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diff --git a/39742-8.txt b/39742-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc955d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/39742-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5349 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Half a Man, by Mary White Ovington and Franz Boas + +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: Half a Man + The Status of the Negro in New York + +Author: Mary White Ovington + Franz Boas + +Release Date: May 20, 2012 [EBook #39742] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF A MAN *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Paul Clark and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + Transcriber's Note: + + Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as + possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. + Some changes of spelling have been made. They are listed at the end + of the text. + + Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. + OE ligatures have been expanded. + + + + + HALF A MAN + + THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO + IN NEW YORK + + BY + MARY WHITE OVINGTON + + _WITH A FOREWORD BY DR. FRANZ BOAS + OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY_ + + LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. + FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK + LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA + 1911 + + + _Copyright, 1911, by_ + LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. + + THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS + [W · D · O] + NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A + + + TO + THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER + THEODORE TWEEDY + OVINGTON + + + + +FOREWORD + + +Miss Ovington's description of the status of the Negro in New York City +is based on a most painstaking inquiry into his social and economic +conditions, and brings out in the most forceful way the difficulties +under which the race is laboring, even in the large cosmopolitan +population of New York. It is a refutation of the claims that the Negro +has equal opportunity with the whites, and that his failure to advance +more rapidly than he has, is due to innate inability. + +Many students of anthropology recognize that no proof can be given of +any material inferiority of the Negro race; that without doubt the bulk +of the individuals composing the race are equal in mental aptitude to +the bulk of our own people; that, although their hereditary aptitudes +may lie in slightly different directions, it is very improbable that the +majority of individuals composing the white race should possess greater +ability than the Negro race. + +The anthropological argument is invariably met by the objection that the +achievements of the two races are unequal, while their opportunities are +the same. Every demonstration of the inequality of opportunity will +therefore help to dissipate prejudices that prevent the best possible +development of a large number of our citizens. + +The Negro of our times carries even more heavily the burden of his +racial descent than did the Jew of an earlier period; and the +intellectual and moral qualities required to insure success to the Negro +are infinitely greater than those demanded from the white, and will be +the greater, the stricter the segregation of the Negro community. + +The strong development of racial consciousness, which has been +increasing during the last century and is just beginning to show the +first signs of waning, is the gravest obstacle to the progress of the +Negro race, as it is an obstacle to the progress of all strongly +individualized social groups. The simple presentation of observations, +like those given by Miss Ovington, may help us to overcome more quickly +that self-centred attitude which can see progress only in the domination +of a single type. + +This investigation was carried on by Miss Ovington under the auspices of +the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations, of which she was +a Fellow.[1] + +FRANZ BOAS. + + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] The Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations is composed +of Edwin R. A. Seligman, Chairman, Franz Boas, Edward T. Devine, +Livingston Farrand, Franklin H. Giddings, Henry R. Seager, Vladimir G. +Simkhovitch, Secretary. + +Miss Ovington's is the second publication of the Committee, the first +being Mrs. Louise Bolard More's "Wage-Earners' Budgets," published by +Henry Holt & Co. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I "UP FROM SLAVERY" 5 + + II WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 31 + + III THE CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 52 + + IV EARNING A LIVING--MANUAL LABOR AND THE TRADES 75 + + V EARNING A LIVING--BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONS 106 + + VI THE COLORED WOMAN AS A BREAD WINNER 138 + + VII RICH AND POOR 170 + + VIII THE NEGRO AND THE MUNICIPALITY 195 + + IX CONCLUSION 218 + + APPENDIX 229 + + INDEX 233 + + + + +HALF A MAN + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +Six years ago I met a young colored man, a college student recently +returned from Germany where he had been engaged in graduate work. He was +born, he told me, in one of the Gulf States, and I questioned him as to +whether he intended going back to the South to teach. His answer was in +the negative. "My father has attained success in his native state," he +said, "but when I ceased to be a boy, he advised me to live in the North +where my manhood would be respected. He himself cannot continually +endure the position in which he is placed, and in the summer he comes +North to be a man. No," correcting himself, "to be half a man. A Negro +is wholly a man only in Europe." + +Half a man! During the six years that I have been in touch with the +problem of the Negro in New York this characterization has grown in +significance to me. I have endeavored to know the life of the Negro as I +know the life of the white American, and I have learned that while New +York at times gives full recognition to his manhood, again, its race +prejudice arrests his development as certainly as severe poverty arrests +the development of the tenement child. Perhaps a study of this shifting +attitude on the part of the dominant race, and of the Negro's reaction +under it, may not be unimportant; for the color question cannot be +ignored in America, nor should the position taken by her largest city be +overlooked. And those who love their fellows may be glad, among New +York's four millions--its Slavs and Italians, its Russians and +Asiatics--to meet these dark people who speak our language and who for +many generations have made this country their home. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +"UP FROM SLAVERY" + + +The status of the Negro in New Amsterdam, a slave in a pioneer +community, differed fundamentally from his position today in New York. +His history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century contains many +exciting incidents, but those only need be considered here that show a +progress or a retardation in his attainment to manhood. What were his +struggles in the past to secure his rights as a man? + +Slavery in the early days of the colonies was more brutal than at the +time of final emancipation. Savages recently arrived from Africa lacked +the docility of blacks reared in bondage, and burning and torturing, as +well as whipping, were recognized modes of punishment. Masters looked +upon their Negroes, bought at the Wall Street market from among the +cargo of a recently arrived slaver, with some suspicion and fear. Nor +were their apprehensions entirely without reason. In 1712 some of the +discontented among the New York slaves met in an orchard in Maiden Lane +and set fire to an outhouse. Defending themselves against the citizens +who ran to put out the flames, they fired, killing nine men and wounding +six. Retribution soon followed. They were pursued when they attempted +flight, captured and executed--some hanged, some burned at the stake, +some left suspended in chains to starve to death. + +Perhaps it was the memory of this small revolt that caused the people of +New York in 1741 to lay the blame for a series of conflagrations upon +their slaves. Nine fires that seemed to be incendiary came one upon +another, and a robbery was committed. To escape death herself, a +worthless white servant girl gave testimony against the Negroes who +frequented a tavern where she was employed, declaring that a plot had +been conceived whereby the slaves would kill all the white men and take +control of the city. New York was aflame with fear, and evidence that at +another time would have been rejected, was listened to by the judges +with grave attention. The slaves were allowed no defence, and before the +city had recovered from its fright, it had burned fourteen Negroes, +hanged eighteen, and transported seventy-one.[1] + +Historians today think that the slaves were in no way concerned in this +so-called "plot." The two thousand blacks in the city might have done +much mischief to the ten thousand whites, but their servile condition +made an organized movement among them impossible. We may infer, however, +from the fear which they provoked, that they were not all docile +servants. In a letter written at the port of New York in 1756, an +English naval officer says of the city, "The laborious people in general +are Guinea Negroes who lie under particular restraints from the attempts +they have made to massacre the inhabitants for their liberty."[2] +Janvier in his "Old New York" thinks, "that the alarm bred by the +so-called Negro plot of 1741 was most effective in checking the growth +of slavery in that city." Probably the restlessness of the slaves, their +efforts toward manhood, in a community where there was little economic +justification for slavery, contributed to the movement for emancipation +that began in 1777. + +Emancipation came gradually to the New York Negro. Gouverneur Morris at +the state constitutional convention of 1776-1777 recommended that "the +future legislature of the state of New York take the most effectual +measures consistent with the public safety and the private property of +individuals for abolishing domestic slavery within the same, so that in +future ages every human being who breathes the air of this state shall +enjoy the privileges of a freeman." The postponement of action to a +future legislature was keenly regretted by John Jay, who was absent from +the convention when the slavery question arose, but who had hoped that +New York might be a leader in emancipation. The state's initial measure +for abolishing slavery was in 1785, when it prohibited the sale of +slaves in New York. This was followed in 1799 by an act giving freedom +to the children of slaves, and in 1817 by a further act providing for +the abolition of slavery throughout the state in 1827. This law went +into effect July 4, 1827, the emancipation day of the Negroes in New +York. + +With gradual emancipation and the cessation of the sale of slaves, the +Negroes numerically became unimportant in the city. In 1800 they +constituted ten and a half per cent of the population. Half a century +later, while they had doubled their numbers, the immense influx of +foreign immigrants brought their proportion down to two and seven-tenths +per cent. In 1850 and 1860 their positive as well as their relative +number decreased, and it was not until twenty years ago that they began +to show some gain. The last census returns of 1900 give Greater New York +(including Brooklyn) 60,666 Negroes in a population of 3,437,202, one +and eight-tenths per cent. It seems probable that the census of 1910 +will show a large positive and a slight relative Negro increase.[3] + +The relative decrease in the number of Negroes did not, however, produce +a decrease in the agitation upon their presence and position in the +city. Their political status was a subject for heated discussion even +before their complete emancipation. The first state constitution, +drafted in 1777, was without color discrimination, since it based the +suffrage upon a property qualification requiring voters for governor and +senators to be freeholders owning property worth £100. A Negro with such +a holding was a phenomenon, a curiosity. But by 1821, when the framing +of the second constitution was in progress, Negroes of some education +were an appreciable element in the population, and with them ignorant, +recently emancipated slaves. Should they be admitted to the full manhood +suffrage contemplated for the whites? Those who favored the new +democratic movement were doubtful of its applicability to colored +people. Livingston, a champion of universal white manhood suffrage, was +against giving the black man the vote. On the other hand, the +conservative Chancellor Kent, apprehending in the new constitution "a +disposition to encroach on private rights,--to disturb chartered +privileges and to weaken, degrade, and overawe the administration of +justice," would yet have made no color discrimination, and Peter A. Jay, +who did not believe in universal white manhood suffrage, urged that +colored men, natives of the country, should derive from its institutions +the same privileges as white persons. The second constitution when +adopted enfranchised practically all white men, but gave the Negroes a +property qualification of $250. The issue of the revolution, however, +was not far from men's thoughts, and "taxation without representation" +was not permitted; for while no colored man might vote without a +freehold estate valued at 250 dollars, _no person of color was subject +to direct taxation unless he should be possessed of such real estate_. + +In 1846 a third constitutional convention was held, and the same matter +came up for debate. John L. Russell of St. Lawrence declared that "the +Almighty had created the black man inferior to the white man," while +Daniel S. Waterbury of Delaware County believed that "the argument that +because a race of men is marked by a peculiarity of color and crooked +hair they are not endowed with a mind equal to another class who have +other peculiarities is unworthy of men of sense." John H. Hunt of New +York City proclaimed that "We want no masters, least of all no Negro +masters.... Negroes are aliens." And he predicted that the practical +effect of their admission to the suffrage would be their exclusion from +Manhattan Island. A delegation of colored men appeared at Albany before +the suffrage committee, but their arguments and those of their friends +produced no effect. The new constitution contained the same Negro +property qualification, and it was not until 1874, after the passage of +the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that +legislation placed the Negro voter of New York upon the same footing as +the white.[4] + +Had New York sincerely desired to keep the Negro in an inferior +position, it could have accomplished this by refusing him an education. +This it never did, though it suffered much tribulation regarding the +place and manner of his instruction. Before the establishment of a +public school system, the Manumission society, an association composed +largely of Friends, though including in its membership John Jay, De Witt +Clinton, and Alexander Hamilton, undertook the education of the Negro. +In 1787 it opened a school for Africans on Cliff Street. One of the +early teachers was Charles C. Andrews, whose little book on "The African +Free Schools," published in 1830, shows a kindly tolerance for the black +race. "As a result of forty years' experience," he writes, "the idea +respecting the capacity of the African race to receive a respectable and +even a liberal education has not been visionary." And he recites the +names of some of his pupils: "Rev. Theodore S. Wright, graduate of +Princeton Theological Seminary; John B. Russworm, graduate of Bowdoin; +Edward Jones, graduate of Amherst; William Brown and William G. Smith, +students of the medical department, Columbia College: all of them +persons of color." Describing an annual exhibition of his school on May +12, 1824, he quotes from the _Commercial Advertiser_ of the same date: +"We never beheld a white school, of the same age (of and under the age +of fifteen), in which, without exception, there was more order and +neatness of dress and cleanliness of person. And the exercises were +performed with a degree of promptness and accuracy which was +surprising." + +In 1834 the public school association took over the schools of the +Manumission society, but before this time the Negroes had begun to +assert themselves regarding the method and place of instruction for +their children. They clamored for colored teachers and succeeded in +displacing Charles Andrews himself. In 1838, at their desire, the word +African was changed to colored in describing the race; but of chief +importance to their educational future, they began a protest, only to +end in 1900, against segregation. + +Removed from the care of the Manumission society, the colored schools +deteriorated. Their grade was reduced,[5] and owing to the growth of the +city, their attendance was very irregular, the severe winter weather +often keeping children who lived at a distance at home. A Brooklyn man +tells me that, when a boy, he used to walk from his home at East New +York to Fulton Ferry, passing inferior Brooklyn colored schools, and +after crossing the river, on up to Mulberry Street to be instructed by +the popular colored teacher, John Peterson. Here he received a good +education; but few boys would have endured a daily trip of fourteen +miles. Increasingly parents, if the colored school of their neighborhood +was not of the best, sent their boys and girls to be instructed with the +white boys and girls of their district. + +The state law declared that any city or incorporated village might +establish separate schools for the instruction of African youths, +provided the facilities were equal to those of white schools, and when, +in 1862, a colored parent brought a case against the city for forcing +her child to go to a colored school, the case was lost.[6] Nevertheless, +during the nineteenth century Negroes in some numbers attended white +schools in both Brooklyn and New York, and Negro parents continued in +their quiet but persistent efforts against segregation. Then again, New +York grew too rapidly to segregate any race. The Negro boys and girls +were scattered through many districts, and the attendance at colored +schools fell off; in 1879 it was less than in 1878, and in 1880 less +than in 1879; so that the Board of Education in 1883 decided to +disestablish three colored schools. + +But this involved another factor. If the colored schools were +disestablished, what would become of the colored teachers? The Negroes +met this issue by delaying disestablishment for a year, while the +teachers went about among the parents of the ward, making friends and +urging that children, _white or colored_, be sent to their schools. +Numbers of new pupils of both races were brought in within the year, and +at the end of the time, after a hearing before the governor, then Grover +Cleveland, a bill was passed prohibiting the abolition of two of the +three colored schools, but also making them open to all children +regardless of color.[7] + +Occasionally a colored girl graduated from the normal college of the +city, but if there was no vacancy for her in the four colored schools +she received no appointment. In 1896, however, a normal graduate, Miss +S. E. Frazier, insisted upon her right to be appointed as teacher in any +school in which there was a vacancy. She visited the ward trustees and +the members of the Board of Education, and represented to them the +injustice done her and her race in refusing her the chance to prove her +ability as a teacher in the first school that should need a normal +graduate. She was finally appointed to a position in a white school. Her +success with her pupils was immediate, and since then the question of +race or color has not been considered in the appointment of teachers in +New York. + +Until 1900, the state law permitted the establishment of separate +colored schools. In that year, however, on the initiative of Theodore +Roosevelt, then governor, the legislature passed a bill providing that +no person should be refused admission or be excluded from any public +school in the state on account of race or color.[8] This closed the +question of compulsory segregation in the state, though before this it +had ceased in New York. Public education was thus democratized for the +New York Negroes, their persistent efforts bringing at the end complete +success. + +While the colored people in New York started with segregated schools and +attained to mixed schools, the movement in the churches was the reverse. +At first the Negroes were attendants of white churches, sitting in the +gallery or on the rear seats, and waiting until the white people were +through before partaking of the communion; but as their number increased +they chafed under their position. Why should they be placed apart to +hear the doctrine of Christ, and why, too, should they not have full +opportunity to preach that doctrine? The desire for self-expression was +perhaps the greatest factor in leading them to separate from the white +church. In 1796 about thirty Negroes, under the leadership of James +Varick,[9] withdrew from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, +and formed the first colored church of New York. Varick had been denied +a license to preach, but now as pastor of his own people, he was +recognized by the whites and helped by some of them. He was the founder +of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. + +The Abyssinian Baptist Church was organized in 1800 by a few colored +members who withdrew from the First Baptist Church, then in Gold Street, +to establish themselves on Worth Street,[10] and in 1818 the colored +Episcopalians organized St. Philip's Church. In 1820 one of their race, +Peter Williams, for six years deacon, became their preacher. + +Another prominent church was the colored Congregational, situated, in +1854, on Sixth Street; and it was the determined effort of its woman +organist to reach the church in time to perform her part in the Sunday +morning service that led to an important Negro advance in citizenship. + +In the middle of the last century the right of the Negro to ride in car +or omnibus depended on the sufferance of driver, conductor, and +passenger. Sometimes a car stopped at a Negro's signal, again the driver +whipped up his horses, while the conductor yelled to the "nigger" to +wait for the next car. Entrance might always be effected if in the +company of a white person, and the small child of a kindly white +household would be delegated to accompany the homeward bound black +visitor into her car where, after a few minutes, conductor and +passengers having become accustomed to her presence, the young +protector might slip away. Such a situation was very galling to the +self-respecting negro. + +In July, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings, a colored school-teacher and organist +at the Congregational Church, attempted to board a Third Avenue car at +Pearl and Chatham Streets. She was hurrying to reach the church to +perform her part in the service. The conductor stopped, but as Miss +Jennings mounted the platform, he told her that she must wait for the +next car, which was reserved for her people. "I have no people," Miss +Jennings said. "I wish to go to church as I have for six months past, +and I do not wish to be detained." The altercation continued until the +car behind came up, and the driver there declaring that he had less room +than the car in front, the woman was grudgingly allowed to enter the +car. "Remember," the conductor said, "if any passenger objects, you +shall go out, whether or no, or I'll put you out." + +"I am a respectable person, born and brought up in New York," said Miss +Jennings, "and I was never insulted so before." + +This again aroused the conductor. "I was born in Ireland," he said, "and +you've got to get out of this car." + +He attempted to drag her out. The woman clung to the window, the +conductor called in the driver to help him, and together they dragged +and pulled and at last threw her into the street. Badly hurt, she +nevertheless jumped back into the car. The driver galloped his horses +down the street, passing every one until a policeman was found who +pushed the woman out, not, however, until she had taken the number of +the car. She then made her way home. + +Elizabeth Jennings took the case into court, and it came before the +Supreme Court of the State in February, 1855, Chester A. Arthur, +afterwards President of the United States, being one of the lawyers for +the plaintiff. The judge's charge was clear on the point that common +carriers were bound to carry all respectable people, white or colored, +and the plaintiff was given $225 damages, to which the court added ten +per cent and costs; and to quote the New York _Tribune's_ comment on the +case,[11] "Railroads, steamboats, omnibuses, and ferryboats will be +admonished from this as to the rights of respectable colored +people."[12] + +When you talk with the elderly educated colored people of New York +today, they tell you that before the War were "dark days." The +responsibility felt by the thoughtful Negroes was very great. They had +not only their own battles to wage, but there were the fugitives who +were entering the city by the Underground Railroad, whom they must +assist though it cost them their own liberty. In 1835 a Vigilance +Committee was formed in New York City to take charge of all escaping +slaves, and also to prevent the arrest and return to slavery of free men +of color. Colored men served on this Committee, and its secretary was +the minister of the church to which Elizabeth Jennings was endeavoring +to make her way that Sunday morning, the Reverend Charles B. Ray. In +1850 the New York State Vigilance Committee was formed with Gerritt +Smith as President and Ray as Secretary. Ray's home was frequently used +to shelter fugitives.[13] Once a young man, stepping up to the door and +learning that it was Charles Ray's house, whistled to his companions in +the darkness, and fourteen black men made their appearance and received +shelter. There would also come the task of negotiating for the purchase +of a slave, or this proving impossible, for the careful working out of +a means for his escape. Dark days, indeed, but made memorable to the +Negro by heroic work and the friendship of great men. Perhaps the two +races have never worked together in such fine companionship as at the +unlawful and thrilling task of protecting and aiding the fugitive. + +The hardest year of the century for the Negro was 1863, when the draft +riot imperilled every dark face. Many Negroes fled from the city. +Colored homes were fired, the Orphan Asylum for colored children on +Fifth Avenue was burned, and even the dead might not be buried save at +the peril of undertaker and priest. Elizabeth Jennings, now Mrs. Graham, +lost a child when the rioting was at its height. An undertaker named +Winterbottom, a white man, was brave enough to give his services, +winning the lasting gratitude and patronage of the colored people. With +the danger of violence about them, the father and mother went to +Greenwood Cemetery, where the Reverend Morgan Dix of Trinity Church read +the burial service at the grave. + +With the end of the War and the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth +amendments came a revulsion of feeling for the race. "I remember," an +old time friend of the Negro tells me, "when the fifteenth amendment was +passed. The colored people stood in great numbers on the streets, and on +their faces was a look of gratitude and thanksgiving that I shall never +forget." Following the amendment came the State Civil Rights Bill in +1873, declaring that all persons should be entitled to full and equal +accommodations in all public places; and discrimination for a time +largely ceased. + +While the colored people were winning citizenship, their progress in +industry was also considerable. Until 1860 the race was infrequently +segregated, and black and white were neighbors, not only in their homes, +but in business. Samuel R. Scottron, a careful Negro writer, compiled a +long list of the trades in which Negroes engaged before the War. Besides +the various lines of domestic service, in which they were more +frequently seen than today--coachmen, cooks, waitresses, seamstresses, +barbers--there were many craftsmen, ship-builders, trimmers, riggers, +coopers, caulkers, printers, tailors, carpenters. "Second-hand clothing +shops were everywhere kept by colored men. All the caterers and +restaurant keepers of the high order, as well as small places, were kept +by colored men.... Varick and Peters kept about the most pretentious +barber shop in the city. Patrick Reason was one of the most capable +engravers. The greatest among the restaurateurs was Thomas Downing, who +kept a restaurant under what is now the Drexel Building, corner of Wall +and Broad Streets. The drug stores of Dr. James McCune Smith on West +Broadway, and Dr. Philip A. White on Frankfort Street, were not +outclassed by any kept by white men in their day."[14] + +And so the list goes on. It is perhaps somewhat exaggerated in the +importance in the city's business life which it gives to the colored +race. Charles Andrews, in 1837, says of the pupil who graduates from his +school, "He leaves with every avenue closed against him--doomed to +encounter as much prejudice and contempt as if he were not only +destitute of that education which distinguishes the civilized from the +savage, but as if he were incapable of receiving it." And he goes on to +tell of those few who have been able to learn trades, and their +subsequent difficulties in finding employment in good shops. White +journeymen object to working in the same shop with them, and many of the +best lads go to sea or become waiters, barbers, coachmen, servants, +laborers. But he is writing of an early date, and the opinion of the +colored people seems to be that, before our large foreign immigration, +the Negro was more needed in New York than today and received a large +share of satisfactory employment. His chief competitor was the Irish +immigrant, like himself an agricultural laborer, without previous +training in business, and he was frequently able to hold his own in his +shop. His long experience in domestic service, moreover, made him a +better caterer than the representatives of any other nationality that +had yet entered the city. His churches were flourishing, thus securing a +profession for which he had natural ability, and as we have seen, +colored men and women taught in the New York schools. + +The city grew rapidly after 1875, and the colored society, the little +group that had attained to modest means and education, bought homes, +chiefly in Brooklyn, where land was easier to secure than in Manhattan, +and strove to enlarge the opportunities for those who were to come after +them. Color prejudice had waned, and they often met with especial +consideration because of their race. Had they been white they would have +slipped into the population and been lost, as happened to the Germans +and the Irish, who had been their competitors. As it was, they formed a +society apart from the rest of the city, meeting it occasionally in work +or through the friendship of children, who, left to themselves, know no +race. They had battled against prejudice and had won their rights as +citizens. + +As we look at the life of a segregated people, however, we see that we +tend always to regard not the individual but the group. The Negro is a +man in Europe, because there he is an individual, standing or falling +by his own merits. But in America, even in so cosmopolitan a city as New +York, he is judged, not by his own achievements, but by the achievements +of every other New York black man. So we will leave these able colored +Americans, who won much both for themselves and for their race, and turn +to the mass of the Negroes, the toiling poor, who dwell in our tenements +today. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Daniel Horsmanden, "New York Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro +Plot." + +[2] James Grant Wilson, "History of New York," Vol. II, p. 314. + +[3] + POPULATION OF NEW YORK FROM 1800 TO 1900: TOTAL AND NEGRO. + + BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN + Percentage + Total Negro of Negroes + + 1800 60,515 6,382 10.5 + + 1810 96,373 9,823 10.2 + + 1820 123,706 10,886 8.8 + + 1830 202,589 13,976 6.9 + + 1840 312,710 16,358 5.2 + + 1850 515,547 13,815 2.7 + + 1860 805,658 12,574 1.6 + + 1870 942,292 13,072 1.5 + + BOROUGHS OF MANHATTAN AND BRONX + + 1880 1,206,299 19,663 1.6 + + 1890 1,515,301 23,601 1.6 + + 1900 2,050,600 38,616 1.9 + + GREATER NEW YORK + + 1900 3,437,202 60,666 1.8 + +[4] For a full account of the Negro's political status in New York +consult Charles Z. Lincoln's "Constitutional History of New York." + +[5] Thomas Boese's "Public Education in the City of New York," p. 227. + +[6] King _v._ Gallagher, 1882. + +[7] A. Emerson Palmer, "The New York Public School." + +[8] Laws of New York, Chapter 492. + +[9] B. F. Wheeler, D.D., "The Varick Family." + +[10] Geo. H. Hansell, "Reminiscences of New York Baptists." + +[11] _New York Tribune_, February 23, 1855. + +[12] "The Story of an Old Wrong," in _The American Woman's Journal_, +July, 1895. + +[13] Life of the Reverend Charles B. Ray. + +[14] _Colored American Magazine_, October, 1907. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES + + +It is thirty-five years since, in his Symphony, Sidney Lanier told of + + "The poor + That stand by the inward opening door + Trade's hand doth tighten evermore, + And sigh their monstrous foul air sigh + For the outside hills of liberty." + +Were Lanier writing this today, we should wonder whether New York's +crowded tenements had not served as inspiration for his figure. The +island of Manhattan, about eight miles long by two miles wide, with an +additional slender triangle of five miles at the north end, in 1905, +housed two million one hundred and twelve thousand people. These men and +women and children were not scattered uniformly throughout the island, +but were placed in selected corners, one thousand to the acre, while a +mile or so away large comfortable homes held families of two or three. +This was Manhattan's condition in 1905, and with each succeeding year +more congestion takes place, and more pressure is felt upon the inward +opening door.[1] + +The Negro with the rest of the poor of New York has his part in this +excessive overcrowding. The slaver in which he made his entrance to this +land provided in floor space six feet by one-foot-four for a man, five +feet by one-foot-four for a woman, and four feet by one-foot-four for a +child.[2] This outdoes any overcrowding New York can produce, but an +ever increasing cost in food and rent is bringing into her interior +bedrooms a mass of humanity approximating that of the slaver's ship. +These new-comers, however, are not unwilling occupants, since unlike the +slaves they may spend their day and much of their night amid an ocean of +changing and exciting incidents. If you are young and strong, you care +less where you sleep than where you may spend your waking hours. + +From among the millions of New York's poor, can we pick out the Negroes +in their tenements? This is not so difficult a task as it would have +proved fifty years ago when the colored were scattered throughout the +city; today we find them confined to fairly definite quarters. A black +face on the lower East Side is viewed with astonishment, while on the +middle West Side it is no more noticeable than it would be in Atlanta or +New Orleans. Roughly we may count five Negro neighborhoods in Manhattan: +Greenwich Village, the middle West Side, San Juan Hill, the upper East, +and the upper West sides. Brooklyn has a large Negro population, but it +is more widely distributed and less easily located than that of +Manhattan. + +Of the five Manhattan neighborhoods the oldest is Greenwich Village, +according to Janvier once the most attractive part of New York, where +the streets "have a tendency to sidle away from each other and to take +sudden and unreasonable turns." Here one finds such fascinating names as +Minetta Lane and Carmine and Cornelia Streets. These and neighboring +thoroughfares grow daily more grimy, however, and no longer merit +Janvier's praise for cleanliness, moral and physical. The picturesque, +friendly old houses are giving way to factories with high, monotonous +fronts, where foreigners work who crowd the ward and destroy its former +American aspect. + +Among the old time aristocracy bearing Knickerbocker names there are a +few colored people who delight in talking of the fine families and past +wealth of old Greenwich Village. Scornful of the gibberish-speaking +Italians, they sigh, too, at their own race as they see it, for the +ambitious Negro has moved uptown, leaving this section largely to +widowed and deserted women and degenerates. The once handsome houses, +altered to accommodate many families, are rotten and unwholesome, while +the newer tenements of West Third Street are darkened by the elevated +road, and shelter vice that knows no race. Altogether, this is not a +neighborhood to attract the new-comer. Here alone in New York I have +found the majority of the adults northern born, men and women who, +unsuccessful in their struggle with city life, have been left behind in +these old forgotten streets.[3] + +The second section, north of the first, lies between West Fourteenth and +West Fifty-ninth Streets, and Sixth Avenue and the Hudson River. In 1880 +this was the centre of the Negro population, but business has entered +some of the streets, the Pennsylvania Railroad has scooped out acres for +its terminal, and while the colored houses do not diminish in number, +they show no decided increase. No one street is given over to the Negro, +but a row of two or three or six or even eight tenements shelter the +black man. The shelter afforded is poorer than that given the white +resident whose dwelling touches the black, the rents are a little +higher, and the landlord fails to pay attention to ragged paper, or to a +ceiling which scatters plaster flakes upon the floor. In the Thirties +there are rear tenements reached by narrow alley-ways. Crimes are +committed by black neighbor against black neighbor, and the entrance to +the rear yard offers a tempting place for a girl to linger at night. A +rear tenement is New York's only approach to the alley of cities farther +south. + +There are startling and happy surprises in all tenement neighborhoods, +and I recall turning one afternoon from a dark yard into a large +beautiful room. Muslin curtains concealed the windows, the brass bed was +covered with a thick white counterpane, and on either side of the +fireplace, where coal burned brightly in an open grate, were two rare +engravings. It was a workroom, and the mistress of the house, steady, +capable, and very black, was at her ironing-board. By her sat the +colored mammy of the story book rocking lazily in her chair. She +explained to me that her daughter had found her down south, two years +ago, and brought her to this northern home, where she had nothing to do, +for her daughter could make fifty dollars a month. This home picture was +made lastingly memorable by the younger woman's telling me softly as she +went with me to the door, "I was sold from my mother, down in Georgia, +when I was two years old. I ain't sure she's my mother. _She_ thinks so; +but I can't ever be sure." + +Homes beautiful both in appearance and in spirit can rarely occur where +people must dwell in great poverty, but there are many efforts at +attractive family life on these streets. A few of the blocks are orderly +and quiet. Thirty-seventh Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, is +largely given over to the colored and is rough and noisy. Here and down +by the river at Hell's Kitchen the rioting in 1900 between the Irish and +the Negro took place. Men are ready for a fight today, and the children +see much of hard drinking and quick blows. + +"The poorer the family, the lower is the quarter in which it must live, +and the more enviable appears the fortune of the anti-social class."[4] +A vicious world dwells in these streets and makes notorious this section +of New York. For this is a part of the Tenderloin district, and at +night, after the children's cries have ceased, and the fathers and +mothers who have worked hard during the day have put out their lights, +the automobiles rush swiftly past, bearing the men of the "superior +race." Temptation is continuous, and the child that grows up pure in +thought and deed does so in spite of his surroundings. + +Before reaching West Fifty-ninth Street, the beginning of our third +district, we come upon a Negro block at West Fifty-third Street. When +years ago the elevated railroad was erected on this fashionable street, +white people began to sell out and rent to Negroes; and today you find +here three colored hotels, the colored Young Men's and Young Women's +Christian Associations, the offices of many colored doctors and lawyers, +and three large beautiful colored churches. The din of the elevated +drowns alike the doctor's voice and his patient's, the client's and the +preacher's. + +From Fifty-ninth Street, walking north on Tenth Avenue, we begin to +ascend a hill that grows in steepness until we reach Sixty-second +Street. The avenue is lined with small stores kept by Italians and +Germans, but to the left the streets, sloping rapidly to the Hudson +River, are filled with tenements, huge double deckers, built to within +ten feet of the rear of the twenty-five foot lot, accommodating four +families on each of the five floors. We can count four hundred and +seventy-nine homes on one side of the street alone! + +This is our third district, San Juan Hill, so called by an on-looker who +saw the policemen charging up during one of the once common race fights. +It is a bit of Africa, as Negroid in aspect as any district you are +likely to visit in the South. A large majority of its residents are +Southerners and West Indians, and it presents an interesting study of +the Negro poor in a large northern city. The block on Sixtieth Street +has some white residents, but the blocks on Sixty-first, Sixty-second, +and Sixty-third are given over entirely to colored. On the square made +by the north side of Sixty-first, the south side of Sixty-second +Streets, and Tenth and West End Avenues, 5.4 acres, the state census of +1905 showed 6173 inhabitants.[5] All but a few of these must have been +Negroes, as the avenue sides of the block, occupied by whites, are short +and with low houses. It is the long line of five-story tenements, +running eight hundred feet down the two streets, that brings up the +enumeration. The dwellings on Sixty-first and Sixty-second Streets are +human hives, honeycombed with little rooms thick with human beings. +Bedrooms open into air shafts that admit no fresh breezes, only foul +air carrying too often the germs of disease. + +The people on the hill are known for their rough behavior, their +readiness to fight, their coarse talk. Vice is abroad, not in insidious +form as in the more well-to-do neighborhood farther north, but open and +cheap. Boys play at craps unmolested, gambling is prevalent, and Negro +loafers hang about the street corners and largely support the Tenth +Avenue saloons. + +But San Juan Hill has many respectable families, and within the past +five years it has taken a decided turn for the better. The improvement +has been chiefly upon Sixty-third Street where two model tenements, one +holding one hundred, the other one hundred and sixty-one families, have +been opened under the management of the City and Suburban Homes Company, +the larger one having been erected by Mr. Henry Phipps. Planning for a +four per cent return on their investment, these landlords have rented +only to respectable families, and their rule has changed the character +of the block.[6] Old houses have been remodelled to compete with the +newer dwellings, street rows have ceased, and the police captain of the +district, we are told, now counts this as one of the peaceful and +law-abiding blocks of the city. When its other blocks show a like +improvement, San Juan Hill will no longer merit its belligerent name. + +The lower East Side of Manhattan, a many-storied mass of tenements and +workshops, where immigrants labor and sleep in their tiny crowded rooms, +was once a fashionable American district. At that time Negroes dwelt +near the whites as barbers, caterers, and coachmen, as laundresses and +waiting-maids. But with the removal of the people whom they served, the +colored men and women left also, and it is difficult to find an African +face among the hundreds of thousands of Europeans south of Fourteenth +Street. On Pell Street, in the Chinese quarter, there used to be two +colored families on friendly terms with their neighbors, who, however, +went uptown for their pleasures and their church. + +It is not until we reach Third Avenue and Forty-third Street that we +come to the East Side Negro tenement. From this point, such houses run, +a straggling line, chiefly between Second and Third Avenues, to +the Bronx where the more well-to-do among the colored live. At +Ninety-seventh Street, and on up to One Hundredth Street, dark faces are +numerous. About six hundred and fifty Negro families live on these four +streets and around the corner on Third Avenue. Occasionally they live in +houses occupied by Jews or Italians. Above this section there are a +number of Negro tenements in the One Hundred and Thirties, between +Madison and Fifth Avenues--almost a West Side neighborhood, since it +adjoins the large colored quarter to the west of Fifth Avenue. On the +whole, the East Side is not often sought by the colored as a place of +residence. Their important churches are in another part of the city, and +every New Yorker knows the difficulty in making a way across Central +Park. Yet, the neighborhood is not uncivil to them, and one rarely reads +here of race friction. Doubtless this is in part owing to the smallness +of the population, all of Manhattan east of Fifth Avenue containing but +fourteen per cent of the apartments occupied by colored in the city; but +it is partly, too, that Jews and Italians prove less belligerent +tenement neighbors than Irish. + +Five years ago, those of us who were interested in the Negro poor +continually heard of their difficulty in securing a place to live. Not +only were they unable to rent in neighborhoods suitable for respectable +men and women, but dispossession, caused perhaps by the inroad of +business, meant a despairing hunt for any home at all. People clung to +miserable dwellings, where no improvements had been made for years, +thankful to have a roof to shelter them. Yet all the time new-law +tenements were being built, and Gentile and Jew were leaving their +former apartments in haste to get into these more attractive dwellings. +At length the Negro got his chance; not a very good one, but something +better than New York had yet offered him--a chance to follow into the +houses left vacant by the white tenants. Owing in part to the energy of +Negro real estate agents, in part to rapid building operations, +desirable streets, near the subway and the elevated railroad, were +thrown open to the colored. This Negro quarter, the last we have to note +and the newest, has been created in the past eight years. When the +Tenement House Department tabulated the 1900 census figures for the +Borough of Manhattan, and showed the nationalities and races on each +block, it found only 300 colored families in a neighborhood that today +accommodates 4473 colored families.[7] This large increase is on six +streets, West Ninety-ninth, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, West One +Hundred and Nineteenth, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, and West One +Hundred and Thirty-third to One Hundred and Thirty-sixth Streets, +between Fifth and Seventh Avenues, with a few houses between Seventh and +Eighth, and on Lenox Avenues. There are colored tenements north and +south of this; and while these figures are correct today,[8] they may +be wrong tomorrow, for new tenements are continually given over to the +Negro people. Moreover, on all of these streets are colored boarding and +lodging houses, crowded with humanity. Houses today fall into the hands +of the Negro as a child's blocks, placed on end, tumble when a push is +given to the first in the line. The New York _Times_, in August, 1905, +gives a graphic account of the entrance of the colored tenant on West +Ninety-ninth Street. Two houses had been opened for a short time to +Negroes when the other house-owners capitulated, and the colored influx +came: "The street was so choked with vehicles Saturday that some of the +drivers had to wait with their teams around the corners for an +opportunity to get into it. A constant stream of furniture trucks loaded +with the household effects of a new colony of colored people who are +invading the choice locality is pouring into the street. Another equally +long procession, moving in the other direction, is carrying away the +household goods of the whites from their homes of years." The movement +is not always so swift as this, but it is continuous. + +This last colored neighborhood perhaps ought not to be spoken of as +belonging to the poor; not to Lanier's poor whose door pressed so +tighteningly inward. Here are homes where it is possible, with +sufficient money, to live in privacy, and with the comforts of steam +heat and a private bath. But rents are high, and if money is scarce, the +apartment must be crowded and privacy lost. Moreover, vice has made its +way into these newly acquired streets. The sporting class will always +pay more and demand fewer improvements than the workers, and, unable to +protect himself, the respectable tenant finds his children forced to +live in close propinquity to viciousness. Each of these new streets has +this objectionable element in its population, for while some agents +make earnest efforts to keep the property they handle respectable, they +find the owner wants money more than respectability. + +In our walk up and down Manhattan, turning aside and searching for +Negro-tenanted streets, we ought to see one thing with clearness--that +the majority of the colored population live on a comparatively few +blocks. This is a new and important feature of their New York life, and +in certain parts of the city it develops a color problem, for while you +seem an inappreciable quantity when you constitute two per cent of the +population in the borough, you are of importance when you form one +hundred per cent of the population of your street. This congestion is +accompanied by a segregation of the race. The dwellers in these +tenements are largely new-comers, men and women from the South and the +West Indies,[9] seeking the North for greater freedom and for economic +opportunity. Like any other strangers they are glad to make their home +among familiar faces, and they settle in the already crowded places on +the West Side. Freedom to live on the East Side next door to a Bohemian +family may be very well, but sociability is better. The housewife who +timidly hangs her clothes on the roof her first Monday morning in New +York is pleased to find the next line swinging with the laundry of a +Richmond acquaintance, who instructs her in the perplexing housekeeping +devices of her flat. No chattering foreigner could do that. And while to +be welcome in a white church is inspiring, to find the girl you knew at +home, in the next pew to you, is still more delightful when you have +arrived, tired and homesick, at the great city of New York. So the +colored working people, like the Italians and Jews and other +nationalities, have their quarter in which they live very much by +themselves, paying little attention to their white neighbors. If the +white people of the city have forced this upon them, they have easily +accepted it. Should this two per cent of the population be compelled to +distribute itself mathematically over the city, each ward and street +having its correct quota, it would evince dissatisfaction. This is not +true of the well-to-do element, but of the mass of the Negro workers +whose homes we have been visiting. Loving sociability, these new-comers +to the city--and it is in the most segregated districts that the greater +number of southern and British born Negroes are found--keep to their own +streets and live to themselves. If they occupy all the sidewalk as they +talk over important matters in front of their church, the outsider +passing should recognize that he is an intruder and take to the curb. He +would leave the sidewalk entirely were he on Hester Street or Mulberry +Bend. New-comers to New York usually segregate, and the Negro is no +exception. + +While congestion and segregation seem important to us as we look at +these colored quarters, I suspect that the matter most pertinent to the +Negro new-comer is, not where he will live nor how he will live, but +whether he will be able to live in New York at all, whether he can meet +the landlord's agent the day he comes to the door. For New York rents +have mounted upwards as have her tenements. The Phipps model houses, +built especially to benefit the poor, charge twenty-five dollars a month +for four tiny rooms and bath; and while this is a little more than the +dark old time rooms would bring, it takes about all of the twenty-five +dollars you make running an elevator, to get a flat in New York. What +wonder that, once secured, it is overrun with lodgers, or that, if +privacy is maintained, there is not enough money left to feed and clothe +the growing household. The once familiar song of the colored comedian +still rings true in New York: + + "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown, + What you gwine ter do when de rent comes roun'?" + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Harold M. Finley in _Federation_, May, 1908. + +[2] Thomas Clarkson, "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade," p. +378. + +[3] Place of birth of 1036 New York Negro tenement dwellers. These +figures were obtained chiefly from personal visits: + + ======================================================================== + | Totals | East | Greenwich | Middle | San | Upper + | | Side | Village | West | Juan | West + | | | | Side | Hill | Side + ---------------------+--------+------+-----------+--------+------+------ + New England | 18 | 1 | 4 | 7 | 5 | 1 + West | 11 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 1 + New York | 157 | 6 | 47 | 42 | 55 | 7 + New Jersey | 18 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 9 | 1 + Pennsylvania | 19 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 12 | 1 + Maryland | 37 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 27 | 3 + District of Columbia | 26 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 16 | 4 + Virginia | 375 | 8 | 15 | 71 | 244 | 37 + Carolinas | 217 | 6 | 16 | 64 | 127 | 4 + Gulf States | 65 | 0 | 2 | 23 | 39 | 1 + Canada | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 + West Indies | 87 | 1 | 6 | 13 | 67 | 0 + Europe | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 + ---------------------+--------+------+-----------+--------+------+------ + | 1036 | 25 | 100 | 243 | 608 | 60 + ======================================================================== + +[4] S. N. Patten, "New Basis of Civilization," p. 52. + +[5] Some doubt is cast upon this figure. The New York Health Department +in an enumeration of its own, in 1905, found a population of 3833. There +is no question, however, of the great congestion of this block and the +one north and south of it. The erection of new tenements has gone on +rapidly since 1905, sweeping away the children's playgrounds, and making +this one of the most crowded centres of New York. + +[6] Too much cannot be said of the beneficial effect of good housing in +a colored neighborhood, when under such able management as the City and +Suburban Homes Company. Decent homes under competent management are +absolutely necessary to an improvement in the Negro quarters of +Manhattan and of Brooklyn as well. I can speak with some authority of +the good done by the Phipps houses on West Sixty-third Street, as I +lived, for eight months, the only white tenant in the one hundred and +sixty-one apartments. Church and philanthropy had done and are doing +excellent work on these blocks, but a sudden and marked improvement came +from good housing, from the building of clean, healthful homes for +law-abiding people. + +[7] The Tenement House Department tabulated the number of Negro +families living in tenements on these streets. I have counted the number +of flats rented to colored people. + +[8] July 15, 1910. + +[9] The yearly arrivals of "African blacks" at the port of New York, +secured from the Immigration Commissioner, are as follows: 1902-03, 110; +1903-04, 547; 1904-05, 1189; 1905-06, 1757; 1906-07, 2054; 1907-08, +1820; 1908-09, 2119. The year runs from July 1 to June 30. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CHILD OF THE TENEMENT + + +Within the last few years white Americans, many of whom were formerly +ignorant of their condition, have been taught that they are possessed of +a racial antipathy for human beings whose color is not their own. They +have a "natural contrariety," "a dislike that seems constitutional" +toward the dark tint that they see on another's face. But however well +they may have conned their lesson, it breaks down or is likely to be +forgotten in the presence of a Negro baby; for a healthy colored baby +is a subject, not for natural contrariety, but for sympathetic +cuddling. They are most engaging new-comers, these "delicate bronze +statuettes,"[1] only warm with life, and smiling good will upon their +world. + +Not many colored babies are born in New York, at least not enough to +keep pace with the deaths. The year 1908 saw in all the boroughs 1973 +births as against 2212 deaths at all ages.[2] + +In this same year the colored births for Manhattan and the Bronx were +1459, and the deaths under one year of age 424, an infant mortality rate +of 290 to every thousand.[3] That is, two babies in every seven died +under one year of age. The white infant mortality rate was 127.7, a +little less than half that of the colored. + +Why should we have in New York this enormous colored infant death rate? +Many physicians believe it indicates a lack of physical stamina in the +Negro, an inability to resist disease. This may be so, but before +falling back upon race as an explanation of high infant mortality, we +need to exhaust other possible causes. We do not question the vitality +of the white race when we read that in parts of Russia 500 babies out +of every thousand die within the year; nor do we believe the people of +Fall River, a factory town in Massachusetts, have an inherent inability +to resist disease, though their infant mortality rate in 1900 was 260 in +one thousand births. We look in these latter cases, as we should in the +former, to see if we find those conditions which careful students of the +subject tell us accompany a high infant death rate. + +Among the first of the accepted causes of infant mortality is the +overcrowding of cities. We have viewed overcrowding as a usual condition +among the Negroes of New York, and have seen the small, ill-ventilated +bedroom where the baby spends much of its life. Heat, with its +accompanying growth of bacteria and swift process of decomposition, is a +second cause. New York's high infant mortality comes in the summer +months when in the poorest quarters it has been known to reach four +hundred in the thousand.[4] In the hot, crowded tenements, and no +place can be so hot as New York in one of its July record-breaking +weeks, the babies die like flies, and yet not like flies, for the flies +buzz in hundreds about the little hot faces. Excitement, late hours, +constant restlessness, these, too, cause infant mortality. On a city +block tenanted by hundreds of men and women and little children, no hour +of the night is free from some disturbance. Children whimper as they +wake from the heat, babies cry shrilly, and the brightly-lighted streets +are rarely without the sound of human footsteps. The sensitive new-born +organism knows nothing of the quiet and restful darkness of nature's +night. + +But the most important cause of infant mortality[5] is improper infant +feeding. And here we meet with a condition that confronts the Negro +babies of New York far more than it confronts the white. For a properly +fed baby is a breast fed baby, or else one whose food has been prepared +with great care, and mothers forced by necessity to go out to work, +cannot themselves give their babies this proper food. It is among the +infants of mothers at work that mortality is high. Mr. G. Newman, an +English authority on this subject, gives an interesting example of this +in Lancashire, where, during the American civil war, many of the cotton +operatives were out of employment and many more worked only half time. +Privation was great. A quarter of the mill hands were in receipt of poor +relief, the general death rate increased, but _the infant mortality rate +decreased_. The mothers, forced by circumstances to remain away from the +factory, though in a state of semi-starvation, by their nursing and by +their care of the home preserved the lives of their infants. Negro +mothers, owing to the low wage earned by their husbands, for the general +welfare of the family and to avoid semi-starvation, like the Lancashire +women, leave their homes, but they thereby sacrifice the lives of many +of their babies. The percentage for 1900 of Negro married women in New +York engaging in self-supporting work was 31.4 in every hundred; of +white married women 4.2 in every hundred, seven times as many in +proportion among the Negroes as among the whites.[6] The Negro also +shows a large percentage of widows, a quarter of all the female +population over ten years of age. Some of these, we have no means of +knowing how many, are widows only in name, and have babies for whom they +must in some way provide support. The colored mother who has no husband +often takes a position in domestic service and boards her baby, paying +usually by the month, and finding the opportunity to visit her infant +perhaps once a week. Sometimes she secures a "baby tender" who can give +kindly, intelligent care; but under the best conditions her child will +be bottle fed and in tenement surroundings inimical to health, while +sometimes the woman to whom she intrusts her infant will be ignorant of +the simplest matters of hygiene. + +I remember an old colored woman, she must be dead by this time, who kept +a baby farm. Her health was poor, and when I saw her, she had taken to +her bed and lay in a dark room with two infants at her side. They were +indescribably puny, with sunken cheeks and skinny arms and hands, +weighing what a normal child should weigh at birth, and yet six and +seven months old. The woman talked to me enthusiastically of salvation +and gave filthy bottles to her charges. She was exceptionally +incompetent, but there are others doing her work, too old or too +ignorant properly to attend to the babies under their care. + +Mothers who go out to day's-work are also unable to nurse their babies +or to prepare all their food. The infant is placed in the care of some +neighbor or of a growing daughter, who may be the impatient "little +mother" of a number of charges. When the hot summer comes, such a baby +is likely to fall the victim of epidemic diarrhoea, caused by pollution +of the milk. Newman has a striking chart of infant death rates in Paris +in which he pictures a rate mounting in one week as high as 256 in the +thousand among the artificially fed infants, while for the same week, +among the breast fed babies, the mortality is 32. The Negro mother, +seeking self-support by keeping clean another's house or caring for +another's children, finds her own offspring swiftly taken from her by a +disease that only her nourishing care could forestall.[7] + +Remedial measures have for some time been taken in New York to check +infant mortality, and they have met with some success. The distribution +of pasteurized milk by Mr. Nathan Straus, the establishment of milk +stations during the summer months in New York and Brooklyn where mothers +at slight cost may secure proper infant food, and where much educative +work is done by the visiting nurse, the multiplication of day nurseries, +all these have helped to decrease the death rate. The Negroes have been +benefited by these remedial agencies, but their percentage of 290 is +still a matter for grave attention. + +Two out of seven of New York's Negro babies die in the first year, but +the other five grow up, some with puny arms and ricketty legs, others +again too hardy for bad food or bad air to harm. + +Like the babies these children suffer from their mother's absence at +work. Family ties are loose, and more than other children they are +handicapped by lack of proper home care. In an examination of the +records of the Children's Court for three years I found that out of 717 +arraignments of colored children, 221 were for improper guardianship, +30.8 per cent of the whole. Among the Russian children of the East Side, +Tenth and Eleventh Wards, only 15 per cent of arraignments were on this +complaint, indicating twice as many children without parental care among +the colored as among the children of the Tenth and Eleventh Wards. Rough +colored girls, also, whose habits were too depraved to permit of their +remaining without restraint, were frequently committed to reformatories. + +Truancy is not uncommon in colored neighborhoods, though few cases come +before the courts. Sometimes the boy or girl is kept at home to care for +the younger children, but again, lacking the mother's oversight, he +remains on the street when he should be in school, or arrives late with +ill prepared lessons. + +Asking a teacher of long experience among colored and white children +concerning their respective scholarship, he assured me that the colored +child could do as well as the white, but didn't. "From 20 to 50 per cent +of the mothers of my colored children," he said, "go out to work. There +is no one to oversee the child's tasks, and consequently little +conscientious study." + +One can scarcely blame the children; and certainly one cannot blame the +mothers for toiling for their support. And the fathers, though they work +faithfully, are rarely able to earn enough unaided to support their +families. Perhaps in time the city may improve matters by opening its +school-rooms for a study period in the afternoon. + +But meanwhile the children are without proper care. This is not hard to +endure in the summer, but in winter it is very trying to be without a +home. Poor little cold boys and girls, some of them mere babies! You see +them in the late afternoon sitting on the tenement stairs, waiting for +the long day to be done. It seems a week since they were inside eating +their breakfast. The city has not pauperized them with a luncheon, and +they have had only cold food since morning. Sometimes they have been all +day without nourishment. When the door is opened at last, there are many +helpful things for them to do for their mother, and reading and +arithmetic are relegated to so late an hour that their problem is only +temporarily solved by sleep. + +Not all the colored working women, however, go out for employment. +Laundry work is an important home industry, and one may watch many +mothers at their tubs or ironing-boards from Monday morning until +Saturday night. This makes the tenement rooms, tiny enough at best, +sadly cluttered, but it does not deprive the children of the presence of +their mother, who accepts a smaller income to remain at home with them. +For after we have made full allowance for the lessening of family ties +among the Negroes by social and economic pressure, we find that the +majority of the colored boys and girls receive a due share of proper +parental oversight. They are fed on appetizing food, cleanly and +prettily dressed, they are encouraged to study and to improve their +position, and they are given all the advantages that it is possible for +their mothers and fathers to secure. + +Jack London tells in the "Children of the Abyss" of the East Side of +London, where "they have dens and lairs into which to crawl for sleeping +purposes, and that is all. One can not travesty the word by calling such +dens and lairs 'homes.'" I have seen thousands of Negro dwelling-places, +but I cannot think of half a dozen, however great their poverty, where +this description would be correct. No matter how dingy the tenement, or +how long the hours of work, the mother, and the father, too, try to make +the "four walls and a ceiling" to which they return, home. Visitors +among the New York poor, in the past and in the present, testify that +given the same income or lack of income, the colored do not allow their +surroundings to become so cheerless or so filthy as the white, and that +when there is an opportunity for the mother to spend some time in the +house, the rooms take on an air of pleasant refinement. Pictures +decorate the walls, the sideboard contains many pretty dishes, and the +table is set three times a day. Meals are not eaten out of the paper bag +common on New York's East Side, but there is something of formality +about the dinner, and good table manners are taught the children. The +tenement dwelling becomes a home, and the boys and girls pass a happy +childhood in it. + +Watching the colored children for many months in their play and work, I +have looked for possible distinctive traits. The second generation of +New Yorkers greatly resembles the "Young America" of all nationalities +of the city, shrill-voiced, disrespectful, easily diverted, whether at +work or at play, shrewd, alert, and mischievous--the New York street +child. I remember once helping with a club of eight boys where +seven nationalities were represented, and where no one could have +distinguished Irish from German or Jew from Italian, with his eyes +shut. Had a Negro been brought up among them he would quickly have taken +on their ways. Of the colored children who model their lives after their +mischievous young white neighbors, many outdo the whites in depravity +and lawlessness; but among the boys and girls who live by themselves, as +on San Juan Hill, one sees occasional interesting traits. + +The records of the Children's Court of New York (Boroughs of Manhattan +and the Bronx) throw a little light on this matter, and are sufficiently +important to quote with some fulness. For the three years studied, 1904, +1905, 1906, I tabulated the cases of the colored children brought before +the court, and also the cases of the children of the Tenth and Eleventh +Wards, chiefly Hungarians and Russian Jews, expecting to find, in two +such dissimilar groups, interesting comparisons. The following table +shows the result of this study. The court in its annual report gives the +figures for the total number of arrests which I have incorporated in my +table: + + RECORD OF ARRESTS IN CHILDREN'S COURT OF MANHATTAN AND THE BRONX FOR + 1904, 1905, 1906 + + Key to Column Headers-- + A: No. of children. + B: Arrests per cent. + + =================================================================== + | | 10th | Total arrests + | | and | for all + | Negro | 11th | children + | Arrests | Wards | in Manhattan + | | Arrests | and Bronx + +-----+------+-----+------+-------+------ + | A | B | A | B | A | B + -------------------------+-----+------+-----+------+-------+------ + Petit larceny | 56 | 7.8 | 139 | 6.8 | 2,697 | 10.1 + Grand larceny | 27 | 3.8 | 108 | 5.3 | 878 | 3.3 + Burglary--Robbery | 27 | 3.8 | 116 | 5.7 | 1,383 | 5.2 + Assault | 27 | 3.8 | 61 | 3.0 | 669 | 2.5 + Improper guardianship | 221 | 30.8 | 305 | 15.0 | 6,386 | 23.9 + Disorderly | | | | | | + child--ungovernable | | | | | | + child | 90 | 12.6 | 124 | 6.1 | 1,980 | 7.4 + Depraved girl | 33 | 4.6 | 21 | 1.1 | 312 | 1.2 + Violation of labor law | 0 | 0 | 73 | 3.5 | 592 | 2.1 + Unlicensed peddling[8] | 0 | 0 | 130 | 6.4 | 0 | .0 + Truancy | 5 | .7 | 23 | 1.0 | 298 | 1.1 + Malicious mischief | 1 | .1 | 9 | .4 | 179 | .7 + Violation of Park | | | | | | + Corporation ordinances | 0 | 0 | 25 | 1.2 | 175 | .7 + Mischief, including | | | | | | + craps, throwing stones, | | | | | | + building bonfires, | | | | | | + fighting, etc. | 214 | 29.8 | 896 | 43.7 |10,267 | 38.4 + Unclassified felonies, | | | | | | + misdemeanors | 13 | 1.8 | 16 | .7 | 799 | 3.0 + All others | 3 | .4 | 3 | .1 | 90 | .4 + -------------------------+-----+------+-----+------+-------+------ + | 717 |100.0 |2049 |100.0 |26,705 |100.0 + =================================================================== + + Percentage of Negro to total, 1904-1907 2.7 + Percentage of Negro to total, 1907-1910 1.9 + +Our table shows us that which we have already noted, the high percentage +of improper guardianship among the Negroes and the grave number of +depraved Negro girls. For the sins of petit larceny, grand larceny, and +burglary, putting the three together, the colored child shows a slightly +smaller percentage than the East Side white, a noticeably smaller +percentage than the total number of children. The sin of theft is often +swiftly attributed to a black face, but this percentage indicates that +the colored child has no "innate tendency" to steal. Ten per cent of the +arrests among the East Side children are for unlicensed peddling and +violation of the labor law, but no little Negro boys plunge into the +business world before their time. They have no keen commercial sense to +lead them to undertake transactions on their own account, and they are +not desired by purchasers of boy labor in the city. + +The most important heading, numerically, is that of mischief, and here +the Negro falls far behind the Eastsider, behind the average for the +whole. While depravity among the girls and improper guardianship are the +race's most serious defects, as shown by the arrests among its children +in New York, tractability and a decent regard for law are among its +merits. The colored child, especially if he is in a segregated +neighborhood, is not greatly inclined to mischief. My own experience has +shown me that life in a tenement on San Juan Hill is devoid of the +ingenious, exasperating deviltry of an Irish or German-American +neighborhood. No daily summons calls one to the door only to hear wildly +scurrying footsteps on the stairs. Mail boxes are left solely for the +postman's use, and hallways are not defaced by obscene writing. There is +plenty of crap shooting, rarely interfered with by the police, but there +is little impertinent annoyance or destructiveness. + +An observer, watching the little colored boys and girls as they play on +the city streets, finds much that is attractive and pleasant. They sing +their songs, learned at school and on the playground, fly their kites, +spin their tops, run their races. They usually finish what they begin, +not turning at the first interruption to take up something else. They +move more deliberately than most children, and their voices are slower +to adopt the New York screech than those of their Irish neighbors on the +block above them. Altogether they are attractive children, particularly +the smaller ones, who are more energetic than their big brothers and +sisters. Good manners are often evident. While receiving an afternoon +call from two girls, aged four and five, I was invited by the older to +partake of half a peanut, the other half of which she split in two and +generously shared with her companion. "Gim'me five cents," I once heard +a Negro boy of twelve say to his mother who walked past him on the +street. She did not seem to hear, but the boy's companion, a youth of +the same age, reproved him severely for his rude speech. When walking +with an Irish friend, who had worked among the children of her own race, +I saw a colored boy run swiftly up the block to meet his mother. He +kissed her, took her bundle from her, and carrying it under his arm, +walked quietly by her side to their home. "There are many boys here," I +said, "who are just as courteous as that." "Is that so?" she retorted +quickly, "Then you needn't be explaining to me any further the reason +for the high death rate." + +The gentle, chivalrous affection of the child for its mother is daily to +be seen among these boys and girls. "Your African," said Mary Kingsley, +"is little better than a slave to his mother, whom he loves with a love +he gives to none other. This love of his mother is so dominant a factor +in his life that it must be taken into consideration in attempting to +understand the true Negro."[9] And if the child lavishes affection upon +its parent, the mother in turn gives untiringly to her child. She is the +"mammy" of whom we have so often heard, but with her loving care +bestowed, as it should be, upon her own offspring. She tries to keep her +child clean in body and spirit and to train it to be gentle and good; +and in return usually she receives a stanch devotion. I once found +fault with a colored girl of ten years for her rude behavior with her +girl companions, adding that perhaps she did not know any better, at +which she turned on me almost fiercely and said, "It's our fault; we +know better. Our mothers learn us. It's we that's bold." As one watches +the boys and girls walking quietly up the street of a Sunday afternoon +to their Sunday-school, neatly and cleanly dressed, one appreciates the +anxious, maternal care that strives as best it knows how, to rear honest +and God-fearing men and women. + +Paul Lawrence Dunbar has painted the Negro father, his "little brown +baby wif sparklin' eyes," nestling close in his arms. Working at unusual +hours, the colored man often has a part of the day to give to his +family, and one sees him wheeling the baby in its carriage, or playing +with the older boys and girls. + +Negroes seem naturally a gentle, loving people. As you live with them +and watch them in their homes, you find some coarseness, but little +real brutality. Rarely does a father or mother strike a child. +Travellers in Central and West Africa describe them as the most friendly +of savage folk, and where, as in our city, they live largely to +themselves, they keep something of these characteristics. But it is only +a step in New York from Africa into Italy or Ireland; and the step may +bring a sad jostling to native friendliness. To hold his own with his +white companions on the street or in school, the Negro must become +pugnacious, callous to insult, ready to hit back when affronted. Many +are like the little girl who told me that she did not care to play with +white children, "because," she explained, "my mother tells me to smack +any one who calls me nigger, and I ain't looking for trouble." The +colored children aren't looking for trouble. They have a tendency to run +away from it if they see it in the form of a gang of boys coming to them +around the corner. They believe if they had a fight, it wouldn't be a +fair one, and that if the policeman came, he would arrest them and not +their Irish enemies. So they grow up on streets through which few white +men pass, leading their own lives with their own people and thinking not +overmuch of the other race that surrounds them. But the day comes when +school is over, and the outside world, however indifferent they may be +to it, must be met. They must go out and grapple with it for the means +to hire a cooking stove and a dark bedroom of their own; they must think +of making money. So they stand at the corner of their street, looking +out, and then move slowly on to find what opportunity is theirs to come +to a full manhood. The way ahead does not seem very bright, and some +move so timidly that failure is sure to meet them at the first turning. +But some have the courage of the little colored girl, aged four, who led +a line of kindergarten children up their street and then on to the +unknown country that lay between them and Central Park. At the first +block a mob of Irish boys fell upon them, running between the lines, +throwing sticks, and calling "nigger" with screams and jeers. The leader +held her head high, paying no attention to her persecutors. She neither +quickened nor slowed her pace, and when the child at her side fell back, +she pulled her hand and said, "Don't notice them. Walk straight ahead." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Dudley Kidd's, "Savage Childhood," a delightful book. + +[2] Report of the Department of Health, City of New York, 1908, pp. +844, 849. The returns for births, the report states, are incomplete. + +[3] This per cent is obtained from two sources, the births from the +Department of Health report, and the deaths from the Mortality +Statistics of the United States Census, 1908. "Colored" includes +Chinese, a negligible quantity in the infant population. + +[4] Third Annual Report of the New York Milk Committee, 1909. + +[5] See G. Newman, "Infant Mortality," for a careful study of this +whole subject. + +[6] Census, 1900, combination of Population table and Women at Work. + +[7] It is interesting to see that the married women of Fall River, +where we found a very high infant death rate, show a percentage of +married women at work of twenty in a hundred. + +[8] My tabulations of the Negro and Tenth and Eleventh Ward Children +are from the Court's unpublished records to which I was allowed access. +The absence of any figures for Unlicensed Peddling in the Total +indicates that in its printed reports the Court has included Unlicensed +Peddling with Unclassified Misdemeanors. + +[9] Mary Kingsley, "West African Studies," p. 319. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +EARNING A LIVING--MANUAL LABOR AND THE TRADES + + +In "The American Race Problem," one of our recent important books upon +the Negro, the author, Mr. Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi, after a +survey of the world, declares that "to me, it seems the plainest fact +confronting the Negro is that there is but one area of any size wherein +his race may obey the command to eat its bread in the sweat of its face +side by side with the white man. That area is composed of the Southern +United States."[1] + +On examination we find that only men of English and North European stock +are "white" to Mr. Stone, and that his statement is too sweeping by a +continent or two, but as applying to the United States, it will usually +meet with unqualified approval. It is generally believed that +discrimination continually retards the Negro in his search for +employment in the North, while in the South "he is given a man's chance +in the commercial world." Northern men visiting southern colored +industrial schools advise the pupils to remain where they are, and +restless spirits among the race are assured that it is better to submit +to some personal oppression than to go to a land of uncertain +employment. The past glory of the North is dwelt upon, its days of black +waiters, and barbers, and coachmen, but the present is painted in harsh +colors. + +There is some truth in this comparison of economic conditions among the +Negroes in the North and in the South, but it must not be taken too +literally. Today's tendency to minimize southern and maximize northern +race difficulties, while strengthening the bonds between white +Americans, sometimes obscures the real issues regarding colored labor in +this country. We need to look carefully at conditions in numbers of +selected localities, and we can find no northern city more worthy of +our study than New York. + +The New York Negro constitutes today but two per cent of the population +of Manhattan, one and eight-tenths per cent of that of Greater New York; +and, as many workers in Manhattan live in Brooklyn, the larger area is +the better one to consider. In 1900, the census volume on occupations +gives the number of males over ten years of age engaged in gainful +occupations in Greater New York at 1,102,471, and of that number 20,395 +or 1.8 per cent, eighteen in every thousand, are Negroes. In Atlanta, to +take a southern commercial centre, 351 out of every thousand male +workers are Negroes. This enormous difference in the proportion of +colored workers to white must never be forgotten in considering the +labor situation North and South. We cannot expect in the North to see +the Negro monopolizing an industry which demands a larger share of +workers than he can produce, nor need we admit that he has lost an +occupation when he does not control it. + +We often come upon such a statement as that of Samuel R. Scottron, a +colored business man, who, writing in 1905, said, "The Italian, +Sicilian, Greek, occupy quite every industry that was confessedly the +Negro's forty years ago. They have the bootblack stands, the news +stands, barbers' shops, waiters' situations, restaurants, janitorships, +catering business, stevedoring, steamboat work, and other situations +occupied by Negroes."[2] Did the colored men have all this forty years +ago when they were only one and a half per cent of the population? If +so, there were giants in those days, or New York was much simpler in its +habits than now. At present the control by the colored people of any +such an array of industries would be quite impossible. To take four out +of the nine occupations enumerated: the census of 1900 gives the number +of waiters at 31,211; barbers, 12,022; janitors, 6184; bootblacks, 2648; +a total of 52,065. But in 1900 there were only 20,395 Negro males +engaged in gainful occupations in New York. Without a vigorous astral +body the 20,000-odd colored men could not occupy half these jobs. If +they dominated in the field of waiters they must abandon handling the +razor, and not all the colored boys could muster 2684 strong to black +the boots of Greater New York. We must at the outset recognize that as a +labor factor the Negro in New York is insignificant. + +The volume of the federal census for 1900 on occupations shows us how +the Negroes are employed in New York City. There are five occupational +divisions, and the Negroes and whites are divided among them as follows: + + ==================================================================== + | White | Per | Negro | Per + | | cent | | cent + ------------------------------+-----------+-------+---------+------- + Agricultural pursuits | 9,853 | .9 | 251 | 1.2 + Professional service | 60,037 | 5.6 | 729 | 3.6 + Domestic and personal service | 189,282 | 17.6 | 11,843 | 58.1 + Trade and transportation | 398,997 | 37.1 | 5,798 | 28.4 + Manufacturing and mechanical | | | | + pursuits | 417,634 | 38.8 | 1,774 | 8.7 + ------------------------------+-----------+-------+---------+------- + Total | 1,075,803 | 100.0 | 20,395 | 100.0 + ==================================================================== + +But in examining in detail the occupations under these different +headings, we get a clearer view of the place the Negro maintains as a +laborer by finding out how many workers he supplies to every thousand +workers in a given occupation. He should average eighteen if he is to +occupy the same economic status as the white man. Taking the first +(numerically) important division, Domestic and Personal Service, we get +the following table: + + DOMESTIC AND PERSONAL SERVICE + + Key to column headers-- + A: Total number of males in each occupation. + B: Number of Negroes in occupation. + C: Number of Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation. + + ======================================================= + | A | B | C + ------------------------------+---------+--------+----- + Barbers and hairdressers | 12,022 | 215 | 18 + Bootblacks | 2,648 | 51 | 20 + Launderers | 6,881 | 70 | 10 + Servants and waiters | 31,211 | 6,280 | 201 + Stewards | 1,366 | 140 | 103 + Nurses | 1,342 | 22 | 16 + Boarding and lodging house | | | + keepers | 474 | 10 | 21 + Hotel keepers | 3,139 | 23 | 7 + Restaurant keepers | 2,869 | 116 | 40 + Saloon keepers and bartenders | 17,656 | 111 | 6 + Janitors and sextons | 6,184 | 800 | 129 + Watchmen, firemen, policemen | 16,093 | 116 | 7 + Soldiers, sailors, marines | 3,707 | 56 | 15 + Laborers (including elevator | | | + tenders, laborers in coal | | | + yards, longshoremen, and | | | + stevedores) | 98,531 | 3,719 | 38 + | | | + Total, including some | | | + occupations not specified | 206,215 | 11,843 | 57 + ======================================================= + +The most important of these groups, not only in absolute numbers, but in +proportion to the whole working population, is the servants and waiters. +Two hundred out of every thousand (we must remember that the proportion +to the population would be eighteen out of every thousand) are holding +positions with which they have long been identified in America. We +cannot tell from the census how many "live out," or how many are able to +go nightly to their homes, how many have good jobs, and how many are in +second and third rate places. A study of my own of 716 colored men helps +to answer one of these questions. Out of 176 men coming under the +servants' and waiters' classification, I found 5 caterers, 24 cooks, 26 +butlers, 30 general utility men, 41 hotel men, and 50 waiters. Sixty per +cent of the 176 lived in their own homes, not in their masters'. Some of +the cooks and waiters were on Pullman trains or on river boats or +steamers; only a few were in first-class positions in New York. In the +summer many of these men are likely to go to country hotels, and with +the winter, if New York offers nothing, migrate to Palm Beach or stand +on the street corner while their wives go out to wash and scrub.[3] +"An' it don't do fer me ter complain," one of them tells me, "else he +gits 'high' an' goes off fer good." Waiters in restaurants sometimes do +not make more than six dollars a week, to be supplemented by tips, +bringing the sum up to nine or ten dollars. Hall men make about the +same, but both waiters and hall men in clubs and hotels receive large +sums in tips or in Christmas money. The Pullman car waiters have small +wages but large fees. + +Looking again at the census, we see that 129 out of every thousand +janitors and sextons are colored. The janitor's position varies from the +impecunious place in a tenement, where the only wage is the rent, to the +charge of a large office or apartment building. Then come the laborers, +nearly four thousand strong, with the elevator boy as a familiar figure. +Forty per cent of the 139 laborers in my own tabulation were elevator +boys, for, except in office buildings and large stores and hotels, this +occupation is given over to the Negro, who spends twelve hours a day +drowsing in a corner or standing to turn a wheel. Paul Lawrence Dunbar +wrote poetry while he ran an elevator, and ambitious if less talented +colored boys today study civil service examinations in their unoccupied +time; but the situation as a life job is not alluring. Twenty-five +dollars a month for wage, with perhaps a half this sum in tips, twelve +hours on duty, one week in the night time and the next in the day--no +wonder the personnel of this staff changes frequently in an apartment +house. A bright boy will be taken by some business man for a better job, +and a lazy one drifts away to look for an easier task, or is dismissed +by an irate janitor. + +Quite another group of laborers are the longshoremen who, far from +lounging indolently in a hallway, are straining every muscle as they +heave some great crate into a ship's hold. The work of the New York +dockers has been admirably described by Mr. Ernest Poole, who says of +the thirty thousand longshoremen on the wharves of New York--Italians, +Germans, Negroes, and Swedes, "Far from being the drunkards and bums +that some people think them, they are like the men of the lumber camps +come to town--huge of limb and tough of muscle, hard-swearing, +quick-fisted, big of heart." Their tasks are heavy and irregular. When +the ship comes in, the average stretch of work for a gang is from twelve +to twenty hours, and sometimes men go to a second gang and labor +thirty-five hours without sleep. Their pay for this dangerous, +exhausting toil averages eleven dollars a week. "There are thousands of +Negroes on the docks of New York," Mr. Poole writes me, "and they must +be able to work long hours at a stretch or they would not have their +jobs." At dusk, Brooklynites see these black, huge-muscled men, many of +them West Indians, walking up the hill at Montague Street. In New York +they live among the Irish in "Hell's Kitchen" and on San Juan Hill. They +are usually steady supporters of families. + +New York demands strong, unskilled laborers. To some she pays a large +wage, and Negroes have gone in numbers into the excavations under the +rivers, though a lingering death may prove the end of their two and a +half or perhaps six or seven dollar a day job. Many colored men worked +in the subway during its construction. One sees them often employed at +rock-drilling or clearing land for new buildings. About a third of the +asphalt workers, making their two dollars and a half a day, are colored. +Some educated, refined Negroes choose the laborer's work rather than +pleasanter but poorly paid occupations. A highly trained colored man, a +shipping clerk, making seven dollars a week, left his employer to take a +job of concreting in the subway at $1.80 a day. His decision was in +favor of dirty, severe labor, but a living wage. + +When the next census is published, those of us who are carefully +watching the economic condition of the Negro expect to find a movement +from domestic service into the positions of laborers, including the +porters in stores, who belong in our second census division. + +Kelly Miller[4] describes the massive buildings and sky-seeking +structures of our northern city, and finds no status for the Negro above +the cellar floor. One can see the colored youth gazing wistfully through +the office window at the clerk, whose business reaches across the ocean +to bewilderingly wonderful continents, knowing as he does that the +employment he may find in that office will be emptying the white man's +waste paper basket. + + TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION + + Key to Column Headers-- + A: Total number of males in each occupation. + B: Number of Negroes in each occupation. + C: Number of Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation. + + ============================================================= + | A | B | C + --------------------------------------+---------+------+----- + Agents--commercial travellers | 27,456 | 67 | 2 + Bankers, brokers, and officials of | | | + banks and companies | 11,472 | 7 | 0 + Bookkeepers--accountants | 22,613 | 33 | 1 + Clerks, copyists (including shipping | | | + clerks, letter and mail carriers) | 80,564 | 423 | 5 + Merchants (wholesale and retail) | 72,684 | 162 | 2 + Salesmen | 45,740 | 94 | 2 + Typewriters | 3,225 | 36 | 11 + Boatmen and sailors | 8,188 | 145 | 18 + Foremen and overseers | 3,111 | 18 | 6 + Draymen, hackmen, teamsters | 51,063 | 1439 | 28 + Hostlers | 5,891 | 633 | 107 + Livery stable keepers | 967 | 9 | 9 + Steam railway employees | 11,831 | 70 | 6 + Street railway employees | 7,375 | 11 | 1 + Telegraph and telephone operators | 2,430 | 6 | 2 + Hucksters and peddlers | 12,635 | 69 | 5 + Messengers, errand and office boys | 13,451 | 335 | 25 + Porters and helpers (in stores, etc.) | 11,322 | 2143 | 188 + Undertakers | 1,572 | 15 | 9 + | | | + Total, including some occupations | | | + not specified | 405,675 | 5798 | 14 + ============================================================= + +This, however, does not apply to government positions, and a large +number of the 423 colored clerks in 1900 were probably in United States +and municipal service. The latter we shall consider later as we study +the Negro and the municipality. Of the former, in 1909 there were about +176 in the New York post-offices.[5] Ambitious boys work industriously +at civil service examinations, and a British West Indian will even +become an American citizen for the chance of a congenial occupation. The +clerkship, that to a white man is only a stepping-stone, to a Negro is a +highly coveted position. + +I have made two divisions of this census list; the first includes those +occupations requiring intellectual skill and carrying with them some +social position, the second, those demanding only manual work. It is in +the second that the colored man finds a place, and as a porter he +numbers 2143, and reaches almost as high a percentage as the waiter and +servant. Porters' positions are paid from five to fifteen dollars a +week, the man receiving the latter wage performing also the duties of +shipping clerk. There is some opportunity for advance, always within the +basement, and there are regular hours and a fairly steady job. + +The heading of draymen, hackmen, and teamsters, with 28 colored in every +thousand, shows that the Negro has not lost his place as a driver. The +chauffeur does not appear in the census, but the Negro is steadily +increasing in numbers in this occupation, and conducts three garages of +his own. + +The last census division to be considered in this chapter is that of +Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits. + + MANUFACTURING AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS + + Key to Column Headers-- + A: Total number of males in each occupation. + B: Number of Negroes in each occupation. + C: Number of Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation. + + ============================================================= + | A | B | C + --------------------------------------+---------+-------+---- + Engineers, firemen (not locomotive) | 16,579 | 227 | 14 + Masons (brick and stone) | 12,913 | 94 | 7 + Painters, glaziers, and varnishers | 27,135 | 177 | 6 + Plasterers | 4,019 | 51 | 12 + Blacksmiths | 7,289 | 29 | 4 + Butchers | 12,643 | 31 | 2 + Carpenters and joiners | 29,904 | 94 | 3 + Iron and steel workers | 10,372 | 40 | 4 + Paper hangers | 962 | 18 | 19 + Photographers | 1,590 | 22 | 14 + Plumbers, gas and steam fitters | 16,614 | 31 | 2 + Printers, lithographers, and pressmen | 21,521 | 53 | 2 + Tailors | 56,094 | 69 | 1 + Tobacco and cigar factory operators | 11,689 | 189 | 16 + Fishermen and oystermen | 1,439 | 65 | 45 + Miners and quarrymen | 326 | 21 | 64 + Machinists | 17,241 | 47 | 3 + | | | + Total, including some occupations | | | + not specified |419,594 | 1774 | 4 + ============================================================= + + Bakers, boot and shoe makers, gold and silver workers, brass workers, + tin plate and tin ware makers, box makers, cabinet makers, marble and + stone cutters, book-binders, clock and watch makers, confectioners, + engravers, glass workers, hat and cap makers, and others--not more than + nineteen in any one occupation, nor a higher per cent than four in a + thousand. + +When Mr. Stone wrote of the Southern States as the only place in which +the Negro could "earn his bread in the sweat of his face," side by side +with the white man, he must especially have been thinking of workers in +the skilled trades. Unskilled laborers in New York are drenched in a +common grimy fellowship. But in this last division the Negro is +conspicuous by his absence. Only four in every thousand where there +should be eighteen! In Atlanta, under this division, the race reaches +almost its due proportion, 279 in a thousand instead of 351. The largest +number in any trade in New York is 189 men among the Cuban tobacco +workers. Seventy-five per cent of all the masons in Atlanta are colored +men, while in New York the colored are less than one per cent. Looking +down the list we see that the figures are small and the percentage +insignificant. The highly skilled and best paid trades are seemingly as +far removed from the Negro as the positions of floor-walkers or cashiers +of banks. + +Omitting for the present the professional class, we have reviewed the +Negro as a worker, and neither in wages nor choice of occupation has he +risen far to success. In domestic service he has gone a little down the +ladder, serving in less desirable positions than in former years. Why +has this happened? What good reasons are there for these conditions? + +The first and most obvious reason is race prejudice. No display of +talent, however prodigious, will open certain occupations to the colored +race. As a salesman he could teach courteous manners to some of our +white salesmen in New York, but he is never given a chance. There are a +few Negroes, digging in the tunnels or sweeping down the subway stairs, +who are capable of filling the clerkships that are counted the +perquisites of the whites; but clerkships are only accessible as they +are associated with municipal or federal service. Of course there are +exceptions, and though they do not affect the rule, they show the +existence of a few employers who ignore the color line, and a few +Negroes of inexhaustible perseverance. + +Mr. Stone argues that the Negro in the South profits by the strict +drawing of the color line, since the white man, always considered the +superior, is not lowered in the eyes of the community by working with +the black man. The Southern white may lay bricks on the same wall with +the Southern black, secure in his superior social position. But this +seems fanciful as an explanation of labor conditions. The black doctor, +for instance, in those localities where the color line is most rigid, +may not ask the white doctor to consult with him; or if he does, his +prompt removal from the community is requested. Colored postal clerks +are in disfavor in the South, though not colored postmen. North or +South, _the Negro gets an opportunity to work where he is imperatively +needed_. Constituting one-third of the working population, he can make a +place for himself in the laboring world of Atlanta as he cannot in New +York. Pick up the 20,000 New York Negroes and drop them in Liberia, and +in two or three weeks Ellis Island could empty out sufficient men to +fill their places; but remove a third of the male workers from Atlanta, +and the city for years would suffer from the calamity. If they are the +only available source of labor, colored men can work by the side of +white men; but where the white man strongly dominates the labor +situation, he tries to push his black brother into the jobs for which he +does not care to compete. + +We have seen, however, that in some occupations in New York the Negroes +appear in such proportion as should be sufficient to secure them +excellent positions; the most conspicuous instance being that of the +200 colored waiters out of every thousand. Why, then, do we not see +Negroes serving in the best hotels the city affords? + +It has been an ideal of American democracy, a part of its strenuous +individualism, that each member of the community should have full +liberty in the pursuit of wealth. The ambitious, capable boy who walks +bare-footed into the city, and at the end of twenty years has +outdistanced his country school-mates, becoming a multi-millionaire +while they are still farm drudges, is the example of American +opportunity. But this ability to separate one's self from the rest of +one's fellows and attain individual greatness is rarely possible to a +segregated race. In domestic service individual colored men have shown +ambition and high capability, but they have never been able to get away +from their fellows like the country boy--to leave the farm drudges and +take a place among the most proficient of their profession. They must +always work in a race group. And this Negro group is like the small +college that tries to win at football against a competitor with four +times the number of students and a better coach. The two hundred +colored waiters, competing against the eight hundred white ones, lose in +the game and are given a second place, which the best must accept with +the worst. When, then, we criticize a capable colored man for failing to +keep a superior position we must remember that he is tied to his group +and has little chance of advancement on his individual merit. + +The census division of mechanical pursuits shows only a few colored men +working at trades, and the paucity of the numbers is often attributed by +the Negro to a third obstacle in the way of his progress, the +trade-union. + +To the colored man who has overcome race prejudice sufficiently to be +taken into a shop with white workmen, the walking delegate who appears +and asks for his union card seems little short of diabolical; and all +the advantages that collective bargaining has secured, the higher wage +and shorter working-day, are forgotten by him. I have heard the most +distinguished of Negro educators, listening to such an incident as this, +declare that he should like to see every labor union in America +destroyed. But unionism has come to stay, and the colored man who is +asked for his card had better at once get to work and endeavor to secure +it. Many have done this already, and organized labor in New York, its +leaders tell us, receives an increasing number of colored workmen. Miss +Helen Tucker, in a careful study of Negro craftsmen in the West +Sixties,[6] found among 121 men who had worked at their trades in the +city, 32, or 26 per cent in organized labor. The majority of these had +joined in New York. Eight men, out of the 121, had applied for entrance +to unions and not been admitted. This does not seem a discouraging +number, though we do not know whether the other 81 could have been +organized or not. Many, probably, were not sufficiently competent +workmen. In 1910, according to the best information that I could secure, +there were 1358 colored men in the New York unions. Eighty of these were +in the building trades, 165 were cigar makers, 400 were teamsters, 350 +asphalt workers, and 240 rock-drillers and tool sharpeners.[7] + +Entrance to some of the local organizations is more easily secured than +to others, for the trade-union, while part of a federation, is +autonomous, or nearly so. In some of the highly skilled trades, to +which few colored men have the necessary ability to demand access, the +Negro is likely to be refused, while the less intelligent and well-paid +forms of labor press a union card upon him. Again, strong organizations +in the South, as the bricklayers, send men North with union membership, +who easily transfer to New York locals. Miss Tucker finds the +carpenters', masons', and plasterers' organizations easy for the Negro +to enter. There is in New York a colored local, the only colored local +in the city, among a few of the carpenters, with regular representation +in the Central Federated Union. The American Federation of Labor in 1881 +declared that "the working people must unite irrespective of creed, +color, sex, nationality, or politics." This cry is for self-protection, +and where the Negroes have numbers and ability in a trade, their +organization becomes important to the white. It may be fairly said of +labor organization in New York that it finds and is at times unable to +destroy race prejudice, but that it does not create it.[8] + +A fourth obstacle, and a very important one, is the lack of opportunity +for the colored boy. The only trade that he can easily learn is that of +stationary engineer, an occupation at which the Negroes do very well. +Colored boys in small numbers are attending evening trade schools, but +their chance of securing positions on graduation will be small. The +Negro youth who is not talented enough to enter a profession, and who +cannot get into the city or government service, has slight opportunity. +Nothing is so discouraging in the outlook in New York as the crowding +out of colored boys from congenial remunerative work. + +The last obstacle in the way of the Negro's advancement into higher +occupations is his inefficiency. Race prejudice denies him the +opportunity to prove his ability in many occupations, and the same +spirit forces him to work in a race group; but the colored men +themselves are often unfitted for any labor other than that they +undertake. + +The picture that is sometimes drawn of many thousands of highly skilled +Southern colored men forced in New York to give up their trades and to +turn to menial labor is not a correct one. Richard R. Wright, Jr., who +has made a careful study of the Negro in Philadelphia,[9] finds that +the majority of colored men who come to that city are from the class of +unskilled city laborers and country hands; the minority are the more +skilful artisans and farmers and domestic servants, with a number also +of the vagrant and criminal classes. + +In New York the untrained Negroes not only form a very large class, but +coming in contact, as they do, with foreigners who for generations have +been forced to severe, unremitting toil, they suffer by comparison. The +South in the days of slavery demanded chiefly routine work in the fields +from its Negroes.[10] The work was under the direction either of the +master, the overseer, or a foreman; and there has been no general +advance in training for the colored men of the South since that time. +Contrast the intensive cultivation of Italy or Switzerland with the +farms of Georgia or Alabama, or the hotels of France with those of +Virginia, and you will see the disadvantages from which the Negro +suffers. America is young and crude, but opportunity has brought to her +great cities workmen from all over the world. In New York these men are +driven at a pace that at the outset distracts the colored man who +prefers his leisurely way. Moreover, the foreign workmen have learned +persistence; they are punctual and appear regularly each morning at +their tasks. "The Italians are better laborers than any other people we +have, are they not?" I asked a man familiar with many races and +nationalities. "No," was his answer, "they do not work better than +others, but when the whistle blows, they are always there." Mr. Stone, +whose book I have already quoted a number of times, shows the +irresponsible, fanciful wanderings of his Mississippi tenants, whom he +endeavored, unsuccessfully, to establish in a permanent tenantry. The +colored men in New York are far in advance of these farm hands, who are +described as moving about simply because they desire a change, but they +are also far from the steady, unswerving attitude of their foreign +competitors. Inadequately educated, too often they come to New York with +little equipment for tasks they must undertake successfully or +starve--unless, puerile, they live by the labor of some industrious +woman. + +I have tried to depict the New York colored wage earners as they labor +in the city today. They are not a remarkable group, and were they white +men, distinguished by some mark of nationality, they would pass without +comment. But the Negro is on trial, and witnesses are continually called +to tell of his failures and successes. We have seen that both in the +attitude of the world about him, and in his own untutored self, there +are many obstacles to prevent his advance; and his natural sensitiveness +adds to these difficulties. He minds the coarse but often good-natured +joke of his fellow laborer, and he remembers with a lasting pain the +mortification of an employer's curt refusal of work. Had he the +obtuseness of some Americans he would prosper better. As we have seen, +many positions are completely closed to him, leading him to idleness and +consequent crime. Just as not every able-bodied white man, who is out of +work and impoverished, will go to the charities wood-yard and saw wood, +so not every colored man will accept the menial labor which may be the +only work open to him. Instead, he may gamble or drift into a vagabond +life. A well-known Philadelphia judge has said that "The moral and +intellectual advance of a race is governed by the degree of its +industrial freedom. When that freedom is restricted there is unbounded +tendency to drive the race discriminated against into the ranks of the +criminal." Discrimination in New York has led many Negroes into these +ranks. But as we look back at the occupations of our colored men we see +a large number who secure regular hours, and if a poor, yet a fairly +steady pay. For the mass of the Negroes coming into the city these +positions are an advance over their former work. Employment in a great +mercantile establishment, though it be in the basement, carries dignity +with it, and educating demands of punctuality, sobriety, and swiftness. +Richard R. Wright, Jr., whose right to speak with authority we have +already noted, believes that the "North has taught the Negro the value +of money; of economy; it has taught more sustained effort in work, +punctuality, and regularity." It has also, I believe, in its more +regular hours of work, aided in the upbuilding of the home. + +I remember once waiting in the harbor of Genoa while our ship was +taking on a cargo. The captain walked the deck impatiently, and, as the +Italians went in leisurely fashion about their task, declared, "If I had +those men in New York I could get twice the amount of work out of them." +That is what New York does; it works men hard and fast; sometimes it +mars them; but it pays a better wage than Genoa, and there is an +excitement and dash about it that attracts laborers from all parts of +the earth. The black men come, insignificant in numbers, ready to do +their part. They work and play and marry and bring up children, and as +we watch them moving to and from their tasks the North seems to have +brought to the majority of them something of liberty and happiness. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Alfred Holt Stone, "Studies in the American Race Problem," p. 164. + +[2] New York _Age_, August 24, 1905. + +[3] Occupations in 1907 of 716 colored men (secured from records of the +Young Men's Christian Association and personal visits) compared with +census figures of occupations in 1900. + + ============================================================== + | 716 Men | Census + -------------------------------------------+---------+-------- + Agricultural pursuits | -- | 1.2 + | | + Professional service, 27 men | 3.8 | 3.6 + | | + Domestic and personal service, 363 men | 50.6 | 58.1 + 5 barbers, 5 caterers, 24 cooks, | | + 30 general utility men, 41 hotel men, | | + 76 waiters and butlers, 8 valets, | | + 35 janitors and sextons, 29 longshoremen, | | + 5 laborers in tunnels, 7 asphalt | | + workers, 57 elevator men, 41 laborers. | | + | | + Trade and transportation, 279 men | 39.0 | 28.4 + 10 chauffeurs, 35 drivers, 13 expressmen, | | + 8 hostlers, 12 messengers, 14 municipal | | + employees, 127 porters in stores, | | + 15 porters on trains, 24 clerks, | | + 21 merchants. | | + | | + Manufacturing and mechanical | | + pursuits, 47 men | 6.6 | 8.7 + +---------+------- + | 100.0 | 100.0 + ============================================================= + +[4] Kelly Miller's "Race Adjustment," p. 129. + +[5] It is difficult to get accurate figures as no official record is +kept of color. + +[6] _Southern Workman_, October, 1907, to March, 1908. + +[7] In 1906, and again in 1910, I secured a counting of the New York +colored men in organized labor. The lists run as follows: + + 1906 1910 + + Asphalt workers 320 350 + Teamsters 300 400 + Rock-drillers and tool sharpeners 250 240 + Cigar makers 121 165 + Bricklayers 90 21 + Waiters 90 not obtainable + Carpenters 60 40 + Plasterers 45 19 + Double drum hoisters 30 37 + Safety and portable engineers 26 35 + Eccentric firemen 15 0 + Letter carriers 10 30 + Pressmen 10 not obtainable + Printers 6 8 + Butchers 3 3 + Lathers 3 7 + Painters 3 not obtainable + Coopers 1 2 + Sheet metal workers 1 1 + Rockmen 1 not obtainable + ---- ---- + Total 1385 1358 + +The large number of bricklayers in 1906 is questioned by the man, +himself a bricklayer, who made the second counting. However, the number +greatly decreased in 1908 when the stagnation in business compelled many +men to seek work in other cities. + +[8] The comment of the Negro bricklayer who secured my figures is +important. "A Negro," he says, "has to be extra fit in his trade to +retain his membership, as the eyes of all the other workers are +watching every opportunity to disqualify him, thereby compelling a +superefficiency. Yet at all times he is the last to come and the first +to go on the job, necessitating his seeking other work for a living, and +keeping up his card being but a matter of sentiment. While all the +skilled trades seem willing to accept the Negro with his travelling +card, yet there are some which utterly refuse him; for instance, the +house smiths and bridge men who will not recognize him at all. While +membership in the union is necessary to work, yet the hardest part of +the battle is to secure employment. In some instances intercession has +been made by various organizations interested in his industrial progress +for employment at the offices of various companies, and favorable +answers are given, but hostile foremen with discretionary power carry +out their instructions in such a manner as to render his employment of +such short duration that he is very little benefited. Of course, there +are some contractors who are very friendly to a few men, and whenever +any work is done by them, they are certain of employment. Unfortunately, +these are too few." + +[9] R. R. Wright, Jr.'s "Migration of Negroes to the North," Annals of +the American Academy, May, 1906. + +[10] See Ulrich B. Phillips' "Origin and Growth of the Southern Black +Belts," _American Historical Review_, July, 1906. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +EARNING A LIVING--BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONS + + +If we walk west on Fifty-ninth Street, at Eighth Avenue, we come upon +one of the colored business sections of New York. Here, for a block's +length, are employment and real estate agents, restaurant keepers, +grocers, tailors, barbers, printers, expressmen, and undertakers, all +small establishments occupying the first floor or basement of some +tenement or lodging house, and with the exception of the employment +agency all patronized chiefly by the colored race. Another such section +and a more prosperous one is in Harlem, on West One Hundred and +Thirty-third, One Hundred and Thirty-fourth, and One Hundred and +Thirty-fifth Streets. From the point of view of the whole business of +the city such concerns are insignificant, but they are important from +the viewpoint of Negro progress, since they represent the accumulation +of capital, experience in business methods, and hard work. Very slowly +the New York Negro is meeting the demanding power of his people and is +securing neighborhood trade that has formerly gone to the Italian and +the Jew. Husband and wife, father and son, work in their little +establishments and make a beginning in the mercantile world. + +The Negro, as we have seen, has conducted businesses in New York in the +past, businesses patronized chiefly by whites. Barbering and catering +were his successes, and in both of these he has lost, despite the fact +that one of the city's wealthiest colored men is a caterer. But if he +has lost here, he has gained along other lines. Among a number of +photographers he has one who is well-known for his excellent +architectural work. Two manufacturers have brought out popular goods, +the Haynes's razor strop, and the Howard shoe polish. These men, one a +barber and one a Pullman car porter, improved upon implements used in +their daily work and then turned to manufacture. The headquarters of +the Howard shoe polish is in Chicago, where the firm employs thirty +people, the New York branch giving employment to twelve. + +A wise utilization of labor already trained and at hand is seen in the +Manhattan House Cleaning and Renovating Bureau. This firm contracts for +the cleaning of houses and places of business and has also been +successful in securing work on new buildings, entering as the builders +leave and arranging everything for occupancy. In one week the Bureau has +given employment to sixty men. + +In those businesses in which he comes in contact with the white, the +most pronounced success of the colored man has been real estate +brokerage. The New York Negro business directory names twenty-two real +estate brokers, and though a dozen of them probably handle altogether no +more business than one white firm, a few put through important +operations. The ablest of these brokers, recently clearing twenty +thousand dollars at a single transaction, turned his operations to +Liberia, where he went for a few months to look into land concessions. +This broker has aided the Negroes materially in their efforts to rent +apartments on better streets. His energy, and that of many more like +him, is also needed to open up places for colored businesses, better +office and workroom facilities for the able professional and business +men and women. In New York as in the South the Negro needs to obtain a +hold upon the land. In this he is aided not only by his brokers, but by +realty companies. The largest of these, the Metropolitan Realty Company, +in operation since 1900, is capitalized at a million dollars, and had in +1910 $400,000 paid in stock, and $400,000 subscribed and being paid for +on instalment. This company operates in the suburban towns, and has +quite a colony in Plainfield, New Jersey, where it owns 150 lots. It has +built eighty cottages for its members, and has bought eighteen. + +Among the businesses that cater directly to the colored, probably none +is more successful than undertaking. The Negroes of the city die in +great numbers, and the funeral is all too common a function. Formerly +this business went to white men, but increasingly it is coming into the +hands of the colored. The Negro business directory gives twenty-two +undertakers, one of them, by common report, the richest colored man in +New York. Profitable real estate investment, combined with one of the +largest undertaking establishments in the city, has given him a +comfortable fortune. Another large and increasingly important Negro +business is the hotel and boarding-house. As the colored men of the +South and West accumulate wealth, they will come in increasing numbers +to visit in New York, and the colored hotel, now little more than a +boarding-house, may become a spacious building, with private baths, +elevator service, and a well-equipped restaurant. In today's modestly +equipped buildings the catering is often excellent, and good, +well-cooked food is sold at reasonable prices. Occasionally the Hotel +Maceo advertises a southern dinner, and its guests sit down to Virginia +sugar-cured ham, sweet potato pie, and perhaps even opossum. + +Printing establishments, tailors' shops,[1] express and van companies, +and many other small enterprises help to make up the Negro business +world. One colored printer brings out an important white magazine. There +are seven weekly colored newspapers, of which the New York _Age_ is the +most important, and two musical publishing companies. All these +enterprises are useful, not only to the proprietor and his patrons, but +especially to the clerks and assistants who thus are able to secure some +training in mercantile work. In the white man's office, white and +colored boys start out together, but as their trousers lengthen and +their ambitions quicken, the former secures promotion while the latter +is still given the letters to put into the mail box. If the Negro lad, +discouraged at lack of advancement, leaves the white man and ventures +with a tiny capital into some business of his own, his ignorance is +almost certain to lead to his disaster. He is indeed fortunate if he can +first work in the office of a successful colored man.[2] + +We have one more census division to consider, Professional Service. The +table runs as follows: + + PROFESSIONAL SERVICE + + Key to column headers-- + A: Total number of males in each occupation. + B: Number of Negroes in each occupation. + C: Number of Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation. + + ======================================================== + | A | B | C + ------------------------------------+--------+-----+---- + Actors, professional showmen, etc. | 4,733 | 254 | 54 + Architects, designers, draftsmen | 3,966 | 2 | 0 + Artists, teachers of art | 2,924 | 13 | 4 + Clergymen | 2,833 | 90 | 32 + Dentists | 1,509 | 25 | 16 + Physicians and surgeons | 6,577 | 32 | 5 + Veterinary surgeons | 320 | 2 | 6 + Electricians | 8,131 | 18 | 2 + Engineers (civil) and surveyors | 3,321 | 7 | 2 + Journalists | 2,833 | 7 | 2 + Lawyers | 7,811 | 26 | 3 + Literary and scientific | 1,709 | 10 | 5 + Musicians | 6,429 | 195 | 30 + Officials (government) | 3,934 | 9 | 2 + Teachers and professors in colleges | 3,409 | 32 | 9 + | | | + Total including some occupations | | | + not specified | 60,853 | 729 | 12 + ======================================================== + +Examining these figures we find few colored architects[3] or engineers, +and a very small proportion of electricians, though among the latter +there is a highly skilled workman. The New York Negro has no position in +the mechanical arts. It may be that, as we so often hear, the African +does not possess mechanical ability.[4] You do not see Negro boys +pottering over machinery or making toy inventions of their own. But +another and powerful reason for the colored youth's failing to take up +engineering or kindred studies is the slight chance he would later have +in securing work. No group of men in America have opposed his progress +more persistently than skilled mechanics, and, should he graduate from +some school of technology, he would be refused in office or workshop. So +he turns to those professions in which he sees a likelihood of +advancement. + +Colored physicians and dentists are increasing in number in New York and +throughout the country. The Negro is sympathetic, quick to understand +another's feelings, and when added to this he has received a thorough +medical training he makes an excellent physician. New York State +examinations prevent the practice of ignorant doctors from other states, +and the city can count many able colored practitioners. These doctors +practise among white people as well as among colored. As surgeons they +are handicapped in New York by lack of hospital facilities, having no +suitable place in which they may perform an operation. The colored +student who graduates from a New York medical college must go for +hospital training to Philadelphia or Chicago or Washington.[5] + +Colored lawyers are obtaining a firm foothold in New York. From +twenty-six in the 1900 census they now, in 1911, number over fifty, +though not all of these by any means rely entirely upon their profession +for support. Some of our lawyers are descendants of old New York +families, others have come here recently from the South. + +Turning to our census figures again we see that the three professions in +which the colored man is conspicuous are those of actor, musician, and +minister. Instead of the average eighteen, he here shows fifty-four in +every thousand actors, thirty in every thousand musicians, and +thirty-two in every thousand clergymen. And since the pulpit and the +stage are two places in which the black man has found conspicuous +success it may be well in this connection to consider, not only the +economic significance of these institutions, but their place in the life +of the colored world. + +The Negro minister was born with the Negro Christian, and the colored +church, in which he might tell of salvation, is over a century old in +New York. Today the Boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn have twenty-eight +colored churches besides a number of missions. Some of the societies own +valuable property, usually, however, encumbered with heavy mortgages, +and yearly budgets mount up to ten, twelve, and sixteen thousand +dollars. The Methodist churches lead in number, next come the Baptist, +and next the Episcopalian. There are Methodist Episcopal, African +Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion. Bethel +African Methodist Episcopal Church, as we have seen, is one of the +oldest and is still one of the largest and most useful Negro churches in +New York. Mount Olivet, a Baptist church on West Fifty-third Street, has +a seating capacity of 1600, taxed to its full on Sunday evenings. St. +Philip's gives the Episcopal service with dignity and devoutness, and +its choir has many sweet colored boy singers. At St. Benedict, the Moor, +the black faces of the boy acolytes contrast with the benignant +white-haired Irish priest, and without need of words preach good-will +to men. Only in this Catholic church does one find white and black in +almost equal numbers worshipping side by side. + +The great majority of the colored churches are supported by their +congregations, and the minister or elder, or both, twice a Sunday, must +call for the pennies and nickels, dimes and quarters, that are dropped +into the plate at the pulpit's base. Contributors file past the table on +which they place their offering, emulation becoming a spur to +generosity. These collections are supplemented by sums raised at +entertainments and fairs, and it is in this way, by the constant +securing of small gifts, that the thousands are raised. + +The church is a busy place and retains its members, not only by its +preaching, but by midweek meetings. There are the class meetings of the +Methodists, the young people's societies, the prayer meetings, and the +sermons preached to the secret benefit organizations. Visiting sisters +and brothers attend to relief work, and standing at a side table, +sometimes picturesque with lighted lantern, ask for dole for the poor. + +The Sunday-schools, while not so large as the church attendance would +lead one to expect, involve much time and labor in their conduct. A +colored church member finds all his or her leisure occupied in church +work. I know a young woman engaged in an exacting, skilled profession +who spends her day of rest attending morning service, teaching in +Sunday-school, taking part in the young people's lyceum in the late +afternoon, and listening to a second sermon in the evening. Occasionally +she omits her dinner to hear an address at the colored Young Men's +Christian Association. On hot summer afternoons you may see colored boys +and girls and men and women crowded in an ill-ventilated hall, giving +ear to a fervid exhortation that leads the speaker, at the sentence's +end, to mop his swarthy face. The woods, the salt-smelling sea, the +tamer prettiness of the lawns of the city's park, have not the impelling +call of sermon or hymn. If the whole of the Negro's summer Sunday is to +be given to direct religious teaching, one wishes that it might take +place at the old time camp meeting, where there is fresh air and space +in which to breathe it. The first of Edward Everett Hale's three rules +of life as he gave them to the Hampton students was, "Live all you can +out in the open air." The religious-minded New York Negro succumbs +easily to disease, and yet elects to spend his day of leisure within +doors. + +With the exception of the Episcopalians, the churches undertake little +institutional work. Money is lacking, and there is only a feeble +conviction of the value of the gymnasium, pool table, and girls' and +boys' clubs. The colored branches of the Young Men's Christian +Association, however, are places for recreation and instruction. The +lines that Evangelical Americans draw regarding amusements, prohibiting +cards and welcoming dominos, allowing bagatelle and frowning upon +billiards, must be interpreted by some folk-lore historian to show their +reasonableness. Doubtless the extent to which a game is used for +gambling purposes has much to do with its good or bad savor, and pool +and cards for this reason are tabooed. Dancing is also frowned upon by +many of the churches, while temperance societies make active campaign +for prohibition. To New York's black folk, the church-goers and they who +stand without are the sheep and the goats, and the gulf between them is +digged deep. + +Of the five colored Episcopal churches, St. Philip's and St. Cyprian's +have parish houses. St. Philip's has moved into a new parish house on +West One Hundred and Thirty-Fourth Street, where with its large, +well-arranged rooms, its gymnasium, and its corps of enthusiastic +workers it will soon become a powerful force in the Harlem Negro's life. +St. Cyprian's is under the City Episcopal Mission, and has unusual +opportunity for helpfulness since it is separated only by Amsterdam +Avenue from the San Juan Hill district and yet stands amid the whites. +Its clubs and classes, its employment agency, its gymnasium, its +luncheons for school children, its beautiful church, are all primarily +for the Negroes; but the colored rector has a friendly word for his +white neighbors, tow-headed Irish and German boys and girls sit upon his +steps, and his ministry has lessened the belligerent feeling between +the east and the west sides of Amsterdam Avenue. St. David's Episcopal +Church in the Bronx has a fresh air home at White Plains, cared for +personally by the rector and his wife, who spend their vacation with +tenement mothers and their children, the tired but grateful recipients +of their good-will. + +If there were ninety colored clergymen in New York in 1900, as the +census says, a number must have been without churches, itinerant +preachers or directors of small missions, supporting themselves by +other labor during the day. Those men who now fill the pulpits of +well-established churches have been trained in theological schools of +good standing, for the ignorant "darky" of the story who leaves the hot +work of the cotton field because he feels a "call" to preach does not +receive another from New York. The colored minister in this city works +hard and long, and finds a wearying number of demands upon his time. The +wedding and the funeral, the word of counsel to the young, and of +comfort to the aged, a multiplicity of meetings, two sermons every +Sunday, the continual strain of raising money, these are some of his +duties. With a day from fourteen to seventeen hours long he earns as few +men earn the meagre salary put into his hand. But his position among +his people is a commanding one, and carries with it respect and +responsibility. + +Strangers who visit colored churches to be amused by the vociferations +of the preacher and the responses of the congregation will be +disappointed in New York. Others, however, who attend, desiring to +understand the religious teaching of the thoughtful Negro, find much of +interest. They hear sermons marked by great eloquence. In the +Evangelical church the preacher is not afraid to give his imagination +play, and in finely chosen, vivid language, pictures his thought to his +people. Especially does he love to tell the story of a future life, of +Paradise with its rapturous beauty of color and sound, its golden +streets, its gates of precious stones, effulgent, radiant. He dwells not +upon the harshness, but rather upon the mercy of God. + +A theological library connected with a Calvinistic church, when recently +catalogued, disclosed two long shelves of books upon Hell and two slim +volumes upon Heaven. No such unloving Puritanism dominates the Negro's +thought. Hell's horrors may be portrayed at a revival to bring the +sinner to repentance, but only as an aid to a clearer vision of the +glories of Heaven. + +The Negro churches lay greater stress than formerly upon practical +religion; they try to turn a fine frenzy into a determination for +righteousness. This was strikingly exemplified lately in one of New +York's colored Baptist churches. During the solemn rite of immersion the +congregation began to grow hysterical, or "happy," as they would have +phrased it; there were cries of "Yes, Jesus," "We're comin', Lord," and +swayings of the body backward and forward. The minister with loud and +stirring appeal for a time encouraged these emotions. Then in a moment +he brought quiet to his congregation and called them to the consecration +of labor. Faith without works was vain. Baptism was not the end, but +only the beginning of their salvation. "You-all bleege ter work," he +said, "if yer gwine foller der Lord. Ain't Jesus work in der carpenter +shop till he nigh on thirty year old? Den one day he stood up (he ain't +none er yer two-by-fo' men) an' he tak off his blue apun (I reckon he +wore er apun like we-alls) an' he goes on down ter der wilderness, an' +John der Baptist baptize him." + +From oratory one turns naturally to music. The feeling for rhythm, for +melodious sound, that leads the Negro to use majestic words of which he +has not always mastered the meaning, leads him also to musical +expression. He has an instinct for harmony, and, when within hearing +distance of any instrument, will whistle, not the melody, however +assertive, but will add a part.[6] Those who have visited colored +schools, and especially the colored schools of the far South where the +pupils are unfamiliar with other music than their own, can never forget +the exquisite, haunting singing. When a foreman wants to get energetic +work from his black laborers he sets them to singing stirring tunes. The +Negro has his labor songs as the sailor has his chanties, and it would +be impossible to measure the joy coming to both through musical +expression. + +In New York, despite their poverty, few Negroes fail to possess some +musical instrument--a banjo perhaps, or a guitar, a mandolin or zither, +or it may be the highly prized piano. Visiting of an evening in the +Phipps model tenement, one hears a variety of gay tinkling sounds. And +besides the mechanical instruments there is always the great natural +instrument, the human voice. Singing, though not as common in the city +as in the country, is still often heard, especially in the summer, and +remains musical, though New York's noise and cheap and vulgar +entertainments have an unhappy fashion of roughening her children's +voices. + +Music furnishes a means of livelihood to many Negroes and supplements +the income of many others. Boys contribute to the family support by +singing cheap songs in saloons or even in houses of prostitution. A boy +"nightingale" will earn the needed money for rent while learning, all +too quickly, the ways of viciousness. Others, more carefully reared, +sing at church or secret society concert, perhaps receiving a little +pay. Men form male quartettes that for five or ten dollars furnish a +part of an evening's entertainment. There are many Negro musicians and +elocutionists who largely support themselves by their share in the +receipts from concerts and social gatherings. + +We speak of men crossing the line when they intermarry with the whites, +but there is another crossing of the line when some Negro by his genius +makes the world forget his race. Such a man is the artist, Henry Tanner; +and New York has such Negro musicians. Mr. Harry Burleigh, the baritone +at St. George's, has won high recognition, not only as an interpreter, +but as a composer of music; and one of the richest synagogues of the +city has a Negro for its assistant organist. There are five colored +orchestras in New York, the one conducted by Mr. Walter A. Craig having +toured successfully in New England and many other northern states. + +But the colored musician has usually found his opportunity for +expression and for a living wage upon the stage. Probably many of the +actors noted on the census list are musicians, and many of the +musicians, actors; the writer of the topical song having himself sung it +in vaudeville or musical comedy. Few New Yorkers appreciate how many of +the tunes hummed in the street or ground out on the hand-organ, have +originated in Negro brains. "The Right Church but the Wrong Pew," +"Teasing," "Nobody," "Under the Bamboo Tree," which Cole and Johnson, +the composers, heard the last thing as they left the dock in New York, +and the first thing when they arrived in Paris, these are a few of the +popular favorites. Handsome incomes have been netted by the shrewder +among these composers, and the demand for their songs is continuous. + +With a bright song and a jolly dance comes success. Picking up the copy +of the New York _Age_, that lies on my desk, I find jottings of +twenty-four colored troupes in vaudeville in the larger cities of the +North and West. Three are at Proctor's and three at Keith's. Their +economic outlook is not so hilarious as their songs, for transportation +is expensive and bookings are uncertain; yet pecuniarily these actors +are far better off than their more sober brothers who stick to their +elevators or their porters' jobs. + +Twenty years ago the Negro performer probably had little anticipation of +advancing beyond minstrel work, in which he sang loud, danced hard, and +told a funny story. S. H. Dudley, the leading comedian in the "Smart +Set" colored company, said in 1909: "When I started in business I had no +idea of getting as high as I am now. A minstrel company came to the +little town in Texas where I was raised, and at once my ambition fired +me to become a musician. So I bought a battered horn and began to toot, +to the great annoyance of my neighbors. Then I secured an engagement +with a minstrel company whose cornet player had fallen into the hands of +the law; and now here I am with one of the best colored shows ever +gotten together and a starring tour arranged for next season." The +movement from the minstrel show to the musical comedy, from the cheapest +form of buffoonery to attractive farce, and even to good comedy, has +been accomplished by a number of colored comedians. Williams and Walker +may be considered the pioneers in this movement, and the story of their +success, as Walker has told it, is a fine example of what the Negro can +do along the line of decided natural aptitude. And it is important to +notice this, for today, in the education of the race, ęsthetic instincts +are often suppressed with Puritan vigor, and labor is made ugly and +unwelcome. + +Bert Williams and George Walker, one a British West Indian, the other a +Westerner, met in California where each was hanging around a box +manager's office, looking for a job. Hardly more than boys, they secured +employment at seven dollars a week. That was in 1889. In 1908 they made +each $250 a week, and in later times they have doubled and quadrupled +this. Their first stage manager expected them to perform as the +blacked-up white minstrels were performing, but the two boys soon saw +that the Negro himself was far more entertaining than the buffoon +portrayed by the white man. They wanted to show the true Negro, and +billing themselves as the "real coons" (their white rivals called +themselves "coons") they played in San Francisco with some success. +Later they came to New York, and at Koster and Bial's made their first +hit. + +"Long before our run terminated," Walker said in telling of those early +days, "we discovered an important fact: that the hope of the colored +performer must be in making a radical departure from the old time +'darky' style of singing and dancing. So we set ourselves the task of +thinking along new lines. + +"The first move was to hire a flat in Fifty-third Street, furnish it, +and throw our doors open to all colored men who possessed theatrical and +musical ability and ambition. The Williams and Walker flat soon became +the headquarters of all the artistic young men of our race who were +stage-struck. We entertained the late Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who wrote +lyrics for us. By having these men about us we had the opportunity to +study the musical and theatrical ability of the most talented members of +our race." + +In 1893 the World's Fair was held at Chicago, and on the "Midway" the +visitor saw races from all over the world. Here was a Dahomey village, +with strange little huts, representative of the African home life. The +Dahomeyans themselves were late in arriving, and American Negroes, +sometimes with an added coat of black, were employed to represent them. +Among them were Williams and Walker, who played their parts until the +real Dahomeyans arriving, they became in turn spectators and studied the +true African. This contact with the dancing and singing of the primitive +people of their own race had an important effect upon their art. Their +lyrics recalled African songs, their dancing took on African movements, +especially Walker's. Any one who saw Walker in "Abyssinia," the most +African and the most artistic of their plays, must have recognized the +savage beauty of his dancing when he was masquerading as an African +king. + +After the Dahomey episode the success of the two men was continuous. "In +1902 and 1903," Walker said, "we had all New York and London doing the +cake walk." In February, 1908, they appeared in "Bandanna Land," at the +Majestic Theatre, and remained there for six months. Only those colored +men who have made a steady, uphill struggle for the chance to play good +comedy, know how important such recognition was for the Negro. "Bandanna +Land" was probably the most popular light opera in New York that winter +next to "The Merry Widow." The singing, especially that of the male +chorus, was often beautiful. Mrs. Walker's dancing and charming acting +were delightful, the chorus girls were above the average in beauty +and musical expression, and the two men who made the piece were +spontaneously, irresistibly funny; added to this, unlike its successful +rival, "Bandanna Land" was without a vulgar scene or word. + +This was the last time the two men played together. Walker became +seriously ill, and died in January, 1911. After their company disbanded, +Williams went back to the one-piece act of vaudeville, but as a star in +a white troupe. His position as a permanent actor in the "Follies of +1910" marks a new departure for the colored comedian, a departure won by +great talent combined with character and tact. + +Since 1908 the Majestic has seen another colored company, Cole and +Johnson's, presenting a half-Negro, half-Indian, musical comedy, the +"Red Moon." These two men, for years in vaudeville, have written songs +for Lillian Russell, Marie Cahill, Anna Held, and other popular musical +comedy and vaudeville singers. They have played for six months +continuously at the Palace Theatre, London. Accustomed to writing for +white actors, their own plays are not so distinctively African as +Williams and Walker's. Both Johnson and Cole are of the mulatto type, +and neither blackens his face. Cole is one of the most amusing men in +comedy in New York. He is tall and very thin, with a genius for finding +lank and grotesque costumes that are delightfully incongruous with his +grave face. The words of the musical comedies are his, the music, +Johnson's. He, too, has become seriously ill, and his company has +disbanded. In three years the colored stage has suffered serious loss, +but we see forming new and successful companies whose reputation will +soon be assured. + +Comedy has always furnished a medium for criticism of the foibles of the +times, and there are many sly digs at the white man in the colored play. +Ernest Hogan, now deceased, better than any one else played the rural +southern darky. In the "Oysterman" we saw him in contact with a white +scamp who was intent upon getting his recently acquired money. He was +urged to take stock in a land company, to buy where watermelons grew as +thick as potatoes, and chickens were as common as sparrows. The audience +hated the white man heartily and sided with the simple, kindly, black +youth, sitting with his dog at his side, on his cabin steps. Behind +boisterous laughter and raillery the writers of these comedies often +gain the sympathy of their hearers for the black race. + +In this attempt to show the occupational life of the Negro, we have +found that race prejudice often proves a bar to complete success, to +full manhood. Something of this is true with the actor as well as with +the laborer and the business man. In securing entrance in vaudeville, +color is at first an advantage. The "darky" to the white man is +grotesquely amusing, and by rolling his eyes, showing a glistening +smile, and wearing shoes that make a monstrosity of his feet, the Negro +may create a laugh where the man with a white skin would be hooted off +the stage. And since the laugh is so easily won, many colored actors +become indolent and content themselves, year after year, with playing +the part of buffoon. But with the ambition to rise in his profession +comes the difficult struggle to induce the audience to see a new Negro +in the black man of today. The public gives the colored man no +opportunity as a tragedian, demanding that his comedy shall border +always on the farcical. And what is demanded of the actor is also +demanded of the musician. Writers of the scores of some of our musical +comedies are musicians of superior training and ability, but rarely are +they permitted full expression. Mr. Will Marion Cook, the composer of +much of the music of "Bandanna Land," for a few moments gives a piece of +exquisite orchestration. When the colored minister rises and exhorts his +quarrelling friends to be at peace with one another, one hears a +beautiful harmony. I am told that Mr. Cook declares that the next score +he writes shall begin with ten minutes of serious music. If the audience +doesn't like it, they can come in late, but for ten minutes he will do +something worthy of his genius. + +However light-hearted a people, and however worthy of praise the +entertainment that brings a jolly, wholesome laugh, let us hope that in +the near future the Negro will find a more complete expression for his +musical and histrionic gifts. Some actor of commanding talent, whose +claims cannot be ignored, may reveal the larger life of the race. The +nineteenth century knew a great Negro actor, Ira Aldridge, a _protégé_ +and disciple of Edmund Kean. He played Othello to Kean's Iago, and in +the forties toured Europe with his own company, receiving high honors in +Berlin and St. Petersburg.[7] A dark-skinned African, of immense power, +physically and emotionally, he made Desdemona cry out in real fear, and +caused Bassanio instinctively to shrink as he demanded his pound of +flesh. Today's actor must be more subtle in his attack, but it may be +given to him to reveal the thoughts at the back of the black man's mind. +The genius of Zangwill gave us the picture of the children of the +Ghetto; perhaps from the theatre's seat the American will first +understand the despised black race. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] On West 133d Street two former Hampton students have a prosperous +little tailor and upholstering shop. + +[2] Those interested in the Negro in business should look for an +intensive study, shortly to be published, on the wage-earners and +business enterprises among Negroes in New York. It is entitled "The +Negro at Work in New York City," and has been made by George E. Haynes, +under the direction of the Bureau of Social Research of the New York +School of Philanthropy. + +[3] Since going to press the new and very beautiful building of St. +Philips' Episcopal Church, on W. 134th Street, has been opened. This is +a fine example of English Gothic and its architects are two young +colored men, one of whom was for years in the office of a white firm. + +[4] Mary Kingsley has some interesting generalizations on this point. +She speaks of the African mind approaching all things from a spiritual +point of view while the English mind approaches them from a material +point of view, and of "the high perception of justice you will find in +the African, combined with the inability to think out a pulley or a +lever except under white tuition."--_West African Studies_, p. 330. + +[5] Lincoln Hospital in New York, while receiving white and colored +patients, was especially designed to help the colored race. It has a +training school for colored nurses, but neither accepts colored medical +graduates as interns, nor allows colored doctors upon its staff. This is +one of many cases in which the good white people of the city are glad to +assist the poor and ailing Negro, but are unwilling to help the strong +and ambitious colored man to full opportunity. + +[6] See H. J. Wilson, "The Negro and Music," _Outlook_, Dec. 1, 1906. + +[7] William J. Simmons's "Men of Mark." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE COLORED WOMAN AS A BREAD WINNER + + +The life of the Negro woman of New York, if she belong to the laboring +class, differs in some important respects from the life of the white +laboring woman. Generalizations on so comprehensive a subject must, of +course, meet with many exceptions, but the observing visitor, familiar +with white and colored neighborhoods, quickly notes marked contrasts +between the two, contrasts largely the result of different occupational +opportunities. These pertain both to the married woman and the unmarried +working girl. + +The generality of white women in New York, wives of laboring men, +infrequently engage in gainful occupations. In the early years of +married life the wife relies on her husband's wage for support, and +within her tiny tenement-flat bears and rears her children and performs +her household duties--the sewing, cooking, washing, and ironing, and the +daily righting of the contracted rooms. She is a conscientious wife and +mother, and rarely, either by night or by day, journeys far from her own +home. When unemployment visits the family wage earner, she turns to +laundry work and day's cleaning for money to meet the rent and to supply +the household with scanty meals; but as soon as her husband resumes work +she returns to her narrow round of domestic duties. + +After a score of these monotonous years more prosperous times come to +the housewife. Every morning two or three children go out to work, and +their wages make heavier the family purse. Son and daughter, having +entered factory or store, bring home their pay envelopes unbroken on +Saturday nights, and the augmentation of the father's wage gives the +mother an income to administer. After the young people's wants in +clothing and entertainment have been in part supplied, it becomes +possible to buy new furniture on the instalment plan, to hire a piano, +even to move into a better neighborhood. The earnings of a number of +children, supplementing the wage of the head of the family, make life +more tolerable for all. + +These days, however, do not last long. Sons and daughters marry and +assume new responsibilities; the husband, his best strength gone, finds +unemployment increasing; and since saving, except for wasteful +industrial insurance, has seemed impossible without sacrificing the +decencies and pleasures of the children, the end of the woman's married +life is likely to be hard and comfortless. + +This rough description may fairly be taken to represent the life of the +average New York white woman of the laboring class. It is not, however, +the life of the average colored woman. With her, self-sustaining work +usually begins at fifteen, and by no means ceases with her entrance upon +marriage, which only entails new financial burdens. The wage of the +husband, as we have seen, is usually insufficient to support a family, +save in extreme penury, and the wife accepts the necessity of +supplementing the husband's income. This she accomplishes by taking in +washing or by entering a private family to do housework. Sometimes she +is away from her tenement nearly every day in the week; again the bulk +of her earnings comes from home industry. Her day holds more diversity +than that of her white neighbor; she meets more people, becomes familiar +with the ways of the well-to-do,--their household decorations, their +dress, their refinements of manner; but she has but few hours to give to +her children. With her husband she is ready to be friend and helpmate; +but should he turn out a bad bargain, she has no fear of leaving him, +since her marital relations are not welded by economic dependence. An +industrious, competent woman, she works and spends, and in her scant +hours of leisure takes pride in keeping her children well-dressed and +clean. + +At the second period of her married life, when her boys and girls, few +in number if she be a New Yorker, begin to engage in self-supporting +work, her condition shows less improvement than that of the white woman +of her class. Sometimes her children hand her their whole wage, far +oftener they bring her only such part as they choose to spare. The +strict accounting of the minor to the parent, usual among Northerners in +the past, and today common among the immigrant class, is not a part of +the Negro's training. Rather, as the race has attained freedom it has +copied the indulgent attitude of the once familiar "master," and regrets +that its offspring must enter upon any work. Children with this +tradition about them use the money they earn largely for the +gratification of their vanity, not for the lessening of their mother's +tasks. But a more potent factor than lack of discipline keeps the mother +from being the administrator of the family's joint earnings. White boys +and girls in New York enter work that makes it possible and advantageous +for them to dwell at home; Negroes must go out to service, accept long +and irregular hours in hotel or apartment, travel for days on boat or +train. The family home is infrequently available to them, and money +given in to it brings small return. Under these circumstances it is not +strange if the mother must continue her round of washing and scrubbing. + +The last years of life of the Negro woman, probably a little more than +the last years of the white, are likely to bring happiness. With a +mother at work a grandmother becomes an important factor, and elderly +colored women are often seen bringing up little children or helping in +the laundry--that great colored home industry. Accustomed all their +lives to hard labor, it is easy for them to find work that shall repay +their support, and in their children's households they are treated with +respect and consideration. + +The contrast in the lives of the colored and white married women is not +more strongly marked than the contrast in the lives of their unmarried +daughters and sisters. Unable to enter any pursuit except housework, the +unskilled colored girl goes out to service or helps at home with the +laundry or sewing. Factory and store are closed to her, and rarely can +she take a place among other working girls. Her hours are the long, +irregular hours of domestic service. She brings no pay envelope home to +her mother, the two then carefully discussing how much belongs +rightfully for board, and how much may go for the new coat or dress, +but takes the eighteen or twenty dollars given her at the end of the +month, and quite by herself determines all her expenditures. Far oftener +than any class of white girls in the city she lives away from the +parental home. + +These are some of the differences found by the observer who looks into +the Negro and the white tenement. They need not, however, rest alone +upon any observer's testimony. We have in the census abundant statistics +for their verification. Scattered among the volumes on Population, +Occupations, and Women at Work are many facts concerning Negro women +workers of New York, all of them confirmatory of the description just +given. We may note the most important. + +In 1900, whereas 4.2 per cent of the white married women in New York +were engaged in gainful occupations, 31.4 per cent of the Negro married +women were earning their living, over seven times as many in proportion +as the whites.[1] + +Again, in the total population of New York's women workers, 80 per cent +were single, 10 per cent married, and 10 per cent widowed and divorced; +while among the Negroes, the single women were only 53 per cent, the +married 25 per cent, and the widowed 22.[2] + +Statistics of the age period at which women are at work, show the +Negro's long continuing wage-earning activity. Between sixteen and +twenty is a busy time for the women of both races. Among the whites 59 +per cent are in gainful occupations, among the Negroes 66 per cent. But +as the girl arrives at the period when she is likely to marry, the per +cent of workers among the whites drops rapidly, until for white women, +forty-five and over, it is 13.5, about one in seven. With the colored, +among the women forty-five years of age and over, 53 per cent, more +than half, still engage in gainful toil.[3] + +Family life can be studied in the census table. While 59 per cent of the +unmarried white girls at work live at home, this is found to be true +of but 25 per cent of the colored girls; that is, 75 per cent, +three-quarters of all the colored unmarried working women, live with +their employers or board.[4] + +The census volume on occupations reveals at once the narrow range of the +New York colored woman's working life. Personal and domestic service +absorbs 90 per cent of her numbers against 40 per cent among the white. +But before considering more fully the colored girl at work, we need to +notice another statistical fact, the preponderance in the city of Negro +women over Negro men. + +Like the foreigner, the youth of the Negro race comes first to the city +to seek a livelihood. The colored population shows 41 per cent of its +number between the ages of 20 and 35. But unlike the foreigner, the +Negro women find larger opportunity and come in greater numbers than the +men. Their range of work is narrow, but within it they can command +double the wages they receive at home, and if they are possessed of +average ability, they are seldom long out of work. With the immense +growth of wealth in New York the demand for servants continually +increases, and finding little response from the white native born +population, many mistresses receive readily the services of the +English-speaking southern and West Indian blacks. So the boats from +Charleston and Norfolk and the British West Indies bring scores and +hundreds of Negro women from country districts, from cities where they +have spent a short time at service, girls with and girls without +experience, all seeking better wages in a new land. + +Mr. Kelly Miller was the first to call attention to the presence in +American cities of surplus Negro women.[5] The phenomenon is not +peculiar to New York. Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, all show the +same condition. In Atlanta the women number 143 to every hundred colored +men. New York shows 123 to every masculine one hundred. These surplus +women account in part for the number of Negro women workers in New York +not living at home. Some are with their employers, but others lodge in +the already crowded tenements, for the southern servant, unaccustomed to +spending the night at her employer's, in New York also, frequently +arranges to leave her mistress when her work is done. In their hours of +leisure the surplus women are known to play havoc with their neighbors' +sons, even with their neighbors' husbands, for since lack of men makes +marriage impossible for about a fifth of New York's colored girls, +social disorder results. Surplus Negro women, able to secure work, +support idle, able-bodied Negro men. The lounger at the street corner, +the dandy in the parlor thrumming on his banjo, means a Malindy of the +hour at the kitchen washboard. In a town in Germany, where men were +sadly scarce, I was told that a servant girl paid as high as a mark to +a soldier to walk with her in the Hofgarten on a Sunday afternoon. +Colored men in New York command their "mark," and girls are found who +keep them in polished boots, fashionable coats, and well-creased +trousers. Could the Negro country boy be as certain as his sister of +lucrative employment in New York, or could he oftener persuade her to +remain with him on the farm, he would better city civilization. But the +demand for servants increases, and the colored girl continues to be +attracted to the city where she can earn and spend. + +The table on the following page shows in condensed form the occupations +of the Negro women in New York. As we see, the Negro women number +forty-four in every thousand women workers. + + FEMALES TEN YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS IN + NEW YORK + + ============================================================ + | | | Number to + | Total | Negro | every 1000 + | | | workers + ----------------------------+---------+--------+------------ + Professional service | 22,422 | 281 | 12 + | | | + Domestic and personal | | | + service | 146,722 | 14,586 | 100 + Laundresses | 16,102 | 3,224 | 200 + Servants and waitresses | 103,963 | 10,297 | 99 + All others | 24,657 | 1,065 | 43 + | | | + Trade and transportation | 65,318 | 106 | Between one + | | | and two + Manufacturing and | | | + mechanical pursuits | 132,535 | 1,138 | 7 + Dressmakers | 37,514 | 813 | 22 + Seamstresses | 18,108 | 249 | 14 + All others | 76,913 | 76 | 1 + | | | + Total including some | | | + occupations not specified | 367,437 | 16,114 | 44 + ============================================================ + + Federal Census 1900: Occupations, Table 43, p. 638 + +Ninety per cent of all the Negro women workers of New York are in +domestic and personal service. This includes a variety of positions. +Some Negro girls work in stores, dusting stock, taking charge of cloak +or toilet rooms, scrubbing floors. Their hours are regular, but the pay, +five or six, or very occasionally eight dollars a week, means a scanty +livelihood without hope of advancement. The position of maid in a +theatre where perquisites are larger is prized, and a new and pleasant +place is that of a maid on a limited train. But the bulk of the girls +are servants in boarding-houses, or are with private families as nurses, +waitresses, cooks, laundresses, maids-of-all-work, earning from sixteen +and eighteen to twenty-five and even thirty dollars a month. +Occasionally a very skilful cook can command as high a monthly wage as +fifty dollars. + +The colored girl is frequently found engaged at general housework in a +small apartment. Her desire to return to her lodging at night makes her +popular with families living in contracted space. With the conveniences +of a New York flat, dumb-waiter, clothes-dryer, gas, and electricity, +general housework is not severe. Work begins early, seven at the latest, +and lasts until the dinner is cleared away, at half-past eight or nine. +Released then from further tasks, the young girl goes to her tiny inner +tenement room, dons a fresh dress, and then, as chance or her training +determines, walks the streets, goes to the theatre, or attends the class +meeting at her church. Entertainments among the Negroes are rarely under +way until ten o'clock, and short hours of sleep in ill-ventilated rooms +soon weaken the vitality of the new-comer. Housework under these +conditions does not create much ambition; the mistress moves, flitting, +in New York fashion, from one flat to another, and the girl also flits +among employers, changing with the whim of the moment. + +Few subjects present so fascinating a field for discussion as domestic +service, and the housewife of today enters into it with energy, +sometimes decrying the modern working girl, again planning household +economics that shall lure her from factory or shop. The only point we +need to consider now is the dissatisfaction that results when 64 per +cent of the women of a race are forced by circumstances into one +occupation. Those with native ability along this line succeed and make +others and themselves happy. The faithful, patient, loyal Negro servant +is well-known, the black mammy has passed into American literature, but +not every colored woman can wisely be given this position. Some of the +Negro girls who take up housework in New York are capable of more +intelligent labor, and chafe under their limitations; others have not +the ability to do good housework; for domestic service requires more +mental capacity than is demanded in many factories. In short, a great +many colored girls in New York are round pegs in square holes, and the +community is the loser by it. + +Among these round pegs are girls who, determining no longer to drudge in +lonely kitchens, contrive, as we shall see later, to find positions at +other more attractive reputable work. Others, deciding in favor of +material betterment at whatever cost, lower their moral standard and +secure easier and more remunerative jobs. A well-paying place, with +short hours and high tips, at once offers itself to the colored girl who +is willing to work for a woman of the demi-monde. In the sporting house +also she is preferred as a servant, her dark complexion separating her +from other inmates. In 1858, Sanger wrote in his "History of +Prostitution," "The servants (in these houses) are almost always colored +women. Their wages are liberal, their perquisites considerable, and +their work light." Untrained herself, bereft of home influence, with an +ancestry that sometimes cries out her parent's weakness in the contour +and color of her face, the Negro girl in New York, more even than the +foreign immigrant, is subject to degrading temptation. The good people, +who are often so exacting, want her for her willingness to work long +hours at a lower wage than the white; and the bad people, who are often +so carelessly kind, offer her light labor and generous pay. It is small +wonder that she sometimes chooses the latter. + +Not all the colored girls who work in questionable places and with +questionable people take the jobs from choice; some are sent without +knowing the character of the house they enter. A few years ago an +agitation was started for the protection of helpless Negro immigrants +who had fallen into the hands of unscrupulous employment agencies. A +system existed, and still exists, by which employment agencies were able +to advance the travelling expenses of southern girls, who on their +arrival in New York were held in debt until the cost of the journey had +been many times repaid. Helpless in the power of the agent, the +new-comer was forced to work where he wished. Under the city's +department of licenses some of the more unscrupulous of these agencies +have been closed, and philanthropy has placed a visitor at the docks to +give aid and advice to unprotected girls. But the danger is by no means +over. Those familiar with the subject assert that there is a +proportionately larger black slave than white slave traffic. + +There is a gainful occupation for women, black and white, too important +to be left unnoticed. The census does not tabulate it. The best people +strive to ignore it, and carefully sheltered girls grow up unconscious +of its existence. But the employment agent understands its commercial +value, and little children in the red light neighborhood are as familiar +with it as with the vending of peanuts on the street. To the poor it is +always an open door affording at least a temporary respite from +dispossession and starvation. How many of the colored turn to it, we do +not know--certainly not a few. Some gain from it a meagre livelihood, +but others, for a time at least, achieve comfort and even luxury. + +Among the round pegs that the square holes so uncomfortably chafe are +colored girls of intelligence and charm who deliberately join the +anti-social class. Probably a few in any case would lead this life, but +the history of many shows an unsuccessful struggle for congenial work, +ending with a choice of material comfort however high the moral cost. In +One Hundred and Thirty-fourth and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Streets +are apartments where such girls live, two or three together, surrounded +by comforts that their respectable neighbors who go out to cook, wash, +and iron may fruitlessly long for all their lives. A colored +philanthropic worker, stopping by chance at the door of one of these +places, saw an old college friend. "How can you do it!" she cried as she +recognized the life the girl was leading, "How can you do it! I would +rather kill myself scrubbing!" "There is the difference between us," +came the answer, "I am not willing to die, and I cannot and will not +scrub." + +It is pleasant and encouraging to turn from colored women who have given +up the struggle, to ambitious, successful workers. Some among these are +in the domestic service group and enjoy with heartiness their tasks as +nurse-maid or cook. "This is my piano day," an expert colored +washerwoman says of a Monday morning. Among the domestic service +workers, as classified by the census, is the trained nurse, filling an +increasingly important position in New York. In 1909, Lincoln Hospital +graduated twenty-one colored nurses, some of whom remain in New York to +do excellent work. + +In the professions, with the women as with the men, the first place +numerically is occupied by performers upon the stage. So much has been +said of the Negro as an actor that there is little to add. A rather +better class of colored than of white women join musical comedy chorus +troupes, for fifteen or eighteen dollars a week that will attract a +Negro to the stage can be made by a white girl in a dozen other ways. +Lightness of color seems a requisite for a stage position, unless a dark +skin is offset by very great ability, as in the case of Aida Walker, one +of the most graceful and charming women in musical comedy. + +No record is kept of the number of colored teachers in the city's public +schools, but each year Negro graduates from the normal college secure +positions. These are found from the kindergarten through the primary +and up to the highest grammar grade. The colored girl with intellectual +ability, particularly if she comes of an old New York family, is apt to +turn to teaching. Her novitiate is long, but a permanent certificate +secured, she is sure of a good salary, increasing with her years of +service, and ending in a pension. This path of security has perhaps +tended to keep New York colored girls from going into other lines of +work. I have not yet found one who has graduated from a university. +Pratt Institute and the Teachers' College have colored normal students, +but they are usually from the South or West, not New Yorkers born. + +Philanthropy is opening up important lines of opportunity to the Negro +woman in New York. In 1903, a colored graduate nurse secured an +interview with the Secretary of the New York Charity Organization +Society, and so ably presented to him the need of Negro visitors among +Negroes that she was appointed visiting nurse for the colored sick who +came under the notice of the Society. In time the position changed into +that of a colored district visitor, other colored nurses entering in +numbers into district nursing work. In 1910, three nurses were employed +by the Nurses' Settlement, two by the Association for Improving the +Condition of the Poor of Manhattan, and two by the District Nursing +Association of Brooklyn. With increased knowledge of the sickness and +suffering amid the Negro poor, and of their need of proper care in their +homes, the number of these nurses will doubtless increase. Colored women +rank high among the trained nurses of New York. + +Other philanthropic work lately has been undertaken by Negro women in +New York. In 1910, besides the nurses of whom we have spoken, there were +at the head of societies in salaried positions, two settlement workers, +two matrons of day nurseries, two matrons of homes in which much social +work was carried on, many employees in colored orphan asylums, a teacher +of domestic science in a home-keeping flat, a traveller's aid visitor, +a playground instructor, besides workers in various religious +organizations. This does not include the many colored women doing +social and recreation work in the public schools and on the city's +playgrounds. Indeed, the difficulty in New York is to secure trained +colored women for philanthropic work, the Negro's attitude still being +that of the great majority of white women a few years ago, that love for +children and a sentimental kindness constitute the requisites for work +among the poor. But the school of experience is training workers, and as +the schools of philanthropy of New York, Boston, and Chicago also +graduate colored students, we shall have in the North the intelligent, +trained workers whom we need. + +The little kindergarten girl who, with head erect, walked past the +jeering line of boys to the green trees and soft grass of the park has +her counterpart in many young women of New York. In 1909, a colored girl +graduated from one of the city's dental colleges, the first woman of her +race to take this degree in the state. From the first her success was +remarkable. Colored girls with ability and steady purpose and dogged +determination have won success in clerical and business work; but the +last large and efficient group is that classified in the census under +mechanical and manufacturing pursuits: the dressmakers, seamstresses, +milliners. + +Colored women have always been known as good sewers, and recently they +have studied at their trade in some of the best schools. From 1904 to +1910, the Manhattan Trade School graduated thirty-four colored girls in +dressmaking, hand sewing, and novelty making. The public night school on +West Forty-sixth Street, under its able colored principal, Dr. W. L. +Bulkley, since 1907, has educated hundreds of women in sewing, +dressmaking, millinery, and artificial flower-making. While the majority +of the pupils have taken the courses for their private use, a large +minority are entering the business world. They meet with repeated +difficulties; white girls refuse to work in shops with them, private +employers object to their color, but they have, nevertheless, made +creditable progress. The census reports the number of Negro dressmakers +to have quadrupled in the United States from 1890 to 1900. Something +comparable to this increase in dressmaking and allied trades has taken +place among the Negroes of New York, and it has come through education +and persistence, and the increase of trade among the colored group +itself. Numbers of these dressmakers and milliners earn a livelihood, +though often a scanty one, from the patronage of the people of their own +race. + +But despite her efforts and occasional successes, the colored girl in +New York meets with severer race prejudice than the colored man, and is +more persistently kept from attractive work. _She gets the job that the +white girl does not want._ It may be that the white girls want the wrong +thing, and that the jute mill and tobacco shop and flower factory are +more dangerous to health and right living than the mistress's kitchen, +but she knows her mind, and follows the business that brings her liberty +of action when the six o'clock whistle blows. What she desires for +herself, however, she refuses to her colored neighbor. Occasionally an +employer objects to colored girls, but the Manhattan Trade School +repeatedly, in trying to place its graduates, has found that opposition +to the Negro has come largely from the working girls. Race prejudice +has even gone so far as to prevent a colored woman from receiving home +work when it entailed her waiting in the same sitting-room with white +women. Of course, this is not the universal attitude. In friendly talks +with hundreds of New York's white women workers, I have found the +majority ready to accept the colored worker. Jewish girls are especially +tolerant. They believe that good character and decent manners should +count, not color; but an aggressive, combative minority is quite sure +that no matter how well educated or virtuous she may be, no black woman +is as good as a white one. So the few but belligerent aristocrats +triumph over the many half-ashamed, timid democrats. + +The shirtwaist makers' strike of 1910 was so profoundly important in its +breaking down of feeling between nationalities, its union of all working +women in a common cause, that the colored girl, while very slightly +concerned in the strike itself, may profit by the more generous feeling +it engendered. Certainly an entrance into store and workshop would be to +her immense advantage. She needs the discipline of regular hours, of +steady training, of order and system. She needs also to become part of a +strong labor group, to share its working class ideal, to feel the weight +of its moral opinion; instead of looking into the mirror of her wealthy +mistress, she needs to reflect the aspirations of the strong, earnest +women who toil. + +Before bringing the story of the life of the New York colored working +woman to a close, it may not be amiss to look closely at the +discrimination practised against her, not only in her work, but in her +daily life. The Negro comes North and finds himself half a man. Does the +woman, too, come to be but half a woman? What is her status in the city +to which she turns for opportunity and larger freedom? + +Four years ago, within a few hours' time, two stories were told me, +illustrative of the colored woman's status. Neither occurred in the city +of New York, but both are indicative of its temper. The first I heard +from a woman skilled in a difficult profession, a Canadian now residing +in the United States, and the descendant of a fugitive slave. Her +youthful companions had all been white, and while an African in the +darkness of her skin and her musical voice, her rearing had been that of +an Englishwoman. "Shortly after coming to New York, I went for the first +time," she told me, "to a little resort on the Jersey coast. A board +walk flanked the ocean, and on the other side were shops and places of +amusement. Going out one morning with two companions, a colored man and +woman, we turned into an enclosure to examine a gaily painted +merry-go-round. The place was open to the public, and a few nursery +maids with their charges were seated about. The man in our party, +interested in the mechanism of the machine, went up to it and began to +explain it to us. Quite suddenly a rough fellow, in charge of the place, +walked over and called out, 'Get out of here! We don't allow niggers.' +The attack, to me at least, was so overwhelming that I did not move at +once. Thereupon I was again called 'nigger,' and ordered out. + +"When I reached the beach, I asked my companions to leave me, and I sat +on a bench looking upon the waves. After a time an old woman came to my +side, and said a little timidly, 'What are you thinking about, dearie?' +Looking in her face I saw that she feared that I would commit suicide. +'I am thinking,' I said turning to her, 'that I wish the ocean might +rise up and drown every white person on the face of the earth.' 'Oh, you +mustn't say that,' she cried horrified, and left me. After I cannot tell +how many minutes or hours, I returned to my boarding-house, and then to +my home in New York. I had had a great many white friends in my native +home; I had played with them, eaten with them, slept with them. Now I +destroyed their letters, and resolved never to know them again. That was +my first affront in the United States, and while I have learned to feel +somewhat differently, a little to discriminate, I can never forget that +the white people in the North stand for the insult which was cast upon +me." + +On the evening of the same day I had learned of this happening, a man +from a prominent college in New York State told me of a Negro classmate. +"He was a pleasant, intelligent fellow from the South," he said, "and +while I never knew him well, I was always glad to see him. One day, at +commencement time, when we were all having our relatives about, he +boarded my car with a young colored woman, evidently his sister. Without +a thought I rose, lifted my hat, and gave her my seat. Never again shall +I see such a look of gratitude as that which lighted up his face when he +bowed in acknowledgment of my courtesy. It revealed the race question to +me, and yet I had performed only the simplest act of a gentleman." + +In these two incidents we see the undecided, perplexing position of the +Negro woman in New York. Today she may be turned out of a public resort +as a "nigger," tomorrow she may receive the dues of a gentlewoman. And +since, while I write, I hear the cry of a class in the community who +adjudge the expulsion necessary since the other course must lead at once +to social equality, I make haste to add that the second story did not +end in wedlock. As far as I have seen, it never does. Intermarriage of +white and black in New York is so slight as to be a negligible quantity, +but amalgamation between the two races is not uncommon. And this we may +say with certainty, the man most blatant against the "nigger" in New +York as all over the country is the man most ready to enter into illicit +relationship with the woman whom he claims to despise. The raising of +the hat to the colored woman brings a diminution in sexual immorality. + +If the Negro civilization of New York is to be lifted to a higher level, +the white race must consistently play a finer and more generous part +toward the colored woman. There are many inherent difficulties against +which she must contend. Slavery deprived her of family life, set her to +daily toil in the field, or appropriated her mother's instincts for the +white child. She has today the difficult task of maintaining the +integrity and purity of the home. Many times she has succeeded, often +she has failed, sometimes she has not even tried. A vicious environment +has strengthened her passions and degraded her from earliest girlhood. +Beyond any people in the city she needs all the encouragement that +philanthropy, that human courtesy and respect, that the fellowship of +the workers can give,--she needs her full status as a woman. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] These figures are obtained by a combination of tables, one in +Population, Vol. II, Part II, p. 332, describing the whole of Greater +New York, the other in Women at Work, pp. 266 to 275, describing +Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. The error through the omission of +Richmond and Queens is probably negligible. + +[2] Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 28, pp. 266 to 274. Among +800 married and widowed colored women whom I myself visited, I found +only 150, 19 per cent, who were not engaged in gainful occupations. + +[3] Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 10, pp. 147 to 151. + +[4] Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 28, pp. 266 to 275. + +[5] This is incorporated in a chapter in Mr. Miller's volume on "Race +Adjustment." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +RICH AND POOR + + +Of the many nations and races that dwell in New York none, with the +exception of the Chinese, is so aloof from us in its social life as the +Negro. The childish recollection of an old school friend, recently +related to me, well illustrates this. Across the way from where she +lived there was a house occupied by a family of mulattoes. They were the +quietest and least obtrusive people on the block, and the wife, who was +known to be very beautiful, on the rare occasions when she left her +home, was always veiled. The husband was little seen, and the child, a +shy boy, never played on the street. For years the family lived aloof +from their neighbors, the subject of hushed and mysterious questioning. + +Probably had one of the white women dropped in some day to say +good-morning or to borrow a recipe book, the mystery would have been +wholly dispelled,--a pity surely for the children. Few of New York's +citizens are so American as the colored, few show so little that is +unusual or picturesque. The educated Italian might have in his home some +relic of his former country, the Jew might show some symbol of his +religion; but the Negro, to the seeker of the unusual, would seem +commonplace. The colored man in New York has no associations with his +ancient African home, no African traditions, no folk lore. The days of +slavery he wishes completely to forget, even to the loss of his +exquisite plantation music. He is ambitious to be conventional in his +manners, his customs, striving as far as possible to be like his +neighbor--a distinctly American ambition. In consequence, after +indicating the lines along which he has achieved economic success, one +finds little to describe in the lives of the well-to-do that will be of +interest. And yet this sketch would be open to criticism if, after so +long a survey of the working class, it gave no space to those Negroes +who have achieved a fair degree of wealth and leisure; and perhaps the +very recital of the likeness of these people to those about them may be +of importance, for the great mass of white Americans are like a +vivacious Kentuckian of my acquaintance, who, on learning something of a +well-to-do Negro family, assured me that she knew less of such people +than she did of the Esquimaux. + +Mr. William Archer, in his book, "Through Afro-America," describes a +round of visits to southern Negro homes, where, with touching pride, his +hostesses show their material wealth, or rather the material wealth of +their race as embodied in drawing-room, dining-room, and bedroom. There +seemed to be nothing remarkable about the rooms unless their very +existence was remarkable. So the interiors of colored homes in New York +would reveal nothing to mark them from the homes of their neighbors, +save perhaps the universal presence of some musical instrument. In +Brooklyn, the Bronx, and in the Jersey suburbs, Negroes buy and rent +houses, sometimes with a few of their race in close proximity, sometimes +with white neighbors only on the block. Brooklyn seems always to have +shown less race antagonism than Manhattan (where, indeed, anything but +the apartment is beyond the pocket-book of people of modest means), and +it has been in Brooklyn for the past three generations that the +well-to-do colored families with their children have chiefly been found. + +Much pleasant hospitality and entertainment take place behind these +modest doors. Visitors are common, relatives from the east and west and +south, and little dinner and supper parties are numerous. If church +discipline does not interfere, the women have their afternoons of +whist, and despite church discipline, dancing is very common, few +entertainments proving successful without it. To play well upon some +musical instrument is almost a universal accomplishment, and, as with +the Germans, families and friends meet the oftener for this harmonious +bond. + +The social life of the well-to-do colored family generally centres about +the church, and with a regularity unusual among the white people, father +and mother and children attend the Sunday and week-day meetings. +Colored society is also at the period of the bazaar and fair, the +concert and dramatic entertainment. Money is raised by this means for +the church, the private charity, or to supplement the dues of the mutual +benefit society. There are a number of Negroes in the different large +cities who support themselves by concerts and readings, appearing at +benefits in the North and South, where they receive a third or a half of +the receipts. Amateur performances are also common. A young New York +college man, one winter evening, saw two refined, remarkably +well-dressed colored women turn in at the entrance of the Grand Central +Palace. Purchasing a ticket for the benefit, as it proved, of a colored +day nursery (the entertainment netted $2300), he followed them to find +himself in the Afro-American social world. For while the amateur dancing +and singing upon the stage were pretty and attractive, the young man was +far more interested in the audience. "And the disappointing thing about +it," he remarked in telling of it afterwards, "was that they were +exactly like other people." To use the newspaper phrase, "there was no +'story.'" They were a group of Americans, trained in the social +conventions of their own land. + +There are many secret and benefit societies among the Negroes in New +York. The Masons have nine meeting places; the Elks, ten lodges. The Odd +Fellows have twenty-two places of meeting. The United Order of True +Reformers, a strong Negro organization in the South, where it conducts +large business enterprises, has forty-four head-quarters in church and +hall and private house, where meetings are held twice a month. Many +benefit societies are closely associated with the churches. Colored men +and women are very busy with their multitudinous church and society and +benefit meetings. I remember once attending an evening service at a +colored church when the minister preached the sermon to the benefit +orders of St. Luke's and the Galilean Fishermen. The officers, some of +them carrying spears with blue and red and white trimmings, marched down +the aisle and took their seats at the front of the pulpit. Their leader +was in purple, wearing a huge badge like a breastplate with yellow and +green stones. The women, equally prominent with the men, were dressed +one in yellow with green over it, and broad purple bands, two in white +with golden crowns. The pageant was very pretty, even beautiful, but too +artless in its simple enjoyment of color and display for the +conventional society of New York, and the colored "four hundred" were +not in it. + +Who are the four hundred in New York's colored society? An outsider +would be very bold who should attempt to answer. Twenty-five years ago +the New Yorker born, especially the descendant of some prominent +anti-slavery worker, would have held foremost social position. The taint +of slavery was far removed from these people, who looked with scorn upon +arrivals from the South. Many were proud of their Indian blood, and told +of the freedom that came to their black ancestors who married Long +Island Indians. But these old New York colored families, sometimes +bearing historic Dutch and English names, have diminished in size and +importance as have the old white families beside them. The younger +generation has gone west, or has died and left no issue. And into the +city has come a continual stream of Southerners and more recently West +Indians, some among them educated, ambitious men and women, full of the +energy and determination of the immigrant who means to attain to +prominence in his new home. These new-comers occupy many of the pulpits, +are admitted to the bar, practise medicine, and become leaders in +politics, and their wives are quite ready to take a prominent part in +the social world. They meet the older residents, and the various groups +intermingle, though not without some friction. Like a country village, +the New York Negro social world knows the happenings of its neighbors, +gossips over their shortcomings, rejoices, though with something of +jealousy, over their successes, and has its cliques, its many leaders, +but also its broad-minded spirits who strive to bring the whole village +life into harmony. + +As we have learned from a study of the occupational life of the Negro, +the majority of men and women of means are in the professional class, or +in the city or federal service. Such positions do not carry with them +large incomes, and remembering the high cost of living in New York, and +the exorbitant rental paid by black men, we can see that, gauged by the +white man's standard, the Negro with his two or three or four thousand +dollars a year is poor. Yet with his very limited income the demands +upon him are enormous. In the first place, he must educate his children, +and this means a large expenditure, for only in the technical schools or +the college can his boy or girl be prepared for a successful career. The +white boy may find some business firm that will give him a chance of +advancement, but the colored boy must receive such an education as shall +fit him to start an enterprise by himself, unless he enters public +service. So the trade or professional school or college absorbs the +savings of many years. + +The church is another large recipient of the Negro's slender means. +Watching the dimes and quarters drop into the contribution plate as the +dark-faced congregation files past the pulpit on a Sunday evening, one +wonders whether any other people in America willingly give so large an +amount of their income to their religious organizations. And not only +will money be requested for the church's need, but special offerings +will be given to home and foreign mission work. In 1907, the African +Methodist Church alone raised $36,000 for home and foreign missions. The +Baptists raised $44,000. Educational work demands a share: the African +Methodists support twenty schools, the African Zion twelve, and the +Negro Baptists one hundred and twenty. The other denominations do their +share, and the Negroes also give to the schools conducted by white +churches for their people. This money comes from all over the country, +and the well-to-do New York Negro must contribute his part. + +Home charities also help to drain the Negro's purse. Manhattan and +Brooklyn have a number of colored philanthropies, orphan asylums, old +people's homes, rescue missions, Young Men's and Young Women's Christian +Associations, and social settlements. Some are supported entirely by +white people, but the greater number receive some contributions from the +colored, and a few are dependent for money upon that race alone. +Thousands of dollars are raised yearly, among the well-to-do New York +Negroes, for these institutions. + +Yet, with all these various philanthropic activities, one too frequently +hears that the Negro does not support his own charities. As though +anything of the sort could be expected of him! A little time ago, in +asking for money for settlement work among Negroes, I was asked in turn +by the exquisitely dressed woman before me, whose furs and gown and +jewels must have represented a year's salary of a school-teacher, the +type of wealthy woman among the colored, why the well-to-do Negroes did +not support the settlement themselves. No such question is asked when we +demand money for work among the Italians or the Jews, who have +incomparably larger means. Indeed, one may question whether the Negro is +not too generous for the materialistic city of New York, whether his +successes would not be greater were he niggardly toward himself and +others. He lives well, dresses well, enjoys a good play, strives to give +every advantage to his children, helps the poor of his race. To hold his +own today in this civilization, he needs to be taught to seek first +riches, waiting until much treasure has been laid up before he allows +philanthropy to draw upon his bank account. + +The traveller to the British West Indies finds three divisions among the +inhabitants, white, colored, and black, each group having a distinct +social status. In the United States, on the other hand, there are but +two groups, white and colored, or as the latter is now more frequently +designated, Negro, the term thus losing its original meaning, and +becoming a designation for a race. But while the white race usually +makes no social distinction between the light and the dark Negro, +classing all alike, social lines are drawn within the color line. Years +ago these were more common than they are now. Charles W. Chesnutt, the +novelist, tells some amusing and pathetic stories of distinctions +between colored and black. One of his mulatto heroes, upon finding, as +he thinks, that the congressman who is to call upon his daughter is a +jet black Negro instead of the mulatto he was supposed to be, to prevent +a breach of hospitality, invents a case of diphtheria in the family +and quarantines the house, only to learn later, to his intense +mortification, that he has committed a mistake of identification, and +that the congressman is light after all. But this story belongs with the +last generation. Black men, if they are distinguished citizens, can +enter any colored society, and they not infrequently marry light wives. +Success, a position of probity and importance, these are attributes that +count favorably for the suitor, and as they are quite as often in the +man of strong African lineage as in the mulatto, they gain the desired +end. + +Within this little colored world of a few thousand souls, a drop in the +city's human sea, there is great upheaval and turmoil. The North is the +Negro's centre for controversy regarding his rightful position in the +commonwealth; and in the large cities, in Boston and Chicago, +Philadelphia and New York, the battle rages. The little society is +often divided into hostile camps regarding party politics or the +acceptance of a government position that brings the suspicion of a +bribe. Political, economic, educational matters as they affect the black +race, these are the subjects that fill the mind of the thoughtful +colored man and woman. + +In his "Souls of Black Folk," Dr. Du Bois describes the white man's +tactlessness when, as always, he approaches the Negro with a question +regarding his race. But the Negro, apart from his personal home +affairs, impresses the outsider as having little else as subject for +conversation. World politics, these concern him only as they affect the +race question. Australia is a country where the government excludes +Africans. England rules in South Africa and has lately recognized the +right of African disfranchisement. Germany in Africa is cruel to black +men. The Latin people know no color line. At home, the conflict of +capital and labor is important as the Negro wins or loses in the +economic struggle; the enfranchisement of woman is wise or unwise as it +would affect Negro enfranchisement, one colored thinker arguing against +it since it would double the white vote in the South where the Negro has +no political rights; literature is the poetry of Dunbar, the writing of +Washington and Du Bois, the literature of the Negro question, and art is +largely comprised in Tanner's paintings. + +This picture should not imply that the colored people of means are +without the possibility of wide culture and sympathy. They are perhaps +more sympathetic by nature than the white people about them. But each +year, as the white American grows increasingly conscious of race, as he +argues on racial differences, the Negro feels his dark face, is +sensitive to every disdainful look, and separates himself from the +people about him and their problems. + +There is a struggle against this. The majority of white people have +heard, in a vague way, that there is a difference of opinion in the +Negro world; and again, vaguely, that it takes the form of opposition to +Dr. Booker T. Washington and industrial training. But the difference of +opinion among the Negroes is a difference of ideals, and reaches far +beyond the controversy of industrial or cultural training, or the +question of individual leadership. It is difficult to formulate, +inasmuch as few, if any, Negroes hold logically to one ideal wholly to +the exclusion of the other. They cannot be logical and live. But their +division into radical and conservative is too important to omit; +especially since, as we have seen, there is nothing in their social life +to distinguish them from their neighbors; only in their thoughts are +they aloof from us--aliens upon whose shoulders is the problem of a +race. + +How can one explain these two ideals? Roughly, they accept or reject +segregation. The first looks upon the black man in America, for many +generations at least, as a race apart. Recognizing this, the race must +increasingly grow in self-efficiency. It must run its own businesses, +own its banks, its groceries, its restaurants, have its dressmakers, +milliners, tailors; it must establish factories where it shall employ +only colored men and women; its children shall be brought into the +world by colored doctors, taught by colored teachers, buried by colored +undertakers. Education, along industrial lines, shall help train the +worker to this efficiency, and a proper race pride shall give him the +patronage of the Negroes about him. When, as will of course happen in +the majority of cases, the Negro works for the white man, he must +consider himself and his race. He must not go out on strike when the +white man strives for higher wages; he is justified, if he is willing to +risk a broken head, in filling the place of the striking workman, for he +has to look after his own concerns. + +The second point of view resists segregation. It believes that the Negro +should never cease to struggle against being treated as a race apart, +that he should demand the privileges of a citizen, free access to all +public institutions, full civil and political rights. As a workman, he +should have the opportunity of other workmen, his training should be the +training of his white neighbor, and in business and the professions he +should strive to serve white as well as black. And just as in the +battle-field he fights in a common cause with his white comrade, so in +the struggle for better working class conditions he should stand by the +side of the laborer, regardless of race. Believing these things and +finding that America fails to meet his demands, he thinks it should be +his part to struggle for his ideal, vigorously to protest against +discrimination, and never, complacent, to submit to the position of +inferiority. + +As I have said, few men hold logically to either of these ideals, and as +that of acquiescence to present conditions is naturally popular with the +whites, who are themselves responsible for discrimination, material +success sometimes means a departure from the aggressive to the +submissive attitude. However, the whole question of the Negro as a wage +earner is yet scarcely understood by this small professional and +business class. They are in turmoil, in a virile struggle, harsh, +bewildering, baffling. + +"I cannot conceive what it would mean not to be a Negro," a prominent +New York colored man once said to me. "The white people think and feel +so little; their life lacks an absorbing interest." + +This is the characteristic fact of the life of the well-to-do Negro in +New York. He is not permitted to go through the city streets in easy +comfort of body or mind. Some personal rebuff, some harsh word in +newspaper or magazine, quickens his pulse and rouses him from the +lethargy that often overtakes his comfortable white neighbor. Looking +into the past of slavery, watching the coming generation, the most +careless of heart is forced into serious questioning. A comfortable +income and the intelligence to enjoy the culture of a great city do not +bring to the Negro any smug self-satisfaction; only a greater +responsibility toward the problem that moves through the world with his +dark face. + +Before turning to our last topic, the Negro and the Municipality, we +ought to note two further characteristics of the Negro in New York. + +There are certain statistics quoted by every writer upon the Negro, +statistics of mortality and crime. We have noted these for the child, +but not as yet for the Negroes as a whole. They have been left until +this point in our study that we may view them in relation to what we +have learned of the Negro's economic condition and his environment. + +Looking for criminal statistics first, we find them difficult to obtain +in New York. The courts' reports do not classify by color, but we can +learn something from the census enumeration of 1904 of the prisoners in +the New York County Penitentiary and the New York County Workhouse. +These are short term offenders sent up from the city of New York. The +enumeration is as follows: + + NEW YORK COUNTY PENITENTIARY (BLACKWELL'S ISLAND) + + ======================================================== + | Total | Males | Females | Per cent | Per cent + | | | | Total | Females + --------+--------+-------+---------+----------+--------- + White | 582 | 533 | 49 | 91.8 | 8.4 + Colored | 52 | 33 | 19 | 8.2 | 36.5 + ======================================================== + + NEW YORK COUNTY WORKHOUSE + + ======================================================== + White | 1126 | 870 | 256 | 96.5 | 22.7 + Colored | 41 | 12 | 29 | 3.5 | 70.7 + ======================================================== + +In view of the proportion of Negroes to whites in Manhattan, two per +cent, we find the percentage of colored prisoners high, but no higher +than we expect when we remember that the Negro occupies the lowest plane +in the industrial community, "the plane which everywhere supplies the +jail, the penitentiary, the gallows."[1] But the very large percentage +of crime among colored women calls for grave consideration. In the +workhouse, imprisoned for fighting, for drunkenness, for prostitution, +the colored women more than double in number the colored men. Here is a +condition that we noted in the Children's Court records: an unduly large +percentage of disorderly and depraved colored female offenders. + +We have already touched upon the subject of morality among colored +women. Various causes, some of which we have noted, go to the making up +of this high percentage of crime. The Negroes themselves believe the +basic cause to be their recent enslavement with its attendant unstable +marriage and parental status. They point to the centuries of healthful +home relationships among Americans and Europeans, and contrast them +with the thousands upon thousands of yearly sales of slaves that but two +generations ago disrupted the Negro's attempts at family life. With this +heritage they believe that it is inevitable that numbers of their women +should be slow to recognize the sanctity of home and the importance of +feminine virtue. + +The mortality figures for the New York Negro are more striking than the +figures for crime. In 1908 the death rate for whites in the city was +16.6 in every thousand; for colored (including Chinese), 28.9, almost +double the white rate. The Negroes' greatest excess over the white was +in tuberculosis, congenital debility, and venereal diseases as the table +on the following page shows. + +The Negro's inherent weakness, his inability to resist disease, is a +favorite topic today with writers on the color question. A high +mortality is indeed a matter for grave concern, but we may question +whether these figures show inherent weakness. If a new disease attacks +any group of people, it causes terrible decimation, and tuberculosis and +venereal diseases, the white man's plagues, have proved terribly +destructive to the black man. But recalling the conditions under which +the great majority of the colored race lives in New York, the long hours +of labor, the crowded rooms, the insufficient food, we find abundant +cause for a high death rate. For poverty and death go hand in hand, and +the proportion of Negroes in New York who, live in great poverty far +exceeds the proportion of whites.[2] + + ===================================================== + New York, 1908. | White. | Colored. + ----------------------------------+--------+--------- + Number of deaths from all causes | | + per 1000 population | 16.6 | 28.9 + Number of deaths per 1000 deaths: | | + Tuberculosis | 136. | 232.8 + Pneumonia | 126. | 136.3 + Diarrhoea and enteritis | 91.8 | 79. + Bright's disease | 78.3 | 56.5 + Heart disease | 76.7 | 83.4 + Cancer | 45.5 | 24.8 + Congenital debility | 24.5 | 34.1 + Diphtheria and croup | 23.7 | 15. + Scarlet fever | 19. | 3.2 + Typhoid | 7.3 | 6.9 + Venereal diseases | 4. | 13.4 + All others | 367.2 | 314.6 + +--------+--------- + | 1000.0 | 1000.0 + ===================================================== + +The students at Hampton Institute sing an old plantation song that runs +like this: + + "If religion was a thing that money could buy, + The rich would live and the poor would die. + But my good Lord has fixed it so + The rich and the poor together must go." + +Some of our rich men seem to have fixed it with religion to escape from +the condition the poem describes, but it depicts a reality in the +Negro's life. Rich and poor, as we saw when we left our old New Yorkers, +competent and inefficient, pure and diseased, good and bad, all go +together. Much of the recent literature written by Negroes, and +especially that by Dr. Booker T. Washington, attempts to separate in the +minds of the community the thrifty and prosperous colored men from the +helpless and degraded; but the effort meets with a limited success. When +we can have a statistical study of some thousands of the well-to-do +Negroes compared with an equal number of well-to-do whites, we may find +striking similarity. From my own observations I find that the well-to-do +Negroes bear and rear children, refrain from committing crimes that put +them into jail, and live to an old age with the same success as their +white neighbors. But they get little credit for it. Willy-nilly, the +strong, intellectual Negro is linked to his unfortunate fellow. Whether +an increase in material prosperity will break this bond, or whether it +will continue until it ceases to be a bond as humanity comes into its +own, is a secret of the future. For today the song rings true, and the +rich and the poor go together. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Quincy Ewing, "The Heart of the Race Problem," _Atlantic Monthly_, +March, 1909. + +[2] The statistician, Mr. I. B. Rubinow, in a discussion of high death +rates (American Statistical Association, December, 1905) quotes the rate +in five agricultural districts in a province of Russia, districts +inhabited by peasantry of a common stock. With almost mathematical +certainty, prosperity brings longer life. He divides his peasants into +six groups showing their death rate as follows: + + Death Rate + Having no land 34.7 + Less than 13.5 acres 32.7 + 13.5 to 40.5 acres 30.1 + 40.5 to 67.5 acres 25.4 + 67.5 acres to 135 acres 23.1 + More than 135 acres 19.2 + +Mr. Rubinow suggests that the high Negro death rate may be explained by +noting the poorly paid occupations in which the Negro engages. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE NEGRO AND THE MUNICIPALITY + + +A capricious mood, varying with the individual, considerate today and +offensive tomorrow, this, as far as our observations have led us, has +been New York's attitude toward the Negro. Is it possible to find any +principle underlying this shifting position? The city expresses itself +through the individual actions of its changing four millions of people, +but also through its government, its courts of justice, its manifold +public activities. Out of these various manifestations of the +community's spirit can we find a Negro policy? Has New York any +principle of conduct toward these her colored citizens? This question +should be worth our consideration, for New York's attitude means its +environmental influence, and helps determine for the newly arrived +immigrant and the growing generation whether justice or intolerance +shall mark their dealings with the black race. + +The first matter of civic importance to the Negro, as to every other New +York resident, is his position in the commonwealth; is he a participant +in the government under which he lives, or a subject without political +rights? The law since 1873 has been explicit on this matter, wiping out +former property qualifications, and giving full manhood suffrage. +Probably, even with a much larger influx of colored people, the city +will never agitate this question again. Since the death of the +Know-nothing Party, New York has ceased any organized attempt to lessen +the power of the foreigner, and the growing cosmopolitan character of +the population strengthens the Negro in his rights. Only in those states +where the white population is homogeneous can Negro disfranchisement +successfully take place. + +With the vote the Negro has entered into politics and has maintained +successful political organizations. The necessity of paying for rent and +food out of eight or ten dollars a week is the Negro's immediate issue +in New York, and he tries to meet it by securing a congenial and more +lucrative job. The city in 1910 showed some consideration for him in +this matter. An Assistant District Attorney and an Assistant Corporation +Counsel were colored, and scattered throughout the city departments were +nine clerks making from $1200 to $1800 apiece, and a dozen more acting +as messengers, inspectors, drivers, attendants, receiving salaries +averaging $1275. Three doctors served the Board of Health, and there +were six men on the police force (none given patrol duty), and one first +grade fireman, while the departments of docks, parks, street cleaning, +and water supply employed 470 colored laborers. Altogether 511 colored +men figure among the city's employees.[1] + +In her communal gifts the city acts toward the Negro with a fair degree +of impartiality. At the public schools and libraries, the parks and +playgrounds, the baths, hospitals, and, last, the almshouse, the blacks +have equal rights with the whites. Occasionally individual public +servants show color prejudice, but again, occasionally, especial +kindness attends the black child. The rude treatment awaiting them, +however, from other visitors keeps many Negro children, and men and +women, from enjoying the city's benefactions. Particularly is this true +with the public baths and with some of the playgrounds. The employment +by the city of at least one colored official in every neighborhood where +the Negroes are in great numbers would do much to remedy this condition. + +One department of the city might be cited as having been an exception to +the rule of reasonably fair treatment to the colored man. Harshness, for +no cause but his black face, has been too frequently bestowed upon the +Negro by the police. This has been especially noticeable in conflicts +between white and colored, when the white officer, instead of dealing +impartially with offenders, protected his own race. + +There have been two conflicts between the whites and Negroes in New York +in recent years, the first in 1900, on the West Side, in the forties, +the second in 1905, on San Juan Hill. Each riot was local, representing +no wide-spread excitement comparable to the draft riots of 1863, and in +each case the police might easily in the beginning have stopped all +fighting. Instead, they showed themselves ready to aid, even to +instigate the conflict. + +The riot of 1900 was caused by the death of a policeman at the hands of +a Negro. The black man declared that he was defending his life, but the +officer was popular, and after his funeral riots began. Black men ran to +the police for protection, and were thrown back by them into the hands +of the mob.[2] + +The riot of 1905 commenced on San Juan Hill one Friday evening in July +with a fracas between a colored boy and a white peddler; both races took +a hand in the matter until the side streets showed a rough scrambling +fight. Saturday and Sunday were comparatively quiet; men, black and +white, stood on street corners and scowled at one another, but nothing +further need have occurred, had each race been treated with justice. +The police, however, instead of keeping the peace, angered the Negroes, +urged on their enemies, and by Monday night found that they had helped +create a riot, this time bitter and dangerous. Overzealous to proceed +against the "niggers," officers rushed into places frequented by +peaceable colored men, whom they placed under arrest. Dragging their +victims to the station-house they beat them so unmercifully that before +long many needed to be handed over to another city department--the +hospital. Little question was made as to guilt or innocence, and some of +the worst offenders, colored as well as white, were never brought to +justice.[3] "If," as a colored preacher whose church was the centre of +the storm district pointed out, "the police would only differentiate +between the good and the bad Negroes, and not knock on the head every +colored man they saw in a riot, we should be quite satisfied. As it is, +there is no safety for any Negro in this part of the city at any +time."[4] + +The result of these two riots was the bringing to justice of one +policeman and the placing of a humane and tactful captain on San Juan +Hill. But for some time the colored man felt little protection in the +Department of Police, finding that he was liable to arrest and clubbing +for a trivial offence. Often the officer's club fell with cruel force. +This, however, was before the administration of Mayor Gaynor, who has +commanded humane treatment, and the brutal clubbing of the New York +Negro has now ceased. + +From the police one turns naturally to the courts. What is their +attitude toward the Negro offender? Is there any race prejudice, or do +black and white enjoy an impartial and judicial hearing? + +As the Negro comes before the magistrates of the city courts, he learns +to know that judges differ greatly in their conceptions of justice. To +the Southerner, let us say from Richmond, where the black man is +arrested for small offences and treated with considerable roughness and +harshness, New York courts seem lenient.[5] To the West Indian, +accustomed to British rule, justice in New York is noticeable for its +variability, the likelihood that if it is severe tonight, it will be +generous tomorrow. + +"Three months," the listener at court hears given as sentence to a +respectable-looking colored servant girl who has begged to be allowed to +return to her place which she has held for five years. "I never was up +for drinking before," she pleads; "I have learnt my lesson; please give +me a chance; I will not do this again." + +"What should you two be fighting for?" another judge, another morning, +says to two very battered women, one white and one colored, who come +before him in court. And talking kindly to both, but with greater +seriousness to the Irish offender, his own countrywoman, he sends them +away with a reprimand. + +How much of this unequal treatment comes from color prejudice or +caprice or temperament, the Negro is unable to decide, but he soon +learns one curious fact: while his black skin marks him as inheriting +Republican politics, it is the Democratic magistrate, the Tammany +henchman whose name is a byword to the righteous, who is the more +lenient when he has committed a trifling offence. + +"Didn't I play craps with the nigger boys when I was a kid?" one of +these well-known politicians says, "and am I going back on the poor +fellows now?" Of course, the Negro is assured such men only want his +vote, but he believes real sympathy actuates the Tammany leader, who is +too busy to bother whether the man before him is black or white. The +reformer, on the other hand, big with dignity, at times makes him vastly +uncomfortable as he lectures upon the Negro problem from the eminence of +the superior race. + +But whether Republican or Democrat, the Negro learns that it is well to +have a friend at court; that helplessness is the worst of all +disabilities, worse than darkness of skin or poverty. So he soon +becomes acquainted with his local politician, and if his friend is in +trouble, or his wife or son is locked up, pounds vigorously at the +politician's door. It may be midnight, but the man of power will dress, +and together they will turn from the dark tenement hall into the lighted +street and on to the police-station or magistrate's court to seek +release for the offender. That too often the gravity of the offence +weighs little in the securing of lenient treatment is part of the muddle +of New York justice. The Negro finds that he has taken the most direct +way to secure relief. + +As far as we have followed, we have found the municipality of New York +generally ready to treat her black citizens with the same justice or +injustice with which she treats her whites. Exceptions occur, but she +does not often draw the color line. Perhaps, in this connection, it +might be well to stop a moment and see what return the black man makes, +whether by his vote he helps secure to the city honest and efficient +government. + +Walking through a Negro quarter on election day, the most careful +search fails to reveal any such far-sighted altruism. With a great +majority of colored voters the choice of a municipal candidate is based +on the argument of a two-dollar bill or the promise of a job, combined +with the sentiment, decreasing every year, for the Republican Party--the +party that once helped the colored man and, he hopes, may help him +again. The public standing of the mayoralty candidate, his ability to +choose wise heads of departments, the building of new subways, the +ownership of public utilities, these are unimportant issues. The matter +of immediate moment is what this vote is going to mean to the black +voter himself. + +Such a selfish and unpatriotic attitude, not unknown perhaps to white +voters, leads some of our writers and reformers to doubt the value of +universal manhood suffrage. Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells us that the +Negro and the poor white in New York, through their venality, are +practically without a vote. "While the South is disfranchising by +legislation," he says, "the North is doing it by cash." "What else is +the meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss and machine system in other +cities?"[6] New York's noted ethical culture teacher argues against +agitation for woman's suffrage on the ground that so many of those who +now have the vote do not know how to use it. But looking closely at +these unaltruistic citizens, we see that after all they are putting the +ballot to its primary use, the protection of their own interests. The +Negro in New York has one vital need, steady, decent work. He dickers +and plays with politics to get as much of this as he can. It is very +insufficient relief for an intolerable situation, but it is partial +relief. In another city, Atlanta for instance, he might find education +the most important civic gift for which to strive. Atlanta is a +fortunate city to choose for an example of the power of the suffrage, +for since the Negro's loss of the vote in Georgia, educational funds +have been turned chiefly to white schools, and 5,000 colored children +are without opportunities for public education. 1885 saw the last school +building erected for Negroes, the result of a bargain between the +colored voters and the prohibitionists.[7] Should a colored teacher in +New York be refused her certificate, a colored consumptive be denied a +place in the city's hospital, a colored child meet with a rebuff in the +city park, the colored citizen would find his vote an important means +of redress. Then, too, while there are so many men to buy, it is +important to have a vote to sell, lest the other citizens secure the +morning's bargains. Venality in high and low places will not disappear +until we are dominated by the ideal of social, not individual +advancement. Before that time, it is well for the weak that they are +able, at least in the political field, to bargain with the strong. + +The importance to the Negro of the vote is quickly appreciated when we +consider New York's attitude unofficially expressed. With the franchise +behind him the colored man can secure for himself and his children the +municipality's advantages of education, health, amusement, philanthropy. +He is here a citizen, a contributor to the city treasury, if not +directly as a taxpayer, as a worker and renter. But as a private +individual, seeking to use the utilities managed by other private +individuals, he continually encounters race discrimination. Private +doors are closed, and were the state not so wealthy and generous, +disabilities still graver than at present would follow. + +A few examples will show the condition. A Negro applies by letter for +admission to an automobile school, and is accepted; but on appearing +with his fee his color debars his entrance. Carrying the case to court, +the complaint is dismissed on the ground that the law which forbade +exclusion from places of education on account of race and color is +applicable only to public schools. Private institutions may do as they +desire. + +Again, a colored man tries to get a meal. At the first restaurant he is +told that all the tables are engaged; at the next no one will serve him. +Fearful of further rebuffs, he has to turn to the counter of a railway +station. He wants to go to the theatre. Like Tommy Atkins, he is sent to +the gallery or round the music halls. The white barber whose shop he +enters will not shave him; and when night comes, he searches a long time +before the hotel appears that will give him a bed. The sensitive man, +still more the sensitive woman, often finds the city's attitude +difficult to endure. + +American Negroes have become familiar with racial lines, but the +foreigner of African descent, a visitor to the city, meets with rebuffs +that fill him with surprise as well as rage. Haytians and South +Americans, men of continental education and wide culture, have been +ordered away as "niggers" from restaurant doors, and at the box office +of the theatre refused an orchestra seat. English Negroes from the West +Indies, men and women of character and means, learn that New York is a +spot to be avoided, and cross the ocean when they wish to taste of city +life. In short, the stranger of Negro descent, if he be rash of temper, +hurls anathemas at the villainously mannered Americans; or, if he be +good-natured, shrugs his shoulders and counts New York a provincial +settlement of four million people. + +Northern Negroes believe this discrimination in public places against +the black man to be increasing in New York. One, who came here fifteen +years ago, tells of the simple and adequate test by which he learned +that he had reached the northern city. Born in South Carolina, as he +attained manhood he desired larger self-expression, broader human +relations--he wanted "to be free," as he again and again expressed it. +So leaving the cotton fields he started one morning to walk to New York. +After a number of days he entered a large city and, uncertain in his +geography, decided that this was his journey's end. "I'll be free here," +he thought, and opening the door of a brightly lighted restaurant +started to walk in. The white men at the tables looked up in +astonishment, and the proprietor, laying his hand on the youth's +shoulder, invited him, in strong southern accent, to go into the +kitchen. "I reckon I'm not North yet," the Negro said, smiling a bright, +boyish smile. Interested in his visitor's appearance, the proprietor +took him into another room, gave him a good supper, and talked with him +far into the night, urging the advantages of his staying in the South. +But the youth shook his head, and the next morning trudged on. At length +he reached a rushing city, tumultuous with humanity, and entering an +eating-house was served a meal. To him it was almost a sacrament. He +belonged not to a race but to humanity. He tasted the freedom of +passing unnoticed. But it is doubtful if the same restaurant would serve +him today. + +Color lines, on these matters of entertainment as on others, are not +hard and fast. A few hotels, chiefly those frequented by Latin people, +receive colored guests; and while the foreign Negro meets with rudeness, +he is rebuffed less than the native. "I can't get into that place as a +southern darky," a black man laughingly says, pointing to a fashionable +restaurant, "I'll be the Prince of Abyssinia." But as Prince or American +his status is shifting and uncertain; here, preeminently, he is half a +man. + +Discrimination against any man because of his color is contrary to the +law of the state. After the fifteenth amendment became a law, New York +passed a civil rights bill, which as it stands, re-enacted in 1909, is +very explicit. All persons within the jurisdiction of the state are +entitled to the accommodation of hotels, restaurants, theatres, music +halls, barbers' shops, and any person refusing such accommodation is +subject to civil and penal action. The offence may be punished by fine +or imprisonment or both.[8] + +In 1888, the attempt to exclude three colored men from a skating-rink at +Binghamton, N. Y., led to a suit against the owner of the rink, and his +conviction. The case[9] reached the Court of Appeals, where the +constitutionality of the civil rights bill was upheld. "It is evident," +said Justice Andrews in his decision, "that to exclude colored people +from places of public resort on account of their race is to fix upon +them a brand of inferiority, and tends to fix their position as a +servile and dependent people." + +But despite the law and precedent, the civil rights bill is violated in +New York. Occasionally colored men bring suit, but the magistrate +dismisses the complaint. Usually the evidence is declared insufficient. +A case of a colored man refused orchestra seats at a theatre is +dismissed on the ground that not the proprietor but his employees turned +the man away. A keeper of an ice-cream parlor, wishing to prevent the +colored man from patronizing him, charges a Negro a dollar for a +ten-cent plate. The customer pays the dollar, keeps the check, and +brings the case to court. Ice-cream parlors are then declared not to +come under the list of places of public entertainment and amusement. A +bootblack refuses to polish the shoes of a Negro, and the court decides +that a bootblack-stand is not a place of public accommodation, and +refusal to shine the shoes of a colored man does not subject its +proprietor to the penalties imposed by the law.[10] This last case was +carried to the Court of Appeals, and the adverse judgment has led many +of the thoughtful colored men of the city to doubt the value of +attempting to push a civil rights suit. Litigation is expensive, and +money spent in any personal rights case that attacks private business, +whether the plaintiff be white or colored, is usually wasted. The civil +rights law is on the books, and the psychological moment may arrive to +insist successfully on its enforcement. + +If there is an increase in discrimination against the Negro in New York +solely because of his color, it is a serious matter to the city as well +as to the race. Every community has its social conscience built up of +slowly accumulated experiences, and it cannot without disaster lose its +ideal of justice or generosity. New York has never been tender to its +people, but it has a rough hospitality, what Stevenson describes as +"uncivil kindness," and welcomes new-comers with a friendly shove, +bidding them become good Americans. After the war, the Negro entered +more than formerly into this general welcome. He was unnoticed, allowed +to go his way without questioning word or stare, the position which +every right-minded man and woman desires. But today New York has become +conscious that he is dark-skinned, and her attitude affects her growing +children. "I never noticed colored people," an old abolitionist said to +me, "I never realized there were white and black until, when a boy of +twelve, I entered a church and found Negroes occupying seats alone in +the gallery." As New York returns to the gallery seats, her boys and +girls return to consciousness of color and, from fisticuffs at school, +move on to the race riots upon the streets with bullets among the +stones. + +The municipality, as we have seen, treats the Negro on the whole with +justice; its standard is higher than the standard of the average +citizen. It cherishes the ideal of democracy, and strives for +impartiality toward its many nationalities and races. And the New York +Negro in his turn does not allow his liberties to be tampered with +without protest. But the New York citizen can hardly be described as +friendly to the Negro. What catholicity he has is negative. He fails to +give the black man a hearty welcome. "Do you know where I stayed the +four weeks of my first trip abroad?" a colored clergyman once asked me. +I refused to make a guess. "Well," he said a little shamefacedly, "it +was in Paris. Paris may be a wicked city--any city has wickedness if you +want to look for it--but I found it a place of kindliness and good-will. +Every one seemed glad to be courteous, to assist me in my stumbling +French, to show me the way on omnibus or boat, or through the difficult +streets. It was so different from America; I was never wanted in the +southern city of my youth. In Paris I was welcome." + +"How is it in New York?" I asked. + +"In New York?" He stopped to consider. "In New York I am tolerated." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] The total number of municipal employees is 55,006--Negro employees, +511--Percentage of Negro to whole, 0.9. + +[2] "Story of the Riot," published by Citizens Protective League. + +[3] New York _Age_, July 27, 1905. + +[4] New York _Tribune_, July 24, 1905. + +[5] A southern student says, "The Negro in Richmond is arrested for +small offences and fined in the city courts. He is treated with +considerable roughness and harshness in his punishment for these +offences. It looks as though he were being imposed upon as an individual +of the lower strata of society. But the Negro responds so impulsively to +what appeals, that constant fear, dread, and impressiveness of the +police act well as resistants to temptations." + +[6] Ray Stannard Baker, "Following the Color Line," p. 269. + +[7] The following story of Athens, Georgia, told by a Northerner +teaching in the South, illustrates this point. "The city of Athens was +planning to inaugurate a public school system, and also wished to 'go +dry.' It made a proposal to the colored voters promising that if their +combined vote would carry the city, two schools should be built, of +equal size and similar structure for each race. I visited Athens shortly +after the two buildings were built, and I found two beautiful brick +buildings very similar in all their appointments. At an interval of +several years I again visited the little city and again spent an hour in +the same brick school-house of the colored folk. + +"At my third visit, I found my colored friends occupying a wooden +structure on the edge of the city, and not only inconveniently located, +but much less of a building than the one hitherto occupied. Upon inquiry +I found that in the growth of the school population of the whites, it +was cheaper to seize the building formerly occupied by the colored +children, and to build for them a cheap wooden structure on the +outskirts of the town. + +"The colored school was still occupying this inadequate building at my +visit this last September, 1909. A second wooden structure has been +added to the colored equipment on the east side of the town." + +This story of the Athenians well illustrates what will be done when the +Negro counts for something politically, and also what may be undone if +his value as a political asset is reduced. + +[8] Civil Rights Law, State of New York. Chapter 14 of the Laws of +1909, being Chapter 6 of the Consolidated Laws. + +"Article 4.--Equal rights in places of public amusement. + +"Section 40.--All persons within the jurisdiction of this state shall be +entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, +and privileges of inns, restaurants, hotels, eating houses, bath houses, +barber shops, theatres, music halls, public conveyances on land and +water, and all other places of public accommodation or amusement, +subject only to the conditions and limitations, established by the law +and applicable alike to all citizens. + +"Section 41.--Penalty for violation. Any person who shall violate any of +the provisions of the foregoing section by denying to any citizen, +except for reasons applicable alike to all citizens of every race, creed +and color, and regardless of race, creed and color, the full enjoyment +of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities or privileges in +said section enumerated, or by aiding or inciting such denial, shall, +for every such offence, forfeit and pay a sum not less than one hundred +dollars nor more than five hundred dollars to the person aggrieved +thereby, to be recovered in a court of competent jurisdiction in the +County where said offence was committed, and shall also, for every such +offence, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof +shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five +hundred dollars, or shall be imprisoned not less than thirty days nor +more than ninety days, or both such fine and imprisonment." + +[9] People _vs._ King, 110 N. Y., 418, 1888. + +[10] Burke _vs._ Bosso, 180 N. Y., 341, 1905. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +CONCLUSION + + +A new little boy came two years ago into our story-book world. When Miss +North, taking Ezekiel by the hand, led him into her school-room,[1] we +met a child full of what we call temperament; dreaming quaint stories, +innocently friendly, anxious to please for affection's sake, in his +queer, unconscious way something of a genius. We saw his big musing eyes +looking out upon a world in which his teacher stood serene and +reasoning, but a little cold like her name; his friend, Miss Jane, kind +and very practical; his employer, Mr. Rankin, amused and contemptuous; +all watching him with the impersonal interest with which one might view +a new species in the animal world. For Ezekiel, unlike our other +story-book boys, had a double being, he was first Ezekiel Jordan, a +little black boy, and second, a Representative of the Negro Race. + +Ezekiel was too young to understand his position, but the white world +about him never forgot it. When he arrived late to school, he was a +dilatory representative; when, obliging little soul, he promised three +people to weed their gardens all the same afternoon, he was a +prevaricating representative. He never happened to steal ice-cream from +the hoky-poky man or to play hookey, but if he had, he would have been a +thieving and lazy representative. Always he was something remote and +overwhelming, not a natural growing boy. + +Ezekiel's position is that of each Negro child and man and woman in the +United States today. I think we have seen this as we have reviewed the +position of the race in New York; indeed, the very fact of our +attempting such a review is patent that we see and feel it. We white +Americans do not generalize concerning ourselves, we individualize, +leaving generalizations to the chance visitor, but we generalize +continually concerning colored Americans; we classify and measure and +pass judgment, a little more with each succeeding year. + +Now if we are going to do this, let us be fair; let us try as much as +possible to dismiss prejudice, and to look at the Ezekiels entering our +school of life, with the same impartiality and the same understanding +sympathy with which we look upon our own race. And if we are to place +them side by side with the whites, let us be impartial, not cheating +them out of their hard-earned credits, or condemning them with undue +severity. Let us try, if we can, to be just. + +When we begin to make this effort to judge fairly our colored world, we +need to remember especially two things: First, that we cannot yet +measure with any accuracy the capability of the colored man in the +United States, because he has not yet been given the opportunity to show +his capability. If we deny full expression to a race, if we restrict its +education, stifle its intellectual and ęsthetic impulses, we make it +impossible fairly to gauge its ability. Under these circumstances to +measure its achievements with the more favored white race is +unreasonable and unjust, as unreasonable as to measure against a man's +a disfranchised woman's capabilities in directing the affairs of a +state.[2] + +The second thing is difficult for us to remember, difficult for us at +first to believe; that we, dominant, ruling Americans, may not be the +persons best fitted to judge the Negro. We feel confident that we are, +since we have known him so long and are so familiar with his +peculiarities; but in moments of earnest reflection may it not occur to +us that we have not the desire or the imagination to enter into the life +emotions of others? "We are the intellect and virtue of the airth, the +cream of human natur', and the flower of moral force," Hannibal Chollup +still says, and glowers at the stranger who dares to suggest a different +standard from his own. Hannibal Chollup and his ilk are ill-fitted to +measure the refinements of feeling, the differences in ideals among +people. + +This question of our fitness to sit in the judgment seat must come with +grave insistence when we read carefully the literature published in this +city of New York within the past two years. Our writers have assumed +such pomposity, have so revelled in what Mr. Chesterton calls "the +magnificent buttering of one's self all over with the same stale butter; +the big defiance of small enemies," as to make their conclusions +ridiculous. Ezekiel entering their school is at once pushed to the +bottom of the class, while the white boy at the head, Hannibal Chollup's +descendant, sings a jubilate of his own and butters himself so copiously +as to be as shiny as his English cousin, Wackford Squeers. Then the +writer, the judge, begins. Ezekiel is shown as the incorrigible boy of +the school. He is a lazy, good-for-nothing vagabond. Favored with the +chance to exercise his muscles twelve hours a day for a disinterested +employer, he fails to appreciate his opportunity. He is diseased, +degenerate. His sisters are without chastity, every one, polluting the +good, pure white men about them. He is a rapist, and it is his criminal +tendencies that are degrading America. The pale-faced ones of his family +steal into white society, marry, and insinuate grasping, avaricious +tendencies into the noble, generous men of white blood, causing them to +cheat in business and to practise political corruption. In short there +is nothing evil that Ezekiel is not at the bottom of. Sometimes, poor +little chap, he tries to sniffle out a word, to say that his family is +doing well, that he has an uncle who is buying a home, and a rich cousin +in the undertaking business, but such extenuating circumstances receive +scant attention, and we are not surprised to find, the class dismissed, +that Ezekiel and the millions whom he represents, are swiftly shuffled +off the earth, victims of "disease, vice, and profound discouragement." + +Now this is not an exaggerated picture of much that has recently been +printed in newspaper and magazine, and does it not make us feel the +paradox that if we are to judge the Negro fairly, we must not judge him +at all, so little are we temperamentally capable of meeting the first +requirement? + +"My brother Saxons," says Matthew Arnold, "have a terrible way with them +of wanting to improve everything but themselves off the face of the +earth." And he adds, "I have no such passion for finding nothing but +myself everywhere." Among our American writers a few, like Arnold, do +not care to find only themselves everywhere, and these have told us a +different story of the American Negro. They are poets and writers of +fiction, men and women who are happy in meeting and appreciating +different types of human beings.[3] If these writers were to instruct +us, they would say that we must individualize more when we think of the +black people about us, must differentiate. That, too, we must remember +that when we pass judgment, we need to know whether our own standard is +the best, whether we may not have something to learn from the standards +of others. Supposing Ezekiel is deliberate and slow to make changes or +to take risks; are we who are "acceleration mad," who acquire heart +disease hustling to catch trains, who mortgage our farms to buy +automobiles, who seek continually new sensations, really better than he? +Is it not a matter of difference, just as we may each place in different +order our desires, the one choosing struggle for power and the +accumulation of wealth, the other preferring serenity and pleasure in +the immediate present? And lastly, after having praised our own virtues +and our own ideals, must we not beware that we do not blame the Negro +when he adopts them, that we do not turn upon him and fiercely demand +only servile virtues, the virtues that make him useful not to himself +but to us?[4] + +No one can talk for long of the Negro in America without propounding the +all-embracing question, What will become of him, what will be the +outcome of all this racial controversy? It is a daring person who +attempts to answer. We, who have studied the Negro in New York, may +perhaps venture to predict a little regarding his future in this city, +his possible status in the later years of the century; whether he will +lose in opportunity and social position, or whether he will advance in +his struggle to be a man. + +Looking upon the great population of the city, its varied races and +nationalities, I confess that his outlook to me begins to be bright. New +York is still to a quite remarkable extent dominated socially by its old +American stock, its Dutch and Anglo-Saxon element. Few things strike the +foreign visitor so forcibly as that despite its enormous European +population, American society is homogeneous. But this is not likely to +continue for very long. When the present demand for exhausting +self-supporting work becomes less insistent, we shall feel in a deeper, +more vital way the influence of our vast foreign life. With a million +Jews and nearly a million Latin people, we cannot for long be held in +the provincialism of to-day. I suspect that to many Europeans New York +seems still a great overgrown village in "a nation of villagers," +pronouncing with narrow, dogmatic assurance upon the deep unsolved +problems of life. But in the future it may take on a larger, more +cosmopolitan spirit. Its Italians may bring a finer feeling for beauty +and wholesome gayety, its Jews may continue to add great intellectual +achievements, and its people of African descent, perhaps always few in +number, may show with happy spontaneity their best and highest gifts. If +New York really becomes a cosmopolitan city, let us believe the Negro +will bring to it his highest genius and will walk through it simply, +quietly, unnoticed, a man among men. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Lucy Pratt, "Ezekiel." + +[2] "The world of modern intellectual life is in reality a white man's +world. Few women and perhaps no blacks have entered this world in the +fullest sense. To enter it in the fullest sense would be to be in it at +every moment from the time of birth to the time of death, and to absorb +it unconsciously and consciously, as the child absorbs language. When +something like this happens we shall be in a position to judge of the +mental efficiency of women and the lower races. At present we seem +justified in inferring that the differences in mental expression between +the higher and lower races and between men and women are no greater than +they should be in view of the existing differences in opportunity." W. +I. Thomas, "Sex and Society," p. 312. + +[3] Note especially the stories of Alice MacGowan and Grace MacGowan +Cooke, and the poems of Rosalie M. Jonas. + +[4] Careful readers of economic Negro studies by white writers will +notice this tendency to look upon the Negro as belonging to a servile +class. Emphasis is laid upon his responsibilities to the white man, not +upon the white man's responsibilities to him. Any one familiar with the +sympathetic attitude toward the workers in such a study as the +_Pittsburg Survey_ will notice at once the difference in attitude in +Negro surveys by whites, the slight emphasis laid upon the black +laborers' long hours and poor pay, and the failure to emphasize the +white man's responsibility. Negro laborers are still studied from the +viewpoint of the capitalist. There is one notable exception to this, the +study by the governor of Jamaica, Sir Sidney Olivier, on "White Capital +and Coloured Labor." + + + + +APPENDIX + + +The federal census in 1900 contained a volume on the Negro in the United +States, a source of information quoted by nearly every writer on the +American Negro. The tables in that volume, however, do not classify by +cities, and any one desiring information regarding the Negro in some +especial city must search through other volumes. As this is a lengthy +task, I am affixing a list of the tables in the census of 1900, treating +of the Negro in New York City, believing that it may also be a guide to +students of the new census of 1910, who wish to find New York Negro +statistics. + + Population. Vol. I, Part I. Published 1901. + + Page 868, Table 57. Aggregate, white, and colored population + distributed according to native or foreign parentage, for cities + having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. + + Page 934, Table 81. Total males twenty-one years of age and over, + classified by general nativity, color, and literacy, for cities + having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. + + Vol. II. Published 1902. + + Page 163, Table 19. Persons of school age, five to twenty years, + inclusive, by general nativity and color, for cities having 25,000 + inhabitants or more: 1900. Also, pages 165 and 167, Tables 20 and + 21. + + Page 332, Table 32. Conjugal condition of the aggregate population, + classified by sex, general nativity, color, and age periods, for + cities having 100,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. + + Page 397, Table 54. Negro persons attending school during the + census year, classified by sex and age periods, for cities having + 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. + + Page 737, Table 111. Persons owning and hiring their homes, + classified by color, for cities having 100,000 inhabitants or more: + 1900. + + Vital Statistics. Vol. III. Published 1902. + + Page 458, Table 19. Population, births, deaths, and death rates at + certain ages, and deaths from certain causes, by sex, color, + general nativity, and parent nativity: census year 1900. + + Occupations. Published 1904. + + Pages 634 to 642, Table 43. Total males and females, ten years of + age and over, engaged in selected groups of occupations, classified + by general nativity, color, conjugal condition, months unemployed, + age periods, and parentage, for cities having 50,000 inhabitants or + more: 1900. + + Supplementary Analysis. Published 1906. + + Page 262, Table 87. Per cent Negro in total population, 1900, 1890, + and 1880, per cent male and female in Negro population, per cent + illiterate in Negro population at least ten years of age, and among + negro males of voting age, and per 10,000 distribution of Negro + population by age periods. + + Women at Work. Published 1907. + + Page 146, Table 9. Number and percentage of breadwinners in female + population, sixteen years of age and over, classified by race and + nativity, for cities having at least 50,000 inhabitants: 1900. + + Pages 147 to 151, Table 10. Number and percentage of breadwinners + in the female population, sixteen years and over, classified by + age, race, and nativity. + + Pages 266 to 275, Table 28. Female breadwinners, sixteen years of + age and over, classified by family relationship, and by race, + nativity, marital condition, and occupation, for selected cities: + 1900. + + Pages 354 to 365, Table 29. Female breadwinners, sixteen years of + age and over, living at home, classified by the number of other + breadwinners in the family, and by race, nativity, marital + condition, and occupation, for selected cities: 1900. + + Mortality Statistics. Published 1908. + + Page 28. Number of deaths from all causes per 1,000 of population. + + Page 376, Table 2. Deaths in each registration area, by age: 1908. + + Pages 566 to 568, Table 8. Deaths in each city having 100,000 + population or over in 1900, from certain causes and classes of + causes, by age: 1908. + + + + +INDEX + + + Aldridge, Ira, 137. + + Amalgamation, 168. + + Andrews, Charles, civil rights of Negroes, 214. + + Andrews, Chas. C., on education, 14; + on industrial opportunity, 27. + + Archer, William, 172. + + Arnold, Matthew, 224. + + Arthur, Chester A., 23. + + Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 159. + + Athens, Ga., 207. + + Atlanta, Negroes in occupations in, 77, 91, 93; + proportion of Negro women to men in, 148; + suffrage in, 206. + + + Baker, Ray Stannard, on suffrage, 205. + + Benefit societies, 175. + + Birthplaces, 35. + + Boese, Thomas, 15. + + Brokers, real estate, 45, 108. + + Brown, William, 14. + + Bulkley, W. L., 161. + + Burke _v._ Bosso, 215. + + Burleigh, Harry, 126. + + Businesses, 106-112. + + + Cahill, Marie, 133. + + Charity Organization Society, 158. + + Chesnutt, Charles W., 181. + + Chesterton, Gilbert K., 222. + + Churches: + Baptist, 20, 116, 123; + Catholic, 116; + Congregational, 20; + Episcopal, 20, 113, 116, 120; + Methodist, 20, 116. + + City and Suburban Homes, 41. + + Civil rights: + state bill, 213; + violations of, 209, 210. + + Clarkson, Thomas, 32. + + Cleveland, Grover, 17. + + Clinton, De Witt, 14. + + Cole and Johnson, 127, 133. + + Constitutional conventions, state, 11-13. + + Cook, Will Marion, 136. + + Cooke, Grace MacGowan, 224. + + Court: + children's, 66; + magistrate's, 202-204. + + Craig, Walter A., 126. + + Crime: + among children, 66-68; + among adults, 189. + + + Dahomeyans, 131. + + District Nursing Association of Brooklyn, 159. + + Dix, Morgan, 25. + + Domestic Service, 80-83, 149-153. + + Downing, Thomas, 27. + + Du Bois, W. E. B., 183. + + Dudley, S. H., 128. + + Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 71, 83, 131. + + + East Side, 42-44. + + Education: + colored teacher, 17, 18; + private colored schools, 14; + public colored schools, 15-19. + + Emancipation, 8. + + Ewing, Quincy, 190. + + + Fall River, mortality among infants, 59. + + Finley, H. M., 32. + + Frazier, S. E., 18. + + + Gaynor, William J., 201. + + Government service, Negroes in, 88. + + Greenwich Village, 33-35. + + + Hale, Edward Everett, 119. + + Hamilton, Alexander, 14. + + Hampton Institute, 110, 119, 193. + + Hansell, George H., 20. + + Haynes, George E., 112. + + Health Department, 40, 53, 197. + + Held, Anna, 133. + + Hell's Kitchen, 37, 85. + + Hogan, Ernest, 134. + + Horsmanden, Daniel, 7. + + Housing, 34, 36, 40, 45-51. + + Hunt, John H., against Negro suffrage, 13. + + + Janvier, Thomas, 8, 33. + + Jay, John, on emancipation, 8; + interest in education, 14. + + Jay, Peter, on Negro suffrage, 11. + + Jennings, Elizabeth, 21. + + Jonas, Rosalie M., 224. + + Jones, Edward, 14. + + + Kean, Edmund, 137. + + Kent, Chancellor, favors Negro suffrage, 11. + + Kidd, Dudley, 52. + + King _v._ Gallagher, 16. + + Kingsley, Mary, 70, 113. + + + Lanier, Sidney, 31. + + Lincoln, Charles Z., 13. + + Lincoln Hospital: + attitude towards Negro doctors, 114; + graduates of, 157. + + Livingston, against Negro suffrage, 11. + + London, Jack, 63. + + + MacGowan, Alice, 224. + + Manhattan Trade School, 161, 162. + + Manumission society, 14. + + Middle West Side, 35-38. + + Miller, Kelly, 86, 147. + + Morris, Gouverneur, on emancipation, 8. + + Mortality: + among infants, 53-60; + death rate by diseases, 192. + + Municipal service, Negroes in, 197. + + Music, 125-127. + + + New York Conspiracy, 7. + + New York Milk Committee, 54. + + Newman, G., infant mortality, 55, 58. + + Nurses' Settlement, 159. + + + Olivier, Sidney, 226. + + + Palmer, A. Emerson, 18. + + Patten, S. N., 38. + + People _v._ King, 213. + + Phillips, Ulrich B., 101. + + Phipps, Henry, 41. + + Phipps tenement, 42, 51, 125. + + Pittsburg Survey, 225. + + Police department, 198-201. + + Poole, Ernest, 84. + + Population, Negro, 9; + total, 31. + + Pratt, Lucy, 218. + + Prostitution, 155, 156. + + + Ray, Charles B., 24. + + Reason, Patrick, 27. + + Religion (see Churches). + + Riots: + draft riots, 25; + riot of 1900, 199; + riot of 1905, 199-201. + + Roosevelt, Theodore, 18. + + Rubinow, I. B., relation of death rate to poverty, 193. + + Russell, John L., 12. + + Russell, Lillian, 133. + + Russia, infant mortality in, 54; + mortality and poverty, 193. + + Russworm, John B., 14. + + + Sanger, William W., 153. + + San Juan Hill, 39-42. + + Schools (see Education). + + Scottron, Samuel R., on industrial opportunities, 26; + on occupations, 78. + + Segregation: + churches, 19; + dwelling-places, 48-50; + schools, 15-19. + + Shirtwaist makers' strike, 163. + + Simmons, William J., 137. + + Slave ships, 32. + + Slaves, brutality towards, 5; + insurrections of, 6-8. + + Smith, Gerritt, 24. + + Smith, James McC., 27. + + Smith, William G., 14. + + Stage, 127-137. + + Stevenson, Robert Louis, 215. + + Stone, Alfred Holt, on Negro in occupations in South, 75; + color line in South, 89, 92; + irresponsibility of Negroes, 102. + + Straus, Nathan, 59. + + Street cars, discrimination, 21-23. + + Suffrage: + past, 11-13; + present, 196; + Negro's use of suffrage, 204-208; + in Athens, Ga., 207. + + + Tanner, Henry, 126. + + Tenements (see Housing). + + Thomas, W. I., 221. + + Trade-unions, 95-99. + + Trinity Church, 25. + + Tucker, Helen, on Negro craftsmen, 96, 98. + + + Underground Railroad, 24. + + Upper West Side, 45-48. + + + Varick, James, 20. + + + Walker, Aida, 157. + + Washington, Booker T., 184, 194. + + Waterbury, Daniel S., 12. + + West Indies, arrivals from, 48. + + Wheeler, B. F., 20. + + White, Philip A., 27. + + Williams, Peter, 20. + + Williams and Walker, 129-133. + + Wilson, H. J., 124. + + Wilson, J. G., 8. + + Winterbottom, 25. + + Wright, Richard R., on the city Negro, 100, 104. + + Wright, Theodore S., 14. + + + Zangwill, Israel, 137. + + + + + Transcriber's notes: + + The date of the case of King _v._ Gallagher, given in the text + as 1862, and in Footnote 6 as 1882, is 1883. + + The following is a list of changes made to the original. + The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. + + their positive as well as there relative number + their positive as well as their relative number + + See H. J. Wilson. "The Negro and Music," _Outlook_, + See H. J. Wilson, "The Negro and Music," _Outlook_, + + peoples, receive colored guests; and while + people, receive colored guests; and while + + trains, who mortgate our farms to buy automobiles, + trains, who mortgage our farms to buy automobiles, + + nearly a million Latin peoples, we cannot for + nearly a million Latin people, we cannot for + + pupulation by age periods. + population by age periods. + + Keane, Edmund, 137. + Kean, Edmund, 137. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Half a Man, by Mary White Ovington and Franz Boas + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HALF A MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 39742-8.txt or 39742-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/7/4/39742/ + +Produced by David Edwards, Paul Clark and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + +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. 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