its society, its passions and prejudices. Governor Andrew was right, a disfranchised man, a disfranchised class must become ultimately, "The hopeless pariah of a merciless civilization." This is the peril, the fate which hangs over the colored race at the close of the first fifty years of its emancipation. Governor Andrew s scheme for the reconstruction of the rebel states included not only the extension of the suffrage to the blacks but the re-admission to their full citizenship of the class of old slaveholders who had carried those states out of the Union. They were needed as leaders in the work of res toration and reconstruction, he shrewdly argued. And he was THE NEGRO PROBLEM 227 right. They were indeed the natural leaders of the South, and had they turned their backs upon the past and faced patriotically the new problems and the new posture of their affairs they might have led both races into the promised land of freedom and peace and Southern industrial expansion and greatness. Had they seized their golden opportunity for pro gressive and constructive statesmanship, the sceptre of their as cendency in the governments of their section could not have been wrested from them by another class of whites, risen since the war, who distrust and hate them, but they might instead have transmitted their ascendency undiminished to their de scendants, who ought to be, today, the leaders of the new South. Under unequal conditions, the white man is immune from legislation and administration unfriendly to his class, while the black man is exposed to the aggression of this favored class, either directly through mobs or indirectly through hostile legislation and administration, which fix upon him the brand of a caste whose members have no rights in Southern society which white men are bound to respect. Such social injus tice and political inequality as exist between the races in the South are bad for the whites as they are bad for the blacks are very bad for their collective interests and for the Na tional interests of the great industrial democracy of which they form a part. Is it astonishing then that under such circumstances there have sprung up and flourish in the South the peonage and convict lease systems, the plantation lease and credit systems, contract labor and "Jim Crow" laws, lynching and inequitable distribution of the public school funds between the races? For the Southern white man, and he is no dif ferent from any other white man or black man either for that matter who possesses irresponsible power over others, regulates his conduct toward the Negro in his midst by the law of might, which allows him with a good conscience to do to the Negro whatever he wants to do, and to take from him whatever he wants to take, whether life or liberty; while it forbids his victim to do what he wants to do, or to retain what belongs to him as an American citizen whether it be his life or his liberty that is, to do so by identically the same means which white men use to retain what belongs to them under similar circumstances. Things would undoubtedly be different for the colored people 228 SELECTED ARTICLES in those states had they, though slight, some positive and ap preciable influence at the polls. Their condition would not even then be ideal far from it. But their hard lot as men would improve, their worth as citizens, their social and indus trial value to their community, state and country would rise correspondingly in the scale of being and character, with the increased freedom, self-respect and security which in conse quence would come to them as a race. Legislatures and ad ministrative officers would begin to make some response to their claim for social justice and political rights, and the courts would begin, also, to lend a more attentive ear to their rights of person and property. The end of all those terrible systems which exploit and rob and oppress them and keep them poor and ignorant and weak, the sad victims of race prejudice and greed and cruelty, would grow nearer to the perfect day of the race s final deliverance as American citizens. They would begin to get for their children more and better schools and longer school terms, and for their teachers more equal pay as compared with that received by white teachers for similar service. Such is the deplorable situation of the Negro in the South at the --close of the- -first fifty years of his freedom. There will be no improvement in that situation to any material ex tent until he gets the ballot, a voice in the government of those states. He can not obtain a voice in those governments of and by himself. He must get help from some power out side of himself. But from whom and in what direction ought he to look for it? Not certainly from the Nprth, from the Republican Party. For they gave up long ago trying to solve the problem how to make a vote in that section count as much as a vote in the solid South. They will not again enact a Force Bill or attempt to do so or anything like it. They have during recent years made no movement to execute that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides for a reduc tion of Southern representation in the lower branch of Con gress proportioned to the number of the disfranchised male population of those states, and they have in fact no disposi tion to do so. On the contrary non-interference is the ominous word which now gags the Northern people and press, its pulpit and platform and hobbles the action of the general govern ment. Indeed, the outgoing occupant of the White House has THE NEGRO PROBLEM 229 carried the policy of non-interference to extreme limits. For he it is who laid down the rule at the beginning of his ad ministration, and has observed it strictly for four years, that it would be unwise to make appointments of colored men to federal office in the South whenever the South objects to such appointments. In consequence of the consistent enforcement of this rule colored federal office-holders in the South are like angels visits to that section, few and far between. The South, as we have seen, has succeeded most thoroughly in depriving the Negro in its midst of any voice in its governments and it has shut him out of state offices, and now thanks to Presi dent Taft, has at last succeeded in depriving him of holding federal office in its midst likewise. But there yet remains to the Southern colored man the tattered and bedraggled remnant of his citizenship-,ia_that sec tion, if indeed even that will be left him four years hence. I refer to his quadrennial appearance as a delegate in Repub lican National Conventions, where for a brief hour he enjoys the spotlight importance of a political supernumerary on the party stage. Since 1884, there has been an increasing inclina tion among Republican leaders to reduce the representation of the party s Southern wing in National Conventions to a num ber proportioned to the size of its vote on election day. But the leaders have not yet got their courage to the sticking point to tackle this proposition, perhaps because they have not been willing to tackle the prior one of a reduction of Southern representation in Congress, and perhaps for other good and sufficient considerations of an emergency character they have allowed the matter to drift and to let for the time being well enough alone. Just at this point let me refer in passing to sundry causes which are affecting adversely the Negro s status as a citizen, and are contributing by their collateral pressure to force him into a sort of political and industrial blind alley of our American civilization. The Southern propaganda against the Negro is advancing apace in the North by many dark and devious ways and by many subtle and potent means. Northern capital and enterprise, which are exploiting the South indus trially, assimilate very readily the Southern view of the Negro, who must be kept at the bottom of the white man s labor sys tem and civilization. Intermarriage of Northern men and 230 SELECTED ARTICLES women with Southern men and women helps tremendously the propagation of the Southern view and solution of the race problem. The annual meeting and mingling at the National Capital in social intercoure -of the wealth and fashion and leadership of both sections exerts a powerful influence in ac centing points of agreement rather than points of difference between them. The feeling has risen throughout the North that the white people of the country can not afford either in terms of business or of politics to quarrel among themselves over the rights and wrongs of another race, which in con sequence of the injustices and inequalities suffered by it at their hands, is being pushed brutally to the wall. The whites of both sections make themselves believe, as a sort of salve to their conscience, I suppose, that the Negro in their midst is an alien race, is a non-assimilable element in the body politic, whose ejectment or isolation the health of that body and the race purity of the whites render necessary. Since ejectment is impracticable as involving too huge a displacement of or amputation from the productive labor of the South, isolation remains the only alternative. The whites of course will do what they can without injuring themselves or corrupting their race ideals, or affronting their race prejudices to alleviate the in evitably hard lot of this unfortunate people. But in what may be done for them there must be a care not to mix with it any foolish sentiment of human liberty and brotherhood lest it give offense to the South and so interrupt the flow of that beautiful and brotherly affection which is increasingly making the Southern whites and the Northern whites one people in the bonds of an indissoluble friendship and union. Non-inter ference is the ominous word which has cast its dark spell over the North and has turned its once warm and active sympathy into cold indifference and cruel apathy. We had better look at the situation of the Negro in the United States today without blinking the facts, see it clear and see it straight. The present outlook for that race is gloomy and depressing, and this gloom and depression are na tion-wide. Until the Negro gets in the South some measurable freedom in the use of the ballot, .the present agencies at work for his advancement, like industrial and tKe "rrigkstrdafktcation and the acquisition of property, and organized agitation in the North for his rights, can do little to rescue him from the deep THE NEGRO PROBLEM 23] pit into which American race prejudice has pushed and penned him. The colored American child has a poorer chance to rise in the scale of being today than had the colored American child of a generation ago. He has a poorer chance in the South in spite of his increased educational opportunities and accomplishments, and he has a poorer chance in the North. For as the condition of the race grows worse and its citizen ship deteriorates politically and civilly in the South, it will communicate to that part of it resident in the North some thing of its own sad lot, legal and industrial limitations and contracting prospects and opportunities. This is the inevitable fate of a ballotless race or class in an industrial democracy like ours. Such is the fate which awaits the American Negro unless he can manage to get the right to vote in the South. And this fate he can not escape so long as he remains a bal lotless man with no weapon of defense against the white man s race prejudice, which is regnant in his home and church and government and press and mills and shops and trades and schools. It is as impossible for the Negro to escape from his blind alley without the ballot as it is for some foolish fly, im prisoned on a window pane, to find its way to freedom through it. There is no escape for the fly until its restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despondency until he can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be able to make Southern Govern- ments_ jresponsive to the needs and the rights of the Negro as laborer and citixcn. But until they are made to respond to his claim for social justice and civil rights he will continue in the future as he is today the helpless victim of the peonage and convict lease systems, of the plantation lease and credit systems, of contract labor and "Jim Crow" laws, of lynching and the inequitable distribution of the public school funds between the races. I can not repeat too often that such monstrous depression of a part of Southern labor is not less bad for the whites than it is for the blacks. Nothing else can possibly come of it in the future than has come of it in the past but evil to the South, arrested development and a back ward civilization. For the whites cannot advance in law and order, in private and public morals, in wealth and in industrial 232 SELECTED ARTICLES intelligence and efficiency with the speed commensurate with their social and sectional opportunity if they persist in wast ing so much of their individual and collective energies in keeping the Negro down at the bottom of their social and political fabric without regard to his merits and abilities. Low water mark has been reached in the ebb tide of Negro citizenship in the South. Once upon a time, the race was repre sented in Congress, but today the tribe of the Negro Congress men is extinct and has long been extinct. A few years ago it had its representatives on the Republican National Com mittee, but today the tribe of the National Committeeman is extinct. NEGRO SUFFRAGE 1 In the long run only voters have rights in this country. The politicians, whether they hold executive office or sit in legis latures, know, respect, and fear the "labor vote," the "temper ance vote," the "soldier vote," the "suffrage vote," and every other vote, but they have no thought to spare for any class that has no vote. The non-voters are defenceless, their needs are not considered, their rights are not defended, and no body of taxpayers can long remain in that position. "Taxation without representation is tyranny," whether the taxpayer is black or white, and if men are counted as voters when the number of Congressmen or presidential electors is determined, and yet are not allowed to cast their votes, those who profit by the system exercise an undue influence in the councils of the Nation to which their fellow-citizens will not long submit. The solid South rests upon the .suppressed Negro vote, and it creates a political situation which cannot endure. Both the colored tax payer, whose vote is wholly suppressed, and the white voter in the North and \Yest, whose vote is partly neutralized and so partly suppressed, are bound to oppose it. Does it help the communities which refuse to recognize the political rights of the Negro? Does it insure them good government to let their political life hinge on a single question? Is it wise to let a whole 1 From article, National Aspects of the Negro Problem, by Moorfield Storey, President of the Association for the Advancement of the Colored People. Southern Workman. 49:349-55- August, 1920. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 233 government rest on injustice to its citizens as a corner-stone? What must be the political and moral tone of men who see the laws habitually spurned or evaded by the men who are chosen to govern them? Is it an example which is likely to promote good citizenship and love of justice among the citizens who are the soil from which government springs? If they are just their rulers will be just and not otherwise. HAS THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT BEEN JUSTIFIED 1 As is generally known, the Thirteenth Amendment made the Negro a free man ; the Fourteenth made him a citizen with all the rights of a citizen, and aimed to stimulate the States to grant him suffrage; the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed him that his right of vote should be free from any State interference or discriminations on the ground of "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Thus the late slave suddenly found himself promoted to the high exercise of the franchise ; elevated from the low estate of a mere chattel to become the maker and builder of the state. The circumstances attending the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment must be examined, and they form a record we cannot be proud of. To "reconstruct" the seceded States meant two things : first, to settle their relations to the rest of the Union, and second, to make proper provisions for the emancipated slaves. The death of Abraham Lincoln, coming at this critical period, was a catastrophe that precipitated such a train of evils as the centuries cannot heal. To fix the status of the helpless Negro needed his statecraft, his wisdom, yes and his kindness. The South did not find a generous victor in the North, after he was removed from the head of the nation. Jefferson and Lincoln had both declared that the white and black races in the South could not live together in peace under a condition of political and social equality. As Judge Curtis informs us, Lincoln intended to leave the question of suffrage with the 1 From article by James E. Boyle, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. Arena. 31:481-8. May, 1904. 234 SELECTED ARTICLES States, knowing that no country would be fit to live in which should be dominated by uneducated and ignorant blacks just emancipated from a condition of abject servitude. Lincoln himself, just before his death, prepared a proc lamation for the restoration of South Carolina. The radicals in Congress, anxious to administer severer "punishment to the rebels," considered this an abuse of executive power and de nounced Lincoln for having perpetrated "a studied outrage on the legislative rights of the people." If Lincoln was denounced thus by Congress for his honest and humane efforts at reconstruction, what was to be expected when his successor took the helm? If Lincoln had lived, he would doubtless have been strong enough, to carry his policy through, despite the opposition of some congressmen. Johnson was not able to do this. We have John Sherman s word for it (Senate speech, February, 1866) that Johnson s plan was practically the same as Lincoln s, and to consist of the following steps: (a) retain Lincoln s cabinet, (6) keep Lincoln s policy, (c) require adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment as part of the State Constitutions of the South, (d) require repudiation of Rebel debt, (e} secure protection to freedmen. The plan was simple and plain. Negro suffrage was not men tioned. This Lincoln-Johnson plan was speedily put into execu tion, much to the satisfaction of the South and the dissatisfac tion of Congress. The issue was stated plainly, dogmatically in the House in these words : "The President lacks power to re construct. Congress alone h as this ^pftWen The Presicfent is commander-in-chief of the armies, but Congress is his com mander, and, *T5ocl^willing, he shall obey." This was the sftflil and temper of reconstruction as grimly announced and brutally carried out by Congress ! The struggle between Congress and the PresidgniMyill not be recounted here. It is sufricientTo"~5ay ThaF coercion was the*l)o1icyofT^ongress, and Johnson s "ex-rebel State governments" were swept away. This course naturally appealed to the South as brutal and humiliating. The Fourteenth Amendment staggered her by dis franchising the leading whites and making voters of ex-slaves. The patriotic and generous States of Ohio and New Jersey even withdrew their consent to this amendment when they saw its full significance and potency for evil. The fall elections of 1867 in the North showed an overwhelming revolt against Negro THE NEGRO PROBLEM 235 suffrage, the States of Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California becoming democratic on anti-Negro-suf frage resolutions. If the colored vote was intolerable at the North where Negroes were few and partially educated, how galling must the yoke have been for the South where in some States the Negroes were in the majority and all hopelessly ignorant. It is hardly possible to picture the condition of the South at this time, exhausted by a long war for a lost cause, subjugated to a protracted military occupancy in time of peace, dazed by a cataclysm in her industrial foundations, and trembling with fear of a possible black supremacy. Yet Congress was to use its club once more on its staggering victim. The Fifteenth Amendment wa spasspHjim^ enforced hv "appropriate legislation." The SotttiT~wa!rTiFeralJy%orn of the bayonet," reconstruction was complete, and the unheard-of experiment of general and unqualified Negro suffrage was on. Before tracing the workings of the Fifteenth Amendment it is well to notice what was claimed to be its purpose when it was adopted. Then we can measure its success in fulfilling its purpose. All the arguments put forth by the supporters of the amendment at the time of its adoption may be reduced to five: (a) The franchise would benefit the colored race and secure to them importance, respect and protection. (&) The exercise of the ballot would educate the Negro in practical citizenship. O) It would be a public benefit, safeguarding the country against unfriendly legislation at the South, and avoiding the possible danger of irritating the Negroes of that section by political discriminations against them. (d) Allies would be gained for the Republican party. Party managers considered the ascendency of the Republican party (self-styled "Union" party) absolutely essential to the safety and preservation of the nation. (?) The amendment would be, according to speakers in Con gress, proper punishment for the "rebels." As Stevens put it: "If it be a punishment for traitors, they deserve it." These, then, were the reasons assigned for the amendment. \ It remains to trace the actual workings of the amendment during the few years it was put in practice. 2 3 6 SELECTED ARTICLES We commonly accept the dictum of Guizot s that: "Of all systems of government, the most difficult to establish and ren der effective, the one which evidently requires the greatest maturity of reason, of morality, of civilization in the society to which it is applied, is the federative system of the United States." But mark the strikingly contrary conditions of affairs in the South when the Fifteenth Amendment went into opera tion and the "disloyal" whites were disfranchised. Three classes remain, a few southern whites loyal to the Union through the war; the Negroes, ignorant and destitute of all political ideas whatever; and the carpet-baggers and agents of the Freed- men s Bureau. Negroes were in the majority, and the cry of "black domi nation" was taken up by the proud and haughty South. Leadership fell to the zealous carpet-baggers who soon organized the Negroes for election purposes. Then began the memorable regime of the carpet-bagger and the Negro. It was a veritable reign of terror for the South, a carnival of crime and corrup tion, a saturnalia of robbery and jobbery. Hundreds of Negro justices were put in office who could neither read nor write. Ruinous taxes were levied on the property of the southern whites, for the Negro had no property and the business of the carpet-bagger was office-holding. Public debts were in creased enormously with little or nothing to show in the way of public improvements. The history of one State is the his tory of all. We have the facts at hand for South Carolina, as brought out by the joint investigating committee there. Of the eight recognized classes of fraud, the chief was general legis lative corruption. Under the expansive term "supplies" the state had been charged up with the following, for which vouchers were left on file : "English tapestry, Brussels carpet ing, French velvets, silk damask, Irish linen, billiard-table cloths, woollen blankets, ladies hoods, ribbons, crepe, scissors, skirt-braid and pins, tooth-brushes, hooks-and-eyes, boulevard skirts, bustles, chignons, palpitators, garters, chemises, parasols, gold watches and chains, jewelry, diamond rings, knives, pocket- pistols, horses, mules, harness, buggies and carriages." The Negro was not responsible for this regime. He readily followed the so-called guides and friends who came in from the North and represented that party to which the Negro owed his freedom. These adventurers made tools of the Negro, THE NEGRO PROBLEM 237 dividing spoils with him and exploiting his ignorance and superstition. He was taught that to scratch a name on a Republican party ticket was a "sin little short of damnation." Such a state of affairs was too violent to continue. Spirited and intolerant Southerners could not submit to Negro domi nation. Means were found to suppress the colored vote. Both legitimate and illegitimate methods were freely employed. Men who had fought bravely four years to establish an independent government could not be expected to submit tamely to such a monstrous travesty on self-government. Terror was spread by the Ku-Klux-Klan in some regions, while more moderate means were used in others. Some temperate white Republicans united with the Democrats. In some cases Negroes received pay or other inducements to remain away from the polls. By murders, by whippings, by threats, by promises, by fair means and foul, thp N^ro vote was thoroughly suppressed by i77, and has been kept so ever since. Negro surfragetoday in the South is a complete nullity. But the danger is still present of Negro domination in those regions having a majority of colored citizens. This menace disturbs and poisons the rela tions of the two races forced to live side by side. To summarize then, the five purposes of the amendment were, in reverse order, (i) to punish the rebels; (2) gain allies for the Republican party; (3) benefit general public; (4) educate Negro in citizenship; (5) protect colored race. It signally failed in all these purposes but the first, and there is exactly where it should have failed. For the "rebels" had had sufficient punishment and needed more considerate and generous treatment. It lost the Republican party several northern States, and the "solid South." It failed utterly from the public benefit standpoint, which left out of view the fact that intelligent men are better able to legislate for their own welfare than are ignorant men for them. This point, however, is directly connected with the two following, and falls to the ground with them. It failed, worse than failed, to educate the Negro in good citizenship. He found himself enfranchised with the right to barter and sell his vote, or hold an office which he could not fill. He immediately fell into the hands of professional poli ticians, and in this school of rottenness and corruption he 238 SELECTED ARTICLES became a plastic tool with marvelous facility. If this was the education he needed, God save the mark! But despite his enfranchisement, bulwarked by the mighty force of the Fed eral Constitution, he does not vote south of Delaware or make himself an important political factor. That the colored race might be protected was the fifth pur pose noted above. Here was the saddest, most stupendous failure of all, and which years of time will not suffice to remedy. It was imagined that the appointment of an ignorant Negro justice would protect the Negroes in his vicinage. But the appointment of every incompetent Negro fanned the pre judice of the people already overwrought in sectional feeling. It took from the Negro his only true friend, the one com petent to understand, advise and help him, his master, and made him his enemy. The disfranchised master turned, with the instinct of self-preservation, against both the intruding carpet-bagger and his tool the misguided Negro. The Negro was readily led to believe his liberators from the North were blessed saviors to him, and that his former master would reenslave him if he could. Thus race-prejudice was fostered, and the South was given her present race problem. Since the Negro lost both ballot and friends throughout the South, we must pronounce this experiment in political science an unqualified failure. The right to thfe ballot is the capacity for the ballot. REPRESENTATION * In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, there was a long and heated discussion about a suitable basis for representation in the lower branch of Congress. The following compromise clause was finally adopted: "Representatives, and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective num bers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole num ber of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons." Thus the apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives is based upon the population in the respective 1 From Negro Suffrage and Congressional Representation, by James Albert Hamilton, p. 46-8. Winthrop Press. New York. 1910. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 239 States, and not upon the number of votes cast. The number of votes cast would not offer an equitable basis of apportion ment, because there is not always the same interest in elections. Some years we have what is termed a "light" vote and other years a "heavy" vote. At the close of the Civil War in 1865, the population for the purposes of representation had been largely increased in the South, from the fact that slavery had been abolished, and the blacks were now fully counted instead of only three- fifths as before. The result was, the Southern States found their quota in the House of Representatives numerically in creased. The Northerners would not tolerate this unless there was some quid pro quo forthcoming. To serve as a punishment for rebellion and as a protection to the former slaves a penalty in the shape of a reduction in the Southern representation was provided in the Fourteenth Amendment, if suffrage was denied the Negro. It says : "But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice- President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male in habitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, ex cept for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens, twenty-one years of age in such State." In_ 1867, the federal bay^n^t_^ml^he_Jjej^jQ in fyll possession of the ballot and also of the Southern States, and the ex-Confederates were disqualified for public office. Shortly afterward, the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted. Immediately a contest arose between the positive law of the amendments, and the natural conditions and customs of the South. In every such contest the positive law is overridden, be cause it does not have public sanction. As Alexander Hamiliton said: "How unequal are parchment provisions to struggle with public necessity." Since the withdrawal of the military, Negro suffrage and Negro control have been swept aside. The fact is that 240 SELECTED ARTICLES as far as the Negro in the South is concerned, the Fifteenth Amendment is dead. It is idle to argue that anything short of military force can ever restore the ballot to the Negro. For many years, the Negro appealed to the sympathetic people in the North and to Congress to restore the ballot to him, and many so-called "Force Bills" have been considered; but there is a growing tendency to go back to the belief that, after all, the question of suffrage is one belonging entirely to the State and without Federal jurisdiction. This change in public sentiment is simply the swinging of the pendulum away from the ultra centralization and federalism following the Civil War. The post-bellum days were filled with the most bitter sectional prejudice. The Southerners nursed their resentment over the treatment accorded them during the period of re construction, and the Northerner could find no other terms than "rebel" or "traitor" to characterize the ex-Confederate. We" were politically a unit ; but divided into two distinctively hostile groups. With the adoption of the new Constitutions in the South, a great hue and cry has been raised by the remnant of the old abolitionists and suffrage theorists, and a general allegation has been made that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have been directly violated, As a consequence, it is asserted that the Southern States should be duly punished, and put again under compulsion. An analysis of this contention will show that: (i) As far as the Fourteenth Amendment is concerned, the only punishment which could be meted out would be a reduction in representation. Section 2 provides for such a contingency, by demanding reduction wherever there is any restriction of the suffrage "except for participation in rebellion or other crime." Thus, unless followed by a proportionate loss of representation, we should not have : (1) Property or educational qualifications; (2) Payment of poll tax; (3) Requirement of residence for a term of years; (4) Requirement of registration; (5) Disfranchisement of paupers, idiots and insane. Professor Burgess, in speaking of this penalizing second clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, says: "The Congress has THE NEGRO PROBLEM 241 not created the means and measures for carrying this threatened reduction of representation into execution, nor have the courts given judicial interpretation to the words of the clauses. We, therefore, do not know whether, in order to warrant the re duction of representation, denial or abridgment of the right to vote must be by a law of the Commonwealth, or by an officer of the Commonwealth, or whether the act of a combination of private persons, which the Commonwealth either cannot or will not control, would come within the meaning of the provision. The language is that whenever the right to vote is denied, etc. It does not designate by whom. In the previous section of the article it is expressly provided that the denials, deprivations and abridgments there spoken of, must be made by the Com monwealth in order to warrant the interference of the govern ment of the United States in behalf of the person receiving the injury. What does the omission of this phrase in the second section indicate? Is it fortuitous, or was it intended to ma)ce the Commonwealth responsible in this case for the unlawful acts of its citizens? Sound political science would approve the latter interpretation ; but we must await the legislation of Congress and, after that, the final adjudication of a case in point by the Supreme Court, before we can pronounce this to be the settled principle of our public law." (2) There is excellent authority for the belief that the Fif teenth Amendment abrogates and supersedes Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, for it distinctly prohibits exclusion from the suffrage on account of race, color, and previous condition of servitude. Hon. James G. Elaine, who was largely instrumental in the shaping and adoption of the post-bellum amendment, says : "When, therefore, the nation, by subsequent change in its constitution, declared that the State shall not exclude the Negro from the right of suffrage, it neutralized and surrendered the contingent right before held, to exclude him from the basis of apportionment. Congress is thus plainly deprived by the Fifteenth Amendment of certain powers over representation in the South, which it previously possessed under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the adoption of the Fif teenth Amendment, if a State should exclude the Negro from suffrage, the next step would be for Congress to exclude the Negro from the basis of apportionment. After the adoption 242 SELECTED ARTICLES of the Fifteenth Amendment, if a State should exclude the Negro from suffrage, the next step would be for the Supreme Court to declare that the act was unconstitutional, and, there fore, null and void. The essential and inestimable value of the Fourteenth Amendment still remains in the three other sections, and preeminently in the first section." Congress cannot enforce the penalty for disfranchisement provided for in Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment supersedes the Fourteenth. The Fif teenth Amendment distinctly prohibits disfranchisement on ac count of race, color, etc. The Fourteenth permitted this with a penalty. Therefore any disfranchisement on account of race, color, etc., would be contrary to the Fifteenth Amendment, and consequently void. If void, how could it form the basis for reduction in representation? To enforce the second clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would require the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment. The repeal of the Fifteenth Amend ment would leave the question of suffrage where the Con stitution originally placed it, to wit, in the hands of the several States. It would then be entirely discretionary for the State to give suffrage to the Negroes if it chooses, just as it can give it to women if it chooses. If the Negro were not permitted to exercise the special privilege of suffrage, it would in no way deprive him of his civil rights which he enjoys the same as women. Having the ballot thrust upon him without the proper intellectual and moral training, the Negro has come to believe that he is not only on the same political equality but also social equality with the whites. Edgar G. Murphy, an intelligent exponent of Southern senti ment, writes : "The North may punish the white man, but the retort of the white man falls too often upon the Negro. The Negro is upon the line of the crossfire between the sections. The Federal Government may be solicitous as to his vote, but the Negro needs the daily and neighborly solicitude of those who offer opportunities of labor, possibilities of bread. The North, especially the Negro of the North, may wish to strike at the South, but the Southern Negro, knowing that he must live with the Southern white man, rightfully feels no cowardice in the confession that a privilege accorded voluntarily by the South is worth more than any conceivable privilege that might be imposed externally by the North. The latter is but a tern- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 243 porary and exotic bauble. The former is a fact to rest in. What it is, it is. Because its basis lies rooted in the common consent of the whole people it is a social and political real ity." And further, "The white voter who under our own laws remains unqualified, should be excluded in his own interest and in the interest of the State. The qualified Negro quali fied by our own tests and under our own laws should be fairly registered without evasion or postponent * * * I pro foundly disbelieve in any social admixture of amalgamation of the races, but I confess that, in a certain high civic sense, I am glad that I can hold in honor the Negro man who, after only forty years of freedom, is able fairly to stand upon his feet before the white man s law and take the white man s test. The registration of such a man is a security rather than a peril to every sound and legitimate interest of the State. That the South recognizes his presence and accepts the credentials which he offers is evident from the fact that tens of thousands of such men have been accepted as regis tered voters under our amended Constitutions." It is one of the large truths of history that the superior race will always dominate. The English do in Africa and India. In our own experience, the American dominates the Indian and the Chinese. Would we be ready to condemn the native-born population of Massachusetts for refusing to sub mit to domination by her foreign-born illiterates, or Califor nia for disfranchising the 45,754 Chinese within her borders? If not, can we in justice criticize the South for refusing to submit to Negro domination? Wherever the intermingling of the races is frowned down assimilation cannot take place. Consequently one race must be supreme; and the inferior can never hope to occupy a plane of social and political equality with its superior. MIGRATION NEGRO MIGRATION DURING THE WAR * Within the brief period of three years following the outbreak of the great war in Europe, more than four hundred thousand Negroes suddenly moved North. In extent this movement is without parallel in American history, for it swept on thousands of the blacks from remote regions of the South, depopulated entire communities, drew upon the Negro inhabitants of practi cally every city of the South, and spread from Florida to the western limits of Texas. In character it was not without prece dent. In fact, it bears such a significant resemblance to the migration to Kansas in 1879 and the one to Arkansas and Texas in 1888 and 1889 that this of 1916-1917 may be regarded as the same movement with intervals of a number of years. Strange as it might seem the migration of 1879 first at tracted general notice when the accusation was brought that it was a political scheme to transplant thousands of Negro voters from their disfranchisement in the South to States where their votes might swell the Republican majority. Just here may be found a striking analogy to one of the current charges brought against the movement nearly forty years later. The congressional inquiry which is responsible for the discovery of the fundamental causes of the movement was occasioned by this charge and succeeded in proving its baselessness. The real causes of the migration of 1879 were not far to seek. The economic cause was the agricultural depression in the lower Mississippi Valley. But by far the most potent fac tor in effecting the movement was the treatment received by Negroes at the hands of the South. More specifically, as ex pressed by the leaders of the movement and refugees them selves, they were a long series of oppression, injustice and violence extending over a period of fifteen years; the convict system by which the courts are permitted to inflict heavy 1 From monograph by Emmett J. Scott, Howard University, p. 3-?- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Preliminary Economic Studies of the War, No. 16. Washington, D. C. 1920. 246 SELECTED ARTICLES fines for trival offenses and the sheriff to hire the convicts to planters on the basis of peonage; denial of political rights; long continued persecution for political reasons ; a system of cheat ing by landlords and storekeepers which rendered it impossible for tenants to make a living, and the inadequacy of school facilities. Sworn public documents show that nearly 3,500 persons, most of whom were Negroes, were killed between 1866 and 1879, and their murderers were never brought to trial or even arrested. Several massacres of Negroes occurred in the parishes of Louisiana. Henry Adams, traveling through out the State and taking note of crimes committed against Negroes, said that 683 colored men were whipped, maimed or murdered within eleven years. In the year 1879, therefore, thousands of Negroes from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina moved to Kansas. Henry Adams of Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated Negro but a man of extraordinary talent, organized that year a colonization council. He had been a soldier in the United States Army until 1869 when he returned to his home in Louisiana and found the con dition of Negroes intolerable. Together with a number of other Negroes he first formed a committee which in his own words was intended to "look into affairs and see the true condition of our race, to see whether it was possible we could stay under a people who held us in bondage or not." This committee grew to the enormous size of five hundred members. One hundred fifty of these members were scattered throughout the South to live and work among the Negroes and report their observations. These agents quickly reached the conclusion that the treatment the Negroes received was generally unbearable. Some of the conditions re ported were that land rent was still high; that in the part of the country where the committee was organized the people were still being whipped, some of them by their former owners; that they were cheated out of their crops and that in some parts of the country where they voted they were being shot. It was decided about 1877 that all hope and confidence that conditions could be changed should be abandoned. Mem bers of this committee felt that they could no longer re main in the South, and decided to leave even if they "had THE NEGRO PROBLEM 247 to run away and go into the woods." Membership in the council was solicited with the result that by 1878 there were ninety-eight thousand persons from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas belonging to the colonization council and ready to move. About the same time there was another conspicuous figure working in Tennessee Benjamin or "Pap" Singleton, who styled himself the father of the exodus. He began the work of inducing Negroes to move to the State of Kansas about 1869, founded two colonies and carried a total of 7,432 blacks from Tennessee. During this time he paid from his own pocket over $600 for circulars which he distributed throughout the Southern States. "The advantages of living in a free State" were the inducements offered. The movement spread as far east as North Carolina. There a similar movement was started in 1872 when there were distributed a number of circulars from Nebraska telling of the United States government and railroad lands which could be cheaply obtained. This brief excitement subsided, but was re vived again by reports of thousands of Negroes leaving the other States of the South for Kansas. Several hundred of these migrants from North Carolina were persuaded en route to change their course and go to Indiana. Much excitement characterized the movement. One des cription of this exodus says : Homeless, penniless and in rags, these poor people were thronging the wharves of St. Louis, crowding the steamers on the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers and im ploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where the rights of citizens are respected and honest toil rewarded by honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with ac counts of their destitution, and the very air was burdened with the cry of distress from a class of American citizens flying from persecution which they could no longer endure. Their piteous tales of outrage, suffering and wrong touched the hearts of the more fortunate members of their race in the North and West, and aid societies, designed to afford tem porary relief and composed almost wholly of colored people, were organized in Washington, St. Louis, Topeka and various other places. Men still living, who participated in this movement, tell 248 SELECTED ARTICLES of the long straggling procession of migrants, stretching to the length, at times, of from three to five miles, crossing States on foot. Churches were opened all along the route to receive them. Songs were composed, some of which still linger in the memory, of survivors. The hardships under which they made this journey iare pathetic. Yet it is estimated that nearly 25,000 Negroes left their homes for Kansas. The exodus during the World War, like both of these, was fundamentally economic, though its roots were entangled in the entire social system of the South. It was hailed as the "Exodus to the Promised Land" and characterized by the same frenzy and excitement. Unlike the Kansas movement, it had no conspicuous leaders of the type of the renowned "Pap" Singleton and Henry Adams. Apparently they were not needed. The great horde of restless migrants swung loose from their acknowledged leaders. The very pervasiveness of the impulse to move at the first definite call of the North was sufficient to stir up and carry away thousands before the ex citement subsided. Despite the apparent suddenness of this movement, all evi dence indicates that it is but the accentuation of a process which has been going on for more than fifty years. So silently indeed has this shifting of the Negro population taken place that it has quite escaped popular attention. Follow ing the decennial revelation of the census there is a momen tary outburst of dismay and apprehension at the manifest trend in the interstate migration of Negroes. Inquiries into the living standards of selected groups of Negroes in large cities antedating the migration of 1916-1917 have revealed from year to year an increasing number of persons of southern birth whose length of residence has been surprisingly short. The rapid increase in the Negro population of the cities of the North bears eloquent testimony to this tendency. The total increase in the Negro population between 1900 and 1910 was 1 1. 2 per cent. In the past fifty years the northern move ment has transferred about 4 per cent of the entire Negro population ; and the movement has taken place in spite of the Negro s economic handicap in the North. Within the same period Chicago increased her Negro population 46.3 per cent and Columbus, Ohio, 55.3 per cent. This increase was wholly at the expense of the South, for the rural com- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 249 munities of the North are very sparsely populated with Negroes and the increment accruing from surplus birth over deaths is almost negligible. When any attempt is made to estimate the volume of this most recent movement, however, there is introduced a con fusing element, for it can not definitely be separated from a process which has been in operation since emancipation. Another difficulty in obtaining reliable estimates is the dis tribution of the colored population over the rural districts. It is next to impossible to estimate the numbers leaving the South even on the basis of the numbers leaving the cities. The cities are merely concentration points and they are con tinually recruiting from the surrounding rural districts. The census of 1910 brought out the fact that there had been considerable migration from the North to the South, as well as from the South to the North, and from the East to the West. The number of persons born in the North and living in the South (1,449,229) was not very different from the number born in the South and living in the North (1,527,107). The North, however, has contributed more than five times as many to the population of the West as the South has. The number of Negroes born in the South and living in the North in 1910 was 415,533, or a little over two-thirds of the total number living in the North. Of the 9,109,153 Negroes born in the South 440,534, or 4.8 per cent, were, in 1910, living outside the South. The migration southward it will be noted, has been in recent years largely into the west south central division, while the migration northward has been more evenly distributed by divisions, except that a comparatively small number from the South have gone into the New England States. The greater mobility of whites than of Negroes is shown by the fact that in 1910, 15 per cent of the whites and 10 per cent of the Negroes lived outside of the States in which they were born. This greater mobility of the whites as compared with the Negroes was due in a large measure to the lack of opportunities for large numbers of Negroes to find employment in the sec tions outside the South. The World War changed these con ditions and gave to the Negroes of the United States the same opportunities for occupations in practically every section of the country, which had heretofore been enjoyed only by the 250 SELECTED ARTICLES whites. In 1900, 27,000 Negroes born in the North lived in the South. In 1910, 41,000 Negroes born in the North lived in the South. This indicated that there was beginning to be a con siderable movement of Negroes from the North to the South because of the greater opportunities in the South to find em ployment in teaching, medicine and business. The migration conditions brought about by the war have probably changed this to some extent. Previous to the World War, the States having the greatest gain from Negro migration were Arkansas, 105,500, Pennsylvania, 85,000, Oklahoma, 85,000, Florida, 84,000, New York, 58,450 and Illinois, 57,500. EFFORTS TO CHECK THE MOVEMENT * The departure of the first Negroes usually elicited no con cern from the authorities. It was assumed that their actions were merely expressions of the Negro s "love for travel," and that they would soon return. When, however, they did not return and hosts of others followed, the white South became deeply concerned and endeavored to check the movement. Throughout the exodus drastic legislation and force were em ployed. In Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia laws were passed in an effort to suppress the activities of labor agents. Licenses were made prohibitively high ; labor agents were arrested and heavily fined. In some cases their coming was penalized to prohibit their operations entirely and they frequently suffered physical injury. In Florida labor recruiting early assumed a serious aspect. Precaution was, therefore, taken to impede the progress of the work of labor agents among Negroes, at first by moral suasion and then by actual force. The cities and towns of this State enacted measures requiring a very high license of labor agents, imposing in case of failure to comply with these regulations, a penalty of imprisonment. In Jacksonville, where the labor agents flourished, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring that migration agents should pay $1,000 license to recruit labor sent out of the State under penalty of $600 fine and 60 days in jail. Several police 1 From Negro Migration During the War, by Emmett J. Scott, Howard University, p. 72-85. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Pre liminary Economic Studies of the War, No. 16. Washington, D.C. 1920. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 251 detectives were assigned the task of arresting those who were said to be spreading false reports among Negroes there to the effect that special trains were ready on various specified dates to take them to points in the North. The same condition with respect to the apparent necessity for prohibitive measures obtained in Georgia. The local gov ernments early took action to prevent the drain of the labor population to northern States through the operation of labor Agents. It was soon observed, however, that these agents worked out their schemes so clandestinely that it was impossible to check the movement by such measures. Fearing that the general unrest among the Negroes of the city and the efforts that were being put forth on the part of the authorities to keep them from being transported from Macon to the North, might result in a riot with which the city authorities would not be able to cope, Chief of Police George S. Riley recommended to the civil service commission that forty magazine rifles be pur chased for the police department. At that time the police had only their pistols and clubs. It was said that surliness then existed among certain Negroes and the police wanted to be able to cope with any situation that might arise. The City Council, thereafter, raised the license fee for labor agents to $25,000, requiring also that such an agent be recommended by ten local ministers, ten manufacturers and twenty-five business men. The police of Macon were very active in running down labor agents violating this law. Americus was honeycombed and carefully watched and searched for persons inducing Negroes to migrate, as there was a large exodus of Negroes from this city to the tobacco fields of Connecticut. Negroes attempting to leave were ar rested and held to see if by legal measures they could be deterred from going North. The officers in charge of this raid were armed with State warrants charging misdemeanors and assisted by a formidable array of policemen and deputy sheriffs. Negroes were roughly taken from the trains and crowded into the prisons to await trial for these so-called misdemeanors. Although the majority of them were set free after their trains had left the city, the leaders in most cases suffered humiliation at the hands of the officers of the law. Alabama was equally alive to the need to suppress the migra tion propaganda among Negroes. To this end the Montgomery 252 SELECTED ARTICLES City Commission on September 19, 1916, passed an ordinance to the effect that any person who would entice, persuade or in fluence any laborer or other person to leave the city of Mont gomery for the purpose of being employed at any other place as a laborer must on conviction be fined not less than one nor more than one hundred dollars, or may be sentenced to hard labor for the city, for not more than six months, one or both in the discretion of the court. The other ordinance provided that any person, firm or corporation who published, printed or wrote or delivered or distributed or posted or caused to be pub lished, printed or written or delivered or distributed or posted, any advertisement, letter, newspaper, pamphlet, handbill or other writing, for the purpose of enticing, persuading or influencing any laborer or other person to leave the city of Montgomery for the purpose of being employed at any other place as a laborer must on conviction be fined not less than one hundred dollars, or may be sentenced to hard labor for the city for not more than six months, one or both in the discretion of the court. Labor agents and other leaders both white and black were ar rested throughout the State in accordance with the usual cus tom of preferring technical charges. The treatment of the movement in Mississippi was no ex ception to the rule. At Jackson, the "pass riders," as they were called, were so molested by the police that they were finally driven from the town. In the same town the citizens were re ported to have forced the railroads to discontinue the use of passes on the threat of damaging their interests and influencing decisions in court cases. Negroes were secretly enticed away, however, after they had been dispersed from the railway sta tions and imprisoned when in the act of boarding the trains. The police interfered at one time with Negroes leaving, espe cially when it was suspected that they were leaving on passes To circumvent this, Negroes would go two or three stations be low Jackson where there were no policemen and board the trains. The alarm felt over the exodus prompted the mayor of New Orleans to telegraph the president of the Illinois Central Railroad, asking that this road stop carrying Negroes to the North. The latter replied that he had viewed with much con cern the heavy exodus f Negro labor from the South during the past year, and, because of his very important interest in THE NEGRO PROBLEM 253 that section, it was not to his advantage to encourage it, but as common carriers, they could not refuse to sell tickets or to provide the necessary transportation. It seemed to him that as long as their friends and kinsmen who had preceded them to the North and East were receiving a high scale of wages, the South would have to look for continued movement. After having enforced these drastic measures without secur ing satisfactory results, and having seen that any attempt to hold the Negroes by force resulted apparently in an increased determination to leave, there was resort to the policy of frighten ing the Negroes away from the North by circulating rumors as to the misfortunes to be experienced there. Negroes were then warned against the rigors of the northern winter and the death rate from pneumonia and tuberculosis. When such efforts as these failed, however, the disconcerted planters and business men of the South resorted to another plan. Reconciliation and persuasion were tried. Meetings were held and speakers were secured and advised what to say. In cities and communities where contact on this plane had been infrequent, it was a bit difficult to approach the subject. The press of Georgia gave much space to the discussion of the movement and what ought to be done to stop it. The consen sus of opinion of the white papers in the State was that the Negro had not been fairly treated, and that better treatment would be one of the most effective means of checking the mi gration. Mob violence, it was pointed out, was one of the chief causes of the exodus. It was found necessary to increase wages from 10 to 25 per cent and in some cases as much as 100 per cent to hold labor. The reasons for migration given by Negroes were sought. In almost all cases the chief complaint was about treatment. An effort was made to meet this by calling con ferences and by giving publicity to the launching of a cam paign to make unfair settlements and other such grievances un popular. Thus, in Bolivar county, Mississippi, a meeting was called, ostensibly to look after the economic welfare of the Delta country, but in reality to develop some plan for holding labor. A subcommittee of seventeen men was appointed to look into the labor situation. There were twelve white men and five Negroes. The subcommittee met and reported to the body that the present labor shortage was due to the migration, and that 254 SELECTED ARTICLES the migration was due to a feeling of insecurity before the law, the unrestrained action of mobs, unfair methods of yearly settlement on farms and inadequate school facilities. As a re sult of the report, it was agreed to make an appropriation of $25,000 toward an agricultural high school, as a step toward showing an interest in the Negroes of Bolivar county and thus give them reasons for remaining. A campaign was started to make unpopular the practice among farmers of robbing Negroes of the returns from their labor, and a general effort was made by a few of the leading men behind the movement to create "a better feeling" between the races. Wide publicity was given to the experiment in plantation government, and the policy was accepted by a number of planters as opportunistic action. Thus, one Mr. Abbott of Natchez, Mississippi, told the planters of his section that good treatment, adequate and sympathetic oversight are the import ant factors in any effort to hold labor. He made a trip to his farm every week, endeavoring to educate his tenants in modes of right living. Every man on his place had a bank account and was apparently satisfied. This example was presented with the statement that where these methods had been used, few had left. One planter purchased twenty-eight Ford auto mobiles to sell on easy terms to his tenants with the hope of contenting them. When migrants could be induced to talk freely, they com plained also against the treatment in the courts. Some of the cities consequently are known to have suspended their raids and arrests on petty charges. In some instances the attempts at pacification reached almost incredible bounds. For example, a Negro missed connection with his train through the fault of the railroad. His white friend advised him to bring suit. This he did and urged as his principal grievance that he was stranded in a strange town and was forced to sleep in quar ters wholly at the mercy of bed bugs. It is said that he was awarded damages to the extent of $800. A Jackson, Missis sippi, daily paper that had been running a column of humor ous incidents about Negroes taken from the daily court ses sions, which was very distasteful to the colored people of the city, discontinued it. Such methods as these have been the only ones to prove effective in bringing about an appreciable stem in the tide. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 255 EFFECTS OF THE MOVEMENT ON THE SOUTH 1 The first changes wrought by this migration were unusual ly startling. Homes found themselves without servants, fac tories could not operate because of the lack of labor, farmers were unable to secure laborers to harvest their crops. Streets in towns and cities once crowded assumed the aspect of deserted thoroughfares, houses in congested districts became empty, churches, lodges and societies suffered such a large loss iof membership that they had to close up or undergo reorgan ization. Probably the most striking change was the unusual increase in wages. Throughout the South there was not only a change in pol icy as to the method of stopping the migration of the blacks to the North, but a change in the economic policy of the South. Southern business men and planters soon found out that it was impossible to treat the Negro as a serf and began to deal with him as an actual employee entitled to his share of the returns from his labor. It was evident that it would be very much better to have the Negroes as co-workers in a common cause than to have them abandon their occupations in the South, leaving their employers no opportunity to secure to themselves adequate income to keep them above want. A more difficult change of attitude was that of the labor unions. They had for years been antagonistic to the Negroes and had begun to drive them from many of the higher pur suits of labor which they had even from the days of slavery monopolized. The skilled Negro laborer has gradually seen his chances grow less and less as the labor organizations have invaded the South. In the end, however, the trade unions have been compelled to yield, although complete economic free dom of the Negro in the South is still a matter of prospect. There was, too, a decided change in the attitude of the whole race toward the blacks. The white people could be more easily reached, and very soon there was brought about a better understanding between the races. Cities gave attention to the improvement of the sanitary condition of the Negro sections, which had so long been neglected; Negroes were From Negro Migration During the War by Emmett J. Scott Howard University, p. 86-94- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace I liminary Economic Studies of the War, No. 16. Washington, D.C., 1920. 256 SELECTED ARTICLES invited to take part in the clean-up week; the Women s Health League called special meetings of colored women, conferred with them and urged them to organize community clubs. Com mittees of leading Negroes dared to take up with their em ployers the questions of better accommodations and better treatment of Negro labor. Members of these committees went before chambers of commerce to set forth their claims. Others dared boldly to explain to them that the Negroes were leav ing the South because they had not been given the treatment which should be accorded men. Instead of expressing their indignation at such efforts on the part of the Negroes, the whites listened to them attentively. Accordingly, joint meetings of the whites and blacks were held to hear frank statements of the case from speakers of both races. One of the most interesting of these meetings was the one held in Birmingham, Alabama. The Negroes ad dressing the audience frankly declared that it was impossible to bring back from the North the migrants who were making good there, but that the immediate problem requiring solution was how to hold in the South those who had not gone. These Negroes made it clear that it was impossible for Negro lead ers through the pulpit and press to check the movement, but that only through a change in the attitude of the whites to the blacks could the latter be made to feel that the Southland is safe for them. Here we see the coming to pass of a thing long desired by those interested in the welfare of the South and long rejected by those who have always prized the peculiar interest of one race more highly than the welfare of all. White men, for the first time, were talking on the streets with Negroes just as white men talk with each other. The merchants gave their Negro patrons more attention and consideration. A prominent white man said, "I have never seen such changes as have come about within the last four months. I know of white men and Negroes who have not dared to speak to one another on the streets to converse freely." The suspension of harsh treatment was so marked in some places that few Negroes neglected to mention it. Conferences of Negroes and whites in Mississippi em phasized the necessity of cooperation between the races for their common good. A general review of the results made it THE NEGRO PROBLEM 257 clear that there was a disposition on the part of the white population to give some measure of those benefits, the denial of which was alleged as the cause of the exodus. For those who remained conditions were much more tolerable, although there appeared to persist a feeling of apprehension that these concessions would be retracted as soon as normal times re turned. Some were of the opinion that the exodus was of more assistance to those Negroes who stayed behind than to those who went away. Another evidence of the beneficent effects of the decrease in the population in the Black Belt of the South is the interest now almost generally manifested in the improvement of the Negro quarters in southern cities. For a number of years sci ence has made an appeal in behalf of the thoroughly clean city, knowing that since the germ does not draw the color line, a city can not be kept clean as long as a substantial por tion of its citizens are crowded into one of its oldest and least desirable parts, neglected by the city and avoided by the whites. Doing now what science has hitherto failed to accom plish, this peculiar economic need of the Negro in the South has brought about unusual changes in the appearance of southern cities. Darkened portions of urban districts have been lighted ; streets in need of improvement have been paved ; the water, light and gas systems have been extended to Negro quarters and play grounds and parks have been provided for their amusement. No less important has been the effect of the migration on the southern land tenure and the credit system, the very heart of the trouble in that section. For generations the Negroes have borne it grievously that it has been difficult to obtain land for cultivation other than by paying exorbitant rents on giving their landlords an unusually large share of the crops. They have been further handicapped by the necessity of de pending on such landlords to supply them with food and cloth ing at such exorbitant prices that their portion of the return from their labor has been usually exhausted before harvest ing the crops. Cheated thus in the making of their contracts and in purchasing necessities, they have been but the prey of sharks and harpies bent upon keeping them in a state scarcely better than that of slavery. Southerners of foresight have, therefore, severely criticized this custom and, in a measure, 258 SELECTED ARTICLES have contributed to its decline. The press and the pulpit of the South are now urging the planters to abolish this system that the Negroes may enjoy the fruits of their own labor. It is largely because of these urgent appeals in behalf of fair play, during the economic upheaval, that this legalized rob bery is losing its hold in the South. On the whole, the South will profit by this migration. Such an upheaval was necessary to set up a reaction in the southern mind to enable its leaders of thought to look beyond them selves into the needs of the man far down. There is in prog ress, therefore, a reshaping of public opinion, in fact a peace ful revolution in a land cursed by slavery and handicapped by aristocracy. The tendency to maltreat the Negroes without cause, the custom of arresting them for petty offenses and the institution of lynching have all been somewhat checked by this change in the attitude of the southern white man toward the Negro. The check in the movement of the Negroes to other parts may to some extent interfere with this develop ment of the new public opinion in the South, but this move ment has been so far reaching in its effect as to compel the thinking class of the South to construct and carry out a pol icy of fair play to provide against that day when that section may find itself again at the mercy of the laboring class of the Negroes. NEGRO IN INDUSTRY HIS INDUSTRIAL SUCCESS 1 Too exclusively the Negro has been thought of in the terms of the domestic servant. In the right light it is an honorable distinction. At his best the domestic has belonged to the Order of the Knights of the Christian Round Table whose motto has been: "Whosoever will be great among you let him be your servant." He has often shown the real spirit and heart of "The Servant in the House." This old-time re lation of life has gradually changed since the days of Eman cipation. Only 21 per cent of all Negroes were of this class in 1910. The movement away from domestic service has been greatly accelerated since the wartime demands in in dustry came upon us. Even before the Great War Negro la borers were multiplying in lumber camps, mines, iron mills, and all forms of industry in the Sunny South. Increasingly also they were coming North as industrial laborers. Only in Southern cotton mills did the "poor whites" reign supreme. The coming of the war meant accelerated industry and a new day for Negro labor. Negroes were needed in great numbers in factories, mines, munition plants, docks, stock yards, freight yards and in many other places not previously entered. Negro women in greatly increased numbers found welcome also as clerks, factory hands, milliners, wrappers, checkers. Race was no hindrance when economic law made demands. A new day for the colored worker had dawned. His work was a success. The Department of Negro Eco nomics of the United States Government in a careful study found that "with here and there an exception the Negro work ers in the matter of turnover, absenteeism, wage scales, quan tity and quality of the work on which they are employed, compared favorably with the white workers in the same plant on the same work. Here is substantial answer to the old charge of shiftlessness and laziness." iFrom The Negro: an Asset of the American Nation by Rodney W. Roundy. p. 7-8, u. Home Missions Council, New York. 26o SELECTED ARTICLES As a skilled workman he made good. The United States Ship ping Board had under employment 24,647 negroes when the arm istice was signed. Of this number 4,962 were skilled workmen and 19,685 were unskilled. At the conclusion of the war these numbers were respectively reduced to 3,872 and 10,203. In the case of the skilled workers this was a 20.7 per cent re duction. Of the unskilled 48 per cent reduction. These facts are altogether to the good in testing the success of the Negro skilled laborer. Other investigations of the Department of Negro Economics in various industrial plants throughout the country emphasize the same truth. The skilled Negro has very largely retained his position in all places where he has gained foothold during the last few years. It is to be remem bered that Charles Knight made the record as a riveter in the war period, having driven 4,875 rivets in nine hours in the Bethlehem Steel Plant at Sparrow s Point, Md., and that Charles H. Jackson is the recent inventor of an armored div ing suit, to be used as a device for marine salvage and per mitting a descent of 360 feet beneath the water s surface. There is such a thing as the thriftless Negro. He is still with us in sufficient though decreasing numbers. The real Negro is the working Negro. When new industries are planned and new developments projected the colored man is included in the reckoning. He is on the Railroad section as well as in the Pullman car and diner. We find him in the stockyards of Chicago, the automobile industry of Detroit, the rubber works of Akron, the steel mills of Pittsburgh, Cleve land and other mid-western cities. The Negro was the deter mining factor in the steel strike of 1919. At last, all too tardily, the American Federation of Labor has admitted him to membership in the union. His number is multiplying among the longshoremen of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. He digs coal in the mines of Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Kansas. Even after the war is over he is among the shipbuilders of Portsmouth, Newark, Philadelphia, Balti more, Norfolk and Newport News. In the latter place 5,500 skilled Negro laborers work with white men side by side. Mr. Homer L. Ferguson, native of North Carolina, "the most human shipbuilder in America," sounds a real warning: "Don t you dare come down from the North to this yard and tell us that the black man in the South is an industrial fail- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 261 ure you who only use him as an elevator boy or a parlor- car porter or a chauffeur and refuse to give him an equal in dustrial opportunity with white labor." Varied industries in many places have called 300,000 to 500,000 from cabins, farms and plantations of the Southland for work that must be done work left undone unless the strong hands of Negroes do it. Progress in Business The Negro s commercial progress has been remarkable. Increasing numbers of his race have shown unshakable evi dence of that soundest principle of American business success thrift. In 1866 the Negroes of the country North and South owned 12,000 houses, operated 20,000 farms, conducted 2,100 businesses and had $20,000,000 of accumulated wealth. iFifty years later the number of homes owned had increased to 600,000, one out of every four, the operated farms to 981,000, the number of businesses to 45,000 and the accumulated wealth to $1,110,000,000. In 1867 four hundred Negroes were .engaged in about forty lines of business; in 1917 they were engaged in two hundred lines and had $50,000,000 invested. Today there are seventy or more safe and sound banks in the hands of capable Negro financiers. Already members of the race have received grants for a thousand patents. In 1866 the valuation of property used for higher education was $60,000; in 1916 it was $21,500,000. For the same dates the valuation of church property increased from $1,500,000 to $76,000,000. Were the figures for increase along all lines for the last five years available a much more marked contrast would appear. EFFECT OF WAR CONDITIONS ON NEGRO LABOR 1 In speaking upon the "Effect of War Conditions on Negro Labor" the subject should be divided into three main parts: (i) The change in the relation of Negro wage-earners to white employers, North and South; (2) the change in the 1 From article by George Edmund Haynes, Director of Negro Eco nomics, U.S. Department of Labor. Academy of Political Science. Pro ceedings. 8:299-312. February, 1919. 262 SELECTED ARTICLES relation of Negro wage-earners to white wage-earners and (3) the change in the Negro himself. To discuss first the change in the relation of the Negro wage-earner to white employers, the point divides itself into two parts: namely, the change in relation to employers in the North and the change in relation to employers in the South. Preceding the war period, Northern employers in indus tries, on railroads and in mines had very little contact or ex perience with Negro labor. With few exceptions, it might be said that Northern industrial employers as a whole had al most no relations with Negro labor. The experiences, there fore, of these employers during the war were largely experi mental and with results varying according to the wisdom of their methods. To deal with such problems in the mobilization of Negro wage-earners for winning the war, the Department of Labor formed Negro Workers Advisory Committee in ten states. These committees by states and counties were made up of repre sentatives of Negro wage-earners, of white employers and wherever possible, of white wage-earners. These committees have served as connecting links between employers and many organizations such as churches, lodges, women s clubs and betterment agencies through which Negro workers are influ enced. Thus these committees helped to bring employers and white workers into such touch with Negro workers that all sides received satisfactory impressions during the first steps of introducing Negroes into industrial plants. In a number of cases in Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey the facts about the success of employing Negro workers along several lines, especially the employment of Negro women, have been brought favorably to the attention of employers who had here tofore given no consideration to the matter. These illustra tions indicate the fact that these first experiences of Northern employers with Negro labor were largely experimental. In a number of cases they frankly said they did not desire to have the Negro, but were taking him under the pressure of extreme war-labor needs. But, let me emphasize that wherever as in Detroit, in Chi cago, in Cleveland and in other places, there has been intelli gent guidance so that the first experience of the employer has been satisfactory to him and wherever there has been intelli- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 263 gent guidance for Negro workers, the experiment has usually been successful. Northern employers have testified that they have received a favorable impression of the capacity of Ne groes, of their readiness to learn, and of their responsiveness to good wages and fair treatment. A number of private welfare agencies have been of great service in this connection both to employers and to the Negro new-comers to Northern industrial centers. Without such in telligent guidance, employers have given up as a hopeless at tempt their experiment of using Negro labor. Taking next the change in the Negro s relation to em ployers in the South, perhaps the most far-reaching effect of the war conditions has been the decided change in the estimate placed upon the Negro as a factor in the productive life of the South. Preceding the war and the migration North there was such a surplus of Negro workers in many localities that when one worker dropped out or departed it was an easy matter to secure another to fill his place. After the migra tion North had developed and after there was a considerable increase in war demands for the building of cantonments and munitions plants in the South, a shortage of labor followed inevitably. Because of this shortage, there arose a revalua tion of Negro labor. The Southern employer began to at tach a new importance to the Negro wage-earner. In the second place, while in some localities attempts were made to use compulsory measures to force workers to stick to their tasks, in a majority of localities the larger view of persuasion and better treatment has prevailed. The result is that such reasonable measures as increase in wages, the im provement of working conditions and the enlargement of edu cational and other community facilities have gained headway. Thoughtful representatives of both races have met in many localities to discuss their problems. In these ways better un derstanding, greater contentment and increased production an the part of Negro workers have been promoted. Public opin ion as expressed in the white public press has been more fav orable toward the Negro, and the desire for meting out jus tice to him has found increased expression. May I again ven ture to refer to the special work of the Department of Labor through its Negro Workers Advisory Committees and through its state supervisors of Negro Economics appointed by the 264 SELECTED ARTICLES Department? In Florida, in Mississippi, in Georgia, in North Carolina and in Virginia these committees, made up of repre sentative Negro citizens and representative white citizens, to gether with these supervisors, who are Negroes of ability, have been large factors in securing conferences of the races and frank discussion of local labor problems from the think ing people of both groups. In this way, more amicable ad justment of working and living conditions in the South is be ing promoted. Similar committees and officials have been ap pointed in five northern states. It should be emphasized, that although these efforts to ad just relations of white employers and Negro wage-earners in the South during the unusual war conditions have been large ly experimental, the experiment has been successful beyond the most sanguine expectations. The experiment, North and South, has established beyond question the practical value of the plan by which representatives of Negro wage-earners meet representatives of white employers in committees and conferences. It has demonstrated that such committees and conferences can achieve substantial results in adjusting the lo cal Negro labor problems, which changing conditions and re lations have produced. Let us turn, now, to the effect of war conditions on Negro labor through the gradually changing attitude of white wage- earners. This part of the question is largely to the forefront in the North. In many of the war industries, there was such a demand for labor, both North and South, that large numbers of white workmen passed on to the higher-paid occupation. As a consequence, Negroes were freely admitted to many of the occupations formerly monopolized by white workers and from which Negroes were previously excluded. With the de mand for labor so much greater than the supply, the fear of white workmen that Negroes would be their competitors at a lower wage was greatly lessened in many semi-skilled and skilled occupations. It may be well to remember that this danger of paying Negroes lower wages exists not because Negroes want lower wages than other workers but because, as in the case of wo men, there is a prevalent idea that Negro wage-earners should be paid less than white wage- earners for the same work. We have actually had governmental wage-fixing authorities to act upon this idea. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 265 Those who accept this notion overlook the fact that the Negro buys his bread, butter and beefsteak in the same mar ket as other purchasers; that investigations have shown that he pays higher rent for similar houses, and that his clothing must be bought at current prices in about the same quantity as other workers. It would seem that the Negro is expected to produce from his dark skin some sort of alchemy which will transmute smaller pay than white workers receive into equal standards of food, shelter and clothing in spite of simi lar demands from grocer, landlord and clothier. Some of the most striking evidence of the change in the attitude of white workmen is the growing recognition given Negro workmen by white labor unions. In many of the city centers where union organization is strong, the unions are opening their doors to Negro members. In such centers as Chicago and Cleveland Negroes are represented in labor lo cals and union councils. But there still remains considerable fear of competition in the future and this reacts in some oc cupations to keep up the hostility of white workers toward the Negro s entry into these fields. It is reasonable to conclude, however, that white wage-earners today look upon the en trance of Negroes into the higher grades of occupations with less opposition than existed before the war. The contact in industry and in the community of the white and Negro working classes offers one of the most delicate and difficult problems of the changing order. It is here, also, that the experiment of the Department of Labor with its Negro Workers Advisory Committees has pointed a signifi cant way to secure the introduction of the Negro into indus try by peaceful agreement and understanding of all whose in terests are affected rather than by force and the confusion of misunderstanding. Already race disturbances in East St. Louis, 111.; Chester, Pa. and Philadelphia have called attention to the need of peaceful adjustment. The federal government as the best and most impartial agent may well come to the aid of citizens, white and black, in these local communities and help adjust such racial labor problems before outbreaks occur rather than make investigations afterward. Many private or ganizations such as were referred to a few minutes ago are eagerly doing their best. They are ready to join hands under government cooperation. We come, now, to the third decided effect of war condi- 266 SELECTED ARTICLES tions upon Negro labor: namely, the effect upon the Negro himself. The first effect upon the Negro was to increase his mobility. Let me remind you that when the great war started not only did immigration from Europe practically cease, but thousands of the foreign born went home in re sponse to the call of their countries needs. Northern employ ers who had depended upon the immigrant for labor found their supply vanishing. At the same time their contracts for European war orders were increasing by leaps and bounds. The owners and operators of Northern mines, factories and railroads faced a serious labor shortage. They soon discovered an unworked labor supply in the Negroes of the South. Early in the spring of 1915, their agents began to comb the South seeking these workers. Preceding the appearance of Northern labor agents in the South, floods and drouths, the spread of the boll weevil in the cotton states, the low price of cotton for several years pre ceding the war, lynchings and other racial friction, together with other unsatisfactory local conditions, had created eco nomic and community situations that caused unusual restless ness in the Negro population. There was needed only the creation of such a labor vacuum in the North and the guiding hand of the labor agent to draw thousands of unskilled Negro workers, along with some of the skilled workers, into North ern industrial centers. It has been estimated that by January i, 1918, between four hundred and five hundred thousand Negroes had migrated north. This effect of war conditions on Negro labor not only in creased its mobility by moving about a half million of Negroes from one section of the country to the other, but it also accel erated the constant, slower migration to Northern centers, a movement which has been going on for more than a generation. The change under war conditions did more than this. Not only did thousands move, but also there was created in the mind of Negro rural peasants and urban wage-earners a new consciousness of the fact that they have the liberty and the opportunity to move freely from place to place. The migra tion broke down much of their timidity. It gave the rank and file the belief that they could move to another part of the country and succeed in gaining a foothold in its industrial life and activity. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 267 The effects of the war changes went even further. The mind of the masses of the Negro people received the impres sion that all kinds and types of work might at some time be open to them ; that they need not be content with clinging to poorer paid occupations but might aspire to those requiring greater efficiency and affording larger pay. And here let me emphasize what a change in Negro life this means. In years past in New York and other cities Negro boys and girls dropped out of school in the lower grades because they re peatedly said there was no use in going any further, when a Negro could only get a menial job anyway and that they were already prepared for that. I sometimes surmise what the American public would do if in some way it could understand that North and South, on railroads, in factories, in erection of buildings and in government projects, thousands of work men have been denied the fundamental opportunity of earn ing an honest living at jobs for which they were competent, for no other reason than because they are Negroes. A prominent writer several years ago said Negroes could get any job under the sun. He overlooked the fact that to day much of industry is carried on in the shade. To sum up the point in a sentence, the migration of these thousands of Negro workers to the North and the consequent changes under war conditions brought consciously to their minds the fact that freedom for any one means liberty to move freely from place to place and opportunity to change his job when it is advantageous to do so. In parenthesis, let me add that this new consciousness of liberty which is dawning upon the Negro people calls not only for the best guidance their own leaders can give, but also for the sympathetic understanding of white Americans. Negroes are faced with the problem of walking the narrow path of liberty and of avoiding the precipice of license. To shake off the bondage of servility and to take on the restraints of civ ility is no easy task for any people. Another effect of the war upon the Negro himself has been to open up a wider range of occupations, in the North espe cially. This might logically be discussed under the point of the relation of Negroes to white employers, but the result has been felt largely within the Negro group. Hence it is placed in this part of the discussion. This change has been 268 SELECTED ARTICLES more far-reaching than the most hopeful might have expected for the next twenty years. In 1910 there were 5,192,535 Negroes of the nation gain fully employed. This was about one-half of the total Negro population. More than one-half of those gainfully employed were engaged in agriculture and nearly one-half of those in agriculture were only farm laborers. In manufacturing, in transportation and in trade occupations the large majority of Negroes, male and female, previous to the war had been given opportunity to work principally as laborers, porters and the like the poorer paid places. Furthermore, more than one- fifth of the Negroes gainfully employed in 1910 were classi fied as engaged directly in domestic and personal service. In 1908-9, I made some studies of the Negro at work in New York and other northern cities. At that time probably more than 85 per cent of Negro women gainfully employed in northern centers and about 75 per cent of Negro men were engaged in domestic and personal service. War conditions have made some changes. Just how great the changes have been we cannot tell before the Census of 1920. But in some northern cities, the change has been sig nificant. In Detroit, Michigan, in 1914, for example, there were probably not a thousand Negroes in all the factories in that great automobile center. The latest report from Detroit about two months ago stated that probably between twelve and fifteen thousand are now engaged in the automobile in dustries of that city alone. In the steel districts of Pittsburgh, within twelve months, the number of Negro workers in the various plants increased in some cases 35 per cent and in others as high as 100 per cent. I am informed that the General Electric Company of Pittsburgh, which had not employed Negroes before 1914, now employs scores of both men and women. In New York, where ten years ago it was quite difficult to get a Negro girl admitted into one of the cheaper branches of the garment trades, now scores of Negro women are daily employed and the manufacturers are advertising for more. Unlike many other problems brought to the surface by war conditions, this racial labor situation probably can best be guided toward a constructive policy through the help of the federal government acting as a central, coordinating THE NEGRO PROBLEM 269 agency for the private organizations and interests involved. Repeatedly, I have found white employers and white work men willing to meet Negro representatives under Department of Labor supervision, when they would not consider it other wise. Negroes have comparatively few unions or employers organizations. They have felt the power of both organized capital and organized labor. Negroes have had to deal with both in an effort to secure an American s chance to work. Yesterday, when I read the resolutions of the councillors of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States on regu larity of employment, the right of workers to organize, a minimum wage and their other newly adopted principles of industrial democracy, immediately there arose in my mind the question, how far Negro workers will share these benefits just as other workers do. The announcement of the new policy of the captains of industry and commerce gave new strength to my conviction that there should be some govern mental guidance of the private forces toward a constructive policy dealing with the reconstruction and peace problems growing out of the effect of war conditions upon Negro labor. THE NEGRO IN INDUSTRY * The increased tension between the races to which the north ward movement contributed had two main determinants : First, recognition by northern industrialists that they must find some source of cheap labor to compensate the stoppage of immigration during the war and that Southern Negroes were available for their purposes. Second, a realization by white labor unionists that their unions were endangered by an influx of aliens, unorganized, distrustful of labor unions and therefore difficult and in many cases impossible, for the time, to unionize. What has been called "group protection" became a strong motive among white unionists. Independent as it was of racial antip athyfor hostility would have been directed against any laborers who threatened union standards it speedily fastened on the color line. Thus from the industrial movements and read justments incident to the war grew a new race conflict. iFrom Negro Faces America, by Herbert J. Seligmann. p. 186-317. Copyright by Harper & Bros. New York. 1920. 270 SELECTED ARTICLES For the Negro wartime opportunity was especially significant in that it enabled him, as never before, to play with capital and with labor. In a short space of time Negroes found themselves preferred in many plants from which they had previously been excluded or where they had been employed in small numbers only. Their leaders urged them not to serve as strike-breakers; just as the more intelligent of the white union leaders had warned against dividing labor by the color line. In practice, white unionists had discriminated against the Negro, had given him no jobs when the allotments were made or had given the most arduous and disagreeable work; had either discouraged his joining their unions or had made it virtually impossible for him to do so. In practice, the Negro, indoctrinated with the brotherhood of man and the common interests of all labor, irrespective of color, took advantage of the situation which presented itself. Colored workers in many instances saw no reason why, having always been made victims of white discrim ination, they should fight the white unionists battles. The Negro s distrust of unionism, justified as it has been by discrimination in the North, is based on the treatment of colored labor in the South. It has been the rule to exclude Negroes from white unions. In June of 1919, it was reported that two thousand white unionists of Richmond, Virginia, had withdrawn from the Virginia Federation of Labor because W. C. Page, a Negro of Newport News, had been seated as a delegate. Under the circumstances, the American Federation of Labor, at its spring meeting of 1919, indulged in a more or less empty gesture in voting with but one dissenting voice to admit Negroes to full membership. As is well known, the Fed eration exercises no power over its constituent international unions. At the same convention at which the vote was taken, a representative of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks justified the exclusion of Negroes from his union and announced that the color line would be drawn in the future as it had in the past. One of the colored delegates to the convention reported that in Virginia, from March to April, 1919, 43,oo Negro workmen had been obliged to join an independent labor union because thev could not be received into those affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The influence of Southern delegates to the Federation had always prevented effective measures to organize Negroes. Even THE NEGRO PROBLEM 271 where the constitution of the union contained no express pro hibition, it was not uncommon for white membership to double while no Negroes were added, in an industry giving employ ment to both white and colored men. Negroes were not in a position to constitute a menace to unionism . With the demand for Negro labor to supply war-time and after-war needs, the scene changed. The Federation made its gesture of generosity. Unions whose strikers were being replaced suddenly discovered the brotherhood of man. The Negro found himself in a position of strategic importance. Every sort of opposition was offered the Negro during his progress to industrial bargaining power. Mr. Roger Baldwin, who worked as a manual laborer in the Middle West during October and November of 1919, writes: "Everywhere, of course, the Negroes had the hardest and most disagreeable jobs. Only the exceptional Negro had risen above the lowest paid day laborer rate. That s the rate I was getting too! And it was these men I found really thinking, keenly conscious of the relation of their own problem to the race and to labor. Every one ot the men was in favor ot the unions, but every one of them complained of union discrimin ation against the Negro. They are ready for organization which they felt would be fair to them. "On the other hand, there was a feeling of desperation because of the almost universal ignoring or contempt of the Negro. Every man I spoke to talked of warfare between the races. All of them were preparing to resist further invasion of what they regarded as their rights. They didn t seem to have faith that white men, even in the unions, were going to make common cause with them. Even the scabs in the steel mill at Homestead, Pennsylvania, where Negroes have been imported by the thousand, were all for the union and all for a strike at the right time, but they felt that they owed nothing to white men who had so long ignored and oppressed them. Not a single organizer had been sent into the Pittsburgh steel dis trict ... I couldn t help but feel as I looked around at the forces lined up about me that the immediate future of Amer ican labor depends on what unions will do with the Negro. It is the white man s job if he is to make the solidarity of labor a living fact." Discrimination against Negro labor bore fruit in the steel 272 SELECTED ARTICLES strike of 1919. The conditions which materially helped to produce the East St. Louis riots and the Chicago disorders were reproduced. Despite opposition in the South, where labor re cruiters and agents risked death at the hands of a mob if their errand were made known, Negroes were brought North. Negro welfare workers were employed at the Homestead and Duqnesne plants of the Carnegie Steel Company, at the Monessen plant of the Pittsburgh Steel Company; and by the Lockhart Iron and Steel Company. Three of the four basic mills of the United States Steel Corporation and the largest of the inde pendent mills pursued the policy of encouraging employment of Negroes. During the first six weeks of the steel strike six thousand Negroes, it was estimated, were brought to Allegheny County. At Lackawanna, before the strike there were said to be seven thousand employees of whom seventy-two were Negroes. Dur ing the strike the mill was operated chiefly with Negro labor. Some of the steel mills employed Negro preachers. Early in November a representative of the Urban League said that Negroes in the steel works had remained at work during the strike almost to a man. There were, of course, exceptions, but in general, however favorably they were disposed to white labor unions, Negroes became effective instruments to be used against white unions. If the vote of the American Federation of Labor to unionize Negroes was an anticipation and a recognition of the menace of division of labor along color lines, that state of mind found recognition in the South. For the first time to any marked extent white labor realized the necessity of making allies of colored workers. Any such general change of front by white workmen would menace the very foundations of the color line as it is drawn in the South. It is, therefore, significant to note what extraordinary measures were adopted to prevent a coalition of white and colored labor. As always, the advocates of the color line brought about violence to sustain the division. It is, therefore, a melodramatic episode which reveals the forces which were at work in the South. As the color line is stretched and becomes a matter of national concern, it becomes more and more evident that colored labor cannot be treated as though it were a monstrosity or a rare specimen. Too much evidence is at hand which demon- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 273 strates that not only have colored men done their work as well as white, often increasing output in factories manned previously by white men; but also have worked in amity, without friction, among white workers. The elaborate plans made by the steel companies to obtain and to keep Negro labor tell their own story. The Urban League of Pittsburgh found that the Negro laborer "can do anything the white worker can do." If some Negroes are unsteady, on the other hand, there are "hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of Negroes who have not lost a single day and are counted upon by concerns as their most dependable men." It is not necessary to draw from the evidence presented any conclusions other than those written upon the face of the facts : namely, that the Negro has enormously enlarged his sphere of opportunity in industry by doing satisfactorily the work allotted to him; that he has worked with white men amicably; and that the future of the American labor movement will be involved to some extent in the position which the Negro workman is given or takes. In the existing state of industrial organization, the Negro s capabilities as they may be limited or determined by racial inheritance, play a small part. With few exceptions industries are not so thoroughly organized that slight individual and psychological differences make themselves felt in large- scale production. Meanwhile the test of practice has been applied. The results have shown industrial corporations eager to employ and to retain Negro labor. That is a fact which, regardless of racial prejudice, actual or alleged racial "inferior ity," it is necessary for any student of labor currents to take into account. The Negro has been engaged in conquering and making his own new industrial fields. That development was bound to come in time. It was undoubtedly accelerated by the World War, as much as fifty years, in the estimation of a number of observers. One fruit of the acceleration was acute conflict which came of the same sort of maladjustment that attended the influx of immigrant labor from abroad. What fostered the violence and the riots of 1919, some of them erroneously called race riots, was the unduly sensitive, in fact, morbid, state of the public mind with regard to color. It rests very largely with labor, white and colored, whether the divisions that have caused havoc are to be perpetuated and made irrec- 274 SELECTED ARTICLES oncilable. The broadest path toward harmonization of racial differences in the future lies in labor organization. As soon as a community of interest is recognized between white arid colored workers, as it was recognized in the heart of the South, in Bogalusa, Louisiana, race prejudice fades into its proper place as a bogy, a set of ungoverned and unanalyzed emotions, which can be stimulated to the detriment of the people who harbor those emotions. In more than one place the color line is being swept irresistibly out of labor organ izations. The question is still debated whether the Negro is or is not a "good union man." In fact, the Negro was and has been shown to be systematically discriminated against, until the industrial weight of his numbers and his competence made itself felt. If many Negroes are not now good union men, it is because they have never, despite their interest and their desire, been given opportunity to have an effective part in the American Labor movement. BILL OF LABOR RIGHTS 1 It is not enough, to train the Negro for industry. In dustry must be open to him upon a basis of justice. In the past it has been the industrial part of the color line that has most impeded the Negro s progress. He has been barred from the trades to a serious extent by the fact of his being barred from membership in the labor-unions of the country. But now a start has been made toward correcting this feature of the race situation. At its recent Atlantic City meeting the American Federation of Labor voted to grant unconditional membership to the Negro. Afro-American periodicals here and there refer to this step as next in importance to the abolition of chattel slavery. Theoretically this decision of the federation makes it possible for the Negro workman to enter all of the skilled and better-paid trades and carry on a genuine test of merit un hampered by racial discrimination. This action of the federa tion was not inspired by any abstract theory of the race problem, but was the inevitable result of conditions brought about by the 1 From article, The Clash of Color, by Glenn Frank. Century. 99 .-86-98. November, 1919. I THE NEGRO PROBLEM 275 war. I have already referred to the fact that the withdrawal of many white American workmen from industry for military service, the return of so many Italians and other South-European laborers to their native lands for war duty, and the practical cessation of immigration during the war resulted in a labor shortage in Northern industries; that this resulted in a great influx of Negro labor into the Northern States. The American Federation of Labor had to reckon with the presence of this great body of colored workmen already in Northern industry as a result of the migration of the last three years. It saw that the great need for labor during the reconstruction period, coupled with an imminent restriction of immigration by Con gressional act, would probably keep a steady stream of Negro labor flowing from the South for some time to come. If this mass of colored workmen should be left unorganized or admitted to a qualified membership only, there would be great danger to organized white labor in the use of colored workmen as strike-breakers. If the mass of Negro workmen in Northern industries, dissatisfied with discriminatory treatment at the hands of organized labor, were made available as "scab" labor, a complicated situation would obtain. The American Federation of Labor saw this and hastened to throw its doors open to the Negro. If this vote can be translated into fact, labor will face the issues of the new era with a solid front. There are two factors that will make difficult the carrying out of this vote. In the first place, there is bound to be much friction between white and black workmen as the Negro enters the unions and takes his place alongside the white workman. The old race prejudice will not be exorcised by executive order. In the second place, it is not at all certain that Negro workmen will readily adapt themselves to a far-reaching program of organization. They may feel that their best interests lie in playing a separate game with capital. Mr. John Mitchell, the editor of a Negro periodical in Richmond, Virginia, has stated these two difficulties clearly. He writes: "The greatest menace to organized labor as opposed to organized capital is the black multitude that entered the indus trial plants of the country and demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that they could execute and master the tasks assigned. . . It was organized capital and not organized labor that gave to black labor the position that it now occupies. Will 276 SELECTED ARTICLES the colored men accept the invitation and join the white labor- unions or will they stand out as independent units under their own leaders and from their respective platforms deal directly with the moneyed interests of the country? On this decision will depend the fate of the white laboring interests of America as represented by the American Federation of Labor. "It is also an interesting question as to whether the American Federation of Labor can hold in leash its own membership should the invitation be generally accepted by the colored men of this country." Mr. Samuel Gompers said regarding the admission of colored workmen into unqualified membership in the federation that "it is one of the most important steps taken by the federation in many years." It is undoubtedly a challenge to the good temper, the patience, and the statesmanship of the leaders of black and white labor. THE NEGRO AND HIS OPPORTUNITY l We are told that as a race Negroes surpass whites in acuteness of some of the senses, namely those of seeing, hearing and location. With these advantages with which na ture has endowed the Negro, why should he not surpass in those arts in which the senses named play an important part. The Negro in his original habitat possessed great facility in metal-working trades our white ancestor fashioned his weap on and crude implement out of stone, the Negro used iron for his. The Negroes of Guinea several centuries past were ex perts in the art of bronze casting. So much for the past performances of the Negro race, what we are concerned with is the present capabilities. He was first imported as a slave and in most cases since his emancipation has been content to retain the relative position of a servant. Our work or fight law precipitated many Negroes into actual industrial life from positions as personal servants and many will not return to their former station. These have earned the right to be called producers. As I see it the problems accruing to the employment of Negro labor can be classified in a very few points: By Ralph W. Immel. Industrial Management. 58:75-6. July, 1919. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 277 1. The problem of the extent of segregation is most im portant. In this connection I desire to cite the experience of a man who has made a distinct success of employment of Negro labor. Mr. Shamberger started on the assumption that in his eyes the value of a man lay only in his productive power and not in the amount of pigment in his skin. His toilets, lockers and shower baths were separated on each side of a large room. One side for Negroes and the other side for whites. Inside this room the color line was drawn but as soon as the man, black or white, stepped outside he became a neutral shade in the eyes of the superintendent and his foremen and as noted above his status was only measured by his work. Most important of all, in my eyes, was the fact that no at tempt was made to have white gangs or colored gangs. The man s color was completely ignored. The proof of the suc cess of this lay not only in the satisfactory work turned out by the Negroes but in the matter-of-fact way in which the whites accepted the situation. And this has not resulted in un due familiarity on the part of the Negro toward his white fellow workman. The work in this department meant the di viding up into numerous gangs of twos, threes, and so on. These may be two whites and one Negro or vice versa and the men all of them have come to be unconscious of the color of the man next them as long as he holds up his end. So much against segregation in actual working and for segre gation in welfare relations. 2. The seeming lack of responsibility of the Negro. I have often heard it said (and justly in many cases) that a Negro does not feel responsibility for results that is essential in a man to whom important work with a possibility of high spoilage existing is to be given. This, I believe, is capable of development. It is true that naturally the Negro is possessed with a large amount of un reasoning, child-like optimism, being equally impartial with his own as well as other s troubles, but when it is "put up to him" in the right way a Negro welcomes responsibility, and I believe possesses a higher degree of faithfulness in following out orders implicitly than many white and especially alien workmen. Let him know that you are trusting him and meeting 278 SELECTED ARTICLES him in a business (not social) way on the same plane and you will find that he will rise to the emergency. 3. The proper selection of work to start negroes on. (After a period of probation it will be found that many Negroes have outgrown the need for methods noted below.) Work in which a Negro can by extra exertion for a per iod gain a spell of rest is most popular. Sustained effort has a dampening effect on the naturally buoyant nature of the negro and will (on the start) discourage him with his job as well as himself. Or work requiring a display of great strength intermit tently is also popular with the Negro. (The love of the spec tacular has a mitigating effect on the Negro s usefulness as in many cases it increases his liability to accident.) Work, if such can be found, in which the operations pos^ sess a natural rhythm and which can be carried on to the accom paniment of a song suits the Negro. I do not know whether physiology will substantiate me in this statement, but I have found that the Negro as a class possesses less muscular coordination than the white in that they seem to be most susceptible to strains. 4. Supervision of the Negro. It is most important that Negro laborers, whether all men in gang are Negroes or not, should be supervised by a white foreman until such time as a careful selection can be made of a foreman of their own col or. My opinion is that the opportunity for advancement for the Negro does not lie along lines of supervision as much as perfection of individuals to a point capable of doing high grade mechanical work. 5. The problem of improvidence in the colored race. The per capita wealth of the colored race is only a small percent age of that of the white race. Needless to say, the man who will become an asset to his country and to his company is the one who saves toward a home, education of his offspring or for any purpose. This is the man who will work steady and try to advance. 6. The natural laziness and lassitude of the colored man. This heading hardly sounds like a recommendation for the Negro but in a certain way even this unmistakable quality has its compensations to the employer. A lazy man and especially a Negro will instinctively and THE NEGRO PROBLEM 279 even unconsciously find the easiest way to perform an opera tion. In other words, the Negro is the original efficiency en gineer. If he is given a certain thing to do in a certain time he. will do it with the least effort and in a way which will allow him the longest rest period out of the time allotted. What an opportunity for time studies. Unnecessary steps or exer tion are repugnant to every fibre of his being, and he will surely find the line of least resistance which will at the same time accomplish the desired result in work done. Here is one time where the Negro will use his head to save his hands. 7. Care as to health of the Negro in placing on certain work. The Negro is naturally much more susceptible to pul monary disease than the white race, the death rate from con sumption being nearly three times that of the white. It is, therefore, most important that they be not put on dusty work unless fully protected (and then it is a dangerous practice as they do not always make use of the protecting devices furnished). 8. Welfare work among Negro families. This subject possesses so many ramifications that it cannot be covered here, but the work of a visiting nurse with a practical knowledge of cooking, hygiene in the home, proper care of offspring, etc., would prove a great uplifting force and one which if carried out should result in great good to the recipients of such attention as well as a benefit to the employer in the im provement of morale among the male members of families visited, as a man undoubtedly reflects the atmosphere of his home in his work. We must all revise our estimate of the Negro, the past two years have wrought in him a change and the orthodox ideas on Negro psychology must be revised to fit. We cannot expect a Negro to accept from fellow workmen the treatment dealt a vassal or a serf and then at the same time take the same interest as a white workman. It is very true in the case of a Negro that he is just what he is made to feel, if in his work he is accorded equal consideration with others, he will nearly always try to justify and deserve such treatment and consideration. The propor tion holds good for all kinds of treatment bad treatment will beget bad work and best treatment (within intelligent and practical limits) will beget best work. RACE SEPARATION SEGREGATION AND COLONIZATION UNCONSTITUTIONALLY OF NEGRO SEGRE GATION * Until comparatively recently, the century old demand that the Negro be made to "keep his place" has had reference to the political, social or industrial rights or privileges which he might seek to share. In slavery days, through the reconstruc tion era, and for a couple of decades afterwards, it does not appear that white men concerned themselves much about the places in which Negroes might live, but since the closing years of the last century, there has developed in many communities, a strong and sometimes intense desire to keep the Negro from becoming a householder in white neighborhoods. Apparently it is not the mere physical proximity which is most objected to. No one ever says that a Negro servant may not live in his employer s home. There is no agitation to drive him out of the alley houses within a few yards of the back windows of white residences. Even where he lives on the same street and in the same block, he can be tolerated, if his home is plainly less desirable than that of his white neighbor. The resentment is greatest when he moves into a row of houses, all of which are very much alike, and all the others of which have white occupants. But if the dislike for the implication of equality is at the root of the difficulty, it is not true that the coming in of the Negro hurts nothing but the racial pride of a white neighborhood. Where that pride is strong, the fact that a Negro has come to dwell in one of a number of houses not greatly dissimilar in pretension, lowers the value of all real estate in the vicinity. The losers are not disposed to be philosophical. Their indigna tion and sense of loss sometimes leads to disorder and riot 1 By John C. Rose. National Municipal Review. 8:104-5. January, 1919. 282 SELECTED ARTICLES Seven or eight years ago, cities and towns began to pass segregation ordinances. So far as the reported cases show, the earliest of these to be enacted was that of Richmond, on April 19, 1911, fifty years to the day after the first bloodshed of the civil war. A month later Baltimore followed suit, and then many other places did likewise. Within a few years, courts of last resort of no less than five states passed upon the validity of such enactments. In Kentucky and Virginia they were sustained. In Maryland while the court was of the opinion that it was lawful to segregate, it held that the ordinance before it was invalid, because it prohibited a Negro, who had owned a house before its passage, from moving into it afterwards. In Georgia and North Carolina the ordinances were stricken down. While the decision in each of these cases was based upon some what narrow grounds, each court discussed the general question somewhat fully, and in a way to suggest that in its opinion the end sought could not lawfully be attained. The United States Supreme Court gave the issue unusually full and deliberate consideration. The case was first argued in April, 1916, and reargued a year later. It was not decided until November, 1917. The Louisville ordinance was in controversy, but the principle was felt to be common to the whole body of segregation legis lation. Briefs were filed by the city law officers of Baltimore and Richmond, and on behalf of various organizations interested on one side or the other. Mr. Justice Day, speaking for a unan imous court, based the conclusion reached upon grounds which were equally fatal to all attempts to establish ghettoes for the blacks. He said: It is the purpose of such enactments, and, it is frankly vowed it will be their ultimate effect, to require by law, at least in residential districts, the compulsory separation of the races on account of color. Such action is said to be essential to the maintenance of the purity of the races, although it is to be noted in the ordinance under consideration that the employment of colored servants in white families is permitted, and nearby residences of colored persons not coming within the blocks, as defined in the ordinance, are not prohibited. It is urged that this proposed segregation will promote the public peace by preventing race conflicts. Desirable as this is, and important as is the preservation of the public peace, this aim cannot be accomplished by laws or ordinances which deny rights created or protected by the federal constitution. It is said Aat such acquisitions by colored persons depreciate property owned in the neighborhood by white persons. But property may be ac quired by undesirable white neighbors or put to disagreeable though lawful uses with like results. The Maryland court of appeals, one of those originally holding that segregation was lawful, now recognizes that the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 283 supreme court has decided otherwise. Apparently the con troversy as to the legal power is at an end. Those who would shut Negroes out of a larger part of a city, are in justice bound to see that there is some place in which they may dwell in health and comfort, but nobody ever thought of this. The same feeling which demands segrega tion, usually stands in the way of the erection of any con siderable number of new houses for Negro tenants. The creation of a new "Dark Town" is always bitterly resented by the owners of neighboring property, improved or un improved. Segregation, in any community with an increasing Negro population, means for them overcrowding and excessive rents. In Baltimore houses in which Negroes could lawfully live, rented at much higher figures than similar dwellings in which they could not. Municipal legislators did not want to force the Negroes to herd together or to pay unfair rents. In most cases, it never occurred to them that what they were doing would have such results, and if it had, they would seldom have known how to guard against the dangers involved. What they wanted was to keep the Negroes from dwelling among the whites except as servants. That end seem to them both desirable and fair, and they were determined to take the shortest cut to attain it. As they saw it, they were entitled to protect themselves from what was costly, unsightly and disagreeable. If in so doing, the Negro suffered, they were sorry, but it was his affair rather than theirs. Men of one race or class, when they have the opportunity, are prone to deal with those of others, in such thoughtless, and if you will, heartless fashion. To make it impossible that they shall, is not the least of the purposes for which constitutions exist. RACE SEGREGATION IN THE UNITED STATES The separation of the two races in their religious organ isations is entirely voluntary on the Negroes pact. There is no formal law to compel it. On the other hand, the separa tion of the two races in the schools supported by public tax ation is required by the statutes of all the Southern States. J From article by Philip Alexander Bruce. Hibbert Journal. 13:867-86. July, 1915. 284 SELECTED ARTICLES To each people are assigned school buildings of their own. No black pupils are admitted to the school buildings of the white; and the reverse is enforced with equal strictness. But even were there no ordinances prescribing this rigid separation in the common schools, there is no ground for thinking that the Negroes desire the co-education of the two races ; or that they resent, in the slightest degree, its legal prohibition. The fact alone that all the teachers in the black schools are black would be sufficient to make the present system of division ac ceptable to persons of that colour. These teachers are ob tained from the most influential class of their people; they are men and women who have enjoyed the best education now in the reach of their race; and who, if deprived of the opportunity for a livelihood afforded by the common school, would find themselves compelled to turn to purely manual la bour. They are fully aware that, if white and black pupils are permitted to be instructed in the same school-houses, the only teachers who would be appointed would be white. Every practical instinct, therefore, causes them to sustain the policy of separation as most suitable for children of their colour; and as most advantageous to those among the adults who are prepared and eager to follow some higher calling. All the immediate officers of the schools for the blacks are black, with the exception of the general superintendent, and all those of the schools for the whites are white, with the exception of the janitors. This is not precisely true of the higher seats of learning for the Negroes, which have steadily increased in number during recent years. Some of the instructors in these advanced institutions are white, but it is significant that they have invariably been appointed to their positions from the Northern States. The students, omitting from view a few Indians, are all black. No white students are to be found among them. On the other hand, no Negro students above all, no Negro professors are ad mitted to any of the academies, colleges, and universities be longing to the white people. In their practical working the advanced seats of learning for the two races respectively are as completely disconnected as their religious organisations. Unlike their common schools, the higher institutions for the Negroes are not even subject to the particular supervision of a white city or county superintendent, or to the general oversight I THE NEGRO PROBLEM 285 of boards composed exclusively of white persons. In short, they are, from both an academic and a political point of view, en tirely independent. It was many years after the close of the Civil War before ordinances were passed requiring the separation of the races on all lines of public conveyance. The advantages of such a policy were as clearly perceived just after emancipation as they are today; but, during the first decades succeeding that event, the impoverishment of the Southern States, resulting from the great conflict of arms, was so general that their railway and tramcar companies were unable to bear the addi tional expense that would have been entailed had they been compelled to provide separate accommodations. This fact, during those years, discouraged any formal legislation on the subject. Moreover, there was good reason to anticipate that the Federal Courts, being still under the influence of the strong feeling aroused by the Civil War, would declare such legislation to be unconstitutional, should it be enacted. The indiscriminate commingling of white and black persons in the same public conveyances, was, as long as it was suffered, a serious drawback to the use of those conveyances by the white people. Not only were the Negroes, during those years, inclined to be actively disagreeable, owing to their passions having been inflamed against their former masters by their white leaders from the North; not only were they too often physically offen sive, even when correct in their bearing; but all were prone to indulge in liquor to excess, which frequently led them, without provocation, to create scenes of violent disorder. These several weaknesses, whether displayed separately or in combination, were objectional enough on any occasion or anywhere when only white men were present; but in public conveyances they were doubly so, for there white women became the principal victims. With the appearance of the first generation of Negroes born free, that feeling of toleration among the whites for the infirm ities of the race which had survived the Civil War, sensibly diminished; and this fact strengthened their desire to remove the evils that sprang from the personal contact of whites and blacks while traveling. As soon as the South had become once more prosperous, the conviction arose that it would no longer be a hardship to require the transportation companies to provide 286 SELECTED ARTICLES separate accommodations for the two races. On all the steam railways there are now different coaches for white and black passengers. No white person is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to Negroes; no Negro is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to white persons. It is required by law that there shall be no difference whatever in the comfort and safety of the cars reserved for each race. On more than one occasion this provision for separate accommodation has been enforced by the Federal Courts, who under the influence of the change in the national temper, now decide in favour of the validity of such a law, instead of deciding the reverse, as they would have done twenty-five years ago. On the urban tramways, where the traffic is not yet suffi ciently great to justify the use of separate cars, the objections to indiscriminate commingling are met in part by reserving one portion of each car for black persons and one for white; and neither are permitted to take possession of seats assigned to the other. Some of the evils of the old system, however, survive, for the tramcars not infrequently become, in the late night hours, scenes of violence, owing to the aggressiveness of drunken Negroes returning to their homes. In time the law which re quires separate coaches on the steam railways will also be made to apply to all the tramways. With equal strictness the separation of the races is enforced in all places of public amusement. In some of the theatres, and in most of the numerous halls for picture shows operated for the diversion of the whites, no provision whatever is made for a black audience; or such provision as is made is so poor in character that the most respectable class of Negroes feel small temptation to attend the performance there. The only seats in the theaters open to black persons are situated in the highest gallery, the furthest removed from the stage; while if any at all are reserved in the halls set apart for the largest picture shows, they are found at a point nearest to the entrance doors. In a measure these inferior accommodations are justified by the general indisposition of the Negroes of all ranks to appear under the same roof with any considerable body of white people. This feeling, so far as places of public diversion are concerned, is encouraged by the fact that in all the towns they now possess theaters of their own, and also halls for picture shows and assembly-rooms for dancing. These places of amuse- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 287 ment are frequently of a low character, owing to the mixed company patronising them. But there are now more than one Negro theatre where neither dissipation nor disorder is tolerated, and where the performances compare very favourably in their set ting at least with those to be observed in theaters of equal size managed and patronized by white people. Ample provision is made for comfort and safety in the construction of the build ings; and quite frequently too the decorations are both ornate and artistic. The actors and actresses are always black. While the race has shown very decided vocal and instrumental talent, it has not yet demonstrated its possession of any histrionic ability of a high order. The picture shows being wholly me chanical, and the films used by the white managers being also purchasable by the black, this form of entertainment is quite as successful in the halls patronised by Negroes as in those patronized by white people. In all the places of amusement belonging to the former there is no accommodation whatever for the white auditor or spectator. So far as white persons are considered in the performances, it is as if they did not exist at all. No white face is seen there, unless it is that of the policeman assigned nightly to the spot to preserve the peace. But undoubtedly the most significant aspect of race segre gation in the Southern States today is the rigid line of division which has been drawn in all the important cities between the residential areas occupied by the white and black populations respectively. Down to a recent date, no measure, whether of state or municipal origin, had been adopted to raise an insur mountable barrier between these two areas. The natural dis position of the two races was to establish their homes apart. The Negro quarter in every town has always been a distinct community in itself, without even a white sprinkling among its inhabitants, beyond the few grocers and mechanics who occupied small stores and shops here and there within its boundaries. The growth of the black population in numbers gradually compelled it, in all the cities, to spread out; and this, during many years, was chiefly accomplished by breaking into the contiguous white areas. The movement usually began by a single black family purchasing a house in the first adjacent white block. Its presence at once created a desire among most of the white occupants of that block to leave their homes, par ticularly if these homes were held under lease. The vacancies 288 SELECTED ARTICLES were soon filled by Negro families, until, in a short time, a block that had been inhabited by white persons only was taken possession of perhaps entirely by black. So seriously was the value of such property depreciated by invasions of this kind that an ordinance has now been adopted by all the large Southern cities to the effect that hereafter no additional Negro house holder is to be permitted to take up his residence in any block of which at least two-thirds of the inhabitants are white; and the converse is also enforced no new white householder is to be permitted to occupy a home in a block of which at least two- thirds of the inhabitants are black. By this regulation the present status of every residential block in each city has become permanently fixed; the white people are prevented from en croaching on the black areas; the Negroes from encroaching on the white. The practical working of this ordinance would not only be a menace to public health, but also impose a serious hardship on the black population, but for the fact that the quarter which that population occupies in every town lies near or on its out skirts ; for this, by permitting of an indefinite expansion in the adjacent country districts, prevents an unsanitary over crowding, and it also holds down the values of real estate in new areas belonging to the race by constantly bringing new areas into competition with them. The primary effect of the law in the city is to concentrate the entire Negro population by permanently confining it to a definite locality of its own. A secondary effect is that, by further diminishing the number of irritating points of contact between the two peoples, it, to that extent, distinctly promotes peace in their relations. Since the provision is as strictly enforced against the white as against the blacks, no objection on the score of discrimination can be raised against it; so far, indeed, the blacks have acquiesced in it as quietly as the whites. The ordinances requiring the confinement of each race to its own residential area have so far been of municipal origin only, they apply to the cities alone. No Southern State has yet passed a law which provides for segregation, not only in the urban districts, but also in the rural. The separation of the two peoples in the schools and public conveyances has, as we have seen, been enforced by legislative enactments which operate throughout the whole extent of each State. They THE NEGRO PROBLEM 289 apply to the town and country alike, since their scope is general But residential segregation is a local regulation in every in stance of its adoption, simply because it can only be carried into effect where the two populations are already dense. So far this has been practicable in the Southern cities alone, where, as I have already pointed out, the Negroes have always been more or less confined to their own quarter. It is not a difficult undertaking to enforce a segregation law applicable to both the white and black inhabitants of the towns, for its object is not to create a new condition, but rather to make permanent a condition that already exists. While some of the Southern States contain more black people than white, and while too the proportion in some of the counties in favour of the former is as three to one, still the rural whites and blacks are in general not very thickly settled over the face of the country. It would be practically impossible, even were it hu mane and in harmony with a sound economic policy, to com pel all the Negroes of the rural districts to group themselves iri separate communities, for they would, in most cases, have to be uprooted to their heavy loss ; and this would also be true of the rural whites, were the law also made applicable to them. Apart from individual hardships, it would, in the present age at least, disturb the whole system of agricultural production and, in doing so, inflict far more damage than it would accomplish good from a purely .social point of view. To a certain degree, however, racial influences are at work in the rural districts to bring about, there also, a modi fied form of residential segregation. There is a natural ten dency in all the large black communities in the country to grow by accessions from without as well as from within ; while many of the Negroes who are seated here and there as isolated families show a disposition to drift together into a loose grouping, which gradually assumes the character of a more or less compact village, or a long chain of farm-houses, if the site is one of those ridges of poor soil which lie back of so many of the Southern streams. The rural blacks are eager to acquire land, and, as it is still cheap and can be pur chased on favourable terms as to time, they have, in many places, come into possession of extensive areas of ground adapted to the production of the staple crops of cotton and tobacco. 2QO SELECTED ARTICLES With the black population s ever-increasing tendency to form large and closely knit communities of their own in city and country alike, every branch of business that supplies their numerous wants is falling more and more into the hands of enterprising individuals of their own race. Even now the greater proportion of their patronage in the towns is con ferred upon shops established and controlled by persons of their own colour. All their restaurants are managed by such persons. No white man or woman is ever seen taking a meal in these eating-houses, just as no black man or woman is ever observed taking a meal in the eating-houses of the white people. At every fourth or fifth crossing on the most crowded streets of the Negro quarter, a chemist s or drug gist s shop is found under the exclusive direction of black pharmacists, who look to their own race for their only prof its. A like patronage sustains a large number of tailors , haberdashers , and shoemakers shops. The blacks are also their own milliners, clothiers, and drapers. All their under takers are persons of their own colour; no white undertaker can count a single Negro family among his customers. All their barbers are black. Only a few years ago the barber shops for the whites in every Southern City were occupied by Negroes alone, who were generally noted for their intelli gence and polished manners, as well as for their skill in then trade. With few exceptions, they have been driven away from even their oldest stands by Italian and Northern rivals ; and, in order to earn a livelihood, have been compelled to re establish themselves in the black quarter, where their profits are smaller and more precarious. The Negro bootblacks have also gone down before a similar competition, and are rarely seen as formerly in places where white people congregate. They too have taken refuge in the black quarter. What is true of business life is also true of the profes sions. In all the Southern cities there are now many Negro lawyers whose clientele is confined to persons of their own race. Almost the entire practice involving the interests of that race in the magistrates courts is in their possession ; and also the like practice in the probate and chancery courts; but in cases originating in, or appealed to, the higher tribunals they are generally found associated with white members of the bar. The bulk of the office business for the blacks is also in their hands. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 291 From the preceding paragraphs it will be perceived that the Negroes of the Southern States, in their religious organ isations, in their schools, in their residential areas, in places of amusement, in public conveyances, and finally in business and in the professions, stand almost as much apart from the white people as if they made up a community occupying a different country. CONDITIONS AMONG NEGROES IN THE CITIES 1 Migration to the city is being followed by segregation into districts and neighborhoods within the city. In Northern cities years ago Negro residents, for the most part, lived where their purses allowed. With the influx of thousands of immigrants from the South and the West Indies, both native Negro and newcomer have been lumped together into distinct neighbor hoods. In Southern cities domestic servants usually still live upon the premises of their employers or near by. But the growing Negro business and professional classes and those engaged in other than domestic and personal service find sep arate sections in which to dwell. Thus the Negro ghetto is growing up. New York has its "San Juan Hill" in the West Sixties, and its Harlem district of over 35,000 within about eighteen city blocks; Philadelphia has its Seventh Ward; Chi cago has its State Street; Washington its North West Neigh borhood, and Baltimore its Druid Hill Avenue ; Louisville has its Chestnut Street and its "Smoketown" ; Atlanta its West End and Auburn Avenue. These are examples taken at ran dom which are typical of cities, large and small, North and South. This segregation within the city is caused by strong forces at work both within and without the body of the Negroes themselves. Naturally, Negroes desire to be together. The con sciousness of kind in racial, family and friendly ties binds them closer to one another than to their white fellow-citizens. But as Negroes develop in intelligence, in their standard of living and economic power, they desire better houses, better public 1 From article by George Edmund Haynes, Ph.D., Director, National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes; Professor of Social Science, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Annals of the American Academy. 49: 105-19. September, 1913. 292 SELECTED ARTICLES facilities and other conveniences not usually obtainable in the sections allotted to their less fortunate black brothers. To obtain these advantages they seek other neighborhoods, just as the European immigrants who are crowded into segregated sections of our cities seek better surroundings when they are economically able to secure them. But a prejudiced opposition from his prospective white neigh bors confronts the Negro, which does not meet the immigrant who has shuffled off the coil of his Continental condition. Intelligence and culture do not often discount color of skin. Professions of democratic justice in the North, and deeds of individual kindness in the South, have not yet secured to Negroes the unmolested residence in blocks with white fellow-citizens. In Northern cities where larger liberty in some avenues obtains, the home life, the church life and much of the business and community life of Negroes are carried on separately and apart from the common life of the whole people. In Southern com munities, with separate street-car laws, separate places of amuse ment and recreation, separate hospitals and separate cemeteries, there is sharp cleavage between whites and Negroes, living and dead. With separation in neighborhoods, in work, in churches, in homes and in almost every phase of their life, there is growing up in the cities of America a distinct Negro world, isolated from many of the impulses of the common life and little known and understood by the white world about it. In the midst of this migration and segregation, the Negro is trying to make a three-fold adjustment, each phase of which requires heroic struggle. First, there is the adjustment that all rural populations have to make in learning to live in town. Adjustment to conditions of housing, employment, amusement, etc., is necessary for all who make the change from country to city. The Negro must make a second adjustment from the status of a chattel to that of free contract, from servitude to citizenship. He has to realize in his own consciousness the self-confidence of a free man. Finally, the Negro must adjust himself to the white population in the cities, and it is no exag geration of the facts to say that generally today the attitude of this white population is either indifferent or prejudiced or both. Now, the outcome of segregation in such a serious situation is first of all to create an attitude of suspicion and hostility between the best elements of the two races. Too much of the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 293 Negro s knowledge of the white world comes through dema gogues, commercial sharks, yellow journalism and those "citi zens" who compose the mobs, while too much of the white man s knowledge 01 the Negro people ib derived Irom similar sources, from domestic servants and from superficial obser vation of the loafers about the streets. The best elements of both races, thus entirely removed from friendly contact, except for the chance meeting of individuals in the market place, know hardly anything of their common life and tend to become more suspicious and hostile toward each other than toward strangers from a far country. The white community is thus frequently led to unjust judg ments of Negroes and Negro neighborhoods, as seen in the soubriquets of "little Africa," "black bottom," "Niggertown," "Smoketown," "Buzzard s Alley," "Chinch-row," and as indicated by the fact that the individuals and families who live in these neighborhoods are all lumped by popular opinion into one class. Only here and there does a white person come to know that "there are Negroes and Negroes just as there are white folks and white folks." The most serious side of this attitude and opinion is, that the Negro is handicapped by them in securing the very things that would help him in working out his own salvation. In the matter of the housing conditions under which he must live, reliable investigations have shown that in several cities the "red-light" districts of white people are either in the midst of, or border closely upon Negro neighborhoods. Also respect able Negroes often find it impossible to free themselves from disreputable and vicious neighbors of their own race, because the localities in which both may live are limited. And on top of this, Negroes often pay higher rentals for accommodations similar to those of white tenants, and, frequently, improved houses are secured only when white people who occupied them have moved on to something better. In Southern cities, many of the abler classes of Negroes have escaped the environment of the vicious element by creating decent neighborhoods through home ownership, and by eternal vigilance, excluding saloons, gambling places or other degrading agencies. For the poorer and less thrifty element, in a number of towns and cities, loose building regulations allow greedy landlords to profit by "gun- barrel" shanties and cottages, by "arks," of which the typical 294 SELECTED ARTICLES pigeon-house would be a construction model, and by small houses crowded upon the same lot, often facing front street, side street and the alley, with lack of sewerage and with other sanitary neglect, which an inspector of one Southern city de scribed as "a crying disgrace to any civilized people." Yet, in the face of these handicaps, thousands of homes that would do credit to any people on earth are springing up in these cities. In ^he absence or with the indifference of sanitary authorities, intelligent Negroes are not only struggling to free themselves from disease-breeding surroundings, but they are teaching the unintelligent throng. In spite of spontaneous schemes of real estate owners and agents to keep them out of desirable neighborhoods, in spite of the deliberate designs of city segregation ordinances such as have been passed in several cities and attempted in others, in spite of intimidation, the abler Negroes in some cities are buying homes and creating decent neighborhoods in which to live. However, the larger propor tion are rent payers and not owners, hence they need intelligent leadership and influential support in their efforts for improved housing and neighborhood conditions. GUNPOWDER OF RACE ANTAGONISM 1 Take the housing situation: The Negro who lives in pover ty usually gets the worst deal the city has to give. If he leaves the alley and the slum, as he has in New York, it is thru a series of fortuitous happenings plus the farsightedness of his own real estate dealers and his indomitable grit. It is not pleasant for colored people to break into a new neighbor hood; if they are not bombed, they are often insulted and are subjected to much petty attack. They are also subject to the sharpest of sharp dealing on the part of real estate inter ests, and on entering a new home are always charged more than the former white tenants. This practice makes them skeptical regarding the loss in real estate values of which they so frequently hear. They themselves suffer chiefly from the utter disregard of the owner of Negro property to the 1 From article by Mary White Ovington, Chairman, National Asso ciation for the Advancement of Colored People. American City. 21:248-51. September, 1919- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 295 character of his tenants. While in a white neighborhood the landlord often shows a desire to keep up the standard of respectability of his block and turns down the criminal, in a Negro neighborhood whoever pays the highest rent gets in. Thus we have bootlegger and street walker living in an apart ment with law-abiding, self-respecting Negro families. New York s colored neighborhood in Harlem, of 150,000 residents, contains within its few blocks the best but also the most criminally inclined Negroes in the world. Under these cir cumstances, colored Darents are continually endeavoring to get into a new place where viciousness is not permitted to show itself. They invade white blocks. In all our large ci ties, north and south, there are many colored homes scattered among the whites where the two races live in peace and us ually in amity. But where the population is large, the better Negro element, as it surges forward entering a new area in considerable numbers, causes race friction and sometimes al most a panic. Probably little can be done to stabilize real estate values when a neighborhood once loses its exclusive character. Good old residential sections in every great city have gone their way. Many an old mansion has seen in its turn the Irish, the German, the Italian, the Russian Jew, the Negro. So long as America spells opportunity, we shall see these inva sions, the old families moving to newer and more attractive districts, the old homes occupied by foreigners or by colored families. To prevent this, some southern cities tried segrega tion by municipal ordinance, until the Supreme Court of the United States declared such an ordinance unconstitutional. Even now we have the same thing attempted despite the deci sion of the courts. Recently in Oklahoma City the Negroes have been clamoring for a hospital, and were on the point of obtaining one when the city officials voted the appropriation down, on the ground that Negroes had attacked a municipal segregation ordinance and that until they accepted segrega tion nothing would be done for them. The Negroes, on the other hand, replied that they would not permanently remain in their present unhealthy quarter by the creeks and mudholes, but that they intended to live in a healthier part of the city. The matter has not yet come to a decision, both sides holding 296 SELECTED ARTICLES out, but it shows that segregation ordinances are for the bene fit of those who pass them, and that Americans, black or white, mean to recognize no limit to the possibility of better ing their housing conditions save that of their pocketbooks. An interesting experiment has been made in Cincinnati that should be worth following in other cities. A small com munity settlement, occupying seven acres, was opened up for Negroes in 1914 to Mr. J. G. Schmidlapp. It is in a beauti ful wooded section of the city, and is built along the best lines of modern apartment-house construction. On a modest scale it resembles the Forest Hills experiment of the Russell Sage Foundation. Small Negro sections such as this, health-, fully situated, would relieve the tension. The colored man usually gets second best, with an anathema from his new white neighbors. That the situation is a complicated one is only too apparent, and its very difficulty shows that it should no longer be left wholly to the dealer in real estate. MY VIEW OF SEGREGATION LAWS 1 White people who argue for the segregation of the masses of black people forget the tremendous power of objective teaching. To hedge any set of people off in a corner and sally among them now and then with a lecture or a sermon is merely to add misery to degradation. But put the black man where day by day he sees how the white man keeps his lawns, his windows; how he treats his wife and children, and you will do more real helpful teaching than a whole library of lectures and sermons. Moreover, this will help the white man. If he knows that his life is to be taken as a model, that his hours, dress, manners, are all to be patterns for someone less fortunate, he will deport himself better than he would otherwise. Practically all the real moral uplift the black people have got from the whites and this has been great indeed has come from this observation of the white man s conduct. The South today is still full of the type of Negro with gentle manners. Where did he get them? From some master or mistress of the same type. 1 From article by Booker T. Washington. New Republic. 5:113-14- December 4, 1915- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 297 Summarizing the matter in the large, segregation is ill- advised because 1. It is unjust. 2. It invites other unjust measures. 3. It will not be productive of good, because practically every thoughtful Negro resents its injustice and doubts its sincerity. Any race adjustment based on injustice finally de feats itself. The Civil War is the best illustration of what results where it is attempted to make wrong right or seem to be right. 4. It is unnecessary. 5. It is inconsistent. The Negro is segregated from his white neighbor, but white business men are not prevented f^rom doing business in Negro neighborhoods. 6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races. Wherever a form of segregation exists it will be found that it has been administered in such a way as to embitter the Negro and harm more or less the moral fibre of the white man. That the Negro does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it. Finally, as I have said in another place, as white and black learn daily to adjust, in a spirit of justice and fair play, those interests which are individual and racial, and to see and feel the importance of those fundamental interests which are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run no individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the common good; for "in the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim." RURAL LAND SEGREGATION BETWEEN WHITES AND NEGROES 1 The proposition looks rather to white segregation than Negro segregation, providing only that where Negroes cease to become laborers or renters, and become independent land owners working for themselves, they should buy land in com- 1 From article by Clarence Poe, Editor of the Progressive Farmer. South Atlantic Quarterly. 13:207-12. July, 1914- \ 2g8 SELECTED ARTICLES munities to themselves or at least apart from those com munities which are, and wish to remain, predominantly white. Seven reasons I have given for favoring the plan may also be briefly repeated: 1. Because it is necessary to give our white farmers and their families a satisfying social life. 2. Because it will insure them greater safety and protec tion. 3. Because it will give both races better schools, churches, and all the agencies of a richer community life. 4. Because it will open the way to both races for rural co operation and cooperative enterprises work in which it is almost impossible for whites and blacks to work together suc cessfully. 5. Because it will improve moral conditions in the rela tions of the races. 6. Because it will give the rural South what it most sorely needs a greater proportion of white people, (i) by stopping the crowding out of the white farmers by Negroes, and (2) by providing all-white communities such as white people from other sections will be willing to move into. 7. Because ambitious young white men will then be willing to go into these all-white communities as tenants, work and save, and become good farmers and good citizens, whereas they are unwilling to go into mixed communities and com pete with Negro tenants. As to the question why a law is needed, instead of leaving the whole matter to be settled by public opinion, that is also quickly answered. We need a law (i) so as to let each race know definitely its own bounds and therefore better respect the rights of the other race; and (2) to protect white com munities from the white landlord who lives away from the community and doesn t care how many Negroes he sells land to simply because he doesn t have to live among them him self and doesn t care about anybody else s condition. The chief point at which I have been misunderstood and the chief point at which Mr. Stephenson misunderstands me is in my attitude toward the Negro the motive of this land segregation movement. I hope I shall never be classed with the bitter or destructive type of "Negro agitators." My whole aim in this matter has been to develop a constructive policy for the help of the white man and not a destructive THE NEGRO PROBLEM 299 policy to the hurt of the Negro. If I know my own heart I would not be unjust to the Negro. For the Shylocks and vultures of our own race who fatten financially upon his ig norance and weakness I have nothing but the utmost contempt and loathing. For all who would oppress him and keep him in peonage I have no shadow of sympathy. I believe in help ing the Negro and in being just to him. But and here comes the rub I also believe in helping and being just to the working white man of the South whose an cestors through centuries of toil wrought out the civilization which we enjoy the civilization, moreover, to which the Ne gro himself owes the very peace, safety and prosperity he enjoys. And years of earnest study have convinced me that all in all the handicapped man, the disadvantaged man, in the rural South today is not the Negro, but the laboring white man who must compete industrially with a race with lower living standards and whose white social life is impoverished if not imperilled by the universal sandwiching of white and Negro homes. This is the situation that confronts us. The Negroes not only have an advantage over the white farmer in that they are able to buy land and make crops on a scale of living, clothing, and housing that the respectable white farmer and his family cannot meet, but the Negroes have the additional advantage that where Negroes begin to outnumber the whites, or are of bad character, the whites may be forced to surrender the whole community to the Negroes because there is no longer an adequate white social life or else for reasons of safety. This has happened in thousands of cases. Let us consider conditions briefly. Booker Washington himself boasts that in every southern state east of the Mis sissippi, except Florida, the percentage of Negroes on the farms is increasing: the Negroes are gaining on the whites proportionately and rural districts are becoming blacker in stead of whiter. Moreover, not only are the rural sections of the South getting blacker instead of whiter but the Ne groes are gaining most rapidly in farm ownership, 17 per cent gain in Negro ownership to 12 per cent in white, while most sinister fact of all it is the white farmers who are fastest becoming a tenant class (one hundred eighty-eight thousand gain in white tenants or 27 per cent and only one hundred eighteen thousand gain in Negro tenants or 21 per cent). Now, if the Negroes were gaining this advantage by virtue 300 SELECTED ARTICLES of a superior character and civilization, we should have no word of protest. But they are not. They are gaining chiefly because they are nearer the savage stage of man s develop ment because they will live in shabbier houses, eat meaner food, wear dirtier clothes, than men will do among whom the living standards and their undesirability as neighbors: would because new Negro landowners crowd in among white farm families in districts without police protection, and thus fre quently force these white farmers to move away. It s an un fair advantage that is, if we assume that the white man has a right to protect his civilization and I say that simply as a matter of fairness to the white man and not of unfairness to the Negro, the best thought of the South should be given to working out a remedy. We should give a reasonable propor- iton of rural white communities, communities owned by our white farmers and their families, the right to segregate them selves, the right to say (under reasonable restrictions) that no more land in such communities should be sold to Negroes or else some other solution must be found. When our recent Southern Sociological Congress in Nash ville had speaker after speaker benevolently discussing "Hind rances to Negro Progress" while no man said a word about "Hindrances to White Progress," I could not help but think this : Suppose a million Chinese or Japanese had come into California, and they were gaining on the whites in every farming county, running the white farmers out by their lower living standards and their undesirability as neighbors; would you have a white Californians conference discussing "Hind rances to the Yellow Man s Progress?" Or would they be looking after the preservation of their own white civilization, as they have shown themselves so abundantly able to do? The only man in the South today whose civilization and whose future are really imperilled mark my words is the small white farmer and white workingman. THE PRESIDENT AND THE SEGREGATION AT WASHINGTON l Careful inquiry by a representative of the National Asso ciation for the Advancement of Colored People, and by news- 1 From article by Oswald Garrison Villard. North American Review. 198:800-7. December, 1913. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 301 paper men of the standing of Washington correspondents of the New York Evening Post and Boston Advertiser, has developed the fact that segregation of colored employees exists and is increasing, especially in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, in the Post-Office Department, and in the office of the Auditor for the Post-Office, which is a part of the Treasury Department, and that it has begun in the Washington city post-office. As yet, segregation has not been introduced in the Treasury Build ing, where there are two hundred seventy colored em ployees in the corridors and offices together with white clerks. It is defended by Mr. McAdoo as "an effort to remove causes of complaint and friction where white women have been forced unnecessarily to sit at desks with colored men." But there is no statement that there have been many such complaints or that they were heard of under previous Administrations. Nor is it explained why colored clerks are taken out of rooms in which their sole companions are white men, or why, if there should be segregation because of the women, the Government does not segregate all its women clerks. Nor does Mr. McAdoo record the fact that in many instances the white clerks, without respect to sex, have gone to their colored associates and expressed their complete dissent from the Government s caste undertaking. He indignantly denies that poorer quarters have been given to the segregated, but eye-witnesses have told of colored women shut off in an unpleasant alcove in one office; of others quietly forced out of the lunch-room they had been using for nine years past, of men clerks segregated behind lockers in one corner of a room in the dead-letter division of the Post-Office Department. Poorer accommodations for the segregated are the invariable law of segregation. To the colored workers all this segregating has been more brutal than a slap in the face. It is as if the great Government of the United States had gone out of its way to stamp them publicly as lepers, as physically and morally contagious and unfit for association with white people. Among them are perhaps veterans of Fort Wagner, of the Crater of Petersburg, and survivors of the triumphal march into Richmond of General Godfrey Weitzel s black brigade; certainly brothers and sisters of the black troopers who were good enough to die alongside of white men in saving ^the day at San Juan Hill are now learning to know the gratitude of Republics. These colored people who are thus branded are not roust- 302 SELECTED ARTICLES abouts, or corner loafers, or worthless laborers. They are educated men and women, college graduates many of them, from all over the country who have passed their civil-service exam inations and entered the Government s employ with full faith in its justice, asking merely the right to serve on equal terms with their fellows. The Negroes have borne, as patiently as the children of Israel bore their burdens, the wrongs of disfran- chisement, the lynchings and burnings of innocent and guilty, the humiliation of the "Jim Crow" car, the constant personal insults of low whites; these were the acts of individuals or of States lately in rebellion. But that the Federal Government, under whose flag they have fought in every war, under whose aegis they are working, which struck their fetters from their limbs, should now take the side of the oppressors in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln s Emancipation Proclama tion this is what hurts and rankles beyond all else. Is it any wonder that one of the leaders of the race of national renown writes that he has never seen his people so discouraged and so embittered as today? They rightly declare as must every fair-minded man free from prejudice that this spells caste. They believe that it is intended to drive them out of the public service by rendering it intolerable for Negroes with self-respect; they assert that one of the Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury has already held up the promotion of two colored clerks because of their color. Segregation is, beyond doubt, an entering wedge, and here is the chief significance of it all. Let a precedent be established, and who shall say what the outcome will be, to what lengths despotic officials will take their way by means of discrimination, intimidation, by aboveboard or underhand methods? Who shall prophesy to what extent this caste idea may not be developed in the decades to come? If Negroes can thus be set apart contrary to the spirit of the civil-service law and of the Constitution itself, why not others Jews, for instance? Those who in this day and generation are seeking to estab lish two classes of citizens, the disfranchised and enfranchised, to say that there shall be two kinds of Government employees they are on the high road to convulsing anew this land of liberty, which will never know peace and quiet as long as there are discriminations among its citizens. Upon their heads will be the responsibility of forcing the issue. To oppress any THE NEGRO PROBLEM 303 group of human beings, or to deny them full equality, is to court disaster. HISTORIC ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE RACE PROB LEM IN AMERICA BY DEPORTATION * Deportation and colonization of the Negroes as a solution of the race problem is not a modern plan. It is as old as the feeling against slavery and the prejudice against the Negro race. Had the slaves been of the same race as the masters, there would have been no suggestion of deportation and coloni zation; the history of the unfree white classes in Europe and America shows what the solution would have been. But in regard to black slaves there was another problem besides that of status it was that of race. Was it possible for two free races unlike in many respects to inhabit the same territory without racial conflicts? After emancipation this was the prob lem that had to be solved. Most people of the colonial period and the early Nineteenth Century who opposed slavery believed that deportation must follow emancipation. Thomas Jefferson, for example, believed that slavery would not be permanent, that the slaves would become free, but that they could not be free in the country of the masters; that the two races could not live together on terms of equality. Colonization of free Negroes in tropical countries was a New England suggestion. It was first publicly mentioned in 1770, by Reverend Samuel Hopkins of Newport, Rhode Island, and for several years an agitation on a small scale was carried on by him. Considerable interest was aroused in the scheme and men who were opposed to slavery and to the presence of Negroes accepted it as the proper solution of the difficulties in volved in emancipation. Out of this feeling developed the American Colonization Society, which was organized gradually between 1803 and 1817. The object of this society was to encourage emancipation by providing a way to get the freed Negroes out of the country. Prominent men, such as Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Clay, 1 From article by Walter H. Fleming, A.M., Ph.D. Professor of His tory in the Louisiana State University. Journal of American History. 4:197-213. April, 1910. 304 SELECTED ARTICLES supported the work of the society. Most of its members, how ever, were from the North and from the border slave states, few being in the plantation states; and branches of the society were found in all those states which had numbers of free Negroes. The sentiment that resulted in the formation of the Coloniza tion Society also caused Congress to provide for the return to Africa of certain free Negroes and slaves captured from slave traders. The society was used by Congress as its agent, fifty dollars being paid for each Negro carried back to Africa and there subsisted for one year. Under this arrangement the society organized Liberia, and by 1860 had carried about eighteen thousand Negroes to that place. During and after the war about two thousand more were transported. The small numbers show that the society did not solve the free Negro problem. For this failure there were several reasons : First, free Negroes, hard as was their condition in America seldom wanted to go to Africa, and none except Negroes cap tured from slavers could be forced to go ; second, the work of the society was hindered by the growth of radical abolition sentiment during and after the thirties. The abolitionists, to a certain extent, denied the principle upon which the Colonization Society was founded, which was that the black race was inferior to the white, and that in American society there was no place for the free blacks. The society was accused of encouraging race prejudice and thus strengthening the bonds of slavery. The active efforts of the abolitionists, and the introduction of the slavery question into partisan politics, weakened the society and caused greater regard for the rights of the Negro. A National Emigration Convention of colored people, held in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1854, declared that a proper home for the race must be found, a center for organization. And such a place could be only where the black race was in the majority and could constitute the ruling element. The part of the world best suited to this purpose was tropical America the West Indies, Central America, and part of South America where they considered the whites worthless, a Negro being regarded as the equal of the white, and as a citizen often preferred. Before the Civil War it is doubtful if any considerable number of Northern anti-slavery people, except the radical abolitionists, would have advocated wholesale emancipation without deportation. The advocates of gradual emancipation THE NEGRO PROBLEM 305 recognized that in order to meet the popular objection to free Negroes some practical plan of procedure must be offered. Deportation and colonization outside of the United States was the usual plan suggested. During the fifties another argument was offered to support this measure it was that the American free Negro colonies in the tropics would serve the extended American civilization and American commerce. The Civil War began and the "contrabands" at once became a burden and a problem. The deportation solution was again proposed by such men as President Lincoln and Senators Blair, Doolittle and Pomeroy, and by anti-slavery Unionists of the border states, and numerous other individuals. Since the close of the war there has been much discussion of deportation and colonization, but very little practical effort made to colonize. The American Colonization Society kept up its work after the war, but could get only a few hundred Negroes a year. Bishop Turner, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has for years been the leading exponent of the coloniza tion idea, and while his views are indorsed in theory by many of his race, few have gone back to Africa. After the failure of the "Exodus" movement of 1879-1882, to Kansas, there was strong sentiment in favor of "separate national existence." The United Transatlantic Society, organized during the eighties by one of the "Exodus" leaders, reflected this feeling, but had slight results. John Temple Graves of Georgia, is now the leading white advocate of deportation. One thing that has prejudiced the Negroes against going to Liberia, and other proposed places of settlement, is the fact that many swindlers have taken advantage of the various coloniza tion schemes to defraud the Negroes by collecting passage money from them and giving them in return fraudulent tickets. Negroes who went to Liberia have come back with bad reports of the country. The Negro and the Southern white each favor colon ization in a way. The Negro would be glad to go if sure of doing as well in Africa as in the United States. The white would be glad to have the entire black race deported except his own laborers. Any organized emigration scheme invariably meets more or less forcible resistance from the employers of labor. 306 SELECTED ARTICLES BLACK AND WHITE IN THE SOUTH The future seems to contain four possibilities, or rather conceivabilities, which may be examined in turn. (1) Things may "worry along" in the present profoundly unsatisfactory condition, until the Negro gradually dies out. (2) The education of both races, and the moral and eco nomic elevation of the black race, may gradually enable them to live side by side in mutual tolerance and forbearance, without mingling, but without clashing. (3) Marriage between persons of the two races may] mean might conceivably be legalized, and the color line oblit erated by "miscegenation." (4) The Negro race might be geographically segregated, by deportation or otherwise, and established in a community or communities of its own. The first eventuality the evanescence of the Negro race we have already examined and seen to be highly improbable. Let me only add here that there is one way in which it might conceivably be brought about a way too horrible to be con templated, yet not wholly beyond the bounds of possibility. The recurrence of such an outbreak as the Atlanta riot of 1906 might lead to very terrible consequences. On that occasion the white mob found the Negroes unarmed, and wreaked its frenzy practically unopposed. But the lesson was not lost on the Negroes, and a similar onslaught would, in many places, find them armed and capable of a certain amount of resistance. In that case one dares not think what might happen. It would be an exaggeration to say that the South lives on the brink of such a horror; but there is no denying that the elements are present which might one day bring it to pass Sir Sidney Olivier is quite right in calling the feeling of a large class of Southerners toward the Negro "hysterical" and ungoverned; and this is just the class that is handiest with it? "guns." Long and laborious treatises have been written to prove, on Biblical evidence, that the Negro is a "beast," and, on scientific evidence, that he is more nearly an ape than a man, These works, no doubt, are scarcely sane; but their insanity is by no means peculiar to their individual authors. The word 1 From article by William Archer. McClure. 33:324-38. July, 1909 THE NEGRO PROBLEM 307 "extermination" is gravely spoken by men who are not therefore to be held maniacs or even monomaniacs. The South, says Mr. W. E. B. DuBois, is "simply an armed camp for intimi dating black folk"; and where such a condition prevails the possibility of sudden disaster is never far off. To recognize the possibility is not to bring it nearer, but rather to indicate the urgent need of measures that shall place it infinitely remote. We pass now to the second eventuality the gradual smooth ing away of friction, so that the two races may live side by side, never blending and yet never jarring. This is the concep tion set forth in Dr. Booker Washington s celebrated "Atlanta Compromise" speech of 1895, wherein he said, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." Is this a possible I will not say ideal, for that it manifestly is not but a possible working arrangement? The assumed improvement of conditions (under the Atlanta (Compromise) would of course imply a steady increase in the numbers of the black race; so that, even with the aid of immi gration the white race would probably not add to its numerical superiority. Let us suppose that at the end of fifty years the colored people were not as one in three, but as one in four, and that this ratio remained pretty constant. Here, then, we should have a nation within a nation, unassimilated and (by hypothesis) unassimilable, occupying one-fourth of the whole field of existence, and performing no function that could not, in their absence, be at least as well performed by assimilable people, whose presence would be a strength to the community. The black nation would be a hampering, extraneous element in the body politic, like a bullet encysted in the human frame. It may lie there for years without setting up inflammation or gangrene, and causing no more than occasional twinges of pain; but it certainly cannot contribute to the health, efficiency, or comfort of the organism. Is it wonderful that the Atlanta Compromise, supposing it realized in all conceivable perfection, should excite little enthusiasm in the white South? But to imagine it realized in perfection is to imagine an impossibility almost a contradiction in terms. We are on the one hand to suppose the Negro ambitious, progressive, pros perous, and on the other hand to imagine him humbly acquies cent in his status as a social pariah. The thing is out of the 308 SELECTED ARTICLES question ; such saintlike humility has long ceased to form any part of the moral equipment of the American Negro. The bullet could never be thoroughly encysted; it would always irri tate, rankle, fester. It is quite inconceivable that the nation within a nation should acquiesce in disfranchisement; and the question of the Negro vote will always be a disturbing factor in Southern political life. Either he must be jockeyed out of it by devices abhorrent to democratic principle and more or less subversive of political morality; or, if he be honestly suffered to cast his ballot, he will block the healthy divergence of political opinion in the South, since, in any party conflict, he would hold the balance between the two sides, and thus become the dominant power in the state. This will always be a danger so long as the unassimilated Negro is forced, by his separate- ness, to think and act first as a Negro and only in the second place as an American. Even if the Atlanta Compromise were otherwise realizable, the friction at this point would always continue acute. The worst, however, remains behind. If the Atlanta Com promise were possible in every other way, it would be impossible on the side of sex. For two races to dwell side by side in large numbers, and to be prohibited from coming together in legal marriage, is unwholesome and demoralizing to both. We are here at the very heart of the problem. All other relations are adjustable at a certain sacrifice; but not this one. I venture to say that no one not even Dr. Washington himself really believes in the Atlanta Compromise as a stable solution of the problem. The Negroes who accept it as an interim ideal (so to speak) never doubt that it is but a stepping- stone to freedom of racial intermixture. They see that so long as constant physical proquinity endures, the color barrier between the sexes is factitious and in great measure unreal; and they believe that at last the race-pride of the white man will be worn down, and he will accept the inevitable amalgamation. The ultimate forces at war in the South are the instinctive, half-conscious desire of the black race to engraft itself on the white stock, and the no less instinctive horror of the white stock at such a surrender of its racial integrity. This horror is all the more acute all the more morbid, if you will because the white race is conscious of its own frailty, and knows that it is in some sense, fighting a battle against perfidious nature. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 309 This brings us, of course, to the third of the conceivabilities above enumerated the legalization of marriage between the two races. To the white South, nothing is more inconceivable : to the critics of the white South, nothing is more simple. Which of them is in the right? For the South itself, at any rate, the discussion is purely academic. Amalgamation is a thousand leagues remote from the sphere of practical politics. I have been endeavoring to state for outsiders the case of the South as I understand it. I may have stated it wrongly, or understated it; but no one can possibly overstate the resolve of the South that the color line shall not be obliterated by "miscegenation." Lastly, we have to consider the fourth conceivable even tuality the geographical segregation of the Negro race, whether within or without the limits of the United States. This is usually ridiculed as an absolutely Utopian scheme, and at the outset of my investigation I myself regarded it in that light. But the more I saw and read and thought, the oftener and the more urgently did segregation recur to me as the one possible way of escape from an otherwise intolerable situation. Not, of course, the instant, and wholesale, and violent deportation of ten million people that is a rank im possibility. Between that and inert acquiescence in the ubi quity of the Negro throughout the Southern States, there are many middle courses; and I cannot but believe that the first really great statesman who arises in America will prove his greatness by grappling with this vast but not insoluble prob lem. And, assuredly, the sooner he comes the better. The deportation of the Negro has been urged by many American writers, generally in a somewhat illogical fashion. They start by asserting his total incapacity for self-govern ment, as demonstrated in Haiti, Liberia, and elsewhere, and then recommend the foundation of a new Negro republic in some undefined portion of Africa. In no form does the African project seem to me at all a hopeful one. The habitable portions of Africa are, I take it, pretty well staked out among the European powers, so that an elaborate and costly international arrangement would be nec essary before the requisite territory would be available. But supposing this difficulty overcome, would the United ^ States be justified in simply dumping its colored population in Africa, 3io SELECTED ARTICLES and then washing its hands of them? It might just as well drive them into the sea and have done with it. The Negro character has shown no fitness for the very difficult task of combined pioneering and nation-building that it would have to encounter. To the lower elements in the race, the return to Africa might mean repatriation in the sense of a not un welcome home-coming to savagery; but the better elements would suffer greatly in such a relapse, while of their own strength they probably could not resist it. Toward these bet ter elements, and indeed toward the whole race, the United States has a responsibility that it could not, and certainly would not, shirk; so that it would in effect have to undertake the policing of a distant, troublesome, and unsatisfactory de pendency, which might, in addition, not improbably involve it in international difficulties. This would be preferable to the present state of things, but still far from a desirable solution of the problem. The same objections apply to a settlement in South Amer ica, the Philippines, or anywhere else outside the United States. Deportation, in a word, is beset with disadvantages. It would be ruinously costly and indefensibly cruel. If there ever was a time for it, that time is past. What, then, is the alternative? Manifestly concentration within the United States the formation of a new State, which should be, not a white man s land, but a black man s land. Is this physically possible? Is there enough unoccupied territory to permit of such a concentration? Of absolutely unoccupied territory there probably is not enough; but those who have studied the matter tell us that there is plenty of territory so thinly occupied that the white settlers could be removed and compensated at no extravagant cost. Accord ing to the Honorable John Temple Graves: Lower California might be secured. The lands west of Texas might be had. But the Government does not need to purchase. Four hundred million acres of Government land is yet untaken and undeveloped in the West. Of these vast acres the expert hydrographer of the Interior De partment has reported that it is easily possible to redeem by irrigation enough to support in plenty a population of sixty million people. We may liberally discount this estimate, and yet leave it unquestionable that the resources of the United States are amply sufficient to admit of the establishment of a new State THE NEGRO PROBLEM 311 without any exorbitant disturbance of the existing distribu tion of territory. It would be absurd for me to forecast in any detail the methods by which the concentration should be brought about. They must be devised and elaborated by the great American statesman who is to come. If he can successfully grapple with this colossal task, he will deserve to lank with Wash ington and Lincoln in the affections of his countrymen. It may be pretty safely predicted that he will attempt no sudden and forcible displacement of the mass 01 the Negro race. Rather he will establish local conditions that shall tempt the younger and more enterprising Negroes to migrate of their own free will. There seems to be little doubt that the Negro race, as a whole, would welcome any reasonable means of escape from the galling conditions of their life in the South. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatever that all the more in telligent members of the race are staunchly and even patheti cally loyal to American ideals, and would be very unwilling to live under any other than the American form of govern ment. In the new State, they would be members of a Negro community without ceasing to be American citizens. I am far from denying that this racial readjustment would demand a huge effort and a very large expense. In many individual cases it might cause a good deal of hardship to people of both colors. But that both colors would enormous ly and permanently benefit by the effort seems to me indubit able. It would be, before everything, an act of justice to the Negro. It would enable him to build up a polity of his own, on lines to which his mind is already habituated. It would offer him full opportunity for the development of his talents and ambitions, unhampered by any social discriminations or disabilities. "But," it may be said, "the rights and liberties of civilized humanity include the right to move freely hither and thither over the face of the earth. This right, at any rate, would be denied to the Afro-American, inclosed within the ring-fence of his own State." There is, I think, a sufficient answer to this objection. The right to travel would not be denied to the Negro. Nor would he be debarred from emigrating and settling abroad among any community that was willing to 3i2 SELECTED ARTICLES receive him. It is, I think, becoming more and more clear that the right of every man, white, black, or yellow, to effect a permanent settlement outside his own country, is subject to this qualification. The idea that all the world ought to be long equally to all men, and that rational development tends toward an unrestricted intermingling of races, seems to be signally contradicted by the trend of events. Is it not the great essential for the ultimate world-peace that races should learn to keep themselves to themselvs? NEGRO S FATHERLAND 1 The future of Africa is one of the most important questions to be answered after this war. The very silence today concern ing that future, on both sides of the forces at war, emphasizes its importance. We must remember that in Africa we have today not only the greatest world mine of undeveloped human labor but, also, that much of the raw material which the modern world particularly wants is to be found in Africa more abundantly than anywhere else. Let us note the list: Palm-oil, cocoa, mahogany, ebony, cork, cotton, rubber, ivory, ostrich feathers, gold, copper, iron, zinc, tin, lead and diamonds, these are the present gifts of Africa to the world. Others in abundance hide in her bosom. The fight for the ownership of these mate rials and the domination of this labor was a prime cause of the present war. If this question is to be left unsettled after this war it is going to be a prime cause of future wars. Why, then, are we so silent concerning the fate of some thing between one hundred fifty million to two hundred million human beings? I presume that the cause of our indifference is largely psychological. It is the penalty of human degradation which always exacts payment from oppressor and oppressed. Today it is possible to ignore the Negro because of a history of degradation the parallel of which the modern world does not furnish. In ancient Mediterranean civilization Negro blood was predominant in many great nations and present in nearly all. Negro genius and Negro civilization gave here their great gifts to the world. In the European middle age when Africa 1 By W. E. B. DuBois, Director of Publications and Research. Na tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Survey. 39: 141. November 10, 1917. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 313 became more or less separated from direct contact with Europe, nevertheless, African culture filtered into Europe, and legend and story and song came out of the dark continent. There was then no question of racial inferiority based upon color. But then, beginning late in the fifteenth century, the world for four hundred years raped this continent on a scale never before equalled. The result was not only the degradation of Africa, it was a moral degradation of those who were guilty; and we are still living in the shadow of the debauch of the African slave trade. It comes natural for us to have great masses of unthought-of men; to conceive of society as built upon an unsocial mudsill. It is possible for great labor organizations like the American Federation of Labor to organize themselves upon distinctly aristocratic lines, leaving out of account and out of thought certain so-called lower elements of labor. It is even possible for an organization like the League of Small and Subject Nationalists to bring in Africa only as an accident and after-thought. This mental attitude toward Africa and its problems builds itself upon unclear thinking based on the tyranny of conventional words. When we speak of modern African slavery we think of modern slavery as a survival of ancient slavery. But it was not. The cleft between the two was absolute. Modern African slavery was the beginning of the modern labor problem, and must be looked at and interpreted from that point of view unless we would lose ourselves in an altogether false analogy. Modern world commerce, modern imperialism, the modern factory system and the modern labor problem began with the African slave trade. The first modern method of securing labor on a wide commercial scale and primarily for profit was inaugurated in the middle of the fifteenth century and in the commerce between Africa and America. Through the slave trade Africa lost at least one hundred million human beings, with all the attendant misery and economic and social disorganization. The survivors of this wholesale rape became a great international laboring force in America on which the modern capitalistic movement has been built and out of which modern labor problems have arisen. We have tried ever since to keep these black men and their descendants at the bottom of the scale on the theory that they were not thoroughly men, that they cannot be self-respecting members of and contributors to modern culture an assumption 3i 4 SELECTED ARTICLES purely modern and undreamed of in ancient or medieval days. If, now, this same psychology and this same determination to exploit and enslave these people passes over into the new world after the war, what can we expect but, on the one hand, persistence of the idea that there must be an exploited class at the bottom of civilization and, on the other, an endeavor by endless war and rapine, futile at first but in the end bound to be triumphant, by which these millions of people will gain their right to think and act. No modern world can dream of holding two hundred millions of people in permanent slavery even though they be black. If it tries, the cost will be terrible. If we would avoid this cost then we must begin the freeing of Africa through this war. It would be the least that Europe could do in return and some faint reparation for the terrible world history between 1441 and 1861 to see that a great free central African state is erected out of German East Africa and the Belgian Congo. Surely after Belgium has suffered almost as much from Ger many as Africa has suffered from her, she ought to be willing to give up the Congo to this end; and it would be right that England should refrain from taking German East Africa as well as refrain from handing it back. Out of this state we could make a great modern effort to restore the ancient efficiency of the land that gave the iron age to all the world, and that for ages led in agriculture, weaving, metal working, and the traffic of the market place. Here is a chance such as the world has not seen since the fifteenth century. Liberia and Haiti were never given a sincere chance and were from first to last harassed, as only modern capitalism can harass little and hated nations. The effort of such a new and sincere start in Africa would be tremendous. Its first effect would be upon the millions of Africa and then upon their descendants throughout the world. In the West Indies and in South America are some thirty millions of men of Negro descent. They have given literature and freedom to Brazil; they have given industry and romance to the West Indies, and they have given to North America art and music and human sensibility. In South America they may lose themselves in the blood of other people, but in the West Indies and North America they are striving for self expression and need only such encouragement as just treat ment of their fatherland and its spiritual effect on the whole THE NEGRO PROBLEM 315 world would give. I trust, therefore, that among the new nations that are to start forth* after this war will be a new Africa and a new beginning of culture for the Negro race. FUTURE OF THE NEGRO * Negro emigration is the solution of the Negro problem, from three points of view: 1. It is desirable for the Negroes themselves, to enable them to develop a racial life away from the blight of caste stigma and the monopoly of land and other advantages by the whites. 2. It is desirable from the Southerners standpoint, in that it would lighten the burdens entailed by a two-fold population, remove the dangers which the low and degraded of the colored race offer, and enable the South to be American in the full sense in its social and political make-up. 3. It is desirable for the nation as a whole, as the comple tion of a work begun and carried forward by the two great idealists of the American system, Jefferson and Lincoln, re moving at last the cause of bitter division between brothers North and South. This at any rate is a broad enough hypothesis from which to argue a vexed question. Only Destiny can bring to a har mony a theme to which human dulness and passion have set so false and uncertain a key-note. But in the past there have been a few whose almost prophetic vision seems to have com passed the whole design. About eighty years ago a few broad-minded men, among them Henry Clay of Kentucky, started Liberia, a colony for free American Negroes. Lincoln, in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, specifically stated that the liberation of the blacks was to enable them "to colonize in Africa or elsewhere." And no less discerning a mind than that of the author of Uncle Tom s Cabin pro phesied the return of the freedmen to their ancestral home. Liberia has been mostly forgotten in the noisy material ad vance of the past century, but it still exists as a very worthy example of self-government in Africa, by the Africans, des pite the craftiness of European governments and a frontier From article by Wallace B. Conant. Arena. 40:62-5. July, 1908. 3i6 SELECTED ARTICLES crowded with the aboriginal races of the Dark Continent. As exacting an English diplomatist as Sir Harry Johnston, in his recent work, Liberia, leads one to believe that the little re public is a proper success, maintaining the ideal of Christian ity and freedom in the face of great obstacles. Doubtless it would prove a greater power in Africa if its small population were to be reinforced by a new influx of Negroes from Amer ica a movement which doubtless would be welcomed by the Liberians, who now numbering only about twenty-five thousand, hold a territory as large as England and inhabitated in its hinterland by two millions of savages. But Liberia is only one of several tropical regions to which the Negro might resort. The most pertinent phase of the question seems to be: would Negroes to any considerable number leave America if given opportunity and aid in doing so? Of course, every thing would depend on the attitude of the recognized leaders of the race. Present conditions are evidently not ripe for such a movement. But it is the future that is being con sidered ; and time may bring forward a leader with the en thusiasm of a Moses to lead the race on a new pilgrimage. It is evident that the Negro, and not the whites, must de cide what the Negro will do for himself. If the Negro were the ward of the nation, as he began to be, in a manner, after emancipation, and as the Indian has long been, one might expect the black to follow the red men s path to gradual ex tinction through not having to struggle for his place in the world. But the Negro is of a very different nature from the Indian. He takes readily to organization, is naturally coop erative, as the numerous churches, lodges and societies show; very unlike the Indian, who, bereft of the fields and woods that maintain his free, wild, individualistic life, embraces ob livion. More than this, the individual Negro feels himself a part of a distinct and peculiar race. In certain ways the Ne groes in America resemble the Jews in their various periods of captivity and wandering, and in a remarkable manner the race finds itself reflected in the history of the Hebrew people. More than any other class in this country, and perhaps more than any other people in the world, the Negro reads the Bible, and reads it literally. He finds there a vital parallelism between the story of the Children of Israel in their wander- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 317 ings and periods of slavery and his own race history. It is natural, then, that he should carry the analogy further and foresee for his race a final deliverance and a happy entrance into Canaan. Often as one goes through the South, one hears in the colored churches the expressed yearnings for this consummation. SOLUTIONS l Many solutions of the problem have been proposed ; but, for the most part, they are too altruistic, ideal, Utopian, or too harsh, or demand too vast an expenditure of labor or treasure. To state the proposed solutions, with the stupendous problem held steadily before us, is to recognize at once their chimerical or impracticable character. The colonization or deportation plans, though they have received high approval, may be dismissed as too costly or too drastic, and as involving too sudden and too sweeping changes in our industrial conditions. The American Negro, having tasted the sweets of Caucasian civilization, contemplates Santo Do mingo or his ancient African home with feelings of horror. He would have to be colonized or deported by force. The project is not, however, physically impracticable, as will at once appear when we consider the bringing over annually of a million immigrants. We could take a million Negroes to Africa every year, if we felt it to be necessary or advisable; but the terrible surgery of that solution must be reserved for a more desperate exigency. A number of proposed solutions may be classified as "hyster ical." Among these is the proposal of "control by influence," a method that worked well enough under the conditions of slavery, but is now merely naive and fanciful. Senator Till- man s recently proposed solution deserves to lead this class. He would, apparently, establish the Prussian or Russian spy system, or "passport system," requiring every freeman to subject him self to the endless and intolerable surveillance of the police. These "solutions," and many of their class, do not go to the root of the matter. At best, they are but makeshifts. They From article, Negro Problem, a Southern View, by .Stanhope Sams. Editor of The State, Columbia, S.C. Eclectic Magazine. 147:387-93. November, 1906. 318 SELECTED ARTICLES seek to control the Negro, to suppress his criminal instincts, and not to meet frankly and solve justly the great problem of race. The most important class of solutions, as they are the most stridently insisted upon, may be grouped under the phrase that expresses their aim "the perfect social ideal." This is the altruistic and millennial solution proposed by those whom Charles Francis Adams, formerly enrolled among them, before a visit to black Africa made "the scales fall from his eyes," calls "philanthropists and theorists of New England," and who, he says, have indulged in an "appalling amount of error and cant * * * on this topic." It is suggested by George S. Merriam, in his notable work, "The Negro and the Nation," and is vaguely hinted at by that eminent and scholarly Negro, Professor Du Bois. DuBois s "Promised Land," seen from some dreamy, cloudy Pisgah, is not, and can never be, the republic of Anglo-Saxon or American civilization. And, of right, it should not be. A race works out its peculiar civilization for itself and not for others. It may generously allow another race to share its garnered fruits and opportunities wrung from nature s shut hand; but it is not in human nature, nor to be expected, that it should do so. Nor has the backward race the right to demand, and it is not privileged to ask, such concessions. We have come far, while the African remains chained to his ancient fetishes and barbarism. We have developed the highest civili zation of modern times, within the brief span of the nineteen hundred years of the Christian era, while the Negro is today precisely what he was when the Pharaohs enslaved him to build their pyramids, seven thousand years ago. We are willing to help this race, to uplift it and speed it on its own natural path; but we would not, if we could, set it beside us on our hard won heights. One of the chief obstacles to a satisfactory solution of the race question is the want of race-consciousness and race-pride on the part of the American Negro. Africa makes no appeal to him. He prates of "race," but does not understand, does not feel, its urge. He feels no stir of inherited patriotism or tribal or racial sentiments, and cherishes no ideals of inde pendence and a native culture and civilization. He is perfectly content to be reaping where he has not sown, and gathering THE NEGRO PROBLEM 319 where he has not strewn. The demand he makes for equality cannot, in justice to ourselves, be met. The frontiers of race must not be passed. The demand for social equality is even more preposterous. In respect to the Negro in this country, it cannot even considered. No race has ever accorded or will ever accord an inferior race the full measure of social equality. No race has ever enforced social equality among its own members. The caste systems of the Orient, and the caste and class systems of the West bear testimony to this world-old principle. as. / be / to / FUTURE PROPOSED SOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM * Mr. Edison once employed some assistants to make several thousand experiments, in search of one of nature s secrets. All proved futile. On being reproached with having wasted time and labor and money, Mr. Edison responded, "Not at all ; I know several thousand things not to do." Now the policy of repression is one of those things we may be sure is not the thing to do. By repression I do not mean keeping a man in "his place," if we are sure we know what his place is; but the avowed policy of "keeping the Ne gro down" no matter what capacities he may develop. It is refusing to meet squarely the question of merit. First, it in creases our difficulties with the Negro. Once give him real justification to disbelieve in the justice of the white man, and our moral hold on him is gone. Secondly, the more we re fuse the just demands of any social group, the greater and more insistent become the unjust and unreasonable demands of that group. Thirdly, if you keep on increasing the steam \ pressure in a boiler and have no safety valve, it will ulti- 1 mately explode and hurt something besides the boiler. Fourth ly as Mr. Lecky points out, one of the greatest forces for I the moral uplift of a race is an outlet at the top for its men I of talent. It i* the thing not to do, finally, because it will in- Vevitably react upon the white race to its own undoing. This idea and policy of repression sometimes takes the form of advocating ignorance as the solution of all difficulties. What sort of education to give the Negro is a very practical and sensible question; but it may be well to recall what the late Dr. J. L. Curry used to say, that "ignorance is a cure for nothing." Another one of the things not to do is lynch law, or iFrom address by Charles Breckinridge Wilmer, in the Conference on Southern Problems, held at Sewanee, Tenn., July 4 to 7, 1909- Foren sic Quarterly. 1:144^7. June, 1910. 322 SELECTED ARTICLES mob violence! You cannot cure crime of one individual against another by invoking the spirit of defiance of all law and order. You cannot cure a broken pane of glass in a house by dynamiting the foundation. A single crime, how ever heinous, is a single demon at work; mob violence is the reign of the prince of demons. In the punishment of crime at least three things are essen tial : the punishment must be the right punishment, it must be inflicted in the right spirit, and it must be visited upon the right man. It has taken thousands of years to build up a civilization based on these accepted truths. To substitute a mob inflamed with passion for a court of justice is to destroy the civilization we have built up. If there were any real pro tection for our homes in mob violence, one might question the expediency of doing right; but there is no protection for anybody in mob violence. There is about as much protection in it as there would be for Holland if its population were to destroy the dykes that shut out the ocean, in order to kill a few crayfish! Experiencing almost daily the terrible tempta tion to meet violence with violence, let us learn that in self- control lie both our only safety and our only hope of control ling others. Another thing not to do, is hating other people. Hatred, let us remember, solves no problems, but complicates all prob lems. What then is there left for us to do? In the constructive discussion of this question, the possi bilities are usually reduced to three. The first proposal is Extermination, either permitted or inflicted ; the second is Amalgamation; the third is Segregation. Let us examine these in turn. Extermination means that we murder the % whole race, or, if we find them dying off, acquiesce in the decree of a kindly Providence. Now if it be the right and wise thing to do to murder a Negro every time he gets in the way of some plan of ours, or has a job that some white man wants, why not murder the whole race at once and be done with it? We have to choose between Christ and the Devil. But if the Devil be God, why not follow him to the utmost? If the proposition is its own refutation, thdi let us follow Christ wholly. Let us be done with the spirit of murder. Let us serve notice in unmistakable terms on the few individuals who THE NEGRO PROBLEM 323 propose murder, that we will not stand for it. And let us train our boys and girls to know that we cannot follow or desire to follow such a policy without working moral ruin on ourselves. That is clear. But how about taking satisfac tion in the thought that disease will carry off the Negro race? Just neglecting to do anything to help the Negro to survive ? But the spirit of permitting people to die without extend ing a helping hand is the spirit of murder ; and, besides, does any sane man suppose for one instant that ten million people can die in our midst of disease, and not convey any of that disease to us white people? God has so constituted human so ciety that whether we will or not, we are members one of an other, and if one member suffers, all suffer. Even if we were mean enough to be murderous, the necessity of physical self- preservation forbids. Extermination won t do. A second remedy proposed by some extremists is amalgama tion, the fusing together of the two races. Our feelings revolt so against the very idea, that discussion for us of such a proposi tion is not only unnecessary but well nigh intolerable. Yet it is necessary to discuss it, not only because feelings should sub mit to scientific test, but because our feelings do not suffice for arguments with people who do not share them with us. To those, then, who seriously propose such a way out of our diffi culties, we have simply to say, that the thing is impracticable because we will not, and further that, on scientific grounds, we ought not to suffer it. We beg theorizers in other parts of the world to consider, not our feelings, they are under no obliga tion to do that, but two facts : first, that amalgamation does not produce a race superior to the white race; and, secondly, that the advocacy of such ideas is prejudicial to the best interests of society as a whole, and is likely to stir among certain members of the Negro race false ambitions that tempt them away from the path of their best chance, which is racial integrity. It is only fair to the Negroes themselves to say that, in the main, they do not ask for social equality. As has been strikingly observed, "for one Negro that is advocating social equality, there are ten white men who are practicing it in its most heinous form." For closely connected with the question of race integrity is the question of social equality. If we are not to have 324 SELECTED ARTICLES race amalgamation, it is but common sense not to allow such things as naturally lead up to and suggest race amalgama tion. And so the South is irrevocably committed to separate schools, and separation in general wherever demanded by the denial of social equality. It is in vain that theorists cry out against this as caste. Separation is not necessarily caste. Every opportunity should be given to the Negroes to advance along their own lines. So far from social separation leading to injustice, it is the only policy that will make justice possible. When once that question is understood to be settled, when once there is a recognized line which neither may cross, then justice and friendship may be built up. And I would here point out to theorists and doctrinaires not only that no wise friend of the human race will undertake to violate the law of progress, but that they are standing in the way of equitable settlement of affairs in the South. The real friend of the Negro in the South would gather together both extremists and say, "a plague on both your houses." This seems the proper place in which to say a word about our own failure to preserve complete race in tegrity. Every white man should set his face against any such surrender of the whole principle of race integrity, as well as such violation of the law of morality. The consequences form one of the most conspicuous instances of the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children. The third proposed solution is, segregation ; setting the Negroes apart by themselves, either in some portion of the United States, or somewhere else in the world. This is a solution of the Race Problem in the same sense that divorce is a solution of the marriage problem. It would mean that we cannot get along in peace, righteousness and fraternity dwelling under the same civic roof. It means that Anglo-Saxon supe riority, proclaiming its right to rule, confesses its inability to govern. Now I am no prophet nor the son of a prophet. At least, I am no predictor. I do not dogmatically affirm that we may not have to come to segregation, as a last resort. But I hazard the contention, as, in some degree a discerner of human duties and divine principles, that such a total surrender of the task, providentially laid upon us, is unnecessary. I am perfectly sure, moreover, that if we fail to work out some solution, that we, or somebody else in other ages, will have the same problem to face again. The Race Problem in a large, and not merely in THE NEGRO PROBLEM 325 a local, sense is fast becoming the world problem. We have to find out how the different races can get along with each other on the same earth. We cannot send the Negroes or the orien tals to some other planet. And that is just what is really involved in the policy of "shirk." It is perfectly plain that segregating the Negroes means postponing the issue, and not even its permanent evasion. Such a postponement seems likely to increase rather than diminish the difficulties of solution. Are we willing to hand down to our descendants such a task, with all its inherent difficulties augmented by our own failures? Is that worthy of the superior race? And who would not make some contribution to the ultimate reign of peace on earth? Suppose that we in the South, both white and black, could establish some modus vivendi, would not that help in the final solution of the world problem of racial amity? Is not the situation a challenge to a man, to a superior, a Christian race? Shall we basely, and in a manner essentially cowardly give it up, at least until we are compelled to confess our inability to solve the problem? The man who fails to see that we do not solve problems by pushing them aside, is the proverbial ostrich. He thinks that when he buries his head in the sand, not only the God of the Universe no longer beholds him, but that what he himself puts out of his sight ceases to exist. We may have to come to segregation, but let us first exhaust every other possi bility. Besides, were we to carry out the plan of segregation, who is going to begin? Every now and then we hear someone advocating the removal of the Negro in general from our midst, but has one ever heard any of the advocates of the plan, or heard anyone else come down to the Negro in particular and cry: "Here is my cook, here is my washerwoman, here are my farm hands; take them to start with?" Along with the voice of the turtle dove in the spring and the call of the quail in the fall, has anybody heard such voices as these? Until we are ready to make that sacrifice, and actually get rid of these people, the advocacy of segregation has somewhat the same sort of effect on the situation as if a married couple were trying to get along with one another despite some incompatibility of temper ament, by the faithful discharge of obvious duties, and some one were continually dinning into their ears that it is of no use try ing to get along! I may be mistaken but it seems to me that continually directing attention to the sore spots in our Southern 326 SELECTED ARTICLES life, and overlooking everything that makes for peace and health, and doing nothing to make things better day by day, is the reverse of wisdom. Besides the ideal of service, another element that ought to occupy a large place in our educational curriculum is so ciology, the science of human society, with special reference to our race problem. It is astonishing what effect even a lit tle knowledge of sociology has in interesting and clarifying the mind and subduing the passions. Would you expect to find a student of sociology in a lynching party? At present, the most difficult adjustment to make is in the realm of politics. So long as the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution stands, the Negro cannot be discriminated against, in the matter of the suffrage, on the ground of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." After the revolu tion following the withdrawal of Federal troups, first fraud and violence, and then suffrage qualification laws, have sufficed to keep the government in the hands of the whites. These laws have been able, so far, to run the gantlet of the Supreme Court of the United States. But their moral is more dubious than their legal status. Their effect, in some instances, is to give a white man, who has no property, education, intelligence or visible merit of any kind, superior consideration over a Negro possessing civic capacity, measured by the tests white men themselves have invented. Although this is an extreme case, yet it may be fairly doubted whether it is not a bad thing for the whites themselves, (the whites of small education and property), to grant them civic rights merely on account of their race. What these people need more than anything else is a spur to their ambition, and a quietus put on their false pride. A suffrage qualification law, fairly and squarely applied to both races, would be best for all. We can hardly expect to maintain our claim of racial superiority so long as we refuse to subject our own people to the same tests we apply to the Negro; nor can we convince the Negro of our justice toward him, when we say that he shall not vote, no matter what his qualifications. So far as the mass of the Negro race is con cerned, their civic capacity is small, and their moral and in dustrial progress, as a race, has been sadly retarded by giving them the suffrage. It has greatly fostered that spirit which Booker Washington so well hit off when he declared, "our THE NEGRO PROBLEM 327 people are all the time talking about gitin recognition, whereas what we need is to get something to recognize." The main fault to be found with the false leaders of the Negro race, both white and colored, is the tendency to harp upon the rights of the Negro to the exclusion, or at least the minimi zing of his duties. An expedient which will help greatly to solve our problem in details, or at least make for peace between the races, is friend ly conferences. Up to the time of the Atlanta riot (Septem ber, 1906), there had been practically no opportunity for the leading men of the two races to confer. If Negro brutes shocked the civilized world with their crimes against the whites, respectable Negroes had no opportunity to express their abhorrence, or to cooperate with the civilized whites for the detection and punishment of such crimes. If brutal whites were guilty of injustice against some helpless blacks, the race in its best representatives suffered, with no oppor tunity to complain, except in their prayers to the God of the weak and helpless. It is too true that the Negroes in general are disposed to shield criminals of their own race; but, not to speak of the fact that this is partly induced by mob violence on the part of the whites, my reference in the matter of such conferences is to the superior Negroes. Realizing that not all Negroes are bad, that we must make a discrimination be tween the bad and the good, and that by enlisting the best elements of both races in cooperation for the common good, the strain could greatly be relieved, two Associations, one white and the other black, were formed in Atlanta, with ex ecutive committees that could confer in any emergency. Great good was done by the satisfactory settlement of par ticular difficulties as they arose, but more still by a general diffusion of the spirit of justice and good will. The conduct of the committee of blacks was without exception creditable to their impartial sense of justice, their intelligence and their efficiency. I am told by the chairman of the white committee that in no single instance was a judgment of the committee of blacks reversed by the whites. There is opportunity for such organized conferences all over the South, and their possibilities for good are boundless. It is still the hall-mark of a gentleman in the South that he is willing to give the Negro a chance. The Negro race needs 328 SELECTED ARTICLES the white race as a friend, both individually and sociological ly. The cultivation of something of the old time and rapidly disappearing friendly feeling, between individual members of the two races will do good now, as it did good in the past; and, properly guarded, it need not involve any danger. The Negro cannot stand alone; but the very people who seem to glory in talking of the dependence of the Negro, are usually those who tell us we ought to put him off by himself where, they assure us, he will revert to barbarism! It will greatly help if we cultivate a sympathetic spirit toward the Negro. He has been more sinned against than sinning. He has been the victim of doctrinaires and politicians, white and black. On his back, sometimes by abusing and sometimes by using him, hundreds of politicians have ridden into office. And let us make allowances for the Negro. He was led into a fool s paradise, and has been rudely awakened from his dream of "forty acres and a mule." He is for the most part in the wilderness, between his Egypt and his Promised Land of true manhood. He was thrown overboard into the civic waters without having been taught how to swim. If sometimes he is "sassy," let us remember that the "sassy" Negro is a green persimmon; he will ripen after awhile, when he has learned that "sassiness" and obsequiousness are two equally objection able extremes. He will learn to be both respectful, and self- respecting. Let us use our power not arbitrarily but for his good, showing him that it is the expression of reason and justice. Let us show him, both personally and in our civic life, that we think more of a good Negro than we do of a bad one. And in this connection I would say that of all the people in this our Southern land who deserve admiration, mine goes out in the highest degree to the Negro who (born of a backward and sensual race, surrounded by millions whose standards do not uplift, frowned down on too often by haughty superiors, with every temptation to do wrong, and little inducement to do right), leads nevertheless an industrious, clean and honest life, respecting himself and others. And we should take courage. Such Negroes may come to constitute an ever-increasing pro portion of their race. In conclusion, as my last constructive suggestion, let me urge all men who wish well to their fellows and love this THE NEGRO PROBLEM 329 "South land," to "get together," and not leave the whole dis cussion of the complicated and vital matter to the newspapers and politicians, actuated more or less by special interests, pri vate or corporate. Let us all endeavor to make our con tribution. The silent South should speak, that it may come fully to understand itself, and its relation to the problem which has been set us to solve for the nation and the world. PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR IN SOUTHERN RACE PROBLEMS 1 The more the races of men are studied, the more certain becomes the evidence to show that races have characteristic mental peculiarities, which would serve to distinguish species and varieties almost as well as physical characteristics. In practical life, in jurisprudence, in language itself, we empiri cally allow for these racial mental differences. But we have never taken the trouble to study them nor to understand their nature from a scientific point of view, and almost nothing is known about their potentialities. Taking as a fact these mental differences, let us for a mo ment consider the possibility of their modification. It has been pointed out that mental differences must ultimately de pend upon material anatomical differences in brain-structure; if we deny this, we instantly remove racial psychology from the field of science to that of metaphysics, and controvert all the observed data of physiological psychology; there must be some structural differences between the brain of a Negro and that of a white man, though such differences are admittedly very hard to detect by present methods. We know that it is impossible for us to modify anatomical structures at will; we can undoubtedly change them (within narrow limits, by selec tion of characters already present and the accentuation of these), but we can not make any two differing anatomical char acters become exactly alike. Why, then, should we assume that we can modify at will the mental processes of a race, since these mental processes are expressions of a certain defi nite anatomical and physiological organization, which we 1 From article by James Bardin, University of Virginia. Popular Science Monthly. 83:368-74. October, 1913. 330 SELECTED ARTICLES know can not be altered save by the crossing of bloods or by the laborious and infinitely slow processes of evolution? Yet, North and South, we wish to do this very thing, and to do it in its extreme form. For we are not merely trying to change the direction of the Negro s peculiar mental char acteristics, and to improve them by selection among the ele ments already present we are trying, on the contrary, to de prive the Negro of his own racial mental characteristics, and to substitute our own in their place, at the same time keeping him anatomically a Negro. That this is an impossibility fol lows after the former argument. It will undoubtedly be said, by way of refutation, that the Negroes of the southern states have advanced and advanced considerably since they have been in this country. This is un reservedly true. But it is often forgotten that they have ad vanced as Negroes, not as anything else. They have adopted the form of our civilization and to a certain extent (due principally to the influence of language), the mould of our thought. But however much the form of the civilization and the mould of the thought resemble our own, the substance of both are different. The Negro has received much from us, and has profited greatly therefrom; but all that he has received he has modified in accordance with his racial mental-set, and his psychical reactions to the influences of our civilization are entirely different from our own, and will necessarily remain so as long as the Negro is a Negro. No matter how much we educate him, no matter how much we better his position in society, he will remain a Negro psychically as long as he remains a Negro physically. We may cause him to absorb the full, rich store of our cultural elements, but by the time these elements have gone through the channels of his thought they will be profoundly modified, and they will take on a dif ferent meaning in the Negro s consciousness from what they have in the white man s consciousness. Concomitantly, these cultural elements will modify the brain of the Negro ; but this modification will not follow the same pathways and will not give the same results as it would in the untutored brain, say, of a white child. The modifying forces acting upon the Ne gro s brain will have to start with an anatomical structure al ready formed and set by heredity, an anatomical structure different from that of the white race, which produced the THE NEGRO PROBLEM 331 modifying forces in question, and the final result in the Ne gro s brain will be determined and directed by this preexis- tent anatomical make-up. So that the brain and the conscious ness resulting from the absorption of our culture by the Ne groes will be a brain and a consciousness different from our own to the same extent that the Negro differs from us in other respects, and both will be characteristically Negroid in nature, not European. It follows, therefore, that present ideals in regard to the "solution" of our Negro problem (ideals, as it has been pointed out and which it is well to reiterate, resulting from the con fusion of ethical and scientific principles) are biologically fallacious, and impossible of attainment. We can never make the Negro like the white man mentally. We can never have a bi-racial state based upon an identity of ideas and political philosophies in both races. The Negroes will continue to progress, undoubtedly. But they will progress along the lines laid down by their evolu tionary history. They will take our cultural elements and make them part of themselves; but they will modify these elements according to their nature, and when they have assim ilated them, they will be our cultural elements no longer, but will be profoundly and permanently modified. The two races will continue to develop side by side, but the develop ment can never be parallel it must be divergent, even though its successive steps may perchance maintain approximately the same level, as long as the races remain pure. It will be like two men, thrown together by fortuitous circumstances, who start walking up the same slope toward the same hill-top; but because of differences in the nature of their interests, one goes east while the other goes northeast; each step will carry them closer to the top of the hill, but further and further apart. This fact, rather than ethical theory, should form the foundation of American thought in regard to the Negroes and the Negro problem. The Negro as an intellectual being should be studied as a Negro not as a potential white-man; and if we wish to help him, we should at least try to be sure that he is allowed to develop as a Negro in the freest, broad est manner possible, and to the full extent of his racial po tentialities. 332 SELECTED ARTICLES PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE AMERICAN RACE PROBLEM l I^QBLJJiay_wg_appjy this doctrine to the present American Negro problem? In the first place, let us judge the Negro fairly. Negroes are misjudged more, probably, than any other class of people, owing in large part to the powerful race prejudice. The Ne gro is charged with being vicious and dangerous, and Negro criminals and crime are cited to prove the charge. This is all wrong. While statistics show a greater percentage of Negro criminals than white, yet the proportion in either race is far too small to be characteristic. Why not say that the Negro is an energetic, progressive, law-abiding race, and cite as proof the best of his race? This would be more just to the Negro, and yet it would not be a fair estimate. Any race should be judged not alone by its best qualities or its worst traits; not only by its best or its worst members; but by a fair average. The exception should not be made the rule. The Negro race should be judged with consideration for its virtues and pa tience with its faults. The good Negro can in no way justly be held responsible for the misdeeds of the worst of his race. All Negroes are not alike; there are good, bad, and indiffer ent Negroes, just as there are different types of white men, and justice would demand that the Negro be considered not merely as a member of a different race, but as an individual. The average Negro is industrious and law-abiding, and he, not the exceptional cases, should be taken as a fair sample of the race. Let us always remember the Divine warning: "Judge not lest ye be judged." In the second place, we should take steps to remedy the conditions under which the Negro population is living. The part played by the white race in the spread of Negro crime and pauperism should not pass unnoticed. The dive, the re sort, the saloon, poverty, ignorance, and unsanitary conditions are the great breeders of crime among all races. And yet these influences exist in practically every community. Espe cially do they tend to develop Negro criminals. As a result of discrimination, competition, and of their own inefficiency, 1 By William Burkholder, Marion, Kans. Kansas University News- Bulletin. 14: no. 5, p. 3S-S8. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 333 there is more idleness proportionately among the Negro labor ers than among white. Idleness, in itself a dangerous condi tion, always breeds evil. Under existing conditions, the Negro is driven for social life and amusement to frequent resorts run by other Negroes, often by whites. Political interests and neglect on the part of the public allow such proprietors to op erate with impunity. Negro crime is inevitable under these circumstances. Were the Golden Rule applied, such evils might largely be abolished and the condition of the Negro bettered. Every Negro would be given a free man s right to work for his liv ing and be paid according to his talents and industry. Profit able and elevating amusements would be provided for his lei sure hours ; he would not be driven to frequent dives and re sorts. Or better still, there would be no such places to fre quent. By enforcement of sanitary laws, intelligent charity, and justice in the matter of employment, much poverty, dis ease, and crime could be avoided. Education is essential for the proper solution of the prob lem, but this alone will only increase the unpleasantness of the Negro s position. Unless he be allowed to make full use of his education and training, it has been more than a waste of time and money. Without opportunity, the best education is of no practical value. We should be great enough to over look such a superficial thing as an uncertain and unfounded color line and regard the Negro not merely as a Negro, but as a man. If he is a good, wise, and able man, his talents and character should be given full opportunity to develop and work. If we are the superior race, our example must be of con siderable influence with those who must look to us as lead ers. Our attitude toward the Negro will very largely deter mine his attitude toward us. If we have consideration for his rights and feelings, we can then reasonably expect to receive the same treatment in return. Today we may well continue the practice of Jefferson Davis, who, being asked why he was always so careful to return in kind the respectful, friendly greetings of Negroes whom he chanced to meet, replied: "I can t allow any Negro to outdo me in courtesy." And Jeffer son Davis was at that time United States Senator from Mississippi. 334 SELECTED ARTICLES This example, common in the old South, may account for the proverbial respectfulness and politeness of the old Southern Negroes: the lack of such examples today may ex plain the reputed disrespect and insolence of the present Ne gro generation. Before a member of the "superior" race treats any Negro uncivilly, he may well stop and recall the Divine command "Love thy neighbor as thyself." And he should remember that most treatment is returned in kind; and that a gentleman is usually treated as such, and vice versa. Every human being has a right to the fullest enjoyment of life. Any unkind act, word, or treatment that will in any way detract from honest, healthful pleasure is a violation of a right as sacred as the right to hold property. Yet the cases of unhappiness caused unoffending Negroes by insult, neglect, coldness, and race hatred at the hands of whites, are of count less occurrence. The most respectable Negro can scarcely venture into a public place without receiving some cowardly reminder of his color and status. That this is of daily oc currence is undeniable; that it is wrong is unquestionable. Such treatment is not in accordance with our democracy or Christianity. It should never have to be said of any Chris tian gentleman that he had voluntarily marred the happiness of any of our dark-skinned fellow-citizens, simply because of race feelings. Far be it from any honorable person to cast a shadow over a happy soul by any inconsiderate action or re mark. In the foregoing discussion, the means suggested for ap plying the principles of Christianity to the Negro problem have been: (i) by judging the Negro fairly; (2) by better ing the conditions under which he lives, thus doing away with pauperism and crime; (3) by insuring him intelligent and use ful education, which will increase his industrial efficiency; (4) by giving him opportunity to show his individual ability, judging him as a man, not as a member of a race; (5) by setting him a good example; (6) by considerate and courte ous treatment; and (7) by overcoming instinctive racial prej udice and treating the Negro with justice and charity. Pa tience and the Golden Rule are the only solution of the prob lem. Force, law, and agitation can do nothing but make a bad matter worse. It is certainly unfortunate that such a THE NEGRO PROBLEM 335 problem exists, but we should not forget who is responsible for the Negro s presence in the United States. We must solve the problem in some way; and why not solve it to the advantage of both races? Time, patience, and the Golden Rule these alone can bring about a happy solution of an un happy problem. If we are a Christian nation, making great efforts at the Christianization of heathendom, why do we not apply in our own land the doctrines which we are so zealous ly spreading? AN OBJECT-LESSON IN THE SOLUTION OF RACE PROBLEMS 1 Meeting at Jamaica "all sorts and conditions of men" un der favoring circumstances gave unusual facilities for obser vation, and for arriving at just conclusions. The first impression so derived was of the absolute justice obtaining! as between the white race and the Colored. This was apparent in many ways. In fact, the white officials, in ad judging the colored people, were like the old Indian who stood up so straight that he leaned over backward. An Eng lish resident, a justice of the peace, said that if a white man and a colored were brought before him for similar offenses, in case of conviction he inflicted a severer penalty upon the white man, for the reason that he was presumed to know his duty better than the colored man, and was deemed to have offended against greater light. In reading the various newspapers, in attendance at court and at the legislative council of the island, and in conversa tion generally, it was nowhere observed or charged that the colored race was discriminated against. As the Colonial Sec retary said, "Every man on this island has absolutely an equal chance." Another impression was of the mutual consideration and courtesy exhibited by and between the races. Most of the principal wholesale and department stores, as well as the smaller ones, and the shops, are owned or managed by colored people. It was extremely rare to find a white clerk anywhere. 1 From article by Frank Jewett Mather. Arena. 36:364-9. October, 1906. 336 SELECTED ARTICLES In the largest wholesale and retail drug house in Kingston, apparently no white person was interested or employed, and there seemed to be as high a degree of skill and care as would be shown in any similar store in any of our cities. In the Legislative Council, which is charged substantially with the conduct of affairs of the whole island, a majority of the elected men were colored, many of them of the deepest black ; of all the members, nominated or elected, by common consent by far the ablest speaker was a black man, with dis tinctively the features of the Negro. The Governor, always presiding at the Council, surrounded by the Colonial Secre tary, the Director of Public Works, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and other officials, listened and made reply to the black members with the same patience and courtesy that he did to the most eminent white men. There were no "Ji m Crow" cars, either on electric lines or steam railroads. Black men and women with their parcels rode with the whites, side by side, on every seat, and I did not see the slightest shrug of the shoulders or sign of dis pleasure. Many of the large plantations are owned and man aged by the blacks, some of whom are capitalists worth a half million of dollars. The absence of crime and violence was noticeable. The records state that there has never been a case of assault upon a white woman by a black man or col ored, and there is no place on the island where a white wo man can not go alone, night or day, with absolute impunity. No instance of lynching of anyone could be found. The ab sence of churlishness, of jealousy, on the part of the colored people was noticeable. "Morning, master," "Morning, mis sus" ; and it was fine to note the gratification expressed when the salutation was equally cordially returned. The editors of the leading newspapers were colored men, and they proved agreeable and instructive. The police were exclusively colored, generally black, and, in their white jack ets, wearing white helmets and red sashes, were picturesque. They were very courteous and efficient. They make the rounds of their district at regular intervals, inquire at each house if there is any complaint to be made. If any is made, it is entered in a book, and each householder signs his own complaint, or a statement that he has none to make. During our stay, not the slightest criticism of the police was heard, THE NEGRO PROBLEM 337 or the least hint of corruption. We were assured on every hand that the government of the island is free from graft ; that while personal influence might play some part, money corruption, or anything like it, was wholly unknown. The "Budget" of the island is open to every one, and is explicit in detail. A large volume, resembling a modern atlas, of about one hundred fifty printed pages, containing com plete tabulated columns of proposed expenditures, and under each heading a carefully detailed list of items, was placed before every member of the Council. Attention was called by the Governor to every page, with inquiry whether any item was objectionable. Sometimes a page would be turned with out remark; at other times a single page would be under dis cussion for days in open Council. The criticisms were pub lished in the daily papers, so that every one could be informed about the various proposed disbursements. There are fine scholars and accomplished professional men among the colored people. In looking over society as we found it, we could but ad mire the just, impartial administration of law, the self-respect ing good-will reciprocally shown between the races, the com parative absence of public lawlessness, in such marked contrast with similar race conditions in our own land; the uptrend of a race, which, still having far to go, has gone far, and is evi dently going farther. The evolution of the colored race in Jamaica, and that of the whites in their relation to them, is wonderfully like that of both races in our own South, and the stock arguments and theories of Southern whites, deprecatory of the colored people, have all been made and advocated, and triumphantly answered, in Jamaica. The local government of Jamaica entirely ignored the freed men after their emancipation, and made no effort to train them as citizens. The planters stood proudly aloof and de clined to recognize the changed and improved conditions of the blacks, and treated them in a manner which engendered keen antagonism. The legislation was primarily in the inter est of the whites, and had practically no reference to that of the great body of the people. The whites organized and main tained an exclusive body, dealing with public matters for their own exclusive advantage, wilfully disregarding the rights of 338 SELECTED ARTICLES the blacks. Such conduct of affairs culminated in the Eyer rebellion in 1865. It is needless to draw further parallel. It was from the date of that rebellion that the progress of the freed men began. An imperial dictator was sent out, instruct ed to care for the people in mass, without discrimination; a new fiscal system was created ; positive reforms were affected in all departments; and efficient police were installed; a better judiciary was established; prison methods were reformed; bet ter sanitary laws were enacted; public works were organized; education was cared for, and taxes were considerably re mitted. The arrival of the dictator was the signal for the political retirement of the planters, who never emerged therefrom. The Crown government had reconstructed the colony. The whites chafed under the rigorous, impartial rule; the blacks were contented and satisfied, and are today the strongest ad herents to that government. In the absence of formulated convictions, the intuitions serve well the great body of the colored race, and they cling to Crown-colonial government with unshaken tenacity. In looking over a society so novel in its political and social aspects, it was natural to seek for the causes which had pro duced such results. First in order and importance appeared the long-continued, intelligent, patient, religious, missionary work, which has been carried on for generations. While that work had much to encounter, it nevertheless made a lasting and substantial im pression and laid an assured foundation for the work of the secular law. The fact of such work, and its influence upon the civilization of the island, was universally recognized by the thoughtful and well-informed. Another potent factor was the just, impartial administration of the laws. It was more and more evident that the normal solution of all race problems is simpler than is generally sup posed; it is found in justice, intelligently, impartially adminis tered. The wisdom, as well as fairness, of intrusting a con siderable share of the administration of law to the blacks themselves, was amply vindicated. A colored man policing the city is ever upon his honor, and stimulated by his pride, to more vigilantly protect the community against his own race; while colored people more willingly obey the law which they themselves are set to uphold. No suspicion of partiality, or THE NEGRO PROBLEM 339 racial hostility to law officers, can live in such a situation. The effect of such conditions extends far beyond the immedi ate contacts of the people with the authorities, even to a gen eral mental and moral stimulus. It is an object-lesson of op portunity; an incitement to effort; a positive factor in the de velopment of character. Contrast such a government with that in our own Southern States, where practically no outside interference is permis sible, and where the colored race are substantially at the mercy of local interests, prejudice and antipathies, restricted in force and direction only by local law. Until the withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South, there was a very modi fied similar restraining force. Whatever the necessity, politi cally, for such withdrawal, undoubtedly it set back many years the development of the colored people, and set in motion and encouraged a current of hostile influences against which it is, and for a long time will be, hard for a disfavored race to make headway. We went to Jamaica with decided prejudice against the English colonial systems we left it with regret that we had not some similar administration in parts of our own land, and with many queries whether our Federal gov ernment would not have to come more and more in play in the respective States as an indispensable counterpoise to otherwise uncontrollable local interests, wrongs and antip athies. As I read history, reflect upon the inspired utterances, ob serve the trend of opinion and the tendencies of affairs, I cannot but think, hope and believe, that He who has ordained justice, who loves mercy and delights in equality of opportun ity, will yet bring about all over the earth an equal chance for these dusky men and women, and an equal development of these children of the night. RACE PROBLEM * Recognizing that the Negro is a permanent and increasing ly important factor in the development of our National life, the Southern Sociological Congress considers the solution of the problem of race relations as the most delicate and difficult 1 Outlook. 123:44-5. September 10, 1919. 340 SELECTED ARTICLES single task for American democracy. We believe that no enduring basis of good-will between the white and colored peoples in this country can be developed except on the funda mental principles of justice, cooperation and race integrity. The obligations of this generation to posterity demand that we exert our utmost endeavor to preserve the purity of our democratic ideals expressed in the American Constitution as well as the purity of the blood of both races. With this be lief the Southern Sociological Congress has worked out a program for the improvement of race relations which we respectfully submit to this Conference of Governors in the earnest hope that this body of distinguished leaders may lend its powerful influence toward making this program effective throughout the Union. The program is : First, that the Negro should be liberated from the blight ing fear of injustice and mob violence. To this end it is im peratively urgent that lynching be prevented: 1. By the enlistment of Negroes themselves in preventing crimes that provoke mob violence. 2. By prompt trial and speedy execution of persons who are guilty of heinous crimes. 3. By legislation that will make it unnecessary for a wo man who has been assaulted to appear in court to testify publicly. 4. By legislation that will give the Governor authority to dismiss a sheriff for failure to protect a prisoner in his charge. Second, that the citizenship rights of the Negro should be safeguarded, particularly : 1. By securing proper traveling accommodations. 2. By providing better housing conditions and by preventing extortionate rents. 3. By providing adequate educational and recreation fa cilities. Third, that closer cooperation between white and colored citizens should be promoted (without encouraging any viola tion of race integrity) : i. By organizing local committees, both white and colored in as many communities as possible for the consideration of inter-racial problems. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 341 2. By the employment of Negro physicians, nurses, and po licemen as far as practicable in work for sanitation, public, health and law enforcement among their own people. 3. By enlisting all agencies possible in fostering justice, good-will, and kindliness in all individual dealings of mem bers of one race with members of the other. 4. By the appointment of a standing commission by the Governor of each state for the purpose of making a careful study of the causes underlying race friction, with the view of recommending proper means for their removal. In addition to the standing commissions proposed in the foregoing program there should be a National commission appointed by the President to serve as a unifying body to co ordinate the work of the several State commissions here pro posed. The work of the National Commission should in no way be permitted to conflict with the State commissions and local committees proposed in the program of the Southern Sociological Congress. The National Commission should work with and through the State commissions rather than as a su pervising and superior body. WHITE MAN S DEBT TO THE NEGRO 1 Here in the South, as elsewhere, the stability of civilization is to be measured by the condition of the masses of our work ing people. Men of all nations have been prone to think that enduring national strength can be built up on rottenness ; that national and industrial life can be broad-based and firm though it rest on injustice to the poor and the despised, on ignorance, immorality, inefficiency, disease ; that the great huddled mass of workers can be safely exploited and then ig nored ; that a people may defy the fundamental law of human life and prosper. So, from the beginning, have nations fallen ; until, at last, men began to learn. In the old world and in the new we are moving slowly, along much-lauded paths of science, to that ignored simplicity of Jesus Christ, whose word of human brotherhood we have forgotten. Here in the South we are moving too. Some of our best 1 From article by L. H. Hammond, Paine College, Augusta, Ga. An nals of the American Academy. 49:67-73. September, 1913. 342 SELECTED ARTICLES are turning to serve our neediest. In Louisville, Ky., is a man, the son of an Alabama banker, a man of substance and family, who is conducting settlement work for Negroes, serv ing them in the same ways that other college-bred men and women serve folk of other races in the same economic class elsewhere. One of the International Y. M. C. A. secretaries, a Southern man, has enrolled six thousand young men in our Southern colleges to study the white man s debt to the Negro; and another Southern secretary is following up the work by organizing these young men for social service among Ne groes. The Southern University Commission on the Negro, an outgrowth of the first Southern Sociological Congress, held a year ago, is composed of men both young and old from every Southern state university, who are agreed as to the duty of the favored race to secure justice and opportunity for the backward one. The Woman s Missionary Council of the Southern Methodist Church, an organization representing over two hundred thousand of our white women, recently adopted a plan for cooperation between their own local societies, some four thousand in number, and the better class of Negroes, for the uplift of the poorer classes, locally, throughout the South. Through their secretary for Negro work efforts in this direc tion are already being made at several points. The Southern Baptists have still more recently decided to open a theological seminary for Negro preachers. It is to be in connection with their seminary for white preachers, and the same man, one of their most honored leaders, is to be the head of both institu tions. The Southern Presbyterians have long had a theologi cal seminary for Negroes, where Southern white college men have taught their darker brothers. In South Carolina white members of the Episcopal church, both men and women, are giving their personal service to the Negroes. The Southern Methodists have for thirty years maintained a school for the higher education of the race where college-bred Southern white men and women have taught from the beginning. The Southern Educational Association has been on record for sev eral years as favoring the teaching of Negro normal students by Southern whites; and the work of a man like the Virginia state superintendent of Negro rural schools is something for both races to be thankful for. Southern club women, too, in more than one state, are showing both by word and deed a THE NEGRO PROBLEM 343 spirit of sympathy with the Negro life in their midst. Among the many encouraging and inspiring utterances by both whites and blacks at the recent meeting of the Southern Sociological Congress in Atlanta no single speech summed up the race sit uation as did that of a young Negro on the closing night. "I have always known," he said, "that the old Southern white man understood and trusted the old Negro, and that the old Negro understood and trusted the old Southern white man; but before this congress I never dreamed that the young Southern white man and the young Negro could ever under stand or trust one another; and now I know they can; and that shoulder to shoulder, each in his own place, they can work out together the good of their common country." In all the congress, no speech won from the white people heartier applause than this. But the white men who spoke, college professors, lawyers, business men, preachers, had their audience with them also, as they called for justice and brotherhood and service in the spirit of Christ. The millennium is probably far to seek; but vision is com ing to our leaders a vision of human oneness under all ra cial separateness, of human service fitted to human need. And as the leaders are, the people will be. When even one man sees truth its ultimate triumph is always assured. What ever may happen in between, the final issue is inevitable. THE SOUTH TAKING UP THE PROBLEM 1 In the South the older generation of white people, with its traditions and animosities, is passing away, and there are many signs that a few men of the younger generation are seriously turning their attention to the "everlasting problem." Where the older generation was merely reactionary, dreaming of the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, or discussing "ex portation," "territorial segregation," "extermination," and other wholesale or theoretical remedies, the new generation is plain ly, if a little hopelessly at the start, taking up the "white man s burden" and seeking to look at the whole .subject construc tively. Several different movements are under way. One has 1 From article, Gathering Clouds Along the Color Line, by Ray Stan- nard Baker. World s Work. 32:232-6. June, 1916. 344 SELECTED ARTICLES been organized through the Y. M. C. A., under the direction of an earnest Southern white man, Mr. W. D. Weatherford, and has taken the form of study classes among the students of the colleges and universities. There was a time when the Southerner thought there was nothing for him to learn about the Negro or the race problem, and that was a hopeless time, but the new spirit in the colleges takes the opposite view. Another movement, also originating among the more thoughtful class of Southerners, and largely in the colleges, began with the University Commission on Race Questions, composed of representatives from eleven Southern states, which held a meeting at Nashville, in May, 1912. It was fol lowed in August, 1913, by the still more important Southern Sociological Congress which met in Atlanta and conducted the most impressive discussions of the Negro question ever held in the South. The president of the Congress was Governor Mann of Virginia, and some of the ablest white men of the South took part in the proceedings. The addresses on the Negro question, bound together in a small book with the sig nificant title, "The Human Way," mark a new departure in the Southern attitude toward the Negro. Dr. James H. Dil- lard, of New Orleans, struck the keynote of the present situa tion among the best white people of the South when he said: "Let us be glad that what may be called the post-recon struction period seems at last to be drawing to a close. "This is the truth which I wish to emphasize at this time. I sincerely believe that the day of better feeling is at hand. I believe that the day has come when we shall, if I may say so, start over again and develop right relations in the right way. We Southern white people now realize two facts in regard to the relationship of the races. First, we realize that the old relationship, so frequently typified in the affection of the black mammy, is one that must pass. Second, we realize that the spirit of no relationship, no responsibility, no cooperation, is impossible. We see that our whole public welfare requires the education and improvement of the colored people in our midst. We ^see that public health depends on common efforts between the races. We see that the prosperity of these Southern States is conditioned on greater intelligence among the masses of all the people. We see that every consideration of justice and righteousness demands our good-will, our help ful guidance . . . and our cooperation." THE NEGRO PROBLEM 345 Another evidence of the changing sentiment of the white people is the tendency toward the gradual assumption of the obligation, so long borne partly by Northern philanthropy, of the burden of Negro education. The movement, while very slow, seems genuine. White supervisors of Negro schools are a new development in Southern education, and the fact that Negro leaders, like Dr. Washington was, can speak frankly often with Southern white men on the platform of the need and value of Negro education, indicates a wider popular ac ceptance of the idea that safety lies only in universal educa tion. Compulsory education is now being seriously considered for the first time in at least two Southern states. Some of the Negro colleges and the teachers in them also report an in creasing friendliness among white people toward them. While these movements are confined to the highest type of Southern people, mostly educational leaders who do not meet directly the problems of economic or political competition, they are influencing those centers of thought where public opinion originates. Whether they are strong enough or can travel fast enough to meet the increasing friction between the races is still an open question. That they have not yet really influenced the masses of Southern white people is indicated in various ways by the failure to check lynchings, by the con tinued pressure for discriminatory laws, by the hostility to Negro education, and by the election to office of leaders who have made their reactionary position on the Negro question the foundation of their political existence. The pressure of Southern Congressmen for more discriminatory legislation against Negroes is a clear indication of the hostile popular sentiment in the South. Another strong conservative force is the wise leadership of such men as Dr. H. B. Frissell, of Hampton Institute, who stand as mediating statesmen between the two races. One who studies the Southern situation will be surprised to dis cover how many of the constructive and hopeful organizations in the South, both white and colored, have had their origin in what may be called the Hampton group, which has had for its two great fundamental purposes the training of wise Ne gro leaders (of whom Booker T. Washington and Major Mo- ton, the new head of Tuskegee, are the finest products) and the bringing about of a better understanding between the white man and the Negro, and between South and North. 346 SELECTED ARTICLES The Nation does not yet appreciate the debt it owes to Gen eral Armstrong, the prophet of the Hampton idea, and to Dr. Frissell, its statesman. But the constructive movements are not all confined to the white people. Among the Negroes themselves, there is grow ing up a body of conservative opinion. Increasing property- ownership makes men comfortable, dulls the appetite for agi tation and reform. There are nearly seventy banks owned by Negroes in the South, thousands of little stores, and much other property which, as the Negro well knows, would suffer in case any serious disturbance arose. These interests are ac tively organized in the National Negro Business League, with a wide and influential membership. Moreover, in the black belt, where nine-tenths of the Negroes live, land-ownership against which, until recently, there has been comparatively little opposition, has furnished the one great free opportunity for expansion and has operated as a safety valve for restless ness. And finally, there continues to exist in the South a rather intangible but very real body of relationships, unknown in the North, between individual white people and individual colored people. It varies all the way from that sympathy and under standing which long association as master and servant has produced to a hard sense of the economic interdependence of the races. In the cotton belt, the recognition by the white man that he must have the Negro as a worker, and that noth ing must be done that will go to the length of frightening him entirely away, acts as a salutary influence upon race-relation ships. In one town that I visited to investigate a lynching, I found that the chief argument against the rapacity of the mob was that it was cotton-picking time, and Negro labor was be ing frightened away ! I have endeavored to set forth the present situation re garding the Negro. Radical and conservative forces are both operative, and, as usual, it is difficult to measure them quanti tatively especially the conservative forces, which are always the quietest, least clearly recognizable. But certain general tendencies are apparent. The Negro is being more completely thrown upon his own resources; and at the same time that he begins to feel his strength, becomes better educated, and more intelligent, he feels more distressingly the pressure and in- THE NEGRO PROBLEM 347 justice from above: and he now has leaders who are able enough and courageous enough to make his situation clear to him. It is a condition full of danger, not only to the Negro and the South, but to the whole country: and its most men acing aspect is the contemptuous indifference of a large part of "white America to what is going on in the depths of the volcano just below. Men of the North like to comfort them selves by thinking of the Negro as a Southern problem. He is not that : he is a national problem ; and it must be sharply realized that injustice sooner or later brings its sure reward and the more monstrous the injustice, the more terrible the consequences. WAY TO RACIAL PEACE 1 Under the stress of the World War program of racial co operation developed with a vigor heretofore unknown. The experience gained in past experiments was enlarged and de veloped in many directions. Local Red Cross chapters formed colored auxiliaries for Home Service work and for other ac tivities. Councils of defense, Liberty Loan committees, Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., War Work Councils and other agencies had joint Negro organizations. Various mission boards, welfare societies and associations enlarged their efforts to bring both races into cooperative actions. Federal and State governments adopted the principle of racial cooperation in war efforts. The war program of the Department of Labor may be given as an illustration. The Secretary of War could draft men, send them as soldiers wherever he desired and could compel them to stay put. The Secretary of Labor, as a leader of our agricultural and indus trial army, had no such authority to compel workmen. He had to depend upon the confidence and enthusiasm of the la bor recruits. In dealing with Negro workers, Secretary of Labor Wil liam B. Wilson recognized that, since they constitute about one-seventh of the working army, their confidence and en- thusiams could best be fostered by giving them representation in councils where matters affecting them were considered and iFrom article by George E. Haynes, Director of Negro Economics, United States Department of Labor. World Outlook. 5:3-4. October, 1919. 348 SELECTED ARTICLES decided. He therefore created the office of Director of Negro Economics and adopted a plan for local county, city and State Negro Workers Advisory Committees composed of Ne gro workers and cooperating with white employers, and, wherever possible, white workers. To transfer such a plan from paper to actual operation in ten states demanded racial understanding. Before such under standing could be developed, the friction, prejudices, antago nisms, fears and suspicions of both sides had to be met. There stood also in the pathway of such a program the inevitable lack of adjustment between national needs, standards, and policies, on the one hand, and local needs, problems, and de sire for self-direction on the other. Furthermore, racial la bor problems necessarily had to be solved in local communi ties. The task was to get these local communities to recog nize the larger national standards and needs in adjusting local situations. State Conferences composed of representative white and colored citizens were held in Virginia, North Caro lina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Ken tucky, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri. The state gov ernments cooperated in these conferences, which led in ten states to the establishment of State Negro Workers Advisory Committees with county and city branches made up of repre sentatives from the Negro workers and cooperating white members from employers, and wherever possible white workers. The good feeling and enthusiasm for cooperation in local labor efforts ran high at these conferences and flowed out from them over the states. Besides the State conferences, sixteen local conferences were held and one informal national conference with white and colored representatives from forty- five interested agencies, mission boards and associations met in Washington last February. In nine states these committees set up by the conferences, and through which much constructive work was done, have continued to operate in spite of the fact that a failure of con gressional appropriation forced the Department of Labor to discontinue the employment of State Supervisors of Negro Economics. These state supervisors as paid workers helped to make the work of the volunteer committees effective. Out of such experiences of racial cooperation in these many THE ^EGRO PROBLEM 349 war organizations and activities a few definite indications point clearly to the first steps in plans for prevention of ra cial conflict and for amicable adjustment. We see clearly that every community in which racial problems are an issue needs three things : first, a form of racial cooperative or ganization ; second, a program of work ; third, an organiza tion personnel with a conciliatory, cooperative spirit and an appreciation of the human qualities of all, from the highest down to the lowliest of either race. It is well to bear in mind continually the fact that the purpose of this organization, pro gram and personnel in action is action that brings results. Constructive work to meet the needs of the community must be the dominant policy. It is not enough merely to fight evils. Cures for typhoid and malaria and remedies for mobs are certainly needed after these ills appear. More important, however, is prevention of the occurrence and recurrence of these evils. Preventive social sanitation is more effective than social therapeutics. Let us look now at the general form of organization for cooperative agencies. In every community there already ex ist a church, a school, and in most Negro communities a se cret society. These communities also have police officers, health officers and court officials. In addition, many commu nities have women s clubs, men s clubs, commercial bodies, labor organizations, Christian associations and welfare societies. Such organizations among the white people are usually duplicated among Negroes. Through representatives of the more responsible among these agencies there may be formed a joint community coun cil with white and colored committees, which may meet to gether or separately as occasions make expedient. The general outline of a working program may include: first, problems of employment of efficient work, fair wages and reasonable treatment. Such questions have hardly yet received more than first-aid attention in any community. The second item in a cooperative program relates to the Negro home. This is a point of need where cooperation will bring results not only for the Negro but for the whole com munity. A campaign for better housing, help in promoting home ownership through building and loan associations and housing corporations, legislation to improve the building code, and other housing measures may well form a part in any community program. 350 SELECTED ARTICLES Third, recreation, amusement and instruction during leisure hours are important. When at work, one obeys his boss; when at play, he follows the line of least resistance, which helps him forget both his work and his boss. In both city and country, facilities are needed for music, games, wholesome moving pictures and other recreational devices. Large funds are not always necessary for such a program. With the Ne gro s love for music and singing, the problem needs mainly thought and planning. The success of the War Camp Com munity Service "sings" indicates the practicability of such a plan. The usefulness of public lectures and musical and literary features as a means of enlightenment for the masses of the people is only beginning to be realized. The public library and the public- press are gaining in popularity among Negroes. Let us always bear in mind that the organized forces of evil can be overcome only by the organized forces of good playing on human desire. Fourth, the question of recreation leads naturally to the question of schools for Negro children. There is not a Ne gro community in the country which would not be benefited by greater racial cooperation in improving educational facili ties for Negroes. A fifth plank in our program is health. A campaign to make health catching is not difficult to develop at the present time when the United States Public Health Service is con ducting a nation-wide campaign against venereal diseases; when nearly every state, city and town has some public health activity. The need for such a health program as well as other improvements, is indicated by statistics of the death-rates in cities. For instance, in the middle western city the Negro death-rate is twice that of the whites. Three colored children under one year of age die for every white child who dies at a similar age. All the population of any community which neglects Negro health in this way pays a penalty. Death draws no color line. Many other items will be included in the programs of dif ferent communities, but these five points are fundamental and have a practical constructive value to members of both races. And as the races work together to meet these needs, there will grow up good-will, racial self-respect, and racial peace. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 351 Finally, let us look at the personnel of this community or ganization. It should be recognized that such a program as has been outlined needs some one who can give a large amount of time to the carrying out of details. It should also be rec ognized that a community executive is needed on the Negro side. Such persons working together on the delicate and diffi cult questions of race relations, ready for prompt action when action is necessary and waiting patiently when action is to be deferred are social servants who will be a blessing to any community even at considerable salaries. The ideal democratic Christian cooperation prophetic of the new age, cannot be forced upon any local community. Like heaven in the heart, it grows from within. But like grace from without the heart, it can be stimulated by national organizations and their representatives. ULTIMATE RACE PROBLEM 1 It so happens, in the process of human development, that the whiter races at present represent the forward and pro gressive section of the human family, while the darker varie ties are relatively backward and belated. That the relative concrete superiority of the European is due to the advantage of historical environment rather than to innate ethnic endow ment a careful study of the trend of social forces leaves little room to doubt. Temporary superiority of this or that breed of men is only a transient phase of human development. In the history of civilization the various races and nations rise and fall like the waves of the sea, each imparting an impulse to its successor, which pushes the process further and further forward. Civilization is not an original process with any race or na tion known to history, but the torch is passed from age to age, and gains in brilliancy as it goes. Those who for the time be ing stand at the apex of prestige and power are ever prone to indulge in "Such boasting as the Gentiles use," and claim ever lasting superiority over the "lesser breeds." Nothing less can be expected of human vanity and pride. But history plays 1 From Out of the House of Bondage, by Kelly Miller, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Howard University, p. 218-39. Copyright by Neale Publishing Co. New York. 1914- 352 SELECTED ARTICLES havoc with the vain-glorious boasting of national and racial conceit. Where are the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Egyptians, who once lorded it over the earth? In the histor ical recessional of races they are "one with Nineveh and Tyre." Expeditions must be sent from some distant continent to unearth the glorious monuments of their ancestors from beneath the very feet of their degenerate descendants. The lordly Greeks who ruled the world through the achievements of the mind, who gave the world Homer and Socrates and Phidias in the heyday of their glory, have so sunken in the scale of excellence that, to use the language of Macaulay, "their people have degenerated into timid slaves and their language into a barbarous jargon." On the other hand, the barbarians who, Aristotle tells us, could not count beyond ten fingers in his day subsequently produced Kant and Shakespeare and Newton. The Arab and the Moor for a season led the van of the world s civilization. Because any particular race or class has not yet been caught up by the current of the world movement is no ade quate reason to conclude that it must forever fall without the reach of its onward flow. If history teaches any clear lesson, it is that civilization is communicable to the tougher and hardier breeds of men, whose physical stamina can endure the awful stress of transmission. To damn a people to everlast ing inferiority because of deficiency in historical distinction shows the same faultiness of logic as the assumption that what never has been never can be. The application of this test a thousand years ago would have placed under the ban of reproach all of the vigorous and virile nations of modern times. The European races are now overrunning the world in quest of new resources to exploit, and are thus coming into close and intimate contact with the various weaker breeds of men. The commercial spirit is the ruling passion of the dom inant world today. The whole surface of the habitable globe is practically parceled out among the stronger nations within denned spheres of influence. It is easy to predict the continu ance of this process until "every creature" has been touched by modern civilization. The wonderful growth of exact knowledge and its application to the forces of nature is ren dering this contact easy and inevitable. Steam and electricity THE NEGRO PROBLEM 353 have annihilated distance and banished the terrors of the deep; preventive and remedial medicine has neutralized the baneful influence of climate, and checked the ravage of disease; the hardship of pioneer life is lessened by the easy transportation of material comforts, and the loneliness of isolation is re lieved by the transmission of intelligence which is flashed around the world swifter than the wings of morning. We may naturally expect that less and less heed will be paid to the fixity of the bounds of habitation of the various races and nations that dwell upon the face of the earth. The out come of this contact constitutes the race problem of the world. As water when unrestrained flows from a higher to a lower level till equilibrium is established, so we may expect this stream to flow down and out from the higher fount until the various races and tribes of men reach an equilibrium of civil ization and culture. The place of education in human development is a prin ciple whose importance is just beginning to dawn upon the world. Knowledge is the great equalizing factor in modern civilization. At one time it was thought that divine favor made one man lord over another. It was but a short step from the divine right of the ruler to the divine right of the race. But we are gaining a clearer and clearer conviction that racial, like individual, superiority depends upon knowl edge, discipline and efficiency, which may be imparted largely by education. A people may gain or lose its place according as it holds aloof from or keeps in touch with the highest at tained efficiency of the world. The powers and forces of na ture are not enchanted by any sorcery of race, but yield their secret and mystery to the application of knowledge. Steam and electricity, wind and wave and sunlight, will work as will ingly for a backward as for a forward race. The only ad vantage that the latter possesses is a predisposition to a bet ter discipline and a higher social efficiency. It does not ap pear that it possesses a better grasp upon the recondite prin ciples of knowledge. Education can be relied upon to dis count if not to liquidate the disadvantage under which the backward races labor. Nor is it necessary for such races to repeat the slow steps and stages by which present greatness has been attained. He who comes at the eleventh hour is placed on equal terms with him who has borne the heat and 354 SELECTED ARTICLES burden of the day in the vineyard of civilization. It takes the child of the most favored race twenty-five years to absorb the civilization of the world. The child of the backward race can accomplish the same feat in the same space of time. Japan is teaching the world that she can appropriate and ap ply the agencies of civilization as readily, and wield them as effectively, as the most favored nations of Europe. What Japan has done can be repeated by China or India, or Africa, or by any hardy people with territorial and national integrity who will assimilate the principles of modern progress through education and helpful contact with those nations which are now in the forefront of things. There are three distinct modes of race-contact: (i) where the European takes up permanent residence among the weak er race, as in Australia, South Africa, and Hawaii; (2) where the white man has no expectation of permanent residence, but aims merely at political and commercial domination, as in India, North and Central Africa, and the Polynesian Isles; and (3) where the weaker race has been introduced into the land of the stronger for the sake of industrial exploitation, as in the United States, South America, and the West Indian archipelago. The several phases of the race problem growing out of these different modes of contact are too often over looked in current discussion. The conceivable lines of outcome of race-contact are: the enslavement of the weaker, or, what amounts to the same thing, its subordination into an inferior caste; the extermina tion of the weaker or of the stronger; amalgamation or ab sorption; and amicable adjustment and continuance of dis tinct ethnic types. All of these processes will doubtless con tribute in part to the solution of this problem. The outcome will not be uniform and invariable, but will depend upon the nature and complexity of underlying conditions. In the United States this problem presents many interest ing and unique phases which cause the student of social sub jects to bestow upon it a degree of attention beyond that ac corded any other point of race-contact throughout the world. Its workings are watched with the keenest interest, and much reliance is placed upon its indications, because it presents the widest types of ethnic divergence in the closest intimacy of contact. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 355 Wherever the white man has touched the weaker races he has never scrupled to mingle his blood with theirs. The sons of the gods are ever prone to look lustfully upon the daughters of men. There arises a composite progeny which enters as an important factor into race-adjustment. In this regard it is necessary to make a sharp distinction between the Teutonic and Catholic races of Europe. The Latin or Catholic nations give the mongrel offspring the status of the father, while the Teutonic or Protestant races relegate them to the status of the mother race. In one case the white race becomes mongrelized while the feebler element remains com paratively pure; whereas, in the other, the white race remains pure while the lower race becomes mixed. In Cuba, where the Latin dispensation prevails, the mixed element is returned as white; but in the United States it is classed with the Ne groes. In Cuba, Porto Rico and South America the mongrel- ization of the races is either an accomplished or an assured result. A caste system must be like a pyramid, each layer repre senting a broader area than the one resting upon it. It is im possible to form a lasting system of caste with a superincum- bence of ten white men upon the substratum of one Negro. If the Negroes were everywhere relatively as numerous as they are in some parts of the Southern states, and if the whites were not smothered out by numerical predominance, the permanence of caste might be counted on as a calculable factor. The slave system in America was doomed to destruc tion because the slave element was not sufficiently numerous to support the entire white population. Even in the South there were only five hundred thousand slaveholders, who con trolled four million slaves, leaving six million free whites practically on the level with Negro bondmen, a condition which could exist only until the non-slaveholding class became conscious of their condition. The free laborer of the North was the first to awake to consciousness of the fact that he was made the competitor of slave labor, a condition which he re sented and resisted to the bitter end. The overthrow of slav ery was due to economic as well as to moral and philanthropic causes. After the red and brown races shall have perished from the face of the earth; after the fragmentary peoples have 356 SELECTED ARTICLES been exterminated, expelled or absorbed; after the diffusion of knowledge has established a world equilibrium, there will be left the white, the yellow and the black as the residuary races, each practically in its ethnic identity, and occupying its own habitat. We can only prophecy peace, amity and good will among these types, who will more fully appreciate than we do now that God has made of one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth, within assignable bounds of habitation. Whether this will be but a stage in the ultimate blending of all races in a common world type transcends all of our present calculable data, and must be left to the play of the imagination. FUTURE OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE 1 While, it cannot as yet be predicted with certainty that the Negro will eventually reach a state of complete inherent equality with the white man; neither can it be maintained, on the other hand, that this is outside the range of possi bility. All we know is, that, though the Negro is still back ward, he is steadily moving forward; and that, though he is still below the other race in point of ability, he is gradually coming up. His present incapacities, therefore, appear to be not those of the lower orders of creation as compared with man, but rather those of the growing child as com pared with the mature adult. As the Negro s inferiority was found to be at the bot tom of the Negro problem, and as this inferiority is now seen to be not only reducible, but also actually being re duced, the conclusion is inevitable that the problem itself is in process of measurable solution, as regards its most fundamental element. The other element in this problem, which still remains to be considered, is that of the prevailing prejudice against the Negro. As this also was shown to have its root in the Negro s inferiority, it would logically be expected to show some mitigation as that inferiority is lessened. But on 1 From In Freedom s Birthplace, by John Daniels, Secretary of the Social Service Corporation, Baltimore. Chapter X. Copyright by Houghton, Mifflin Co. Boston, 1914. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 357 the surface at least, as previously stated, this prejudice ap pears to have increased in recent years. In view of the sketch which has already been given of the course of development of the attitude toward the Negro, on the part of the other race, from the earliest period down to the present, it must be obvious that the antipathy which exists today is to some extent a survival and outgrowth of that which has existed in former years. As account ing both for the perpetuation of prejudice in this way, and also for its further increase, several sets of influences may be perceived. The first of these consists of facts, reports, or mem ories, having to do with conditions of inferiority among this race in the past. The attitude of a great many people toward the Negro is without doubt determined wholly or mainly by such impressions from days gone by, with little or no regard to the present. In the case of some persons, the distant fact that this race was originally brought from a state of savagery in Africa is sufficient to stigmatize it beyond hope of redemption. Others look down upon the Negroes because they used to be slaves. With a much larger number, however, the aversion displayed is traceable to no specific source, but to a vague combination of things read, or heard, or remembered from their own experience, about the Negro at an earlier time. On the part of some of the older residents of Boston, who were living in the city in the first two or three decades following the war, when uncouth blacks were swarming in from the South, the disagreeable impressions then received stick obstinately. A second factor working in this same direction, is that of accounts and hearsay concerning conditions among the Negroes in the Southern States. There are many white people of Boston who know practically nothing about the Negro in their own city, but who nevertheless become violently prejudiced against him, as the result of glaring newspaper reports of brutal crimes, superstitious orgies, and the like, said to have taken place somewhere in the Black Belt. Another contingent are adversely influenced by things which they hear from white Southerners, regarding the al leged ignorance, shiftlessness, and depravity of the Negroes 358 SELECTED ARTICLES in that part of the country. Still others, who happen for one reason or another to visit the South, return with an unfavorable verdict respecting the Negro in Boston, which is based entirely on snap-shot glimpses of the conditions of this race in, say, Alabama or Mississippi. The third element in continuing and furthering prejudice, consists of superficial observation of the Negro in the Boston community itself. Only a slight fraction of the city s white inhabitants have even a cursory knowledge of the actual facts pertaining to its Negro population. The great majority of the former know the latter only from seeing them in the hotels, as menials, dealing with them in their homes, as servants, making an occasional curious excursion to a Negro church, or passing now and then through a Negro district; and almost always, it must be said, with their eyes and ears open for something to make fun of, or to censure. Judgment arrived at in this haphazard fashion and in such an attitude of mind can hardly be considered as either just or dependable. These prejudicial influences, operating to exaggerate and distort the Negro s actual points of past and present in feriority, have largely produced both a survival, and to some extent an increase, of that antipathy toward the Negro which had its rise in former years, when the conditions among 1 this race were far different from, and far below, those which at present hold true. Leaving this side of the situation, for the moment, note may be taken of certain other influences, of a different character, which are working in exactly the opposite direc tion from those that have just been mentioned. The first of these is to be found in the increase both of individual Negroes of marked ability and worth of charac ter, and of white people who are brought into contact with such individuals. Under these circumstances, as a rule, any previously existing prejudice on the part of these particular white persons is appreciably reduced, so far as regards its exhibition with reference to these particular Negroes. Mention of many individual Negroes of this grade has been made in the foregoing account, and brief autobiographical sketches have been given of a few whose records are typical. In the case of the latter, the reader must have been struck THE NEGRO PROBLEM 359 by the fact that next to no complaint was made of any sufferings on account of prejudice; but that, on the contrary, the unanimous testimony of these individuals was to the effect that, in their own experience, they had for the most part succeeded, by dint of tact and the demonstration of capacity, in overcoming such antipathy. White people who come to know Negroes of this kind usually find that they do not feel toward them as they do toward the Negro in the mass, or in the abstract. "He is different from the rest, is the way they put it. But in the total, these Negroes who are "different" constitute a very substantial and con stantly growing number; while the members of the other race who are thrown into more or less association with them form a total still larger and still more rapidly in creasing number. Thus, it is evident, a considerable leavening in fluence is at work. And thereby arises the second factor of similar but broader effect. Individual Negroes, of the character which has been described, not only overcome antipathy in their own cases, but also, by their example, blaze the way for others of the race to follow in their steps, while at the same time they help to lessen any prejudice which these others may encounter. For it is improbable that white people can feel little or no aversion toward particular Ne groes, without eventually coming to feel somewhat less aversion toward the Negroes as a race. These particular white people, moreover, can hardly fail, by force of word and act, to influence others in the same direction. After this manner, the number of white people whose attitude toward the Negro becomes favorably modified, is still fur ther increased. The third factor in reducing prejudice grows out of the two already remarked, but is of a more general nature. When white people are once brought to recognize ability and accomplishment on the part of particular Negroes, they are more likely to reflect that such individual attainment really bears witness to the latent capacity of the Negro in general; and they are also more disposed to look for and discover the progress which the Negro people, as a whole, are making. So marked has this progress become at many points, indeed, that it is beginning of itself to compel 36o SELECTED ARTICLES recognition, even on the part of an increasing number of persons whose eyes have not been opened by individual examples. In proportion as people become aware of the Negroes advance, their attitude toward him cannot fail to become more favorable. The problem s two elements indicate the double road which the Negro will have to travel in his advance into the future. On the one hand, he must continue to make in dependent strides on his own account; while on the other, he must continue also to insist upon his rights and priv ileges as a citizen, and thus more directly to combat the prejudice against him. Though not as a rule fully realized, the measure in which the possession of equal political and civil rights by the Negro in Boston conduces to his substantial progress through his own resources, is sufficiently obvious when once pointed out. Such equality not only instills this race with a degree of self-respect which it could not have as a class inferior be fore the law, but also results in enlarging at practically every point, the Negro s opportunities for self-improvement. First and foremost, the effective right to vote, without restriction either in law or in fact, is of inestimable value to the Negro. It gives him a consciousness of having some responsible part in the affairs of the community, which other wise he would not feel, and which cannot but act upon him as a general spur and incentive. More immediately, the franchise enables him to make concrete protest against as pirants for leadership who are unfriendly to his race, and policies which are inimical to his welfare, as well as mak ing it possible for him, from a more positive and con structive point of view, to promote measures calculated to assist him. The ballot furthermore puts him in a position to demand just political recognition, in the form of com petent public offices; while the holding of such offices, and the creditable performance of the duties involved, not only give rise among the Negroes themselves to a justified con fidence in their own potential abilities, but also have the ef fect of obtaining fuller recognition of their capacity on the part of the other race. Likewise the right to attend the same public schools and other educational institutions as those attended by the whites, renders accessible to the Negro . THE NEGRO PROBLEM 361 advantages in securing an education which are undoubtedly far superior to any separate provision likely to be made for him, if a policy of segregation were followed. The freedom of this race to reside in any locality means that a con siderable proportion of its members are able to live and to rear their children in much more healthful, morally salutary, and otherwise desirable surroundings, than would be the case if the Negroes were confined within such congested and evilly environed colonies as those which exist in many cities of the South. The further right to purchase real estate in any section supplies the Negroes with a stronger motive to become owners of homes, and results in their acquiring more and better property, than would be true if their holdings were restricted, as in some Southern cities, to certain inferior districts. In addition to these rather specific considerations, there are two whose bearing is more general. The first of these is, that inasmuch as the other race is still in a much more ad vanced stage of development than the Negro, the present extent of the latter s contact with white people must be reckoned a factor of the utmost value in his own progress. For thus, instead of being forced back wholly upon himself and his own limitations, he is constantly enabled to derive encouragement and stimulus from the experience and ex ample of the other race. At the same time and this is the companion factor such inter-racial association has the result of acquainting the other race with the Negro in a closer and more discriminating way, and of giving it a more sym pathetic understanding both of the difficulties with which the Negro has to contend, and of the degree to which these difficulties are being conquered by him. But while thus equality of public privilege greatly quick ens the Negro s rate of progress, the ways in which, as already suggested, this very self-achievement qualifies him to gain and to hold such privilege, are likewise obvious. The Negro s marked advance in point of education and refine ment, to begin with, secures for many members of this race an amount of helpful association with the other race which they could not possibly obtain if ignorant and uncouth. The good appearance, as regards dress and demeanor, which all but the poorest element of the Negroes in Boston usually 362 SELECTED ARTICLES present, obtains them admittance, and thus establishes a precedent for their admittance, in many places of semi- public character, such as theaters, churches, settlements, educational and other institutions, from which, were they a class of ragamuffins and rowdies, they would be effectually shut out. The individual Negro will never gain the full respect of the other race until he first comes fully to respect himself. This he cannot do until his own race has reached the point where he will not be ashamed, he will be proud, to own himself a Negro. Other racial stocks as, for example, the Slavs, Celts, or Teutons feel no aversion, but only the pride of historical achievement, in these corresponding designa tions. The Negro affords the one solitary case of which the opposite is true. And the reason for this is, that as yet the Negro has comparatively little history which warrants pride. Therefore, he must set to work to make a history for himself. He must have a creditable past upon which to build a creditable future. The development of the Negro people as a distinct racial group, with traditions, leaders, and ideals of their own, will run not counter, but parallel to the considerably slower proc ess of the Negro s articulation into the common life of the community. Though it may appear paradoxical to say that the surest way in which the Negro will succeed in over coming the prevailing attitude in his disfavor will be by becoming more and not less a Negro than he is today, this is nevertheless the truth. For as the Negro, in proportion to his own independent progress, compels increased respect for his capacity, the other race will gradually and naturally become more willing to receive him into closer association. This articulating process has already, indeed, reached a noticeably advanced stage: The fact that, in point of resi dence, the Negroes are being distributed among the city s white inhabitants to a constantly widening extent, cannot fail to promote mutually better acquaintance and to give rise to common interests. Likewise, in the ranks of in dustry, the interspersion of Negro workmen among white workmen, in both manual and clerical occupations, is steadily increasing. The proportion of the Negro professional and business class who are venturing to go outside those THE NEGRO PROBLEM 363 districts colonized by their own people, and to try their for tunes among white competitors, though of course still small, is continually growing. Cases of office-sharing and even of partnership between persons of the two races are less of a rarity now than in former years, while instances of Negro proprietors or of responsible employees having white workmen in their charge are oftener to be found. General trade contact between these two elements of the population is gradually extending, while through the use of banks, the ownership of property, and the paying of taxes, the Negro is being linked, more and more substantially, to the economic interests of the community. Citizens of both races vote together at the same voting places and on an equal basis. Through representation on the various party committees, the Negroes have some part in the management of party affairs, and at all political con ventions Negro delegates are to be seen. Especially under the civil service, an increasing quota of Negroes are serving in public positions side by side with officials of the other race. With regard to religious activity, though on the whole the attendance of Negroes at white churches is diminishing, yet as previously noted there are some churches which are marked exceptions to this rule; and, on a broader scale, cases of white churches, especially in the suburbs, which contain a few earnest and well-regarded Negro members, are coming to constitute a significant total. The Negro churches are admitted into the general denominational organ izations, Negro delegates participate in the general meet ings, and no color line is drawn on the various ministers societies. In the public schools white and Negro children work and play together in apparent innocence of any barrier. These memories and impressions of childhood are not easily blotted out. White youth of high-school and college age find Negro youth often their equals and sometimes their superiors, both in scholarship and athletic prowess. A Negro principal, half a dozen teachers, and several school officials, represent the Negro on the side of substantial con tribution to the city s educational advance. Perhaps it may be said, however, that all such contact as this between the two races ends simply with itself, and neither signifies nor leads to social intercourse of such uncondi- 364 SELECTED ARTICLES tioned character as that which takes place between the various elements of the white population. In other words, it may be held that though the Negro is in the community, and closely related to it, he is not by any means an in tegral part of it. This distinction is, without doubt, a real and vital one. But it is at the same time so subtle, in many respects, as to render the question raised by it extremely difficult, if not at this stage practically impossible, to answer with finality. Viewed against the background of the prevail ing prejudice against the Negro people and the still out standing fact of their separateness in the main, whatever association there is between the Negro and the white por tion of the population tends easily and plausibly, of course, to appear as something of an altogether peculiar and rigidly limited nature. But, on the other hand, may it not be that these perfectly obvious elements of prejudice and separate- ness loom so large and so near as to bias and distort the observer s vision, and to render him incapable of preceiving, in their true light and at their full value, any facts of an opposite significance? The writer feels confident, out of years of experience, that, as regards all except possibly the most intimate personal relations, no such necessarily fixed barrier between the Negro and the white man, as that which has just been suggested, actually exists; that there is today a substantial measure of genuine, man-to-man as sociation between members of these two races; and that in the future such association, based upon a fellow-feeling of human brotherhood which strikes deeper than any sense of difference, will continue to increase, tending eventually to make the Negro people an inner and component part of the general community. GARVEY S EMPIRE OF ETHIOPIA 1 Probably the most remarkable of race conventions that America, the cradle of liberty and the nursery of nationalistic and racial aspirations, has ever witnessed was held in New York in August when for thirty-one days and nights the three 1 From article by Truman Hughes Talley. World s Work. 41:264-70. January, 1931. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 365 thousand elected representatives of the Negroes of all na tions, states, colonies, and territories of the world assembled for thorough deliberation upon the past, present, and future of their race. "We are met here tonight," Marcus Garvey, in his key note speech said, "for the purpose of enlightening the world respecting the attitude of the new Negro. We are assembled as the descendants of a suffering people who are determined to suffer no longer. For three hundred years our forefathers and even ourselves suffered in this Western Hemisphere. For more than five hundred years our forefathers on the great con tinent of Africa suffered from the abuse of an alien race. "We, as new Negroes, declare that what is good for the white man in this age is also good for the Negro. The white race claim freedom, liberty, and democracy. For that free dom, that liberty, that democracy they drenched Europe in blood for four and a half years. In that bloody war, fought to maintain the standard of civilization and freedom of democ racy, they called upon two million black men from Africa, from the West Indies, and from America to fight that the world might enjoy the benefits of civilization. We fought as men; we fought nobly; we fought gloriously; but after the battle was won we were still deprived of our liberties, our democracy, and the glorious privileges for which we fought. And, as we did not get those things out of the war, we shall organize four hundred million strong to float the banner of democracy on the great continent of Africa. "We have absolutely no apologies or compromises to make where Negro rights and liberties are concerned. Just at this time as the world is reorganizing it is also reconstructing it self, and everywhere oppressed peoples are striking for and obtaining their rightful freedom. Negroes ol the world shall do no less than, also, strike out for freedom. Liberty is the common heritage of mankind and as God Almighty created us four hundred million strong, we shall ask the reason why and dispute every inch of ground with any other race to find out why we also cannot enjoy the same benefits. "We, as a people, do not desire what belongs to others. But others have sought to deprive us of those things which belong to us. Our fathers might have been satisfied to have been deprived of their rights, but we new Negroes, we young 366 SELECTED ARTICLES men who were called out in this war, we young men who have returned from the war, shall dispute every inch of right with every other race until we win what belongs to us. "This convention is called for the purpose of framing a bill of rights for the Negro race. We shall write a constitution within this month that shall guide and govern the destiny of our four hundred millions. This constitution, like that of the greatest democracy in the world, we shall defend with the last drop of our blood. Wheresoever I go, whether it is in Eng land, France, Germany, Italy, or America, I am told, This is a white man s country. Wheresoever I travel in this nation I am made to understand that I am a nigger. If the Eng lishman claims England as his native habitat, the Frenchman claims France as his home, the Americans, this continent as their land, then the time has come for the Negroes to claim Africa as their native land. If Europe and America are for the white man, and Asia is for the yellow man, then in the name of God, Africa shall be the home of the black peoples. We have been dying for the last five hundred years for whom? For alien races. The time has come for the Negro to die for himself. "The President of this country returned from Europe and told us there was to be peace. Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and the other national leaders returned to their countries and said there was to be peace. But the handwriting on the wall shows that the bloodiest and greatest war of all times is yet to come the war when Asia shall match her strength against Europe for the survival of the fittest and for the dominance of Ori ental or Occidental civilization. Men, let me tell you this : the hour has come for the Negro to mobilize his forces of four hundred millions for that bloody war. The time has ar rived and is now opportune for the Negro to strike for African redemption. "It is apparent that it is left to the Negro to teach the principles of mercy and justice. The Negro has carried those principles with him for thousands of years, but the time has come for us to call a halt. Why? Because we realize that the other races are living in a material and practical age. They do not regard glorious and noble principles; they regard only those things that will make them happy and comfortable. While the white man, for ages, taught us to despise Africa THE NEGRO PROBLEM 367 told us how hideous a place it was, inhabited by savages, by cannibals, by pagans, trying to persuade Negroes not to take any interest in it, they have gone to Africa and have taken large portions of it. In the north, south, east and west they have helped themselves until there is but little left even of the interior. But the hour has come when the whole continent of Africa shall be reclaimed and redeemed as the home of the black peoples. We shall not ask England, Why are you here? nor France, Why are you here? nor Italy, nor Bel gium. The only thing we will say will be Get out of here/ And because we mean that, we believe in the principles of jus tice and equity. "We have no animus against the white man. All that we have desired, as a race, is a place in the sun. Four hundred million people are too numerous not to have a place in the sun. If sixty million Anglo-Saxons can have a place in the sun, if eighty million Germans can still have a place in the sun, if seven million Belgians can have a place in the sun, I do not see why we cannot have a place a big spot in that self-same sun. If you believe that the Negro should have a place in the sun, if you believe that Africa should be one vast empire controlled by Negroes, then arise and sing the national anthem of our people." With which "Ethiopia, Thou Land of our Fathers/ swelled from the thousands of throats as a great cry out of the wilderness. Within a week s time there was a drafted document, the Declaration of Negro Rights and Constitution of Negro Liberty. The finished product was a long document of sixty- six divisions in which every phase of the Negro s outlook upon life and the future was touched upon and the line of conduct every adherent must follow was set forth. The preamble of this constitution states that "the Negro people of the world, through their chosen representatives, in convention assembled in Liberty Hall . . . protest against the wrongs and injustices they are suffering at the hands of their white brethren and state what they deem their fair and just rights as well as the treatment they pur pose to demand of all men in the future." There follows, briefly summarized in twelve paragraphs, the entire category of complaint, after which are enumerated under fifty-four headings the aspirations and intentions of the regenerated 368 SELECTED ARTICLES race. In the words of the framers the more important and startling of these decisions are: "Be it known to all men that whereas all men are created equal and entitled to the rights of life, liberty, and pur suits of happiness, and because of this, we, the duly elected representatives of the Negro peoples of the world, invoking the aid of the just and Almighty God, do declare all men, women and children of our blood throughout the world free denizens of the world and do claim them as free citizens of Africa, the motherland of all Negroes. "That we believe in the supreme authority of our race, in all things racial, that all things are created and given to man as a common possession, that there should be an equitable distribution and apportionment of all such things, and in consideration of the fact that as a race we are now deprived of those things that are morally and legally ours, we believe it right that all such things should be acquired and held by whatsoever means possible. "We believe in the freedom of Africa for the Negro peoples of the world, and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asiatics, we also demand Africa for the Africians at home and abroad. "We believe in the right of self-determination. "We believe in the inherent right of the Negro to pos sess himself of Africa and that his possession of same shall not be regarded as an infringement on any claim or purchase made by any race or nation. "We strongly condemn the cupidity of those nations who by open aggression and secret schemes have seized the ter ritories and inexhaustible natural wealth of Africa, and we place on record our most solemn determination to reclaim the treasures and possession of the vast continent of our forefathers. "We hereby demand that the governments of the world recognize our leader and his representatives chosen by the race to guard the welfare of our people under such govern ments. "We demand that our duly accredited representatives be given proper recognition in all Leagues, Conferences, Con ventions, or Courts of International Arbitration wherever human rights are discussed. THE NEGRO PROBLEM 369 "We declare the League of Nations null and void so far as the Negro is concerned in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty. We declare for the absolute freedom of the seas for all peoples. "We demand a free and unfettered commercial inter course with all the Negro peoples of the world. "We believe all men should live in peace one with another, but when races and nations provoke the ire of other races and nations by attempting to infringe upon their rights, war becomes inevitable and the attempt in any way to free one s self or protect one s rights or heritage becomes justifiable. "We declare that no Negro shall engage himself in battle for an alien race without first obtaining the consent of the leader of the Negro peoples of the world, except in a mat ter of national self-defence. "We protest against the practice of drafting Negroes and sending them to war with alien forces without proper training, and demand in all cases that Negro soldiers be given the same training as the aliens." Other sections of the document deal with the treatment of the Negro in political, educational, industrial and religious fields, the dominant note throughout being that the Negro must be accorded even-handed treatment and that henceforth the weight of combined Negro opinion and arms if neces sary will be brought be bear to remedy flagrant evil or op pression. The parent body, the original Garvey enterprise, is the Universal Negro Improvement Association. This body is concerned with the promotion of solidarity among the ad herents to the empire-building organization. It is, in effect, the political complement of the two previously described commercial corporations. Allied with it is the Africian Communities of the World which is undertaking to develop those portions of Africa now held by the blacks as well as later to take a hand in those areas which they may re gain. With this larger and more distant field, this joint organization points to the convention just held and the organization perfected throughout the Negro world as its chief accomplishment to date. Eventually and in conjunc tion with the Black Star Line its leaders declare it must 370 SELECTED ARTICLES grapple with the problem of building African railroads, docks, warehouses, factories, educational institutions, churches, homes and all the rest of construction that goes with such an enterprise. Also, it must find, transport and regulate the supply of skilled American and West Indian Negro labor with which portions of the black continent is to be modernized. A rather large order, it must be admit ted, but in the words of Garvey, who is not infrequently more practical than visionary, "It may take fifty years and it may take many fifties, but it will come." 14 DAY USE \ RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. "* - - n LIBR M0^3 s; n ^i n J Q r ON OEPT. 1970 aUG^G^s LIBRARY RECJQFFirfJANOG 97 10"IO -. : CALIFORNIA \ a - LD 21A-607n-7/66 (G4427slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley LB$B ^^ nzaiA^a 2 = ^ 37267 vD ilTY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THb > SIT* OF CALIFORNIA SHS^ QJ/-MO LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA