diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:45:53 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:45:53 -0700 |
| commit | 2c5d73149442602e9d29b736ca063c7478b25461 (patch) | |
| tree | 3554ccabfb8e022a8673f7e56e7a6d09505bc103 | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 1512273 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/15041-h.htm | 4111 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/images/chesnutt.png | bin | 0 -> 176843 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/images/dubois.png | bin | 0 -> 272976 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/images/fortune.png | bin | 0 -> 240108 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/images/kealing.png | bin | 0 -> 224837 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/images/noname.png | bin | 0 -> 240372 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041-h/images/smith.png | bin | 0 -> 261761 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041.txt | 3866 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15041.zip | bin | 0 -> 88376 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
13 files changed, 7993 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15041-h.zip b/15041-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d42814 --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h.zip diff --git a/15041-h/15041-h.htm b/15041-h/15041-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..be347cb --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/15041-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4111 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Negro Problem. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + td.graph {border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black;} + + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Negro Problem, by Booker T. Washington, et al. + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Negro Problem + +Author: Booker T. Washington, et al. + +Release Date: February 14, 2005 [EBook #15041] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEGRO PROBLEM *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h1>THE<br /> +NEGRO PROBLEM</h1> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/noname.png" +alt="none" title="none" /> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" />CONTENTS</h2> + +<div style="margin-left: 35%; margin-right: 5%;"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> + +<tr><td align='left'>I</td><td align='left'><a href="#Industrial_Education_for_the_Negro"><b>Industrial Education for the Negro</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i>Booker T. Washington</i></td><td align='left'>7</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> II</td><td align='left'><a href="#The_Talented_Tenth"><b>The Talented Tenth</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i>W.E. Burghardt DuBois</i></td><td align='left'>31</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>III</td><td align='left'> <a href="#The_Disfranchisement_of_the_Negro"><b>The Disfranchisement of the Negro</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i> Charles W. Chesnutt</i></td><td align='left'>77</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> IV</td><td align='left'><a href="#The_Negro_and_the_Law"><b>The Negro and the Law</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i>Wilford H. Smith</i></td><td align='left'>125</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>V</td><td align='left'> <a href="#The_Characteristics_of_the_Negro_People"><b>The Characteristics of the Negro People</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i>H.T. Kealing</i></td><td align='left'>161</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'> VI</td><td align='left'> <a href="#Representative_American_Negroes"><b>Representative American Negroes</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i>Paul Laurence Dunbar</i></td><td align='left'>187</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>VII</td><td align='left'> <a href="#The_Negros_Place_in_American_Life_at_the_Present_Day"><b>The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><i>T. Thomas Fortune</i></td><td align='left'>211</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> +<p class="center">[<i>Transcriber's Note: Variant spellings have been left in the text. Obvious +typos have been corrected and indicated with a footnote.</i>]</p> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Industrial_Education_for_the_Negro" id="Industrial_Education_for_the_Negro" /><i>Industrial Education for the Negro</i></h2> + +<h3>By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,</h3> + +<h3>Principal of Tuskegee Institute</h3> + +<blockquote><p>The necessity for the race's learning the difference between being + worked and working. He would not confine the Negro to industrial life, + but believes that the very best service which any one can render to what + is called the "higher education" is to teach the present generation to + work and save. This will create the wealth from which alone can come + leisure and the opportunity for higher education.</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />One of the most fundamental and far-reaching deeds that has been +accomplished during the last quarter of a century has been that by which +the Negro has been helped to find himself and to learn the secrets of +civilization—to learn that there are a few simple, cardinal principles +upon which a race must start its upward course, unless it would fail, and +its last estate be worse than its first.</p> + +<p>It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference between being +worked and working—to learn that being worked meant degradation, while +working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable, and all +forms of idleness disgraceful. It has been necessary for him to learn that +all races that have got <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />upon their feet have done so largely by laying an +economic foundation, and, in general, by beginning in a proper cultivation +and ownership of the soil.</p> + +<p>Forty years ago my race emerged from slavery into freedom. If, in too many +cases, the Negro race began development at the wrong end, it was largely +because neither white nor black properly understood the case. Nor is it +any wonder that this was so, for never before in the history of the world +had just such a problem been presented as that of the two races at the +coming of freedom in this country.</p> + +<p>For two hundred and fifty years, I believe the way for the redemption of +the Negro was being prepared through industrial development. Through all +those years the Southern white man did business with the Negro in a way +that no one else has done business with him. In most cases if a Southern +white man wanted a house built he consulted a Negro mechanic about the +plan and about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit +of clothes <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />made he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a +shoemaker of the same race. In a certain way every slave plantation in the +South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and +women were constantly being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters, +blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, +sewing women and housekeepers.</p> + +<p>I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery, which was +a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial training in +slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude, and was given +for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends, because there +was an absence of mental training in connection with the training of the +hand. To a large degree, though, this business contact with the Southern +white man, and the industrial training on the plantations, left the Negro +at the close of the war in possession of nearly all the common and skilled +labor in the South. The industries that gave the South <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />its power, +prominence and wealth prior to the Civil War were mainly the raising of +cotton, sugar cane, rice and tobacco. Before the way could be prepared for +the proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared, +houses to be built, public roads and railroads constructed. In all these +works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating +and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence, +but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient +workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead +in the large tobacco manufactories.</p> + +<p>In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years +after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the industrial +training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men and women were +educated in literature, in mathematics and in the sciences, with little +thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two hundred and +fifty years, except, perhaps, as <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />something to be escaped, to be got as +far away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had +been trained as mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and +gradually it began to be realized that there were few to take their +places. There were young men educated in foreign tongues, but few in +carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were trained in +Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the +farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason +they had no interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet +eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of the Southern states lives +and for a considerable time will continue to live in the country +districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race—and +too often justly, I confess—that they are found leaving the country +districts and flocking into the great cities where temptations are more +frequent and harder to resist, and where the Negro people too often become +de<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />moralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the case that from the +first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much +about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the +country. How natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his +life he wants to live it in the city.</p> + +<p>Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose +memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the +Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some +words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them here:</p> + +<p>"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my +opinion, they teach very few children just what they ought to know in +order to make their way successfully in life. They do not put into their +hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so many failures. +Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty food, +in order to give a son and brother a "lib<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />eral education," and in doing +this have built up a barrier between the boy and the work he was fitted to +do. Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor +is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be +thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay, +and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and +responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can +help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher +level."</p> + +<p>Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training +at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost +impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man who could +teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them who could +teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost none who could +instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by every +one of us every day in the year. How often have I been dis<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />couraged as I +have gone through the South, and into the homes of the people of my race, +and have found women who could converse intelligently upon abstruse +subjects, and yet could not tell how to improve the condition of the +poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and meat which they and +their families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a +girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the +globe and who does not know where to place the dishes upon a common dinner +table. It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical +chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and iron a shirt.</p> + +<p>In what I say here I would not by any means have it understood that I +would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro-student. +No race can be lifted until its mind is awakened and strengthened. By the +side of industrial training should always go mental and moral training, +but the pushing of mere abstract knowledge into the head means little.<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" /> We +want more than the mere performance of mental gymnastics. Our knowledge +must be harnessed to the things of real life. I would encourage the Negro +to secure all the mental strength, all the mental culture—whether gleaned +from science, mathematics, history, language or literature that his +circumstances will allow, but I believe most earnestly that for years to +come the education of the people of my race should be so directed that the +greatest proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be brought +to bear upon the every-day practical things of life, upon something that +is needed to be done, and something which they will be permitted to do in +the community in which they reside. And just the same with the +professional class which the race needs and must have, I would say give +the men and women of that class, too, the training which will best fit +them to perform in the most successful manner the service which the race +demands.</p> + +<p>I would not confine the race to industrial life, not even to agriculture, +for example, although<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" /> I believe that by far the greater part of the Negro +race is best off in the country districts and must and should continue to +live there, but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation +must be laid—that the very best service which any one can render to what +is called the higher education is to teach the present generation to +provide a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this +will grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of +property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical +education, professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out +of it will grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth +from which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of +literature and the fine arts.</p> + +<p>In the words of the late beloved Frederick Douglass: "Every blow of the +sledge hammer wielded by a sable arm is a powerful blow in support of our +cause. Every colored mechanic is by virtue of circumstances an elevator of +<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />his race. Every house built by a black man is a strong tower against the +allied hosts of prejudice. It is impossible for us to attach too much +importance to this aspect of the subject. Without industrial development +there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no leisure; without +leisure no opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of +the higher arts."</p> + +<p>I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in letters +or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those ends is by +laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie immediately +about one's door. I plead for industrial education and development for the +Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him. I +want to see him enter the all-powerful business and commercial world.</p> + +<p>It was such combined mental, moral and industrial education which the late +General Armstrong set out to give at the Hampton Institute when he +established that school thirty years <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />ago. The Hampton Institute has +continued along the lines laid down by its great founder, and now each +year an increasing number of similar schools are being established in the +South, for the people of both races.</p> + +<p>Early in the history of the Tuskegee Institute we began to combine +industrial training with mental and moral culture. Our first efforts were +in the direction of agriculture, and we began teaching this with no +appliances except one hoe and a blind mule. From this small beginning we +have grown until now the Institute owns two thousand acres of land, eight +hundred of which are cultivated each year by the young men of the school. +We began teaching wheelwrighting and blacksmithing in a small way to the +men, and laundry work, cooking and sewing and housekeeping to the young +women. The fourteen hundred and over young men and women who attended the +school during the last school year received instruction—in addition to +academic and religious training—in thirty-three trades and industries, +includ<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />ing carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting +harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding, shoemaking, brickmasonry and +brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical +and architectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning, +sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, housekeeping, +mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture, dairying and stock +raising, horticulture.</p> + +<p>Not only do the students receive instruction in these trades, but they do +actual work, by means of which more than half of them pay some part or all +of their expenses while remaining at the school. Of the sixty buildings +belonging to the school all but four were almost wholly erected by the +students as a part of their industrial education. Even the bricks which go +into the walls are made by students in the school's brick yard, in which, +last year, they manufactured two million bricks.</p> + +<p>When we first began this work at Tuskegee, and the idea got spread among +the people of <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />my race that the students who came to the Tuskegee school +were to be taught industries in connection with their academic studies, +were, in other words, to be taught to work, I received a great many verbal +messages and letters from parents informing me that they wanted their +children taught books, but not how to work. This protest went on for three +or four years, but I am glad to be able to say now that our people have +very generally been educated to a point where they see their own needs and +conditions so clearly that it has been several years since we have had a +single protest from parents against the teaching of industries, and there +is now a positive enthusiasm for it. In fact, public sentiment among the +students at Tuskegee is now so strong for industrial training that it +would hardly permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwilling +to labor.</p> + +<p>It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the Negro young +man or woman in a weak position. For example, I have <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />seen a Negro girl +taught by her mother to help her in doing laundry work at home. Later, +when this same girl was graduated from the public schools or a high school +and returned home she finds herself educated out of sympathy with laundry +work, and yet not able to find anything to do which seems in keeping with +the cost and character of her education. Under these circumstances we +cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill the expectations made for her. +What should have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along +with her academic education thorough training in the latest and best +methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and +intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the +plane of drudgery<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1" /><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>. The home which she would then have been able to +found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her +children to take a still more responsible position in life.</p> + +<p>Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind—and this I think should +be the policy of <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />all industrial schools—fitting students for occupations +which would be open to them in their home communities. Some years ago we +noted the fact that there was beginning to be a demand in the South for +men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We opened a dairy +department in connection with the school, where a number of young men +could have instruction in the latest and most scientific methods of dairy +work. At present we have calls—mainly from Southern white men—for twice +as many dairymen as we are able to supply. What is equally satisfactory, +the reports which come to us indicate that our young men are giving the +highest satisfaction and are fast changing and improving the dairy product +in the communities into which they go. I use the dairy here as an example. +What I have said of this is equally true of many of the other industries +which we teach. Aside from the economic value of this work I cannot but +believe, and my observation confirms me in my belief, that as we continue +to place Negro men <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />and women of intelligence, religion, modesty, +conscience and skill in every community in the South, who will prove by +actual results their value to the community, I cannot but believe, I say, +that this will constitute a solution to many of the present political and +social difficulties.</p> + +<p>Many seem to think that industrial education is meant to make the Negro +work as he worked in the days of slavery. This is far from my conception +of industrial education. If this training is worth anything to the Negro, +it consists in teaching him how not to work, but how to make the forces of +nature—air, steam, water, horse-power and electricity—work for him. If +it has any value it is in lifting labor up out of toil and drudgery into +the plane of the dignified and the beautiful. The Negro in the South works +and works hard; but too often his ignorance and lack of skill causes him +to do his work in the most costly and shiftless manner, and this keeps him +near the bottom of the ladder in the economic world.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />I have not emphasized particularly in these pages the great need of +training the Negro in agriculture, but I believe that this branch of +industrial education does need very great emphasis. In this connection I +want to quote some words which Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Montgomery, +Alabama, has recently written upon this subject:</p> + +<p>"We must incorporate into our public school system a larger recognition of +the practical and industrial elements in educational training. Ours is an +agricultural population. The school must be brought more closely to the +soil. The teaching of history, for example, is all very well, but nobody +can really know anything of history unless he has been taught to see +things grow—has so seen things not only with the outward eye, but with +the eyes of his intelligence and conscience. The actual things of the +present are more important, however, than the institutions of the past. +Even to young children can be shown the simpler conditions and processes +of growth—how corn is put into <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />the ground—how cotton and potatoes +should be planted—how to choose the soil best adapted to a particular +plant, how to improve that soil, how to care for the plant while it grows, +how to get the most value out of it, how to use the elements of waste for +the fertilization of other crops; how, through the alternation of crops, +the land may be made to increase the annual value of its products—these +things, upon their elementary side are absolutely vital to the worth and +success of hundreds of thousands of these people of the Negro race, and +yet our whole educational system has practically ignored them.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Such work will mean not only an education in agriculture, but an +education through agriculture and education, through natural symbols and +practical forms, which will educate as deeply, as broadly and as truly as +any other system which the world has known. Such changes will bring far +larger results than the mere improvement of our Negroes. They <a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />will give +us an agricultural class, a class of tenants or small land owners, trained +not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and in intelligent +dependence upon its resources."</p> + +<p>I close, then, as I began, by saying that as a slave the Negro was worked, +and that as a freeman he must learn to work. There is still doubt in many +quarters as to the ability of the Negro unguided, unsupported, to hew his +own path and put into visible, tangible, indisputable form, products and +signs of civilization. This doubt cannot be much affected by abstract +arguments, no matter how delicately and convincingly woven together. +Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter, +sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and +industry, we must re-enforce argument with results. One farm bought, one +house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the +largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church +maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably +<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well +preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived—these will tell +more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to +plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through +swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through +commerce, education and religion!</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1" /><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> In the original, this was 'drudggery'.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Talented_Tenth" id="The_Talented_Tenth" /><i>The Talented Tenth</i></h2> + +<h3>By PROF. W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS</h3> + +<blockquote><p>A strong plea for the higher education of the Negro, which those who are + interested in the future of the freedmen cannot afford to ignore. Prof. + DuBois produces ample evidence to prove conclusively the truth of his + statement that "to attempt to establish any sort of a system of common + and industrial school training, without <i>first</i> providing for the higher + training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the + winds."</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/dubois.png" +alt="W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS." title="W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS." /> +</div> +<p class="center"><b>W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS.</b></p> + +<p><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" /></p> + +<p>The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional +men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal +with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this +race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of +the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a +difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational +experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the +object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily +men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess +artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make +manhood the object of the work of the schools—intelligence, broad +sympathy, knowl<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />edge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of +men to it—this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must +underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill +of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man +mistake the means of living for the object of life.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>If this be true—and who can deny it—three tasks lay before me; first to +show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among +American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; secondly, to show how +these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly, to show their +relation to the Negro problem.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>You misjudge us because you do not know us. From the very first it has +been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and +elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded +their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />is slavery but +the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of +natural internal leadership? Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the +first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for +natural selection and the survival of the fittest. In colonial days came +Phillis Wheatley and Paul Cuffe striving against the bars of prejudice; +and Benjamin Banneker, the almanac maker, voiced their longings when he +said to Thomas Jefferson, "I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am +of the African race, and in colour which is natural to them, of the +deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the +Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you that I am not +under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman captivity to which too +many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the +fruition of those blessings which proceed from that free and unequalled +liberty with which you are favored, and which I hope you will willingly +allow, you have mercifully received from the immediate <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />hand of that Being +from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift.</p> + +<p>"Suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms of the +British crown were exerted with every powerful effort, in order to reduce +you to a state of servitude; look back, I entreat you, on the variety of +dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that period in which every +human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore +the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a +serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential +preservation, you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and +tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that a +peculiar blessing of heaven.</p> + +<p>"This, sir, was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state +of Slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its +condition. It was then that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that +you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy +to be recorded and re<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />membered in all succeeding ages: 'We hold these +truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are +endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, +liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"</p> + +<p>Then came Dr. James Derham, who could tell even the learned Dr. Rush +something of medicine, and Lemuel Haynes, to whom Middlebury College gave +an honorary A.M. in 1804. These and others we may call the Revolutionary +group of distinguished Negroes—they were persons of marked ability, +leaders of a Talented Tenth, standing conspicuously among the best of +their time. They strove by word and deed to save the color line from +becoming the line between the bond and free, but all they could do was +nullified by Eli Whitney and the Curse of Gold. So they passed into +forgetfulness.</p> + +<p>But their spirit did not wholly die; here and there in the early part of +the century came other exceptional men. Some were natural sons of +unnatural fathers and were given often <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />a liberal training and thus a race +of educated mulattoes sprang up to plead for black men's rights. There was +Ira Aldridge, whom all Europe loved to honor; there was that Voice crying +in the Wilderness, David Walker, and saying:</p> + +<p>"I declare it does appear to me as though some nations think God is +asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their +mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or +profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the +privilege of believing—Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? +Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and +permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children +in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families, +would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us +and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a +people were afflicted with since the world began—I <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />say if God gives you +peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and +our children, who have never given you the least provocation—would He be +to us a God of Justice? If you will allow that we are men, who feel for +each other, does not the blood of our fathers and of us, their children, +cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth against you for the cruelties and murders +with which you have and do continue to afflict us?"</p> + +<p>This was the wild voice that first aroused Southern legislators in 1829 to +the terrors of abolitionism.</p> + +<p>In 1831 there met that first Negro convention in Philadelphia, at which +the world gaped curiously but which bravely attacked the problems of race +and slavery, crying out against persecution and declaring that "Laws as +cruel in themselves as they were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many +places been enacted against our poor, unfriended and unoffending brethren +(without a shadow of provocation on our part), at whose bare recital the +very <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />savage draws himself up for fear of contagion—looks noble and +prides himself because he bears not the name of Christian." Side by side +this free Negro movement, and the movement for abolition, strove until +they merged into one strong stream. Too little notice has been taken of +the work which the Talented Tenth among Negroes took in the great +abolition crusade. From the very day that a Philadelphia colored man +became the first subscriber to Garrison's "Liberator," to the day when +Negro soldiers made the Emancipation Proclamation possible, black leaders +worked shoulder to shoulder with white men in a movement, the success of +which would have been impossible without them. There was Purvis and +Remond, Pennington and Highland Garnett, Sojourner Truth and Alexander +Crummel, and above all, Frederick Douglass—what would the abolition +movement have been without them? They stood as living examples of the +possibilities of the Negro race, their own hard experiences and well +wrought culture said si<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />lently more than all the drawn periods of +orators—they were the men who made American slavery impossible. As Maria +Weston Chapman once said, from the school of anti-slavery agitation "a +throng of authors, editors, lawyers, orators and accomplished gentlemen of +color have taken their degree! It has equally implanted hopes and +aspirations, noble thoughts, and sublime purposes, in the hearts of both +races. It has prepared the white man for the freedom of the black man, and +it has made the black man scorn the thought of enslavement, as does a +white man, as far as its influence has extended. Strengthen that noble +influence! Before its organization, the country only saw here and there in +slavery some faithful Cudjoe or Dinah, whose strong natures blossomed even +in bondage, like a fine plant beneath a heavy stone. Now, under the +elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, +the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the +noblest temples."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />Where were these black abolitionists trained? Some, like Frederick +Douglass, were self-trained, but yet trained liberally; others, like +Alexander Crummell and McCune Smith, graduated from famous foreign +universities. Most of them rose up through the colored schools of New York +and Philadelphia and Boston, taught by college-bred men like Russworm, of +Dartmouth, and college-bred white men like Neau and Benezet.</p> + +<p>After emancipation came a new group of educated and gifted leaders: +Langston, Bruce and Elliot, Greener, Williams and Payne. Through political +organization, historical and polemic writing and moral regeneration, these +men strove to uplift their people. It is the fashion of to-day to sneer at +them and to say that with freedom Negro leadership should have begun at +the plow and not in the Senate—a foolish and mischievous lie; two hundred +and fifty years that black serf toiled at the plow and yet that toiling +was in vain till the Senate passed the war amendments; and two <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />hundred +and fifty years more the half-free serf of to-day may toil at his plow, +but unless he have political rights and righteously guarded civic status, +he will still remain the poverty-stricken and ignorant plaything of +rascals, that he now is. This all sane men know even if they dare not say +it.</p> + +<p>And so we come to the present—a day of cowardice and vacillation, of +strident wide-voiced wrong and faint hearted compromise; of double-faced +dallying with Truth and Right. Who are to-day guiding the work of the +Negro people? The "exceptions" of course. And yet so sure as this Talented +Tenth is pointed out, the blind worshippers of the Average cry out in +alarm: "These are exceptions, look here at death, disease and crime—these +are the happy rule." Of course they are the rule, because a silly nation +made them the rule: Because for three long centuries this people lynched +Negroes who dared to be brave, raped black women who dared to be virtuous, +crushed dark-hued youth who dared to be am<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />bitious, and encouraged and +made to flourish servility and lewdness and apathy. But not even this was +able to crush all manhood and chastity and aspiration from black folk. A +saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires, +continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character. Exceptional +it is to be sure, but this is its chiefest promise; it shows the +capability of Negro blood, the promise of black men. Do Americans ever +stop to reflect that there are in this land a million men of Negro blood, +well-educated, owners of homes, against the honor of whose womanhood no +breath was ever raised, whose men occupy positions of trust and +usefulness, and who, judged by any standard, have reached the full measure +of the best type of modern European culture? Is it fair, is it decent, is +it Christian to ignore these facts of the Negro problem, to belittle such +aspiration, to nullify such leadership and seek to crush these people back +into the mass out of which by toil and travail, they and their fathers +have raised themselves?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly +raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and +character? Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the +bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top +downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that +are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of +human progress; and the two historic mistakes which have hindered that +progress were the thinking first that no more could ever rise save the few +already risen; or second, that it would better the unrisen to pull the +risen down.</p> + +<p>How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands +of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and +most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and +universities of the land. We will not quarrel as to just what the +university of the Negro should <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />teach or how it should teach it—I +willingly admit that each soul and each race-soul needs its own peculiar +curriculum. But this is true: A university is a human invention for the +transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation, +through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no +other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools.</p> + +<p>All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or +nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of +training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and +necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their +bellies, and no God greater than Gold. This is true training, and thus in +the beginning were the favored sons of the freedmen trained. Out of the +colleges of the North came, after the blood of war, Ware, Cravath, Chase, +Andrews, Bumstead and Spence to build the foundations of knowledge and +civilization in the black South.<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" /> Where ought they to have begun to build? +At the bottom, of course, quibbles the mole with his eyes in the earth. +Aye! truly at the bottom, at the very bottom; at the bottom of knowledge, +down in the very depths of knowledge there where the roots of justice +strike into the lowest soil of Truth. And so they did begin; they founded +colleges, and up from the colleges shot normal schools, and out from the +normal schools went teachers, and around the normal teachers clustered +other teachers to teach the public schools; the college trained in Greek +and Latin and mathematics, 2,000 men; and these men trained full 50,000 +others in morals and manners, and they in turn taught thrift and the +alphabet to nine millions of men, who to-day hold $300,000,000 of +property. It was a miracle—the most wonderful peace-battle of the 19th +century, and yet to-day men smile at it, and in fine superiority tell us +that it was all a strange mistake; that a proper way to found a system of +education is first to gather the children and buy <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />them spelling books and +hoes; afterward men may look about for teachers, if haply they may find +them; or again they would teach men Work, but as for Life—why, what has +Work to do with Life, they ask vacantly.</p> + +<p>Was the work of these college founders successful; did it stand the test +of time? Did the college graduates, with all their fine theories of life, +really live? Are they useful men helping to civilize and elevate their +less fortunate fellows? Let us see. Omitting all institutions which have +not actually graduated students from a college course, there are to-day in +the United States thirty-four institutions giving something above high +school training to Negroes and designed especially for this race.</p> + +<p>Three of these were established in border States before the War; thirteen +were planted by the Freedmen's Bureau in the years 1864-1869; nine were +established between 1870 and 1880 by various church bodies; five were +established after 1881 by Negro churches, and four are state institutions +supported by United<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" /> States' agricultural funds. In most cases the college +departments are small adjuncts to high and common school work. As a matter +of fact six institutions—Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Shaw, Wilberforce and +Leland, are the important Negro colleges so far as actual work and number +of students are concerned. In all these institutions, seven hundred and +fifty Negro college students are enrolled. In grade the best of these +colleges are about a year behind the smaller New England colleges and a +typical curriculum is that of Atlanta University. Here students from the +grammar grades, after a three years' high school course, take a college +course of 136 weeks. One-fourth of this time is given to Latin and Greek; +one-fifth, to English and modern languages; one-sixth, to history and +social science; one-seventh, to natural science; one-eighth to +mathematics, and one-eighth to philosophy and pedagogy.</p> + +<p>In addition to these students in the South, Negroes have attended Northern +colleges for <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />many years. As early as 1826 one was graduated from Bowdoin +College, and from that time till to-day nearly every year has seen +elsewhere, other such graduates. They have, of course, met much color +prejudice. Fifty years ago very few colleges would admit them at all. Even +to-day no Negro has ever been admitted to Princeton, and at some other +leading institutions they are rather endured than encouraged. Oberlin was +the great pioneer in the work of blotting out the color line in colleges, +and has more Negro graduates by far than any other Northern college.</p> + +<p>The total number of Negro college graduates up to 1899, (several of the +graduates of that year not being reported), was as follows:</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%;"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="The total number of Negro college graduates up to 1899."> + +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Negro Colleges.</td><td align='left'> White Colleges.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Before '76</td><td align='right'>137</td><td align='right'>75</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>'75-80</td><td align='right'>143</td><td align='right'>22</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>'80-85</td><td align='right'>250</td><td align='right'>31</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>'85-90</td><td align='right'>413</td><td align='right'>43</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>'90-95</td><td align='right'>465</td><td align='right'>66</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>'96-99</td><td align='right'>475</td><td align='right'>88</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Class Unknown</td><td align='right'>57</td><td align='right'>64</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>Total</td><td align='right'>1,914</td><td align='right'>390</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + +<p><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />Of these graduates 2,079 were men and 252 were women; 50 per cent. of +Northern-born college men come South to work among the masses of their +people, at a sacrifice which few people realize; nearly 90 per cent. of +the Southern-born graduates instead of seeking that personal freedom and +broader intellectual atmosphere which their training has led them, in some +degree, to conceive, stay and labor and wait in the midst of their black +neighbors and relatives.</p> + +<p>The most interesting question, and in many respects the crucial question, +to be asked concerning college-bred Negroes, is: Do they earn a living? It +has been intimated more than once that the higher training of Negroes has +resulted in sending into the world of work, men who could find nothing to +do suitable to their talents. Now and then there comes a rumor of a +colored college man working at menial service, etc. Fortunately, returns +as to occupations of college-bred Negroes, gathered by the Atlanta +conference, are quite full—nearly<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" /> sixty per cent. of the total number of +graduates.</p> + +<p>This enables us to reach fairly certain conclusions as to the occupations +of all college-bred Negroes. Of 1,312 persons reported, there were:</p> + + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 5%;"> +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> + <td align="left" style="width:40%;">Teachers,</td><td align="right" style="width: 5%;">53.4 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:53.4%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> + <td align="left" style="width:40%;">Clergymen,</td><td align="right" style="width: 5%;">16.8 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:16.8%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> + <td align="left" style="width:40%;">Physicians, etc.,</td><td align="right" style="width: 5%;">6.3 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:6.3%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> + <td align="left" style="width:40%;">Students,</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">5.6 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:5.6%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> +<td align="left" style="width:40%;">Lawyers,</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">4.7 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:4.7%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> +<td align="left" style="width:40%;">In Govt. Service,</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">4.0 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:4%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> +<td align="left" style="width:40%;">In Business,</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">3.6 </td> +<td class="graph" style="width:3.6%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> +<td align="left" style="width:40%;">Farmers and Artisans,</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">2.7 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:2.7%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> +<td align="left" style="width:40%;">Editors, Secretaries and Clerks,</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">2.4 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:2.4%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width: 85%;" summary="table"> +<tr> +<td align="left" style="width:40%;">Miscellaneous.</td><td align="right" style="width:5%;">.5 </td> + <td class="graph" style="width:1%; background: black;"></td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +</div> + + + +<p>Over half are teachers, a sixth are preachers, another sixth are students +and professional men; over 6 per cent. are farmers, artisans and +merchants, and 4 per cent. are in government service. In detail the +occupations are as follows:</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 5%;"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Occupations of College-Bred Men."> + +<tr><td align='left'><i>Occupations of College-Bred Men.</i></td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Teachers:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Presidents and Deans,</td><td align='right'>19</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Teacher of Music,</td><td align='right'>7</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Professors, Principals and Teachers,</td><td align='right'> 675</td><td align='right'> Total 701</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Clergymen:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Bishop,</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Chaplains U.S. Army,</td><td align='right'>2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Missionaries,</td><td align='right'>9</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Presiding Elders,</td><td align='right'>12</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Preachers,</td><td align='right'>197</td><td align='right'>Total 221</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Physicians,</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Doctors of Medicine,</td><td align='right'>76</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Druggists,</td><td align='right'>4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Dentists,</td><td align='right'>3</td><td align='right'>Total 83</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Students,</td><td align='right'>74</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Lawyers,</td><td align='right'>62</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Civil Service:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary,</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> U.S. Consul,</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> U.S. Deputy Collector,</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> U.S. Gauger,</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> U.S. Postmasters,</td><td align='right'>2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> U.S. Clerks,</td><td align='right'>44</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> State Civil Service,</td><td align='right'>2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> City Civil Service,</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='right'>Total 53</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Business Men:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Merchants, etc.,</td><td align='right'>30</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Managers,</td><td align='right'>13</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Real Estate Dealers,</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='right'>Total 47</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Farmers,</td><td align='right'>26</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Clerks and Secretaries:</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Secretary of National Societies,</td><td align='right'>7</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Clerks, etc.,</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='right'>Total 22</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Artisans,</td><td align='right'>9</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Editors,</td><td align='right'>9</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='left'>Miscellaneous,</td><td align='right'>5</td></tr> + +</table> +</div> + +<p><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />These figures illustrate vividly the function of the college-bred Negro. +He is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of +the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social +movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social +leadership more than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall +back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well +defined social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully +evolved. The preacher was, even before the war, the group leader of the +Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally this +preacher was ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the +older type by better educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct +work and by direct influence on other preachers, and on congregations, the +college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory work and moral +inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated.</p> + +<p>It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college +has found its <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />peculiar function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how +mighty a revolution has been thus accomplished. To furnish five millions +and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race and blood, in +one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but a very +important one, in that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro +child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses of the blacks in contact +with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities +and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were +first teachers, and then teachers of teachers. And here it is that the +broad culture of college work has been of peculiar value. Knowledge of +life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro's deepest +ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been +simply for bread winning, but also for human culture, has been of +inestimable value in the training of these men.</p> + +<p>In earlier years the two occupations of preacher and teacher were +practically the only <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />ones open to the black college graduate. Of later +years a larger diversity of life among his people, has opened new avenues +of employment. Nor have these college men been paupers and spendthrifts; +557 college-bred Negroes owned in 1899, $1,342,862.50 worth of real +estate, (assessed value) or $2,411 per family. The real value of the total +accumulations of the whole group is perhaps about $10,000,000, or $5,000 a +piece. Pitiful, is it not, beside the fortunes of oil kings and steel +trusts, but after all is the fortune of the millionaire the only stamp of +true and successful living? Alas! it is, with many, and there's the rub.</p> + +<p>The problem of training the Negro is to-day immensely complicated by the +fact that the whole question of the efficiency and appropriateness of our +present systems of education, for any kind of child, is a matter of active +debate, in which final settlement seems still afar off. Consequently it +often happens that per<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />sons arguing for or against certain systems of +education for Negroes, have these controversies in mind and miss the real +question at issue. The main question, so far as the Southern Negro is +concerned, is: What under the present circumstance, must a system of +education do in order to raise the Negro as quickly as possible in the +scale of civilization? The answer to this question seems to me clear: It +must strengthen the Negro's character, increase his knowledge and teach +him to earn a living. Now it goes without saying, that it is hard to do +all these things simultaneously or suddenly, and that at the same time it +will not do to give all the attention to one and neglect the others; we +could give black boys trades, but that alone will not civilize a race of +ex-slaves; we might simply increase their knowledge of the world, but this +would not necessarily make them wish to use this knowledge honestly; we +might seek to strengthen character and purpose, but to what end if this +people have nothing to eat or to wear? A system of education is not one +<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter +of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and +without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. If then we +start out to train an ignorant and unskilled people with a heritage of bad +habits, our system of training must set before itself two great aims—the +one dealing with knowledge and character, the other part seeking to give +the child the technical knowledge necessary for him to earn a living under +the present circumstances. These objects are accomplished in part by the +opening of the common schools on the one, and of the industrial schools on +the other. But only in part, for there must also be trained those who are +to teach these schools—men and women of knowledge and culture and +technical skill who understand modern civilization, and have the training +and aptitude to impart it to the children under them. There must be +teachers, and teachers of teachers, and to attempt to establish any sort +of a system of com<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />mon and industrial school training, without <i>first</i> +(and I say <i>first</i> advisedly) without <i>first</i> providing for the higher +training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the +winds. School houses do not teach themselves—piles of brick and mortar +and machinery do not send out <i>men</i>. It is the trained, living human soul, +cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the +real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they +be black or white, Greek, Russian or American. Nothing, in these latter +days, has so dampened the faith of thinking Negroes in recent educational +movements, as the fact that such movements have been accompanied by +ridicule and denouncement and decrying of those very institutions of +higher training which made the Negro public school possible, and make +Negro industrial schools thinkable. It was Fisk, Atlanta, Howard and +Straight, those colleges born of the faith and sacrifice of the +abolitionists, that placed in the black schools of the South the<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" /> 30,000 +teachers and more, which some, who depreciate the work of these higher +schools, are using to teach their own new experiments. If Hampton, +Tuskegee and the hundred other industrial schools prove in the future to +be as successful as they deserve to be, then their success in training +black artisans for the South, will be due primarily to the white colleges +of the North and the black colleges of the South, which trained the +teachers who to-day conduct these institutions. There was a time when the +American people believed pretty devoutly that a log of wood with a boy at +one end and Mark Hopkins at the other, represented the highest ideal of +human training. But in these eager days it would seem that we have changed +all that and think it necessary to add a couple of saw-mills and a hammer +to this outfit, and, at a pinch, to dispense with the services of Mark +Hopkins.</p> + +<p>I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of +teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and skill<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />fully; or seem +to depreciate in the slightest degree the important part industrial +schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I <i>do</i> say, and +insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, +to imagine that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the +training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and +to teach the teachers of the public schools.</p> + +<p>But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of +schools; it is much more a matter of family and group life—the training +of one's home, of one's daily companions, of one's social class. Now the +black boy of the South moves in a black world—a world with its own +leaders, its own thoughts, its own ideals. In this world he gets by far +the larger part of his life training, and through the eyes of this dark +world he peers into the veiled world beyond. Who guides and determines the +education which he receives in his world? His teachers here are the +group-leaders of the Negro people—the <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />physicians and clergymen, the +trained fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about him of +all kinds; here it is, if at all, that the culture of the surrounding +world trickles through and is handed on by the graduates of the higher +schools. Can such culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we +afford to ignore it? Do you think that if the leaders of thought among +Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers, that they will have no +leaders? On the contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold +the places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous +busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you must help +furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained +leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless +misguided rabble.</p> + +<p>I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black +boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of +Negro colleges the most valuable <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />addition to Negro education since the +war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist +that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is +to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man, +each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in +which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and +his family what life means; the second is to give him sufficient +intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the +first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men—not a +quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many +college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to +raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good +system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently located and properly +equipped.</p> + +<p>The Sixth Atlanta Conference truly said in 1901:</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />We call the attention of the Nation to the fact that less than one +million of the three million Negro children of school age, are at present +regularly attending school, and these attend a session which lasts only a +few months.</p> + +<p>"We are to-day deliberately rearing millions of our citizens in ignorance, +and at the same time limiting the rights of citizenship by educational +qualifications. This is unjust. Half the black youth of the land have no +opportunities open to them for learning to read, write and cipher. In the +discussion as to the proper training of Negro children after they leave +the public schools, we have forgotten that they are not yet decently +provided with public schools.</p> + +<p>"Propositions are beginning to be made in the South to reduce the already +meagre school facilities of Negroes. We congratulate the South on +resisting, as much as it has, this pressure, and on the many millions it +has spent on Negro education. But it is only fair to point out that Negro +taxes and the Negroes' share of <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />the income from indirect taxes and +endowments have fully repaid this expenditure, so that the Negro public +school system has not in all probability cost the white taxpayers a single +cent since the war.</p> + +<p>"This is not fair. Negro schools should be a public burden, since they are +a public benefit. The Negro has a right to demand good common school +training at the hands of the States and the Nation since by their fault he +is not in position to pay for this himself."</p> + +<p>What is the chief need for the building up of the Negro public school in +the South? The Negro race in the South needs teachers to-day above all +else. This is the concurrent testimony of all who know the situation. For +the supply of this great demand two things are needed—institutions of +higher education and money for school houses and salaries. It is usually +assumed that a hundred or more institutions for Negro training are to-day +turning out so many teachers and college-bred men that the race is +threatened with an over-supply.<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" /> This is sheer nonsense. There are to-day +less than 3,000 living Negro college graduates in the United States, and +less than 1,000 Negroes in college. Moreover, in the 164 schools for +Negroes, 95 per cent. of their students are doing elementary and secondary +work, work which should be done in the public schools. Over half the +remaining 2,157 students are taking high school studies. The mass of +so-called "normal" schools for the Negro, are simply doing elementary +common school work, or, at most, high school work, with a little +instruction in methods. The Negro colleges and the post-graduate courses +at other institutions are the only agencies for the broader and more +careful training of teachers. The work of these institutions is hampered +for lack of funds. It is getting increasingly difficult to get funds for +training teachers in the best modern methods, and yet all over the South, +from State Superintendents, county officials, city boards and school +principals comes the wail, "We need TEACHERS!" and teachers must <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />be +trained. As the fairest minded of all white Southerners, Atticus G. +Haygood, once said: "The defects of colored teachers are so great as to +create an urgent necessity for training better ones. Their excellencies +and their successes are sufficient to justify the best hopes of success in +the effort, and to vindicate the judgment of those who make large +investments of money and service, to give to colored students opportunity +for thoroughly preparing themselves for the work of teaching children of +their people."</p> + +<p>The truth of this has been strikingly shown in the marked improvement of +white teachers in the South. Twenty years ago the rank and file of white +public school teachers were not as good as the Negro teachers. But they, +by scholarships and good salaries, have been encouraged to thorough normal +and collegiate preparation, while the Negro teachers have been discouraged +by starvation wages and the idea that any training will do for a black +teacher. If carpenters are needed it is well <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />and good to train men as +carpenters. But to train men as carpenters, and then set them to teaching +is wasteful and criminal; and to train men as teachers and then refuse +them living wages, unless they become carpenters, is rank nonsense.</p> + +<p>The United States Commissioner of Education says in his report for 1900: +"For comparison between the white and colored enrollment in secondary and +higher education, I have added together the enrollment in high schools and +secondary schools, with the attendance on colleges and universities, not +being sure of the actual grade of work done in the colleges and +universities. The work done in the secondary schools is reported in such +detail in this office, that there can be no doubt of its grade."</p> + +<p>He then makes the following comparisons of persons in every million +enrolled in secondary and higher education:</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%;"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Enrolled in secondary and higher education."> + +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align='right'><i>Whole Country.</i></td><td align='right'><i>Negroes.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1880</td><td align='right'>4,362</td><td align='right'>1,289</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1900</td><td align='right'>10,743</td><td align='right'>2,061</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + + +<p><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />And he concludes: "While the number in colored high schools and colleges +had increased somewhat faster than the population, it had not kept pace +with the average of the whole country, for it had fallen from 30 per cent. +to 24 per cent. of the average quota. Of all colored pupils, one (1) in +one hundred was engaged in secondary and higher work, and that ratio has +continued substantially for the past twenty years. If the ratio of colored +population in secondary and higher education is to be equal to the average +for the whole country, it must be increased to five times its present +average." And if this be true of the secondary and higher education, it is +safe to say that the Negro has not one-tenth his quota in college studies. +How baseless, therefore, is the charge of too much training! We need Negro +teachers for the Negro common schools, and we need first-class normal +schools and colleges to train them. This is the work of higher Negro +education and it must be done.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />Further than this, after being provided with group leaders of +civilization, and a foundation of intelligence in the public schools, the +carpenter, in order to be a man, needs technical skill. This calls for +trade schools. Now trade schools are not nearly such simple things as +people once thought. The original idea was that the "Industrial" school +was to furnish education, practically free, to those willing to work for +it; it was to "do" things—i.e.: become a center of productive industry, +it was to be partially, if not wholly, self-supporting, and it was to +teach trades. Admirable as were some of the ideas underlying this scheme, +the whole thing simply would not work in practice; it was found that if +you were to use time and material to teach trades thoroughly, you could +not at the same time keep the industries on a commercial basis and make +them pay. Many schools started out to do this on a large scale and went +into virtual bankruptcy. Moreover, it was found also that it was possible +to teach a boy a trade mechanically, without giving him <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />the full +educative benefit of the process, and, vice versa, that there was a +distinctive educative value in teaching a boy to use his hands and eyes in +carrying out certain physical processes, even though he did not actually +learn a trade. It has happened, therefore, in the last decade, that a +noticeable change has come over the industrial schools. In the first place +the idea of commercially remunerative industry in a school is being pushed +rapidly to the back-ground. There are still schools with shops and farms +that bring an income, and schools that use student labor partially for the +erection of their buildings and the furnishing of equipment. It is coming +to be seen, however, in the education of the Negro, as clearly as it has +been seen in the education of the youths the world over, that it is the +<i>boy</i> and not the material product, that is the true object of education. +Consequently the object of the industrial school came to be the thorough +training of boys regardless of the cost of the training, so long as it was +thoroughly well done.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />Even at this point, however, the difficulties were not surmounted. In the +first place modern industry has taken great strides since the war, and the +teaching of trades is no longer a simple matter. Machinery and long +processes of work have greatly changed the work of the carpenter, the +ironworker and the shoemaker. A really efficient workman must be to-day an +intelligent man who has had good technical training in addition to +thorough common school, and perhaps even higher training. To meet this +situation the industrial schools began a further development; they +established distinct Trade Schools for the thorough training of better +class artisans, and at the same time they sought to preserve for the +purposes of general education, such of the simpler processes of elementary +trade learning as were best suited therefor. In this differentiation of +the Trade School and manual training, the best of the industrial schools +simply followed the plain trend of the present educational epoch. A +prominent educator tells us that, in Sweden, "In the <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />beginning the +economic conception was generally adopted, and everywhere manual training +was looked upon as a means of preparing the children of the common people +to earn their living. But gradually it came to be recognized that manual +training has a more elevated purpose, and one, indeed, more useful in the +deeper meaning of the term. It came to be considered as an educative +process for the complete moral, physical and intellectual development of +the child."</p> + +<p>Thus, again, in the manning of trade schools and manual training schools +we are thrown back upon the higher training as its source and chief +support. There was a time when any aged and wornout carpenter could teach +in a trade school. But not so to-day. Indeed the demand for college-bred +men by a school like Tuskegee, ought to make Mr. Booker T. Washington the +firmest friend of higher training. Here he has as helpers the son of a +Negro senator, trained in Greek and the humanities, and graduated at +Harvard; the son of a<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" /> Negro congressman and lawyer, trained in Latin and +mathematics, and graduated at Oberlin; he has as his wife, a woman who +read Virgil and Homer in the same class room with me; he has as college +chaplain, a classical graduate of Atlanta University; as teacher of +science, a graduate of Fisk; as teacher of history, a graduate of +Smith,—indeed some thirty of his chief teachers are college graduates, +and instead of studying French grammars in the midst of weeds, or buying +pianos for dirty cabins, they are at Mr. Washington's right hand helping +him in a noble work. And yet one of the effects of Mr. Washington's +propaganda has been to throw doubt upon the expediency of such training +for Negroes, as these persons have had.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race +transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you +like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do +not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the +levers to uplift a<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" /> people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by +the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply +teach work—it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must +be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. +No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The +Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional +men.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Disfranchisement_of_the_Negro" id="The_Disfranchisement_of_the_Negro" /><i>The Disfranchisement of the Negro</i></h2> + +<h3>By CHARLES W. CHESNUTT</h3> + +<blockquote><p>In this paper the author presents a straightforward statement of facts + concerning the disfranchisement of the Negro in the Southern States. Mr. + Chesnutt, who is too well known as a writer to need any introduction to + an American audience, puts the case for the Negro to the American people + very plainly, and spares neither the North nor the South.</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/chesnutt.png" +alt="CHARLES W. CHESNUTT." title="CHARLES W. CHESNUTT." /> +</div> +<p class="center"><b>CHARLES W. CHESNUTT.</b></p> + +<p><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" /></p> + + +<p>The right of American citizens of African descent, commonly called +Negroes, to vote upon the same terms as other citizens of the United +States, is plainly declared and firmly fixed by the Constitution. No such +person is called upon to present reasons why he should possess this right: +that question is foreclosed by the Constitution. The object of the +elective franchise is to give representation. So long as the Constitution +retains its present form, any State Constitution, or statute, which seeks, +by juggling the ballot, to deny the colored race fair representation, is a +clear violation of the fundamental law of the land, and a corresponding +injustice to those thus deprived of this right.</p> + +<p>For thirty-five years this has been the law. As long as it was measurably +respected, the col<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />ored people made rapid strides in education, wealth, +character and self-respect. This the census proves, all statements to the +contrary notwithstanding. A generation has grown to manhood and womanhood +under the great, inspiring freedom conferred by the Constitution and +protected by the right of suffrage—protected in large degree by the mere +naked right, even when its exercise was hindered or denied by unlawful +means. They have developed, in every Southern community, good citizens, +who, if sustained and encouraged by just laws and liberal institutions, +would greatly augment their number with the passing years, and soon wipe +out the reproach of ignorance, unthrift, low morals and social +inefficiency, thrown at them indiscriminately and therefore unjustly, and +made the excuse for the equally undiscriminating contempt of their persons +and their rights. They have reduced their illiteracy nearly 50 per cent. +Excluded from the institutions of higher learning in their own States, +their young men hold their own, and occasion<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />ally carry away honors, in +the universities of the North. They have accumulated three hundred million +dollars worth of real and personal property. Individuals among them have +acquired substantial wealth, and several have attained to something like +national distinction in art, letters and educational leadership. They are +numerously represented in the learned professions. Heavily handicapped, +they have made such rapid progress that the suspicion is justified that +their advancement, rather than any stagnation or retrogression, is the +true secret of the virulent Southern hostility to their rights, which has +so influenced Northern opinion that it stands mute, and leaves the colored +people, upon whom the North conferred liberty, to the tender mercies of +those who have always denied their fitness for it.</p> + +<p>It may be said, in passing, that the word "Negro," where used in this +paper, is used solely for convenience. By the census of 1890 there were +1,000,000 colored people in the country who were half, or more than half, +white, <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />and logically there must be, as in fact there are, so many who +share the white blood in some degree, as to justify the assertion that the +race problem in the United States concerns the welfare and the status of a +mixed race. Their rights are not one whit the more sacred because of this +fact; but in an argument where injustice is sought to be excused because +of fundamental differences of race, it is well enough to bear in mind that +the race whose rights and liberties are endangered all over this country +by disfranchisement at the South, are the colored people who live in the +United States to-day, and not the low-browed, man-eating savage whom the +Southern white likes to set upon a block and contrast with Shakespeare and +Newton and Washington and Lincoln.</p> + +<p>Despite and in defiance of the Federal Constitution, to-day in the six +Southern States of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, South +Carolina and Virginia, containing an aggregate colored population of about +6,000,000, these have been, to all intents and pur<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />poses, denied, so far +as the States can effect it, the right to vote. This disfranchisement is +accomplished by various methods, devised with much transparent ingenuity, +the effort being in each instance to violate the spirit of the Federal +Constitution by disfranchising the Negro, while seeming to respect its +letter by avoiding the mention of race or color.</p> + +<p>These restrictions fall into three groups. The first comprises a property +qualification—the ownership of $300 worth or more of real or personal +property (Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia and South Carolina); the payment of +a poll tax (Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia); an educational +qualification—the ability to read and write (Alabama, Louisiana, North +Carolina). Thus far, those who believe in a restricted suffrage +everywhere, could perhaps find no reasonable fault with any one of these +qualifications, applied either separately or together.</p> + +<p>But the Negro has made such progress that these restrictions alone would +perhaps not de<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />prive him of effective representation. Hence the second +group. This comprises an "understanding" clause—the applicant must be +able "to read, or understand when read to him, any clause in the +Constitution" (Mississippi), or to read and explain, or to understand and +explain when read to him, any section of the Constitution (Virginia); an +employment qualification—the voter must be regularly employed in some +lawful occupation (Alabama); a character qualification—the voter must be +a person of good character and who "understands the duties and obligations +of citizens under a republican (!) form of government" (Alabama).</p> + +<p>The qualifications under the first group it will be seen, are capable of +exact demonstration; those under the second group are left to the +discretion and judgment of the registering officer—for in most instances +these are all requirements for registration, which must precede voting.</p> + +<p>But the first group, by its own force, and the second group, under +imaginable conditions, <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />might exclude not only the Negro vote, but a large +part of the white vote. Hence, the third group, which comprises: a +military service qualification—any man who went to war, willingly or +unwillingly, in a good cause or a bad, is entitled to register (Ala., +Va.); a prescriptive qualification, under which are included all male +persons who were entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, at which date the +Negro had not yet been given the right to vote; a hereditary +qualification, (the so-called "grandfather" clause), whereby any son +(Va.), or descendant (Ala.), of a soldier, and (N.C.) the descendant of +any person who had the right to vote on January 1, 1867, inherits that +right. If the voter wish to take advantage of these last provisions, which +are in the nature of exceptions to a general rule, he must register within +a stated time, whereupon he becomes a member of a privileged class of +permanently enrolled voters not subject to any of the other restrictions.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />It will be seen that these restrictions are variously combined in the +different States, and it is apparent that if combined to their declared +end, practically every Negro may, under color of law, be denied the right +to vote, and practically every white man accorded that right. The +effectiveness of these provisions to exclude the Negro vote is proved by +the Alabama registration under the new State Constitution. Out of a total, +by the census of 1900, of 181,471 Negro "males of voting age," less than +3,000 are registered; in Montgomery county alone, the seat of the State +capital, where there are 7,000 Negro males of voting age, only 47 have +been allowed to register, while in several counties not one single Negro +is permitted to exercise the franchise.</p> + +<p>These methods of disfranchisement have stood such tests as the United +States Courts, including the Supreme Court, have thus far seen fit to +apply, in such cases as have been before them for adjudication. These +include a case based upon the "understanding" clause of <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />the Mississippi +Constitution, in which the Supreme Court held, in effect, that since there +was no ambiguity in the language employed and the Negro was not directly +named, the Court would not go behind the wording of the Constitution to +find a meaning which discriminated against the colored voter; and the +recent case of Jackson vs. Giles, brought by a colored citizen of +Montgomery, Alabama, in which the Supreme Court confesses itself impotent +to provide a remedy for what, by inference, it acknowledges <i>may</i> be a +"great political wrong," carefully avoiding, however, to state that it is +a wrong, although the vital prayer of the petition was for a decision upon +this very point.</p> + +<p>Now, what is the effect of this wholesale disfranchisement of colored men, +upon their citizenship. The value of food to the human organism is not +measured by the pains of an occasional surfeit, but by the effect of its +entire deprivation. Whether a class of citizens should vote, even if not +always wisely—what class does?—may best be determined by considering +<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />their condition when they are without the right to vote.</p> + +<p>The colored people are left, in the States where they have been +disfranchised, absolutely without representation, direct or indirect, in +any law-making body, in any court of justice, in any branch of +government—for the feeble remnant of voters left by law is so +inconsiderable as to be without a shadow of power. Constituting one-eighth +of the population of the whole country, two-fifths of the whole Southern +people, and a majority in several States, they are not able, because +disfranchised where most numerous, to send one representative to the +Congress, which, by the decision in the Alabama case, is held by the +Supreme Court to be the only body, outside of the State itself, competent +to give relief from a great political wrong. By former decisions of the +same tribunal, even Congress is impotent to protect their civil rights, +the Fourteenth Amendment having long since, by the consent of the same +Court, been in many respects as completely nul<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />lified as the Fifteenth +Amendment is now sought to be. They have no direct representation in any +Southern legislature, and no voice in determining the choice of white men +who might be friendly to their rights. Nor are they able to influence the +election of judges or other public officials, to whom are entrusted the +protection of their lives, their liberties and their property. No judge is +rendered careful, no sheriff diligent, for fear that he may offend a black +constituency; the contrary is most lamentably true; day after day the +catalogue of lynchings and anti-Negro riots upon every imaginable pretext, +grows longer and more appalling. The country stands face to face with the +revival of slavery; at the moment of this writing a federal grand jury in +Alabama is uncovering a system of peonage established under cover of law.</p> + +<p>Under the Southern program it is sought to exclude colored men from every +grade of the public service; not only from the higher administrative +functions, to which few of them would <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />in any event, for a long time +aspire, but from the lowest as well. A Negro may not be a constable or a +policeman. He is subjected by law to many degrading discriminations. He is +required to be separated from white people on railroads and street cars, +and, by custom, debarred from inns and places of public entertainment. His +equal right to a free public education is constantly threatened and is +nowhere equitably recognized. In Georgia, as has been shown by Dr. DuBois, +where the law provides for a pro rata distribution of the public school +fund between the races, and where the colored school population is 48 per +cent. of the total, the amount of the fund devoted to their schools is +only 20 per cent. In New Orleans, with an immense colored population, many +of whom are persons of means and culture, all colored public schools above +the fifth grade have been abolished.</p> + +<p>The Negro is subjected to taxation without representation, which the +forefathers of this Republic made the basis of a bloody revolution.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />Flushed with their local success, and encouraged by the timidity of the +Courts and the indifference of public opinion, the Southern whites have +carried their campaign into the national government, with an ominous +degree of success. If they shall have their way, no Negro can fill any +federal office, or occupy, in the public service, any position that is not +menial. This is not an inference, but the openly, passionately avowed +sentiment of the white South. The right to employment in the public +service is an exceedingly valuable one, for which white men have struggled +and fought. A vast army of men are employed in the administration of +public affairs. Many avenues of employment are closed to colored men by +popular prejudice. If their right to public employment is recognized, and +the way to it open through the civil service, or the appointing power, or +the suffrages of the people, it will prove, as it has already, a strong +incentive to effort and a powerful lever for advancement. Its value to the +Negro, like that of the right to vote, may be <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />judged by the eagerness of +the whites to deprive him of it.</p> + +<p>Not only is the Negro taxed without representation in the States referred +to, but he pays, through the tariff and internal revenue, a tax to a +National government whose supreme judicial tribunal declares that it +cannot, through the executive arm, enforce its own decrees, and, +therefore, refuses to pass upon a question, squarely before it, involving +a basic right of citizenship. For the decision of the Supreme Court in the +Giles case, if it foreshadows the attitude which the Court will take upon +other cases to the same general end which will soon come before it, is +scarcely less than a reaffirmation of the Dred Scott decision; it +certainly amounts to this—that in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, +colored men in the United States have no political rights which the States +are bound to respect. To say this much is to say that all the privileges +and immunities which Negroes henceforth enjoy, must be by favor of the +whites; they are not <i>rights</i>. The whites <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />have so declared; they proclaim +that the country is theirs, that the Negro should be thankful that he has +so much, when so much more might be withheld from him. He stands upon a +lower footing than any alien; he has no government to which he may look +for protection.</p> + +<p>Moreover, the white South sends to Congress, on a basis including the +Negro population, a delegation nearly twice as large as it is justly +entitled to, and one which may always safely be relied upon to oppose in +Congress every measure which seeks to protect the equality, or to enlarge +the rights of colored citizens. The grossness of this injustice is all the +more apparent since the Supreme Court, in the Alabama case referred to, +has declared the legislative and political department of the government to +be the only power which can right a political wrong. Under this decision +still further attacks upon the liberties of the citizen may be confidently +expected. Armed with the Negro's sole weapon of defense, the white South +stands ready to smite down his rights.<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" /> The ballot was first given to the +Negro to defend him against this very thing. He needs it now far more than +then, and for even stronger reasons. The 9,000,000 free colored people of +to-day have vastly more to defend than the 3,000,000 hapless blacks who +had just emerged from slavery. If there be those who maintain that it was +a mistake to give the Negro the ballot at the time and in the manner in +which it was given, let them take to heart this reflection: that to +deprive him of it to-day, or to so restrict it as to leave him utterly +defenseless against the present relentless attitude of the South toward +his rights, will prove to be a mistake so much greater than the first, as +to be no less than a crime, from which not alone the Southern Negro must +suffer, but for which the nation will as surely pay the penalty as it paid +for the crime of slavery. Contempt for law is death to a republic, and +this one has developed alarming symptoms of the disease.</p> + +<p>And now, having thus robbed the Negro of every political and civil +<i>right</i>, the white South, <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />in palliation of its course, makes a great show +of magnanimity in leaving him, as the sole remnant of what he acquired +through the Civil War, a very inadequate public school education, which, +by the present program, is to be directed mainly towards making him a +better agricultural laborer. Even this is put forward as a favor, although +the Negro's property is taxed to pay for it, and his labor as well. For it +is a well settled principle of political economy, that land and machinery +of themselves produce nothing, and that labor indirectly pays its fair +proportion of the tax upon the public's wealth. The white South seems to +stand to the Negro at present as one, who, having been reluctantly +compelled to release another from bondage, sees him stumbling forward and +upward, neglected by his friends and scarcely yet conscious of his own +strength; seizes him, binds him, and having bereft him of speech, of sight +and of manhood, "yokes him with the mule" and exclaims, with a show of +virtue which ought to deceive no one: "Behold how good a friend I <a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />am of +yours! Have I not left you a stomach and a pair of arms, and will I not +generously permit you to work for me with the one, that you may thereby +gain enough to fill the other? A brain you do not need. We will relieve +you of any responsibility that might seem to demand such an organ."</p> + +<p>The argument of peace-loving Northern white men and Negro opportunists +that the political power of the Negro having long ago been suppressed by +unlawful means, his right to vote is a mere paper right, of no real value, +and therefore to be lightly yielded for the sake of a hypothetical +harmony, is fatally short-sighted. It is precisely the attitude and +essentially the argument which would have surrendered to the South in the +sixties, and would have left this country to rot in slavery for another +generation. White men do not thus argue concerning their own rights. They +know too well the value of ideals. Southern white men see too clearly the +latent power of these unexercised rights. If the political pow<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />er of the +Negro was a nullity because of his ignorance and lack of leadership, why +were they not content to leave it so, with the pleasing assurance that if +it ever became effective, it would be because the Negroes had grown fit +for its exercise? On the contrary, they have not rested until the +possibility of its revival was apparently headed off by new State +Constitutions. Nor are they satisfied with this. There is no doubt that an +effort will be made to secure the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, and +thus forestall the development of the wealthy and educated Negro, whom the +South seems to anticipate as a greater menace than the ignorant ex-slave. +However improbable this repeal may seem, it is not a subject to be lightly +dismissed; for it is within the power of the white people of the nation to +do whatever they wish in the premises—they did it once; they can do it +again. The Negro and his friends should see to it that the white majority +shall never wish to do anything to his hurt. There still stands, before +the Negro-hating whites of the South, <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />the specter of a Supreme Court +which will interpret the Constitution to mean what it says, and what those +who enacted it meant, and what the nation, which ratified it, understood, +and which will find power, in a nation which goes beyond seas to +administer the affairs of distant peoples, to enforce its own fundamental +laws; the specter, too, of an aroused public opinion which will compel +Congress and the Courts to preserve the liberties of the Republic, which +are the liberties of the people. To wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold +it lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything +else whatever is simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race, +disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, +that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against +oppression until they shall have become rich and learned, in competition +with those already thus favored and possessing the ballot in addition. +This is not the philosophy of history. The growth of liberty has been the +constant struggle of the <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />poor against the privileged classes; and the +goal of that struggle has ever been the equality of all men before the +law. The Negro who would yield this right, deserves to be a slave; he has +the servile spirit. The rich and the educated can, by virtue of their +influence, command many votes; can find other means of protection; the +poor man has but one, he should guard it as a sacred treasure. Long ago, +by fair treatment, the white leaders of the South might have bound the +Negro to themselves with hoops of steel. They have not chosen to take this +course, but by assuming from the beginning an attitude hostile to his +rights, have never gained his confidence, and now seek by foul means to +destroy where they have never sought by fair means to control.</p> + +<p>I have spoken of the effect of disfranchisement upon the colored race; it +is to the race as a whole, that the argument of the problem is generally +directed. But the unit of society in a republic is the individual, and not +the <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />race, the failure to recognize this fact being the fundamental error +which has beclouded the whole discussion. The effect of disfranchisement +upon the individual is scarcely less disastrous. I do not speak of the +moral effect of injustice upon those who suffer from it; I refer rather to +the practical consequences which may be appreciated by any mind. No +country is free in which the way upward is not open for every man to try, +and for every properly qualified man to attain whatever of good the +community life may offer. Such a condition does not exist, at the South, +even in theory, for any man of color. In no career can such a man compete +with white men upon equal terms. He must not only meet the prejudice of +the individual, not only the united prejudice of the white community; but +lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn +with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far +shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts +itself readily to circumstances; and be<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />ing thus adaptable, there is +always the temptation to</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,<br /></span> +<span>Where thrift may follow fawning."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He who can most skilfully balance himself upon the advancing or receding +wave of white opinion concerning his race, is surest of such measure of +prosperity as is permitted to men of dark skins. There are Negro teachers +in the South—the privilege of teaching in their own schools is the one +respectable branch of the public service still left open to them—who, for +a grudging appropriation from a Southern legislature, will decry their own +race, approve their own degradation, and laud their oppressors. Deprived +of the right to vote, and, therefore, of any power to demand what is their +due, they feel impelled to buy the tolerance of the whites at any +sacrifice. If to live is the first duty of man, as perhaps it is the first +instinct, then those who thus stoop to conquer may be right. But is it +needful to stoop so low, and <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />if so, where lies the ultimate +responsibility for this abasement?</p> + +<p>I shall say nothing about the moral effect of disfranchisement upon the +white people, or upon the State itself. What slavery made of the Southern +whites is a matter of history. The abolition of slavery gave the South an +opportunity to emerge from barbarism. Present conditions indicate that the +spirit which dominated slavery still curses the fair section over which +that institution spread its blight.</p> + +<p>And now, is the situation remediless? If not so, where lies the remedy? +First let us take up those remedies suggested by the men who approve of +disfranchisement, though they may sometimes deplore the method, or regret +the necessity.</p> + +<p>Time, we are told, heals all diseases, rights all wrongs, and is the only +cure for this one. It is a cowardly argument. These people are entitled to +their rights to-day, while they are yet alive to enjoy them; and it is +poor statesmanship and worse morals to nurse a <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />present evil and thrust it +forward upon a future generation for correction. The nation can no more +honestly do this than it could thrust back upon a past generation the +responsibility for slavery. It had to meet that responsibility; it ought +to meet this one.</p> + +<p>Education has been put forward as the great corrective—preferably +industrial education. The intellect of the whites is to be educated to the +point where they will so appreciate the blessings of liberty and equality, +as of their own motion to enlarge and defend the Negro's rights. The +Negroes, on the other hand, are to be so trained as to make them, not +equal with the whites in any way—God save the mark! this would be +unthinkable!—but so useful to the community that the whites will protect +them rather than to lose their valuable services. Some few enthusiasts go +so far as to maintain that by virtue of education the Negro will, in time, +become strong enough to protect himself against any aggression of the +whites; this, it may be said, is a strictly Northern view.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />It is not quite clearly apparent how education alone, in the ordinary +meaning of the word, is to solve, in any appreciable time, the problem of +the relations of Southern white and black people. The need of education of +all kinds for both races is wofully apparent. But men and nations have +been free without being learned, and there have been educated slaves. +Liberty has been known to languish where culture had reached a very high +development. Nations do not first become rich and learned and then free, +but the lesson of history has been that they first become free and then +rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back into slavery again because of +too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of civic +virtues. The process of education has been going on rapidly in the +Southern States since the Civil War, and yet, if we take superficial +indications, the rights of the Negroes are at a lower ebb than at any time +during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race prejudice more +intense and uncompromising. It is <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" />not apparent that educated Southerners +are less rancorous than others in their speech concerning the Negro, or +less hostile in their attitude toward his rights. It is their voice alone +that we have heard in this discussion; and if, as they state, they are +liberal in their views as compared with the more ignorant whites, then God +save the Negro!</p> + +<p>I was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the Superintendent of +Public Schools of a Southern city that "there was no place in the modern +world for the Negro, except under the ground." If gentlemen holding such +opinions are to instruct the white youth of the South, would it be at all +surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their leisure to +the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground as many of +this superfluous race as possible?</p> + +<p>The sole excuse made in the South for the prevalent injustice to the Negro +is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies resulting +therefrom. It has nowhere <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />been declared as a part of the Southern program +that the Negro, when educated, is to be given a fair representation in +government or an equal opportunity in life; the contrary has been +strenuously asserted; education can never make of him anything but a +Negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to be safely trusted +with any degree of power. A system of education which would tend to soften +the asperities and lessen the inequalities between the races would be of +inestimable value. An education which by a rigid separation of the races +from the kindergarten to the university, fosters this racial antipathy, +and is directed toward emphasizing the superiority of one class and the +inferiority of another, might easily have disastrous, rather than +beneficial results. It would render the oppressing class more powerful to +injure, the oppressed quicker to perceive and keener to resent the injury, +without proportionate power of defense. The same assimilative education +which is given at the North to all children alike, <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />whereby native and +foreign, black and white, are taught side by side in every grade of +instruction, and are compelled by the exigencies of discipline to keep +their prejudices in abeyance, and are given the opportunity to learn and +appreciate one another's good qualities, and to establish friendly +relations which may exist throughout life, is absent from the Southern +system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future. +Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the +disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A +wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high +fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could +become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks, +and to the body politic, was clearly perceived and acknowledged by the +educated leaders of the South as far back as the Revolutionary War and the +Constitutional Convention, and yet they made no effort to abolish it. +Their remedy was the <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />same—time, education, social and economic +development;—and yet a bloody war was necessary to destroy slavery and +put its spirit temporarily to sleep. When the South and its friends are +ready to propose a system of education which will recognize and teach the +equality of all men before the law, the potency of education alone to +settle the race problem will be more clearly apparent.</p> + +<p>At present even good Northern men, who wish to educate the Negroes, feel +impelled to buy this privilege from the none too eager white South, by +conceding away the civil and political rights of those whom they would +benefit. They have, indeed, gone farther than the Southerners themselves +in approving the disfranchisement of the colored race. Most Southern men, +now that they have carried their point and disfranchised the Negro, are +willing to admit, in the language of a recent number of the <i>Charleston +Evening Post</i>, that "the attitude of the Southern white man toward the +Negro is incompatible with the fundamental ideas of <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />the republic." It +remained for our Clevelands and Abbotts and Parkhursts to assure them that +their unlawful course was right and justifiable, and for the most +distinguished Negro leader to declare that "every revised Constitution +throughout the Southern States has put a premium upon intelligence, +ownership of property, thrift and character." So does every penitentiary +sentence put a premium upon good conduct; but it is poor consolation to +the one unjustly condemned, to be told that he may shorten his sentence +somewhat by good behavior. Dr. Booker T. Washington, whose language is +quoted above, has, by his eminent services in the cause of education, won +deserved renown. If he has seemed, at times, to those jealous of the best +things for their race, to decry the higher education, it can easily be +borne in mind that his career is bound up in the success of an industrial +school; hence any undue stress which he may put upon that branch of +education may safely be ascribed to the natural zeal of the promoter, +without detracting in any <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />degree from the essential value of his +teachings in favor of manual training, thrift and character-building. But +Mr. Washington's prominence as an educational leader, among a race whose +prominent leaders are so few, has at times forced him, perhaps +reluctantly, to express himself in regard to the political condition of +his people, and here his utterances have not always been so wise nor so +happy. He has declared himself in favor of a restricted suffrage, which at +present means, for his own people, nothing less than complete loss of +representation—indeed it is only in that connection that the question has +been seriously mooted; and he has advised them to go slow in seeking to +enforce their civil and political rights, which, in effect, means silent +submission to injustice. Southern white men may applaud this advice as +wise, because it fits in with their purposes; but Senator McEnery of +Louisiana, in a recent article in the <i>Independent</i>, voices the Southern +white opinion of such acquiescence when he says: "What other race <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />would +have submitted so many years to slavery without complaint? <i>What other +race would have submitted so quietly to disfranchisement?</i> These facts +stamp his (the Negro's) inferiority to the white race." The time to +philosophize about the good there is in evil, is not while its correction +is still possible, but, if at all, after all hope of correction is past. +Until then it calls for nothing but rigorous condemnation. To try to read +any good thing into these fraudulent Southern constitutions, or to accept +them as an accomplished fact, is to condone a crime against one's race. +Those who commit crime should bear the odium. It is not a pleasing +spectacle to see the robbed applaud the robber. Silence were better.</p> + +<p>It has become fashionable to question the wisdom of the Fifteenth +Amendment. I believe it to have been an act of the highest statesmanship, +based upon the fundamental idea of this Republic, entirely justified by +conditions; experimental in its nature, perhaps, as every new thing must +be, but just in principle; <a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />a choice between methods, of which it seemed +to the great statesmen of that epoch the wisest and the best, and +essentially the most just, bearing in mind the interests of the freedmen +and the Nation, as well as the feelings of the Southern whites; never +fairly tried, and therefore, not yet to be justly condemned. Not one of +those who condemn it, has been able, even in the light of subsequent +events, to suggest a better method by which the liberty and civil rights +of the freedmen and their descendants could have been protected. Its +abandonment, as I have shown, leaves this liberty and these rights frankly +without any guaranteed protection. All the education which philanthropy or +the State could offer as a <i>substitute</i> for equality of rights, would be a +poor exchange; there is no defensible reason why they should not go hand +in hand, each encouraging and strengthening the other. The education which +one can demand as a right is likely to do more good than the education for +which one must sue as a favor.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />The chief argument against Negro suffrage, the insistently proclaimed +argument, worn threadbare in Congress, on the platform, in the pulpit, in +the press, in poetry, in fiction, in impassioned rhetoric, is the +reconstruction period. And yet the evils of that period were due far more +to the venality and indifference of white men than to the incapacity of +black voters. The revised Southern Constitutions adopted under +reconstruction reveal a higher statesmanship than any which preceded or +have followed them, and prove that the freed voters could as easily have +been led into the paths of civic righteousness as into those of +misgovernment. Certain it is that under reconstruction the civil and +political rights of all men were more secure in those States than they +have ever been since. We will hear less of the evils of reconstruction, +now that the bugaboo has served its purpose by disfranchising the Negro, +it will be laid aside for a time while the nation discusses the political +corruption of great cities; the scandalous conditions in Rhode Island; the +evils attending <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />reconstruction in the Philippines, and the scandals in +the postoffice department—for none of which, by the way, is the Negro +charged with any responsibility, and for none of which is the restriction +of the suffrage a remedy seriously proposed. Rhode Island is indeed the +only Northern State which has a property qualification for the franchise!</p> + +<p>There are three tribunals to which the colored people may justly appeal +for the protection of their rights: the United States Courts, Congress and +public opinion. At present all three seem mainly indifferent to any +question of human rights under the Constitution. Indeed, Congress and the +Courts merely follow public opinion, seldom lead it. Congress never enacts +a measure which is believed to oppose public opinion;—your Congressman +keeps his ear to the ground. The high, serene atmosphere of the Courts is +not impervious to its voice; they rarely enforce a law contrary to public +opinion, even the Supreme Court being able, as Charles Sumner once put it, +to find a reason for <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />every decision it may wish to render; or, as +experience has shown, a method to evade any question which it cannot +decently decide in accordance with public opinion. The art of straddling +is not confined to the political arena. The Southern situation has been +well described by a colored editor in Richmond: "When we seek relief at +the hands of Congress, we are informed that our plea involves a legal +question, and we are referred to the Courts. When we appeal to the Courts, +we are gravely told that the question is a political one, and that we must +go to Congress. When Congress enacts remedial legislation, our enemies +take it to the Supreme Court, which promptly declares it +unconstitutional." The Negro might chase his rights round and round this +circle until the end of time, without finding any relief.</p> + +<p>Yet the Constitution is clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no Supreme +Court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but +what it says. This Court should be bombarded with suits until it makes +some defi<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />nite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question +of the constitutionality of the disfranchising Constitutions of the +Southern States. The Negro and his friends will then have a clean-cut +issue to take to the forum of public opinion, and a distinct ground upon +which to demand legislation for the enforcement of the Federal +Constitution. The case from Alabama was carried to the Supreme Court +expressly to determine the constitutionality of the Alabama Constitution. +The Court declared itself without jurisdiction, and in the same breath +went into the merits of the case far enough to deny relief, without +passing upon the real issue. Had it said, as it might with absolute +justice and perfect propriety, that the Alabama Constitution is a bold and +impudent violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, the purpose of the lawsuit +would have been accomplished and a righteous cause vastly strengthened.</p> + +<p>But public opinion cannot remain permanently indifferent to so vital a +question. The agi<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />tation is already on. It is at present largely academic, +but is slowly and resistlessly, forcing itself into politics, which is the +medium through which republics settle such questions. It cannot much +longer be contemptuously or indifferently elbowed aside. The South itself +seems bent upon forcing the question to an issue, as, by its arrogant +assumptions, it brought on the Civil War. From that section, too, there +come now and then, side by side with tales of Southern outrage, excusing +voices, which at the same time are accusing voices; which admit that the +white South is dealing with the Negro unjustly and unwisely; that the +Golden Rule has been forgotten; that the interests of white men alone have +been taken into account, and that their true interests as well are being +sacrificed. There is a silent white South, uneasy in conscience, darkened +in counsel, groping for the light, and willing to do the right. They are +as yet a feeble folk, their voices scarcely audible above the clamor of +the mob. May their convictions ripen into wisdom, and may their num<a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" />bers +and their courage increase! If the class of Southern white men of whom +Judge Jones of Alabama, is so noble a representative, are supported and +encouraged by a righteous public opinion at the North, they may, in time, +become the dominant white South, and we may then look for wisdom and +justice in the place where, so far as the Negro is concerned, they now +seem well-nigh strangers. But even these gentlemen will do well to bear in +mind that so long as they discriminate in any way against the Negro's +equality of right, so long do they set class against class and open the +door to every sort of discrimination. There can be no middle ground +between justice and injustice, between the citizen and the serf.</p> + +<p>It is not likely that the North, upon the sober second thought, will +permit the dearly-bought results of the Civil War to be nullified by any +change in the Constitution. As long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the +<i>rights</i> of colored citizens are ultimately secure. There were would-be +despots in England after the <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" />granting of Magna Charta; but it outlived +them all, and the liberties of the English people are secure. There was +slavery in this land after the Declaration of Independence, yet the faces +of those who love liberty have ever turned to that immortal document. So +will the Constitution and its principles outlive the prejudices which +would seek to overthrow it.</p> + +<p>What colored men of the South can do to secure their citizenship to-day, +or in the immediate future, is not very clear. Their utterances on +political questions, unless they be to concede away the political rights +of their race, or to soothe the consciences of white men by suggesting +that the problem is insoluble except by some slow remedial process which +will become effectual only in the distant future, are received with scant +respect—could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise received, without a voting +constituency to back them up,—and must be cautiously made, lest they meet +an actively hostile reception. But there are many colored men at the +North, where their civil and polit<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />ical rights in the main are respected. +There every honest man has a vote, which he may freely cast, and which is +reasonably sure to be fairly counted. When this race develops a sufficient +power of combination, under adequate leadership,—and there are signs +already that this time is near at hand,—the Northern vote can be wielded +irresistibly for the defense of the rights of their Southern brethren.</p> + +<p>In the meantime the Northern colored men have the right of free speech, +and they should never cease to demand their rights, to clamor for them, to +guard them jealously, and insistently to invoke law and public sentiment +to maintain them. He who would be free must learn to protect his freedom. +Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. He who would be respected must +respect himself. The best friend of the Negro is he who would rather see, +within the borders of this republic one million free citizens of that +race, equal before the law, than ten million cringing serfs existing by a +contemptuous sufferance. A race that is willing to survive upon any other +terms is scarcely worthy of consideration.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />The direct remedy for the disfranchisement of the Negro lies through +political action. One scarcely sees the philosophy of distinguishing +between a civil and a political right. But the Supreme Court has +recognized this distinction and has designated Congress as the power to +right a political wrong. The Fifteenth Amendment gives Congress power to +enforce its provisions. The power would seem to be inherent in government +itself; but anticipating that the enforcement of the Amendment might +involve difficulty, they made the superorogatory declaration. Moreover, +they went further, and passed laws by which they provided for such +enforcement. These the Supreme Court has so far declared insufficient. It +is for Congress to make more laws. It is for colored men and for white men +who are not content to see the blood-bought results of the Civil War +nullified, to urge and direct public opinion to the point where it will +demand stringent legislation to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth +Amendments. This demand will rest in law, in morals and in true +statesmanship; no difficulties <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />attending it could be worse than the +present ignoble attitude of the Nation toward its own laws and its own +ideals—without courage to enforce them, without conscience to change +them, the United States presents the spectacle of a Nation drifting +aimlessly, so far as this vital, National problem is concerned, upon the +sea of irresolution, toward the maelstrom of anarchy.</p> + +<p>The right of Congress, under the Fourteenth Amendment, to reduce Southern +representation can hardly be disputed. But Congress has a simpler and more +direct method to accomplish the same end. It is the sole judge of the +qualifications of its own members, and the sole judge of whether any +member presenting his credentials has met those qualifications. It can +refuse to seat any member who comes from a district where voters have been +disfranchised: it can judge for itself whether this has been done, and +there is no appeal from its decision.</p> + +<p>If, when it has passed a law, any Court shall refuse to obey its behests, +it can impeach the judges. If any president refuse to lend the executive +arm of the government to the enforce<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />ment of the law, it can impeach the +president. No such extreme measures are likely to be necessary for the +enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—and the +Thirteenth, which is also threatened—but they are mentioned as showing +that Congress is supreme; and Congress proceeds, the House directly, the +Senate indirectly, from the people and is governed by public opinion. If +the reduction of Southern representation were to be regarded in the light +of a bargain by which the Fifteenth Amendment was surrendered, then it +might prove fatal to liberty. If it be inflicted as a punishment and a +warning, to be followed by more drastic measures if not sufficient, it +would serve a useful purpose. The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the +right to vote <i>shall not</i> be denied or abridged on account of color; and +any measure adopted by Congress should look to that end. Only as the power +to injure the Negro in Congress is reduced thereby, would a reduction of +representation protect the Negro; without other measures it would still +leave him in <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />the hands of the Southern whites, who could safely be +trusted to make him pay for their humiliation.</p> + +<p>Finally, there is, somewhere in the Universe a "Power that works for +righteousness," and that leads men to do justice to one another. To this +power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the Negro can +always appeal. He has the right upon his side, and in the end the right +will prevail. The Negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and +citizenship throughout the United States. No better guaranty of this is +needed than a comparison of his present with his past. Toward this he must +do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity. But it will be, +after all, largely a white man's conflict, fought out in the forum of the +public conscience. The Negro, though eager enough when opportunity +offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition of slavery, +which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the enforcement of +the Fifteenth Amendment.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Negro_and_the_Law" id="The_Negro_and_the_Law" /><i>The Negro and the Law</i></h2> + +<h3>By WILFORD H. SMITH</h3> + +<blockquote><p>The law and how it is dodged by enactments infringing upon the rights + guaranteed to the freedmen by constitutional amendment. A powerful plea + for justice for the Negro.</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/smith.png" +alt="WILFORD H. SMITH." title="WILFORD H. SMITH." /> +</div> +<p class="center"><b>WILFORD H. SMITH.</b></p> + +<p><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" /></p> + + +<p>The colored people in the United States are indebted to the beneficent +provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of +the United States, for the establishment of their freedom and citizenship, +and it is to these mainly they must look for the maintenance of their +liberty and the protection of their civil rights. These amendments +followed close upon the Emancipation Proclamation issued January 1st, +1863, by President Lincoln, and his call for volunteers, which was +answered by more than three hundred thousand negro soldiers, who, during +three years of military service, helped the Union arms to victory at +Appomattox. Standing in the shadow of the awful calamity and deep distress +of the civil war, and grateful to God for peace and victory over the +rebellion, the American people, who <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />upheld the Union, rose to the sublime +heights of doing justice to the former slaves, who had grown and +multiplied with the country from the early settlement at Jamestown. It +looked like an effort to pay them back for their years of faithfulness and +unrequited toil, by not only making them free but placing them on equal +footing with themselves in the fundamental law. Certainly, they intended +at least, that they should have as many rights under the Constitution as +are given to white naturalized citizens who come to this country from all +the nations of Europe.</p> + +<p>The 13th amendment provides that neither slavery nor involuntary +servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have +been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject +to their jurisdiction.</p> + +<p>The 14th amendment provides in section one, that all persons born or +naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, +are citizens of the United States, and <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />of the State wherein they reside. +No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges +or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State +deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of +law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection +of the law.</p> + +<p>The 15th amendment provides 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.</p> + +<p>Chief Justice Waite, in the case of the United States vs. Cruikshank, 92nd +U.S. 542, said:—</p> + +<p>"The 14th amendment prohibits a State from denying to any person within +its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. The equality of the +rights of citizens is a principle of republicanism. Every Republican +government is in duty bound to protect all its citizens in the enjoyment +of this principle if within its power."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />The same Chief Justice, in the case of the United States vs. Reese, 92nd +U.S. 214, said:</p> + +<p>"The 15th amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. + It prevents the States or the United States from giving preference in + this particular to one citizen of the United States over another, on + account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Before its + adoption this could be done. It was as much within the power of a State + to exclude citizens of the United States from voting on account of race + and color, as it was on account of age, property or education. Now it is + not."</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding the manifest meaning of equality of citizenship contained +in the constitutional amendments, it was found necessary to reinforce them +by a civil rights law, enacted by the Congress of the United States, March +1st, 1875, entitled, "An Act To Protect All Citizens In Their Civil and +Legal Rights." Its preamble and first section are as follows:—Preamble: +"Whereas, it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of +all men <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its +dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of +whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political, and +it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental +principles into law, therefore,</p> + +<p>"Be it enacted that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United +States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the +accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, public +conveyances on land or water, theatres and other places of public +amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by +law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless +to any previous condition of servitude."</p> + +<p>The Supreme Court of the United States has held this salutary law +unconstitutional and void as applied to the States, but binding in the +District of Columbia, and the Territories over which the government of the +United States has control.—Civil Rights cases 109 U.S. 63.<a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" /> Since the +Supreme Court's ruling, many Northern and Western States have enacted +similar civil rights laws. Equality of citizenship in the United States +suffered a severe blow when the civil rights bill was struck down by the +Supreme Court. The colored people looked upon the decision as unsound, and +prompted by race prejudice. It was clear that the amendments to the +Constitution were adopted to secure not only their freedom, but their +equal civil rights, and by ratifying the amendments the several States +conceded to the Federal government the power and authority of maintaining +not alone their freedom, but their equal civil rights in the United States +as well.</p> + +<p>The Federal Supreme Court put a narrow interpretation on the Constitution, +rather than a liberal one in favor of equal rights; in marked contrast to +a recent decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New +York in a civil rights case arising under the statute of New York, Burks +vs. Bosso, 81 N.Y. Supp, 384. The New York Supreme Court held this +<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />language: "The liberation of the slaves, and the suppression of the +rebellion, was supplemented by the amendments to the national Constitution +according to the colored people their civil rights and investing them with +citizenship. The amendments indicated a clear purpose to secure equal +rights to the black people with the white race. The legislative intent +must control, and that may be gathered from circumstances inducing the +act. Where that intent has been unvaryingly manifested in one direction, +and that in the prohibition of any discrimination against a large class of +citizens, the courts should not hesitate to keep apace with legislative +purpose. We must remember that the slightest trace of African blood places +a man under the ban of belonging to that race. However respectable and +whatever he may be, he is ostracized socially, and when the policy of the +law is against extending the prohibition of his civil rights, a liberal, +rather than a narrow interpretation should be given to enactments +evidencing the intent to eliminate race dis<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />crimination, as far as that +can be accomplished by legislative intervention."</p> + +<p>The statutory enactments and recent Constitutions of most of the former +slave-holding States, show that they have never looked with favor upon the +amendments to the national Constitution. They rather regard them as war +measures designed by the North to humiliate and punish the people of those +States lately in rebellion. While in the main they accept the 13th +amendment and concede that the negro should have personal freedom, they +have never been altogether in harmony with the spirit and purposes of the +14th and 15th amendments. There seems to be a distinct and positive fear +on the part of the South that if the negro is given a man's chance, and is +accorded equal civil rights with white men on the juries, on common +carriers, and in public places, that it will in some way lead to his +social equality. This fallacious argument is persisted in, notwithstanding +the well-known fact, that although the Jews are the leaders in the wealth +<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />and commerce of the South, their civil equality has never, except in rare +instances, led to any social intermingling with the Southern whites.</p> + +<p>Holding these views the Southern people in 1875, found means to overcome +the Republican majorities in all the re-constructed States, and +practically drove the negroes out of the law-making bodies of all those +States. So that, now in all the Southern States, so far as can be +ascertained, there is not one negro sitting as a representative in any of +the law-making bodies. The next step was to deny them representation on +the grand and petit juries in the State courts, through Jury +Commissioners, who excluded them from the panels.</p> + +<p>To be taxed without representation is a serious injustice in a republic +whose foundations are laid upon the principle of "no taxation without +representation." But serious as this phase of the case must appear, +infinitely more serious is the case when we consider the fact that they +are likewise excluded from the grand and petit juries in all the State +courts, with the <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />fewest and rarest exceptions. The courts sit in judgment +upon their lives and liberties, and dispose of their dearest earthly +possessions. They are not entitled to life, liberty or property if the +courts should decide they are not, and yet in this all-important tribunal +they are denied all voice, except as parties and witnesses, and here and +there a negro lawyer is permitted to appear. One vote on the grand jury +might prevent an indictment, and save disgrace and the risk of public +trial; while one vote on the petit jury might save a life or a term of +imprisonment, for an innocent person pursued and persecuted by powerful +enemies.</p> + +<p>With no voice in the making of the laws, which they are bound to obey, nor +in their administration by the courts, thus tied and helpless, the negroes +were proscribed by a system of legal enactments intended to wholly nullify +the letter and spirit of the war amendments to the national organic law. +This crusade was begun by enacting a system of Jim-Crow car laws in all +the Southern States, so that now the<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" /> Jim-Crow cars run from the Gulf of +Mexico into the national capital. They are called, "Separate Car Laws," +providing for separate but equal accommodations for whites and negroes. +Though fair on their face, they are everywhere known to discriminate +against the colored people in their administration, and were intended to +humiliate and degrade them.</p> + +<p>Setting apart separate places for negroes on public carriers, is just as +repugnant to the spirit and intent of the national Constitution, as would +be a law compelling all Jews or all Roman Catholics to occupy compartments +specially set apart for them on account of their religion. If these +statutes were not especially aimed at the negro, an arrangement of +different fares, such as first, second and third classes, would have been +far more just and preferable, and would have enabled the refined and +exclusive of both races to avoid the presence of the coarse and vicious, +by selecting the more expensive fare. Still these laws have been upheld by +the Federal Supreme Court, and pro<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />nounced not in conflict with the +amendments to the Constitution of the United States.</p> + +<p>City ordinances providing for separate street cars for white and colored +passengers, are in force in Atlanta, New Orleans, and in nearly all the +cities of the South. In all the principal cities of Alabama, a certain +portion of the street cars is set apart and marked for negroes. The +conductors are clothed with the authority of determining to what race the +passenger belongs, and may arrest persons refusing to obey his orders. It +is often a very difficult task to determine to what race some passengers +belong, there being so many dark-white persons that might be mistaken for +negroes, and persons known as negroes who are as fair as any white person.</p> + +<p>In the State of Georgia, a negro cannot purchase a berth in a sleeping +car, under any circumstances, no matter where his destination, owing to +the following statute enacted December 20th, 1899: "Sleeping car +companies, and all railroads operating sleeping cars in this <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />State, shall +separate the white and colored races, and shall not permit them to occupy +the same compartment; provided, that nothing in this act shall be +construed to compel sleeping car companies or railroads operating sleeping +cars, to carry persons of color in sleeping or parlor cars; provided also, +that this act shall not apply to colored nurses or servants travelling +with their employers." The violation of this statute is a misdemeanor.</p> + +<p>Article 45, section 639 of the statutes of Georgia, 1895, makes it a +misdemeanor to keep or confine white and colored convicts together, or to +chain them together going to and from work. There is also a statute in +Georgia requiring that a separate tax list be kept in every county, of the +property of white and colored persons. Both races generally approve the +laws prohibiting inter-marriages between white and colored persons, which +seem to be uniform throughout the Southern States.</p> + +<p>Florida seems to have gone a step further than the rest, and by sections +2612 and 2613,<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" /> Revised Statutes, 1892, it is made a misdemeanor for a +white man and a colored woman, and vice versa, to sleep under the same +roof at night, occupying the same room. Florida is entitled to credit, +however, for a statute making marriages between white and colored persons +prior to 1866, where they continue to live together, valid and binding to +all intents and purposes.</p> + +<p>In addition to this forced separation of the races by law, "from the +cradle to the grave," there is yet a sadder and more deplorable +separation, in the almost universal disposition to leave the negroes +wholly and severely to themselves in their home life and religious life, +by the white Christian people of the South, distinctly manifesting no +concern in their moral and religious development.</p> + +<p>In Georgia and the Carolinas, and all the Gulf States (except Texas, where +the farm labor is mostly white) the negroes on the farms are held by a +system of laws which prevents them from leaving the plantations, and +enables <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />the landlord to punish them by fine and imprisonment for any +alleged breach of contract. In the administration of these laws they are +virtually made slaves to the landlord, as long as they are in debt, and it +is wholly in the power of the landlord to forever keep them in debt.</p> + +<p>By section 355, of the Criminal Code of South Carolina, 1902, it is made a +misdemeanor to violate a contract to work and labor on a farm, subject to +a fine of not less than five dollars, and more than one hundred dollars, +or imprisonment for not less than ten days, or more than thirty. It is +also made a misdemeanor to employ any farm laborer while under contract +with another, or to persuade or entice a farm laborer to leave his +employer.</p> + +<p>The Georgia laws are a little stronger in this respect than the laws of +the other States. By section 121, of the Code of Georgia, 1895, it is +provided, "that if any person shall, by offering higher wages, or in any +other way entice, persuade or decoy, or attempt to entice, persuade or +decoy any farm laborer from his em<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />ployer, he shall be guilty of a +misdemeanor." Again, by act of December 17th, 1901, the Georgia +Legislature passed a law making it an offense to rent land, or furnish +land to a farm laborer, after he has contracted with another landlord, +without first obtaining the consent of the first landlord.</p> + +<p>The presence of large numbers of negroes in the towns and cities of the +South and North can be accounted for by such laws as the above, +administered by ignorant country magistrates, in nearly all cases the +pliant tools of the landlords.</p> + +<p>The boldest and most open violation of the negro's rights under the +Federal Constitution, was the enactment of the grand-father clauses, and +understanding clauses in the new Constitutions of Louisiana, Alabama, the +Carolinas, and Virginia, which have had the effect to deprive the great +body of them of the right to vote in those States, for no other reason +than their race and color. Although thus depriving him of his vote, and +all voice in <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />the State governments at the South, in all of them his +property is taxed to pay pensions to Confederate soldiers, who fought to +continue him in slavery. The fact is, the franchise had been practically +taken from the negroes in the South since 1876, by admitted fraudulent +methods and intimidation in elections, but it was not until late years +that this nullification of the amendments was enacted into State +Constitutions.</p> + +<p>This brings me to the proposition that it is mainly in the enforcement, or +the administration of the laws, however fair and equal they may appear on +their face, that the constitutional rights of negroes to equal protection +and treatment are denied, not only in the South but in many Northern +States. There are noble exceptions, however, of high-toned honorable +gentlemen on the bench as trial judges, and Supreme Court justices, in the +South, who without regard to consequences have stood for fairness and +justice to the negro in their courts.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />With the population of the South distinctly divided into two classes, not +the rich and poor, not the educated and ignorant, not the moral and +immoral, but simply whites and blacks, all negroes being generally +regarded as inferior and not entitled to the same rights as any white +person, it is bound to be a difficult matter to obtain fair and just +results, when there is any sort of conflict between the races. The negro +realizes this, and knows that he is at an immense disadvantage when he is +forced to litigate with a white man in civil matters, and much more so +when he is charged with a crime by a white person.</p> + +<p>The juries in the South almost always reject the testimony of any number +of negroes if given in opposition to that of a white witness, and this is +true in many instances, no matter how unreasonable or inconsistent the +testimony of the white witness may be. Jurors in the South have been heard +to admit that they would be socially ostracized if they brought in <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />a +verdict upon colored testimony alone, in opposition to white testimony.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it can be best explained how the negro fares in the courts of the +South by giving a few cases showing how justice is administered to him:</p> + +<p>A negro boy was brought to the bar for trial before a police magistrate, +in a Southern capital city, charged with assault and battery on a white +boy about the same age, but a little larger. The testimony showed that the +white boy had beat the negro on several previous occasions as he passed on +his way to school, and each time the negro showed no disposition to fight. +On the morning of the charge he attacked the negro and attempted to cut +him with a knife, because the negro's mother had reported to the white +boy's mother the previous assaults, and asked her to chastise him. The +colored boy in trying to keep from being cut was compelled to fight, and +got the advantage and threw the white boy down and blacked his eyes. The +magistrate on this evidence fined <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />the negro twenty-five dollars. The +mother of the negro having once been a servant for the magistrate, found +courage to rise, and said: "Jedge, yo Honer, can I speak?" The magistrate +replied, "Yes, go on." She said, "Well, Jedge, my boy is ben tellin' me +about dis white boy meddlin' him on his way to school, but I would not let +my boy fight, 'cause I 'tole him he couldn't git no jestice in law. But he +had no other way to go to school 'ceptin' gwine dat way; and den jedge, +dis white chile is bigger an my chile and jumped on him fust with a knife +for nothin', befo' my boy tetched him. Jedge I am a po' woman, and washes +fur a livin', and ain't got nobody to help me, and can't raise all dat +money. I think dat white boy's mammy ought to pay half of dis fine." By +this time her voice had become stifled by her tears. The judge turned to +the mother of the white boy and said, "Madam, are you willing to pay half +of this fine?" She answered, "Yes, Your Honor." And the judge changed the +order to a fine of $12.50 each, against both boys.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />A celebrated case in point reported in the books is, George Maury vs. The +State of Miss., 68 Miss. 605. I reproduce the court's statement of the +case:—"This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of Kemper County. +Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life. +He appears in this court without counsel. The facts are briefly these: +One, Nicholson, a white man, accompanied by his little son seven years +old, was driving an ox team along a public road; he had occasion to stop +and the oxen were driven by his son; defendant, a negro, also in an ox +wagon, was going along the road in an opposite direction, and met +Nicholson's wagon in charge of the little boy. It was after dark, and when +the wagons met, according to the testimony of Nicholson, the defendant +insultingly demanded of the boy to give the way, and cursed and abused +him. Nicholson, hearing the colloquy, hurried to the scene and a fight +ensued between him and Maury, in which the latter got the advantage, +inflicting severe blows upon Nichol<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />son. This occurred on Thursday, and on +the following Sunday night, Nicholson, in company with eleven or twelve of +his friends, rode to the farm of Maury, and after sending several of their +number to ascertain if he was at home, rode rapidly into his yard and +called for him. Not finding him, they proceeded to search the premises, +and found several colored men shut up in the smoke house, the door of +which some of the searching party had broken open. Maury, the accused, was +not found there, and about that time some one called out, "Here is +George." Some of the party then started in the direction of the cotton +house from which the voice proceeded, when a volley was fired from it, and +two of the searching party were killed, one of whom was the son of the +former owner of the defendant, and the other a brother-in-law of +Nicholson. The members of the raiding party testified that their purpose +in going to the home of the defendant was merely to arrest him. It was, +however, shown that Nicholson, immediately after the <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />fight on Thursday, +informed Cobb, and Cobb between Thursday and Sunday night collected the +men who joined in the raid. No affidavit for the arrest of Maury had been +made, and none of the party had any warrant, or made any announcement to +the defendant or his family, of the object of their visit. The accused who +testified in his own behalf, denied that he was at home at the time of the +shooting, and says he fled before the raiding party arrived. He also +contradicted Nicholson in his account of the difficulty with him, and +denies that he spoke harshly to the child." Chief Justice Campbell, in +delivering the opinion of the court said, "It is inconceivable that the +crime of murder is predicable of the facts disclosed by the evidence in +this case. The time and place and circumstances of the killing forbid any +such conclusion as a verdict of guilty of murder." The judgment of the +trial court was reversed.</p> + +<p>This same Chief Justice, in the case of Monroe vs. Mississippi, 71 Miss. +201, where a ne<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />gro was convicted of rape, makes use of the following +brave and noble language, reversing the case on the ground of the +insufficiency of the evidence: "We might greatly lighten our labors by +deferring in all cases to the verdict approved by the presiding judge as +to the facts, but our duty is to administer justice without respect of +persons, and do equal right to the poor and the rich. Hence the +disposition, which we are not ashamed to confess we have, to guard +jealously the rights of the poor and friendless and despised, and to be +astute as far as we properly may, against injustice, whether proceeding +from wilfulness or indifference."</p> + +<p>The country has produced no abler jurist, nor the South no greater man +than Ex-Chief Justice Campbell of Mississippi. If the counsel of such men +as he and Chief Justice Garret of the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas, +could obtain in the South, there would be no problem between the races. +All would be contented because justice would be administered to the whites +and blacks alike.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />In the administration of the suffrage sections under the new +Constitutions of the South by the partisan boards of registrars, the same +discrimination against negroes was practiced. Their methods are of more or +less interest. The plan was to exclude all negroes from the electorate +without excluding a single white man. Under the Alabama Constitution, a +soldier in the Civil War, either on the Federal or Confederate side, is +entitled to qualification. When a negro goes up to register as a soldier +he is asked for his discharge. When he presents it he is asked, "How do we +know that you are the man whose name is written in this discharge? Bring +us two white men whom we know and who will swear that you have not found +this paper, and that they know that you were a soldier in the company and +regiment in which you claim to have been." This, of course, could not be +done, and the ex-soldier who risked his life for the Union is denied the +right to vote.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />The same Constitution provides that if not a soldier or the legal +descendant of one, an elector must be of good character and understand the +duties and obligations of citizenship under a Republican form of +government. When a negro claims qualifications under the good character +and understanding clauses he is put through an examination similar to the +following:</p> + +<p>"What is a republican form of government?</p> + +<p>"What is a limited monarchy?</p> + +<p>"What islands did the United States come into possession of by the +Spanish-American War?</p> + +<p>"What is the difference between Jeffersonian Democracy and Calhoun +principles, as compared to the Monroe Doctrine?</p> + +<p>"If the Nicaragua Canal is cut, what will be the effect if the Pacific +Ocean is two feet higher than the Atlantic?" Should these questions be +answered satisfactorily, the negro must still produce two white men known +to the registrars to testify to his good character. A remarkable +<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />exception in the treatment of negroes by the registrars of Dallas county, +Alabama, is shown in the following account taken from the Montgomery +Advertizer:—</p> + +<p>"An old negro barber by the name of Edward E. Harris, stepped in before +the registrars, hat in hand, humble and polite, with a kindly smile on his +face. He respectfully asked to be registered. He signed the application +and waited a few minutes until the registrars had disposed of some other +matters, and being impressed with his respectful bearing, some member of +the board commenced to ask a few questions. The old man told his story in +a straight forward manner. He said: "Gentlemen, I am getting to be a +pretty old man. I was born here in the South, and I followed my young +master through all of the campaigns in Virginia, when Mas' Bob Lee made it +so warm for the Yankees. But our luck left us at Gettysburg. The Yankees +got around in our rear there, and I got a bullet in the back of my head, +and one in my leg before I got out <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />of that scrape. But I was not hurt +much, and my greatest anxiety was about my young master, Mr. John Holly, +who was a member of the Bur Rifles, 18th Mississippi. He was a private and +enlisted at Jackson, Miss.</p> + +<p>"He could not be found the first day; I looked all among the dead on the +battle field for him and he was not there. Next day I got a permit to go +through the hospitals, and I looked into the face of every soldier +closely, in the hope of finding my young master. After many hours of +searching I found him, but he was dangerously wounded. I stayed by his +side, wounded as I was, for three long weeks, but he gradually grew worse +and then he died. I went out with the body and saw it buried as decently +as I could, and then I went back to Jackson and told the young mistress +how brave he was in battle, how good he was to me, and told her all the +words he had sent her, as he lay there on that rude cot in the hospital. +That is my record as a Confederate soldier, and if you gentlemen care to +give me a certificate of reg<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />istration, I would be much obliged to you." +It is needless to say that old Ed. Harris got his certificate.</p> + +<p>It is insisted upon by the leaders of public opinion at the South, that +negroes should not be given equal political and civil rights with white +men, defined by law and enforceable by the courts; but that they should be +content to strive to deserve the good wishes and friendly feeling of the +whites, and if the South is let alone, they will see to it that negroes +get becoming treatment.</p> + +<p>While there is a large number of the high-toned, chivalrous element of the +old master class yet living, who would stand by the negro and not permit +him to be wronged if they could prevent it, yet they are powerless to +control the great mass of the poor whites who are most bitter in their +prejudices against the negro. They should also bear in mind that the old +master class is rapidly passing way, and that there is constantly an +influx of foreigners to the South, and in less than fifty years the<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" /> +Italians, or some other foreign nationality, may be the ruling class in +all the Southern States; and the negro, deprived of all political and +civil rights by the Constitution and laws, would be wholly at the mercy of +a people without sympathy for him.</p> + +<p>In order to show the fallacy and the wrong and injustice of this doctrine, +and how helplessly exposed it leaves the negro to the prejudices of the +poor whites, I relate a tragedy in the life of a friend of mine, who was +well known and respected in the town of Rayville, Louisiana.</p> + +<p>Sewall Smith, for many years ran the leading barber shop for whites in the +town of Rayville, and was well-liked and respected by the leading white +men of the entire parish. At the suggestion of his customers he bought +Louisiana state lands while they were cheap, before the railroad was put +through between Vicksburg and Shreveport; and as the road passed near his +lands he was thereby made a rich man, as wealth goes in those parts. His +good for<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />tune, however, did not swell his head and he remained the same to +his friends. He became so useful in his parish that there was never a +public gathering of the leading white business men that he was not invited +to it, and he was always on the delegations to all the levee or river +conventions sent from his parish. He was chosen to such places by white +men exclusively; and in his own town he was as safe from wrong or injury, +on account of his race or color, as any white man.</p> + +<p>After the trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he +had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in +the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy +asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed +well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might +not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping +place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked permission to take +his satchel back to the train on the <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />following day when he was to return. +The next day the boy came for the satchel, and they had nearly reached the +depot about train time, when they passed a saloon where a crowd of poor +whites sat on boxes whittling sticks. The sight of a negro having a white +boy carrying his satchel quite enraged them, and after cursing and abusing +Smith and the boy, they undertook to kick and assault Smith. Smith +defended himself. The result was a shooting affair, in which Smith shot +two or three of them and was himself shot. The train rolled up while the +fight was in progress, and without inquiring the cause or asking any +questions whatever, fully a hundred white men jumped off the train and +riddled Smith with bullets. That was the end of it. Nobody was indicted or +even arrested for killing an insolent "nigger" that did not keep his +place. That is the way the affair was regarded in Ruston. Of course, the +people of Rayville very much regretted it, but they could not do anything, +and could not afford to defend the rights of a negro against <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />white men +under such circumstances, and the matter dropped.</p> + +<p>I have preferred not to mention the numerous ways and many instances in +which the rights of negroes are denied in public places, and on the common +carriers in the South, under circumstances very humiliating and degrading. +Nor have I cared to refer to the barbarous and inhuman prison systems of +the South, that are worse than anything the imagination can conceive in a +civilized and Christian land, as shown by reports of legislative +committees.</p> + +<p>If the negro can secure a fair and impartial trial in the courts, and can +be secure in his life and liberty and property, so as not to be deprived +of them except by due process of law, and can have a voice in the making +and administration of the laws, he shall have gone a great way in the +South. It is to be hoped that public opinion can be awakened to this +extent, and that it may assist him to attain that end.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Characteristics_of_the_Negro_People" id="The_Characteristics_of_the_Negro_People" /><i>The Characteristics of the Negro People</i></h2> + +<h3>By H.T. KEALING</h3> + +<blockquote><p>A frank statement of the virtues and failings of the race, indicating + very clearly the evils which must be overcome, and the good which must + be developed, if success is really to attend the effort to uplift them.</p></blockquote> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/kealing.png" +alt="H.T. KEALING." title="H.T. KEALING." /> +</div> +<p class="center"><b>H.T. KEALING.</b></p> + +<p><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" /></p> + + +<p>The characteristics of the Negro are of two kinds—the inborn and the +inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen, +but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the +blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so, +of time and habitat. Inbred qualities are acquired, and are the result of +experience. They may be overcome by a reversal of the process which +created them. The fundamental, or inborn, characteristics of the Negro may +be found in the African, as well as the American, Negro; but the inbred +characteristics of the latter belong to the American life alone.</p> + +<p>There is but one human nature, made up of constituent elements the same in +all men, and racial or national differences arise from the <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" />predominance +of one or another element in this or that race. It is a question of +proportion. The Negro is not a Caucasian, not a Chinese, not an Indian; +though no psychological quality in the one is absent from the other. The +same moral sense, called conscience; the same love of harmony in color or +in sound; the same pleasure in acquiring knowledge; the same love of truth +in word, or of fitness in relation; the same love of respect and +approbation; the same vengeful or benevolent feelings; the same appetites, +belong to all, but in varying proportions. They form the indicia to a +people's mission, and are our best guides to God's purpose in creating us. +They constitute the material to be worked on in educating a race, and +suggest in every case where the stress of civilization or education should +be applied in order to follow the lines of least resistance.</p> + +<p>But there are also certain manifestations, the result of training or +neglect, which are not inborn. As they are inculcable, so they are +<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />eradicable; and it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term +characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent +traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore, +we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with +sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to +possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form a +fair catalogue:</p> + +<p><i>He is intensely religious.</i> True religion is based upon a belief in the +supernatural, upon faith and feeling. A people deeply superstitious are +apt to be deeply religious, for both rest upon a belief in a spiritual +world. Superstition differs from religion in being the untrained and +unenlightened gropings of the human soul after the mysteries of the higher +life; while the latter, more or less enlightened, "feels after God, if +haply," it may find Him. The Negro gives abundant evidence of both phases. +The absolute inability of the master, in the days of slavery, while +successfully vetoing all <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />other kinds of convocation, to stop the Negro's +church meetings, as well as the almost phenomenal influence and growth of +his churches since; and his constant referring of every event, adverse or +favorable, to the personal ministrations of the Creator, are things unique +and persistent. And the master class reposed more faith in their slaves' +religion ofttimes than they did in their own. Doubtless much of the +reverential feeling that pervades the American home to-day, above that of +all other nations, is the result of the Negro mammy's devotion and loyalty +to God.</p> + +<p><i>He is imaginative.</i> This is not evinced so much in creative directions as +in poetical, musical, combinatory, inventional and what, if coupled with +learning, we call literary imagination. Negro eloquence is proverbial. The +crudest sermon of the most unlettered slave abounded in tropes and glowing +tongue pictures of apochalyptic visions all his own; and, indeed, the +poetic quality of his mind is seen in all his natural efforts when the +self-con<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />sciousness of education does not stand guard. The staid religious +muse of Phillis Wheatley and the rollicking, somewhat jibing, verse of +Dunbar show it equally, unpremeditated and spontaneous.</p> + +<p>I have heard by the hour some ordinary old uneducated Negro tell those +inimitable animal stories, brought to literary existence in "Uncle Remus," +with such quaint humor, delicious conceit and masterly delineation of +plot, character and incident that nothing but the conventional rating of +Aesop's Fables could put them in the same class. Then, there are more +Negro inventors than the world supposes. This faculty is impossible +without a well-ordered imagination held in leash by a good memory and +large perception.</p> + +<p><i>He is affectionate and without vindictiveness.</i> He does not nurse even +great wrongs. Mercurial as he is, often furiously angry and frequently in +murderous mood, he comes nearer not letting the sun go down upon his anger +<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />than any other man I know. Like Brutus, he may be compared to the flint +which,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Much enforced, shows a hasty spark,<br /></span> +<span>And straight is cold again."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His affection is not less towards the Caucasian than to his own race. It +is not saying too much to remark that the soul of the Negro yearns for the +white man's good will and respect; and the old ties of love that subsisted +in so many instances in the days of slavery still survive where the +ex-slave still lives. The touching case of a Negro Bishop who returned to +the State in which he had been a slave, and rode twenty miles to see and +alleviate the financial distress of his former master is an exception to +numerous other similar cases only in the prominence of the Negro +concerned. I know of another case of a man whose tongue seems dipped in +hyssop when he begins to tell of the wrongs of his race, and who will not +allow anyone to say in his presence that any good came out of slavery, +even incidentally; yet he supports the widowed and aged wife of <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />his +former master. And, surely, if these two instances are not sufficient to +establish the general proposition, none will gainsay the patience, +vigilance, loyalty and helpfulness of the Negro slave during the Civil +War, and of his good old wife who nursed white children at her breast at a +time when all ties save those of affection were ruptured, and when no +protection but devoted hearts watched over the "great house," whose head +and master was at the front, fighting to perpetuate slavery. Was it +stupidity on the Negro's part? Not at all. He was well informed as to the +occurrences of the times. A freemasonry kept him posted as well as the +whites were themselves on the course of the war and the issue of each +battle. Was it fear that kept him at the old home? Not that, either. Many +thousands <i>did</i> cross the line to freedom; many other thousands (200,000) +fought in the ranks for freedom, but none of them—those who went and +those who stayed—those who fought and those who worked,—betrayed a +trust, outraged a female, or rebelled <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />against a duty. It was love, the +natural wellings of affectionate natures.</p> + +<p><i>He has great endurance, both dispositional and physical.</i> So true is the +first that his patience has been the marvel of the world; and, indeed, +many, regarding this trait manifested in such an unusual degree, doubted +the Negro's courage, till the splendid record of the '60's and the equal, +but more recent, record of the '90's, wrote forbearance as the real +explanation of an endurance seemingly so at variance with manly spirit.</p> + +<p>Of his physical powers, his whole record as a laborer at killing tasks in +the most trying climate in America speaks so eloquently that nothing but +the statistics of cotton, corn, rice, sugar, railroad ties and felled +forests can add to the praise of this burden-bearer of the nation. The +census tables here are more romantic and thrilling than figures of +rhetoric.</p> + +<p><i>He is courageous.</i> His page in the war record of this country is without +blot or blemish. His commanders unite in pronouncing <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />him admirable for +courage in the field, commendable for obedience in camp. That he should +exhibit such excellent fighting qualities as a soldier, and yet exercise +the forbearance that characterizes him as a citizen, is remarkable.</p> + +<p><i>He is cheerful.</i> His ivories are as famous as his songs. That the South +is "sunny" is largely due to the brightness his rollicking laugh and +unfailing good nature bring to it. Though the mudsill of the labor world, +he whistles as he hoes, and no dark broodings or whispered conspirings mar +the cheerful acceptance of the load he bears. Against the rubber bumper of +his good cheer things that have crushed and maddened others rebound +without damage. When one hears the quaint jubilee songs, set to minor +cadence, he might suppose them the expressions of a melancholy people. +They are not to be so interpreted. Rather are they the expression of an +experience, not a nature. Like the subdued voice of a caged bird, these +songs are the coinage of <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />an occasion, and not the free note of nature. +The slave sang of griefs he was not allowed to discuss, hence his songs. +This cheerfulness has enabled the Negro to live and increase under +circumstances which, in all other instances, have decimated, if not +exterminated, inferior peoples. His plasticity to moulding forces and his +resiliency against crushing ones come from a Thalian philosophy, +unconscious and unstudied, that extracts Epicurean delights from funeral +meats.</p> + +<p>The above traits are inborn and fundamental, belonging to the race +everywhere, in Africa as well as America. Strict correctness requires, +however, that attention be called to the fact that there are tribal +differences among African Negroes that amount almost to the national +variations of Europe; and these are reflected in American Negroes, who are +the descendants of these different tribes. There is as much difference +between the Mandingo and the Hottentot, both black, as between the Italian +and the German, both white; or between the Bushman and <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />the Zulu, both +black, as between the Russian and the Englishman, both white. Scientific +exactness, therefore, would require a closer analysis of racial +characteristics than an article of this length could give; but, speaking +in a large way, it may be said that in whatever outward conformity may +come to the race in America by reason of training or contact, these traits +will lie at the base, the very warp and woof of his soul texture.</p> + +<p>If, now, we turn to consider his inbred traits, those the result of +experience, conditions and environments, we find that they exist mainly as +deficiencies and deformities. These have been superimposed upon the native +soul endowment. Slavery has been called the Negro's great schoolmaster, +because it took him a savage and released him civilized; took him a +heathen and released him a Christian; took him an idler and released him a +laborer. Undoubtedly it did these things superficially, but one great +defect is to be charged against this school—it did not teach him the +meaning of home, <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />purity and providence. To do this is the burden of +freedom.</p> + +<p>The emancipated Negro struggles up to-day against many obstacles, the +entailment of a brutal slavery. Leaving out of consideration the many who +have already emerged, let us apply our thoughts to the great body of +submerged people in the congested districts of city and country who +present a real problem, and who must be helped to higher things. We note +some of the heritages under which they stagger up into full development:</p> + +<p><i>Shiftlessness.</i> He had no need to devise and plan in bondage. There was +no need for an enterprising spirit; consequently, he is lacking in +leadership and self-reliance. He is inclined to stay in ruts, and applies +himself listlessly to a task, feeling that the directive agency should +come from without.</p> + +<p><i>Incontinence.</i> It is not to the point to say that others are, too. +Undoubtedly, example has as much to do with this laxity as neglect. We +simply record the fact. A <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />slave's value was increased by his prolificacy. +Begetting children for the auction block could hardly sanctify family +ties. It was not nearly so necessary for a slave to know his father as his +owner. Added to the promiscuity encouraged and often forced among this +class, was the dreadful license which cast lustful Caucasian eyes upon +"likely" Negro women.</p> + +<p><i>Indolence.</i> Most men are, especially in a warm climate: but the Negro +acquired more than the natural share, because to him as a bondman laziness +was great gain, for he had no pecuniary interest in his own labor. Hence, +holidays were more to be desired than whole labor days, and he learned to +do as little as he might, be excused as often as he could, and hail +Saturday as the oasis in a desert week. He hails it yet. The labor +efficiency of the Negro has greatly increased since the emancipation, for +self-interest is a factor now. In 1865, each Negro produced two-thirds of +a bale of cotton; now he produces an average of one whole bale to the man. +But there is still woful waste of <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />productive energy. A calculation +showing the comparative productive capacity, man for man, between the +Northern<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2" /><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> and Southern laborer would be very interesting.</p> + +<p><i>Improvidence and Extravagance.</i> He will drop the most important job to go +on an excursion or parade with his lodge. He spends large sums on +expensive clothing and luxuries, while going without things necessary to a +real home. He will cheerfully eat fat bacon and "pone" corn-bread all the +week<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3" /><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> in order to indulge in unlimited soda-water, melon and fish at the +end. In the cities he is oftener seen dealing with the pawn-broker than +the banker. His house, when furnished at all, is better furnished that +that of a white man of equal earning power, but it is on the installment +plan. He is loath to buy a house, because he has no taste for +responsibility nor faith in himself to manage large concerns; but organs, +pianos, clocks, sewing-machines and parlor suits, on time, have no terrors +for him. This is because he has been accustomed to think in small +num<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />bers. He does not regard the Scotchman's "mickle," because he does not +stop to consider that the end is a "muckle." He has amassed, at full +valuation, nearly a billion dollars' worth of property, despite this, but +this is about one-half of what proper providence would have shown.</p> + +<p><i>Untidiness.</i> Travel through the South and you will be struck with the +general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing +from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window +panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater +than the real is seen on every side. The inside of the house meets the +suggestions of the outside. This is a projection of the slave's "quarters" +into freedom. The cabin of the slave was, at best, a place to eat and +sleep in; there was no thought of the esthetic in such places. A quilt on +a plank was a luxury to the tired farm-hand, and paint was nothing to the +poor, sun-scorched fellow who sought the house for shade rather than +beauty.<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" /> Habits of personal cleanliness were not inculcated, and even now +it is the exception to find a modern bath-room in a Southern home.</p> + +<p><i>Dishonesty.</i> This is the logic, if not the training, of slavery. It is +easy for the unrequited toiler in another's field to justify reprisal; +hence there arose among the Negroes an amended Commandment which added to +"Thou shalt not steal" the clause, "except thou be stolen from." It was no +great fault, then, according to this code, to purloin a pig, a sheep, a +chicken, or a few potatoes from a master who took all from the slave.</p> + +<p><i>Untruthfulness.</i> This is seen more in innocent and childish exaggeration +than in vicious distortion. It is the vice of untutored minds to run to +gossip and make miracles of the matter-of-fact. The Negro also tells +falsehoods from excess of good nature. He promises to do a piece of work +on a certain day, because it is so much easier and pleasanter to say Yes, +and stay away, than it is to say No.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" /><i>Business Unreliability.</i> He does not meet a promise in the way and at +the time promised. Not being accustomed to business, he has small +conception of the place the promise has in the business world. It is only +recently he has begun to deal with banks. He, who has no credit, sees<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4" /><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> +no loss of it in a protested note, especially if he intends to pay it some +time. That chain which links one man's obligation to another man's +solvency he has not considered. He is really as good and safe a debt-payer +when he owes a white man as the latter can have, but the methods of the +modern bank, placing a time limit on debts, is his detestation. He much +prefers the <i>laissez-faire</i> of the Southern plantation store.</p> + +<p><i>Lack of Initiative.</i> It was the policy of slavery to crush out the +combining instinct, and it was well done; for, outside of churches and +secret societies, the Negro has done little to increase the social +efficiency which can combine many men into an organic whole, subject to +the corporate will <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />and direction. He has, however, made some hopeful +beginnings.</p> + +<p><i>Suspicion of his own race.</i> He was taught to watch other Negroes and tell +all that they did. This was slavery's native detective force to discover +incipient insurrection. Each slave learned to distrust his fellow. And +added to this is the knowledge one Negro has that no other has had half +sufficient experience in business to be a wise counsellor, or a safe +steward of another man's funds. Almost all Negroes who have acquired +wealth have entrusted its management to white men.</p> + +<p><i>Ignorance.</i> The causes of his ignorance all know. That he has thrown off +one-half of it in forty years is a wonderful showing; but a great incubus +remains in the other half, and it demands the nation's attention. What the +census calls literacy is often very shallow. The cause of this shallowness +lies, in part, in the poor character and short duration of Southern +schools; in the poverty that snatches the child from school prematurely to +work for bread; <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />in the multitude of mushroom colleges and get-smart-quick +universities scattered over the South, and in the glamour of a +professional education that entices poorly prepared students into special +work.</p> + +<p>Add to this, too, the commercialism of the age which regards each day in +school as a day out of the market. Boys and girls by scores learn the +mechanical parts of type-writing and stenography without the basal culture +which gives these callings their greatest efficiency. They copy a +manuscript, Chinese-like, mistakes and all; they take you phonetically in +sense as well as sound, having no reserve to draw upon to interpret a +learned allusion or unusual phrase. Thus while prejudice makes it hard to +secure a place, auto-deficiency loses many a one that is secured.</p> + +<p>We have discussed the leading characteristics of the Negro, his inborn +excellencies and inbred defects, candidly and as they are to be seen in +the great mass whose place determines the status of the race as a whole. +It would, <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />however, be to small purpose if we did not ask what can be done +to develop the innate good and correct the bad in a race so puissant and +numerous? This mass is not inert; it has great reactionary force, +modifying and influencing all about it. The Negro's excellences have +entered into American character and life already; so have his weaknesses. +He has brought cheer, love, emotion and religion in saving measure to the +land. He has given it wealth by his brawn and liberty by his blood. His +self-respect, even in abasement, has kept him struggling upward; his +confidence in his own future has infected his friends and kept him from +nursing despondency or planning anarchy. But he has laid, and does lay, +burdens upon the land, too: his ignorance, his low average of morality, +his low standards of home, his lack of enterprise, his lack of +self-reliance—these must be cured.</p> + +<p>Evidently, he is to be "solved" by educational processes. Everyone of his +inborn traits must be respected and developed to proper propor<a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />tion. +Excesses and excrescences must not be carelessly dealt with, for they mark +the fertility of a soil that raises rank weeds because no gardener has +tilled it. His religion must become "ethics touched with feeling"—not a +paroxysm, but a principle. His imagination must be given a rudder to guide +its sails; and the first fruits of its proper exercise, as seen in a +Dunbar, a Chesnutt, a Coleridge-Taylor and a Tanner, must be pedestaled +along the Appian Way over which others are to march. His affection must be +met with larger love; his patience rewarded with privilege; his courage +called to defend the rights of others rather than redress his own wrongs. +Thus shall he supplement from within the best efforts of good men without.</p> + +<p>To cure the evils entailed upon him by an unhappy past, he must be +educated to work with skill, with self-direction, in combination and +unremittingly. Industrial education with constant application, is the +slogan of his rise from racial pauperism to productive manliness. Not that +exceptional minds should not have <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />exceptional opportunities (and they +already exist); but that the great majority of awkward and unskilled ones, +who must work somehow, somewhere, all the time, shall have their +opportunities for training in industrial schools near them and with +courses consonant with the lives they are to lead. Let the ninety and nine +who must work, either with trained or fumbling hands, have a chance. Train +the Negro to accept and carry responsibility by putting it upon him. Train +him, more than any schools are now doing, in morals—to speak the truth, +to keep a promise, to touch only his own property, to trust the +trustworthy among his own race, to risk something in business, to strike +out in new lines of endeavor, to buy houses and make homes, to regard +beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us +subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will, +energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe +men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor +above sleight-<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above +classical smatterings, which awe the multitude but butter no parsnips.</p> + +<p>If we do this, America will have enriched her blood, ennobled her record +and shown the world how to deal with its Dark Races without reproach.</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2" /><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> In the original, this was 'Northen'.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3" /><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> In the original, this was 'weeek'.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4" /><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> In the original, this was 'seees'.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Representative_American_Negroes" id="Representative_American_Negroes" /><i>Representative American Negroes</i></h2> + +<h3>By PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR</h3> + +<blockquote><p>An enumeration of some of the noteworthy American Negroes of to-day and + yesterday, with some account of their lives and their work. In this + paper Mr. Dunbar has turned out his largest and most successful picture + of the colored people. It is a noble canvas crowded with heroic figures.</p></blockquote> +<p><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" /></p> +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>In considering who and what are representative Negroes there are +circumstances which compel one to question what is a representative man of +the colored race. Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and +others lived during the reconstruction period. To have achieved something +for the betterment of his race rather than for the aggrandizement of +himself, seems to be a man's best title to be called representative. The +street corner politician, who through questionable methods or even through +skillful manipulation, succeeds in securing the janitorship of the Court +House, may be written up in the local papers as "representative," but is +he?</p> + +<p>I have in mind a young man in Baltimore, Bernard Taylor by name, who to me +is more <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />truly representative of the race than half of the "Judges," +"Colonels," "Doctors" and "Honorables" whose stock cuts burden the pages +of our negro journals week after week. I have said that he is young. +Beyond that he is quiet and unobtrusive; but quiet as he is, the worth of +his work can be somewhat estimated when it is known that he has set the +standard for young men in a city that has the largest colored population +in the world.</p> + +<p>It is not that as an individual he has ridden to success one enterprise +after another. It is not that he has shown capabilities far beyond his +years, nor yet that his personal energy will not let him stop at one +triumph. The importance of him lies in the fact that his influence upon +his fellows is all for good, and in a large community of young Negroes the +worth of this cannot be over-estimated. He has taught them that striving +is worth while, and by the very force of his example of industry and +perseverance, he stands out from the mass. He does not tell how to do +things, he does <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" />them. Nothing has contributed more to his success than +his alertness, and nothing has been more closely followed by his +observers, and yet I sometimes wonder when looking at him, how old he must +be, how world weary, before the race turns from its worship of the +political janitor and says of him, "this is one of our representative +men."</p> + +<p>This, however, is a matter of values and neither the negro himself, his +friends, his enemies, his lauders, nor his critics has grown quite certain +in appraising these. The rabid agitator who goes about the land preaching +the independence and glory of his race, and by his very mouthings +retarding both, the saintly missionary, whose only mission is like that of +"Pooh Bah," to be insulted; the man of the cloth who thunders against the +sins of the world and from whom honest women draw away their skirts, the +man who talks temperance and tipples high-balls—these are not +representative, and whatever their station in life, <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />they should be rated +at their proper value, for there is a difference between attainment and +achievement.</p> + +<p>Under the pure light of reason, the ignorant carpet bagger judge is a +person and not a personality. The illiterate and inefficient black man, +whom circumstance put into Congress, was "a representative" but was not +representative. So the peculiar conditions of the days immediately after +the war have made it necessary to draw fine distinctions.</p> + +<p>When Robert Smalls, a slave, piloted the Confederate ship Planter out of +Charleston Harbor under the very guns of the men who were employing him, +who owned him, his body, his soul, and the husk of his allegiance, and +brought it over to the Union, it is a question which forty years has not +settled as to whether he was a hero or a felon, a patriot or a traitor. So +much has been said of the old Negro's fidelity to his masters that +something different might have been expected of him. But take the singular +conditions: the first faint <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />streaks of a long delayed dawn had just begun +to illumine the sky and this black pilot with his face turned toward the +East had no eye for the darkness behind him. He had no time to analyze his +position, the right or wrong of it. He had no opportunity to question +whether it was loyalty to a union in which he aspired to citizenship, or +disloyalty to his masters of the despised confederacy. It was not a time +to argue, it was a time to do; and with rare power of decision, skill of +action and with indomitable courage, he steered the good ship Planter past +Fort Johnson, past Fort Sumter, past Morris Island, out where the flag, +the flag of his hopes and fears floated over the federal fleet. And Robert +Smalls had done something, something that made him loved and hated, +praised and maligned, revered and despised, but something that made him +representative of the best that there is in sturdy Negro manhood.</p> + +<p>It may seem a far cry from Robert Smalls, the pilot of the Planter, to +Booker T. Wash<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />ington, Principal of the Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama. +But much the same traits of character have made the success of the two +men; the knowledge of what to do, the courage to do it, and the following +out of a single purpose. They are both pilots, and the waters through +which their helms have swung have been equally stormy. The methods of both +have been questioned; but singularly neither one has stopped to question +himself, but has gone straight on to his goal over the barriers of +criticism, malice and distrust. The secret of Mr. Washington's power is +organization, and organization after all is only a concentration of force. +This concentration only expresses his own personality, in which every +trait and quality tend toward one definite end. They say of this man that +he is a man of one idea, but that one is a great one and he has merely +concentrated all his powers upon it; in other words he has organized +himself and gone forth to gather in whatever about him was essential.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />Pilot he is, steadfast and unafraid, strong in his own belief,—yes +strong enough to make others believe in him. Without doubt or skepticism, +himself he has confounded the skeptics.</p> + +<p>Less statesmanlike than Douglass, less scholarly than DuBois, less +eloquent than the late J.C. Price, he is yet the foremost figure in Negro +national life. He is a great educator and a great man, and though one may +not always agree with him, one must always respect him. The race has +produced no more adroit diplomatist than he. The statement is broad but +there is no better proof of it than the fact that while he is our most +astute politician, he has succeeded in convincing both himself and the +country that he is not in politics. He has none of the qualities of the +curb-stone politician. He is bigger, broader, better, and the highest +compliment that could be paid him is that through all his ups and downs, +with all he has seen of humanity, he has kept his faith and his ideals. +While Mr. Washington stands <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />pre-eminent in his race there are other names +that must be mentioned with him as co-workers in the education of the +world, names that for lack of time can be only mentioned and passed.</p> + +<p>W.H. Council, of Normal, Alabama, has been doing at his school a good and +great work along the same lines as Tuskegee. R.R. Wright, of the State +College of Georgia, "We'se a-risin' Wright," he is called, and by his own +life and work for his people he has made true the boyish prophecy which in +the old days inspired Whittier's poem. Three decades ago this was his +message from the lowly South, "Tell 'em we'se a-risin," and by thought, by +word, by deed, he has been "Tellin' em so" ever since. The old Southern +school has melted into the misty shades of an unregretted past. A new +generation, new issues, new conditions, have replaced the old, but the boy +who sent that message from the heart of the Southland to the North's heart +of hearts has risen, and a martyred President did not blush to call him +friend.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />So much of the Negro's time has been given to the making of teachers that +it is difficult to stop when one has begun enumerating some of those who +have stood out more than usually forceful. For my part, there are two more +whom I cannot pass over. Kelly Miller, of Howard University, Washington, +D.C., is another instructor far above the average. He is a mathematician +and a thinker. The world has long been convinced of what the colored man +could do in music and in oratory, but it has always been skeptical, when +he is to be considered as a student of any exact science. Miller, in his +own person, has settled all that. He finished at Johns Hopkins where they +will remember him. He is not only a teacher but an author who writes with +authority upon his chosen themes, whether he is always known as a Negro +writer or not. He is endowed with an accurate, analytical mind, and the +most engaging blackness, for which some of us thank God, because there can +be no argument as to the source of his mental powers.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />Now of the other, William E.B. DuBois, what shall be said? Educator and +author, political economist and poet, an Eastern man against a Southern +back-ground, he looms up strong, vivid and in bold relief. I say looms +advisedly, because, intellectually, there is something so distinctively +big about the man. Since the death of the aged Dr. Crummell, we have had +no such ripe and finished scholar. Dr. DuBois, Harvard gave him to us, and +there he received his Ph.D., impresses one as having reduced all life and +all literature to a perfect system. There is about him a fascinating calm +of certain power, whether as a searcher after economic facts, under the +wing of the University of Pennsylvania, or defying the "powers that be" in +a Negro college or leading his pupils along the way of light, one always +feels in him this same sense of conscious, restrained, but assured force.</p> + +<p>Some years ago in the course of his researches, he took occasion to tell +his own people some plain hard truths, and oh, what a <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />howl of protest and +denunciation went up from their assembled throats, but it never once +disturbed his magnificent calm. He believed what he had said, and not for +a single moment did he think of abandoning his position.</p> + +<p>He goes at truth as a hard-riding old English squire would take a +difficult fence. Let the ditch be beyond if it will.</p> + +<p>Dr. DuBois would be the first to disclaim the name of poet but everything +outside of his statistical work convicts him. The rhythm of his style, his +fancy, his imagery, all bid him bide with those whose souls go singing by +a golden way. He has written a number of notable pamphlets and books, the +latest of which is "The Soul of the Black Folk," an invaluable +contribution to the discussion of the race problem by a man who knows +whereof he speaks.</p> + +<p>Dr. DuBois is at Atlanta University and has had every opportunity to +observe all the phases of America's great question, and I wish I might +write at length of his books.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />It may be urged that too much time has already been taken up with the +educational side of the Negro, but the reasonableness of this must become +apparent when one remembers that for the last forty years the most helpful +men of the race have come from the ranks of its teachers, and few of those +who have finally done any big thing, but have at some time or other held +the scepter of authority in a school. They may have changed later and +grown, indeed they must have done so, but the fact remains that their +poise, their discipline, the impulse for their growth came largely from +their work in the school room.</p> + +<p>There is perhaps no more notable example of this phase of Negro life than +the Hon. Richard Theodore Greener, our present Consul at Vladivostok. He +was, I believe, the first of our race to graduate from Harvard and he has +always been regarded as one of the most scholarly men who, through the +touch of Negro blood, belongs to us. He has been historian, journalist and +lecturer, but back of all this he <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />was a teacher; and for years after his +graduation he was a distinguished professor at the most famous of all the +old Negro colleges. This institution is now a thing of the past, but the +men who knew it in its palmy days speak of it still with longing and +regret. It is claimed, and from the names and qualities of the men, not +without justice, that no school for the higher education of the black man +has furnished a finer curriculum or possessed a better equipped or more +efficient faculty. Among these, Richard T. Greener was a bright, +particular star.</p> + +<p>After the passing of the school, Mr. Greener turned to other activities. +His highest characteristics were a fearless patience and a hope that +buoyed him up through days of doubt and disappointment. Author and editor +he was, but he was not satisfied with these. Beyond their scope were +higher things that beckoned him. Politics, or perhaps better, political +science, allured him, and he applied himself to a course that brought him +into intimate con<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />tact with the leaders of his country, white and black. A +man of wide information, great knowledge and close grasp of events he made +himself invaluable to his party and then with his usual patience awaited +his reward.</p> + +<p>The story of how he came to his own cannot be told without just a shade of +bitterness darkening the smile that one must give to it all. The cause for +which he had worked triumphed. The men for whom he had striven gained +their goal and now, Greener must be recognized, but—</p> + +<p>Vladivostok, your dictionary will tell you, is a sea-port in the maritime +Province of Siberia, situated on the Golden Horn of Peter the Great. It +will tell you also that it is the chief Russian naval station on the +Pacific. It is an out of the way place and one who has not the +world-circling desire would rather hesitate before setting out thither. It +was to this post that Mr. Greener was appointed.</p> + +<p>"Exile," his friends did not hesitate to say. "Why didn't the Government +make it a sen<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" />tence instead of veiling it in the guise of an appointment?" +asked others sarcastically.</p> + +<p>"Will he go?" That was the general question that rose and fell, whispered +and thundered about the new appointee, and in the midst of it all, silent +and dignified, he kept his council. The next thing Washington knew he was +gone. There was a gasp of astonishment and then things settled back into +their former state of monotony and Greener was forgotten.</p> + +<p>But in the eastern sky, darkness began to arise, the warning flash of +danger swept across the heavens, the thunder drum of war began to roll. +For a moment the world listened in breathless suspense, the suspense of +horror. Louder and louder rose the thunder peal until it drowned every +other sound in the ears of the nation, every other sound save the cries +and wails of dying women and the shrieks of tortured children. Then +France, England, Germany, Japan and America marshalled their forces and +swept eastward to save and to <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />avenge. The story of the Boxer uprising has +been told, but little has been said of how Vladivostok, "A sea-port in the +maritime Province of Siberia," became one of the most important points of +communication with the outside world, and its Consul came frequently to be +heard from by the State Department. And so Greener after years of patience +and toil had come to his own. If the government had wished to get him out +of the way, it had reckoned without China.</p> + +<p>A new order of things has come into Negro-American politics and this man +has become a part of it. It matters not that he began his work under the +old regime. So did Judge Gibbs, a man eighty years of age, but he, too, +has kept abreast of the times, and although the reminiscences in his +delightful autobiography take one back to the hazy days when the land was +young and politics a more strenuous thing than it is even now, when there +was anarchy in Louisiana and civil war in Arkansas, when one shot first +and questioned afterward; yet <a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />because his mind is still active, because +he has changed his methods with the changing time, because his influence +over young men is greatly potent still; he is, in the race, perhaps, the +best representative of what the old has brought to the new.</p> + +<p>Beside him strong, forceful, commanding, stands the figure of George H. +White, whose farewell speech before the Fifty-sixth Congress, when through +the disfranchisement of Negroes he was defeated for re-election, stirred +the country and fired the hearts of his brothers. He has won his place +through honesty, bravery and aggressiveness. He has given something to the +nation that the nation needed, and with such men as Pinchback, Lynch, +Terrell and others of like ilk, acting in concert, it is but a matter of +time when his worth shall induce a repentant people, with a justice +builded upon the foundation of its old prejudice, to ask the Negro back to +take a hand in the affairs of state.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />Add to all this the facts that the Negro has his representatives in the +commercial world: McCoy and Granville T. Woods, inventors; in the +agricultural world with J.H. Groves, the potato king of Kansas, who last +year shipped from his own railway siding seventy-two thousand five hundred +bushels of potatoes alone; in the military, with Capt. Charles A. Young, a +West Pointer, now stationed at the Presidio; that in medicine, he +possesses in Daniel H. Williams, of Chicago, one of the really great +surgeons of the country; that Edward H. Morris, a black man, is one of the +most brilliant lawyers at the brilliant Cook County bar; that in every +walk of life he has men and women who stand for something definite and +concrete, and it seems to me that there can be little doubt that the race +problem will gradually solve itself.</p> + +<p>I have spoken of "men and women," and indeed the women must not be +forgotten, for to them the men look for much of the inspiration and +impulse that drives them forward to suc<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />cess. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell +upon the platform speaking for Negro womanhood and Miss Sarah Brown, her +direct opposite, a little woman sitting up in her aerie above a noisy New +York street, stand for the very best that there is in our mothers, wives +and sisters. The one fully in the public eye, with learning and eloquence, +telling the hopes and fears of her kind; the other in suffering and +retirement, with her knowledge of the human heart and her gentleness +inspiring all who meet her to better and nobler lives. They are both doing +their work bravely and grandly. But when the unitiate ask who is "la +Petite Reine," we think of the quiet little woman in a New York fifth +floor back and are silent.</p> + +<p>She is a patron of all our literature and art and we have both. Whether it +is a new song by Will Marion Cook or a new book by DuBois or Chestnut, +than whom no one has ever told the life of the Negro more accurately and +convincingly, she knows it and has a kindly word of praise or +encouragement.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />In looking over the field for such an article as this, one just begins to +realize how many Negroes are representative of something, and now it seems +that in closing no better names could be chosen than those of the two +Tanners.</p> + +<p>From time immemorial, Religion and Art have gone together, but it remained +for us to place them in the persons of these two men, in the relation of +father and son. Bishop Benj. Tucker Tanner, of the A.M.E. Church, is not +only a theologian and a priest, he is a dignified, polished man of the +higher world and a poet. He has succeeded because he was prepared for +success. As to his writings, he will, perhaps, think most highly of "His +Apology For African Methodism;" but some of us, while respecting this, +will turn from it to the poems and hymns that have sung themselves out of +his gentle heart.</p> + +<p>Is it any wonder that his son, Henry O. Tanner, is a poet with the brush +or that the French Government has found it out? From the father must have +come the man's artistic im<a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />pulse, and he carried it on and on to a golden +fruition. In the Luxembourg gallery hangs his picture, "The Raising of +Lazarus." At the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, I saw his +"Annunciation," both a long way from his "Banjo Lesson," and thinking of +him I began to wonder whether, in spite of all the industrial tumult, it +were not in the field of art, music and literature that the Negro was to +make his highest contribution to American civilization. But this is merely +a question which time will answer.</p> + +<p>All these of whom I have spoken are men who have striven and achieved and +the reasons underlying their success are the same that account for the +advancement of men of any other race: preparation, perseverance, bravery, +patience, honesty and the power to seize the opportunity.</p> + +<p>It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere +out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="The_Negros_Place_in_American_Life_at_the_Present_Day" id="The_Negros_Place_in_American_Life_at_the_Present_Day" /><i>The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day</i></h2> + +<h3>BY T. THOMAS FORTUNE</h3> + +<blockquote><p>Considering the two hundred and forty-five years of his slavery and the + comparatively short time he has enjoyed the opportunities of freedom, + his place in American life at the present day is creditable to him and + promising for the future.</p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/fortune.png" +alt="T. THOMAS FORTUNE." title="T. THOMAS FORTUNE." /> +</div> +<p class="center"><b>T. THOMAS FORTUNE.</b></p> +<p><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" /></p> + + +<p>There can be no healthy growth in the life of a race or a nation without a +self-reliant spirit animating the whole body; if it amounts to optimism, +devoid of egotism and vanity, so much the better. This spirit necessarily +carries with it intense pride of race, or of nation, as the case may be, +and ramifies the whole mass, inspiring and shaping its thought and effort, +however humble or exalted these may be,—as it takes "all sorts and +conditions of men" to make up a social order, instinct with the ambition +and the activity which work for "high thinking and right living," of which +modern evolution in all directions is the most powerful illustration in +history. If pride of <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />ancestry can, happily, be added to pride of race and +nation, and these are re-enforced by self-reliance, courage and correct +moral living, the possible success of such people may be accepted, without +equivocation, as a foregone conclusion. I have found all of these +requirements so finely blended in the life and character of no people as +that of the Japanese, who are just now emerging from "the double night of +ages" into the vivifying sunlight of modern progress.</p> + +<p>What is the Negro's place in American life at the present day?</p> + +<p>The answer depends entirely upon the point of view. Unfortunately for the +Afro-American people, they have no pride of ancestry; in the main, few of +them can trace their parentage back four generations; and the "daughter of +an hundred earls" of whom there are probably many, is unconscious of her +descent, and would profit nothing by it if this were not true. The blood +of all the ethnic types that go to make up American citizenship flows in +the <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />veins of the Afro-American people, so that of the ten million of them +in this country, accounted for by the Federal census, not more than four +million are of pure negroid descent, while some four million of them, not +accounted for by the Federal census, have escaped into the ranks of the +white race, and are re-enforced very largely by such escapements every +year. The vitiation of blood has operated irresistibly to weaken that +pride of ancestry, which is the foundation-stone of pride of race; so that +the Afro-American people have been held together rather by the segregation +decreed by law and public opinion than by ties of consanguinity since +their manumission and enfranchisement. It is not because they are poor and +ignorant and oppressed, as a mass, that there is no such sympathy of +thought and unity of effort among them as among Irishmen and Jews the +world over, but because the vitiation of blood, beyond the honorable +restrictions of law, has destroyed, in large measure, that pride of +ancestry upon which pride of race must be builded. In no <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />other logical +way can we account for the failure of the Afro-American people to stand +together, as other oppressed races do, and have done, for the righting of +wrongs against them authorized by the laws of the several states, if not +by the Federal Constitution, and sanctioned or tolerated by public +opinion. In nothing has this radical defect been more noticeable since the +War of the Rebellion than in the uniform failure of the people to sustain +such civic organizations as exist and have existed, to test in the courts +of law and in the forum of public opinion the validity of organic laws of +States intended to deprive them of the civil and political rights +guaranteed to them by the Federal Constitution. The two such organizations +of this character which have appealed to them are the National +Afro-American League, organized in Chicago, in 1890, and the National +Afro-American Council, organized in Rochester, New York, out of the +League, in 1898. The latter organization still exists, the strongest of +its kind, but it has never commanded the <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />sympathy and support of the +masses of the people, nor is there, or has there been, substantial +agreement and concert of effort among the thoughtful men of the race along +these lines. They have been restrained by selfish, personal and petty +motives, while the constitutional rights which vitalize their citizenship +have been "denied or abridged" by legislation of certain of the States and +by public opinion, even as Nero fiddled while Rome burned. If they had +been actuated by a strong pride of ancestry and of race, if they had felt +that injury to one was injury to all, if they had hung together instead of +hanging separately, their place in the civil and political life of the +Republic to-day would not be that, largely, of pariahs, with none so poor +as to do them honor, but that of equality of right under the law enjoyed +by all other alien ethnic forces in our citizenship. They who will not +help themselves are usually not helped by others. They who make a loud +noise and courageously contend for what is theirs, usually enjoy the +respect and <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" />confidence of their fellows and get, in the end, what belongs +to them, or a reasonable modification of it.</p> + +<p>As a consequence of inability to unite in thought and effort for the +conservation of their civil and political rights, the Afro-American +Negroes and colored people have lost, by fundamental enactments of the old +slave-holding States, all of the civil and political rights guaranteed +them by the Federal Constitution, in the full enjoyment of which they were +from the adoption of the War Amendments up to 1876-7, when they were +sacrificed by their Republican allies of the North and West, in the +alienation of their State governments, in order to save the Presidency to +Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Their reverses in this matter in the old +slave-holding States, coupled with a vast mass of class legislation, +modelled on the slave code, have affected the Afro-American people in +their civil and political rights in all of the States of the Republic, +especially as far as pub<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />lic opinion is concerned. This was inevitable, +and follows in every instance in history where a race element of the +citizenship is set aside by law or public opinion as separate and distinct +from its fellows, with a fixed status or caste.</p> + +<p>It will take the Afro-American people fully a century to recover what they +lost of civil and political equality under the law in the Southern States, +as a result of the re-actionary and bloody movement begun in the +Reconstruction period by the Southern whites, and culminating in +1877,—the excesses of the Reconstruction governments, about which so much +is said to the discredit of the Negro, being chargeable to the weakness +and corruption of Northern carpet-baggers, who were the master and +responsible spirits of the time and the situation, rather than to the +weakness, the ignorance and venality of their Negro dupes, who, very +naturally, followed where they led, as any other grateful people would +have done. For, were not these same Northern carpet-baggers the di<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />rect +representatives of the Government and the Army which crushed the slave +power and broke the shackles of the slave? Even so. The Northern +carpet-baggers planned and got the plunder, and have it; the Negro got the +credit and the odium, and have them yet. It often happens that way in +history, that the innocent dupes are made to suffer for the misdeeds and +crimes of the guilty.</p> + +<p>The recovery of civil and political rights under the Constitution, as +"denied or abridged" by the constitutions of the States, more especially +those of the old slave holding ones, will be a slow and tedious process, +and will come to the individual rather than to the race, as the reward of +character and thrift; because, for reasons already stated, it will hardly +be possible in the future, as it has not been in the past, to unify the +mass of the Afro-American people, in thought and conduct, for a proper +contention in the courts and at the ballot-box and in the education of +public opinion, to accomplish this purpose. Perhaps there is no other +in<a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />stance in history where everything depended so largely upon the +individual, and so little upon the mass of his race, for that development +in the religious and civic virtues which makes more surely for an +honorable status in any citizenship than constitutions or legislative +enactments built upon them.</p> + +<p>But even from this point of view, I am disposed to believe that the +Negro's civil and political rights are more firmly fixed in law and public +opinion than was true at the close of the Reconstruction period, when +everything relating to him was unsettled and confused, based in +legislative guarantees, subject to approval or disapproval of the dominant +public opinion of the several States, and that he will gradually work out +his own salvation under the Constitution,—such as Charles Sumner, +Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin F. Butler, Frederick Douglass, and their +co-workers, hoped and labored that he might enjoy. He has lost nothing +under the fundamental law; such of these restrictions, as apply to him by +the law of certain of <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />the States, necessarily apply to white men in like +circumstances of ignorance and poverty, and can be overcome, in time, by +assiduous courtship of the schoolmaster and the bank cashier. The extent +to which the individual members of the race are overcoming the +restrictions made a bar to their enjoyment of civil and political rights +under the Constitution is gratifying to those who wish the race well and +who look beyond the present into the future: while it is disturbing the +dreams of those who spend most of their time and thought in abortive +efforts to "keep the 'nigger' in his place"—as if any man or race could +have a place in the world's thought and effort which he did not make for +himself! In our grand Republic, at least, it has been so often +demonstrated as to become proverbial, that the door of opportunity shall +be closed to no man, and that he shall be allowed to have that place in +our national life which he makes for himself. So it is with the Negro now, +as an individual. Will it be so with him in the future as a race?<a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" /> To +answer that we shall first have to determine that he has a race.</p> + +<p>However he may be lacking in pride of ancestry and race, no one can accuse +the Negro of lack of pride of Nation and State, and even of county. +Indeed, his pride in the Republic and his devotion to it are among the +most pathetic phases of his pathetic history, from Jamestown, in 1620, to +San Juan Hill, in 1898. He has given everything to the Republic,—his +labor and blood and prayers. What has the Republic given him, but blows +and rebuffs and criminal ingratitude! And he stands now, ready and eager, +to give the Republic all that he has. What does the Republic stand ready +and eager to give him? Let the answer come out of the mouth of the future.</p> + +<p>It is a fair conclusion that the Negro has a firmer and more assured civil +and political status in American life to-day than at the close of the +Reconstruction period, paradoxical as this may appear to many, despite the +adverse legislation of the old slave-holding States, and <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />the tolerant +favor shown such legislation by the Federal Supreme Court, in such +opinions as it has delivered, from time to time, upon the subject, since +the adoption of the War amendments to the Federal Constitution. +Technically, the Negro stands upon equality with all other citizens under +this large body of special and class legislation; but, as a matter of +fact, it is so framed that the greatest inequality prevails, and was +intended to prevail, in the administration of it by the several States +chiefly concerned. As long as such legislation by the States specifies, on +the face of it, that it shall operate upon all citizens equally, however +unequally and unjustly the legislation may be interpreted and administered +by the local courts, the Federal Supreme Court has held, time and again, +that no hardship was worked, and, if so, that the aggrieved had his +recourse in appeal to the higher courts of the State of which he is a +citizen,—a recourse at this time precisely like that of carrying coal to +New Castle.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />Under the circumstances, there is no alternative for the Negro citizen +but to work out his salvation under the Constitution, as other citizens +have done and are doing. It will be a long and tedious process before the +equitable adjustment has been attained, but that does not much matter, as +full and fair enjoyment of civil and political rights requires much time +and patience and hard labor in any given situation, where two races come +together in the same governmental environment; such as is the case of the +Negro in America, the Irishman in Ireland, and the Jew everywhere in +Europe. It is just as well, perhaps, that the Negro will have to work out +his salvation under the Constitution as an individual rather than as a +race, as the Jew has done it in Great Britain and as the Irishman will +have to do it under the same Empire, as it is and has been the tendency of +our law and precedent to subordinate race elements and to exalt the +individual citizens as indivisible "parts of one stupendous whole." When +this has been accomplished by the law <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />in the case of the Negro, as in the +case of other alien ethnic elements of the citizenship, it will be more +gradually, but assuredly, accomplished by society at large, the +indestructible foundation of which was laid by the reckless and brutal +prostitution of black women by white men in the days of slavery, from +which a vast army of mulattoes were produced, who have been and are, +gradually, by honorable marriage among themselves, changing the alleged +"race characteristics and tendencies" of the Negro people. A race element, +it is safe and fair to conclude, incapable, like that of the North +American Indian, of such a process of elimination and assimilation, will +always be a thorn in the flesh of the Republic, in which there is, +admittedly, no place for the integrality and growth of a distinct race +type. The Afro-American people, for reasons that I have stated, are even +now very far from being such a distinct race type, and without further +admixture of white and black blood, will continue to be less so to the end +of the chapter. It <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" />seems to me that this view of the matter has not +received the consideration that it deserves at the hands of those who set +themselves up as past grand masters in the business of "solving the race +problem," and in accurately defining "The Negro's Place in American Life +at the Present Day." The negroid type and the Afro-American type are two +very distinct types, and the sociologist who confounds them, as is very +generally done, is bound to confuse his subject and his audience.</p> + +<p>It is a debatable question as to whether the Negro's present industrial +position is better or worse than it was, say, at the close of the +Reconstruction period. As a mass, I am inclined to the opinion that it is +worse, as the laws of the States where he is congregated most numerously +are so framed as to favor the employer in every instance, and he does not +scruple to get all out of the industrial slave that he can; which is, in +the main, vastly more than the slave master got, as the latter was at the +expense of housing, feeding, clothing and pro<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />viding medical service for +his chattel, while the former is relieved of this expense and trouble. +Prof. W.E.B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, who has made a critical study +of the rural Negro of the Southern States, sums up the industrial phase of +the matter in the following ("The Souls of Black Folk," pp. 39-40):</p> + +<p>"For this much all men know: Despite compromise, war and struggle, the +Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and +miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the +whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to +an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the +penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the +Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and +privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a +different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule +of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must +have been, lawlessness and crime."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />It is a dark and gloomy picture, the substitution of industrial for +chattel slavery, with none of the legal and selfish restraints upon the +employer which surrounded and actuated the master. And this is true of the +entire mass of the Afro-American laborers of the Southern States. Out of +the mass have arisen a large number of individuals who own and till their +own lands. This element is very largely recruited every year, and to this +source must we look for the gradual undermining of the industrial slavery +of the mass of the people. Here, too, we have a long and tedious process +of evolution, but it is nothing new in the history of races circumstanced +as the Afro-American people are. That the Negro is destined, however, to +be the landlord and master agriculturist of the Southern States is a +probability sustained by all the facts in the situation; not the least of +which being the tendency of the poor white class and small farmers to +abandon agricultural pursuits for those of the factory and the mine, from +which the Negro laborer is ex<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />cluded, partially in the mine and wholly in +the factory. The development of mine and factory industries in the +Southern States in the past two decades has been one of the most +remarkable in industrial history.</p> + +<p>In the skilled trades, at the close of the War of the Rebellion, most of +the work was done by Negroes educated as artisans in the hard school of +slavery, but there has been a steady decline in the number of such +laborers, not because of lack of skill, but because trade unionism has +gradually taken possession of such employments in the South, and will not +allow the Negro to work alongside of the white man. And this is the rule +of the trade unions in all parts of the country. It is to be hoped that +there may be a gradual broadening of the views of white laborers in this +vital matter and a change of attitude by the trade unions that they +dominate. Can we reasonably expect this? As matters now stand, it is the +individual Negro artisan, often a master contractor, who can work at his +trade and give employ<a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />ment to his fellows. Fortunately, there are a great +many of these in all parts of the Southern States, and their number is +increasing every year, as the result of the rapid growth and high favor of +industrial schools, where the trades are taught. A very great deal should +be expected from this source, as a Negro contractor stands very nearly on +as good footing as a white one in the bidding, when he has established a +reputation for reliability. The facts obtained in every Southern city bear +out this view of the matter. The individual black man has a fighting +chance for success in the skilled trades; and, as he succeeds, will draw +the skilled mass after him. The proper solution of the skilled labor +problem is strictly within the power of the individual Negro. I believe +that he is solving it, and that he will ultimately solve it.</p> + +<p>It is, however, in the marvellous building up of a legal, comfortable and +happy home life, where none whatever existed at the close of the War of +the Rebellion; in the no less stupendous development of the church life, +with large <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />and puissant organizations that command the respect and +admiration of mankind, and owning splendid church property valued at +millions of dollars; in the quenchless thirst of the mass of the people +for useful knowledge, displayed at the close of the War of the Rebellion, +and abating nothing of its intense keenness since, with the remarkable +reduction in the illiteracy of the mass of the people, as is eloquently +disclosed by the census reports—it is in these results that no cause for +complaint or discouragement can be found. The whole race here stands on +improved ground over that it occupied at the close of the War of the +Rebellion; albeit, even here, the individual has outstripped the mass of +the race, as it was but natural that he should and always will. But, while +this is true and gratifying to all those that hope the Afro-American +people well, it is also true, and equally gratifying that, as far as the +mass is concerned, the home life, the church and the school house have +come into the life of the people, in some sort, everywhere, giving the +<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />whole race a character and a standing in the estimation of mankind which +it did not have at the close of the war, and presaging, logically, unless +all signs fail, a development along high and honorable lines in the +future; the results from which, I predict, at the end of the ensuing half +century, builded upon the foundation already laid, being such as to +confound the prophets of evil, who never cease to doubt and shake their +heads, asking: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" We have the +answer already in the social and home life of the people, which is so vast +an improvement over the conditions and the heritage of slavery as to +stagger the understanding of those who are informed on the subject, or +will take the trouble to inform themselves.</p> + +<p>If we have much loose moral living, it is not sanctioned by the mass, +wedlock being the rule, and not the exception; if we have a vast volume of +illiteracy, we have reduced it by forty per cent. since the war, and the +school houses are all full of children eager to learn, and the <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />schools of +higher and industrial training cannot accommodate all those who knock at +their doors for admission; if we have more than our share of criminality, +we have also churches in every hamlet and city, to which a vast majority +of the people belong, and which are insistently pointing "the way, the +light and the truth" to higher and nobler living.</p> + +<p>Mindful, therefore, of the Negro's two hundred and forty-five years of +slave education and unrequited toil, and of his thirty years of partial +freedom and less than partial opportunity, who shall say that his place in +American life at the present day is not all that should be reasonably +expected of him, that it is not creditable to him, and that it is not a +sufficient augury for better and nobler and higher thinking, striving and +building in the future? Social growth is the slowest of all growth. If +there be signs of growth, then, there is reasonable hope for a healthy +maturity. There are plenty of such signs, and he who runs may read them, +if he will.<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" /></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Negro Problem, by Booker T. Washington, et al. + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEGRO PROBLEM *** + +***** This file should be named 15041-h.htm or 15041-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/0/4/15041/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/15041-h/images/chesnutt.png b/15041-h/images/chesnutt.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a373a1e --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/images/chesnutt.png diff --git a/15041-h/images/dubois.png b/15041-h/images/dubois.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b08fe9 --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/images/dubois.png diff --git a/15041-h/images/fortune.png b/15041-h/images/fortune.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a0f96e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/images/fortune.png diff --git a/15041-h/images/kealing.png b/15041-h/images/kealing.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0419de --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/images/kealing.png diff --git a/15041-h/images/noname.png b/15041-h/images/noname.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..02281f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/images/noname.png diff --git a/15041-h/images/smith.png b/15041-h/images/smith.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..75d6ab7 --- /dev/null +++ b/15041-h/images/smith.png diff --git a/15041.txt b/15041.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c54d54c --- /dev/null +++ b/15041.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3866 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Negro Problem, by Booker T. Washington, et al. + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Negro Problem + +Author: Booker T. Washington, et al. + +Release Date: February 14, 2005 [EBook #15041] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEGRO PROBLEM *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE +NEGRO PROBLEM + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I Industrial Education for the Negro + _Booker T. Washington_ 7 + + II The Talented Tenth + _W.E. Burghardt DuBois_ 31 + +III The Disfranchisement of the Negro + _ Charles W. Chesnutt_ 77 + + IV The Negro and the Law + _Wilford H. Smith_ 125 + + V The Characteristics of the Negro People + _H.T. Kealing_ 161 + + VI Representative American Negroes + _Paul Laurence Dunbar_ 187 + +VII The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day + _T. Thomas Fortune_ 211 + + +[_Transcriber's Note: Variant spellings have been left in the text. Obvious +typos have been corrected and indicated with a footnote._] + + + + + +_Industrial Education for the Negro_ + +By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, + +Principal of Tuskegee Institute + + The necessity for the race's learning the difference between being + worked and working. He would not confine the Negro to industrial life, + but believes that the very best service which any one can render to what + is called the "higher education" is to teach the present generation to + work and save. This will create the wealth from which alone can come + leisure and the opportunity for higher education. + + +One of the most fundamental and far-reaching deeds that has been +accomplished during the last quarter of a century has been that by which +the Negro has been helped to find himself and to learn the secrets of +civilization--to learn that there are a few simple, cardinal principles +upon which a race must start its upward course, unless it would fail, and +its last estate be worse than its first. + +It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference between being +worked and working--to learn that being worked meant degradation, while +working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable, and all +forms of idleness disgraceful. It has been necessary for him to learn that +all races that have got upon their feet have done so largely by laying an +economic foundation, and, in general, by beginning in a proper cultivation +and ownership of the soil. + +Forty years ago my race emerged from slavery into freedom. If, in too many +cases, the Negro race began development at the wrong end, it was largely +because neither white nor black properly understood the case. Nor is it +any wonder that this was so, for never before in the history of the world +had just such a problem been presented as that of the two races at the +coming of freedom in this country. + +For two hundred and fifty years, I believe the way for the redemption of +the Negro was being prepared through industrial development. Through all +those years the Southern white man did business with the Negro in a way +that no one else has done business with him. In most cases if a Southern +white man wanted a house built he consulted a Negro mechanic about the +plan and about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit +of clothes made he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a +shoemaker of the same race. In a certain way every slave plantation in the +South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and +women were constantly being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters, +blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, +sewing women and housekeepers. + +I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery, which was +a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial training in +slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude, and was given +for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends, because there +was an absence of mental training in connection with the training of the +hand. To a large degree, though, this business contact with the Southern +white man, and the industrial training on the plantations, left the Negro +at the close of the war in possession of nearly all the common and skilled +labor in the South. The industries that gave the South its power, +prominence and wealth prior to the Civil War were mainly the raising of +cotton, sugar cane, rice and tobacco. Before the way could be prepared for +the proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared, +houses to be built, public roads and railroads constructed. In all these +works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating +and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence, +but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient +workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead +in the large tobacco manufactories. + +In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years +after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the industrial +training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men and women were +educated in literature, in mathematics and in the sciences, with little +thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two hundred and +fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to be escaped, to be got as +far away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had +been trained as mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and +gradually it began to be realized that there were few to take their +places. There were young men educated in foreign tongues, but few in +carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were trained in +Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the +farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason +they had no interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet +eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of the Southern states lives +and for a considerable time will continue to live in the country +districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race--and +too often justly, I confess--that they are found leaving the country +districts and flocking into the great cities where temptations are more +frequent and harder to resist, and where the Negro people too often become +demoralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the case that from the +first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much +about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the +country. How natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his +life he wants to live it in the city. + +Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose +memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the +Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some +words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them here: + +"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my +opinion, they teach very few children just what they ought to know in +order to make their way successfully in life. They do not put into their +hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so many failures. +Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty food, +in order to give a son and brother a "liberal education," and in doing +this have built up a barrier between the boy and the work he was fitted to +do. Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor +is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be +thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay, +and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and +responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can +help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher +level." + +Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training +at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost +impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man who could +teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them who could +teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost none who could +instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by every +one of us every day in the year. How often have I been discouraged as I +have gone through the South, and into the homes of the people of my race, +and have found women who could converse intelligently upon abstruse +subjects, and yet could not tell how to improve the condition of the +poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and meat which they and +their families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a +girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the +globe and who does not know where to place the dishes upon a common dinner +table. It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical +chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and iron a shirt. + +In what I say here I would not by any means have it understood that I +would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro-student. +No race can be lifted until its mind is awakened and strengthened. By the +side of industrial training should always go mental and moral training, +but the pushing of mere abstract knowledge into the head means little. We +want more than the mere performance of mental gymnastics. Our knowledge +must be harnessed to the things of real life. I would encourage the Negro +to secure all the mental strength, all the mental culture--whether gleaned +from science, mathematics, history, language or literature that his +circumstances will allow, but I believe most earnestly that for years to +come the education of the people of my race should be so directed that the +greatest proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be brought +to bear upon the every-day practical things of life, upon something that +is needed to be done, and something which they will be permitted to do in +the community in which they reside. And just the same with the +professional class which the race needs and must have, I would say give +the men and women of that class, too, the training which will best fit +them to perform in the most successful manner the service which the race +demands. + +I would not confine the race to industrial life, not even to agriculture, +for example, although I believe that by far the greater part of the Negro +race is best off in the country districts and must and should continue to +live there, but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation +must be laid--that the very best service which any one can render to what +is called the higher education is to teach the present generation to +provide a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this +will grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of +property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical +education, professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out +of it will grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth +from which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of +literature and the fine arts. + +In the words of the late beloved Frederick Douglass: "Every blow of the +sledge hammer wielded by a sable arm is a powerful blow in support of our +cause. Every colored mechanic is by virtue of circumstances an elevator of +his race. Every house built by a black man is a strong tower against the +allied hosts of prejudice. It is impossible for us to attach too much +importance to this aspect of the subject. Without industrial development +there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no leisure; without +leisure no opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of +the higher arts." + +I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in letters +or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those ends is by +laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie immediately +about one's door. I plead for industrial education and development for the +Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him. I +want to see him enter the all-powerful business and commercial world. + +It was such combined mental, moral and industrial education which the late +General Armstrong set out to give at the Hampton Institute when he +established that school thirty years ago. The Hampton Institute has +continued along the lines laid down by its great founder, and now each +year an increasing number of similar schools are being established in the +South, for the people of both races. + +Early in the history of the Tuskegee Institute we began to combine +industrial training with mental and moral culture. Our first efforts were +in the direction of agriculture, and we began teaching this with no +appliances except one hoe and a blind mule. From this small beginning we +have grown until now the Institute owns two thousand acres of land, eight +hundred of which are cultivated each year by the young men of the school. +We began teaching wheelwrighting and blacksmithing in a small way to the +men, and laundry work, cooking and sewing and housekeeping to the young +women. The fourteen hundred and over young men and women who attended the +school during the last school year received instruction--in addition to +academic and religious training--in thirty-three trades and industries, +including carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting +harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding, shoemaking, brickmasonry and +brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical +and architectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning, +sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, housekeeping, +mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture, dairying and stock +raising, horticulture. + +Not only do the students receive instruction in these trades, but they do +actual work, by means of which more than half of them pay some part or all +of their expenses while remaining at the school. Of the sixty buildings +belonging to the school all but four were almost wholly erected by the +students as a part of their industrial education. Even the bricks which go +into the walls are made by students in the school's brick yard, in which, +last year, they manufactured two million bricks. + +When we first began this work at Tuskegee, and the idea got spread among +the people of my race that the students who came to the Tuskegee school +were to be taught industries in connection with their academic studies, +were, in other words, to be taught to work, I received a great many verbal +messages and letters from parents informing me that they wanted their +children taught books, but not how to work. This protest went on for three +or four years, but I am glad to be able to say now that our people have +very generally been educated to a point where they see their own needs and +conditions so clearly that it has been several years since we have had a +single protest from parents against the teaching of industries, and there +is now a positive enthusiasm for it. In fact, public sentiment among the +students at Tuskegee is now so strong for industrial training that it +would hardly permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwilling +to labor. + +It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the Negro young +man or woman in a weak position. For example, I have seen a Negro girl +taught by her mother to help her in doing laundry work at home. Later, +when this same girl was graduated from the public schools or a high school +and returned home she finds herself educated out of sympathy with laundry +work, and yet not able to find anything to do which seems in keeping with +the cost and character of her education. Under these circumstances we +cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill the expectations made for her. +What should have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along +with her academic education thorough training in the latest and best +methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and +intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the +plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to +found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her +children to take a still more responsible position in life. + +Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind--and this I think should +be the policy of all industrial schools--fitting students for occupations +which would be open to them in their home communities. Some years ago we +noted the fact that there was beginning to be a demand in the South for +men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We opened a dairy +department in connection with the school, where a number of young men +could have instruction in the latest and most scientific methods of dairy +work. At present we have calls--mainly from Southern white men--for twice +as many dairymen as we are able to supply. What is equally satisfactory, +the reports which come to us indicate that our young men are giving the +highest satisfaction and are fast changing and improving the dairy product +in the communities into which they go. I use the dairy here as an example. +What I have said of this is equally true of many of the other industries +which we teach. Aside from the economic value of this work I cannot but +believe, and my observation confirms me in my belief, that as we continue +to place Negro men and women of intelligence, religion, modesty, +conscience and skill in every community in the South, who will prove by +actual results their value to the community, I cannot but believe, I say, +that this will constitute a solution to many of the present political and +social difficulties. + +Many seem to think that industrial education is meant to make the Negro +work as he worked in the days of slavery. This is far from my conception +of industrial education. If this training is worth anything to the Negro, +it consists in teaching him how not to work, but how to make the forces of +nature--air, steam, water, horse-power and electricity--work for him. If +it has any value it is in lifting labor up out of toil and drudgery into +the plane of the dignified and the beautiful. The Negro in the South works +and works hard; but too often his ignorance and lack of skill causes him +to do his work in the most costly and shiftless manner, and this keeps him +near the bottom of the ladder in the economic world. + +I have not emphasized particularly in these pages the great need of +training the Negro in agriculture, but I believe that this branch of +industrial education does need very great emphasis. In this connection I +want to quote some words which Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Montgomery, +Alabama, has recently written upon this subject: + +"We must incorporate into our public school system a larger recognition of +the practical and industrial elements in educational training. Ours is an +agricultural population. The school must be brought more closely to the +soil. The teaching of history, for example, is all very well, but nobody +can really know anything of history unless he has been taught to see +things grow--has so seen things not only with the outward eye, but with +the eyes of his intelligence and conscience. The actual things of the +present are more important, however, than the institutions of the past. +Even to young children can be shown the simpler conditions and processes +of growth--how corn is put into the ground--how cotton and potatoes +should be planted--how to choose the soil best adapted to a particular +plant, how to improve that soil, how to care for the plant while it grows, +how to get the most value out of it, how to use the elements of waste for +the fertilization of other crops; how, through the alternation of crops, +the land may be made to increase the annual value of its products--these +things, upon their elementary side are absolutely vital to the worth and +success of hundreds of thousands of these people of the Negro race, and +yet our whole educational system has practically ignored them. + + * * * * * + +"Such work will mean not only an education in agriculture, but an +education through agriculture and education, through natural symbols and +practical forms, which will educate as deeply, as broadly and as truly as +any other system which the world has known. Such changes will bring far +larger results than the mere improvement of our Negroes. They will give +us an agricultural class, a class of tenants or small land owners, trained +not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and in intelligent +dependence upon its resources." + +I close, then, as I began, by saying that as a slave the Negro was worked, +and that as a freeman he must learn to work. There is still doubt in many +quarters as to the ability of the Negro unguided, unsupported, to hew his +own path and put into visible, tangible, indisputable form, products and +signs of civilization. This doubt cannot be much affected by abstract +arguments, no matter how delicately and convincingly woven together. +Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter, +sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and +industry, we must re-enforce argument with results. One farm bought, one +house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the +largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church +maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably +cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well +preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these will tell +more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to +plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through +swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through +commerce, education and religion! + +[Footnote A: In the original, this was 'drudggery'.] + + + + +_The Talented Tenth_ + +By PROF. W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS + + A strong plea for the higher education of the Negro, which those who are + interested in the future of the freedmen cannot afford to ignore. Prof. + DuBois produces ample evidence to prove conclusively the truth of his + statement that "to attempt to establish any sort of a system of common + and industrial school training, without _first_ providing for the higher + training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the + winds." + +[Illustration: W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS.] + + +The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional +men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal +with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this +race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of +the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a +difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational +experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the +object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily +men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess +artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make +manhood the object of the work of the schools--intelligence, broad +sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of +men to it--this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must +underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill +of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man +mistake the means of living for the object of life. + + * * * * * + +If this be true--and who can deny it--three tasks lay before me; first to +show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among +American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; secondly, to show how +these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly, to show their +relation to the Negro problem. + + * * * * * + +You misjudge us because you do not know us. From the very first it has +been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and +elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded +their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but +the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of +natural internal leadership? Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the +first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for +natural selection and the survival of the fittest. In colonial days came +Phillis Wheatley and Paul Cuffe striving against the bars of prejudice; +and Benjamin Banneker, the almanac maker, voiced their longings when he +said to Thomas Jefferson, "I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am +of the African race, and in colour which is natural to them, of the +deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the +Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you that I am not +under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman captivity to which too +many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the +fruition of those blessings which proceed from that free and unequalled +liberty with which you are favored, and which I hope you will willingly +allow, you have mercifully received from the immediate hand of that Being +from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift. + +"Suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms of the +British crown were exerted with every powerful effort, in order to reduce +you to a state of servitude; look back, I entreat you, on the variety of +dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that period in which every +human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore +the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a +serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential +preservation, you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and +tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that a +peculiar blessing of heaven. + +"This, sir, was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state +of Slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its +condition. It was then that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that +you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy +to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages: 'We hold these +truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are +endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, +liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'" + +Then came Dr. James Derham, who could tell even the learned Dr. Rush +something of medicine, and Lemuel Haynes, to whom Middlebury College gave +an honorary A.M. in 1804. These and others we may call the Revolutionary +group of distinguished Negroes--they were persons of marked ability, +leaders of a Talented Tenth, standing conspicuously among the best of +their time. They strove by word and deed to save the color line from +becoming the line between the bond and free, but all they could do was +nullified by Eli Whitney and the Curse of Gold. So they passed into +forgetfulness. + +But their spirit did not wholly die; here and there in the early part of +the century came other exceptional men. Some were natural sons of +unnatural fathers and were given often a liberal training and thus a race +of educated mulattoes sprang up to plead for black men's rights. There was +Ira Aldridge, whom all Europe loved to honor; there was that Voice crying +in the Wilderness, David Walker, and saying: + +"I declare it does appear to me as though some nations think God is +asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their +mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or +profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the +privilege of believing--Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? +Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and +permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children +in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families, +would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us +and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a +people were afflicted with since the world began--I say if God gives you +peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and +our children, who have never given you the least provocation--would He be +to us a God of Justice? If you will allow that we are men, who feel for +each other, does not the blood of our fathers and of us, their children, +cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth against you for the cruelties and murders +with which you have and do continue to afflict us?" + +This was the wild voice that first aroused Southern legislators in 1829 to +the terrors of abolitionism. + +In 1831 there met that first Negro convention in Philadelphia, at which +the world gaped curiously but which bravely attacked the problems of race +and slavery, crying out against persecution and declaring that "Laws as +cruel in themselves as they were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many +places been enacted against our poor, unfriended and unoffending brethren +(without a shadow of provocation on our part), at whose bare recital the +very savage draws himself up for fear of contagion--looks noble and +prides himself because he bears not the name of Christian." Side by side +this free Negro movement, and the movement for abolition, strove until +they merged into one strong stream. Too little notice has been taken of +the work which the Talented Tenth among Negroes took in the great +abolition crusade. From the very day that a Philadelphia colored man +became the first subscriber to Garrison's "Liberator," to the day when +Negro soldiers made the Emancipation Proclamation possible, black leaders +worked shoulder to shoulder with white men in a movement, the success of +which would have been impossible without them. There was Purvis and +Remond, Pennington and Highland Garnett, Sojourner Truth and Alexander +Crummel, and above all, Frederick Douglass--what would the abolition +movement have been without them? They stood as living examples of the +possibilities of the Negro race, their own hard experiences and well +wrought culture said silently more than all the drawn periods of +orators--they were the men who made American slavery impossible. As Maria +Weston Chapman once said, from the school of anti-slavery agitation "a +throng of authors, editors, lawyers, orators and accomplished gentlemen of +color have taken their degree! It has equally implanted hopes and +aspirations, noble thoughts, and sublime purposes, in the hearts of both +races. It has prepared the white man for the freedom of the black man, and +it has made the black man scorn the thought of enslavement, as does a +white man, as far as its influence has extended. Strengthen that noble +influence! Before its organization, the country only saw here and there in +slavery some faithful Cudjoe or Dinah, whose strong natures blossomed even +in bondage, like a fine plant beneath a heavy stone. Now, under the +elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, +the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the +noblest temples." + +Where were these black abolitionists trained? Some, like Frederick +Douglass, were self-trained, but yet trained liberally; others, like +Alexander Crummell and McCune Smith, graduated from famous foreign +universities. Most of them rose up through the colored schools of New York +and Philadelphia and Boston, taught by college-bred men like Russworm, of +Dartmouth, and college-bred white men like Neau and Benezet. + +After emancipation came a new group of educated and gifted leaders: +Langston, Bruce and Elliot, Greener, Williams and Payne. Through political +organization, historical and polemic writing and moral regeneration, these +men strove to uplift their people. It is the fashion of to-day to sneer at +them and to say that with freedom Negro leadership should have begun at +the plow and not in the Senate--a foolish and mischievous lie; two hundred +and fifty years that black serf toiled at the plow and yet that toiling +was in vain till the Senate passed the war amendments; and two hundred +and fifty years more the half-free serf of to-day may toil at his plow, +but unless he have political rights and righteously guarded civic +status, he will still remain the poverty-stricken and ignorant plaything +of rascals, that he now is. This all sane men know even if they dare +not say it. + +And so we come to the present--a day of cowardice and vacillation, of +strident wide-voiced wrong and faint hearted compromise; of double-faced +dallying with Truth and Right. Who are to-day guiding the work of the +Negro people? The "exceptions" of course. And yet so sure as this Talented +Tenth is pointed out, the blind worshippers of the Average cry out in +alarm: "These are exceptions, look here at death, disease and crime--these +are the happy rule." Of course they are the rule, because a silly nation +made them the rule: Because for three long centuries this people lynched +Negroes who dared to be brave, raped black women who dared to be virtuous, +crushed dark-hued youth who dared to be ambitious, and encouraged and +made to flourish servility and lewdness and apathy. But not even this was +able to crush all manhood and chastity and aspiration from black folk. A +saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires, +continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character. Exceptional +it is to be sure, but this is its chiefest promise; it shows the +capability of Negro blood, the promise of black men. Do Americans ever +stop to reflect that there are in this land a million men of Negro blood, +well-educated, owners of homes, against the honor of whose womanhood no +breath was ever raised, whose men occupy positions of trust and +usefulness, and who, judged by any standard, have reached the full measure +of the best type of modern European culture? Is it fair, is it decent, is +it Christian to ignore these facts of the Negro problem, to belittle such +aspiration, to nullify such leadership and seek to crush these people back +into the mass out of which by toil and travail, they and their fathers +have raised themselves? + +Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly +raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and +character? Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the +bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top +downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that +are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of +human progress; and the two historic mistakes which have hindered that +progress were the thinking first that no more could ever rise save the few +already risen; or second, that it would better the unrisen to pull the +risen down. + +How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands +of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and +most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and +universities of the land. We will not quarrel as to just what the +university of the Negro should teach or how it should teach it--I +willingly admit that each soul and each race-soul needs its own peculiar +curriculum. But this is true: A university is a human invention for the +transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation, +through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no +other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools. + +All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or +nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of +training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and +necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their +bellies, and no God greater than Gold. This is true training, and thus in +the beginning were the favored sons of the freedmen trained. Out of the +colleges of the North came, after the blood of war, Ware, Cravath, Chase, +Andrews, Bumstead and Spence to build the foundations of knowledge and +civilization in the black South. Where ought they to have begun to build? +At the bottom, of course, quibbles the mole with his eyes in the earth. +Aye! truly at the bottom, at the very bottom; at the bottom of knowledge, +down in the very depths of knowledge there where the roots of justice +strike into the lowest soil of Truth. And so they did begin; they founded +colleges, and up from the colleges shot normal schools, and out from the +normal schools went teachers, and around the normal teachers clustered +other teachers to teach the public schools; the college trained in Greek +and Latin and mathematics, 2,000 men; and these men trained full 50,000 +others in morals and manners, and they in turn taught thrift and the +alphabet to nine millions of men, who to-day hold $300,000,000 of +property. It was a miracle--the most wonderful peace-battle of the 19th +century, and yet to-day men smile at it, and in fine superiority tell us +that it was all a strange mistake; that a proper way to found a system of +education is first to gather the children and buy them spelling books and +hoes; afterward men may look about for teachers, if haply they may find +them; or again they would teach men Work, but as for Life--why, what has +Work to do with Life, they ask vacantly. + +Was the work of these college founders successful; did it stand the test +of time? Did the college graduates, with all their fine theories of life, +really live? Are they useful men helping to civilize and elevate their +less fortunate fellows? Let us see. Omitting all institutions which have +not actually graduated students from a college course, there are to-day in +the United States thirty-four institutions giving something above high +school training to Negroes and designed especially for this race. + +Three of these were established in border States before the War; thirteen +were planted by the Freedmen's Bureau in the years 1864-1869; nine were +established between 1870 and 1880 by various church bodies; five were +established after 1881 by Negro churches, and four are state institutions +supported by United States' agricultural funds. In most cases the college +departments are small adjuncts to high and common school work. As a matter +of fact six institutions--Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Shaw, Wilberforce and +Leland, are the important Negro colleges so far as actual work and number +of students are concerned. In all these institutions, seven hundred and +fifty Negro college students are enrolled. In grade the best of these +colleges are about a year behind the smaller New England colleges and a +typical curriculum is that of Atlanta University. Here students from the +grammar grades, after a three years' high school course, take a college +course of 136 weeks. One-fourth of this time is given to Latin and Greek; +one-fifth, to English and modern languages; one-sixth, to history and +social science; one-seventh, to natural science; one-eighth to +mathematics, and one-eighth to philosophy and pedagogy. + +In addition to these students in the South, Negroes have attended Northern +colleges for many years. As early as 1826 one was graduated from Bowdoin +College, and from that time till to-day nearly every year has seen +elsewhere, other such graduates. They have, of course, met much color +prejudice. Fifty years ago very few colleges would admit them at all. Even +to-day no Negro has ever been admitted to Princeton, and at some other +leading institutions they are rather endured than encouraged. Oberlin was +the great pioneer in the work of blotting out the color line in colleges, +and has more Negro graduates by far than any other Northern college. + +The total number of Negro college graduates up to 1899, (several of the +graduates of that year not being reported), was as follows: + +---------------+---------------+----------------- + |Negro Colleges.| White Colleges. +---------------+---------------+----------------- +Before '76 | 137 | 75 + '75-80 | 143 | 22 + '80-85 | 250 | 31 + '85-90 | 413 | 43 + '90-95 | 465 | 66 + '96-99 | 475 | 88 +Class Unknown | 57 | 64 +---------------+---------------+----------------- +Total | 1,914 | 390 +---------------+---------------+----------------- + +Of these graduates 2,079 were men and 252 were women; 50 per cent. of +Northern-born college men come South to work among the masses of their +people, at a sacrifice which few people realize; nearly 90 per cent. of +the Southern-born graduates instead of seeking that personal freedom and +broader intellectual atmosphere which their training has led them, in some +degree, to conceive, stay and labor and wait in the midst of their black +neighbors and relatives. + +The most interesting question, and in many respects the crucial question, +to be asked concerning college-bred Negroes, is: Do they earn a living? It +has been intimated more than once that the higher training of Negroes has +resulted in sending into the world of work, men who could find nothing to +do suitable to their talents. Now and then there comes a rumor of a +colored college man working at menial service, etc. Fortunately, returns +as to occupations of college-bred Negroes, gathered by the Atlanta +conference, are quite full--nearly sixty per cent. of the total number of +graduates. + +This enables us to reach fairly certain conclusions as to the occupations +of all college-bred Negroes. Of 1,312 persons reported, there were: + +---------------------------------+----------+------------ + | Per Cent.| +---------------------------------+----------+------------ +Teachers, | 53.4 |************ +Clergymen, | 16.8 |****** +Physicians, etc., | 6.3 |**** +Students, | 5.6 |*** +Lawyers, | 4.7 |*** +In Govt. Service, | 4.0 |** +In Business, | 3.6 |** +Farmers and Artisans, | 2.7 |* +Editors, Secretaries and Clerks, | 2.4 |* +Miscellaneous. | .5 |* +---------------------------------+----------+------------ + +Over half are teachers, a sixth are preachers, another sixth are students +and professional men; over 6 per cent. are farmers, artisans and +merchants, and 4 per cent. are in government service. In detail the +occupations are as follows: + +_Occupations of College-Bred Men._ + +Teachers: + Presidents and Deans, 19 + Teacher of Music, 7 + Professors, Principals and Teachers, 675 Total 701 + +Clergymen: + Bishop, 1 + Chaplains U.S. Army, 2 + Missionaries, 9 + Presiding Elders, 12 + Preachers, 197 Total 221 + +Physicians, + Doctors of Medicine, 76 + Druggists, 4 + Dentists, 3 Total 83 + +Students, 74 + +Lawyers, 62 + +Civil Service: + U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary, 1 + U.S. Consul, 1 + U.S. Deputy Collector, 1 + U.S. Gauger, 1 + U.S. Postmasters, 2 + U.S. Clerks, 44 + State Civil Service, 2 + City Civil Service, 1 Total 53 + +Business Men: + Merchants, etc., 30 + Managers, 13 + Real Estate Dealers, 4 Total 47 + +Farmers, 26 + +Clerks and Secretaries: + Secretary of National Societies, 7 + Clerks, etc., 15 Total 22 + +Artisans, 9 + +Editors, 9 + +Miscellaneous, 5 + +These figures illustrate vividly the function of the college-bred Negro. +He is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of +the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social +movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social +leadership more than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall +back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well +defined social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully +evolved. The preacher was, even before the war, the group leader of the +Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally this +preacher was ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the +older type by better educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct +work and by direct influence on other preachers, and on congregations, the +college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory work and moral +inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated. + +It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college +has found its peculiar function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how +mighty a revolution has been thus accomplished. To furnish five millions +and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race and blood, in +one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but a very +important one, in that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro +child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses of the blacks in contact +with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities +and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were +first teachers, and then teachers of teachers. And here it is that the +broad culture of college work has been of peculiar value. Knowledge of +life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro's deepest +ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been +simply for bread winning, but also for human culture, has been of +inestimable value in the training of these men. + +In earlier years the two occupations of preacher and teacher were +practically the only ones open to the black college graduate. Of later +years a larger diversity of life among his people, has opened new avenues +of employment. Nor have these college men been paupers and spendthrifts; +557 college-bred Negroes owned in 1899, $1,342,862.50 worth of real +estate, (assessed value) or $2,411 per family. The real value of the total +accumulations of the whole group is perhaps about $10,000,000, or $5,000 a +piece. Pitiful, is it not, beside the fortunes of oil kings and steel +trusts, but after all is the fortune of the millionaire the only stamp of +true and successful living? Alas! it is, with many, and there's the rub. + +The problem of training the Negro is to-day immensely complicated by the +fact that the whole question of the efficiency and appropriateness of our +present systems of education, for any kind of child, is a matter of active +debate, in which final settlement seems still afar off. Consequently it +often happens that persons arguing for or against certain systems of +education for Negroes, have these controversies in mind and miss the real +question at issue. The main question, so far as the Southern Negro is +concerned, is: What under the present circumstance, must a system of +education do in order to raise the Negro as quickly as possible in the +scale of civilization? The answer to this question seems to me clear: It +must strengthen the Negro's character, increase his knowledge and teach +him to earn a living. Now it goes without saying, that it is hard to do +all these things simultaneously or suddenly, and that at the same time it +will not do to give all the attention to one and neglect the others; we +could give black boys trades, but that alone will not civilize a race of +ex-slaves; we might simply increase their knowledge of the world, but this +would not necessarily make them wish to use this knowledge honestly; we +might seek to strengthen character and purpose, but to what end if this +people have nothing to eat or to wear? A system of education is not one +thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter +of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and +without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. If then we +start out to train an ignorant and unskilled people with a heritage of bad +habits, our system of training must set before itself two great aims--the +one dealing with knowledge and character, the other part seeking to give +the child the technical knowledge necessary for him to earn a living under +the present circumstances. These objects are accomplished in part by the +opening of the common schools on the one, and of the industrial schools on +the other. But only in part, for there must also be trained those who are +to teach these schools--men and women of knowledge and culture and +technical skill who understand modern civilization, and have the training +and aptitude to impart it to the children under them. There must be +teachers, and teachers of teachers, and to attempt to establish any sort +of a system of common and industrial school training, without _first_ +(and I say _first_ advisedly) without _first_ providing for the higher +training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the +winds. School houses do not teach themselves--piles of brick and mortar +and machinery do not send out _men_. It is the trained, living human soul, +cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the +real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they +be black or white, Greek, Russian or American. Nothing, in these latter +days, has so dampened the faith of thinking Negroes in recent educational +movements, as the fact that such movements have been accompanied by +ridicule and denouncement and decrying of those very institutions of +higher training which made the Negro public school possible, and make +Negro industrial schools thinkable. It was Fisk, Atlanta, Howard and +Straight, those colleges born of the faith and sacrifice of the +abolitionists, that placed in the black schools of the South the 30,000 +teachers and more, which some, who depreciate the work of these higher +schools, are using to teach their own new experiments. If Hampton, +Tuskegee and the hundred other industrial schools prove in the future to +be as successful as they deserve to be, then their success in training +black artisans for the South, will be due primarily to the white colleges +of the North and the black colleges of the South, which trained the +teachers who to-day conduct these institutions. There was a time when the +American people believed pretty devoutly that a log of wood with a boy at +one end and Mark Hopkins at the other, represented the highest ideal of +human training. But in these eager days it would seem that we have changed +all that and think it necessary to add a couple of saw-mills and a hammer +to this outfit, and, at a pinch, to dispense with the services of Mark +Hopkins. + +I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of +teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem +to depreciate in the slightest degree the important part industrial +schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I _do_ say, and +insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, +to imagine that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the +training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and +to teach the teachers of the public schools. + +But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of +schools; it is much more a matter of family and group life--the training +of one's home, of one's daily companions, of one's social class. Now the +black boy of the South moves in a black world--a world with its own +leaders, its own thoughts, its own ideals. In this world he gets by far +the larger part of his life training, and through the eyes of this dark +world he peers into the veiled world beyond. Who guides and determines the +education which he receives in his world? His teachers here are the +group-leaders of the Negro people--the physicians and clergymen, the +trained fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about him of +all kinds; here it is, if at all, that the culture of the surrounding +world trickles through and is handed on by the graduates of the higher +schools. Can such culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we +afford to ignore it? Do you think that if the leaders of thought among +Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers, that they will have no +leaders? On the contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold +the places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous +busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you must help +furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained +leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless +misguided rabble. + +I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black +boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of +Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education since the +war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist +that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is +to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man, +each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in +which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and +his family what life means; the second is to give him sufficient +intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the +first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men--not a +quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many +college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to +raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good +system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently located and properly +equipped. + +The Sixth Atlanta Conference truly said in 1901: + +"We call the attention of the Nation to the fact that less than one +million of the three million Negro children of school age, are at present +regularly attending school, and these attend a session which lasts only a +few months. + +"We are to-day deliberately rearing millions of our citizens in ignorance, +and at the same time limiting the rights of citizenship by educational +qualifications. This is unjust. Half the black youth of the land have no +opportunities open to them for learning to read, write and cipher. In the +discussion as to the proper training of Negro children after they leave +the public schools, we have forgotten that they are not yet decently +provided with public schools. + +"Propositions are beginning to be made in the South to reduce the already +meagre school facilities of Negroes. We congratulate the South on +resisting, as much as it has, this pressure, and on the many millions it +has spent on Negro education. But it is only fair to point out that Negro +taxes and the Negroes' share of the income from indirect taxes and +endowments have fully repaid this expenditure, so that the Negro public +school system has not in all probability cost the white taxpayers a single +cent since the war. + +"This is not fair. Negro schools should be a public burden, since they are +a public benefit. The Negro has a right to demand good common school +training at the hands of the States and the Nation since by their fault he +is not in position to pay for this himself." + +What is the chief need for the building up of the Negro public school in +the South? The Negro race in the South needs teachers to-day above all +else. This is the concurrent testimony of all who know the situation. For +the supply of this great demand two things are needed--institutions of +higher education and money for school houses and salaries. It is usually +assumed that a hundred or more institutions for Negro training are to-day +turning out so many teachers and college-bred men that the race is +threatened with an over-supply. This is sheer nonsense. There are to-day +less than 3,000 living Negro college graduates in the United States, and +less than 1,000 Negroes in college. Moreover, in the 164 schools for +Negroes, 95 per cent. of their students are doing elementary and secondary +work, work which should be done in the public schools. Over half the +remaining 2,157 students are taking high school studies. The mass of +so-called "normal" schools for the Negro, are simply doing elementary +common school work, or, at most, high school work, with a little +instruction in methods. The Negro colleges and the post-graduate courses +at other institutions are the only agencies for the broader and more +careful training of teachers. The work of these institutions is hampered +for lack of funds. It is getting increasingly difficult to get funds for +training teachers in the best modern methods, and yet all over the South, +from State Superintendents, county officials, city boards and school +principals comes the wail, "We need TEACHERS!" and teachers must be +trained. As the fairest minded of all white Southerners, Atticus G. +Haygood, once said: "The defects of colored teachers are so great as to +create an urgent necessity for training better ones. Their excellencies +and their successes are sufficient to justify the best hopes of success in +the effort, and to vindicate the judgment of those who make large +investments of money and service, to give to colored students opportunity +for thoroughly preparing themselves for the work of teaching children of +their people." + +The truth of this has been strikingly shown in the marked improvement of +white teachers in the South. Twenty years ago the rank and file of white +public school teachers were not as good as the Negro teachers. But they, +by scholarships and good salaries, have been encouraged to thorough normal +and collegiate preparation, while the Negro teachers have been discouraged +by starvation wages and the idea that any training will do for a black +teacher. If carpenters are needed it is well and good to train men as +carpenters. But to train men as carpenters, and then set them to teaching +is wasteful and criminal; and to train men as teachers and then refuse +them living wages, unless they become carpenters, is rank nonsense. + +The United States Commissioner of Education says in his report for 1900: +"For comparison between the white and colored enrollment in secondary and +higher education, I have added together the enrollment in high schools and +secondary schools, with the attendance on colleges and universities, not +being sure of the actual grade of work done in the colleges and +universities. The work done in the secondary schools is reported in such +detail in this office, that there can be no doubt of its grade." + +He then makes the following comparisons of persons in every million +enrolled in secondary and higher education: + + _Whole Country._ _Negroes._ +1880 4,362 1,289 +1900 10,743 2,061 + +And he concludes: "While the number in colored high schools and colleges +had increased somewhat faster than the population, it had not kept pace +with the average of the whole country, for it had fallen from 30 per cent. +to 24 per cent. of the average quota. Of all colored pupils, one (1) in +one hundred was engaged in secondary and higher work, and that ratio has +continued substantially for the past twenty years. If the ratio of colored +population in secondary and higher education is to be equal to the average +for the whole country, it must be increased to five times its present +average." And if this be true of the secondary and higher education, it is +safe to say that the Negro has not one-tenth his quota in college studies. +How baseless, therefore, is the charge of too much training! We need Negro +teachers for the Negro common schools, and we need first-class normal +schools and colleges to train them. This is the work of higher Negro +education and it must be done. + +Further than this, after being provided with group leaders of +civilization, and a foundation of intelligence in the public schools, the +carpenter, in order to be a man, needs technical skill. This calls for +trade schools. Now trade schools are not nearly such simple things as +people once thought. The original idea was that the "Industrial" school +was to furnish education, practically free, to those willing to work for +it; it was to "do" things--i.e.: become a center of productive industry, +it was to be partially, if not wholly, self-supporting, and it was to +teach trades. Admirable as were some of the ideas underlying this scheme, +the whole thing simply would not work in practice; it was found that if +you were to use time and material to teach trades thoroughly, you could +not at the same time keep the industries on a commercial basis and make +them pay. Many schools started out to do this on a large scale and went +into virtual bankruptcy. Moreover, it was found also that it was possible +to teach a boy a trade mechanically, without giving him the full +educative benefit of the process, and, vice versa, that there was a +distinctive educative value in teaching a boy to use his hands and eyes in +carrying out certain physical processes, even though he did not actually +learn a trade. It has happened, therefore, in the last decade, that a +noticeable change has come over the industrial schools. In the first place +the idea of commercially remunerative industry in a school is being pushed +rapidly to the back-ground. There are still schools with shops and farms +that bring an income, and schools that use student labor partially for the +erection of their buildings and the furnishing of equipment. It is coming +to be seen, however, in the education of the Negro, as clearly as it has +been seen in the education of the youths the world over, that it is the +_boy_ and not the material product, that is the true object of education. +Consequently the object of the industrial school came to be the thorough +training of boys regardless of the cost of the training, so long as it was +thoroughly well done. + +Even at this point, however, the difficulties were not surmounted. In the +first place modern industry has taken great strides since the war, and the +teaching of trades is no longer a simple matter. Machinery and long +processes of work have greatly changed the work of the carpenter, the +ironworker and the shoemaker. A really efficient workman must be to-day an +intelligent man who has had good technical training in addition to +thorough common school, and perhaps even higher training. To meet this +situation the industrial schools began a further development; they +established distinct Trade Schools for the thorough training of better +class artisans, and at the same time they sought to preserve for the +purposes of general education, such of the simpler processes of elementary +trade learning as were best suited therefor. In this differentiation of +the Trade School and manual training, the best of the industrial schools +simply followed the plain trend of the present educational epoch. A +prominent educator tells us that, in Sweden, "In the beginning the +economic conception was generally adopted, and everywhere manual training +was looked upon as a means of preparing the children of the common people +to earn their living. But gradually it came to be recognized that manual +training has a more elevated purpose, and one, indeed, more useful in the +deeper meaning of the term. It came to be considered as an educative +process for the complete moral, physical and intellectual development of +the child." + +Thus, again, in the manning of trade schools and manual training schools +we are thrown back upon the higher training as its source and chief +support. There was a time when any aged and wornout carpenter could teach +in a trade school. But not so to-day. Indeed the demand for college-bred +men by a school like Tuskegee, ought to make Mr. Booker T. Washington the +firmest friend of higher training. Here he has as helpers the son of a +Negro senator, trained in Greek and the humanities, and graduated at +Harvard; the son of a Negro congressman and lawyer, trained in Latin and +mathematics, and graduated at Oberlin; he has as his wife, a woman who +read Virgil and Homer in the same class room with me; he has as college +chaplain, a classical graduate of Atlanta University; as teacher of +science, a graduate of Fisk; as teacher of history, a graduate of +Smith,--indeed some thirty of his chief teachers are college graduates, +and instead of studying French grammars in the midst of weeds, or buying +pianos for dirty cabins, they are at Mr. Washington's right hand helping +him in a noble work. And yet one of the effects of Mr. Washington's +propaganda has been to throw doubt upon the expediency of such training +for Negroes, as these persons have had. + + * * * * * + +Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race +transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you +like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do +not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the +levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by +the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply +teach work--it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race +must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their +people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men +for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by +its exceptional men. + + + + +_The Disfranchisement of the Negro_ + +By CHARLES W. CHESNUTT + + In this paper the author presents a straightforward statement of facts + concerning the disfranchisement of the Negro in the Southern States. Mr. + Chesnutt, who is too well known as a writer to need any introduction to + an American audience, puts the case for the Negro to the American people + very plainly, and spares neither the North nor the South. + +[Illustration: CHARLES W. CHESNUTT.] + + +The right of American citizens of African descent, commonly called +Negroes, to vote upon the same terms as other citizens of the United +States, is plainly declared and firmly fixed by the Constitution. No such +person is called upon to present reasons why he should possess this right: +that question is foreclosed by the Constitution. The object of the +elective franchise is to give representation. So long as the Constitution +retains its present form, any State Constitution, or statute, which seeks, +by juggling the ballot, to deny the colored race fair representation, is a +clear violation of the fundamental law of the land, and a corresponding +injustice to those thus deprived of this right. + +For thirty-five years this has been the law. As long as it was measurably +respected, the colored people made rapid strides in education, wealth, +character and self-respect. This the census proves, all statements to the +contrary notwithstanding. A generation has grown to manhood and womanhood +under the great, inspiring freedom conferred by the Constitution and +protected by the right of suffrage--protected in large degree by the mere +naked right, even when its exercise was hindered or denied by unlawful +means. They have developed, in every Southern community, good citizens, +who, if sustained and encouraged by just laws and liberal institutions, +would greatly augment their number with the passing years, and soon wipe +out the reproach of ignorance, unthrift, low morals and social +inefficiency, thrown at them indiscriminately and therefore unjustly, and +made the excuse for the equally undiscriminating contempt of their persons +and their rights. They have reduced their illiteracy nearly 50 per cent. +Excluded from the institutions of higher learning in their own States, +their young men hold their own, and occasionally carry away honors, in +the universities of the North. They have accumulated three hundred million +dollars worth of real and personal property. Individuals among them have +acquired substantial wealth, and several have attained to something like +national distinction in art, letters and educational leadership. They are +numerously represented in the learned professions. Heavily handicapped, +they have made such rapid progress that the suspicion is justified that +their advancement, rather than any stagnation or retrogression, is the +true secret of the virulent Southern hostility to their rights, which has +so influenced Northern opinion that it stands mute, and leaves the colored +people, upon whom the North conferred liberty, to the tender mercies of +those who have always denied their fitness for it. + +It may be said, in passing, that the word "Negro," where used in this +paper, is used solely for convenience. By the census of 1890 there were +1,000,000 colored people in the country who were half, or more than half, +white, and logically there must be, as in fact there are, so many who +share the white blood in some degree, as to justify the assertion that the +race problem in the United States concerns the welfare and the status of a +mixed race. Their rights are not one whit the more sacred because of this +fact; but in an argument where injustice is sought to be excused because +of fundamental differences of race, it is well enough to bear in mind that +the race whose rights and liberties are endangered all over this country +by disfranchisement at the South, are the colored people who live in the +United States to-day, and not the low-browed, man-eating savage whom the +Southern white likes to set upon a block and contrast with Shakespeare and +Newton and Washington and Lincoln. + +Despite and in defiance of the Federal Constitution, to-day in the six +Southern States of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, South +Carolina and Virginia, containing an aggregate colored population of about +6,000,000, these have been, to all intents and purposes, denied, so far +as the States can effect it, the right to vote. This disfranchisement is +accomplished by various methods, devised with much transparent ingenuity, +the effort being in each instance to violate the spirit of the Federal +Constitution by disfranchising the Negro, while seeming to respect its +letter by avoiding the mention of race or color. + +These restrictions fall into three groups. The first comprises a property +qualification--the ownership of $300 worth or more of real or personal +property (Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia and South Carolina); the payment of +a poll tax (Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia); an educational +qualification--the ability to read and write (Alabama, Louisiana, North +Carolina). Thus far, those who believe in a restricted suffrage +everywhere, could perhaps find no reasonable fault with any one of these +qualifications, applied either separately or together. + +But the Negro has made such progress that these restrictions alone would +perhaps not deprive him of effective representation. Hence the second +group. This comprises an "understanding" clause--the applicant must be +able "to read, or understand when read to him, any clause in the +Constitution" (Mississippi), or to read and explain, or to understand and +explain when read to him, any section of the Constitution (Virginia); an +employment qualification--the voter must be regularly employed in some +lawful occupation (Alabama); a character qualification--the voter must be +a person of good character and who "understands the duties and obligations +of citizens under a republican (!) form of government" (Alabama). + +The qualifications under the first group it will be seen, are capable of +exact demonstration; those under the second group are left to the +discretion and judgment of the registering officer--for in most instances +these are all requirements for registration, which must precede voting. + +But the first group, by its own force, and the second group, under +imaginable conditions, might exclude not only the Negro vote, but a large +part of the white vote. Hence, the third group, which comprises: a +military service qualification--any man who went to war, willingly or +unwillingly, in a good cause or a bad, is entitled to register (Ala., +Va.); a prescriptive qualification, under which are included all male +persons who were entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, at which date the +Negro had not yet been given the right to vote; a hereditary +qualification, (the so-called "grandfather" clause), whereby any son +(Va.), or descendant (Ala.), of a soldier, and (N.C.) the descendant of +any person who had the right to vote on January 1, 1867, inherits that +right. If the voter wish to take advantage of these last provisions, which +are in the nature of exceptions to a general rule, he must register within +a stated time, whereupon he becomes a member of a privileged class of +permanently enrolled voters not subject to any of the other restrictions. + +It will be seen that these restrictions are variously combined in the +different States, and it is apparent that if combined to their declared +end, practically every Negro may, under color of law, be denied the right +to vote, and practically every white man accorded that right. The +effectiveness of these provisions to exclude the Negro vote is proved by +the Alabama registration under the new State Constitution. Out of a total, +by the census of 1900, of 181,471 Negro "males of voting age," less than +3,000 are registered; in Montgomery county alone, the seat of the State +capital, where there are 7,000 Negro males of voting age, only 47 have +been allowed to register, while in several counties not one single Negro +is permitted to exercise the franchise. + +These methods of disfranchisement have stood such tests as the United +States Courts, including the Supreme Court, have thus far seen fit to +apply, in such cases as have been before them for adjudication. These +include a case based upon the "understanding" clause of the Mississippi +Constitution, in which the Supreme Court held, in effect, that since there +was no ambiguity in the language employed and the Negro was not directly +named, the Court would not go behind the wording of the Constitution to +find a meaning which discriminated against the colored voter; and the +recent case of Jackson vs. Giles, brought by a colored citizen of +Montgomery, Alabama, in which the Supreme Court confesses itself impotent +to provide a remedy for what, by inference, it acknowledges _may_ be a +"great political wrong," carefully avoiding, however, to state that it is +a wrong, although the vital prayer of the petition was for a decision upon +this very point. + +Now, what is the effect of this wholesale disfranchisement of colored men, +upon their citizenship. The value of food to the human organism is not +measured by the pains of an occasional surfeit, but by the effect of its +entire deprivation. Whether a class of citizens should vote, even if not +always wisely--what class does?--may best be determined by considering +their condition when they are without the right to vote. + +The colored people are left, in the States where they have been +disfranchised, absolutely without representation, direct or indirect, in +any law-making body, in any court of justice, in any branch of +government--for the feeble remnant of voters left by law is so +inconsiderable as to be without a shadow of power. Constituting one-eighth +of the population of the whole country, two-fifths of the whole Southern +people, and a majority in several States, they are not able, because +disfranchised where most numerous, to send one representative to the +Congress, which, by the decision in the Alabama case, is held by the +Supreme Court to be the only body, outside of the State itself, competent +to give relief from a great political wrong. By former decisions of the +same tribunal, even Congress is impotent to protect their civil rights, +the Fourteenth Amendment having long since, by the consent of the same +Court, been in many respects as completely nullified as the Fifteenth +Amendment is now sought to be. They have no direct representation in any +Southern legislature, and no voice in determining the choice of white men +who might be friendly to their rights. Nor are they able to influence the +election of judges or other public officials, to whom are entrusted the +protection of their lives, their liberties and their property. No judge is +rendered careful, no sheriff diligent, for fear that he may offend a black +constituency; the contrary is most lamentably true; day after day the +catalogue of lynchings and anti-Negro riots upon every imaginable pretext, +grows longer and more appalling. The country stands face to face with the +revival of slavery; at the moment of this writing a federal grand jury in +Alabama is uncovering a system of peonage established under cover of law. + +Under the Southern program it is sought to exclude colored men from every +grade of the public service; not only from the higher administrative +functions, to which few of them would in any event, for a long time +aspire, but from the lowest as well. A Negro may not be a constable or a +policeman. He is subjected by law to many degrading discriminations. He is +required to be separated from white people on railroads and street cars, +and, by custom, debarred from inns and places of public entertainment. His +equal right to a free public education is constantly threatened and is +nowhere equitably recognized. In Georgia, as has been shown by Dr. DuBois, +where the law provides for a pro rata distribution of the public school +fund between the races, and where the colored school population is 48 per +cent. of the total, the amount of the fund devoted to their schools is +only 20 per cent. In New Orleans, with an immense colored population, many +of whom are persons of means and culture, all colored public schools above +the fifth grade have been abolished. + +The Negro is subjected to taxation without representation, which the +forefathers of this Republic made the basis of a bloody revolution. + +Flushed with their local success, and encouraged by the timidity of the +Courts and the indifference of public opinion, the Southern whites have +carried their campaign into the national government, with an ominous +degree of success. If they shall have their way, no Negro can fill any +federal office, or occupy, in the public service, any position that is not +menial. This is not an inference, but the openly, passionately avowed +sentiment of the white South. The right to employment in the public +service is an exceedingly valuable one, for which white men have struggled +and fought. A vast army of men are employed in the administration of +public affairs. Many avenues of employment are closed to colored men by +popular prejudice. If their right to public employment is recognized, and +the way to it open through the civil service, or the appointing power, or +the suffrages of the people, it will prove, as it has already, a strong +incentive to effort and a powerful lever for advancement. Its value to the +Negro, like that of the right to vote, may be judged by the eagerness of +the whites to deprive him of it. + +Not only is the Negro taxed without representation in the States referred +to, but he pays, through the tariff and internal revenue, a tax to a +National government whose supreme judicial tribunal declares that it +cannot, through the executive arm, enforce its own decrees, and, +therefore, refuses to pass upon a question, squarely before it, involving +a basic right of citizenship. For the decision of the Supreme Court in the +Giles case, if it foreshadows the attitude which the Court will take upon +other cases to the same general end which will soon come before it, is +scarcely less than a reaffirmation of the Dred Scott decision; it +certainly amounts to this--that in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment, +colored men in the United States have no political rights which the States +are bound to respect. To say this much is to say that all the privileges +and immunities which Negroes henceforth enjoy, must be by favor of the +whites; they are not _rights_. The whites have so declared; they proclaim +that the country is theirs, that the Negro should be thankful that he has +so much, when so much more might be withheld from him. He stands upon a +lower footing than any alien; he has no government to which he may look +for protection. + +Moreover, the white South sends to Congress, on a basis including the +Negro population, a delegation nearly twice as large as it is justly +entitled to, and one which may always safely be relied upon to oppose in +Congress every measure which seeks to protect the equality, or to enlarge +the rights of colored citizens. The grossness of this injustice is all the +more apparent since the Supreme Court, in the Alabama case referred to, +has declared the legislative and political department of the government to +be the only power which can right a political wrong. Under this decision +still further attacks upon the liberties of the citizen may be confidently +expected. Armed with the Negro's sole weapon of defense, the white South +stands ready to smite down his rights. The ballot was first given to the +Negro to defend him against this very thing. He needs it now far more than +then, and for even stronger reasons. The 9,000,000 free colored people of +to-day have vastly more to defend than the 3,000,000 hapless blacks who +had just emerged from slavery. If there be those who maintain that it was +a mistake to give the Negro the ballot at the time and in the manner in +which it was given, let them take to heart this reflection: that to +deprive him of it to-day, or to so restrict it as to leave him utterly +defenseless against the present relentless attitude of the South toward +his rights, will prove to be a mistake so much greater than the first, as +to be no less than a crime, from which not alone the Southern Negro must +suffer, but for which the nation will as surely pay the penalty as it paid +for the crime of slavery. Contempt for law is death to a republic, and +this one has developed alarming symptoms of the disease. + +And now, having thus robbed the Negro of every political and civil +_right_, the white South, in palliation of its course, makes a great show +of magnanimity in leaving him, as the sole remnant of what he acquired +through the Civil War, a very inadequate public school education, which, +by the present program, is to be directed mainly towards making him a +better agricultural laborer. Even this is put forward as a favor, although +the Negro's property is taxed to pay for it, and his labor as well. For it +is a well settled principle of political economy, that land and machinery +of themselves produce nothing, and that labor indirectly pays its fair +proportion of the tax upon the public's wealth. The white South seems to +stand to the Negro at present as one, who, having been reluctantly +compelled to release another from bondage, sees him stumbling forward and +upward, neglected by his friends and scarcely yet conscious of his own +strength; seizes him, binds him, and having bereft him of speech, of sight +and of manhood, "yokes him with the mule" and exclaims, with a show of +virtue which ought to deceive no one: "Behold how good a friend I am of +yours! Have I not left you a stomach and a pair of arms, and will I not +generously permit you to work for me with the one, that you may thereby +gain enough to fill the other? A brain you do not need. We will relieve +you of any responsibility that might seem to demand such an organ." + +The argument of peace-loving Northern white men and Negro opportunists +that the political power of the Negro having long ago been suppressed by +unlawful means, his right to vote is a mere paper right, of no real value, +and therefore to be lightly yielded for the sake of a hypothetical +harmony, is fatally short-sighted. It is precisely the attitude and +essentially the argument which would have surrendered to the South in the +sixties, and would have left this country to rot in slavery for another +generation. White men do not thus argue concerning their own rights. They +know too well the value of ideals. Southern white men see too clearly the +latent power of these unexercised rights. If the political power of the +Negro was a nullity because of his ignorance and lack of leadership, why +were they not content to leave it so, with the pleasing assurance that if +it ever became effective, it would be because the Negroes had grown fit +for its exercise? On the contrary, they have not rested until the +possibility of its revival was apparently headed off by new State +Constitutions. Nor are they satisfied with this. There is no doubt that an +effort will be made to secure the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, and +thus forestall the development of the wealthy and educated Negro, whom the +South seems to anticipate as a greater menace than the ignorant ex-slave. +However improbable this repeal may seem, it is not a subject to be lightly +dismissed; for it is within the power of the white people of the nation to +do whatever they wish in the premises--they did it once; they can do it +again. The Negro and his friends should see to it that the white majority +shall never wish to do anything to his hurt. There still stands, before +the Negro-hating whites of the South, the specter of a Supreme Court +which will interpret the Constitution to mean what it says, and what those +who enacted it meant, and what the nation, which ratified it, understood, +and which will find power, in a nation which goes beyond seas to +administer the affairs of distant peoples, to enforce its own fundamental +laws; the specter, too, of an aroused public opinion which will compel +Congress and the Courts to preserve the liberties of the Republic, which +are the liberties of the people. To wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold +it lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything +else whatever is simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race, +disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught, +that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against +oppression until they shall have become rich and learned, in competition +with those already thus favored and possessing the ballot in addition. +This is not the philosophy of history. The growth of liberty has been the +constant struggle of the poor against the privileged classes; and the +goal of that struggle has ever been the equality of all men before the +law. The Negro who would yield this right, deserves to be a slave; he has +the servile spirit. The rich and the educated can, by virtue of their +influence, command many votes; can find other means of protection; the +poor man has but one, he should guard it as a sacred treasure. Long ago, +by fair treatment, the white leaders of the South might have bound the +Negro to themselves with hoops of steel. They have not chosen to take this +course, but by assuming from the beginning an attitude hostile to his +rights, have never gained his confidence, and now seek by foul means to +destroy where they have never sought by fair means to control. + +I have spoken of the effect of disfranchisement upon the colored race; it +is to the race as a whole, that the argument of the problem is generally +directed. But the unit of society in a republic is the individual, and not +the race, the failure to recognize this fact being the fundamental error +which has beclouded the whole discussion. The effect of disfranchisement +upon the individual is scarcely less disastrous. I do not speak of the +moral effect of injustice upon those who suffer from it; I refer rather to +the practical consequences which may be appreciated by any mind. No +country is free in which the way upward is not open for every man to try, +and for every properly qualified man to attain whatever of good the +community life may offer. Such a condition does not exist, at the South, +even in theory, for any man of color. In no career can such a man compete +with white men upon equal terms. He must not only meet the prejudice of +the individual, not only the united prejudice of the white community; but +lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn +with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far +shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts +itself readily to circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is +always the temptation to + + "Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, + Where thrift may follow fawning." + +He who can most skilfully balance himself upon the advancing or receding +wave of white opinion concerning his race, is surest of such measure of +prosperity as is permitted to men of dark skins. There are Negro teachers +in the South--the privilege of teaching in their own schools is the one +respectable branch of the public service still left open to them--who, for +a grudging appropriation from a Southern legislature, will decry their own +race, approve their own degradation, and laud their oppressors. Deprived +of the right to vote, and, therefore, of any power to demand what is their +due, they feel impelled to buy the tolerance of the whites at any +sacrifice. If to live is the first duty of man, as perhaps it is the first +instinct, then those who thus stoop to conquer may be right. But is it +needful to stoop so low, and if so, where lies the ultimate +responsibility for this abasement? + +I shall say nothing about the moral effect of disfranchisement upon the +white people, or upon the State itself. What slavery made of the Southern +whites is a matter of history. The abolition of slavery gave the South an +opportunity to emerge from barbarism. Present conditions indicate that the +spirit which dominated slavery still curses the fair section over which +that institution spread its blight. + +And now, is the situation remediless? If not so, where lies the remedy? +First let us take up those remedies suggested by the men who approve of +disfranchisement, though they may sometimes deplore the method, or regret +the necessity. + +Time, we are told, heals all diseases, rights all wrongs, and is the only +cure for this one. It is a cowardly argument. These people are entitled to +their rights to-day, while they are yet alive to enjoy them; and it is +poor statesmanship and worse morals to nurse a present evil and thrust it +forward upon a future generation for correction. The nation can no more +honestly do this than it could thrust back upon a past generation the +responsibility for slavery. It had to meet that responsibility; it ought +to meet this one. + +Education has been put forward as the great corrective--preferably +industrial education. The intellect of the whites is to be educated to the +point where they will so appreciate the blessings of liberty and equality, +as of their own motion to enlarge and defend the Negro's rights. The +Negroes, on the other hand, are to be so trained as to make them, not +equal with the whites in any way--God save the mark! this would be +unthinkable!--but so useful to the community that the whites will protect +them rather than to lose their valuable services. Some few enthusiasts go +so far as to maintain that by virtue of education the Negro will, in time, +become strong enough to protect himself against any aggression of the +whites; this, it may be said, is a strictly Northern view. + +It is not quite clearly apparent how education alone, in the ordinary +meaning of the word, is to solve, in any appreciable time, the problem of +the relations of Southern white and black people. The need of education of +all kinds for both races is wofully apparent. But men and nations have +been free without being learned, and there have been educated slaves. +Liberty has been known to languish where culture had reached a very high +development. Nations do not first become rich and learned and then free, +but the lesson of history has been that they first become free and then +rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back into slavery again because of +too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of civic +virtues. The process of education has been going on rapidly in the +Southern States since the Civil War, and yet, if we take superficial +indications, the rights of the Negroes are at a lower ebb than at any time +during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race prejudice more +intense and uncompromising. It is not apparent that educated Southerners +are less rancorous than others in their speech concerning the Negro, or +less hostile in their attitude toward his rights. It is their voice alone +that we have heard in this discussion; and if, as they state, they are +liberal in their views as compared with the more ignorant whites, then God +save the Negro! + +I was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the Superintendent of +Public Schools of a Southern city that "there was no place in the modern +world for the Negro, except under the ground." If gentlemen holding such +opinions are to instruct the white youth of the South, would it be at all +surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their leisure to +the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground as many of +this superfluous race as possible? + +The sole excuse made in the South for the prevalent injustice to the Negro +is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies resulting +therefrom. It has nowhere been declared as a part of the Southern program +that the Negro, when educated, is to be given a fair representation in +government or an equal opportunity in life; the contrary has been +strenuously asserted; education can never make of him anything but a +Negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to be safely trusted +with any degree of power. A system of education which would tend to soften +the asperities and lessen the inequalities between the races would be of +inestimable value. An education which by a rigid separation of the races +from the kindergarten to the university, fosters this racial antipathy, +and is directed toward emphasizing the superiority of one class and the +inferiority of another, might easily have disastrous, rather than +beneficial results. It would render the oppressing class more powerful to +injure, the oppressed quicker to perceive and keener to resent the injury, +without proportionate power of defense. The same assimilative education +which is given at the North to all children alike, whereby native and +foreign, black and white, are taught side by side in every grade of +instruction, and are compelled by the exigencies of discipline to keep +their prejudices in abeyance, and are given the opportunity to learn and +appreciate one another's good qualities, and to establish friendly +relations which may exist throughout life, is absent from the Southern +system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future. +Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the +disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A +wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high +fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could +become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks, +and to the body politic, was clearly perceived and acknowledged by the +educated leaders of the South as far back as the Revolutionary War and the +Constitutional Convention, and yet they made no effort to abolish it. +Their remedy was the same--time, education, social and economic +development;--and yet a bloody war was necessary to destroy slavery and +put its spirit temporarily to sleep. When the South and its friends are +ready to propose a system of education which will recognize and teach the +equality of all men before the law, the potency of education alone to +settle the race problem will be more clearly apparent. + +At present even good Northern men, who wish to educate the Negroes, feel +impelled to buy this privilege from the none too eager white South, by +conceding away the civil and political rights of those whom they would +benefit. They have, indeed, gone farther than the Southerners themselves +in approving the disfranchisement of the colored race. Most Southern men, +now that they have carried their point and disfranchised the Negro, are +willing to admit, in the language of a recent number of the _Charleston +Evening Post_, that "the attitude of the Southern white man toward the +Negro is incompatible with the fundamental ideas of the republic." It +remained for our Clevelands and Abbotts and Parkhursts to assure them that +their unlawful course was right and justifiable, and for the most +distinguished Negro leader to declare that "every revised Constitution +throughout the Southern States has put a premium upon intelligence, +ownership of property, thrift and character." So does every penitentiary +sentence put a premium upon good conduct; but it is poor consolation to +the one unjustly condemned, to be told that he may shorten his sentence +somewhat by good behavior. Dr. Booker T. Washington, whose language is +quoted above, has, by his eminent services in the cause of education, won +deserved renown. If he has seemed, at times, to those jealous of the best +things for their race, to decry the higher education, it can easily be +borne in mind that his career is bound up in the success of an industrial +school; hence any undue stress which he may put upon that branch of +education may safely be ascribed to the natural zeal of the promoter, +without detracting in any degree from the essential value of his +teachings in favor of manual training, thrift and character-building. But +Mr. Washington's prominence as an educational leader, among a race whose +prominent leaders are so few, has at times forced him, perhaps +reluctantly, to express himself in regard to the political condition of +his people, and here his utterances have not always been so wise nor so +happy. He has declared himself in favor of a restricted suffrage, which at +present means, for his own people, nothing less than complete loss of +representation--indeed it is only in that connection that the question has +been seriously mooted; and he has advised them to go slow in seeking to +enforce their civil and political rights, which, in effect, means silent +submission to injustice. Southern white men may applaud this advice as +wise, because it fits in with their purposes; but Senator McEnery of +Louisiana, in a recent article in the _Independent_, voices the Southern +white opinion of such acquiescence when he says: "What other race would +have submitted so many years to slavery without complaint? _What other +race would have submitted so quietly to disfranchisement?_ These facts +stamp his (the Negro's) inferiority to the white race." The time to +philosophize about the good there is in evil, is not while its correction +is still possible, but, if at all, after all hope of correction is past. +Until then it calls for nothing but rigorous condemnation. To try to read +any good thing into these fraudulent Southern constitutions, or to accept +them as an accomplished fact, is to condone a crime against one's race. +Those who commit crime should bear the odium. It is not a pleasing +spectacle to see the robbed applaud the robber. Silence were better. + +It has become fashionable to question the wisdom of the Fifteenth +Amendment. I believe it to have been an act of the highest statesmanship, +based upon the fundamental idea of this Republic, entirely justified by +conditions; experimental in its nature, perhaps, as every new thing must +be, but just in principle; a choice between methods, of which it seemed +to the great statesmen of that epoch the wisest and the best, and +essentially the most just, bearing in mind the interests of the freedmen +and the Nation, as well as the feelings of the Southern whites; never +fairly tried, and therefore, not yet to be justly condemned. Not one of +those who condemn it, has been able, even in the light of subsequent +events, to suggest a better method by which the liberty and civil rights +of the freedmen and their descendants could have been protected. Its +abandonment, as I have shown, leaves this liberty and these rights frankly +without any guaranteed protection. All the education which philanthropy or +the State could offer as a _substitute_ for equality of rights, would be a +poor exchange; there is no defensible reason why they should not go hand +in hand, each encouraging and strengthening the other. The education which +one can demand as a right is likely to do more good than the education for +which one must sue as a favor. + +The chief argument against Negro suffrage, the insistently proclaimed +argument, worn threadbare in Congress, on the platform, in the pulpit, in +the press, in poetry, in fiction, in impassioned rhetoric, is the +reconstruction period. And yet the evils of that period were due far more +to the venality and indifference of white men than to the incapacity of +black voters. The revised Southern Constitutions adopted under +reconstruction reveal a higher statesmanship than any which preceded or +have followed them, and prove that the freed voters could as easily have +been led into the paths of civic righteousness as into those of +misgovernment. Certain it is that under reconstruction the civil and +political rights of all men were more secure in those States than they +have ever been since. We will hear less of the evils of reconstruction, +now that the bugaboo has served its purpose by disfranchising the Negro, +it will be laid aside for a time while the nation discusses the political +corruption of great cities; the scandalous conditions in Rhode Island; the +evils attending reconstruction in the Philippines, and the scandals in +the postoffice department--for none of which, by the way, is the Negro +charged with any responsibility, and for none of which is the restriction +of the suffrage a remedy seriously proposed. Rhode Island is indeed the +only Northern State which has a property qualification for the franchise! + +There are three tribunals to which the colored people may justly appeal +for the protection of their rights: the United States Courts, Congress and +public opinion. At present all three seem mainly indifferent to any +question of human rights under the Constitution. Indeed, Congress and the +Courts merely follow public opinion, seldom lead it. Congress never enacts +a measure which is believed to oppose public opinion;--your Congressman +keeps his ear to the ground. The high, serene atmosphere of the Courts is +not impervious to its voice; they rarely enforce a law contrary to public +opinion, even the Supreme Court being able, as Charles Sumner once put it, +to find a reason for every decision it may wish to render; or, as +experience has shown, a method to evade any question which it cannot +decently decide in accordance with public opinion. The art of straddling +is not confined to the political arena. The Southern situation has been +well described by a colored editor in Richmond: "When we seek relief at +the hands of Congress, we are informed that our plea involves a legal +question, and we are referred to the Courts. When we appeal to the Courts, +we are gravely told that the question is a political one, and that we must +go to Congress. When Congress enacts remedial legislation, our enemies +take it to the Supreme Court, which promptly declares it +unconstitutional." The Negro might chase his rights round and round this +circle until the end of time, without finding any relief. + +Yet the Constitution is clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no Supreme +Court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but +what it says. This Court should be bombarded with suits until it makes +some definite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question +of the constitutionality of the disfranchising Constitutions of the +Southern States. The Negro and his friends will then have a clean-cut +issue to take to the forum of public opinion, and a distinct ground upon +which to demand legislation for the enforcement of the Federal +Constitution. The case from Alabama was carried to the Supreme Court +expressly to determine the constitutionality of the Alabama Constitution. +The Court declared itself without jurisdiction, and in the same breath +went into the merits of the case far enough to deny relief, without +passing upon the real issue. Had it said, as it might with absolute +justice and perfect propriety, that the Alabama Constitution is a bold and +impudent violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, the purpose of the lawsuit +would have been accomplished and a righteous cause vastly strengthened. + +But public opinion cannot remain permanently indifferent to so vital a +question. The agitation is already on. It is at present largely academic, +but is slowly and resistlessly, forcing itself into politics, which is the +medium through which republics settle such questions. It cannot much +longer be contemptuously or indifferently elbowed aside. The South itself +seems bent upon forcing the question to an issue, as, by its arrogant +assumptions, it brought on the Civil War. From that section, too, there +come now and then, side by side with tales of Southern outrage, excusing +voices, which at the same time are accusing voices; which admit that the +white South is dealing with the Negro unjustly and unwisely; that the +Golden Rule has been forgotten; that the interests of white men alone have +been taken into account, and that their true interests as well are being +sacrificed. There is a silent white South, uneasy in conscience, darkened +in counsel, groping for the light, and willing to do the right. They are +as yet a feeble folk, their voices scarcely audible above the clamor of +the mob. May their convictions ripen into wisdom, and may their numbers +and their courage increase! If the class of Southern white men of whom +Judge Jones of Alabama, is so noble a representative, are supported and +encouraged by a righteous public opinion at the North, they may, in time, +become the dominant white South, and we may then look for wisdom and +justice in the place where, so far as the Negro is concerned, they now +seem well-nigh strangers. But even these gentlemen will do well to bear in +mind that so long as they discriminate in any way against the Negro's +equality of right, so long do they set class against class and open the +door to every sort of discrimination. There can be no middle ground +between justice and injustice, between the citizen and the serf. + +It is not likely that the North, upon the sober second thought, will +permit the dearly-bought results of the Civil War to be nullified by any +change in the Constitution. As long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the +_rights_ of colored citizens are ultimately secure. There were would-be +despots in England after the granting of Magna Charta; but it outlived +them all, and the liberties of the English people are secure. There was +slavery in this land after the Declaration of Independence, yet the faces +of those who love liberty have ever turned to that immortal document. So +will the Constitution and its principles outlive the prejudices which +would seek to overthrow it. + +What colored men of the South can do to secure their citizenship to-day, +or in the immediate future, is not very clear. Their utterances on +political questions, unless they be to concede away the political rights +of their race, or to soothe the consciences of white men by suggesting +that the problem is insoluble except by some slow remedial process which +will become effectual only in the distant future, are received with scant +respect--could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise received, without a voting +constituency to back them up,--and must be cautiously made, lest they meet +an actively hostile reception. But there are many colored men at the +North, where their civil and political rights in the main are respected. +There every honest man has a vote, which he may freely cast, and which is +reasonably sure to be fairly counted. When this race develops a sufficient +power of combination, under adequate leadership,--and there are signs +already that this time is near at hand,--the Northern vote can be wielded +irresistibly for the defense of the rights of their Southern brethren. + +In the meantime the Northern colored men have the right of free speech, +and they should never cease to demand their rights, to clamor for them, to +guard them jealously, and insistently to invoke law and public sentiment +to maintain them. He who would be free must learn to protect his freedom. +Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. He who would be respected must +respect himself. The best friend of the Negro is he who would rather see, +within the borders of this republic one million free citizens of that +race, equal before the law, than ten million cringing serfs existing by a +contemptuous sufferance. A race that is willing to survive upon any other +terms is scarcely worthy of consideration. + +The direct remedy for the disfranchisement of the Negro lies through +political action. One scarcely sees the philosophy of distinguishing +between a civil and a political right. But the Supreme Court has +recognized this distinction and has designated Congress as the power to +right a political wrong. The Fifteenth Amendment gives Congress power to +enforce its provisions. The power would seem to be inherent in government +itself; but anticipating that the enforcement of the Amendment might +involve difficulty, they made the superorogatory declaration. Moreover, +they went further, and passed laws by which they provided for such +enforcement. These the Supreme Court has so far declared insufficient. It +is for Congress to make more laws. It is for colored men and for white men +who are not content to see the blood-bought results of the Civil War +nullified, to urge and direct public opinion to the point where it will +demand stringent legislation to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth +Amendments. This demand will rest in law, in morals and in true +statesmanship; no difficulties attending it could be worse than the +present ignoble attitude of the Nation toward its own laws and its own +ideals--without courage to enforce them, without conscience to change +them, the United States presents the spectacle of a Nation drifting +aimlessly, so far as this vital, National problem is concerned, upon the +sea of irresolution, toward the maelstrom of anarchy. + +The right of Congress, under the Fourteenth Amendment, to reduce Southern +representation can hardly be disputed. But Congress has a simpler and more +direct method to accomplish the same end. It is the sole judge of the +qualifications of its own members, and the sole judge of whether any +member presenting his credentials has met those qualifications. It can +refuse to seat any member who comes from a district where voters have been +disfranchised: it can judge for itself whether this has been done, and +there is no appeal from its decision. + +If, when it has passed a law, any Court shall refuse to obey its behests, +it can impeach the judges. If any president refuse to lend the executive +arm of the government to the enforcement of the law, it can impeach the +president. No such extreme measures are likely to be necessary for the +enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments--and the +Thirteenth, which is also threatened--but they are mentioned as showing +that Congress is supreme; and Congress proceeds, the House directly, the +Senate indirectly, from the people and is governed by public opinion. If +the reduction of Southern representation were to be regarded in the light +of a bargain by which the Fifteenth Amendment was surrendered, then it +might prove fatal to liberty. If it be inflicted as a punishment and a +warning, to be followed by more drastic measures if not sufficient, it +would serve a useful purpose. The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the +right to vote _shall not_ be denied or abridged on account of color; and +any measure adopted by Congress should look to that end. Only as the power +to injure the Negro in Congress is reduced thereby, would a reduction of +representation protect the Negro; without other measures it would still +leave him in the hands of the Southern whites, who could safely be +trusted to make him pay for their humiliation. + +Finally, there is, somewhere in the Universe a "Power that works for +righteousness," and that leads men to do justice to one another. To this +power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the Negro can +always appeal. He has the right upon his side, and in the end the right +will prevail. The Negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and +citizenship throughout the United States. No better guaranty of this is +needed than a comparison of his present with his past. Toward this he must +do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity. But it will be, +after all, largely a white man's conflict, fought out in the forum of the +public conscience. The Negro, though eager enough when opportunity +offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition of slavery, +which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the enforcement of +the Fifteenth Amendment. + + + + +_The Negro and the Law_ + +By WILFORD H. SMITH + + The law and how it is dodged by enactments infringing upon the rights + guaranteed to the freedmen by constitutional amendment. A powerful plea + for justice for the Negro. + +[Illustration: WILFORD H. SMITH.] + + +The colored people in the United States are indebted to the beneficent +provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of +the United States, for the establishment of their freedom and citizenship, +and it is to these mainly they must look for the maintenance of their +liberty and the protection of their civil rights. These amendments +followed close upon the Emancipation Proclamation issued January 1st, +1863, by President Lincoln, and his call for volunteers, which was +answered by more than three hundred thousand negro soldiers, who, during +three years of military service, helped the Union arms to victory at +Appomattox. Standing in the shadow of the awful calamity and deep distress +of the civil war, and grateful to God for peace and victory over the +rebellion, the American people, who upheld the Union, rose to the sublime +heights of doing justice to the former slaves, who had grown and +multiplied with the country from the early settlement at Jamestown. It +looked like an effort to pay them back for their years of faithfulness and +unrequited toil, by not only making them free but placing them on equal +footing with themselves in the fundamental law. Certainly, they intended +at least, that they should have as many rights under the Constitution as +are given to white naturalized citizens who come to this country from all +the nations of Europe. + +The 13th amendment provides that neither slavery nor involuntary +servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have +been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject +to their jurisdiction. + +The 14th amendment provides in section one, that all persons born or +naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, +are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. +No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges +or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State +deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of +law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection +of the law. + +The 15th amendment provides 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. + +Chief Justice Waite, in the case of the United States vs. Cruikshank, 92nd +U.S. 542, said:-- + +"The 14th amendment prohibits a State from denying to any person within +its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. The equality of the +rights of citizens is a principle of republicanism. Every Republican +government is in duty bound to protect all its citizens in the enjoyment +of this principle if within its power." + +The same Chief Justice, in the case of the United States vs. Reese, 92nd +U.S. 214, said: + +"The 15th amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. It +prevents the States or the United States from giving preference in this +particular to one citizen of the United States over another, on account of +race, color or previous condition of servitude. Before its adoption this +could be done. It was as much within the power of a State to exclude +citizens of the United States from voting on account of race and color, as +it was on account of age, property or education. Now it is not." + +Notwithstanding the manifest meaning of equality of citizenship contained +in the constitutional amendments, it was found necessary to reinforce them +by a civil rights law, enacted by the Congress of the United States, March +1st, 1875, entitled, "An Act To Protect All Citizens In Their Civil and +Legal Rights." Its preamble and first section are as follows:--Preamble: +"Whereas, it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of +all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its +dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of +whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political, and +it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental +principles into law, therefore, + +"Be it enacted that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United +States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the +accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, public +conveyances on land or water, theatres and other places of public +amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by +law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless +to any previous condition of servitude." + +The Supreme Court of the United States has held this salutary law +unconstitutional and void as applied to the States, but binding in the +District of Columbia, and the Territories over which the government of the +United States has control.--Civil Rights cases 109 U.S. 63. Since the +Supreme Court's ruling, many Northern and Western States have enacted +similar civil rights laws. Equality of citizenship in the United States +suffered a severe blow when the civil rights bill was struck down by the +Supreme Court. The colored people looked upon the decision as unsound, and +prompted by race prejudice. It was clear that the amendments to the +Constitution were adopted to secure not only their freedom, but their +equal civil rights, and by ratifying the amendments the several States +conceded to the Federal government the power and authority of maintaining +not alone their freedom, but their equal civil rights in the United States +as well. + +The Federal Supreme Court put a narrow interpretation on the Constitution, +rather than a liberal one in favor of equal rights; in marked contrast to +a recent decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New +York in a civil rights case arising under the statute of New York, Burks +vs. Bosso, 81 N.Y. Supp, 384. The New York Supreme Court held this +language: "The liberation of the slaves, and the suppression of the +rebellion, was supplemented by the amendments to the national Constitution +according to the colored people their civil rights and investing them with +citizenship. The amendments indicated a clear purpose to secure equal +rights to the black people with the white race. The legislative intent +must control, and that may be gathered from circumstances inducing the +act. Where that intent has been unvaryingly manifested in one direction, +and that in the prohibition of any discrimination against a large class of +citizens, the courts should not hesitate to keep apace with legislative +purpose. We must remember that the slightest trace of African blood places +a man under the ban of belonging to that race. However respectable and +whatever he may be, he is ostracized socially, and when the policy of the +law is against extending the prohibition of his civil rights, a liberal, +rather than a narrow interpretation should be given to enactments +evidencing the intent to eliminate race discrimination, as far as that +can be accomplished by legislative intervention." + +The statutory enactments and recent Constitutions of most of the former +slave-holding States, show that they have never looked with favor upon the +amendments to the national Constitution. They rather regard them as war +measures designed by the North to humiliate and punish the people of those +States lately in rebellion. While in the main they accept the 13th +amendment and concede that the negro should have personal freedom, they +have never been altogether in harmony with the spirit and purposes of the +14th and 15th amendments. There seems to be a distinct and positive fear +on the part of the South that if the negro is given a man's chance, and is +accorded equal civil rights with white men on the juries, on common +carriers, and in public places, that it will in some way lead to his +social equality. This fallacious argument is persisted in, notwithstanding +the well-known fact, that although the Jews are the leaders in the wealth +and commerce of the South, their civil equality has never, except in rare +instances, led to any social intermingling with the Southern whites. + +Holding these views the Southern people in 1875, found means to overcome +the Republican majorities in all the re-constructed States, and +practically drove the negroes out of the law-making bodies of all those +States. So that, now in all the Southern States, so far as can be +ascertained, there is not one negro sitting as a representative in any of +the law-making bodies. The next step was to deny them representation on +the grand and petit juries in the State courts, through Jury +Commissioners, who excluded them from the panels. + +To be taxed without representation is a serious injustice in a republic +whose foundations are laid upon the principle of "no taxation without +representation." But serious as this phase of the case must appear, +infinitely more serious is the case when we consider the fact that they +are likewise excluded from the grand and petit juries in all the State +courts, with the fewest and rarest exceptions. The courts sit in judgment +upon their lives and liberties, and dispose of their dearest earthly +possessions. They are not entitled to life, liberty or property if the +courts should decide they are not, and yet in this all-important tribunal +they are denied all voice, except as parties and witnesses, and here and +there a negro lawyer is permitted to appear. One vote on the grand jury +might prevent an indictment, and save disgrace and the risk of public +trial; while one vote on the petit jury might save a life or a term of +imprisonment, for an innocent person pursued and persecuted by powerful +enemies. + +With no voice in the making of the laws, which they are bound to obey, nor +in their administration by the courts, thus tied and helpless, the negroes +were proscribed by a system of legal enactments intended to wholly nullify +the letter and spirit of the war amendments to the national organic law. +This crusade was begun by enacting a system of Jim-Crow car laws in all +the Southern States, so that now the Jim-Crow cars run from the Gulf of +Mexico into the national capital. They are called, "Separate Car Laws," +providing for separate but equal accommodations for whites and negroes. +Though fair on their face, they are everywhere known to discriminate +against the colored people in their administration, and were intended to +humiliate and degrade them. + +Setting apart separate places for negroes on public carriers, is just as +repugnant to the spirit and intent of the national Constitution, as would +be a law compelling all Jews or all Roman Catholics to occupy compartments +specially set apart for them on account of their religion. If these +statutes were not especially aimed at the negro, an arrangement of +different fares, such as first, second and third classes, would have been +far more just and preferable, and would have enabled the refined and +exclusive of both races to avoid the presence of the coarse and vicious, +by selecting the more expensive fare. Still these laws have been upheld by +the Federal Supreme Court, and pronounced not in conflict with the +amendments to the Constitution of the United States. + +City ordinances providing for separate street cars for white and colored +passengers, are in force in Atlanta, New Orleans, and in nearly all the +cities of the South. In all the principal cities of Alabama, a certain +portion of the street cars is set apart and marked for negroes. The +conductors are clothed with the authority of determining to what race the +passenger belongs, and may arrest persons refusing to obey his orders. It +is often a very difficult task to determine to what race some passengers +belong, there being so many dark-white persons that might be mistaken for +negroes, and persons known as negroes who are as fair as any white person. + +In the State of Georgia, a negro cannot purchase a berth in a sleeping +car, under any circumstances, no matter where his destination, owing to +the following statute enacted December 20th, 1899: "Sleeping car +companies, and all railroads operating sleeping cars in this State, shall +separate the white and colored races, and shall not permit them to occupy +the same compartment; provided, that nothing in this act shall be +construed to compel sleeping car companies or railroads operating sleeping +cars, to carry persons of color in sleeping or parlor cars; provided also, +that this act shall not apply to colored nurses or servants travelling +with their employers." The violation of this statute is a misdemeanor. + +Article 45, section 639 of the statutes of Georgia, 1895, makes it a +misdemeanor to keep or confine white and colored convicts together, or to +chain them together going to and from work. There is also a statute in +Georgia requiring that a separate tax list be kept in every county, of the +property of white and colored persons. Both races generally approve the +laws prohibiting inter-marriages between white and colored persons, which +seem to be uniform throughout the Southern States. + +Florida seems to have gone a step further than the rest, and by sections +2612 and 2613, Revised Statutes, 1892, it is made a misdemeanor for a +white man and a colored woman, and vice versa, to sleep under the same +roof at night, occupying the same room. Florida is entitled to credit, +however, for a statute making marriages between white and colored persons +prior to 1866, where they continue to live together, valid and binding to +all intents and purposes. + +In addition to this forced separation of the races by law, "from the +cradle to the grave," there is yet a sadder and more deplorable +separation, in the almost universal disposition to leave the negroes +wholly and severely to themselves in their home life and religious life, +by the white Christian people of the South, distinctly manifesting no +concern in their moral and religious development. + +In Georgia and the Carolinas, and all the Gulf States (except Texas, where +the farm labor is mostly white) the negroes on the farms are held by a +system of laws which prevents them from leaving the plantations, and +enables the landlord to punish them by fine and imprisonment for any +alleged breach of contract. In the administration of these laws they are +virtually made slaves to the landlord, as long as they are in debt, and it +is wholly in the power of the landlord to forever keep them in debt. + +By section 355, of the Criminal Code of South Carolina, 1902, it is made a +misdemeanor to violate a contract to work and labor on a farm, subject to +a fine of not less than five dollars, and more than one hundred dollars, +or imprisonment for not less than ten days, or more than thirty. It is +also made a misdemeanor to employ any farm laborer while under contract +with another, or to persuade or entice a farm laborer to leave his +employer. + +The Georgia laws are a little stronger in this respect than the laws of +the other States. By section 121, of the Code of Georgia, 1895, it is +provided, "that if any person shall, by offering higher wages, or in any +other way entice, persuade or decoy, or attempt to entice, persuade or +decoy any farm laborer from his employer, he shall be guilty of a +misdemeanor." Again, by act of December 17th, 1901, the Georgia +Legislature passed a law making it an offense to rent land, or furnish +land to a farm laborer, after he has contracted with another landlord, +without first obtaining the consent of the first landlord. + +The presence of large numbers of negroes in the towns and cities of the +South and North can be accounted for by such laws as the above, +administered by ignorant country magistrates, in nearly all cases the +pliant tools of the landlords. + +The boldest and most open violation of the negro's rights under the +Federal Constitution, was the enactment of the grand-father clauses, and +understanding clauses in the new Constitutions of Louisiana, Alabama, the +Carolinas, and Virginia, which have had the effect to deprive the great +body of them of the right to vote in those States, for no other reason +than their race and color. Although thus depriving him of his vote, and +all voice in the State governments at the South, in all of them his +property is taxed to pay pensions to Confederate soldiers, who fought to +continue him in slavery. The fact is, the franchise had been practically +taken from the negroes in the South since 1876, by admitted fraudulent +methods and intimidation in elections, but it was not until late years +that this nullification of the amendments was enacted into State +Constitutions. + +This brings me to the proposition that it is mainly in the enforcement, or +the administration of the laws, however fair and equal they may appear on +their face, that the constitutional rights of negroes to equal protection +and treatment are denied, not only in the South but in many Northern +States. There are noble exceptions, however, of high-toned honorable +gentlemen on the bench as trial judges, and Supreme Court justices, in the +South, who without regard to consequences have stood for fairness and +justice to the negro in their courts. + +With the population of the South distinctly divided into two classes, not +the rich and poor, not the educated and ignorant, not the moral and +immoral, but simply whites and blacks, all negroes being generally +regarded as inferior and not entitled to the same rights as any white +person, it is bound to be a difficult matter to obtain fair and just +results, when there is any sort of conflict between the races. The negro +realizes this, and knows that he is at an immense disadvantage when he is +forced to litigate with a white man in civil matters, and much more so +when he is charged with a crime by a white person. + +The juries in the South almost always reject the testimony of any number +of negroes if given in opposition to that of a white witness, and this is +true in many instances, no matter how unreasonable or inconsistent the +testimony of the white witness may be. Jurors in the South have been heard +to admit that they would be socially ostracized if they brought in a +verdict upon colored testimony alone, in opposition to white testimony. + +Perhaps it can be best explained how the negro fares in the courts of the +South by giving a few cases showing how justice is administered to him: + +A negro boy was brought to the bar for trial before a police magistrate, +in a Southern capital city, charged with assault and battery on a white +boy about the same age, but a little larger. The testimony showed that the +white boy had beat the negro on several previous occasions as he passed on +his way to school, and each time the negro showed no disposition to fight. +On the morning of the charge he attacked the negro and attempted to cut +him with a knife, because the negro's mother had reported to the white +boy's mother the previous assaults, and asked her to chastise him. The +colored boy in trying to keep from being cut was compelled to fight, and +got the advantage and threw the white boy down and blacked his eyes. The +magistrate on this evidence fined the negro twenty-five dollars. The +mother of the negro having once been a servant for the magistrate, found +courage to rise, and said: "Jedge, yo Honer, can I speak?" The magistrate +replied, "Yes, go on." She said, "Well, Jedge, my boy is ben tellin' me +about dis white boy meddlin' him on his way to school, but I would not let +my boy fight, 'cause I 'tole him he couldn't git no jestice in law. But he +had no other way to go to school 'ceptin' gwine dat way; and den jedge, +dis white chile is bigger an my chile and jumped on him fust with a knife +for nothin', befo' my boy tetched him. Jedge I am a po' woman, and washes +fur a livin', and ain't got nobody to help me, and can't raise all dat +money. I think dat white boy's mammy ought to pay half of dis fine." By +this time her voice had become stifled by her tears. The judge turned to +the mother of the white boy and said, "Madam, are you willing to pay half +of this fine?" She answered, "Yes, Your Honor." And the judge changed the +order to a fine of $12.50 each, against both boys. + +A celebrated case in point reported in the books is, George Maury vs. The +State of Miss., 68 Miss. 605. I reproduce the court's statement of the +case:--"This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of Kemper County. +Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life. +He appears in this court without counsel. The facts are briefly these: +One, Nicholson, a white man, accompanied by his little son seven years +old, was driving an ox team along a public road; he had occasion to stop +and the oxen were driven by his son; defendant, a negro, also in an ox +wagon, was going along the road in an opposite direction, and met +Nicholson's wagon in charge of the little boy. It was after dark, and when +the wagons met, according to the testimony of Nicholson, the defendant +insultingly demanded of the boy to give the way, and cursed and abused +him. Nicholson, hearing the colloquy, hurried to the scene and a fight +ensued between him and Maury, in which the latter got the advantage, +inflicting severe blows upon Nicholson. This occurred on Thursday, and on +the following Sunday night, Nicholson, in company with eleven or twelve of +his friends, rode to the farm of Maury, and after sending several of their +number to ascertain if he was at home, rode rapidly into his yard and +called for him. Not finding him, they proceeded to search the premises, +and found several colored men shut up in the smoke house, the door of +which some of the searching party had broken open. Maury, the accused, was +not found there, and about that time some one called out, "Here is +George." Some of the party then started in the direction of the cotton +house from which the voice proceeded, when a volley was fired from it, and +two of the searching party were killed, one of whom was the son of the +former owner of the defendant, and the other a brother-in-law of +Nicholson. The members of the raiding party testified that their purpose +in going to the home of the defendant was merely to arrest him. It was, +however, shown that Nicholson, immediately after the fight on Thursday, +informed Cobb, and Cobb between Thursday and Sunday night collected the +men who joined in the raid. No affidavit for the arrest of Maury had been +made, and none of the party had any warrant, or made any announcement to +the defendant or his family, of the object of their visit. The accused who +testified in his own behalf, denied that he was at home at the time of the +shooting, and says he fled before the raiding party arrived. He also +contradicted Nicholson in his account of the difficulty with him, and +denies that he spoke harshly to the child." Chief Justice Campbell, in +delivering the opinion of the court said, "It is inconceivable that the +crime of murder is predicable of the facts disclosed by the evidence in +this case. The time and place and circumstances of the killing forbid any +such conclusion as a verdict of guilty of murder." The judgment of the +trial court was reversed. + +This same Chief Justice, in the case of Monroe vs. Mississippi, 71 Miss. +201, where a negro was convicted of rape, makes use of the following +brave and noble language, reversing the case on the ground of the +insufficiency of the evidence: "We might greatly lighten our labors by +deferring in all cases to the verdict approved by the presiding judge as +to the facts, but our duty is to administer justice without respect of +persons, and do equal right to the poor and the rich. Hence the +disposition, which we are not ashamed to confess we have, to guard +jealously the rights of the poor and friendless and despised, and to be +astute as far as we properly may, against injustice, whether proceeding +from wilfulness or indifference." + +The country has produced no abler jurist, nor the South no greater man +than Ex-Chief Justice Campbell of Mississippi. If the counsel of such men +as he and Chief Justice Garret of the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas, +could obtain in the South, there would be no problem between the races. +All would be contented because justice would be administered to the whites +and blacks alike. + +In the administration of the suffrage sections under the new +Constitutions of the South by the partisan boards of registrars, the same +discrimination against negroes was practiced. Their methods are of more or +less interest. The plan was to exclude all negroes from the electorate +without excluding a single white man. Under the Alabama Constitution, a +soldier in the Civil War, either on the Federal or Confederate side, is +entitled to qualification. When a negro goes up to register as a soldier +he is asked for his discharge. When he presents it he is asked, "How do we +know that you are the man whose name is written in this discharge? Bring +us two white men whom we know and who will swear that you have not found +this paper, and that they know that you were a soldier in the company and +regiment in which you claim to have been." This, of course, could not be +done, and the ex-soldier who risked his life for the Union is denied the +right to vote. + +The same Constitution provides that if not a soldier or the legal +descendant of one, an elector must be of good character and understand the +duties and obligations of citizenship under a Republican form of +government. When a negro claims qualifications under the good character +and understanding clauses he is put through an examination similar to the +following: + +"What is a republican form of government? + +"What is a limited monarchy? + +"What islands did the United States come into possession of by the +Spanish-American War? + +"What is the difference between Jeffersonian Democracy and Calhoun +principles, as compared to the Monroe Doctrine? + +"If the Nicaragua Canal is cut, what will be the effect if the Pacific +Ocean is two feet higher than the Atlantic?" Should these questions be +answered satisfactorily, the negro must still produce two white men known +to the registrars to testify to his good character. A remarkable +exception in the treatment of negroes by the registrars of Dallas county, +Alabama, is shown in the following account taken from the Montgomery +Advertizer:-- + +"An old negro barber by the name of Edward E. Harris, stepped in before +the registrars, hat in hand, humble and polite, with a kindly smile on his +face. He respectfully asked to be registered. He signed the application +and waited a few minutes until the registrars had disposed of some other +matters, and being impressed with his respectful bearing, some member of +the board commenced to ask a few questions. The old man told his story in +a straight forward manner. He said: "Gentlemen, I am getting to be a +pretty old man. I was born here in the South, and I followed my young +master through all of the campaigns in Virginia, when Mas' Bob Lee made it +so warm for the Yankees. But our luck left us at Gettysburg. The Yankees +got around in our rear there, and I got a bullet in the back of my head, +and one in my leg before I got out of that scrape. But I was not hurt +much, and my greatest anxiety was about my young master, Mr. John Holly, +who was a member of the Bur Rifles, 18th Mississippi. He was a private and +enlisted at Jackson, Miss. + +"He could not be found the first day; I looked all among the dead on the +battle field for him and he was not there. Next day I got a permit to go +through the hospitals, and I looked into the face of every soldier +closely, in the hope of finding my young master. After many hours of +searching I found him, but he was dangerously wounded. I stayed by his +side, wounded as I was, for three long weeks, but he gradually grew worse +and then he died. I went out with the body and saw it buried as decently +as I could, and then I went back to Jackson and told the young mistress +how brave he was in battle, how good he was to me, and told her all the +words he had sent her, as he lay there on that rude cot in the hospital. +That is my record as a Confederate soldier, and if you gentlemen care to +give me a certificate of registration, I would be much obliged to you." +It is needless to say that old Ed. Harris got his certificate. + +It is insisted upon by the leaders of public opinion at the South, that +negroes should not be given equal political and civil rights with white +men, defined by law and enforceable by the courts; but that they should be +content to strive to deserve the good wishes and friendly feeling of the +whites, and if the South is let alone, they will see to it that negroes +get becoming treatment. + +While there is a large number of the high-toned, chivalrous element of the +old master class yet living, who would stand by the negro and not permit +him to be wronged if they could prevent it, yet they are powerless to +control the great mass of the poor whites who are most bitter in their +prejudices against the negro. They should also bear in mind that the old +master class is rapidly passing way, and that there is constantly an +influx of foreigners to the South, and in less than fifty years the +Italians, or some other foreign nationality, may be the ruling class in +all the Southern States; and the negro, deprived of all political and +civil rights by the Constitution and laws, would be wholly at the mercy of +a people without sympathy for him. + +In order to show the fallacy and the wrong and injustice of this doctrine, +and how helplessly exposed it leaves the negro to the prejudices of the +poor whites, I relate a tragedy in the life of a friend of mine, who was +well known and respected in the town of Rayville, Louisiana. + +Sewall Smith, for many years ran the leading barber shop for whites in the +town of Rayville, and was well-liked and respected by the leading white +men of the entire parish. At the suggestion of his customers he bought +Louisiana state lands while they were cheap, before the railroad was put +through between Vicksburg and Shreveport; and as the road passed near his +lands he was thereby made a rich man, as wealth goes in those parts. His +good fortune, however, did not swell his head and he remained the same to +his friends. He became so useful in his parish that there was never a +public gathering of the leading white business men that he was not invited +to it, and he was always on the delegations to all the levee or river +conventions sent from his parish. He was chosen to such places by white +men exclusively; and in his own town he was as safe from wrong or injury, +on account of his race or color, as any white man. + +After the trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he +had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in +the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy +asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed +well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might +not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping +place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked permission to take +his satchel back to the train on the following day when he was to return. +The next day the boy came for the satchel, and they had nearly reached the +depot about train time, when they passed a saloon where a crowd of poor +whites sat on boxes whittling sticks. The sight of a negro having a white +boy carrying his satchel quite enraged them, and after cursing and abusing +Smith and the boy, they undertook to kick and assault Smith. Smith +defended himself. The result was a shooting affair, in which Smith shot +two or three of them and was himself shot. The train rolled up while the +fight was in progress, and without inquiring the cause or asking any +questions whatever, fully a hundred white men jumped off the train and +riddled Smith with bullets. That was the end of it. Nobody was indicted or +even arrested for killing an insolent "nigger" that did not keep his +place. That is the way the affair was regarded in Ruston. Of course, the +people of Rayville very much regretted it, but they could not do anything, +and could not afford to defend the rights of a negro against white men +under such circumstances, and the matter dropped. + +I have preferred not to mention the numerous ways and many instances in +which the rights of negroes are denied in public places, and on the common +carriers in the South, under circumstances very humiliating and degrading. +Nor have I cared to refer to the barbarous and inhuman prison systems of +the South, that are worse than anything the imagination can conceive in a +civilized and Christian land, as shown by reports of legislative +committees. + +If the negro can secure a fair and impartial trial in the courts, and can +be secure in his life and liberty and property, so as not to be deprived +of them except by due process of law, and can have a voice in the making +and administration of the laws, he shall have gone a great way in the +South. It is to be hoped that public opinion can be awakened to this +extent, and that it may assist him to attain that end. + + + + +_The Characteristics of the Negro People_ + +By H.T. KEALING + + A frank statement of the virtues and failings of the race, indicating + very clearly the evils which must be overcome, and the good which must + be developed, if success is really to attend the effort to uplift them. + +[Illustration: H.T. KEALING.] + + +The characteristics of the Negro are of two kinds--the inborn and the +inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen, +but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the +blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so, +of time and habitat. Inbred qualities are acquired, and are the result of +experience. They may be overcome by a reversal of the process which +created them. The fundamental, or inborn, characteristics of the Negro may +be found in the African, as well as the American, Negro; but the inbred +characteristics of the latter belong to the American life alone. + +There is but one human nature, made up of constituent elements the same in +all men, and racial or national differences arise from the predominance +of one or another element in this or that race. It is a question of +proportion. The Negro is not a Caucasian, not a Chinese, not an Indian; +though no psychological quality in the one is absent from the other. The +same moral sense, called conscience; the same love of harmony in color or +in sound; the same pleasure in acquiring knowledge; the same love of truth +in word, or of fitness in relation; the same love of respect and +approbation; the same vengeful or benevolent feelings; the same appetites, +belong to all, but in varying proportions. They form the indicia to a +people's mission, and are our best guides to God's purpose in creating us. +They constitute the material to be worked on in educating a race, and +suggest in every case where the stress of civilization or education should +be applied in order to follow the lines of least resistance. + +But there are also certain manifestations, the result of training or +neglect, which are not inborn. As they are inculcable, so they are +eradicable; and it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term +characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent +traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore, +we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with +sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to +possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form a +fair catalogue: + +_He is intensely religious._ True religion is based upon a belief in the +supernatural, upon faith and feeling. A people deeply superstitious are +apt to be deeply religious, for both rest upon a belief in a spiritual +world. Superstition differs from religion in being the untrained and +unenlightened gropings of the human soul after the mysteries of the higher +life; while the latter, more or less enlightened, "feels after God, if +haply," it may find Him. The Negro gives abundant evidence of both phases. +The absolute inability of the master, in the days of slavery, while +successfully vetoing all other kinds of convocation, to stop the Negro's +church meetings, as well as the almost phenomenal influence and growth of +his churches since; and his constant referring of every event, adverse or +favorable, to the personal ministrations of the Creator, are things unique +and persistent. And the master class reposed more faith in their slaves' +religion ofttimes than they did in their own. Doubtless much of the +reverential feeling that pervades the American home to-day, above that of +all other nations, is the result of the Negro mammy's devotion and loyalty +to God. + +_He is imaginative._ This is not evinced so much in creative directions as +in poetical, musical, combinatory, inventional and what, if coupled with +learning, we call literary imagination. Negro eloquence is proverbial. The +crudest sermon of the most unlettered slave abounded in tropes and glowing +tongue pictures of apochalyptic visions all his own; and, indeed, the +poetic quality of his mind is seen in all his natural efforts when the +self-consciousness of education does not stand guard. The staid religious +muse of Phillis Wheatley and the rollicking, somewhat jibing, verse of +Dunbar show it equally, unpremeditated and spontaneous. + +I have heard by the hour some ordinary old uneducated Negro tell those +inimitable animal stories, brought to literary existence in "Uncle Remus," +with such quaint humor, delicious conceit and masterly delineation of +plot, character and incident that nothing but the conventional rating of +Aesop's Fables could put them in the same class. Then, there are more +Negro inventors than the world supposes. This faculty is impossible +without a well-ordered imagination held in leash by a good memory and +large perception. + +_He is affectionate and without vindictiveness._ He does not nurse even +great wrongs. Mercurial as he is, often furiously angry and frequently in +murderous mood, he comes nearer not letting the sun go down upon his anger +than any other man I know. Like Brutus, he may be compared to the flint +which, + + "Much enforced, shows a hasty spark, + And straight is cold again." + +His affection is not less towards the Caucasian than to his own race. It +is not saying too much to remark that the soul of the Negro yearns for the +white man's good will and respect; and the old ties of love that subsisted +in so many instances in the days of slavery still survive where the +ex-slave still lives. The touching case of a Negro Bishop who returned to +the State in which he had been a slave, and rode twenty miles to see and +alleviate the financial distress of his former master is an exception to +numerous other similar cases only in the prominence of the Negro +concerned. I know of another case of a man whose tongue seems dipped in +hyssop when he begins to tell of the wrongs of his race, and who will not +allow anyone to say in his presence that any good came out of slavery, +even incidentally; yet he supports the widowed and aged wife of his +former master. And, surely, if these two instances are not sufficient to +establish the general proposition, none will gainsay the patience, +vigilance, loyalty and helpfulness of the Negro slave during the Civil +War, and of his good old wife who nursed white children at her breast at a +time when all ties save those of affection were ruptured, and when no +protection but devoted hearts watched over the "great house," whose head +and master was at the front, fighting to perpetuate slavery. Was it +stupidity on the Negro's part? Not at all. He was well informed as to the +occurrences of the times. A freemasonry kept him posted as well as the +whites were themselves on the course of the war and the issue of each +battle. Was it fear that kept him at the old home? Not that, either. Many +thousands _did_ cross the line to freedom; many other thousands (200,000) +fought in the ranks for freedom, but none of them--those who went and +those who stayed--those who fought and those who worked,--betrayed a +trust, outraged a female, or rebelled against a duty. It was love, the +natural wellings of affectionate natures. + +_He has great endurance, both dispositional and physical._ So true is the +first that his patience has been the marvel of the world; and, indeed, +many, regarding this trait manifested in such an unusual degree, doubted +the Negro's courage, till the splendid record of the '60's and the equal, +but more recent, record of the '90's, wrote forbearance as the real +explanation of an endurance seemingly so at variance with manly spirit. + +Of his physical powers, his whole record as a laborer at killing tasks in +the most trying climate in America speaks so eloquently that nothing but +the statistics of cotton, corn, rice, sugar, railroad ties and felled +forests can add to the praise of this burden-bearer of the nation. The +census tables here are more romantic and thrilling than figures of +rhetoric. + +_He is courageous._ His page in the war record of this country is without +blot or blemish. His commanders unite in pronouncing him admirable for +courage in the field, commendable for obedience in camp. That he should +exhibit such excellent fighting qualities as a soldier, and yet exercise +the forbearance that characterizes him as a citizen, is remarkable. + +_He is cheerful._ His ivories are as famous as his songs. That the South +is "sunny" is largely due to the brightness his rollicking laugh and +unfailing good nature bring to it. Though the mudsill of the labor world, +he whistles as he hoes, and no dark broodings or whispered conspirings mar +the cheerful acceptance of the load he bears. Against the rubber bumper of +his good cheer things that have crushed and maddened others rebound +without damage. When one hears the quaint jubilee songs, set to minor +cadence, he might suppose them the expressions of a melancholy people. +They are not to be so interpreted. Rather are they the expression of an +experience, not a nature. Like the subdued voice of a caged bird, these +songs are the coinage of an occasion, and not the free note of nature. +The slave sang of griefs he was not allowed to discuss, hence his songs. +This cheerfulness has enabled the Negro to live and increase under +circumstances which, in all other instances, have decimated, if not +exterminated, inferior peoples. His plasticity to moulding forces and his +resiliency against crushing ones come from a Thalian philosophy, +unconscious and unstudied, that extracts Epicurean delights from funeral +meats. + +The above traits are inborn and fundamental, belonging to the race +everywhere, in Africa as well as America. Strict correctness requires, +however, that attention be called to the fact that there are tribal +differences among African Negroes that amount almost to the national +variations of Europe; and these are reflected in American Negroes, who are +the descendants of these different tribes. There is as much difference +between the Mandingo and the Hottentot, both black, as between the Italian +and the German, both white; or between the Bushman and the Zulu, both +black, as between the Russian and the Englishman, both white. Scientific +exactness, therefore, would require a closer analysis of racial +characteristics than an article of this length could give; but, speaking +in a large way, it may be said that in whatever outward conformity may +come to the race in America by reason of training or contact, these traits +will lie at the base, the very warp and woof of his soul texture. + +If, now, we turn to consider his inbred traits, those the result of +experience, conditions and environments, we find that they exist mainly as +deficiencies and deformities. These have been superimposed upon the native +soul endowment. Slavery has been called the Negro's great schoolmaster, +because it took him a savage and released him civilized; took him a +heathen and released him a Christian; took him an idler and released him a +laborer. Undoubtedly it did these things superficially, but one great +defect is to be charged against this school--it did not teach him the +meaning of home, purity and providence. To do this is the burden of +freedom. + +The emancipated Negro struggles up to-day against many obstacles, the +entailment of a brutal slavery. Leaving out of consideration the many who +have already emerged, let us apply our thoughts to the great body of +submerged people in the congested districts of city and country who +present a real problem, and who must be helped to higher things. We note +some of the heritages under which they stagger up into full development: + +_Shiftlessness._ He had no need to devise and plan in bondage. There was +no need for an enterprising spirit; consequently, he is lacking in +leadership and self-reliance. He is inclined to stay in ruts, and applies +himself listlessly to a task, feeling that the directive agency should +come from without. + +_Incontinence._ It is not to the point to say that others are, too. +Undoubtedly, example has as much to do with this laxity as neglect. We +simply record the fact. A slave's value was increased by his prolificacy. +Begetting children for the auction block could hardly sanctify family +ties. It was not nearly so necessary for a slave to know his father as his +owner. Added to the promiscuity encouraged and often forced among this +class, was the dreadful license which cast lustful Caucasian eyes upon +"likely" Negro women. + +_Indolence._ Most men are, especially in a warm climate: but the Negro +acquired more than the natural share, because to him as a bondman laziness +was great gain, for he had no pecuniary interest in his own labor. Hence, +holidays were more to be desired than whole labor days, and he learned to +do as little as he might, be excused as often as he could, and hail +Saturday as the oasis in a desert week. He hails it yet. The labor +efficiency of the Negro has greatly increased since the emancipation, for +self-interest is a factor now. In 1865, each Negro produced two-thirds of +a bale of cotton; now he produces an average of one whole bale to the man. +But there is still woful waste of productive energy. A calculation +showing the comparative productive capacity, man for man, between the +Northern[B] and Southern laborer would be very interesting. + +_Improvidence and Extravagance._ He will drop the most important job to go +on an excursion or parade with his lodge. He spends large sums on +expensive clothing and luxuries, while going without things necessary to a +real home. He will cheerfully eat fat bacon and "pone" corn-bread all the +week[C] in order to indulge in unlimited soda-water, melon and fish at the +end. In the cities he is oftener seen dealing with the pawn-broker than +the banker. His house, when furnished at all, is better furnished that +that of a white man of equal earning power, but it is on the installment +plan. He is loath to buy a house, because he has no taste for +responsibility nor faith in himself to manage large concerns; but organs, +pianos, clocks, sewing-machines and parlor suits, on time, have no terrors +for him. This is because he has been accustomed to think in small +numbers. He does not regard the Scotchman's "mickle," because he does not +stop to consider that the end is a "muckle." He has amassed, at full +valuation, nearly a billion dollars' worth of property, despite this, but +this is about one-half of what proper providence would have shown. + +_Untidiness._ Travel through the South and you will be struck with the +general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing +from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window +panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater +than the real is seen on every side. The inside of the house meets the +suggestions of the outside. This is a projection of the slave's "quarters" +into freedom. The cabin of the slave was, at best, a place to eat and +sleep in; there was no thought of the esthetic in such places. A quilt on +a plank was a luxury to the tired farm-hand, and paint was nothing to the +poor, sun-scorched fellow who sought the house for shade rather than +beauty. Habits of personal cleanliness were not inculcated, and even now +it is the exception to find a modern bath-room in a Southern home. + +_Dishonesty._ This is the logic, if not the training, of slavery. It is +easy for the unrequited toiler in another's field to justify reprisal; +hence there arose among the Negroes an amended Commandment which added to +"Thou shalt not steal" the clause, "except thou be stolen from." It was no +great fault, then, according to this code, to purloin a pig, a sheep, a +chicken, or a few potatoes from a master who took all from the slave. + +_Untruthfulness._ This is seen more in innocent and childish exaggeration +than in vicious distortion. It is the vice of untutored minds to run to +gossip and make miracles of the matter-of-fact. The Negro also tells +falsehoods from excess of good nature. He promises to do a piece of work +on a certain day, because it is so much easier and pleasanter to say Yes, +and stay away, than it is to say No. + +_Business Unreliability._ He does not meet a promise in the way and at +the time promised. Not being accustomed to business, he has small +conception of the place the promise has in the business world. It is only +recently he has begun to deal with banks. He, who has no credit, sees[D] +no loss of it in a protested note, especially if he intends to pay it some +time. That chain which links one man's obligation to another man's +solvency he has not considered. He is really as good and safe a debt-payer +when he owes a white man as the latter can have, but the methods of the +modern bank, placing a time limit on debts, is his detestation. He much +prefers the _laissez-faire_ of the Southern plantation store. + +_Lack of Initiative._ It was the policy of slavery to crush out the +combining instinct, and it was well done; for, outside of churches and +secret societies, the Negro has done little to increase the social +efficiency which can combine many men into an organic whole, subject to +the corporate will and direction. He has, however, made some hopeful +beginnings. + +_Suspicion of his own race._ He was taught to watch other Negroes and tell +all that they did. This was slavery's native detective force to discover +incipient insurrection. Each slave learned to distrust his fellow. And +added to this is the knowledge one Negro has that no other has had half +sufficient experience in business to be a wise counsellor, or a safe +steward of another man's funds. Almost all Negroes who have acquired +wealth have entrusted its management to white men. + +_Ignorance._ The causes of his ignorance all know. That he has thrown off +one-half of it in forty years is a wonderful showing; but a great incubus +remains in the other half, and it demands the nation's attention. What the +census calls literacy is often very shallow. The cause of this shallowness +lies, in part, in the poor character and short duration of Southern +schools; in the poverty that snatches the child from school prematurely to +work for bread; in the multitude of mushroom colleges and get-smart-quick +universities scattered over the South, and in the glamour of a +professional education that entices poorly prepared students into special +work. + +Add to this, too, the commercialism of the age which regards each day in +school as a day out of the market. Boys and girls by scores learn the +mechanical parts of type-writing and stenography without the basal culture +which gives these callings their greatest efficiency. They copy a +manuscript, Chinese-like, mistakes and all; they take you phonetically in +sense as well as sound, having no reserve to draw upon to interpret a +learned allusion or unusual phrase. Thus while prejudice makes it hard to +secure a place, auto-deficiency loses many a one that is secured. + +We have discussed the leading characteristics of the Negro, his inborn +excellencies and inbred defects, candidly and as they are to be seen in +the great mass whose place determines the status of the race as a whole. +It would, however, be to small purpose if we did not ask what can be done +to develop the innate good and correct the bad in a race so puissant and +numerous? This mass is not inert; it has great reactionary force, +modifying and influencing all about it. The Negro's excellences have +entered into American character and life already; so have his weaknesses. +He has brought cheer, love, emotion and religion in saving measure to the +land. He has given it wealth by his brawn and liberty by his blood. His +self-respect, even in abasement, has kept him struggling upward; his +confidence in his own future has infected his friends and kept him from +nursing despondency or planning anarchy. But he has laid, and does lay, +burdens upon the land, too: his ignorance, his low average of morality, +his low standards of home, his lack of enterprise, his lack of +self-reliance--these must be cured. + +Evidently, he is to be "solved" by educational processes. Everyone of his +inborn traits must be respected and developed to proper proportion. +Excesses and excrescences must not be carelessly dealt with, for they mark +the fertility of a soil that raises rank weeds because no gardener has +tilled it. His religion must become "ethics touched with feeling"--not a +paroxysm, but a principle. His imagination must be given a rudder to guide +its sails; and the first fruits of its proper exercise, as seen in a +Dunbar, a Chesnutt, a Coleridge-Taylor and a Tanner, must be pedestaled +along the Appian Way over which others are to march. His affection must be +met with larger love; his patience rewarded with privilege; his courage +called to defend the rights of others rather than redress his own wrongs. +Thus shall he supplement from within the best efforts of good men without. + +To cure the evils entailed upon him by an unhappy past, he must be +educated to work with skill, with self-direction, in combination and +unremittingly. Industrial education with constant application, is the +slogan of his rise from racial pauperism to productive manliness. Not that +exceptional minds should not have exceptional opportunities (and they +already exist); but that the great majority of awkward and unskilled ones, +who must work somehow, somewhere, all the time, shall have their +opportunities for training in industrial schools near them and with +courses consonant with the lives they are to lead. Let the ninety and nine +who must work, either with trained or fumbling hands, have a chance. Train +the Negro to accept and carry responsibility by putting it upon him. Train +him, more than any schools are now doing, in morals--to speak the truth, +to keep a promise, to touch only his own property, to trust the +trustworthy among his own race, to risk something in business, to strike +out in new lines of endeavor, to buy houses and make homes, to regard +beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us +subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will, +energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe +men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor +above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above +classical smatterings, which awe the multitude but butter no parsnips. + +If we do this, America will have enriched her blood, ennobled her record +and shown the world how to deal with its Dark Races without reproach. + +[Footnote B: In the original, this was 'Northen'.] + +[Footnote C: In the original, this was 'weeek'.] + +[Footnote D: In the original, this was 'seees'.] + + + + +_Representative American Negroes_ + +By PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR + + An enumeration of some of the noteworthy American Negroes of to-day and + yesterday, with some account of their lives and their work. In this + paper Mr. Dunbar has turned out his largest and most successful picture + of the colored people. It is a noble canvas crowded with heroic figures. + + +In considering who and what are representative Negroes there are +circumstances which compel one to question what is a representative man of +the colored race. Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and +others lived during the reconstruction period. To have achieved something +for the betterment of his race rather than for the aggrandizement of +himself, seems to be a man's best title to be called representative. The +street corner politician, who through questionable methods or even through +skillful manipulation, succeeds in securing the janitorship of the Court +House, may be written up in the local papers as "representative," but is +he? + +I have in mind a young man in Baltimore, Bernard Taylor by name, who to me +is more truly representative of the race than half of the "Judges," +"Colonels," "Doctors" and "Honorables" whose stock cuts burden the pages +of our negro journals week after week. I have said that he is young. +Beyond that he is quiet and unobtrusive; but quiet as he is, the worth of +his work can be somewhat estimated when it is known that he has set the +standard for young men in a city that has the largest colored population +in the world. + +It is not that as an individual he has ridden to success one enterprise +after another. It is not that he has shown capabilities far beyond his +years, nor yet that his personal energy will not let him stop at one +triumph. The importance of him lies in the fact that his influence upon +his fellows is all for good, and in a large community of young Negroes the +worth of this cannot be over-estimated. He has taught them that striving +is worth while, and by the very force of his example of industry and +perseverance, he stands out from the mass. He does not tell how to do +things, he does them. Nothing has contributed more to his success than +his alertness, and nothing has been more closely followed by his +observers, and yet I sometimes wonder when looking at him, how old he must +be, how world weary, before the race turns from its worship of the +political janitor and says of him, "this is one of our representative +men." + +This, however, is a matter of values and neither the negro himself, his +friends, his enemies, his lauders, nor his critics has grown quite certain +in appraising these. The rabid agitator who goes about the land preaching +the independence and glory of his race, and by his very mouthings +retarding both, the saintly missionary, whose only mission is like that of +"Pooh Bah," to be insulted; the man of the cloth who thunders against the +sins of the world and from whom honest women draw away their skirts, the +man who talks temperance and tipples high-balls--these are not +representative, and whatever their station in life, they should be rated +at their proper value, for there is a difference between attainment and +achievement. + +Under the pure light of reason, the ignorant carpet bagger judge is a +person and not a personality. The illiterate and inefficient black man, +whom circumstance put into Congress, was "a representative" but was not +representative. So the peculiar conditions of the days immediately after +the war have made it necessary to draw fine distinctions. + +When Robert Smalls, a slave, piloted the Confederate ship Planter out of +Charleston Harbor under the very guns of the men who were employing him, +who owned him, his body, his soul, and the husk of his allegiance, and +brought it over to the Union, it is a question which forty years has not +settled as to whether he was a hero or a felon, a patriot or a traitor. So +much has been said of the old Negro's fidelity to his masters that +something different might have been expected of him. But take the singular +conditions: the first faint streaks of a long delayed dawn had just begun +to illumine the sky and this black pilot with his face turned toward the +East had no eye for the darkness behind him. He had no time to analyze his +position, the right or wrong of it. He had no opportunity to question +whether it was loyalty to a union in which he aspired to citizenship, or +disloyalty to his masters of the despised confederacy. It was not a time +to argue, it was a time to do; and with rare power of decision, skill of +action and with indomitable courage, he steered the good ship Planter past +Fort Johnson, past Fort Sumter, past Morris Island, out where the flag, +the flag of his hopes and fears floated over the federal fleet. And Robert +Smalls had done something, something that made him loved and hated, +praised and maligned, revered and despised, but something that made him +representative of the best that there is in sturdy Negro manhood. + +It may seem a far cry from Robert Smalls, the pilot of the Planter, to +Booker T. Washington, Principal of the Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama. +But much the same traits of character have made the success of the two +men; the knowledge of what to do, the courage to do it, and the following +out of a single purpose. They are both pilots, and the waters through +which their helms have swung have been equally stormy. The methods of both +have been questioned; but singularly neither one has stopped to question +himself, but has gone straight on to his goal over the barriers of +criticism, malice and distrust. The secret of Mr. Washington's power is +organization, and organization after all is only a concentration of force. +This concentration only expresses his own personality, in which every +trait and quality tend toward one definite end. They say of this man that +he is a man of one idea, but that one is a great one and he has merely +concentrated all his powers upon it; in other words he has organized +himself and gone forth to gather in whatever about him was essential. + +Pilot he is, steadfast and unafraid, strong in his own belief,--yes +strong enough to make others believe in him. Without doubt or skepticism, +himself he has confounded the skeptics. + +Less statesmanlike than Douglass, less scholarly than DuBois, less +eloquent than the late J.C. Price, he is yet the foremost figure in Negro +national life. He is a great educator and a great man, and though one may +not always agree with him, one must always respect him. The race has +produced no more adroit diplomatist than he. The statement is broad but +there is no better proof of it than the fact that while he is our most +astute politician, he has succeeded in convincing both himself and the +country that he is not in politics. He has none of the qualities of the +curb-stone politician. He is bigger, broader, better, and the highest +compliment that could be paid him is that through all his ups and downs, +with all he has seen of humanity, he has kept his faith and his ideals. +While Mr. Washington stands pre-eminent in his race there are other names +that must be mentioned with him as co-workers in the education of the +world, names that for lack of time can be only mentioned and passed. + +W.H. Council, of Normal, Alabama, has been doing at his school a good and +great work along the same lines as Tuskegee. R.R. Wright, of the State +College of Georgia, "We'se a-risin' Wright," he is called, and by his own +life and work for his people he has made true the boyish prophecy which in +the old days inspired Whittier's poem. Three decades ago this was his +message from the lowly South, "Tell 'em we'se a-risin," and by thought, by +word, by deed, he has been "Tellin' em so" ever since. The old Southern +school has melted into the misty shades of an unregretted past. A new +generation, new issues, new conditions, have replaced the old, but the boy +who sent that message from the heart of the Southland to the North's heart +of hearts has risen, and a martyred President did not blush to call him +friend. + +So much of the Negro's time has been given to the making of teachers that +it is difficult to stop when one has begun enumerating some of those who +have stood out more than usually forceful. For my part, there are two more +whom I cannot pass over. Kelly Miller, of Howard University, Washington, +D.C., is another instructor far above the average. He is a mathematician +and a thinker. The world has long been convinced of what the colored man +could do in music and in oratory, but it has always been skeptical, when +he is to be considered as a student of any exact science. Miller, in his +own person, has settled all that. He finished at Johns Hopkins where they +will remember him. He is not only a teacher but an author who writes with +authority upon his chosen themes, whether he is always known as a Negro +writer or not. He is endowed with an accurate, analytical mind, and the +most engaging blackness, for which some of us thank God, because there can +be no argument as to the source of his mental powers. + +Now of the other, William E.B. DuBois, what shall be said? Educator and +author, political economist and poet, an Eastern man against a Southern +back-ground, he looms up strong, vivid and in bold relief. I say looms +advisedly, because, intellectually, there is something so distinctively +big about the man. Since the death of the aged Dr. Crummell, we have had +no such ripe and finished scholar. Dr. DuBois, Harvard gave him to us, and +there he received his Ph.D., impresses one as having reduced all life and +all literature to a perfect system. There is about him a fascinating calm +of certain power, whether as a searcher after economic facts, under the +wing of the University of Pennsylvania, or defying the "powers that be" in +a Negro college or leading his pupils along the way of light, one always +feels in him this same sense of conscious, restrained, but assured force. + +Some years ago in the course of his researches, he took occasion to tell +his own people some plain hard truths, and oh, what a howl of protest and +denunciation went up from their assembled throats, but it never once +disturbed his magnificent calm. He believed what he had said, and not for +a single moment did he think of abandoning his position. + +He goes at truth as a hard-riding old English squire would take a +difficult fence. Let the ditch be beyond if it will. + +Dr. DuBois would be the first to disclaim the name of poet but everything +outside of his statistical work convicts him. The rhythm of his style, his +fancy, his imagery, all bid him bide with those whose souls go singing by +a golden way. He has written a number of notable pamphlets and books, the +latest of which is "The Soul of the Black Folk," an invaluable +contribution to the discussion of the race problem by a man who knows +whereof he speaks. + +Dr. DuBois is at Atlanta University and has had every opportunity to +observe all the phases of America's great question, and I wish I might +write at length of his books. + +It may be urged that too much time has already been taken up with the +educational side of the Negro, but the reasonableness of this must become +apparent when one remembers that for the last forty years the most helpful +men of the race have come from the ranks of its teachers, and few of those +who have finally done any big thing, but have at some time or other held +the scepter of authority in a school. They may have changed later and +grown, indeed they must have done so, but the fact remains that their +poise, their discipline, the impulse for their growth came largely from +their work in the school room. + +There is perhaps no more notable example of this phase of Negro life than +the Hon. Richard Theodore Greener, our present Consul at Vladivostok. He +was, I believe, the first of our race to graduate from Harvard and he has +always been regarded as one of the most scholarly men who, through the +touch of Negro blood, belongs to us. He has been historian, journalist and +lecturer, but back of all this he was a teacher; and for years after his +graduation he was a distinguished professor at the most famous of all the +old Negro colleges. This institution is now a thing of the past, but the +men who knew it in its palmy days speak of it still with longing and +regret. It is claimed, and from the names and qualities of the men, not +without justice, that no school for the higher education of the black man +has furnished a finer curriculum or possessed a better equipped or more +efficient faculty. Among these, Richard T. Greener was a bright, +particular star. + +After the passing of the school, Mr. Greener turned to other activities. +His highest characteristics were a fearless patience and a hope that +buoyed him up through days of doubt and disappointment. Author and editor +he was, but he was not satisfied with these. Beyond their scope were +higher things that beckoned him. Politics, or perhaps better, political +science, allured him, and he applied himself to a course that brought him +into intimate contact with the leaders of his country, white and black. A +man of wide information, great knowledge and close grasp of events he made +himself invaluable to his party and then with his usual patience awaited +his reward. + +The story of how he came to his own cannot be told without just a shade of +bitterness darkening the smile that one must give to it all. The cause for +which he had worked triumphed. The men for whom he had striven gained +their goal and now, Greener must be recognized, but-- + +Vladivostok, your dictionary will tell you, is a sea-port in the maritime +Province of Siberia, situated on the Golden Horn of Peter the Great. It +will tell you also that it is the chief Russian naval station on the +Pacific. It is an out of the way place and one who has not the +world-circling desire would rather hesitate before setting out thither. It +was to this post that Mr. Greener was appointed. + +"Exile," his friends did not hesitate to say. "Why didn't the Government +make it a sentence instead of veiling it in the guise of an appointment?" +asked others sarcastically. + +"Will he go?" That was the general question that rose and fell, whispered +and thundered about the new appointee, and in the midst of it all, silent +and dignified, he kept his council. The next thing Washington knew he was +gone. There was a gasp of astonishment and then things settled back into +their former state of monotony and Greener was forgotten. + +But in the eastern sky, darkness began to arise, the warning flash of +danger swept across the heavens, the thunder drum of war began to roll. +For a moment the world listened in breathless suspense, the suspense of +horror. Louder and louder rose the thunder peal until it drowned every +other sound in the ears of the nation, every other sound save the cries +and wails of dying women and the shrieks of tortured children. Then +France, England, Germany, Japan and America marshalled their forces and +swept eastward to save and to avenge. The story of the Boxer uprising has +been told, but little has been said of how Vladivostok, "A sea-port in the +maritime Province of Siberia," became one of the most important points of +communication with the outside world, and its Consul came frequently to be +heard from by the State Department. And so Greener after years of patience +and toil had come to his own. If the government had wished to get him out +of the way, it had reckoned without China. + +A new order of things has come into Negro-American politics and this man +has become a part of it. It matters not that he began his work under the +old regime. So did Judge Gibbs, a man eighty years of age, but he, too, +has kept abreast of the times, and although the reminiscences in his +delightful autobiography take one back to the hazy days when the land was +young and politics a more strenuous thing than it is even now, when there +was anarchy in Louisiana and civil war in Arkansas, when one shot first +and questioned afterward; yet because his mind is still active, because +he has changed his methods with the changing time, because his influence +over young men is greatly potent still; he is, in the race, perhaps, the +best representative of what the old has brought to the new. + +Beside him strong, forceful, commanding, stands the figure of George H. +White, whose farewell speech before the Fifty-sixth Congress, when through +the disfranchisement of Negroes he was defeated for re-election, stirred +the country and fired the hearts of his brothers. He has won his place +through honesty, bravery and aggressiveness. He has given something to the +nation that the nation needed, and with such men as Pinchback, Lynch, +Terrell and others of like ilk, acting in concert, it is but a matter of +time when his worth shall induce a repentant people, with a justice +builded upon the foundation of its old prejudice, to ask the Negro back to +take a hand in the affairs of state. + +Add to all this the facts that the Negro has his representatives in the +commercial world: McCoy and Granville T. Woods, inventors; in the +agricultural world with J.H. Groves, the potato king of Kansas, who last +year shipped from his own railway siding seventy-two thousand five hundred +bushels of potatoes alone; in the military, with Capt. Charles A. Young, a +West Pointer, now stationed at the Presidio; that in medicine, he +possesses in Daniel H. Williams, of Chicago, one of the really great +surgeons of the country; that Edward H. Morris, a black man, is one of the +most brilliant lawyers at the brilliant Cook County bar; that in every +walk of life he has men and women who stand for something definite and +concrete, and it seems to me that there can be little doubt that the race +problem will gradually solve itself. + +I have spoken of "men and women," and indeed the women must not be +forgotten, for to them the men look for much of the inspiration and +impulse that drives them forward to success. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell +upon the platform speaking for Negro womanhood and Miss Sarah Brown, her +direct opposite, a little woman sitting up in her aerie above a noisy New +York street, stand for the very best that there is in our mothers, wives +and sisters. The one fully in the public eye, with learning and eloquence, +telling the hopes and fears of her kind; the other in suffering and +retirement, with her knowledge of the human heart and her gentleness +inspiring all who meet her to better and nobler lives. They are both doing +their work bravely and grandly. But when the unitiate ask who is "la +Petite Reine," we think of the quiet little woman in a New York fifth +floor back and are silent. + +She is a patron of all our literature and art and we have both. Whether it +is a new song by Will Marion Cook or a new book by DuBois or Chestnut, +than whom no one has ever told the life of the Negro more accurately and +convincingly, she knows it and has a kindly word of praise or +encouragement. + +In looking over the field for such an article as this, one just begins to +realize how many Negroes are representative of something, and now it seems +that in closing no better names could be chosen than those of the two +Tanners. + +From time immemorial, Religion and Art have gone together, but it remained +for us to place them in the persons of these two men, in the relation of +father and son. Bishop Benj. Tucker Tanner, of the A.M.E. Church, is not +only a theologian and a priest, he is a dignified, polished man of the +higher world and a poet. He has succeeded because he was prepared for +success. As to his writings, he will, perhaps, think most highly of "His +Apology For African Methodism;" but some of us, while respecting this, +will turn from it to the poems and hymns that have sung themselves out of +his gentle heart. + +Is it any wonder that his son, Henry O. Tanner, is a poet with the brush +or that the French Government has found it out? From the father must have +come the man's artistic impulse, and he carried it on and on to a golden +fruition. In the Luxembourg gallery hangs his picture, "The Raising of +Lazarus." At the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, I saw his +"Annunciation," both a long way from his "Banjo Lesson," and thinking of +him I began to wonder whether, in spite of all the industrial tumult, it +were not in the field of art, music and literature that the Negro was to +make his highest contribution to American civilization. But this is merely +a question which time will answer. + +All these of whom I have spoken are men who have striven and achieved and +the reasons underlying their success are the same that account for the +advancement of men of any other race: preparation, perseverance, bravery, +patience, honesty and the power to seize the opportunity. + +It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere +out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn. + + + + +_The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day_ + +BY T. THOMAS FORTUNE + + Considering the two hundred and forty-five years of his slavery and the + comparatively short time he has enjoyed the opportunities of freedom, + his place in American life at the present day is creditable to him and + promising for the future. + +[Illustration: T. THOMAS FORTUNE.] + + +There can be no healthy growth in the life of a race or a nation without a +self-reliant spirit animating the whole body; if it amounts to optimism, +devoid of egotism and vanity, so much the better. This spirit necessarily +carries with it intense pride of race, or of nation, as the case may be, +and ramifies the whole mass, inspiring and shaping its thought and effort, +however humble or exalted these may be,--as it takes "all sorts and +conditions of men" to make up a social order, instinct with the ambition +and the activity which work for "high thinking and right living," of which +modern evolution in all directions is the most powerful illustration in +history. If pride of ancestry can, happily, be added to pride of race and +nation, and these are re-enforced by self-reliance, courage and correct +moral living, the possible success of such people may be accepted, without +equivocation, as a foregone conclusion. I have found all of these +requirements so finely blended in the life and character of no people as +that of the Japanese, who are just now emerging from "the double night of +ages" into the vivifying sunlight of modern progress. + +What is the Negro's place in American life at the present day? + +The answer depends entirely upon the point of view. Unfortunately for the +Afro-American people, they have no pride of ancestry; in the main, few of +them can trace their parentage back four generations; and the "daughter of +an hundred earls" of whom there are probably many, is unconscious of her +descent, and would profit nothing by it if this were not true. The blood +of all the ethnic types that go to make up American citizenship flows in +the veins of the Afro-American people, so that of the ten million of them +in this country, accounted for by the Federal census, not more than four +million are of pure negroid descent, while some four million of them, not +accounted for by the Federal census, have escaped into the ranks of the +white race, and are re-enforced very largely by such escapements every +year. The vitiation of blood has operated irresistibly to weaken that +pride of ancestry, which is the foundation-stone of pride of race; so that +the Afro-American people have been held together rather by the segregation +decreed by law and public opinion than by ties of consanguinity since +their manumission and enfranchisement. It is not because they are poor and +ignorant and oppressed, as a mass, that there is no such sympathy of +thought and unity of effort among them as among Irishmen and Jews the +world over, but because the vitiation of blood, beyond the honorable +restrictions of law, has destroyed, in large measure, that pride of +ancestry upon which pride of race must be builded. In no other logical +way can we account for the failure of the Afro-American people to stand +together, as other oppressed races do, and have done, for the righting of +wrongs against them authorized by the laws of the several states, if not +by the Federal Constitution, and sanctioned or tolerated by public +opinion. In nothing has this radical defect been more noticeable since the +War of the Rebellion than in the uniform failure of the people to sustain +such civic organizations as exist and have existed, to test in the courts +of law and in the forum of public opinion the validity of organic laws of +States intended to deprive them of the civil and political rights +guaranteed to them by the Federal Constitution. The two such organizations +of this character which have appealed to them are the National +Afro-American League, organized in Chicago, in 1890, and the National +Afro-American Council, organized in Rochester, New York, out of the +League, in 1898. The latter organization still exists, the strongest of +its kind, but it has never commanded the sympathy and support of the +masses of the people, nor is there, or has there been, substantial +agreement and concert of effort among the thoughtful men of the race along +these lines. They have been restrained by selfish, personal and petty +motives, while the constitutional rights which vitalize their citizenship +have been "denied or abridged" by legislation of certain of the States and +by public opinion, even as Nero fiddled while Rome burned. If they had +been actuated by a strong pride of ancestry and of race, if they had felt +that injury to one was injury to all, if they had hung together instead of +hanging separately, their place in the civil and political life of the +Republic to-day would not be that, largely, of pariahs, with none so poor +as to do them honor, but that of equality of right under the law enjoyed +by all other alien ethnic forces in our citizenship. They who will not +help themselves are usually not helped by others. They who make a loud +noise and courageously contend for what is theirs, usually enjoy the +respect and confidence of their fellows and get, in the end, what belongs +to them, or a reasonable modification of it. + +As a consequence of inability to unite in thought and effort for the +conservation of their civil and political rights, the Afro-American +Negroes and colored people have lost, by fundamental enactments of the old +slave-holding States, all of the civil and political rights guaranteed +them by the Federal Constitution, in the full enjoyment of which they were +from the adoption of the War Amendments up to 1876-7, when they were +sacrificed by their Republican allies of the North and West, in the +alienation of their State governments, in order to save the Presidency to +Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Their reverses in this matter in the old +slave-holding States, coupled with a vast mass of class legislation, +modelled on the slave code, have affected the Afro-American people in +their civil and political rights in all of the States of the Republic, +especially as far as public opinion is concerned. This was inevitable, +and follows in every instance in history where a race element of the +citizenship is set aside by law or public opinion as separate and distinct +from its fellows, with a fixed status or caste. + +It will take the Afro-American people fully a century to recover what they +lost of civil and political equality under the law in the Southern States, +as a result of the re-actionary and bloody movement begun in the +Reconstruction period by the Southern whites, and culminating in +1877,--the excesses of the Reconstruction governments, about which so much +is said to the discredit of the Negro, being chargeable to the weakness +and corruption of Northern carpet-baggers, who were the master and +responsible spirits of the time and the situation, rather than to the +weakness, the ignorance and venality of their Negro dupes, who, very +naturally, followed where they led, as any other grateful people would +have done. For, were not these same Northern carpet-baggers the direct +representatives of the Government and the Army which crushed the slave +power and broke the shackles of the slave? Even so. The Northern +carpet-baggers planned and got the plunder, and have it; the Negro got the +credit and the odium, and have them yet. It often happens that way in +history, that the innocent dupes are made to suffer for the misdeeds and +crimes of the guilty. + +The recovery of civil and political rights under the Constitution, as +"denied or abridged" by the constitutions of the States, more especially +those of the old slave holding ones, will be a slow and tedious process, +and will come to the individual rather than to the race, as the reward of +character and thrift; because, for reasons already stated, it will hardly +be possible in the future, as it has not been in the past, to unify the +mass of the Afro-American people, in thought and conduct, for a proper +contention in the courts and at the ballot-box and in the education of +public opinion, to accomplish this purpose. Perhaps there is no other +instance in history where everything depended so largely upon the +individual, and so little upon the mass of his race, for that development +in the religious and civic virtues which makes more surely for an +honorable status in any citizenship than constitutions or legislative +enactments built upon them. + +But even from this point of view, I am disposed to believe that the +Negro's civil and political rights are more firmly fixed in law and public +opinion than was true at the close of the Reconstruction period, when +everything relating to him was unsettled and confused, based in +legislative guarantees, subject to approval or disapproval of the dominant +public opinion of the several States, and that he will gradually work out +his own salvation under the Constitution,--such as Charles Sumner, +Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin F. Butler, Frederick Douglass, and their +co-workers, hoped and labored that he might enjoy. He has lost nothing +under the fundamental law; such of these restrictions, as apply to him by +the law of certain of the States, necessarily apply to white men in like +circumstances of ignorance and poverty, and can be overcome, in time, by +assiduous courtship of the schoolmaster and the bank cashier. The extent +to which the individual members of the race are overcoming the +restrictions made a bar to their enjoyment of civil and political rights +under the Constitution is gratifying to those who wish the race well and +who look beyond the present into the future: while it is disturbing the +dreams of those who spend most of their time and thought in abortive +efforts to "keep the 'nigger' in his place"--as if any man or race could +have a place in the world's thought and effort which he did not make for +himself! In our grand Republic, at least, it has been so often +demonstrated as to become proverbial, that the door of opportunity shall +be closed to no man, and that he shall be allowed to have that place in +our national life which he makes for himself. So it is with the Negro now, +as an individual. Will it be so with him in the future as a race? To +answer that we shall first have to determine that he has a race. + +However he may be lacking in pride of ancestry and race, no one can accuse +the Negro of lack of pride of Nation and State, and even of county. +Indeed, his pride in the Republic and his devotion to it are among the +most pathetic phases of his pathetic history, from Jamestown, in 1620, to +San Juan Hill, in 1898. He has given everything to the Republic,--his +labor and blood and prayers. What has the Republic given him, but blows +and rebuffs and criminal ingratitude! And he stands now, ready and eager, +to give the Republic all that he has. What does the Republic stand ready +and eager to give him? Let the answer come out of the mouth of the future. + +It is a fair conclusion that the Negro has a firmer and more assured civil +and political status in American life to-day than at the close of the +Reconstruction period, paradoxical as this may appear to many, despite the +adverse legislation of the old slave-holding States, and the tolerant +favor shown such legislation by the Federal Supreme Court, in such +opinions as it has delivered, from time to time, upon the subject, since +the adoption of the War amendments to the Federal Constitution. +Technically, the Negro stands upon equality with all other citizens under +this large body of special and class legislation; but, as a matter of +fact, it is so framed that the greatest inequality prevails, and was +intended to prevail, in the administration of it by the several States +chiefly concerned. As long as such legislation by the States specifies, on +the face of it, that it shall operate upon all citizens equally, however +unequally and unjustly the legislation may be interpreted and administered +by the local courts, the Federal Supreme Court has held, time and again, +that no hardship was worked, and, if so, that the aggrieved had his +recourse in appeal to the higher courts of the State of which he is a +citizen,--a recourse at this time precisely like that of carrying coal to +New Castle. + +Under the circumstances, there is no alternative for the Negro citizen +but to work out his salvation under the Constitution, as other citizens +have done and are doing. It will be a long and tedious process before the +equitable adjustment has been attained, but that does not much matter, as +full and fair enjoyment of civil and political rights requires much time +and patience and hard labor in any given situation, where two races come +together in the same governmental environment; such as is the case of the +Negro in America, the Irishman in Ireland, and the Jew everywhere in +Europe. It is just as well, perhaps, that the Negro will have to work out +his salvation under the Constitution as an individual rather than as a +race, as the Jew has done it in Great Britain and as the Irishman will +have to do it under the same Empire, as it is and has been the tendency of +our law and precedent to subordinate race elements and to exalt the +individual citizens as indivisible "parts of one stupendous whole." When +this has been accomplished by the law in the case of the Negro, as in the +case of other alien ethnic elements of the citizenship, it will be more +gradually, but assuredly, accomplished by society at large, the +indestructible foundation of which was laid by the reckless and brutal +prostitution of black women by white men in the days of slavery, from +which a vast army of mulattoes were produced, who have been and are, +gradually, by honorable marriage among themselves, changing the alleged +"race characteristics and tendencies" of the Negro people. A race element, +it is safe and fair to conclude, incapable, like that of the North +American Indian, of such a process of elimination and assimilation, will +always be a thorn in the flesh of the Republic, in which there is, +admittedly, no place for the integrality and growth of a distinct race +type. The Afro-American people, for reasons that I have stated, are even +now very far from being such a distinct race type, and without further +admixture of white and black blood, will continue to be less so to the end +of the chapter. It seems to me that this view of the matter has not +received the consideration that it deserves at the hands of those who set +themselves up as past grand masters in the business of "solving the race +problem," and in accurately defining "The Negro's Place in American Life +at the Present Day." The negroid type and the Afro-American type are two +very distinct types, and the sociologist who confounds them, as is very +generally done, is bound to confuse his subject and his audience. + +It is a debatable question as to whether the Negro's present industrial +position is better or worse than it was, say, at the close of the +Reconstruction period. As a mass, I am inclined to the opinion that it is +worse, as the laws of the States where he is congregated most numerously +are so framed as to favor the employer in every instance, and he does not +scruple to get all out of the industrial slave that he can; which is, in +the main, vastly more than the slave master got, as the latter was at the +expense of housing, feeding, clothing and providing medical service for +his chattel, while the former is relieved of this expense and trouble. +Prof. W.E.B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, who has made a critical study +of the rural Negro of the Southern States, sums up the industrial phase of +the matter in the following ("The Souls of Black Folk," pp. 39-40): + +"For this much all men know: Despite compromise, war and struggle, the +Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and +miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the +whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to +an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the +penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the +Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and +privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a +different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule +of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must +have been, lawlessness and crime." + +It is a dark and gloomy picture, the substitution of industrial for +chattel slavery, with none of the legal and selfish restraints upon the +employer which surrounded and actuated the master. And this is true of the +entire mass of the Afro-American laborers of the Southern States. Out of +the mass have arisen a large number of individuals who own and till their +own lands. This element is very largely recruited every year, and to this +source must we look for the gradual undermining of the industrial slavery +of the mass of the people. Here, too, we have a long and tedious process +of evolution, but it is nothing new in the history of races circumstanced +as the Afro-American people are. That the Negro is destined, however, to +be the landlord and master agriculturist of the Southern States is a +probability sustained by all the facts in the situation; not the least of +which being the tendency of the poor white class and small farmers to +abandon agricultural pursuits for those of the factory and the mine, from +which the Negro laborer is excluded, partially in the mine and wholly in +the factory. The development of mine and factory industries in the +Southern States in the past two decades has been one of the most +remarkable in industrial history. + +In the skilled trades, at the close of the War of the Rebellion, most of +the work was done by Negroes educated as artisans in the hard school of +slavery, but there has been a steady decline in the number of such +laborers, not because of lack of skill, but because trade unionism has +gradually taken possession of such employments in the South, and will not +allow the Negro to work alongside of the white man. And this is the rule +of the trade unions in all parts of the country. It is to be hoped that +there may be a gradual broadening of the views of white laborers in this +vital matter and a change of attitude by the trade unions that they +dominate. Can we reasonably expect this? As matters now stand, it is the +individual Negro artisan, often a master contractor, who can work at his +trade and give employment to his fellows. Fortunately, there are a great +many of these in all parts of the Southern States, and their number is +increasing every year, as the result of the rapid growth and high favor of +industrial schools, where the trades are taught. A very great deal should +be expected from this source, as a Negro contractor stands very nearly on +as good footing as a white one in the bidding, when he has established a +reputation for reliability. The facts obtained in every Southern city bear +out this view of the matter. The individual black man has a fighting +chance for success in the skilled trades; and, as he succeeds, will draw +the skilled mass after him. The proper solution of the skilled labor +problem is strictly within the power of the individual Negro. I believe +that he is solving it, and that he will ultimately solve it. + +It is, however, in the marvellous building up of a legal, comfortable and +happy home life, where none whatever existed at the close of the War of +the Rebellion; in the no less stupendous development of the church life, +with large and puissant organizations that command the respect and +admiration of mankind, and owning splendid church property valued at +millions of dollars; in the quenchless thirst of the mass of the people +for useful knowledge, displayed at the close of the War of the Rebellion, +and abating nothing of its intense keenness since, with the remarkable +reduction in the illiteracy of the mass of the people, as is eloquently +disclosed by the census reports--it is in these results that no cause for +complaint or discouragement can be found. The whole race here stands on +improved ground over that it occupied at the close of the War of the +Rebellion; albeit, even here, the individual has outstripped the mass of +the race, as it was but natural that he should and always will. But, while +this is true and gratifying to all those that hope the Afro-American +people well, it is also true, and equally gratifying that, as far as the +mass is concerned, the home life, the church and the school house have +come into the life of the people, in some sort, everywhere, giving the +whole race a character and a standing in the estimation of mankind which +it did not have at the close of the war, and presaging, logically, unless +all signs fail, a development along high and honorable lines in the +future; the results from which, I predict, at the end of the ensuing half +century, builded upon the foundation already laid, being such as to +confound the prophets of evil, who never cease to doubt and shake their +heads, asking: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" We have the +answer already in the social and home life of the people, which is so vast +an improvement over the conditions and the heritage of slavery as to +stagger the understanding of those who are informed on the subject, or +will take the trouble to inform themselves. + +If we have much loose moral living, it is not sanctioned by the mass, +wedlock being the rule, and not the exception; if we have a vast volume of +illiteracy, we have reduced it by forty per cent. since the war, and the +school houses are all full of children eager to learn, and the schools of +higher and industrial training cannot accommodate all those who knock at +their doors for admission; if we have more than our share of criminality, +we have also churches in every hamlet and city, to which a vast majority +of the people belong, and which are insistently pointing "the way, the +light and the truth" to higher and nobler living. + +Mindful, therefore, of the Negro's two hundred and forty-five years of +slave education and unrequited toil, and of his thirty years of partial +freedom and less than partial opportunity, who shall say that his place in +American life at the present day is not all that should be reasonably +expected of him, that it is not creditable to him, and that it is not a +sufficient augury for better and nobler and higher thinking, striving and +building in the future? Social growth is the slowest of all growth. If +there be signs of growth, then, there is reasonable hope for a healthy +maturity. There are plenty of such signs, and he who runs may read them, +if he will. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Negro Problem, by Booker T. Washington, et al. + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEGRO PROBLEM *** + +***** This file should be named 15041.txt or 15041.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/0/4/15041/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/15041.zip b/15041.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f4c61ea --- /dev/null +++ b/15041.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..88947b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #15041 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15041) |
