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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

The American Negro
HIS PAST AND FUTURE

BY
P. B. BARRINGER, M.D., LL.D.
OF THE UNIVERSITY OP
VIRGINIA

(THI,RDj EDITION)

-.> - .-.-„* .; ¦¦ . ...
Copies of this address may be obtained'for.26' cents each at
Anderson Bros. (Booksellers), .Charlottesville, Va.

RALEIGH, N. C.
Edwards & Bhoughton, Printers and Binders

Introductory Note.

After the preliminary meeting of the Tri-State Medical Society at
Virginia Beach, Dr. P. B. Barringer, of the University of Virginia,
was requested by the acting secretary to prepare for the organization
meeting of this Society to be held at Charlotte, 1ST. C, a short talk on
the raison d'etre for a new medical society in the South.
In this address Dr. Barringer took the position that if this was to he
conducted as other societies, there was no need for a new society, as there
were societies in abundance already in existence which devoted them
selves to the general needs of the profession, and that if another society
was organized it should be based upon new lines. He suggested that
the entire first day of each meeting of this new society should he
devoted to some subject of broad general interest to the profession,
such as the negro problem now facing the South, race mortality, ine
briety, etc. This suggestion was well received and the negro problem
was chosen as the subject for discussion at the next meeting at Charles
ton, S. 0., and Dr. Barringer appointed leader of debate with the
request that he bring in a paper on the influence of heredity upon the
negro. Many papers on the negro were read at tbis Charleston meeting
and the subject freely discussed. By the unanimous vote of the Society
it was ordered that the papers of Dr. P. B. Barringer and Dr. S. O.
Baker should be printed and sent to all the medical societies in the South
with the recommendation that they seriously consider the facts therein
set forth. Pattlus A. Ibving.,
Secretary Tri-State Medical Society.

The American Negro, His Past and Future.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Tri-State Medical Association:
In the early part of this century, when the cholera appeared in Edin
burg, the good people of that city wrote in alarm to the then Prime Min
ister, Lord Palmerston, an Edinburg man, asking that he appoint a day
of national fasting and prayer. To this the Premier replied, saying:
"The Master of this Universe has appointed certain laws of nature for
this planet on which we live, and the weal or woe of mankind depends
upon the proper observance of these laws." To the people of the South,
alarmed by the rapid increase of the negro and his relatively greater
increase in crime, I recommend these words. The weal or woe of this
people depends largely upon the promptitude with which they turn their
faces from looking after external sources of help and apply themselves
to the problem at hand.
Sociological problems are in most cases biological problems and while
the whole history of man is relatively short from the standpoint of
records, it is infinitely long from the standpoint of biological data, and
the one is just as valuable in guiding human reason 'as the other. There
is a short, crisp biological axiom which reads "the ontogeny is the repe
tition of the phylogeny." This axiom literally translated, means, "the
life history is the repetition of the race history ;" freely interpreted it
means that the life history of any individual, of any type, unless modi
fied by forces of an exceptional character, will tend to conform to the
lines of ancestral traits. This, you will observe, is but the expression
of the conservative force in nature, as opposed to the modifying
influences of environment. In other words, it is a terse expression of
the existence of the force we call "heredity" in life.
The lay idea of heredity is, however, a very vague and uncertain
quantity. The term is sometimes made use of to even up scores on "Old
Adam" when other reasons for the occasional lapses of preachers' sons
are not at hand, but very few really appreciate lie principles involved.
The above axiom covers more than simple heredity, as we shall see. It
takes an individual from the fertilized ovum to the grave, and declares
that throughout all this period the child shall tread the path his fathers
trod ; and this tendency to repeat is not only structural, but physiologi
cal and psychic as well. As this paper may have some lay readers, I
* Address delivered by Dr. Paul B. Barringer, Chairman of the Faculty of the
University of Virginia, in Charleston, 8. O., February 20, 1900, before the Tri-State
Medical Association of Virginia and the Carolinas.

will briefly illustrate; if we study the embryonic development of any
higher organism we will see repeated in the process the various stagee
of the developmental history of that type. Man himself, in the embyonic
stage, taking the heart as an example, presents in order the simple tubu
lar heart of the mollusk, the branchial arches of the amphibian, the
analogue of the tripartite heart of the reptile, and last, the four cham
bered organ of the mammal. So with the other organs.
In equal manner we see in the postembryonic life of any individual
the same tendency to repeat ancestral history. The earlier primitive
deer was a spotted animal. The European fallow deer is now among
the few members of this family retaining the original colors, but, under
the law, the young of all this family must sport the ancestral colors, if
but for a time, and hence the spotted fawn. Among the giant cats, the
leopard is the oldest type, and when change of environment developed
in the lion and in the American puma, or panther, solid colors, the
young still present the spots of the primitive type. As with the skin,
so with the body. In illustration of the same law, I will also now
briefly refer to habits. Let us take an animal familiar to all, man's best
companion after man himself — the dog. Yon all know that the well-
bred pointer, though raised apart from any bird dog, is expected to stand
the first bird it ever scents, and the better classes of this breed will also
retrieve the bird when killed. These traits are, however, late acquire
ments and they are readily lost. It takes the utmost care in selection
and breeding to maintain the type. Three or four generations of the
same blood, untrained and undisciplined, will give a scrub dog which no
trainer would accept. He will break shot, chase and mangle his game
and show all the vices. If you will notice this scrub dog, however, you
will see in him certain traits which never lapse. These his ancestors
had for the thousands upon thousands of years before he knew man. I
will mention as one the habit of turning around two or three times
before lying down to rest. There are breeds of dogs whose ancestors
have certainly been separated from the jungle for thousands of years,
but the millions of years of jungle habit will not be overcome in a day,
and he will conscientiously "go through the motions" of treading down
the grass on the hearth before the fire. I would also invite your atten
tion to another influence of heredity manifested in these animals now
under consideration. We have all heard of the cur dog and most of us
have seen him. A "yaller dog," with a dark muzzle, ears at least semi-
erect and a drooping tail. He is the product of indiscriminate breed
ing and it makes no difference how specialized the type from which
you start, the product of the indiscriminate breeding of varieties is a
reversion to the primitive type in color, in form and in temper, and this,
whether it be the wolf, jackal, dhole or dingo type. The crossing of a
shepherd dog and a setter will not give a combination dog, but an animal

worthless either for sheep or birds. He throws to the wind his late
acquirements which man. for a short time has forced upon him, and falls
back upon and retains only what is bred in the bone. In his phylogeny
the tutelage of man counts as but a day, and, left alone, he is himself
again, the wild dog, the "sheep-killing dog," the pariah., the cur whose
name is the very essence of opprobrium. These constitute a few of the
commonplace illustrations of this law aronnd us.
Erom what has been said it will be seen that the longer the life history
of a race (the phylogeny) has been uniform, undisturbed and unbroken
by modifying influences, the more firmly ingrained will be the peculiar
traits descending to any offspring of this race, and influencing its life
(the ontogeny). It will be further seen from the above that in order
that any modifying influence should produce a permanent change in the
habits of a race it must be applied for a long time ; a time at least long
enough to establish in place of the old, a secondary phylogeny, at least
commensurate in time with the first, and also that the influence of the
change in environment must persist. The latter is absolutely essen
tial ; otherwise physiological inertia and momentum would the one offset
the other.
Let us apply this biological axiom to the human race-, taking as our
example of that race, the Southern negro. In advance, I will here state
what I hope to show. I will endeavor to- show that the American negro
is the resultant of a combination of forces, each one of which can be
isolated and analyzed. I will show from the study of his racial history
(phylogeny) that his late tendency to return to barbarism is as natural
as the return of the sow that is washed to her wallowing in the miie. 1
will show that the ages of degradation under which he was formed and
the fifty centuries of historically recorded savagery with which he came
to us can not be permanently influenced by one or two centuries of
enforced correction if the correcting force be withdrawn. 1 will further
endeavor to show that when the correcting force of discipline was
removed be, like the released plummet, began to fall, and, although the
mills of the gods grind slowly, what we have already seen is but the first
evidence of a motion as certain in its results as the law of gravitation.
Fortunately for us, experience (history) also shows that these savage-
traits can be held down, and we have seen that if held down long enough,
they will be bred out. In this one fact lies the hope of the South.
Let us go back, then, and look at the phylogeny of onr brother in
black, and see what his first history teaches us. It may be asked ere we
begin, what African our American is — of what tribe1, from what part of
the continent ? I will answer that we, at least, know that he came from
the west coast of Africa, and from the valleys of the Niger and Senegal,
and as everything in this part of Africa is originally of one race and one
blood, we will call him the west coast African — the true negro, the very
lowest of the blacks.

Erman and other writers on ancient Egypt declare that the negro was
known to the early Egyptians as far back as the time of Pepi, of the
VI Dynasty. This is put by all Egyptologists as far back as 2500
B. C, and by many a thousand years earlier. It was also indicated that
the negro of that date presented the same general characteristics of the
negro of equatorial Africa to-day. In the time of Thotmes III, about
1500 B. C, there was carved at Thebes a triumphal tablet which repre
sents a line of negro prisoners, with their wives and children, being
registered by a scribe. The woolly-headed, thick-lipped, prognathic
savage stands there to-day as if graven yesterday with the Southern plan
tation negro as the model. We next meet him in Carthage, brought by
caravans across the desert from the sources of the Niger, the head
waters of this stream being known to them as the "Nile of the Blacks."
We hear of the negro again in Roman times as a bearer of burdens in
Rome, and an untrammelled savage in Africa; still the same. The
slave-trader found him later, just the same, ready to sell his own flesh
and blood and that of his neighbor — when he could not eat it. So Du
Chaillu, Livingston, Speke, Grant, Stanley and others have all, and at
all times, found him, the original and unmodified savage.
In evidence of what the negro still is in Africa, I will cite here from
a report by the Rev. Mr. Shepherd, a negro missionary of the Soutbern
Presbyterian Church, in the Congo Eree State. This report is corrobo
rated and endorsed as true by the Rev. Mr. Vass and Rev. Mr. Morrison,
of the same Church. Hearing of a slave raid in his vicinity at Luebo,
Mr. Shepherd went over to the raided villages and I quote from Mr.
Vass's report:*
"The sight was barbarous. He (Shepherd) saw fourteen villages
burned and plundered. He saw forty-seven dead lying around the
camp, rotting ; saw three with the flesh carved carefully off and eaten,
according to the testimony of the chief, Melumba N'Ousa. He (Me-
lumba N'Cusa) said eighty or ninety had been killed, the others were
eaten by his people. There are 500 of the Zaps at this place. He saw
sixty women prisoners huddled together in a pen. Many will likely
be eaten ; others taken to the State. Sixteen men had already been sent
to the State. The road along the way stank from the exposed dead."
This report was made in October, 1899, less than six months ago, and
it gives the forbears of our Southern negroes as they are seen at home
to-day; I will further add that there is not in history or in monument
one scintilla of evidence to prove that the west coast negro was ever bet
ter than we find him to-day.
Lord Beaconsfield was wont to boast, as well he might, that his fore
fathers were kings when the ancestors of the people of England wer«
*The Missionary, January, 1900.

skin-clad savages in the mud-flats of northern Europe,- but where is the
phylogeny of the Jew when it is thus matehed against the forty or fifty
centuries of unchanged life, presented by this dusky, primitive type ?
A careful study of the foregoing writers will show an individual life
in Africa, past or present, to be about as follows : The negro child is
born under fair skies and in a land of plenty, but so improvident are
his people that although plantains, bananas and "mealies" will grow for
the mere planting, his life from his birth onward is marked by alternate
periods of gorging and starving. The latter causes him to widen the
range of his appetite and young buds, succulent roots, insects, berries or
anything that would prolong life, are used. The survivors of many
centuries of such a life should certainly be of strong digestion and indis
criminate appetite, and this explains why a negro ration, as it is called
South, "a peck of meal, three pounds of bacon and a pint of molasses a
week," is "a plenty."
But the influence of periodic starvation is seen in another way. At
some early period when not only threatened, but actual, starvation came,
the survivors survived, as they have often done elsewhere, through can
nibalism. In the next period of dearth cannibalism was easier, and
in the next, easier still. With annual periods of famine it is easy to see
how the habit grew and how in time it reached a point at which they
could not wait for the famine, but began to avail themselves of whatever
material disease or war happened to' throw in their way. That death
by disease afforded no obstacles with the equatorial negro is seen in the
case recorded by Stanley when they dug up and ate a corpse, dead with
smallpox, which had been buried for quite a time. Such, in short, is
my idea of the origin of cannibalism. It is the logical result, of a
climate and soil bountiful enough to beget improvidence and yet not
sufficiently certain to insure against occasional famine. Unable to
resist, the aged first suffered, and came in time to be everywhere con
sidered as legitimate material for food. But let us return to our young
African. Protected by a racial odor that seems to repel even the mos
quito, (the bite of a certain type of mosquito is now known to be the
cause of malaria), he is immune to the fevers which make the west coast
the white man's grave. As he grows to adolescence he is familiarized
with every type of evil and brutality. He sees in the centre of the kraal
a young girl lashed to a pole to be devoured alive by buzzards — "a
charm to bring rain" (Burton) ; he sees annually the "customs" when
20, 30 and sometimes even TO or 80 human beings, male and female,
are publicly put to death by club and spear "to propitiate the evil
spirits." When adolescence is complete he joins the fighting men to- learn the
use of the bow, the club and the spear, and he is then ready to partici
pate in the cannibal forays and in the slave raids. These raids, as w*>

have seen, consist in swooping down on some unsuspecting village, mur
dering the men and capturing and outraging the women. The children
of both sexes are also taken, sometimes eaten and sometimes kept as
slaves. The free sexual life of the kraal and the raid, continued as it
has been for ages, has given the negro male, at least, a sexual develop
ment, both anatomical and physiological, unapproached except among
the lower animals. A feature of west coast life, that to my mind was^
its most important feature, was the absence of all restraint either
parental, social, or governmental. The child, the boy, and the man fal
lowed only his impulses, and these were in time naturally cultivated
to the basest of passions, with the results dishonesty and robbery, cruelty
and murder, lust and rape. Among all men we have many that are
dishonest, yet there are .few robberies ; lust is, among the depraved, as
natural as thirst, yet there is but little rapine, and there is, moreover,
everywhere inherent cruelty, and yet there is little murder'. With the
savage, however, there is no> self-control, and dishonesty gives theft,
anger gives murder, and desire rape. This state of being is pathogno
monic of savagery ; and the African fills the bill. There seems to be in
him an entire absence of sustained will-power — will to resist. Not
being able to resist his impulses, he has no fixed purpose, no resolve, and
the result, no pertinacity. The outcome of all this moral deformity is
a creature which, as far back as history runs, has made the ideal slave,
in so far, at least, as resistance is concerned. In old Egypt, Carthage
and Rome, one and all, he brought the highest price, the sordid measure
of adaptability. There are races that die under captivity. The force
that is strong enough to keep them under is too strong for life, and
they perish. The early settlers of New England and Virginia had an
abundance of quite highly colored people around them; why did not
they enslave them ? They all at first tried it, but practically they
failed ; for our Indian was of sterner stuff than the west coast native.
With the latter, but supply his bodily wants, including woman, and he
is happy under any social conditions, for in his natural state a desire
seldom strays above his medulla. This peculiarity, this contentment
with slavery, notwithstanding his savagery, made him most acceptable
to the thinly-peopled plantations of Massachusetts and Virginia. It
was this ingrained trait of nature and this alone which saved the South
from a slave uprising during the war of secession. These, in short, are
the generic traits of the savage black, which cupidity on the one hand,
and folly on the other, led us to bring to onr shores.
And now as to the American exotic. The natural condition of any
locality influences its fauna as well as it flora. In a state of nature, the
mere fact that these terms of life are there, is proof that they are able
to meet the conditions of climate, life, warfare, etc., in that locality*.
they are the product of their environment. There are certain races of

9
mankind so adjustable that they can live anywhere.' The dog has been
so long a follower of man that in his hands he has been put in such
shape that, in one form or another, he follows mam anywhere on the
globe. The same is true of man's other parasitic attendants, the rat,
the cat, the cockroach, the house-fly, ete. Usually, however, where any
animal or vegetable type is moved from its natural environment, and
placed in a new, we see a. disturbance of nature — a biological revolution.
Either the new comer will find telluric and climatic conditions which
it is ivnable to overcome, consequently perishing, as the palm in Iceland
or the Esquimo in the tropics, or else it will be found that the natural
causes which hold it in check in its own land are wanting in the new,
and it grows beyond all bounds and becomes a pest and curse. Among
the plants this is known to many of you from your experience with
Bermuda grass, Means's grass, etc. Turning to the animal forms, we
all know that among the acts of folly for which man has suffered more
or less may be mentioned the introduction of the rabbit into Australia,
the "English" sparrow into North America, the mongoose into Ber
muda, the Gypsy moth into Massachusetts, etc. But of all the follies
recorded since the fall of Adam none is to be compared with the intro
duction of the west coast cannibal into- America. The lack of suitability
to our political conditions, on the one hand, with the marvelous devel
opment of parasitic qualities and an unusual fecundity, on the other,
has made it the crowning folly of the world. That we have learned
something through experience, is shown in the "Chinese Exclusion" act
— although I would hesitate to base this statement on the reasons
assigned by the Congressmen who voted for this exclusion.
The American continent received its first negro slaves in 1620, the
slave trade ceased finally about 1808 and slavery ended in 1865. The
early distribution of these slaves is interesting. There were at the
time of the first census, in 1790, only 697,897 slaves in the United
States, of whom 17 were in Vermont, 158 in New Hampshire, 2,759
in Connecticut, in New Jersey 11,423, and so on increasing as we go
South. With anti-slavery prejudices at that date practically nil, this
disparity in negro population North and South must have been due to
the fact that equatorial "help" was not profitable in the far North.
The American negro as we find him, to-day is the resultant of a mix
ture of many tribes in one race. Some were artisans, as the Eans,
others farmers, as the Ashanti, and others traders, as the Bakete, but in
this they all agreed ; all were savages. And yet it must not be forgot
ten that while the rank and file of the negroes brought to America came
from the slave coast, the gold coast, the ivory coast, and some few even
as far down the west side as BengUela, a few slaves came from almost all
parts of Africa. The result was that the cannibal herd from Bonny,
Old Malabar and the Cameroons was at least leavened with a fair

10
measure of less black, and less degraded (Indo-African) blood from
the southwestern coast. Erom Bonny alone came 320,000 negroes tu
America. It must also be remembered that quite a large number of
female slaves landed in America were either with child or had young
at their breasts by the African slave-trader (usually Portuguese^, Indo-
African and Arab) ; an entirely different kind of savage. Nor must it
be forgotten that at least during the early part of the period of slavery
the negroes inter-married with the occasional Indian slaves, or interbred
with the then abundant "tame Indians." All these things must be
borne in mind in estimating the occasional products of this mixture.
The Indian cross gave a negro of sullen temper, but of very decided
force (Ered Douglas), one certainly, as I remember, much feared by
his fellows on the plantation. I also recall when a boy having heard
a slave woman boast that she was a "Dinka nigger," and it was many
years afterward that I learned of this fine Indo-African race, living a
thousand miles or more inland from the west coast, and seldom enslaved.
I will, moreover, state, since I have entered upon reminiscence, that I
have seen on the floor of Congress the very image of a dusky Portuguese
Don, representing one of the Gulf States of the South. Last came the
final and abundant crossing with the white race. The monuments of
this form of human frailty are everywhere around us, and fitting mon
uments they are of frailty. Of less stamina than, African black, they
show more intelligence, but the inherent physical weakness of hybridiza
tion forbids that they should ever wipe out physically the line between
the races. My own limited observation shows, and I think the next
census will bear me out, that they are markedly on the decrease.
Whether this is due to improved morality on the part of the whites,
or to a high death rate on the part of the mulattoes, time alone will
show. And now let us turn to the influence of this "peculiar institution"
upon the negro. Although he came to us a savage, with fifty genera
tions of unalloyed savagery behind him, two hundred and fifty years
of close association, as slave and master, produced changes in the race,
the like of which has never been seen before or since.
Whatever the evils of slavery may have been, and I have no desire
to minimize them, the general result was ap the close of the war some
4,000,000 negroes, who were in their average morality and character
so far ahead of any other 4,000,000, or any other 1,000,000 of that
race to be found elsewhere on the face of the earth that they were not
in the same class. I seriously doubt if from the millions of negroes of
Cape Colony, the Soudan, Zanzibar and Egypt, one hundred thousand
of this race could have been secured which would compare in general
morality and character with the average product of American slavery.
And it must be here again emphasized that the negroes selected for

11
•omparison above are of the higher Indo-African race, while our raw
material was almost entirely the west coast cannibal. No, my friends,
we can boldly declare the old Southern house servant, male or female,
as brought up in the better class of families, was the flood tide product
in negro character. It seems strange that a woman of Mrs. Stowe's
intelligence, should not have seen the paradoxical side of a work writ
ten in criticism of a civilization which produced an "Uncle Tom" and
a "Topsy" from savage cannibals in less than five generations.
But let us turn a 'moment and see how this was done. It was most
quickly done and it reached its highest state of perfection where the
negro was thrown, and kept, in daily and hourly contact with the
whites, as among the body and house servants. Here the negro was, as
it were, a part of tbe family; he was around the whites all the time.
Even on the Sabbath he went to a part of the same church, set apart for
him. As above stated, the qualities which made this same savage appre
ciated and valued above all other slaves in ancient Egypt, Carthage and
Rome, were to be found in the Southern slaves, namely: the willing
and cheerful surrender of his will to a stronger and more forceful
character. This racial hypnotism, as it might be well called, long con
tinued, gave as a resultant in the South an "Uncle Remus" and "Marse
Chan's" Sam. In the North wherever the negroes are few and where
they are brought into close relationship with the whites, something like
it is seen even now ; and the resulting negro is of aft advanced type, but
utterly unlike his Southern brother. The struggle for existence there
develops even in the negro a seriousness in his views of life utterly at
variance with the natural negro character.
The great bulk of the negroes of our Southern slavery times were not,
however, house servants. They were the field hands or "quarters"
negroes. Here a seemingly loose but effective discipline was main
tained. It is astonishing when we look back upon it how little it was
and yet how effective. The things in which the training of all slaves,
agreed were in the three essentials: to respect, to obey and to work.
.These three things, so essential to the formation of character in every
man, be he bond or free, were forced upon the negro, with the result that
he developed marveloUsly. It mtist be understood that here we speak
again of the average. The later importations had but one or two gen
erations of tutelage at best; and on the large plantation, in the low
swamp lands, and on the isolated sea islands, hundreds of negroes were
under the care of one or two white men, usually of low type, and their
moral training was nominal. There was, however, the same perfect
obedience and much work but no respect, for overseer and slave were
usually of too near the same grade for respect. But just here I wish
to emphasize one fact which stands out with wonderful brightness from
the picture otherwise sombre ; the absence of serious crime. Rape was

12
absolutely unknown, murder was of exoeeding rarity and beyond the
petty pilfering, which is almost a racial attribute, thievery and robbery
were the same.
The negro as a freedman we all know. Rich or poor, he is ever with
us. He is the sociological unit of the black cloud now hanging over the
South and threatening its very existence. The great diversity of opin
ion existing among the people of America regarding this problem is, in
my judg-ment, due to the fact that each judges from the small number of
these sociological units with which he is personally familiar. These
are necessarily of every degree of diversity and hence present every
shade of result. Let us, however, first compare the negroes North and
South. In the North, outside of the large cities, the negroes are few,
they are not herded together and are not subjected to the lowering
influence of their own racial association. Here, under Caucasian tute
lage, they are still rising. It is hard for the Northern" man, seeing this
clean and respectable man of color, to form any idea of the nienty and
nine without this moral support.
If further illustration is needed of white influence on the negro, take
the negro "regular" of the United States army. Here, under the long-
continued tutelage of white officers you see the negro moulded with the
greatest ease into a compact organization. On the other side, there is
no burlesque upon organization so utterly complete as a negro' regiment
with negro officers. The uncontrolled savagery of the few volunteer
regiments enlisted during the Spanish-American war did much to dis
credit the superb performance of the negro regulars at Sibony and San
tiago, while it opened the eyes of those Northern regiments encamped
near them as to what a negro can really be when he's "all nigger." In
the large cities of the North, especially east of the Mississippi, they
tend to congregate, and although outnumbered thousands to one they
improve but little.
If our eight million negroes could be distributed evenly throughout
tbe seventy million whites on this continent there might be no negro
problem. The cloud would be dissipated ; but, alas ! this race is not one
of "particularistic" .trend, it is phylogenetically gregarious, and tends
to herd, hence the cloud. But even under the favorable conditions for
elevation at the North, even under the stimulus of a public trial of his
race before the world and under the very eyes of his liberators, he
breaks crown and bis phylogeny asserts itself ; with the result that there
is not a State in the Union, North or South, East or West, where the
records have been published, in which the negro population does not show
proportionately a greater percentage of criminals than the whites.*
And yet as criminal as tbey are, it is strange with such antecedents

*Willcox "Negro Criminality."

13
that they are not worse. The negroes who have risen above their generic
tendencies, and they are not few, are worthy of our very highest admira
tion and respect. This I freely and gladly accord, but he is the enemy
of the negro who for a moment fosters in him the belief that the essen
tials of civilization are yet his or that his race is now ready to go for
ward without the sustaining influence of the whites. All human
experience is against it: he is not yet even "galvanized."
It is said that if you scrateh a Russian you will find a. Tartar. By
the same law, if you scratch a negro you will find a savage. A curious
evidence of this fact is seen in the negro in his family discipline. He
is not over free to use the rod, and seems to approach his duties in this
line with some reluctance, but simply watch him when once started.
At the first blow, and reflex cry of agony, the savage is aroused. With
each blow his frenzy is increased, and he can hardly stop, with the
result that the brutal beating of their children is not a small factor in
the present fearful child mortality of that race. But let us leave the
North and come South and look at the negro on the ground where this
problem is to be fought out. Here one is at first naturally tempted to
divide the territory, as is usually done in considering the negro problem,
into the "South at large" in which the negro is simply everywhere
abundant, and into the "black belt" section in which he far outnumbers
the whites. The fact that most men of experience in estimating the
future of the negro base their predictions of improvement or decline
chiefly upon the ratio existing between the races, makes me hesitate to
declare that this is not the chief element involved in this question and
yet I do not believe that it is. I believe it to be a matter not of ratio,
nor of localities, but simply a matter of generations. The increase in
crime among the negroes that so alarms the South is not limited to any
one region, but the increment of gain seems just as pronounced in the
South at large as in the black belt, while the ratios of population vary
immensely. My own observation and all the statistics that I am able
to obtain go to prove that the last generation of negroes born to slavery
was, and is now, far more free from criminal habits than the one born
since the war. Every day of slavery seems to have counted for their
benefit, .as we will see if we compare the records of this generation with
that of those whose boast it is that they were born free. It is not ihe
older negro, but the negro under thirty, which crowds our jails and peni
tentiaries throughout the land. As we have seen, the negro even in the
North is distinctly more criminal than the white, but the negro in the
South leads the white in crime by from one hundred to several hundred
per cent., depending upon the form considered. If anyone doubts the
facts here set forth simply let him, upon his return from this meeting.
examine the police justice's or mayor's office records of his own town,
and I am ready to stand or fall upon the result. In this examination

14
it must not be forgotten that the crime of unlawful cohabitation among
negroes is, as a rule, ignored by the officers of the law, because its sup
pression is an end impossible of attainment. But he is blind to the
worst aspect of tins negro problem and shuts his eyes to the most dis
heartening feature of the race question who does not recognize and con
fess the fact that, bad as this comparison is for the negro, it would be
far worse if the white race in the South had not been made more crimi
nal than it otherwise would have been by prolonged contact with this
degraded race. There is no use in longer mincing matters. This prob
lem is to save the white man of the South from barbarism by reclaiming
the savage to whom he is inseparably tied. It rises above a question of
altruism and becomes a question of self-preservation. With this view
of it, then, let us study the conditions at present existing in the South.
In the Middle Atlantic States and in the piedmont and mountain sec
tions of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, the negro is not at his worst.
Mixed in with the whites in small proportion he is in some measure
improving with the general improvement of the country. He is the
day laborer, the stableman, the wagoner, and, to an increasing extent,
the carpenter, bricklayer and blacksmith of the country. In the latter
art he is particularly strong, and not without reason, for the Fans and
other west coast tribes, although the worst of cannibals, have been from
time immemorial excellent workers in iron. In all other races when
the "iron age" was reached, some social prosperity and progress began,
but the west coast negro it failed to raise. Throughout this entire sec
tion above referred to the older negroes are usually good, honest and
reliable laborers, worthy representatives of their class, and in their
humble sphere, good citizens. They were born to slavery or else were
born so early after that institution ceased, that its momentum carried
them on, and their working parents taught them to work. Some few
have made money, others have received their homes, and others small
property, from their former masters. It is the young negro class which
gives us cause for alarm. The term "worthless" is so universally
applied to this class that I think it must be the proper one. They are
absolutely worthless and no industry can be successfully maintained
which is entirely dependent upon their labors.
But now let us turn to the true "black belt." Beginning in southside
Virginia, through the tide-water section of the Carolinas and Georgia,
around the coast and up the Mississippi to' Memphis, we have a climate
and soil as congenial to the black as the valley of the Senegal or that
of the Niger. Parts of this section, and those its most fertile, the rice
plantations, the river bottoms and the sea islands had, as before stated,
a population of a hundred negroes to one overseer. The highly aromatic
black of the Guinea coast was best adapted to these intensely malarial
sections with the result that he was weeded out in the uplands and sent

15
there by the thousands. The original African formed in some places
such a large part of the population that those words of the west coast
dialects, which were common to a number of tribes, became, with per
verted English and Erench verbs, the current jargon of the coast negro.
The Erench element must have come in with the Haytian negro,
brought here early in this century. This dialect de diable is as some
of you know spoken to-day within thirty miles of this city, and is as
absolutely unintelligible to the average member of this body as Chinese
or Arabian. In this black belt it will be readily seen that the negro
was elevated but little by slavery ; he was simply a savage under coer
cion. And yet the white man had taught him to obey and to work, and
that for a west coast negro was a long step towards civilization. At all
events, in this black belt section, it is again the older negroes, the
ex-slaves or the sons of slaves born soon after the war, who are the only
ones on whom it is possible to rely for labor.
Thirty-five years have passed since the negro changed from the condi
tion of a slave to that of a freedman. In every part of the South, it is
the opinion of every man of unbiased mind, that the second generation
is infinitely worse than the first. So patent is this that I would be
tempted to doubt the sanity of any man having fair opportunities to
judge, who declared the reverse to be true. The question for us to-day
then, and the question of questions for the South, is, "What is the cause
of the change and what can be done to remedy the evil ?" The first
thing is to seek out the truth, however unpalatable it may be, and in
my opinion it is very simple. The young negro of the South, except
where descended from parents of exceptional character and worth, is
reverting through hereditary forces to savagery. Eifty centuries of
savagery in the blood can not be held down by two centuries of forced
good behavior if the controlling influences which held down his savagery
are withdrawn as they have been in this case. The language and forms
of civilization may be maintained, but the savage nature remains. It
is the nature that makes the criminal and imperils a civilization, not
the language, the skin or the clothes. >
That this return to savagery may possibly occur with the negro we
have evidence in the experience of Hayti. The island of Hayti is about
the size of Scotland, and infinitely more fertile. Into this, the first
known island of the Western world, the negro was introduced as a slave
in 1505. Here the whites and the negro dwelt in the relation of master
and slave until the Erench revolution of 1798 brought on a, secondary
colonial revolution in Hayti, and about 1805, after just three centuries
of association, the whites were driven out or destroyed and the negro
was free to work out his own salvation.
Let us glance a moment at his social equipment for this task. When
the revolutionary cry of "Liberie, egalite et fraternite" was raised in

16
Hayti, it found 450,000 souls, of which 40,000 were white, about 30,000
free mulattoes and the remainder west coast blacks, slaves. Lossing, in
his "Horrors of San Domingo," (Harper, June, 1871), says: "Many
of the mulattoes owned large estates. Not a few had been liberally edu
cated in France, and many households were models of elegance and
refinement wherein happily dwelt young Frenchmen with beautiful
quadroon wives." Of one of the leaders of the revolution he says that
he "in France had associated on terms of equality with Lafayette and
his revolutionary compeers," etc. This tells us at least enough to
demonstrate that the slave hordes were at least once tinctured with men
of education and force, and that they started on their career of free
dom with some intelligent and able leaders. It is a long, dismal story
from Soulouque to Hippolyte, but the outcome of it all is graphically
set forth on the authority of Sir Spencer St. John (The Black Republic,
1899), as follows: "Official peculation, judicial murder and utter cor
ruption of every kind, underlie the forms and titles of civilized govern
ment ; the religion, nominally Christian, is largely Voudoux, or serpent-
worship, in which actual and horrible cannibalism is even now a most
important element. Instead of progressing, the negro Republican has
gone back to the lowest type of African barbarism." The same state of
affairs is rapidly approaching in Gaudaloupe and Martinique.
We have here one fact that will offset a ton of theory : in the Western
world, under conditions differing in no marked essential from those pre
sented in our own black belt, the negro has gone back to savagery, and*
that too while still presenting all the outward forms of civilization.
Let us look at our own negroes for the prodromal symptoms of this
decline. In the first place, let us take up and consider the family, the
unit of social measurement and gauge of social progress. This family,
in the warmer parts of the South at least, lives by preference in a hovel.
Provide good, healthful and substantial houses, or clean, neat and
attractive rooms, and try to substitute these in lieu of a part of the
monthly or weekly wage, and see how you will stand in the matter of
servants. They will not havp them at this price. Money represents
to the negro the power of gratification for animal appetite. Comfort,
health, self-respect and gentility are as a rule nothing compared with
the gratification of vanity, lust, the cravings for drink, tobacco, the
gaming habit, etc. To obtain the money which represents these things
they are almost all willing to herd like animals in the foulest of dens
and amidst the filthiest of surroundings. This is the environment that
we must start with to approach the next element of family life —
children. Begotten of the very loosest sexual relations, there is of
necessity little love of offspring, and abortion, infanticide, and child
murder are common. This, with the pitiful parental neglect of infancy,
Avith its resulting high infant mortality, alone prevents the race, with its

17
wonderful fecundity in this congenial clime, from overstocking the
South in a few decades. As the ordinary negro child grows it is in
such fatal surroundings, of course without discipline, and it can hope to
be no better than the source of its moral and religious training. Here
the child simply grows as the twig is bent, and as the direction is natur
ally in line with the standard of preceding generations it is downward,
as far as morality is concerned. As far as externals go he seems better
than he is. The rapidity with which this young negro acquires through
"sound memory" is, for his opportunities, good, and makes up for his
racial deficiency in "symbol memory" training. Judged by what we
call "brightness" in children, the negro child can take very fair rank
among his fellows of the human family, and some of them are bright, a
quality not a little accented by their racial cheeriness and lightness of
heart. And yet you all, as medical men, know of that sadness of heart
with which you have watched the development of physical beauty or
high mental attributes in the members of some families doomed by
hereditary tendencies to premature death. With the same feeling,
experience has taught us to look upon the relatively precocious intelli
gence of negro childhood, for we know that with the advent of puberty
and sexual development there will be an almost total arrest of subse
quent mental growth. His people have "gone to' seed" at this time of
life too long for him to depart from the family traditions. It has been
noted from the earliest time in northern Africa and western Asia, where
the necessities of harem life require the eunuch, that the negro eunuch
was a vast improvement in shrewdness and general intelligence on the
unaltered black, but the reason for it did not at once appear.
But let us return once more to the consideration of this discarded
"ward of the nation" which has in fact become the foundling of the
State. The public school which he attends is poor enough, and its
opportunities for advancement are meager, but it has been freely given
by the whites to the serious detriment of their own poor, in the hope
that it would solve the problem. In this school he is taught by young
men or women of his own color, race and caste. They are to him the
exponents of all that he knows of culture, wisdom and educational
refinement. Their sentiments on any question are of necessity his sen
timents and their prejudices, dislikes and hatreds mould his. As a
rule these teachers have but the merest elements of a. liberal education,
but they know enough to know that their people stepped direct from
slavery into absolute political control of the government of nearly a
dozen States of the South. They know furthermore that in spite of
amendments to the constitution the Southern white, has forced them
steadily from this position to a point at which, being human, they
naturally love him and teach all their pupils to love him and his tribe.
The logic of the above statement is far more capable of being under-

18
stood than the continued existence of such a school. In short the only
things gotten from the present system of negro schools that stick to the
pupil throughout life are an intense hatred for the white race and false
ideals' of life. If this hatred stood alone it would be bad enough, but,
unfortunately, it does not stand alone. It is known to every observing
man that the present generation of younger whites have little of that
love and affection for the negro which marked the older generations,
especially the slaveholders. Regret this fact we may, but deny it wo
can not. The result we can only imagine.
But having graduated with him at school let us return and observe
this young negro's relations with his family. Filial love is not, of
course, as strong as parental love, at the same time love and respect for
the old age of parents is as fair a gauge of the standard of civilization
with any people as it is possible to obtain. Measured by this standard,
ihc young negro of the South also fails. You will all bear me out that
there is nothing more common in the South than to see some aged negro,
the parent, perhaps, of a dozen children, left absolutely helpless and
without support in his old age by the desertion of his children, and this
evidence of a return to African habits seems to be on the increase.
When our "boy" which we have followed gets some sixteen or eighteen
years of age, unless his parents have been of the better class and have
really trained him, his phylogeny begins to trouble him and he dreams
and yearns for some analogue of his old African slave raid and the yel
low "literature" he can now read urges him on. A young savage by
instinct, he naturally takes as his ideal the swaggering bully of his own
color. He gradually, by theft and effort, gets up an equipment — no
longer the bow, club and spear of his forefathers — but now a cheap pis
tol, a pair of "knucks" and a razor. He goes to his first "festerval"
and the "progress of the rake" is henceforth fast. Some night at a
carousal he uses his ever handy weapons and flees, carrying with him
everything of his parents' that he cam steal. He makes for some neigh
boring city where day labor is in demand, and in top boots and flannel
shirt becomes a "hand" for a few days or weeks under some contractor.
Working or pretending to work by day, he carouses, drinks and gambles
by night, till for some infraction of the law he is off again. By the
time he is even fully grown, he is far from home and has almost forgot
ten the parents that gave him birth; he is a liar, a thief and a rake; a
gambler and perhaps a murderer or highwayman ; he fears neither God
nor man, and when opportunity offers is ready for any crime. He is
in his own vernacular "a bad man," and for once he does not lie.
This picture is not overdrawn, nor is it the case of an isolated exam
ple. It simply gives the mode of formation and generic characteristics
of a specific criminal class, which to-day numbers its tens of thousands
in the South. The endingxof such a life can be imagined ; the victim of

19
an enraged mob of white men goaded to madness, death on the gallows
or a prisoner in jail or penitentiary where tuberculosis and syphilis
vie with each other to be "first in at the finish," which is the potter's
field, and all, even down to the last, at the white man's expense. Dur
ing his whole life he has not produced for the State a thousand dollars,
and he has cost it four-fold that sum.
And mow to the remedy. Before another generation of negroes is
allowed to arise, worse, as we must see than the present, the people
of the South must act. First they must remove the negro from politics
— not, perhaps, forever — but certainly until the proper time. When
such distant and alien advisers as the Philadelphia Inquirer can see
what the following statement indicates, it is blindness that prevents the
man on the ground from seeing. That journal, in a recent editorial
(February 6, 1900), says: "We have made many mistakes during the
course of the century in the United States. What is called 'the South
ern question' revolves almost exclusively around the ballot box. The
freedom of the ballot box is altogether too free." To deprive the
ignorant negro of the political liberty, which he now uses for license,
will, by the immediate change it will bring in his relation to the white
man, soon indemnify him for the seeming loss. It will, let us hope,
soon bring again the old relations in feeling that existed between the
races at the close of the war. If the change is long delayed, however,
it will come too late; the young whites of the South, more familiar with
the "new issue" than the old, have as we have seen but little of that
sympathetic feeling for the race that their fathers had. The negro is to
them a political menace only; they have no cause to1 love him and in
spite of their traditions they are beginning to. hate him. It were bet
ter for both races that this should be changed at the first possible
moment. Secondly. The negro must be educated along a new line. There
seems to be abroad the idea that this determination to change the method
is prompted by a desire to decrease the negro;s education. Nothing
could be further from the truth, as these figures will show.
At the close of that period of destruction, which in satire only can be
called the period of "reconstruction," each State of the South with an
empty treasury, faced an average debt of $34,000,000, as against an
average debt of $7,000,000 existing at the close of the war. Helpless
to avert it, the white people of the South had seen the negro put this
increased burden upon them, and yet history shows not even an attempt
at retaliation. They soon also faced the heaviest war indemnity, in the
shape of a pension roll, that was ever placed upon a conquered people,
and yet, in the vain hope that education would lift the negro to the
measure of his new functions, they paid out for him millions upon mil
lions of dollars. While the negro paid into the school fund only one-

20
thirtieth of the whole, they expended im his uplifting, nearly one-half
that they could raise. Does this look as if there existed in the South
any objection to the education of the negro? They could have stopped
at any time, and yet hoping against hope, they stuck to their efforts
through good and bad for nearly a quarter of a century, and they see
as a result, nothing — or worse, for ignorance, pauperism and crime are
worse than at the close of the war. The South is therefore going to
change its method of negro, education. Already the voice of warning is
sounded by the Superintendent of Education in one of the Southern
States,* and the cry of dissatisfaction is heard on every hand.
I believe they erred in this wise: The people of the South are
instinctively an intensely political people. Looking naturally along
lines political the white man of the South tried to educate the negro,
already cursed with the ballot, to use it more intelligently. They
gauged the needs of the negro- by the experience of white races, and, as
a result, they have failed, and they will continue to- fail so long as they
attempt to estimate the needs of the negro race by the experience of the
white. The phytogenies of the two races are so divergent that the
results of experience with one are not safely applicable to1 the problems
of the other.
But we all know that we had a good negro in this country once, and
that was in slave times. This was the salient feature of slavery — an
inferior race about as moral as the higher. But the masters knew the
slave in those days. Generations of experience with him in all types
had long since shown him that a little steady force applied im childhood
would guide him aright, and that the adult would be a respectful and
respectable, obedient and faithful servant. But he knew him well
enough to know that underneath this thin veneer of decent life and man
ners was the nature of a savage, which had to- be shaped aright while
the cells were still soft in youth, or it were useless to try. The training
of the child was the all. Let us consider the training of negro, children
in slave time and now — what is the difference? In the amount of
effort, in the amount of time and in the amount of money devoted to
the training of childhood the negro child of to-day has infinitely more
than any slave child ever dreamed of, and yet this expenditure is devel
oping criminals, where seeming indifference developed morality. Where
is the key to this enigma % It lies in one fact, which utilized, will solve
all our troubles in the South, for we have done everything, "except the
one thing needful." The training of the negro is now in the hands of
the negro-, and before it was in the hands of the whites. Put the train
ing of this foundling of the State into the hands of those who hope ulti
mately to get back the pay for his keep, and self-interest will see to it
* Report of Superintendent of Education of Virginia. 1899.

21
that he becomes able to pay. We took the cannibal and made a mam of
him, and we did it because our grandfathers and grandmothers were not
ashamed to give themselves to his guidance. There are in the South
to-day the same people, and in this day of national peril, for it is
national, as hard as it will be at first, they will not be found wanting.
In the old days it was the ambition of the young negroes to become the
best woodcutters and the best cradlers, etc., on the plantation. This
ambition was attainable; they rose to its demands, and were content
and happy. With a race history, if we exclude their slave days, which
is in an unbroken line of savagery from beyond the dawn of history to
the present, and with poverty now as their portion, we are attempting
to make of them "ladies" and "gentlemen."
These ambitions are absolutely unattainable under present conditions,
and the result is a disappointed, soured and vindictive generation. The
present school system of the South is but a "forcing-bed" for racial
hatred and antagonism. I do not harbor any antipathy to the negro
school teacher — I simply deny his capacity for the task in question.
The task is to make of the next generation of negroes in the South
honest, law-abiding laborers and artisans, with an ambition for the
respect of the better class of their own people and of the whites. It is,
moreover, our task to do away forever with the idea in the present gen
eration of the negro that a ludicrous pinchbeck imitation of the not
altogether perfect manners of the whites is all that is necessary to be
admired and respected. In other words, our task is to substitute new,
higher, and, most important of all, attainable ideals.
How this cam best be done I am not fully prepared to say, but if we
will remember that tbe discipline of the whites in the army, applied to
the adult negro, gave the much-boasted negro "regular," and that the
discipline of the whites gave the respectable negroes of to-day and all
days behind us — we can not go wrong as to the principle. In working
out this problem we need not look for external sources of help. It is
to be fought out here in the South and by the people of this section
alone. The colonization or emigration of the negro is impossible, unless
forced, for the parasite, however much he may hate, never leaves his
host. Vou may hear the periodic cry of Southern hatred and Southern
outrage, but the door has been open for thirty years, and he is still here,
amd here he will remain. He may go to the North temporarily for high
wages, but in spite of "outrage" he always returns.
There is another emigration, however, which unfortunately may solve
the problem for us. I refer to the emigration of the whites from the
South. Being a people of great fecundity, there has always been an
overflow of population from the South. Before the war, this was chiefly
the poorer non-slave-holding-"po' white trash" class; but now there is
a reversal of this in kind. Since the war there has been a slow, but

22
steady emigration from the South to the North and West, and now it is
the son of the slave owner, the college man, that is going. In Ms
adopted home he is giving the people a taste of a competition they had
not looked for, but he is of little service to the South. Why did these
people go from the South ? In earlier days the white laborers went to
escape the competition of slave labor ; in late days they leave to escape
the impending savagery of the black; with the lowering of all classes
which it implies. Born and reared in the heart of the South, I can
now, from -the vantage ground of a border State, overlook the whole
field, and I tell you now, that unless a brake is placed upon the natural
ontogeny of this savage, the South will be unhabitable for the white.
The result will be that the better class will leave and the lower classes,
made savage by the growing savagery of their surroundings, will alone
be left.
One of two things then may be expected, unless a remedy be found.
Some race question will arise which will stir the passions and there
will come a struggle, a day of judgment, for folly piled upon folly. As
even the lower classes of the South are of pure Saxon blood, the chroni
cles of their Saxon ancestors will be humane reading compared with the
records of that day, but if it comes before the complete degradation of
the whites of the South, it will put an end to the negro problem, because
it will be the end of the negro.
Less likely, but more to be deplored, will be the other. The majority
of the whites will leave, and then, as some narcotic which lulls to insen
sibility the vital centres, ere it destroys them, so I am afraid the negro
will exterminate the last remaining whites of the black belt, first by
political mastery, then degeneration and apathy and then miscegenation.
But if miscegenation does ever come, it will be the first time im the
history of man that a Teutonic stock has so fallen. The Latin races
naturally 'mingle their blood with any race they touch, but the Teutonic
roots never.
The South African. Boer stands unpolluted after nearly three cen
turies of contact, but savagery around him has not added to his refine
ment or worked otherwise for his well being.
It may be said that although Hayti and San Domingo are gone, and
Martinique may be expected to follow, these are small insular areas
where the return to savagery must be total or none, and these things
can never happen in this land of the free and home of the brave. In
this you are mistaken, for there are now points, as yet mere points, on
the Carolina coast, on the Gulf coast, and in the "Delta," where things
are almost as bad as in Hayti, and around these points the whites are
leaving; and this is the great danger; the danger for the negro; the
whites will leave as increasing savagery comes.
In these sections, now small, but growing, the political debauchery

23
and financial imbecility which we saw in "reconstruction" times is
coming (see eastern North Carolina) and as no State will be found
which will long harbor within its borders a "shoe-string district" which
is such a blot upon its escutcheon and a tax upon its resources, there
will be a division, an extrusion. On the floor of the Senate the repre
sentative of these Liberiam abortions will, under the constitution, nullify
the votes of the best of the States of this Union and then — what !
In conclusion : I have endeavored to show that everything points to
the fact that the phylogeny of the negro is carrying him back to bar-
.barism, to show that the temporary elevation produced by the discipline
of slavery is not being maintained by the efforts we have made at com
mon school education^ in the hands of his own race, and that we must
at omce, if we would save the negro and the South, try something else.
I would finally urge that we try henceforth an education of trade or
industrial type, given at the hands of well-chosen white teachers, who
will teach him to respect, to obey and to work. Under this, if experience
be not fallacious — he will improve in morality, in character, and in
capacity as a taxpayer. Then and not till then, will the franchise
become for him a reality and the "Jim Crow car" a memory.

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