The new Negro: his political, civil, and mental status ; and related essays

of tbe

®[nibersiitj> of iaortlj Carolina

3(ns!titute for 3i0le£fearcfi

Social Science

32-fe"-'P53n

UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT OHAPEL HILL

10000364348

THE NEW NEGRO

HIS POLITICAL, CIVIL AND MENTAL STATUS

AND

RELATED ESSAYS

The New Negro

HIS POLITICAL, CIVIL AND MENTAL STATUS

AND

RELATED ESSAYS

BY

WILLIAM PICKENS,

Dean of Morgan College, Baltimore, Md.

Author of "The Heir of Slaves," "The

Superior Race," "A Visit to the

Art Centers of the Old

World, etc."

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY

MCMXVI

Copyright, 1916, by

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY.

Affectionately Dedicated

to

The White and the Black Men of To-
morrow: A Faith in Whose Essential
Humanity and Justice Is the In-
spiration of These Pages.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

The Renaissance of the Negro Race 9

•The Constitutional Status of the Negro from

i860 to 1870 16

The Negro a Test for Our Civilization 30

Fifty Years After Emancipation 44

Grounds of Hope 61

Frederick Douglass 71

Alexander Hamilton 103

Abraham Lincoln 119

Industry 148

Education 155

From the Christian Viewpoint 176

Lynching 190

The Ultimate Effects of Segregation 206

The New Negro 224

THE RENAISSANCE

OF

THE NEGRO RACE

The Great Sphinx at Gizeh, which for many cen-
turies has looked with steady, enigmatical gaze
over the plains and the changes of civilization,
scarred and marred, but in the main enduring the
attacks of time and tide, is symbolic of much of
African history. The oldest authentic history is
Egypt; Egypt was the mother of civilization. In
the dawn of civilization there were no hard and
fast lines among the colors of the human race, but
it is certain that the darker groups matured more
quickly and took the lead. Milleniums before the
wolf suckled Romulus, many centuries before Ho-
mer sung, the black and brown and yellowish
peoples ruled in Egypt, overran the civilized and
known world, and brought and wrought the usual
changes of civilization before Greece and Rome
were even names in the earth. But altho Africa,
with its warm climate, its impressionable people
and its Nile valley, was fitted for the birth and
childhood of civihzation, ,under the conditions
that obtained in the ancient world, it was not
fitted for indefinite development; old Egypt was
flanked by burning deserts, and had what was at

10 THE NEW NEGRO

that time the unknown, dark and inaccessible con-
tinent at its back. It was sometimes to be overrun
by the powers that grew in the more open and
accessible region of southwestern Asia, and then
it was to yield to the virile and aggressive people
who grew up in Europe and who had lighted their
torch of civilization at the lamp of Egypt itself.

The black people of this ancient world were not
of low caste or marked as inferiors in any special,
way. They were by no means a slave or servile
class; the blood of their veins was poured all
through the civilized and half-civilized world, and
its traces are clear today in southern Asia as far
as India and in southern Europe. Does the trav-
eller not notice the black people among the Turks,
and the beautiful brown face that is occasionally
met among the Italians? It is said, too, that these
African people had a cotton industry before Eng-
land, and that they originated the smelting of iron.
Think of what the invention of iron conferred
upon civilization. Our civilization without its iron
would be like the human body without its skeleton :
it would collapse, it could not stand and go, it
could only crawl and creep.

But this civilization of black men, after per-
forming its early mission in the world, was to have
its dark ages. The African world happened to be
overrun by early Islam (submission), instead
of by early Christianity. Islam is ritualistic and
formal and fixed, and is not progressive. Greece
and Rome, when they began to awake, enjoyed the
advantages of situation, of accessibility, of a coast

THE NEW NEGRO ii

line suitable for commerce and trade, of free inter-
course and contact with many other peoples. It is
known that Rome was not an inventor, but that she
adopted and adapted the best that she found
among the subject peoples. This was her superior
genius. The civilization of Europe is the growth
and work of many minds and peoples, the con-
fluence of many streams. On the other hand,
whatever civilization was developed by the iron-
worker in the heart of Africa, was a straight lift
out of his own life and environment, a creature of
his own generations, a sort of progress over his
dead self.

And in addition to the ritualism from the Mo-
hammedan world Africa later received a still
more blighting visitation from the Christian world
— the slave-hunter. This abortive horror from
Europe and America came upon Africa as a very
contradiction of all Christian principles. This
emissary from the Christian world brought an era
that was worse than heathendom. Whatever civ-
ilization Africa had already developed was cut off
and broken up. The greed for blood-money took
hold of the tribes, setting chief against chief and
clan against clan. What need was there for the
slow processes of iron-work and textile industry,
when a strong tribe could get goods or gold by
simply hunting down the members of the neigh-
boring tribes and selling them to white men ? This
trade in men, brought in by civilized people from
Christian lands, was the worst blight that ever
overtook a continent. It is sometimes said by way

12 THE NEW NEGRO

of excuse that the blacks in Africa were already
holding each other as slaves and were glad enough
to sell slaves to white men. If this were the whole
truth it would not be an excuse — but it is only the
half truth. The Negroes had a normal domestic
slavery, such as is found in every infant civiliza-
tion, such as was in Europe when Spartan noble
held helot and Roman patrician held plebeian. But
this great commerce in men, with its insatiable de-
mands, its cunning and its avarice, which changed
a whole continent into a slave corral, was never
before known in Africa and has never been known
in any other part of the civilized world. Is
there any wonder that centuries of such ravishment
should have destroyed African culture and broken
up whatever civilizing influences were at work
there? And altho Greece had looked up to the
pyramids of Egypt as the lighthouses of civiliza-
tion, and altho black men had not been marked
as special subjects for slavery before the fifteenth
century, yet under the influence of this lucrative
foreign commerce in human flesh black man and
slave became synonymous.

"Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day
Man makes a slave takes half his worth away."

Philosophically the pronoun his in this quota-
tion can refer with equal truth to the slave or to
the man who enslaves him.

Africa, which had produced the Fathers of the
early Christian church, now had many millions of
its people stolen and carried away into captivity by

THE NEW NEGRO 13

Christian nations. The trade in men was profit-
able in money and made or straightened out the
fortunes of many a noble house. The energetic
Dutch wrested the trade from the indolent Por-
tuguese who had started it. So lucrative was the
business that the English took it from the Dutch
by war. But what providence was at work here?
The Negro blood was being carried to every civ-
ilized country, many millions coming to America.
The Negro became the major part of the popula-
tion in many of the West Indies, in parts of Brazil,
and practically half the population in much of the
southern United States. The children of the ex-
patriated slaves have become an ineradicable part
of the vast New World. In the progress of
civilization they have attained their freedom and
varying degrees of citizenship. In Latin America
they are accorded a place in civilization rather
more liberal than that which is accorded them in
Anglo-Saxon countries. This is true in spite of the
fact that the Negro has made the most substantial
progress in those parts of North America where
he is in contact with the Anglo-Saxon. And the
fact that he enjoys less equality there than in Bra-
zil, for example, would be very strange were it
not to be explained by the difference between the
natures of the Teutonic and the Latin races. The
latter have a much less intense race consciousness,
which permits them to quickly assimilate other
peoples. This difference is noticeable from the
time of Caesar and the Teutonic tribes, and is seen
to-day in the difference between the cordial equal-

14 THE NEW NEGRO

ity which is accorded darker people in Paris and
the reserved toleration which they sometimes meet
in London — as well as in the difference between
the absolutely equal rights which the Negro enjoys
in Rio de Janeiro and the fine bigotry and benevo-
lent snobbishness with which he is often burdened
in Boston. But whatever his condition, a provi-
dence has given him the widest contact, has scat-
tered his scions in all the earth and is making him
one of the most versatile races of modern history.
He stands to-day on the threshold of a renais-
sance of civilization and culture after four hun-
dred years of interruption by captivity, slavery
and oppression.

This awakening of the darker and the more
handicapped people is to be noted all over
the world. Japan from the vantage ground of its
island independence, has led off nobly. China is
beginning to shake off the lethargy and conserv-
atism of thousands of years. The brown Hindu is!
growing conscious, the Philippino is pleading and/
expectant, and the Ethiopian in Africa is stretch^
ing forth his hand. In spite of the traditions of
the slave-hunt and the repressive measures of the
Christian foreigner in Africa, the natives are said
to have captured the unskilled labor market and
to be encroaching upon the skilled labor of the
whites. They are even clamoring for the vote in
the aboriginal land of their fathers. What is to
be the future of the African in Africa ? When the
Sphinx speaks, what will he say? In the West
Indies the blacks are asking and receiving a

THE NEW NEGRO 15

greater share in their own government. In the
United States during the few years of their free-
dom the colored people have made a material, in-
tellectual and moral progress which Is wondered
at even by the white people among whom they live
— and yet they are stoutly held back and hindered
in civil and political development. And they are
now awakening to the truth that they must advance
along all lines to make their advancement secure 1
that they must "straighten out their front," as they
say in the European war. The struggle of fifty
years has made them know that their position in
this civilization cannot be secure unless they have
the full citizenship of the country. These essays
aim to voice that aspiration. Conditions will be
described from different viewpoints, without un-
necessary repetition. The condition of the Amer-
ican Negro is hardly sufficiently known to the
members of his own race. The history of the.race
has been distorted j^r^burled In contempt. But
along with the great advance which the Negro can
be expected to Biake,ia the United States in the
next fifty years, every f^w years should se.e a book
up to date on the general subject of "The Renais-
sance of the Negro Race" or "The New Negro,"
the subjects respectively of the first and last essays
of this volume.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF
THE NEGRO FROM i860 TO 1870

?

The second decade of the latter half of the nine-
teenth century was the most epochal period in
American legal history since the time of the origin
of the national constitution. So far as the Amer-
ican Negro is concerned, this period marks the
greatest possible changes in legal and constitu-
tional status. Three years before the opening of
this decade the highest court of the nation had de-
.clared the Negro to have only the status of the
hower animals, while at the close of the decade the
Negro had acquired a status in the organic law of
the land which entitled him to membership in the
Supreme Court itself. In this period the Negro
changed from a chattel to a person, from an ani-
mal to a man, from a slave to a citizen, so far as
the supreme law of the land is concerned.

This period also contains the two extremes in
the scale of discriminations against the American
Negro in statute law. Before this period there
were comparatively few statutory discriminations
against the black race in the Southern states. For
in that section the Negro had no personal rights at
law, and discriminatory statutes were not neces-
sary. When a discrimination is made against a
class in statute law, it is thereby imphed that this

16

THE NEW NEGRO 17

class has at least some rights based on the funda-
mental law of the land. Therefore, the legislative
discriminations against black people before this
period were found chiefly in the border states and
in the "free" states against "free" Negroes — a
strange contradiction of terms. But this decade,
from i860 to 1870, also contains the extremes of
the Negro's legal status in the South: at the open-
ing of the decade stood the Negro slave, at the
close stood the Negro senator; after the middle
of this period the South passed the extreme "Black
Laws," intended to nullify the effect of the Thir-
teenth Amendment as far as possible, while at the
end of the decade came the Fifteenth Amendment,
marking an epoch. These "Black Laws" of the
South were enacted between 1865 and 1868 and
were inspired by the ratification of the Thirteenth
Amendment. They had for their models, it is
claimed, the similar laws that had been passed in
previous decades against the helpless "free"
Negroes of the North and the border states. But
they outdid the models.

These "Black Laws" are worth considering, for
in them are found a sufficient cause and a very
cogent reason for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments. There is really no need for the
charge that these two Amendments were the in-
spiration of revenge or of the desire for the
political advantage of the party in power. At any
rate, such great products of statesmanship should
stand on their merits, and not be condemned, even
if it could be shown that they were originally based

1 8 THE NEW NEGRO

in unworthy motives. It does not lessen the beauty
of the rose if the plant was sprouted in manure.
But the argument of the ultra-motive is unneces-
sary, for the "Black Laws" of the South were the
immediate occasion, and doubtless the only effi-
cient cause, of the Fourteenth Amendment. After
the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, if the
former slave states had accorded the ex-slaves
even half justice, it is very likely that the Negro's
friends in Congress would have quickly forgotten
him — ^as they have since done in the face of the
worst injustices. But it was not unnatural for the
South, after the ratification of the Thirteenth
Amendment which gave the Negro only the lowest
degree of freedom, to try to pass systems of laws
that would cause the Negro's freedom to make
as Httle change as possible in the social organism
and in his relation to the white race. Not to have
done so would have been evidence of superhuman
foresight and self-control. From the standpoint
of the Negro's interests, however, these laws v/ere
"black" not only in name and aim, but in their very
nature. Instead of being the property of a person-
ally interested master, the Negro was to be con-
verted into the slave of a much less sympathetic
society in general. The "free" Negro's lot was
to be much harder than that of the slave had been;
for altho no longer entitled to "board and keep"
from his employer, yet he was to be forbidden by
law to move or to change his employment. This
would have left his wages at the mercy of the em-
ployer. It is a law of economics that the mobility

THE NEW NEGRO 19

of labor is necessary to the normal regulation of
wages. Some states absolutely forbade the freed-
men to engage in skilled work, leaving for them
only the most menial and least profitable occupa-
tions. In the famous old state of South Carolina
the employer was to be allowed to inflict corporal
punishment, or as the euphemism of the law put
it, to "moderately correct" the servants. "Mas-
ter" and "servant" were the terms used in these
laws, — not employer and employee. The vagrancy
laws and laws of apprenticeship were all of a na-
ture to entrap the ignorant and take advantage of
the weak. Famous old South Carolina even sought
to regulate the amount of "politeness" due from
the "servant" to the "master's family."

In the face of all these stereotyped facts, why
should any honest student of history have to resort
to any intangible and indefinite thing like a feeling
of revenge or a desire for political and party ad-
vantage as an explanation of the motives of those
who conceived and passed the Fourteenth Amend-
ment? This Amendment was passed by the friends
of freedom to k e e p the Thirteenth Amendment
from being a mere farce. They sought thereby to
secure for the Negro the protecting power of the
ballot, as the only effective means of influencing
his civil and political interests in a government like
this. There was no thought or hope of making
him dominant in a country that was predominantly
white. But the backers of the Amendment sought
to lead the state governments to this reasonable
end by inducing rather than compelling them. The

20 THE NEW NEGRO

effect of this amendment was to be based on impar-
tial mathematics, and the choice was to be left to
the majority of the voters of the state. The state
was simply not to have a power in the national
government based on a population which the state
itself did not recognize as a part of its own citi-
zenry.

Up to 1865 nearly all of the states of the Union
had restricted the right to vote to white men. After
the Negro was freed some Northern states volun-
tarily removed this restriction. The friends of
freedom hoped that the Fourteenth Amendment
would induce others to do so, by making it to the
advantage of their national representative power.
But from the ratification of the Amendment in
1868 to 1870 not a single state, with the sole ex-
ception of Minnesota, heeded the warning or
yielded to the inducement of the suffrage clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. And it might be
noted in passing that there were not enough Ne-
groes in Minnesota to make any difference either
way. Up to 1870 fourteen states still restricted
the suffrage to white men. This obstinacy on the
part of the reactionaries caused the friends of free-
dom in 1870 to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment,
which substituted must for persuasion and vir-
tually penalized discrimination against any race in
the matter of the suffrage. What evidence is there
that any one of these steps was taken in a spirit
of revenge? Revenge usually acts in haste and
without waiting on the development of other suffi-
cient causes. The persuasion of the Fourteenth

THE NEW NEGRO 21

Amendment was not resorted to till three years
after the close of the war, and when there had
risen the plainest need for even more than per-
suasion in the interests of justice and humanity.
And the Fifteenth Amendment did not appear till
five years after the war, when even the Fourteenth
Amendment had failed to persuade. Why should
revenge wait so long and advance so reluctantly?
It seems that the friends of freedom, who had the
political power in their hands, were slow to anger
and plenteous in hope.

This suffrage amendment was to be a bulwark
to the Hberties not only of black men, but of all
men in America ; it was directed not only against
the "Black Laws" of the South, but against politi-
cal and civil slavery everywhere in the nation. It
is interesting to note that of the states who were
members of the Union up to 1865, only five can
be listed in the honor roll of those who have never
discriminated against the Negro voter: Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island,
and Vermont.

The constant question raised by these discrimi-
nating laws is: What is a Negro? When we are
going to discriminate against a fellow, we must be
careful and definite in pointing him out. And so
each set of discriminating laws contains its own
definition of the word Negro, and the definitions
have differed widely. At first in some parts of the
North the Negro was defined as any person who
was visibly colored. It is plain, however, that if
the matter is left to the eyes, millions of American

22 THE NEW NEGRO

"Negroes" will have to be taken into the Cau-
casian race, — and so most of the state legislatures
reduced their definitions to the finer discrimina-
tions of mathematics. These mathematical defini-
tions vary all the way from one-fourth of the blood
of the black man to a mere one-sixteenth; but some
laws of the gallant South go so far as to say that
if one has even one drop of Negro blood in his
veins he is a Negro. Thus it is seen that "the
Negro," so far as the United States is concerned,
is an arbitrary creature of law and includes within
its scope hundreds of thousands of people who by
every law of God and nature and reason are mem-
bers of the Caucasian race, principally Anglo-
Saxons. For whatever the legal definition, it is
the common practice in the United States to class
as Negroes all persons known to have any part of
Negro blood. The white American, therefore,
ascribes the same potency to Negro blood which
he ascribes to the blood of Jesus Christ, — that it
only takes one drop "to make you whole." The
statement needs no proof that there are thousands
of people in America who are related to the Negro
and do not know it, and others who know it but
also know that its acknowledgment would not in-
crease their comforts in life.

It was especially necessary to define the term
Negro when the intermarriage laws were being
considered. These queer laws have always had
the support of the vast majority of white people,
wherever the Negro has become a considerable
part of the population, and especially after the

THE NEW NEGRO 23

Negro was freed. I call them "queer laws" be-
cause they always, in spirit and in effect if not in
letter, tend to make the naturally honorable relar
tion of marriage a worse crime than the naturally
dishonorable practice of illicit intercourse, — whichj
abuse, however, is practiced chiefly by the men of \
the stronger against the women of the weaker!
group. For this illicitness there is in practice no \
punishment, while the sure penalties of intermar- \
riage range all the way from a fine of one hundred I
dollars to ten years in the penitentiary, — and the I
danger of still more horrible extra-legal penalties.
There could be but one result of thus outlawing
decency and tolerating indecency, — of putting
honor under the foot of dishonor, — and that re-
sult has been attained in the United States;
namely, millions of interracial illegitimates, and
some admixture of Caucasian blood in at least
nine-tenths of the American Negro group.

Such is the American group against which these
discriminating laws have directly and indirectly
aimed. In the historic decade (i860 to 1870)
many forms of discrimination and distinction
began to appear in the laws of the South : in public
travel, in the courts and in the matter of suffrage.
In 1865 ^nd 1866 "Jim Crow" laws were passed
in Florida, Mississippi and Texas, but not in the
other states until 1881, when Tennessee started
the new era of "Jim Crow," which has since over-
run the whole South and threatens, as did slavery
itself, to invade the North. Is it not queer that
this passion should have gained such headway so

24 THE NEW NEGRO

long after slavery? It would seem that the mon
the Negro advances in education and refinement,
the less acceptable he becomes to a large number
of white people. In North Carolina or South
Carolina a Negro may be taken into the white
people's car if he be a criminal or a lunatic; but
if he is a gentleman and a scholar, it will be a
serious offense against earth and heaven, subject
to heavy fine, — and when his train reaches Geor-
gia, even the conductor may be fined one thousand
dollars! This race distinction on the cars serves
no useful, honorable purpose which classified pas-
senger tickets would not serve. But of all the
humiliation, wrong and robbery possible against
a free people, the devil and the Sicilian tyrants
\ working together could never have devised a more
ingenious scheme than the "Jim Crow" car.

As to the courts. Until 1870 the laws of

Iowa forbade the Negro to practice law; many

states sought to invalidate or restrict the testimony

of a Negro witness against a white person; and

most reluctantly of all has any state conceded the

Negro the right to be a juror, even where both

parties to the suit are Negroes. In law and in

theory the Fifteenth Amendment, March 30,

A 1 870, repealed all statutes and nullified all con-

' / stitutional clauses discriminating against people on

/ account of race, color, or previous condition of

/ servitude, but in practice in the United States the

/ Negro is still handicapped as a lawyer, discredited

j as a witness and almost universally excluded from

^-- — juries. This is queer again in the face of the

THE NEW NEGRO 25

almost unanimous testimony of the courts to the
effect that the Negro juryman Is more IncHned to
convict a real Negro criminal than Is the white
juryman.

The Reconstruction constitutions of the South,
in 1868 and 1869, following the Fourteenth
Amendment, gave the Negroes the ballot. It is
needless to say that this was not the will of the
white majority. And It must always be said of
these Reconstruction governments that, whatever
faults they may have had, they made the first, and
up to the present time the last, serious and
straight-going efforts to establish real democratic-
republican organization in the South. In this era
the Congress of the United States was in the hands
of the friends of freedom, and in 1866 the Negro
was given the ballot in all the territories of the
United States. On June 8, 1867, the Congress
gave the ballot to the Negroes of the District of
Columbia, over the President's veto and against
the will of the white Inhabitants. In a popular
vote on the proposition the city of Washington
returned 6,521 votes against enfranchising the
blacks and 35 votes for It; while Georgetown re-
turned the Interesting figures of 812 votes against
the proposition, and for It one vote. This record
of fifty years ago is sufficient to indicate what
would be the condition in Washington, D. C, if
it were left to Its own devices.

Such are the facts of obstinate resistance to the
Negro's actual freedom, which brought the friends
of freedom In Congress rather slowly around to

26 THE NEW NEGRO

the necessity of adopting the Fourteenth, and when
that failed, the Fifteenth Amendment. I repeat
that if, after the passage of the Thirteenth
Amendment, the legislatures and courts and other
creatures of popular suffrage had shown a genius
for doing justice to the Negro, it is likely that
his friends in Congress would have forgotten him
entirely, that the two subsequent amendments
would not have been proposed and that he would
have been left outside of the Constitutional pale
of citizenship indefinitely. The Thirteenth, Four-
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments put the enemies
of freedom successively on trial, and each time
they failed. Yea, even against the direct decree of
the Fifteenth Amendment have they defeated
democracy by indirection and duplicity. If the
aim of the Fifteenth Amendment should be finally
defeated, it would be the ultimate failure of de-
mocracy,— but there are late indications that in
the end it will not fail. And of all the many-
angled struggle which the colored people are sup-
porting in this country for their advancement and
ultimate security, the central aim of every fight-
ing line should be full-fledged citizenship.

There is no doubt about the truth of the plain
statement that the Negro race in the United
States of America does not get a "square deal."
But we observe frequent efforts to minimize the
appearance of this wrong by the ambiguous state-
ment that it is "natural" under the circumstances.
I call the statement ambiguous because in one
sense of the word every fact of life and history is

THE NEW NEGRO 27

natural; all virtue and vice, lust and love are
natural. Many natural things are very undesir-
able,— and fortunately some of them are not in-
destructible or unalterable. It may be natural
for the white race to disfranchise, "Jin^-Crow"
and burn Negroes, but it naturally feels unnatural
to the Negro, and he is naturally opposed to that
procedure. Is it not natural for the victim to be
uncomfortable under these things, to complain
against them, to organize and fight them? The
naturalness of injustice, if it be natural, does not
make it one whit more just. It is natural, or at
least it is historic, that men will rob and commit
murder and bastardy, — but there seems to be
something in man which is higher than nature and
which fights against these things.

The same sort of fallacy in reasoning is re-
sorted to when the effort is made to palliate the
wrongs done in one section by stating the fact that
the same or similar wrongs have been done, are
being done or will be done to the Negro in other
sections or eventually in all sections of the United
States. What on earth has this to do with the
wrong, except to make it more horrible? Does
it justify wrong to show that other people have
done it, are doing it, or may do it? If so, then
sin itself ought to be the fairest thing in the world,
for all men in all ages and all countries have com-
mitted it. The poor sinning South painstakingly
points out and tabulates every single instance of
its own wrongs against black men which can be
found repeated in the North; and when the North

28 THE NEW NEGRO

slips from virtue in the same path, it cries out
Pharisaically that such horrors are common or
even popular in the South. If mere ubiquity justi-
fies, remember that the devil's work is ubiquitous,
too.

Again I have read books and arguments that
sought to minimize the importance of the indus-
trial, civil and political discriminations against the
Negro by saying not only that these practices are
"not confined to any one section of the country,"
but also that such-and-such an evil did not even
"originate" in the South. We are told with great
unction that Philadelphia and San Francisco once
excluded Negroes from street cars altogether, that
slavery originated in the commerce of the North,
and that Jim-Crowism was first met in Massachu-
setts. I have heard that the devil was first met
in the Garden of Eden, but he is none the less the
devil. And as to origin, who cares where the
smallpox or the yellow fever originated? It is
their nature, not their origin, which makes them
horrible.

There is really no room for one section to
boast or to proudly accuse the other. So far as
the Negro's experiences go, both sections need
to improve perhaps in their ideals but certainly
in their practices respecting democratic liberties
and human brotherhood. Let the Negro and his
friends realize that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the United States Constitution
represent not a backward step, but a stride for-
ward in civilization, and that they were fostered

THE NEW NEGRO 29

and ratified, not for the sake of the temporary
burden which they may have put upon the white
race in the South, but for the benefit of all races,
at all times, in all America.

THE NEGRO A TEST FOR OUR
CIVILIZATION

More than three hundred years ago the Anglo-
Saxon came to this continent. Being very reli-
gious, he landed and immediately fell upon his
knees; but, being very ambitious, he arose and
immediately "fell upon the aborigines." At that
time provisions were scarce and work plentiful in
this country, and, in order to conquer the more
unconquerable wilderness, the white man wanted
the best help he could get and wanted to pay only
"board and keep," so he drove a bargain with the
Africans, the unsophisticated children of the sun.
For about two hundred and fifty years this pecu-
liar economic system persisted, the white man
reaping the chief benefits of the economics and
the black man bearing the chief burden of the sys-
tem and the peculiarity.

This system prevented the white man from see-
ing the black man as a fellow-Christian and fellow-
citizen; when he read "Love thy neighbor as thy-
self" in his Bible, his imagination pictured white
neighbors; and when he wrote "All men are born
free and equal", into his political creed, he was
thinking white. Taxation without representation
was wrong, of course, but right against the slave.
The white man thought black when he read from

THE NEW NEGRO 31

the Old Testament, "a servant of servants shall
he be," or from the New Testament, "that servant
which knew his master's will, and prepared not
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be
beaten with many stripes." Little did the white
man suspect that the ultimate test for both his
government and his religion would lie in his rela-
tion to that silent, accommodating black man.
There is one Negro in every ten persons in this
country. How many white American citizens ever
imagined the Congress of the United States and
the legislative and judicial departments of all the
states with every tenth officer a Negro? On earth
there are about seven colored persons to one white.
Be honest, O white American Christians! how
many of you have ever pictured to yourselves the
joys of heaven with seven dark souls to one white?

All other nationalities who have come to this
country since the Negro have been more readily
accepted into the Anglo-Saxorf's scheme of gov-
ernment and Christian brotherhood. Two hun-
dred and fifty years of wrong relationship got this
civilization into the unfortunate habit of except-
ing the Negro. He became the standing excep-
tion to the rules of civilization. We can help a
man best when we know his hindrances. What
are the industrial, civil and political hindrances of
the American Negro?

Industrially he started as a slave, worked two
hundred and fifty years without a pay day, and
then got discharged without credit or capital, when
his employers fell out. The system had marked

32 THE NEW NEGRO

him as menial in the eyes of his fellowmen, and
had not made industry attractive in his own eyes.
As a free laborer he began in the lowest-paid and
least desirable occupations and rose upward only
so far as economic necessity demanded. Indus-
trial society intended that the free Negro should
be what the economist might call the marginal
employee, — to be employed in that margin of in-
dustry where it is impossible or difficult to employ
any white person. And where, on the upper edge
of this margin, he was brought into contact with
other free Americans, he was to receive lower
wages or bear some other distinct badge of indus-
trial inferiority. We see this contact and dis-
tinction on American railroads, where colored
men and white men who do exactly the same work
are distinguished respectively as "porters" and
"trainmen." A few years ago there were some
Negro Pullman conductors on a road in the South,
but they were officially designated as "head
porters." It is needless to add that the wages
followed the designation. Industrial segregation
has been the tendency north and south: in the
South the Negro is more largely employed because
he is more needed; in the North he Is less largely
employed because he is less needed. In both he
is the "marginal employee," the margin being
wider in the South and narrower in the North.

It is plain that a permanent handicap like that
would tend to embarrass the whole life of the
Negro, for if industrial inferiority is to be main-
tained, certain other things are necessary and

THE NEW NEGRO 33

logical, like class education and disfranchisement,
— a lower standard of living and a lower order
of citizenship. For with brains In his head and
a ballot in his hand a man cannot ultimately be
industrially repressed. The Negro's economic
progress as revealed In the census, when seen from
the viewpoint of this handicap, is exceedingly
creditable. When an unwelcome and beginning
race stands up against an entrenched civilization
and wrests from It an increased measure of life,
that race possesses the strongest potentialities of
civilization. Look at our humble possessions and
see how they have mounted upward from zero to
a billion dollars. Look at us and see how we
have grown from three and a half million chain-
marked slaves to ten million aspiring freemen.

The relation of the Negro to trades-unionism
shows that he Is to be either a help or a hindrance
to industrial freedom In America: he must be In
the union on terms of equality, or If out .of the
union he will be a strike-breaker and wage-re-
ducer, a weapon of the employer against the white
employee. If the black Is pushed down, the least
that the white laborer can expect Is to be pushed
down next to him.

Besides Industrial segregation, there is what we
will call civil segregation; and then there Is the
natural tendency to class education and dlsfran-
cblsement. The effect of segregation Is to handi-
cap and thwart the Neo:ro's progress. Some try
to hypnotize us Into the belief tbat It means simple,
harmless, spatial separation. But some of us who

34 THE NEW NEGRO

are hard subjects to hypnotize continue to see and
to say that every single fact of color segregation
in this country, where it does not mean absolute
independence, means subordination and degrada-
tion for the weaker party. We have a right there-
fore to suspect that degradation is the aim; it is
at least such a huge temptation that no white or-
ganization or community has ever yet successfully
resisted the temptation to degrade after segregat-
ing. Our various "jim-crow" arrangements are
an illustration: there is not a railroad in this coun-
try required to furnish separate accommodations
for white and black, which makes those accommo-
dations equal. In many cases the arrangements
for the colored passenger are unsanitary and in-
decent: overcrowded cars, one toilet for both
sexes, and the white trainmen and rougher Ne-
groes permitted to smoke in the face of colored
women. I sometimes see the colored waiting-
room lined with cobwebs, and spittoons that have
not been emptied or disinfected for weeks. In all
cases, mind you, the Negro pays equal first-class
fares. However much he may be rated as inferior
in this country, he is counted equal in the payment
of fares, fines and taxes: equal in the bearing of
burdens, only inferior in the sharing of privileges
nd opportunities.
In many respects American civilization requires
just as much of the Negro as of the proudest and
most fortunate Anglo-Saxon, altho the Negro's
history in America has not bequeathed him a
chance in the present to meet the requirement.

THE NEW NEGRO 35

The past seeks to damn him with its heritage and
the present casts about him an environment which
aims to restrict him much more than any other
race in America is restricted. It is not only true
that we exact of the Negro as much as we exact
of any other man, but sometimes we seem to re-
quire even more of him, to expect him to be even
more virtuous than other races: it is well known
that, on the whole, Negroes are given much longer
terms and heavier fines for the same crimes. Yet
they are called criminals by nature. Why mete
out to a criminal-by-nature severer punishment
than to a deliberate criminal? Negroes are given
inferior schools to meet equal tests; they are given
inferior wages to pay equal prices; they are ex-
pected to work out their economic salvation with
no political power, without even the ballot. These
wonders no other race has ever accomplished or
has ever been expected to accomplish.

Heredity and environment are the factors of
destiny. Heredity is the multiplicand and en-
vironment the multiplier. The Negro is a factor
of American destiny : the nearer zero any factor is,
the nearer zero will the product be. Justice can-
not be corrupted for black men and remain pure
for white men. Government cannot be tyranny
to the weak and democracy to the strong. Amer-
ican civilization will be what It Is to the Negro.

The effect of segregation Is felt In the Negro's
education, public and private. There has been
much effort to find a type of education which
would fit the Negro for the status which the weight

36 THE NEW NEGRO

of American sentiment aimed to give him. If the
aim is right, the educational principle is all right:
if the Negro is to have a special place, he should
have special preparation for that place. But if
he is to be only an American citizen, he needs only
such education as other American citizens. ' Now
the Negro is not only good-natured but often very
cunning, and some of his leaders affect to have ac-
cepted these limitations for the sake of present
profits. These men are shrewd, not honest. They
believe, as they privately acknowledge, that the
only way to manage a white man is to allow him
to be quietly, peaceably, comfortably and com-
pletely fooled. The Negro is constantly trying to
manage the white man as "Br'er Rabbit" man-
aged "Br'er Fox," by his superior wits: by indi-
rection, circumvention and cunning. The defense
of the weak is cunning. The Negro had two hun-
dred and fifty years of schooling in this defensive
art. Even in the days of slavery the black "con-
jurer" often had both white and black at his mercy.
He learned to give Indirect answers, to profit by
ambiguous terms, and to get where he wanted to
go by a sort of broken and uncertain course. ^My
father told me of such a slave, who had everybody
on the plantation, white and black, believing that
he had the supernatural power of seeing Into all
secrets. One day his master even bet a sum of
money to some white neighbors that his Negro
could tell them anything they wanted to know.
They caught something and put It under a barrel,
all unknown to the Negro. The confident mas-

THE NEW NEGRO 37

ter called in the slave and asked him to tell what
was under the barrel. For a moment the Negro
was baffled and almost trapped; but while his mas-
ter threatened, he used his ears and his wits. By
chance he overheard just one word spoken by one
of the white men, but he did not know whether
this word referred to him or to what was under the
barrel. The Negro knew that he must either
make good or beg for mercy. Therefore, he took
this one word and fashioned a sentence which
could pass either for an interpretation of what
was under the barrel, or failing in that, could be
taken as a plea for mercy: "Well, Massa, you has
done caught de ole coon at last." It happened to
be a coon under the barrel, and the white people
did not detect the double-edged nature of the re-
ply. Till this day the Negro is seldom frank to
the white man in America. He says what he does
not mean; he means what he does not say. I have
heard Negro speakers address mixed audiences of
white and colored persons, and both white and
black would go away rejoicing, each side thinking
that the speaker had spoken their opinions, altho
the opinions of the blacks were very different from
those of the whites, even contradictory. This
is one reason for the great misconception in the
white race respecting the desires, ambitions and
sentiments of the black.

The greatest need in America to-day between
white and black people is an era of frankness and
honest expression of opinion. As long as we seek
to fool each other, employing cunning on the one

38 THE NEW NEGRO

side and insincerity on the other, we shall not rest
on the solid foundation of truth and there will be
live coals under the smooth-looking ashes of our
sophistries and deception. We must face facts and
tolerate the truth, however much opposed it may
seem to our dearest preconceptions. We must
pursue the rule of justice even if it seems to lead
out of the window.

Now, as to politics, our first impulse is to won-
der that nine-tenths of a democratic state could be
so opposed to the voting power of one-tenth. Is
Reconstruction the cause? But the intelligent
Negro of to-day is not the ignorant Negro of
Reconstruction days. Besides, it was psycholog-
ically impossible earlier and now must remain
forever impossible to know the truth about Re-
construction. We can only judge of what must
have been the distortions of Reconstruction his-
tory by analogy with the distortions of present-
day Negro history; and we know that now, nearly
fifty years after Reconstruction, with nearly fifty
years more of civilization, Christianity and "free
speech," not one newspaper out of a hundred
dares to tell the truth about the Negro. How,
then, can we ever hope to have the truth handed
down from a society that was dominated by the
Ku Klux Klan? The Negro's argument for citi-
zenship Is based, not on the doubtful past, but on
the eternal and demonstrable present. Is It a
question of Ignorance and unfitness In the Negro?
The Negro can boast that he never has, does not
and never will ask to be enrolled as a voter on

THE NEW NEGRO 39

any test more lenient than the test given white
men. He will let the white man "set the pace"
in the matter of attainable quaHfication. Is it a
desire to preserve the white race? Does the his-
tory of the world and the present European war
teach us that races and nations are preserved by
injustice and bullying? Finally, is it a vague and
inexplainable fear of the Negro? Well, if nine
white men fear one Negro on general principles,
they should be encouraged when they reflect how
much the one Negro must fear the nine white men
on the same principles.

Here again is where the Negro conjurer comes
in: he tries to charm the white man into the be-
lief that Negroes are not interested in politics;
that they regard balloting as a mere empty form-
ality which might just as well be left to the leisure-
loving and deluded white race, if only the long-
headed Negro is granted such useful blessings as
education, property and police protection. The
Negro does not mean this. He is interested in
politics and self-government. But he simply hopes
that the economic and industrial course will prove
to be an indirect route to these other things.

Let us see. First, as to education: this trifling
pastime of voting elects the educational officials,
and the states which have disfranchised the Negro
have relatively cut down his educational appro-
priation, in many cases shortening his school term
and lowering his school grade. The same preju-
dice which pushed him away from the polls tends
to push him out of the school. And now as to

40 THE NEW NEGRO

property right, — have votes any bearing on that?
Will money-getting per se improve the condition
of the disfranchised or will it endanger his life by
making him a richer prey for the mobocrat? Votes
elect the taxers and decide the taxes. The power
that can take i per cent of a man's property with-
out his consent, can take fifty per cent of it, and
then the other fifty. The power to tax is the
power to confiscate, and taxation without repre-
sentation Is confiscation. But what about police
protection, protection of civil rights, and fair
treatment in public places? If the Negro will
only give up his vote and his annoying insistence
upon political equality, will not the officers elected
by the votes of white people be so obligated to
the Negro that they will be zealous in his interest,
while the halls of legislature will fairly ring with
enthusiasm for these admirable "wards of the
nation"? That is a flat contradiction of human
nature : elective officers are obligated to those who
elect them; legislators look after the interests of
those by whom they are sent; sheriffs respect the
influence of those who can vote in the next election.
Where the Negro is disfranchised, the white offi-
cers who have impulses to do him justice are han-
dicapped; they must constantly choose between jus-
tice to the Negro and their own personal interests,
— a dangerous dilemma for human nature. As a
result, in the very states where the Negro is dis-
franchised he receives the least protection and in-
curs the most virulent attacks from the successful
politician. To get the Negro question out of poli-

THE NEW NEGRO 41

tics, give the Negro a fair ballot and he will vote
it out, — for if both races vote, no candidate who
needs the votes of both will drag the race question
into his campaign.

Fifteen years ago even the friends of the Negro
were persuaded to believe that if he were debarrd
from the polls, the mob would be pleased and
lynching would stop, — that pampered prejudice
would be sated and abated. But prejudice, like
most monsters, grows by that it feeds on. A white
officer is but human nature, and it is unfair to
expect him to choose the safety of Negro prison-
ers when society has made such a choice disastrous
to his own interests. Some officers are predis-
posed toward duty and loathe the thing which
they must tolerate: recently in Shreveport, La.,
when an untried Negro was being hanged to a
telegraph pole of the courthouse corner, the poor
sherifF, torn by conflicting emotions, instead of
actively opposing the mob, sat upon the court-
house steps Hmp and helpless, almost in tears and
muttering his disgust, — a sight to stir the pity of
the gods ! Had the Louisiana Negro had a vote
to support that sheriff, he could have and in all
probability, would have acted the part of an officer.
/ In this, as in many other matters, it is plain that
' American civilization fixes its own status when it
fixes the status of the Negro. Give the Negro his
ballot and let him stand by American civilization
by active influence ; or take away his rights and he
will destroy American civihzation by passive in-
fluence.

42 THE NEW NEGRO

Even the church does not escape : on some occa-
sions so triumphant becomes the spirit of barbarity
that even the white preachers yield and publicly
endorse the acts of the mob from their pulpits.
The church has done more for the education and
soul-freedom of the Negro than any other agency,
and it is regrettable that in many instances it is
acquiescing in and exemphfying the various forms
of jim-crowism and segregation, thus lending them
the authority of religion. We know nothing more
inconsistent with the recorded life of Jesus of
Nazareth, or which will be more embarrassing to
the influence of the church among colored people
in this country and in others. The church will be
judged in this world and in the next by its attitude
toward "the least of these." If the church yields
to jim-crowism, what shall we expect of railroads,
steamboats, theaters, labor unions and the United
States Government?

The Negro asks not pity: pity is shallow, evan-
escent and often unreasonable. We pity the over-
taken criminal. We ask only for a strict applica-
tion of those principles of morality and justice
which the white race has been foremost in formu-
lating and spreading in human society.

But whatever others may do, the Negro has a
duty to himself. He must continue to want and
to work. By no means must he stop wanting, for
that is the stimulus to his working. He must
want life, want civilization, want citizenship, want
votes and equal opportunities, — and for all these
wants he will work. A man is as civilized as his

THE NEW NEGRO 43

wants J The only way to work effectively is through
organization : to work as individuals is like bailing
out the ocean with a quart cup. The Negro is
only one among ten in this country, but the white
man is human, and if the black man works well he
will gain friends and co-operation. The surest
way for a thousand to put ten thousand to flight
is by winning many of them and chasing the others.
The struggle of the Negro is not a struggle of
days, but of decades. Success can be measured
only by looking backward over the years. In the
last decade he seems to have advanced along many
lines but to have retreated along political and civil
hnes; but like a baffled but determined European
general he should call that retreat a "withdrawal
for strategical purposes only," and in the present
decade seek advancement along all lines with
greater intrepidity than ever.

FIFTY YEARS AFTER EMANCIPATION

FIFTY YEARS I Half a century is but half
a day in the thought of God and in the life of a
race. It is scarcely the earthly hfe-time of one
full-grown human mind. A race which in so brief
a space can learn most of the lessons of civiHza-
tion, is indeed a precocious race.

From the middle of the 15th century for four
hundred years, from the time when Henry the
Navigator, of Portugal, accepted ten Negroes as
ransom for captive Moors till the time of Amer-
ican Emancipation, Africa had been the world's
big game preserve for the hunter of black slaves.
The system was on the verge of decline in Europe
when the New World with its uncultivated wilds
offered new fields and fresh motives for the pro-
pagation of human slavery. Again by the middle
pf the 19th century most of the civilized world
had come to regard slavery as a crime against
humanity, a contradiction to the Christian reli-
gion and a menace to the freedom of the free.
Even Russia abolished serfdom. Most of the
Spanish-American States had fallen into line, some
of them writing emancipation and freedom into
their new constitutions. But in this progressive
movement three parts of the Western World
44

THE NEW NEGRO 45

lagged behind — Brazil, Cuba and the Southern

United States.

Mammon, who is the creating and sustain-
ing god of slavery, fought mightily to perpetuate
the system in America. Humanity and religion
and patriotism were all about to yield to men's
pockets and stomachs, — luxury and avarice, those
twin pests which, according to Cato the Censor,
have ever been the ruin of every state. Even the
Church, whose God is the Lord, bowed to its arch
and ancient enemy Mammon. The "Colonization
Journal," published not so much in the interest of
Liberia as in the interest of getting the free Ne-
groes out of the United States, declaring them to
be "a greater nuisance than slaves," said "You
cannot abolish slavery, for God is pledged to sus-
tain it." The Church was corrupted and God was
slandered.

But the modern slave had something which the
ancient slave had not,— an ABOLITIONIST,—
Garrison and Philips and John Brown and Fred-
erick Douglass, — the best conscience of the white
race and the best courage of the black. The run-
away slave was the pioneer abolitionist; he was
the appointed creator of antislavery sentiment, —
an avenger born from the womb of slavery for
slaverv's own destruction. "Wherever he went
with the stripes of his back and the eloquence of
his tongue he fired the hearts of men.

"Who would be free themselves must strike the
blow." The runaway Negro was the vanguard,
the first hero in the struggle to free his race. ^)

46 THE NEW NEGRO

The result was war. And the result of war, tho
not its purpose, was freedom. It is one of the
mysteries of Providence that slavery caused a war
about something else, and that this war about
something else had for its most beneficent result
the abolition of slavery. When brave black men
answered the reluctant call of the hard pressed
Union and came to her defense, the war neces-
sarily took on a more definite anti-slavery phase
and the proclamation of emancipation became a
"war measure" in a new sense of the word.

Thus snatching freedom from the issues of a
war which had at first considered his liberty
neither as its immediate object nor its remote aim,
the emancipated Negro began a handicapped
struggle for existence, and a passive but effective
fight against the efforts to practically re-enslave
him. Much has been written and said about the
sad plight of the ex-master ; but even if the pathos
of his position has not been overdawn, it was less
pathetic than the outlook of the ex-slave. Upon
the ex-master shone the light of centuries; over
the ex-slave hung the darkness of ages. The ex-
master by race and blood and feature could easily
become a part of the very civilization against
which he had fought; the ex-slave was an alien in
blood, with the indelible birthmark on his fore-
head, destined to receive contempt, made worse
by pity from that same civilization, whose fall his
manacle-marked arm had stayed. The ex-master
inherited the cumulated results of 250 years of
toil; the ex-slave was grudgingly accorded the

THE NEW NEGRO 47

threadbare clothes which hung upon his back. The
ex-master had a legal title to the very ground upon
which the ex-slave walked, while the latter could
not lay claim to the stones which bruised his naked
feet.

Against such desperate odds the freed black
man in America began his passive and voiceless
struggle, which for accomphshment is without
parallel in the records of the human race. Mere
statistics of material progress do not suffice, for
figures cannot give a fair idea of even the skele-
ton of life. We can count a man's dollars, but
not the resolutions and triumphs of his heart. We
can measure his land, but we cannot measure his
ambition and his sacrifice. We can sum up his
material gains, but not his moral progress. We
can know about him and not know him. Very
few white people, even of those who admire the
material progress, appreciate the pluck and stay-
ing stuff which in an uneven struggle have sus-
tained the American Negro in his half freedom for
half a century. In population he has had normal
increase under very abnormal burdens. The
prophets of fifty years ago, foreseeing the odds
against him, did not think that he could live and
multiply, and predicted his extinction. His death
rate is much discussed to-day, but if we regard the
conditions of his life, the rate at which he dies is
to be wondered at not for how large it is but for
how large it is not. Poverty and ignorance and
economic injustice are not good for a people's
health. Fairmindedness would rather credit the

48 THE NEW NEGRO

Negro with the fact that he lives so well under
such conditions ; for as large as his death-rate fig-
ure is, it is not relatively as large as his poverty
figure or his ignorance figure, — his death rate is
not as high as his wages are low. Where Negroes
die twice as fast as white people they are gener-
ally much more than twice as poor or twice as
ignorant, and do not get half as good wages and
have not half as good housing, as a group. And
according to statistics of the United States Gov-
ernment, his death rate decreases as his home own-
ership and general welfare increases.

In the matter of acquiring property the Negro
has been verily emulous of his Creator; — for be-
ginning with nothing he has made his material
world. He is reputed to have a billion dollars,
and out of nothing created he it. He has almost a
billion known to the tax office, and we can be sure
that, emulating the virtues of his white brother, he
has been consistently modest in the presence of the
tax assessor. And how has this been acquired?
As a rule the Negro must do more and better work
for the same pay, — and sometimes for smaller
pay. Just as women get women's wages for work
equal to the work of men, so colored people get
"colored" wages. In reason we should think
that workers would be paid for their work, and
not for their sex or their color, but in fact it is
not so. The laws of economics, as often the
preachments and more often the practices of re-
ligion, will bow to a preiudice. The South is
sometimes called a good place for the Negro in-

THE NEW NEGRO 49

dustrlally ; and in many respects it is a better place
than the North. It is said that the Negro has a
somewhat better opportunity to earn money in the
South and a somewhat fairer privilege to spend it
in the North ;and someone has said that the chance
to earn money is more important for the Negro
than the privilege to spend it. This remark is as
fallacious as it is shallow: for the chief incentive
to the earning of money is the privilege of spend-
ing it well. Money is not an end in itself. Neither
North nor South offer the Negro a fair industrial
opportunity, if in the one he can boast but starve,
while in the other he may eat but cringe. The
man who can earn a dollar and cannot spend it is
no better off than the man who can spend a dollar
but cannot earn one. The latter inability cuts off
a man's work while the former cuts off his stimulus
to work. The two roads lead to the same end.
The choice between these evils is like the choice
which the antebellum preacher offered "Josh," an
erring member of his flock. As "Josh" staggered
toward him the parson remonstrated: "Josh, you
has jes' got to choose the other way." Then sol-
emnly: "Dar am befo' you jes' two ways, Josh.
Broad am de way dat leads right to damnation,
but narrow am de way dat leads straight to perdi-
tion. Now, which one o' dem ways will you take?"
Josh, tho a double-seeing back-slider, had a quicker
perception for identities than had the parson, and
replied: "Well, parson, you can take whichever
one o' dem ways you please, but if dem's de only
two ways you's got, dis here Nigger is gwine to

50 THE NEW NEGRO

take out right straight th'oo de woods." To nar-
rowly circumscribe the Negro's opportunity to
work certainly leads toward industrial damnation,
while to lessen his interest in work by cutting off
his privilege to spend what he earns in the sweat of
his face, heads him straight toward economic per-
dition. What the Negro needs for a normal in-
dustrial stimulus is the right to work at any trade
in which he can excel and the right to buy and
enjoy anything for which he can outbid his com-
petitors.

From their attitude of opposition to Negro edu-
cation many American people must be put into
that class, who, according to Sir Sydney Smith,
think "that ignorance is the great civilizer of the
world." It would seem that ignorance has actu-
ally been believed in as a cure for all the ills which
America has suffered as regards the Negro. The
education of the Negro has never yet been given
a bona fide trial as a remedy. The public power,
the State, during all these fifty years, has only
tolerated Negro education; has seldom assisted
and never truly encouraged it. And for the last
fifteen years, since the beginning of poHtical dis-
franchisement, the public school systems for the
Negro in the states which disfranchised him, have
been allowed to fall into a decadent condition.
With the passing of the Negro's ballot the public
school official lost the last poor incentive which
had spurred him to even half justice to the Negro
school. The average American public official will
not heed those to whose suffrage he owes no obli-

THE NEW NEGRO 51

gation. And in that, he is human rather than
American. In many of the towns and cities there
is not seating capacity in the Negro public schools
for the children who apply for admittance, to
say nothing of others, who being discouraged by
the uncomfortable situation, do not even apply.
If the Negro school is in the "red hght" district,
the members of the school board, who owe noth-
ing to black men's votes, may lend a dull ear to
their protests. It sounds incredible, and I hope
that posterity will not believe it, but in some of
our states, while the pay of others has been in-
creased, the pay of the Negro public school
teacher has been pushed down, until a convict
working out a fine is allowed a higher wage per
day than the teacher of the Negro school.

And yet, at the end of fifty years of nominal
freedom less than one Negro out of three is un-
able to read and write. It would seem almost
superhuman to have accomplished so much against
such odds, did we not know that when surrounded
by dangers both animals and men instinctively de-
velop means of defense. In this case the Negro
has resorted to double taxation; he pays his taxes
to the state and taxes himself again in the neces-
sary fees to place his child in a private school kept
by some church or missionary society. In the
state of Alabama which is practically half white
and half colored and is a fair representative of
the states which have disfranchised colored men,
there are several large institutions maintained for
the higher and professional training of white men

52 THE NEW NEGRO

and women at the expense of the public treasury,
and not one for the whole Negro population. And
yet they will tell us how many million dollars have
been spent on the public education of the Negro
"since the war," which sounds big in the aggre-
gate. But when we divide it up among several
million Negro children, extend it through a period
of nearly fifty years, and spread it over ten or
fifteen states, the figure then stands, not in millions
of dollars, but in pennies. It is generally assumed
and asserted in speech that the Negro is of an in-
ferior order of capacity, but it looks as if indeed
the white people believe the Negro to be a su-
perior being: those who are his friends expect him
to do so much with so little, and those who are
his enemies fear that he may do too much with too
little.

The one sufficient reply which the Negro can
make today to all his critics, old and new, as to
his education, is this: nearly ten thousand col-
lege graduates, thirty thousand busy teachers and
two million school children — and all this with
much less than half of his just share of the pub-
he educational funds.

The political history of the Negro in the
United States is full of tragedies and comedies.
Before the Civil War he was not regarded in
politics or court save as a chattel, — when he was
a chose In action, as the lawyers say. His only
constitutional privilege was that three-fifths of
him was taken to add political power to his mas-
ter, so that the South enjoyed the unique un-

THE NEW NEGRO 53

American distinction of being able to vote its
property. After the war he was enfranchised,
and some seem to think that his early enfranch-
isement was particularly unfortunate and unwise.
It may have been unwise as man measures wis-
dom, but it was a very wise providence : for had
the Negro not been enfranchised within ten years
after Appomattox, while the rivers were still red
with blood and the memory of his heroic deeds
was yet fresh in the minds of his white comrade,
that man is not now born who would have lived
to see the day of his enfranchisement. "A de-
mocracy has a short memory," says James Bryce.
It may have been unfortunate for somebody tem-
porarily, but it was fortunate for the Negro ever-
lastingly that he got citizenship before his country
forgot. The best time to do a thing is when it
can be done. Reactionary sentiment may not be
strong enough to-day to take the 14th and 15th
Amendments out of the Constitution, — but there
is certainly not progressive spirit enough in any
political party to put those amendments into the
Constitution if they were not already there. If
the amount of energy displayed in efforts to divest
the Negro of his citizenship had been directed
into channels to fit him for good citizenship, he
would be to-day second to no citizenry of the
round world. Even Reconstruction, a word which
has been exaggerated into synonymy with all hor-
rors, had lessons for American democracy. It
should have taught the danger of ignorance and

54 THE NEW NEGRO

demagoglsm, — ignorance in the black and dema-
goguery in the white.

Slavery and oppression are poor schools in
which to train citizens, poor for oppressor and
oppressed. The conclusion is, not that an op-
pressed people should be deprived of citizenship,
but that they should be relieved of oppression.
But whatever may have been the unfitness of the
Negro in the reconstruction period, who can con-
vince the reasonable people of the world that a
race which under a partial freedom has made
such progress in the short space of fifty years, is
not now fit for a voice in its own government?
Most of our Southern states have laws and con-
stitutional provisions which on their face have an
impartial-sounding phraseology to square with
the national constitution, but in their avowed in-
tent and in their administration they aim neither
at ignorance nor vice but at the American Negro
vote. These laws are mere shams, and the mil-
lions of youth of both races in the South are
growing up knowing that these laws are shams
and that they have absolutely no intent for what
they pretend. Is there any wonder that this
youth should come to regard other laws as shams,
— for example, the law against murder,— as mere
petty schemes for hedging about the interests of
one class and permitting it to depredate another
class with impunity?

Even the "grandfather clause," tho manifestly
unjust, discriminative and unconstitutional, was
reluctantly done to death only after being allowed

THE NEW NEGRO 55

to live for many years to the great embarrassment
of respect for political justice in this country.

The American Negro's life is paradoxical. "A
little learning is a dangerous thing," — but for the
Negro, they say, much learning is perilous. His
race is continually called the "child race," but
full-grown white men of the full-grown white race
will not compete with him unless he is greatly han-
dicapped. He makes the laws of the South with-
out being in the legislatures, and elects or rejects
senators and governors without a vote. And the
part of the comedy which he enjoys less is: his
very presence and numbers, where he is disfran-
chised, makes him the source of political power
over which he has no control and which is pretty
generally used against him. As a slave he gave
his master three-fifths of a vote to keep him In
slavery, and as a free man he gives his oppressor
five-fifths of a vote to continue his oppression. He
is condemned in many words but feared in almost
every action.

A dozen or so years ago the states In which
Negroes are often lynched seemed to be saying:
If you will only allow us to disfranchise these
black people, we will not find it necessary to lynch
them; it is their vote, their defense, which annoys
and irritates us; disfranchise them and we will not
want to murder them. Aesop tells a fable of the
wolves and the sheep: the wolves were ever ma-
king war on the sheep, and the sheep kept for
their protection a number of dogs. One day the
wolves proposed terms of peace, saying that If

56 THE NEW NEGRO

the sheep would only dismiss their dogs they
should no longer be annoyed by a wolf, and that
the idea of sheep defending themselves by dogs
was what insulted and angered the wolf tribe.
Aesop says that the innocent sheep accepted the
proposal and dismissed the dogs, — and you do not
need to be told the rest of the story. It is coarse
irony for one inspired with the lust of gain or
power to suggest to his intended victim that a sur-
render of his means of defense will appease that
lust. The greatest possible aid to the lynching
spirit is to make the sheriff of the county depend-
ent upon the votes of the lynching class and inde-
pendent of the favor of the victim class. No
greater burden could be laid upon the weak, no
greater temptation placed before the strong.

And yet colored people, because they do not as-
sist in running down a black man whom the rest
of the community is threatening to lynch if he is
caught, are accused of abetting and condoning
crime; while in fact it is because they are op-
posed to lynching which is the greatest of all
American crimes. They are forced into a seem-
ing favor for the accused: they are making an
indiscriminate defense against an indiscriminate
attack, — a thing which is as inevitable and neces-
sary as it is natural. The fact that a black pris-
oner can be so easily taken from the hands of the
law by the lyncher has caused Negroes to lose
enthusiasm for assisting officers. They know that
black men are lynched for having made a neces-
sary self-defense; they know that sometimes a

THE NEW NEGRO 57

black man is lynched for defending his wife; they
know that colored women have been lynched for
defending their own virtue and honor.

And is there any creature upon whose head
the perils of this unnatural situation have fallen
more than on any other? Yes, — the Negro
woman. For two hundred and fifty years she was
absolutely without protection: and for the last
fifty years if protected, she has been protected
sometimes at the cost and always at the peril of
the life of the male member of her household.
Is there a record anywhere else in human history
that wife, sister, mother bore such a burden
borne so well, — and lost no more? Endowed
with all the affections of her race and denied all
the tenderness of her sex, for the first two hun-
dred and fifty years her life was one incessant
travail. But out of her original vitality of wom-
anhood and motherhood she has for fifty years of
partial freedom cheerfully supplied the sinews of
the war. The physical and moral well-being of
the race are largely within her keeping. Virtue
is a thing that is tried and proven, not a thing
that is protected and innocent. Therefore the
fmost virtuous creature in the United States of
'America is the virtuous Negro woman. Her re-
sisting and enduring powers are of the highest
order. In this she is a prototype and prophecy
of what her race is to be if it will overcome. Her
character is often assailed in fact and her repu-
tation more often assailed in slander. But those
of us who know the Negro race know that the

58 THE NEW NEGRO

virtuous colored woman's name Is legion and that
her ranks are increasing. It seems almost ab-
surd to feel the necessity of saying so, — but the
boldness of the slander elicits the defense. This
woman has honored her sex by proving the vir-
tue of womanhood as few groups of women in
the history of the world have ever had the privi-
lege of proving It. The worst elements of both
races have been her pursuing enemy; and she has
run the gauntlet of the double fire and delivered
the destinies of a race.

These are some of the conditions out of which
has grown the demand for such an organization
as the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, which should seek to maintain
and advance the Negro's civil and political status.
There is as much need for such v/ork to-day as
there was for that of the Anti-Slavery Society in
1857. Some "new abolitionism" must free the
American Negro from the more subtle but not
less real chains which would perpetually shackle
his mind, his spirit and his soul.

Will the American white man forget how po-
tent a factor the American black man has been
in the prosperity of this great country? In all
her labors and struggles he has shared, — whether
as slave or freeman or patriot soldier. vThe Ne-
groes of America played a loyal part in the perils
of our country. And you know the story of Peter
Salem on Bunker Hill and of Crispus Attucks on
Boston Commons, and of the black battalions of
other Northern and Southern States, who at the

THE NEW NEGRO 59

call of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
rushed to arms and interposed their bodies between
freedom and death ; not the freedom of the Negro,
for the Negro was already a slave, but that free
government might not perish from the earth. But
do you also know that Rhode Island had a Ne-
gro regiment in the Revolutionary War? That
there were 755 Negroes with Washington after
the battle of Monmouth? That he had about five
thousand Negroes before the end of his cam-
paigns? That in all of the white regiments there
were Negroes? That a Negro named Prince
helped to capture General Prescott at Newport?
That the Negro voted in at least five states when
the Constitution of the United States was
adopted? He helped Jackson at New Orleans
and paid full toll in the sacrifices before Rich-
mond. Lincoln said that the Civil War could
not have been won by the North without him, and
he made the Spanish-American War an almost
bloodless victory on the American side. There
has been much dispute as to whether the Negro's
best friends are in the North or in the South.
Sometimes I am in doubt as to who is the Negro's
best friend, — but there is one thing about which
I have no doubt, and that is that the very best
friend which the American white man has in the
whole round world is the American Negro. For
three hundred years he has been a part of the
life of this country. For fifty years he has been
a large factor in making it, especially the south-
ern part of it, what it is. In the next fifty years

6o THE NEW NEGRO

it will become what it becomes largely because of
what he is. Active or passive his influence is
nevertheless relentless.

A providence wiser than men has brought the
children of Africa and mingled them in goodly
proportion in this great melting-pot of peoples.
After confusion there will be fusion of thought
and spirit. In summoning to her hills and val-
leys every type of man providence has given Amer-
ica the finest position on the whole battle-line of
humanity. The fight here is decisive. Our success
at this point means world-wide victory, our fail-
ure world-wide disaster. In the matter of race
adjustment all the lines of humanity will go for-
ward when we go forward or fall back when
we fall back. No finer ground could have been
chosen for freedom's last great battle than this
young and virile nation filled with all the ele-
ments of the world. The thought should inspire
the meanest. And let those who fight among the
pioneers remember the distress and glory of the
pioneer's fight — that against us are fighting
hoary-headed, horny-handed prejudice, and greed
and avarice, and mammon the mighty; while for
us are fighting love and justice, time and evolu-
tion, and God the Almighty.

GROUNDS OF HOPE.

"The mainspring of effort," according to Hor-
ace Mann, is "The desire of bettering one's con-
dition." Back of this desire there must be hope.
Hope is the lodestar of human progress. There
can be no strong effort without desire ; there can
be no strong desire without hope ; and strong hope
must have some reasonable grounds.

If the progress of the Negro is to continue in
this country, he must be hopeful, and his friends
must hope. A confidence in the American Ne-
gro's future has many reasonable grounds, — first

In history. If anything in the records of the
last three hundred years can inspire the heart of
humanity, with a faith in God and the ultimate
success of the human family, that thing is the
tale of the American Negro. All the way from
Africa to America he has come; all the way from
savagery to civilization, all the way from slavery
to citizenship, all the way from ignorance to en-
lightenment, all the way from heathenism to
Christianity, — with every inch of the road made
hard or sternly disputed. He has had some friends,
but it has not always been in accordance with the
will of the majority of white men that the Ne-
gro has succeeded. We cannot thus explain his
attainment of freedom or of citizenship or of

61

62 THE NEW NEGRO

education or of some measure of wealth. But the
weak has literally triumphed over the strong, as
if some strange divinity were at work in his his-
tory, mocking opposition. Single decades have
seen revolutions of opinion.

His fellowman has for the most part been a
blind helper in the divine plan of the Negro's
advancement. Those who brought him from
Africa did so without the slightest intention of
saving him from savagery, — it was a cold busi-
ness proposition with all the selfishness of com-
merce. There was not the least thought of sav-
ing him to Christianity; the god Mammon was
the only god in the consideration. Kings, poten-
tates and priests shared in the profits of the slave-
trade, and conscience was lulled to sleep in the lap
of luxury. Two hundred and fifty years ago
the Church on the American continent held it "a
sin to baptize a Negro." Irreligion and cruelty
are inevitable wherever Mammon is god. But
through inhumanity itself the first purpose of the
just God was fulfilled by a bodily transfer of a
large number of the race from a country where
environment forbade civilization to a jand ^of
large opportunity like America.

Then there was the period of American slav-
ery,— slavery which some indignant soul has
called the "sum of all villainies." American slav-
ery as a whole was the most cruel institution of its
kind that the world has ever seen. But Provi-
dence, partly through agitation of men and largely
through the demands of public policy and the ex-

THE NEW NEGRO 63

actions of war, brought freedom. The American
Negro's freedom can hardly be ascribed to the
dehberate and purposed will of his fellowman.
Mars was mightier than Mammon and Jehovah
was superior to both.

After the acquisition of freedom came the ques-
tion of the Negro's citizenship. After getting
freedom in a democratic government, it takes cit-
izenship and the ballot to keep it. Freedom
without citizenship cannot stand any better than
an empty sack. In this matter, too, God and a
few good men proved to be an overwhelming
majority. Wise men saw that there is as much
hope for a flock of sheep in a pack of wolves as
for a voteless people in a selfish democracy.

Accordingly the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments were added to the fundamental law
of the land, primarily to protect the Negro, but
secondarily protecting every man in America.
Some might think that these amendments are veri-
table "broken reeds" of hope, since they are con-
tinually violated. But so it is with every other
law of man and every law that God has made
for man; they are continually violated. But they
are still the highest law of the land, the ideals
toward which the nation moves, the standards
of our justice, the straight-edged rules by which
just men of the future will measure the irregu-
larities of our courts of to-day. There is vindi-
cation for every violated law.

In 1856 political leaders asked Abraham Lin-
coln what principles should underly the new party

64 THE NEW NEGRO

that was to be organized. Lincoln replied: "Let
us build our new party on the rock of the Decla-
ration of Independence and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against us." This Declaration of In-
dependence, with its lofty principles of equality,
which the political charlatan seeks to ridicule, is
still the best rock on which American civilization
can stand.

But there are some who lay upon their con-
sciences the unction of expediency, that the Ne-
gro is disfranchised simply for the sake of peace
with the lower and more unreasonable element of
whites, that this element will like the Negro bet-
ter if they can rob him of a good measure of his
freedom, and will be kinder to him, — in short,
that the Negro is disfranchised for his own best
welfare — physical welfare! Thus they would
damn his soul in order to save his hide, they
would deprive him of the precious jewel of lib-
erty in order to grant him the baser metal of
physical existence, — in order to do him a little
kindness, they will do him the greatest wrong in
the world.

But there is hope for the Negro because the
white man is waking up more and more to the
fact that he is "a part of all that he has met,"
and that in this country he has met nearly a dozen
million Negroes. Their fate is his fate, unless
the laws of God and Nature are subject to re-
peal. The law of compensation is relentless: if
the virtue of the black race is set at naught, the
best citadels of the white race are undermined;

THE NEW NEGRO 65

if a black man is pressed down to the brute end
of society, white men must then be brutal enough
to pay his brutish acts with retaliative brutality;
if a law is made to disfranchise Negroes in Geor-
gia, it will disfranchise a hundred thousand
whites, and the very class of poor whites whose
misguided votes made the disfranchising law pos-
sible. There is hope for the black man if there
be any hope for the white man.

There is hope for the Negro in education. The
question of capacity is a question of the past;
the man who does not know it is a quarter-century
behind. All the poverty of opportunity has been
unable to defeat his almighty desire for educa-
tion. In one locality in Alabama the Negro child
gets less than one dollar per annum for his edu-
cation, and the white child gets eighteen dollars,
— so that if attainment were proportioned to the
money (which, thank Heaven! it is not), it would
take a Negro 180 years to get as much learning
as the white child gets in ten years. The Negro's
desire for education is a tale that should stir
men's hearts. This desire persists even where
there is the meanest opportunity for satisfaction.
This attitude in the Negro should fill his friends
with hope. There is the story of the old gentle-
man who always had "something to thank God
for," whatever happened. He once slipped and
fell and dogs seized the meat which he was car-
rying home for his dinner. A voice of scorn
called out: "What is there to thank God for
now?" The answer came: "Well, my meat is

66 THE NEW NEGRO

gone, and my dinner is gone, but thank God, I
have my APPETITE left." When there are
no means left, the Negro's desire and good cheer
and his hope abide, and these no man can de-
stroy.

If there be any truth in the statement that
the education of the Negro has brought evils,
still the reply is, that the only remedy for the
evils of education is MORE education. Some
men speak as if ignorance were the sum of all
blessings. If the education of the Negro has been
an evil to anybody, that body has not been the
Negro. The elevation of a man may be an evil
to the man who is trying to keep him down; to
the man who is trying to rise, every bit of aid
is an undeniable blessing. Ignorance for the op-
pressed is a necessary part of the policy of op-
pression.

There is hope for the Negro in religion, — in
his own religion and in the religion of the people
among whom he lives. The Negro, for his part,
has enough rehglousness to save America. In
many cases this religiousness very sorely needs
to be Christianized. Less religion and more
Christianity would not hurt the Negro — nor his
friends.

The progress of a race cannot be measured day
after day, but must be taken decade after decade,
or generation after generation. Has the Negro
advanced? Fifty years ago he did not own his
own body; now he owns a billion dollars besides.
Then he was a man without a countrj", hardly

THE NEW NEGRO 67

claiming a foot of land; now he has three hundred
thousand farms, half a million homes and half
a hundred banks. Then he was ignorant; now
he has thirty thousand schools with more than
thirty thousand teachers, and half a dozen mil-
hons who can read. He always had religion,
but now, In addition to that, he has about thirty
thousand churches with millions of members and
the Lord only knows how many preachers.

Should America be hopeless of a people who,
in proportion to their numbers and opportunities,
have done as much for America as any other peo-
ple living? Who have cleared the forests of the
South and driven the dragon from her swamps?
The South sometimes boasts of the purity of its
Anglo-Saxon blood. For that It must thank the
Negro; for the superior fitness of Negro labor
kept out the foreigner. The Negro has been
the vaccine in the body of the South which has
impregnated the system against the worst dis-
eases of southern Europe and Asia. But for the
Negro, Atlanta would to-day be as much of an
interracial hodge podge as Is Boston or New
York.

The black American should advance faster in
the future than In the past, for nothing succeeds
like success. But If It should take two years of
the future to equal one year of the past, it would
not justify despair. In 1837 Lovejoy was mur-
dered in Illinois for a mild opinion against Ne-
gro slavery; in 1863 a man of Illinois issued a
proclamation freeing millions of Negroes. In

68 THE NEW NEGRO

1857 the highest court in the land expressed an
opinion that the Negro had no more respectable
rights than the beasts of the field; and a little
more than ten years later the Negro was made
a citizen by the highest law in the land. Fifty
years ago if a book was found in the hands of
a Negro, that hand might be cut off with a car-
penter's tool; while to-day he has thousands of
schools and millions of students. There is abso-
lutely no reason in despair.

When a black slave woman saw Lincoln at last
entering Richmond in 1865, she exclaimed, "Well,
de Lord am slow, but He am sho," — and the
truth is as sound as the grammar is poor.

In the last fifty years the Negro has accom-
plished all that he could have been expected to
accomplish and more than he actually was ex-
pected to accomphsh. Perhaps no people in all
history have ever disappointed so many ill pre-
dictions as has the American Negro. If the ter-
rible prophets of forty years ago could rise from
the dead, they ought to be most agreeably sur-
prised. He has answered the prophecy of rever-
sion to savagery by becoming at least the most
rehgious element in the country. He has an-
swered the prophecy of ignorance by wiping out
two-thirds of his illiteracy. He has answered the
prophecy of public menace by being peace-loving.
He has answered the prophecy of extinction by
multiplying his numbers by 300 per cent, accord-
ing to the count, and perhaps by another 100 per

THE NEW NEGRO 69

cent, who never get counted. He stands to-day
the despair of the prophets.

He should be taught that next to the hand of
God his own hand rules his destiny. The story
is told of a white preacher who was endeavoring
to explain to a Negro candidate for the ministry
the doctrine of ELECTION, — that some men are
elected to be saved while others are elected to
be lost, by fore-ordaining powers over which they
have no control. The black candidate could not
understand how a fellow could be elected to a
position without ever consenting to be nominated,
until a Negro bystander volunteered to help the
white man out by offering this explanation: "It
is just like this," said the Negro, "God, He votin'
for you; and the devil, he votin' 'gin you; so
whichever way you vote, that's the way the 'lec-
tion goes." In the decision of a man's own
fate he has the deciding vote.

That truth is not at all inconsistent with the
fact that we are all, white and black, subjects of
circumstances, children of antecedents over which
we have no control. The present is the offspring
of the past. We have been cast up as a moun-
tain is cast up from the deep, and it will take
time to alter our relation to one another and
to the rest of the wold. Tho all is not well, and
tho the changes of a day are invisible, yet the
decades and the ages are telling and will tell
the story of our progress and mutual adjust-
ment. Race prejudice is simply the last great
enemy of human brotherhood, and in its turn it

70 THE NEW NEGRO

will be destroyed as have all the other enemies.
It is simply the last barrier behind which the re-
treating narrowness of the human heart has taken
refuge. All other bars to universal brotherhood
have been broken one by one : First, man tried
to live to himself; every man's hand was against
his neighbor, and he scarcely trusted even the
female with whom he associated. This isolating
prejudice was finally broken down and he ac-
quired an Interest in certain other individuals, his
family. But it was family against family now.
Intermarriage brought families into alliances, and
retreating prejudice took its next stand behind the
clan-family, — and it was clan against clan, and
finally tribe against tribe. It is now nation against
nation and league against league. Will it later be
race against race and color against color? The
hnes of civilization are surely drawing closer
against the grim and ancient caste of race preju-
dice. And whether it comes as a sequal to gigan-
tic interracial conflict or through the long siege
of intellectual, moral and religious forces, it
seems certain that the overthrow of this last enemy
will mark the establishment of Universal Human
Brotherhood.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

We shall next speak of the history of three re-
markable men, a Negro, a near-Negro and a white
man. Frederick Douglass, who was known and
treated as a member of the American Negro
group, — ^Alexander Hamilton who was not gen-
erally known to be a Negro in the American sense
of the word, and was therefore not recognized
and treated as a member of that group, — and
Abraham Lincoln, the American of the Ameri-
cans, whose connection with the life and history
of the Negro race is like that of a finger of destiny.

It is a terrible, almost incredible history which
we are about to recite, but the authors and actors
thereof have already appeared before the just
judgment of Heaven, — and the living can review
their virtues and their vices and read the lesson
of their lives with neither mahce nor passion.

The life of Frederick Douglass is an epitome
of human life, which begins at the very lowest and
ends at the very highest. The life of Abraham
Lincoln is typically American; the life of Fred-
erick Douglass is typically human. Lincoln began
in the lowest deprivation of American freedom;
Douglass began in the lowest degradation of
human slavery. Douglass was 21 years old when

72 THE NEW NEGRO

he escaped from slavery to a partial freedom, —
21 years old before he reached the place where
Lincoln began. The life of this black man, more
nearly than that of any other notable American,
spans the whole space of the life of man.

Human slavery is pre-eminent enough in its
badness to deserve a word by itself. Slavery is a
human custom, one of the mores, — Hke commerce,
marriage, agriculture, labor, law. But unlike
these other mores it is born not of worthy but of
unworthy sentiments. The others are born of de-
sires and efforts on the part of the individual to
serve himself and his fellows, and they develop a
fellow-feeling. Slavery is born of the desire to
serve oneself at the expense of his fellows, and
begets ill-feeling. So while slavery is like other
mores a child of human life, it is an illegitimate
child, dishonorably born; its mother is laziness
and its father is Mammon. It is the degenerate
offspring of the desire to have, mated with an
abhorrence for work. Indeed like the half-human
creatures of ancient myths, slavery seems to be the
unnatural issue of the man and the brute.

Some scholars claim that in savage and un-
civilized society slavery is normal. Whether that
be true or false, it is abnormal and unnatural
everywhere in civilization. But any institution,
however wrong, which allies itself with human
greed, bids fair to outlive the day of its normality,
to die hard, and to defy the bolts of the reformer.
Slavery is such an institution : it has the powerful
alliance of men's pockets and stomachs, and the

THE NEW NEGRO 73

passion of gain. As society becomes civilized and
conscience begins to open its eyes, men begin to
palliate and excuse their pet passions. The wish
will father any kind of thought. The civilized,
Christianized enslaver accepted the doctrine of
the brotherhood of man and piously said: We
will elevate and bless our heathen brother by re-
ducing him to slavery. This absurd contradiction
for nearly two thousand years seduced the Chris-
tian church. It is notorious that no group ever
enslaved another group from the motive of con-
ferring benefits.

As we have indicated in a previous chapter the
commerce in slavery began in 1442 when Hgnrv
the Navigator^ a Portuguese prince, allowed some
Moors to ransom their own men by delivering ten
Negroes instead. This taste of human blood at
once excited the cupidity and avarice of the Span-
ish race, which gradually infected better civiliza-
tions and filled the earth with a million horrors.
What with the seductiveness and contagion of
avarice, and what with the discovery of a New
World and the development of agriculture, Africa
became the world's mart for the raw material of
slavery. The horrors of the slave ship are mat-
ters of cold record, written not by the victims but
by the perpetrators. Two captives out of every
three were either starved or drowned or butch-
ered on the high seas, before reaching a worse
fate In the Western World.

With this virus British America was inoculated
In the year of 161 9 at Jamestown in the colony of

74 THE NEW NEGRO

Virginia. Until thistles produce figs a system
rooted in such antecedents will be ugly in its fruit,
ugly to see and ugly to relate. In such antecedents
American slavery was rooted. In this institution
began the life of Douglass, which we shall report
with fidelity to truth, — with love of right and
hatred of wrong, but without malice.

In Feb., 1817, as nearly as he could determine
over half a century afterwards, Frederick Doug-
lass was born in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Mary-
land,— a place till this day remarkable for noth-
ing save the sole fact that Douglass was born
there. His mother was Harriet Bailey, a slave
owned by Aaron Anthony. She was black and of
comely African hneaments. Of his father nobody
knows anything; some have supposed that he was
one of the slave owners or overseers, — but Doug-
lass was woolly-haired and rather dark for a
mulatto. Until seven years of age he lived hap-
pily in ignorance of the fact that he was a slave
with his own grandmother, Betsy Bailey, who was
the caretaker of all the slave babies of Capt.
Anthony until they should be ready for the field or
the market.

Between seven and eight years of age he was
carried by his grandmother, with a crowd of other
youngsters who had reached a useful or a market-
able age, to his master, who was general superin-
tendent of the plantations of Col. Lloyd, a
wealthy Marylander, owning a thousand slaves
and many farms. The home of Col. Lloyd,
known among the slaves as "The Great House,"

THE NEW NEGRO 75

with its imposing wealth and antebellum munifi-
cence, made a profound impression upon the mind
of the child.

Here he had his first taste of the bitterness of
slavery, and as an onlooker beheld some of the
horrors to which his birth would make him heir.
In the first place he was put under the stern and
cruel governance of "Aunt Katy," a slave
woman who seemed to be a sort of superintendent
of the youthful slave property of Capt. Anthony.
He seldom saw his mother, for in order to have
a moment with him she had to walk twelve miles
from another plantation at night and be back for
work in the morning. Through all his life he
remembered with profoundest gratitude how upon
one such mission she came just in the nick of time
to save him from actual starvation at the hands of
merciless "Aunt Katy." Lucretia, his master's
daughter, and little Daniel, the youngest son of
Col. Lloyd, were his "friends at court," and often
befriended him against the tyranny of "Aunt
Katy" by buttered biscuits and other food, or by
the still more kindly ministrations of humane and
sympathetic words. His mother's nocturnal visits
suddenly ceased altogether: she had either died
or, still worse, been sold to the "far South."
Somehow she had learned to read and it was a
risk to keep such a slave too near to the borders
of the free states. — And alas! for the horrors
which his waking mind was permitted to see
through his natural eyes; he saw slave girls
beaten and mangled by the overseers without

76 THE NEW NEGRO

remonstrance from their owners; he saw the un-
defined and indefinable crime of "impudence"
punished like murder; he saw young Denby shot
down in cold blood for running from the lash;
through a crack in the wall of the little cell where
he slept on the ground without covering, he
peeped early one frosty morning into a neighbor-
ing room and saw .his Aunt Esther, a beautiful
slave girl, tied up by her hands and on tiptoe,
while a human demon stood by and coolly draw-
ing his rawhide through his hand, as if delighted
with its delicious feel, dealt blow after blow until
her bare back was like fresh bloody beef, — and
for an unnameable reason entirely to the credit of
the girl. Sometimes he saw the slave resist and
fight the overseer, — and although a resisting slave
was sure to be overpowered, tied and whipped
finally, as a matter of policy, his youthful mind
was quick to seize the fact that those who resisted
most sternly were seldom attacked. A fight with
such a slave was neither pleasant nor safe, and
the overseer would diplomatically avoid an en-
counter. This observation caused young Fred to
make a formula which he carried and repeated
through his whole life : That those are whipped
oftenest who are whipped easiest.

A working slave's weekly allowance of food
was two pounds of pickled pork, one peck of meal
and one handful of salt, — and his clothing was of
the same scantiness. But the most neglected little
animals of any slave plantation were the slave
children not yet large enough to work. Little

THE NEW NEGRO 77

pigs could soon be killed for meat, and so they
were fed; little calves could be slaughtered for
veal, and so they were fattened; but little "nig-
gers" could do nothing but consume what they
could not earn, and so they were stinted. Until
ten years of age they were allowed neither hat or
shoes, coat nor trousers, — only one tow-linen
shirt per annum, and if that wore out before the
end of the year they could wear their skins for
the remaining months. They had no beds but the
floor or ground of their huts. Fred found him an
empty feed sack and used to crawl into it, and
slept head in and heels out. No wonder that he
said when reflecting on this childhood that "the
pigs in the pen had leaves, and the horses in the
stable had straw, but the children had no beds."
Their food was coarse meal boiled into a mush
and poured into a common trough, — and like little
piggies they were called and like little piggies they
came, with neither spoons nor forks, but some
with oyster-shells, and some with chips or pieces
of shingle or potsherds from the yard, — and the
strong and more muscular would get most and the
weak and most needy would get least. Fred could
have fought his way but the vindictive hate of
"Aunt Katy" would punish him if he pushed the
others. So that even in childhood, which is prover-
bially happy, he says he was led to wish that he
had never been born.

"Why am I a slave?" was a question that puz-
zled his boyish brain.

So the "great house" of the slave plantation.

78 THE NEW NEGRO

with all its splendor, had an underworld, an anti-
podal condition, within a stone's throw. Like the
ancient conception of the future life it had the
abodes of the blest and the damned in close prox-
imity. The opulence and plenty of the mansion
were balanced by the poverty and squalor of the
cabin. But the slave servants in the "great house"
itself were more fortunate ; that is, they were bet-
ter fed and dressed, fat and sleek. And a visitor
from the outside world, from free states or from
Europe, might be shown the mansion but not the
slave quarters; and seeing the well-kept, liveried
waiters standing behind the chairs in the dining-
room, he might wonder why it is that Lovejoy and
Garrison and Phillips lose their lives or get them-
selves into so much trouble over a people who are
being treated so kindly.

Miss Lucretia, the kindly daughter of his
owner, was to marry Thomas Auld, and Fred
was to be sent to Thomas' brother, Hugh Auld,
in Baltimore to take care of the little nephew
Tommy Auld. Boys usually regret to leave their
homes and early mates, but little Fred received
the news from Miss Lucretia that he was to be
transported out of this den of horrors with un-
bounded joy. His tow-linen shirt was to be ex-
changed for real trousers; he had three days to
prepare for the journey, and he spent most of
the time bathing in the creek and scraping the
dead skin from his knees and the soles of his feet.
When he reached his Baltimore home Mrs.
Sophia Auld, the wife and mother, said to her

THE NEW NEGRO 79

little son: "Tommy, here's your Freddy," — as
one might speak of a new poodle.

But Mrs. Auld was at heart a kind and gentle
lady, who had never been a slaveholder, who did
not know the philosophy of slavery, and who
made the egregious blunder, from the slavehold-
ing standpoint, of teaching "Freddy" to read.
And one of the greatest indictments against slav-
ery is illustrated by the change which the poison
of irresponsible power wrought in this noble
woman's character. Her disposition gradually
changed from sweet to bitter, from gentle to vin-
dictive. One day, while her soul was still white
and unscarred, she innocently boasted to her hus-
band how quickly and well Fred had learned to
read the Bible, — but Master Hugh was better in-
structed in the creed of slavery, and immediately
he forbade it, and thundered his disapproval in
these words: that "if you give a nigger an inch
he will take an ell. Learning will spoil the best
nigger in the world. If he learns to read the
Bible it will forever unfit him to be a slave." No
wonder that Douglass contended in all his after
life that this was the first and one of the best
anti-slavery speeches he had ever heard. He
caught the cue at once: learning is inconsistent
with being in slavery. All right. He had already
seen enough of slavery to give his vote against
that, and if learning was the key to the way out,
he was going to find the key. Master Hugh's
objection was as great a stimulus as Mrs. Sophia's
instruction.

8o THE NEW NEGRO

Poor Mrs. Auld now sought to undo what she
had done. She was more vindictive than her hus-
band: she tore papers from Fred's hand, she
peeped through keyholes and cracks, she eaves-
dropped at his door. Too late; she had given
him the "inch" and he took the "ell." Persecu-
tion stimulated him. Crayon was his pen, and a
barrel head or the pavement of the street was his
desk. This contradiction in her noble soul made
the woman lose her sweet disposition and become
vixenish and shrewish even to her own family.
An anthropologist says that no man was ever
known to be great and good enough to be a slave-
holder.

Capt. Anthony died, and Fred had to go back
to the farm where he and the other slaves and the
horses and sheep and cattle and plows must be
"valued and divided" among the heirs. Being
"valued and divided" he fell to Miss Lucretia,
and to his great joy and greater fortune she loaned
him again to the Aulds in Baltimore.

Lucretia died, leaving him the property of her
husband, Thomas Auld, and he was brought from
Baltimore to Thomas' plantation near St. Mich-
ael's, Talbot County, Maryland. Thomas mar-
ried a new wife, who "knew not Joseph," who
was hateful and stingy, and she starved Fred and
the other slaves almost to death. She had a horse
from her father's place, which when he got loose
would run back to her father's house. Fred
would let him loose to get to go after him. Beast
and man had the same object in going: the horse

THE NEW NEGRO 8i

found fodder and Fred found bread. A cook was
there who was generous to the hungry.

The boy was not an ideal slave ; he hated slav-
ery; he was rebellious. He exasperated Thomas
Auld, who was one of the worst types of slave-
holding character, — selfish, cruel, stingy. Finally
the slaveholders had a great Methodist camp-
meeting and Master Thomas professed religion.
The slaves secretly rejoiced at this conversion,
hoping for more bread and less beating from the
hand of a Christian master, — to their great dis-
appointment. The only difference was that now
when "brother" Thomas Auld, class leader of his
church, got ready to whip a slave, he would quote
the passage of scripture which says: "That serv-
ant which knew his lord's will and prepared not
himself, neither did according to his will, shall
be beaten with many stripes." The sternness and
gravity of religion were added to his meanness.
Fred was fifteen years old and had professed re-
ligion himself, but he doubted the genuineness of
Thomas Auld's conversion.

Finally Thomas decided that Fred needed
"breaking." You have heard of "broncho-
busters" and "ox-breakers." Well, Thomas had
a neighbor known as a "Negro-breaker." This
Edward Covey was a pious man; his religion kept
him from breaking any rule of the Sabbath, but
not from breaking any bone of a slave's body on
any other day of the week. Fred's treatment
by this man in the year of 1834 is too harrowing,
bloody and inhuman to relate in detail. In the

82 THE NEW NEGRO

first six months he was several times nearly killed
by untamed oxen which he was compelled to drive,
or by Covey's lash and bludgeon, until one morn-
ing in despair he made up his mind that, live or
die, he was going to resist. After Covey had
fought him for hours without being able to sub-
due or whip him, he turned Fred loose and said
diplomatically: "Now, you scoundrel, go to your
work; I would not have whipped you half so hard
if you had not resisted." This physical fight, this
resistance, this refusal to be whipped, reawakened
Fred's intellectual and moral manhood and was
one of the crises of his life. He never received
another whipping in slavery.

"Those are whipped oftenest who are whipped
easiest."

Slavery would be bad enough if the slave could
be treated as well as the horse, the cow and the
dog. But no system of slavery can ever treat
its average slave as well as the horse and cow and
dog. Slavery itself is such a revolt against human
nature that the slave's very humanity, instead of
protecting him, damns him. For instance: if the
horse balks, he is an unreasoning brute — pat him
and coax him; if the slave balks, he is a malicious
devil — kill him. If a horse breaks a wagon, it is
an accident; if a slave breaks a tool, it is sullen
revenge — beat him. If the horse is sick, he is
sick; if a slave is sick, he is trying to get out of
work. If the horse is slow, he is a slow horse;
if a slave is slow, he is stubborn. If the horse
injures his owner, it is regrettable; if a slave in-

THE NEW NEGRO 83

jures his owner, it is murder. And the most
blinding and dangerous thing of all is this thought
in the mind of the slaveholder: If I were in that
fellow's place and he in mine, I would do every
sly, mean thing I could do to him, and I know he
does the same. Thus a man always develops
hatred for the one whom he habitually wrongs.
The slave's very humanhood damns him below the
dumb unreasoning beast; and as to slaveholder,
there is no position within the gift of the devil
better fitted to destroy the character of the one
who fills it.

The next year our 17-year-old lad was rented
out to William Freeland, who was not a church
member, but as compared with the brutality of
Covey he was a kind and gentle master. You
might think that the slave would be contented with
kind treatment after being treated so inhumanly.
But such is not human nature. The "inch" and
the "ell" philosophy is literally true in the matter
of liberty. Give a slave a cruel master and he
will wish a kinder master; give him a kind master
and he will want no master at all. The half free
aspires to full freedom. Give him an inch and
he demands an ell. Such is human nature. And
human nature is right: kindness or cruelty is not
the essential question; it is slavery or freedom.
To make a man a slave and then treat him kindly
is to put a chain on him and paint it with gold
paint. To be chained with a chain is to be chained,
whether the chain be gold or iron.

So, what did Fred do under the experience of

84 THE NEW NEGRO

better slave treatment? Thank God and be con-
tented? The first, but not the last. He planned
to run away from all slavery, kind and cruel,
"good" or worse. He began to teach John and
Henry Harris how to read to inspire them with
the feeling of liberty. Thus organizing a band
of five he wrote passes for each and set a day for
flight. They were betrayed, arrested and put
into jail on the horrible charge of an attempt to
steal themselves. But the brave little fraternity
stood together, ate their passes with their bread
and gave not a word of incriminating evidence
one against the other. They narrowly escaped
being sold into Georgia or Louisiana or Alabama,
a fate worse than hanging; they were released
from jail and Fred was sent back to Hugh Auld's
in Baltimore.

Here he learned ship-calking, and at One time
was nearly beaten to death by the white appren-
tices, who thus showed their resentment at work-
ing with a "nigger," — a spirit which organized
labor still holds. Master Hugh took all his earn-
ings, allowing him poor clothes and poorer food.
He hired the boy out as helper to the carpenters
in a shipyard, — not to one carpenter but to the
seventy-five. All had an equal claim to his time
and obedience. He had seventy-five masters,
when, as he suggests, one was bad enough. He
was to answer the beck and call of each one, even
if they all beckoned and called at the same time.
He tells how, as a bewildered boy, he received
impossible and simultaneous orders from these

THE NEW NEGRO 85

hard men: "Fred, come help me to cant this tim-
ber here," — "Fred, come carry this timber yon-
der,"— "Fred, bring that roller here," — "Fred,
go get a fresh can of water," — "Fred, come help
saw off the end of this timber," — "Fred, go quick
and get the crowbar," — "Fred, hold on the end
of this fall," — "Fred, go to the blacksmith's shop
and get a new punch," — "Halloo, Fred! run and
bring me a cold-chisel," — "I say, Fred, bear a
hand, and get up a fire under the steam-box as
quick as lightning," — "Hullo, nigger! come turn
this grindstone," — "Come, come; move, move!
and bowse this timber forward," — "I say, darkey,
blast your eyes ! why don't you heat up some
pitch?" — "Halloo! halloo! halloo! (three voices
at the same time) — "Come here; go there;
hold on where you are. D — n you. If you move
I'll knock your brains out!"

"Why am I a slave?" mused he. "Why can
I not claim the fruits of my own labor?" Finally
he was permitted to rent himself at the hard bar-
gain of $3 per week and to pay for all his living
besides. But this taste of liberty and possession
determined him to try again for freedom, and
he fixed his date for flight on September 3, 1838.

A second failure would be fatal. Moreover It
required unusual courage for any slave to run
away. Illiterate slaves knew no more of geog-
raphy or distance than an Infant child, and the
very names of the free states were kept from
them. Any white person could halt. Interrogate
and arrest any colored person on any road. A

86 THE NEW NEGRO

gang of ruffians might sometimes catch a free col-
ored person, destroy his free papers and sell him
into slavery. There were professional kidnappers
who caught runaways; and sometimes cunningly
inducing a slave to run away, they would overtake
him and get the reward for catching him. These
fellows literally infested the borderline between
the slave and the free states, hke human carrion
crows circling about the rotten carcass of slavery.
Besides, running away was like going into a living
death, — burying oneself forever from friends and
relatives, — walking into a tomb with eyes open
and consciousness unimpaired. The slave who
could run away was a hero, and to such heroes
the other slaves owe their freedom. These brave
men indicted slavery wherever they went. In the
free states and in Canada they did slavery no
good by their reports. The fugitive slave was
the creator of the abolitionist. He made "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" and Garrison and Phillips; and
those in turn made political parties and Abraham
Lincoln. Sometimes fugitives fought with in-
credible heroism when overtaken. These exiles,
perhaps more than a hundred thousand strong,
with bleeding backs, tortured limbs and eloquent
tongues, were every one ambassadors against the
Slave Power.

One of the very means which the law created to
protect slavery helped to destroy it, namely, the
"free papers" which free Negroes had to carry.
Slaves often borrowed these from their free
brethren, escaped to Canada and sent them back

THE NEW NEGRO 87

by mail. Frederick borrowed a Negro sailor's
"protection" papers, boarded a train as it was
pulling out of Baltimore, to avoid being ques-
tioned and measured by the ticket agent; and
being dressed like a sailor and using a sailor's
slang, he outwitted the conductor and within
twenty-four hours found himself in the city of
New York. He was not beyond the reach of fugi-
tive slave laws, and was somewhat dazed by the
success of this bold attempt. But an escaped
slave cannot live on joy, so David Ruggles, a
Negro anti-slavery worker in New York, advised
him to go to New Bedford, Mass., where ship-
calking was in demand. Even slaves love : the
free colored girl in Baltimore received a secret
message, came on to New York, and they were
married; Frederick paid the minister with
"thanks."

From New York to Newport they passed the
night on the deck of the steamer, not being al-
lowed in the cabin. From Newport to New Bed-
ford they went by stage, and the driver held their
baggage for stage-fare. This was at once fur-
nished by a New Bedford Negro, Nathan John-
son. In these early struggles for freedom the
Negroes stood by each other nobly. Nathan
Johnson had just read Scott's "Lady of the Lake,"
so he induced Frederick to name himself Doug-
lass. Fred had come under the false name of
"Johnson," and Nathan Johnson perhaps thought
that there were enough black "Johnsons" in New
Bedford. And the name which Fred's mother

88 THE NEW NEGRO

had given him in slavery was FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS WASHINGTON BAILEY. Irony
of ironies! The greatest Prussian, the greatest
Roman, and the greatest American in a black slave
baby.

The people of New Bedford would have died
rather than allow a slave hunter to return a man
from their town to slavery; but they would not
give Douglass a fair chance to earn a living at his
trade. So he did odd jobs of all sorts. The
sweetness of possessing himself and the fruits of
his toil inspired him to any honest work. Mean-
while he read the "Liberator," heard anti-slavery
discussions, and was schooled in Garrisonian prin-
ciples. He was much interested by the wealth and
industry of New Bedford, and learned for the
first time in his life that white people could be
rich without owning black people. In Tuckahoe,
Talbot County, Maryland, those who did not own
Negroes were "po' white trash."

In 1 841 Mr. Garrison called an anti-slavery
convention at Nantucket. Douglass attended as
a spectator, was urged to speak, and was at once
employed as agent of the Massachusetts Anti-
Slavery Society, — just three years out of slavery.
Consequently he was often introduced to audi-
ences as "a recent graduate from the institution
of slavery with his diploma written on his back."

Frequently at the risk of his life he now fought
slavery like one who knew the monster, and where
to hit and how hard. Dauntless in courage, un-
bending in principle and terrible in logic, he be-

THE NEW NEGRO 89

came one of the most inveterate and uncompro-
mising foes to oppression that mankind has pro-
duced. If halls and churches were not open to
him, he rang a bell through the streets, summoned
an audience and spoke under the roof of high
heaven. In Syracuse he talked all day, and his
open-air audience grew from five in the morning
to five hundred in the afternoon. He encountered
foul eggs, fouler words, and at one time was
beaten into unconsciousness by an Indiana mob.
The Northern states were at that time disposed
toward the Negro about as Georgia and Mis-
sissippi are now, — continually seeking to "jim-
crow," disfranchise and dishonor him. But wher-
ever the fight was thickest, Douglass was there.
He helped to defeat the disfranchising "Dorr
Constitution" in Rhode Island, and in Massachu-
setts he made so much trouble by refusing to be
"jim-crowed" that the Eastern Railroad ran its
passenger trains through Lynn without stopping,
because Douglass lived there. When the church
people protested, the president of the road handed
them a rejoinder like this: Well, the railroads are
no better than the churches, and the churches liave
their "Negro pew." That was a good argiiment
against the churches, but a poor one against justice
to Douglass.

Douglass's color brought him the usual queer
experiences of the Negro, some of the hardest and
heaviest of which he softened and lightened with
a joke, as is characteristic of his race. Once he
was on a train in the North. It was crowded,

90 THE NEW NEGRO

many were standing but Douglass had a seat and
no one would occupy the seat beside him. As the
night grew on he took advantage of this vacant
seat, pulled his hat over his face and lay down
to sleep. He had begun to feel the real fun of
the thing, but just as he was enjoying all the
luxury of being black, a well-dressed white man
got on at a station and came and tapped him on
the shoulder and wanted to sit down by him. With
a sleepy yawn and the merriest deviltry in his
voice, Douglass said aloud, so that his white fel-
low-passengers could hear: "Don't sit down here,
my friend, I'm a Nigger!" There was great
laughter, and the newcomer sat down beside him.
Once he and several other colored men who were
speakers in the anti-slavery cause, arrived at
Janesville, Wis., and at the hotel they were, of
course, segregated at a table in one corner of the
dining-room. This attracted to them quite a deal
of annoying attention. Every eye in the dining-
room was directed toward them as toward a group
of most curious animals. Even the doorway and
the windows got piled full of curious faces who
stopped as they passed along the street. When
this curiosity was at its height Douglass said in
a full loud voice to one of the other colored inen:
"I have just made a great discovery!" "What
is it?" asked the other. "Why I have just been
out to the hotel stables, where I saw white horses
and black horses eating out of the same trough in
peace! From which I infer that the horses of
Janesville are more civilized than its people!"

THE NEW NEGRO 91

This raised such a storm of laughter at the man-
agement's expense that the colored men were no
longer segregated in the dining-room.

The ex-slaves and their children have never yet
realized how much they owe their early freedom
to this one black fugitive. His example was an
unanswerable argument. His very power and
presence made converts. Men reasoned like this:
If slavery is keeping such men as Frederick Doug-
lass in chains, it is the devil's own institution; and
since he is, there must be others.

Indeed such an impression was made by this
"runaway nigger," as pro-slavery papers called
him, that men began to doubt whether he had ever
been a slave. To set the question at rest he pub-
lished a pamphlet, "Frederick Douglass's Narra-
tive," giving the details of his bondage and the
name and address of his owner. This subjected
him hourly to the danger of being kidnapped and
returned, — for oh, how Thomas Auld and Tucka-
hoe, Talbot County, Maryland, would have liked
to get hands on him then ! So he sailed for Eng-
land. He was not allowed in the cabin and had to
go in steerage. The passengers learned who he
was and invited him to make a speech; some
young fellows from New Orleans and Georgia
threatened to throw him into the ocean for speak-
ing, and the captain threatened to put them into
irons. When they reached England, these inju-
dicious young men flew to the British press with
their grievances against the captain and this
Negro, the British people sided with the captain,

92 THE NEW NEGRO

and the incident served only to furnish Douglass
with the best possible introduction to the British
public.

The English were pioneers in emancipation,
and had become constant and consistent friends
of the slave. Canada had steadfastly refused to
enter into any extradition treaty to return fugi-
tives from bondage, and the English courts had
held that when a slave set foot on English soil
and breathed English air, he became ipso facto
ivtt.

While abroad Douglass did American slavery
all the damage he possibly could, — in England,
Wales, Ireland and Scotland. He heard the
foremost orators, met the pioneer workers for
freedom, and enjoyed the society of the greatest
men of the time, having the same experiences
which the American Negro still has — to be
treated better in any other civilized country of
the world than in his own.

Yet he wanted to return; he could not enjoy
English freedom for the haunting visions and
clanking chains of his fellow bondsmen in
America. Two English ladies, therefore, started
a movement to raise the blood-money, seven hun-
dred and fifty dollars, to buy him from Thomas
and Hugh Auld in Maryland and make him a
present of himself to himself.

Here are copies of the deeds and the manu-
mission papers by which Douglass and his race
came into possession of his body, his soul and his
history:

THE NEW NEGRO 93

"Know all men by these presents: That I,
Thomas Auld of Talbot County and state of
Maryland, for and in consideration of the sum
of one hundred dollars, current money, to me
paid by Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore, in
the said state, at and before the sealing and de-
livery of these presents, the receipt whereof, I
the said Thomas Auld, do hereby acknowledge,
have granted, bargained, and sold, and by these
presents do grant, bargain and sell unto the said
Hugh Auld, his executors, administrators, and as-
signs, ONE NEGRO MAN, by the name of
FREDERICK BAILEY— or DOUGLASS as he
calls himself — he is now about twenty-eight years
of age — to have and to hold the said Negro man
for life. And I the said Thomas Auld, for my-
self, my heirs, executors, and administrators, all
and singular, the said FREDERICK BAILEY
alias DOUGLASS unto the said Hugo Auld, his
executors and administrators, and against all and
every other person or persons whatsoever, shall
and will warrant and forever defend by these
presents. In witness whereof, I set my hand and
seal, this thirteenth day of November, eighteen
hundred and forty-six (1846).

THOMAS AULD.
"Signed, sealed, and delivered, in presence of
Wrightson Jones, John C. Lear."
(Attested also by N. Harrington.)

"To all whom it may concern : Be it known that
I, Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore, in Balti-

94 THE NEW NEGRO

more county of the state of Maryland, for divers
good causes and considerations me thereunto mov-
ing, have released from slavery, liberated, manu-
mitted, and set free, and by these presents do
hereby release from slavery, liberate, manumit,
and set free, MY NEGRO MAN, named FRED-
ERICK BAILEY, otherwise called DOUG-
LASS, being of the age of twenty-eight years, or
thereabouts, and able to work and gain a suf-
ficient livelihood and maintenance; and him the
said negro man, named FREDERICK DOUG-
LASS, I do declare to be henceforth free, manu-
mitted, and discharged from all manner of servi-
tude to me, my executors and administrators for-
ever.

"In witness whereof, I the said Hugh Auld,
have hereunto set my hand and seal the fifth of
December, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and forty-six.

HUGH AULD.
"Sealed and delivered in presence of T. Hanson

Belt, James N. S. T. Wright."

After about two years in England he returned
in 1847, took up his home in Rochester, N. Y.,
founded a paper on money furnished by English
friends, and for twenty years, in one of the most
eventful periods of all history, he worked as
never ex-slave worked before to free a fellow-
slave. He risked life and liberty as an officer of
the "Underground Railroad." This is the only
great railroad system in the United States on

THE NEW NEGRO 95

which Negroes never suffered any kind of "jim-
crow," and they held all sorts of positions, from
stockholders and division superintendents down to
engineers and porters. Trains ran mostly on a
night schedule, and in one general direction, from
South to North. Douglass's Rochester home was
the last station this side of Canada, and he had
as high as eleven passengers at one time.

Editing a paper made Douglass read and
think, — and reading and thinking brought him to
disagree with some of the tenets of the Garrison-
ian anti-slavery school. Garrison held that hon-
orable abolitionists should not vote or have any-
thing to do with the United States Constitution,
which he regarded as a slaveholding instrument, —
or, as he expressed it, a covenant with death and
an agreement with hell. The abolitionists then
wanted the free states to separate from the slave
states. Douglass came to feel that the Constitu-
tion is in spirit an instrument of freedom, inas-
much as those who framed it had shown that they
were ashamed to use the word SLAVERY, pre-
sumably hoping that the institution would soon
end. And he knew that for the free states to leave
the Union might consign his people to endless
southern bondage.

He became acquainted with Harriet Beecher
Stowe and was on intimate terms with John
Brown, the hero of Osawatomie and Harper's
Ferry, the short-built, plain-looking man, lean and
sinewy, with rawhide boots and leather cravat,
with iron will and flinty nerve. Brown confided

96 THE NEW NEGRO

to him the details of his plans for a sort of guer-
rilla warfare from the Allegheny Mountains, to
vex slavery and slaveholders and carry off their
slaves to Canada. Meanwhile the legislatures,
courts and congresses of the country were hot
with the fever of impending conflict. There were
fugitive slave laws, Dred Scott decisions, com-
promises and repeals of compromises. One of
the most horrible laws ever enacted by a civilized
people was the Fugitive Slave Law now passed
by a recreant congress. It endangered the liberty
of a hundred thousand industrious prosperous
fugitives, made it possible for any two villains
to swear away a free colored person's liberty,
and gave the judge in the case twice as much fee
if he condemned the victim as he would get if
he freed him. Even Douglass was in danger:
his purchase was of doubtful validity, the owner
not having possession of the property at the time.
But no act of legislation ever did more to free
the slaves than did this abominable law. It stung
decent people into a fearful resentment. Indeed
the Negro will always have to thank the aggres-
siveness of the slave power for the rapidity with
which the cause of freedom was pushed forward
in this last decade of slavery.

In the midst of all this war of words and con-
flict of principles, John Brown, who had taken
eye for eye and tooth for tooth in Kansas, deter-
mined to throw himself like a firebrand. Three
weeks before his famous "raid" he asked Doug-
lass to meet him at Chambersburg, Pa. Douglass

THE NEW NEGRO 97

did so and brought with him Shields Green, a
black fugitive from South Carolina and next to
Brown the bravest man at Harper's Ferry.
Douglass tried to persuade Brown not to make
the raid, seeing the physical impossibility of suc-
cess. But Brown said in effect that if he could
not succeed, he could die and so awake the sleep-
ing conscience of a nation.

After the raid the United States Government,
then in the hands of Mr. Buchanan and the slave-
holders, determined to arrest all who were in any
way intimate with Brown and turn them over to
the tender mercies of Virginia. Brown impli-
cated nobody and said that he alone was responsi-
ble for all that he had done. But if they could
not have proven that Douglass had anything to
do with the raid, they could have proven that he
was Frederick Douglass, which would have been
enough to hang him in any court of the South
at this particular time. So he again fled from
the terrible claws of the American eagle to a
place of refuge under the mane of the British lion.
His connection with Brown made him exceedingly
popular in England, and when he returned to the
United States six months later, because of the
death of his daughter, he found sentiment so
changed that Brown had been transformed from
a felon into a martyr and the country was fast
moving on to the election of Lincoln and war.
There were three candidates in the presidential
field, every one running on the "Negro Question" :
Breckenridge for the right of the slaveholder to

98 THE NEW NEGRO

carry his slaves into any territory regardless of
the wishes of its people ; Stephen A. Douglass for
the right of the people of a territory to vote
slavery in or out; and Abraham Lincoln for the
right of Congress to prohibit slavery from the
territories altogether and confine it to the then
present slave states. Nobody had any idea of
freeing the Negro where he was already a slave.
But the ways of Providence often mock the ways
of man. Man is not always master of his own
fate ; if he were it would oftener be a very sorry
fate.

Douglass at once saw that Lincoln's position
was the only hope of the slave ; for to attempt to
limit slavery was to fight slavery. The training
of a slaveholder is such that he will not submit
his wishes to debate. He is used to saying to
men, "Go yonder," and they go — "Come here,"
and they come — "Stay there," and they stay.
Such a man will not brook dictation, arbitration
or limitation. If you elect Lincoln, we will leave
the Union, they said; and after Lincoln was
elected one of their leaders said. If you gave us
a blank sheet of paper on which to write our own
conditions for staying in the Union, we would not
stay.

So, behind the candidacy of Lincoln Douglass
threw himself with all the might of his tongue and
his pen. It is familiar history now, how the North
was at first a very lamb in its desire for peace;
how the guns of Sumter changed the lamb into a
lion, "and his roar was terrible," — but he only

THE NEW NEGRO 99

roared and showed his teeth, at first reluctant to
fight: How Lincoln and the whole administration
declared to the world that the war would not be
an abolition war, that however the war might end
the master would be master still and the slave
still slave; how Providence confounded these
declarations; how under the shock of rebellion the
nation began to totter; how Douglass and others
urged the administration to unchain in the nation's
defence the nation's great black hand; how these
blacks, unchained, rushed to the front two hun-
dred thousand strong and stayed a nation's fall.
The details would be a long story. Suffice it to say
that Frederick Douglass did more than any other
man to recruit and rally the Negro troops. He
knew that the Negro troops were not treated
fairly, but he saw at the other end freedom.
"Hereditary bondmen, know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the
blow?"
At once the 54th Massachusetts, a Negro regi-
ment recruited mainly through the efforts of
Douglass, by its gallant and terrible assault on
Fort Wagner, put at rest in one night more ques-
tions about Negro manhood, courage and worth
than could have been settled by a century of de-
bate. And if any man opens his mouth to say
that the Negro was given his freedom and did
not win it, let him pause long enough to read
how 200,000 blacks rushed into a bloody war,
where when captured they were not treated as
prisoners but butchered or sold like cattle, — and

loo THE NEW NEGRO

how, according to the testimony of the com-
mander-in-chief of the armies and navies of the
United States, they saved a nation's life.

After the war he saw that his people were but
half free, and that freedom without citizenship
was a mockery and might become worse than slav-
ery. In acquiring the franchise for the Negro
race Douglass bore a part second only to that
of Charles Sumner of the United States Senate.
As usual the reasons urged against Negro en-
franchisement were the best reasons for It. For
instance, it was urged that It would bring the ex-
slave into conflict and antagonism to the ex-
master; which Is an acknowledgment that the two
might have conflicting interests, and becomes the
best possible reason for giving the Negro the bal-
lot and a fair chance to defend his own. If no
conflicting Interests were ever possible between
white and black people in this country, It would be
a sound reason for not enfranchising the Negro or
for disfranchising the white man.

Douglass had sense enough to be aggressive.
Truth is always truth, whatever opinion might be.
And I only speak the truth when I say that the
only way in the world to break up an unreasonable
prejudice is to contradict it In practice. Prejudice
is from custom, and how can a custom ever be
displaced unless the opposite custom Is established
by practice? Those who have rights to defend
must be vigilant; those who have rights to ac-
quire must be aggressive. Such is human nature.
To complain that it should not be so is to com-

THE NEW NEGRO loi

plain against the weather. No people ever ac-
quired rights by sitting down and waiting for
them. Rights never come — calamities come —
rights, you must go and get them.

For over half a century Douglass retained the
respect and esteem of his fellow-man, espoused
the cause of woman's suffrage and every other
honorable ambition, and held many positions of
honor and trust under the United States Govern-
ment and elsewhere, — among which were Com-
missioner to San Domingo, member of the upper
house of the legislature of the District of Colum-
bia, Marshall of the District, Recorder of Deeds
in the District, Presidential Elector at large for
the state of New York, Minister to Hayti, Presi-
dent of the Freedmen's bank, and his last public
service was as Commissioner for the republic of
Hayti at the World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago. On February 20, 1895, at Anacostia
Heights, a suburb of the city of Washington and
where he had lived for many years, "he died in
action with his armor on."

The city of Rochester, N. Y., has erected for
him a bronze monument; he has built for himself
more enduring monuments in the hearts of the
bronze-colored American group for whom he
spent his life.

I know no better model for ambitious youth or
struggling people. His life completes the record
of human degradation, endeavor and rise. Are
you poor? Here is one who did not possess his
own soul and body; in his own words, his body

102 THE NEW NEGRO

belonged to his master and his soul belonged to
God, so he poor fellow had nothing left for him-
self. Are you scorned? Here is one from the
lowest condition to which humanity can be de-
pressed. Are you buffeted? Here is one who was
beaten with stripes. Are you denied the privi-
leges of a man? He was not accorded the com-
forts of a horse. Are you handicapped in the
struggle for education? Here Is one whose study
hours were stolen at the risk of the lash, in the
school of adversity, with oppression as his teacher.
Is there hope for you? Can you succeed? He
did. From the bottom of despair he reached the
top of success. He was born to the status of the
cattle, by his own exertions he freed his body and
liberated his mind, he literally wrung recognition
from the reluctant hands of a public long steeped
in the idea of the essential Inferiority of his kind,
he fixed the attention of two continents, and when
he died, a literary friend of the Caucasian race in
a volume of sonnets to the memory of Frederick
Douglass pronounced him "the noblest slave that
ever God set free."

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

"My blood is as good as that of those who
plume themselves upon their ancestry."

The above are the words of Alexander Hamil-
ton. Hamilton was a Negro. He was a Negro
according to the definition accepted in our day.
That is, he was a man whose blood was mixed
black and white. Alexander Hamilton, like the
French dramatist Alexandre Dumas, and the
Russian poet Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin,
and the American poet Henry Timrod, and the
English poet Robert Browning, had Negro blood.
Some of these remarkable men had more Negro
blood than many of the American Negroes whom
we see every day. And it was only the merciful
accidents of birth and circumstance that saved
them from Jim Crow cars and disfranchisement.
Yea, if Poushkin and Dumas had lived in Georgia
and Alabama instead of in Russia and France,
they would have been slaves.

Unjust sneers were cast upon Hamilton because
of his parentage. And perhaps his impetuous and
imperious soul was smarting under a sense of this
injustice when he gave expression to the above
words.

But it is not our purpose to deal with Hamilton
here as a Negro, but as a MAN, — for we admire

104 THE NEW NEGRO

him for his manhood and not for his ancestry.
And yet we will make no pretense of suppressing
the genuine pleasure which these FACTS give
us in confuting and confounding the race-bigoted,
color-mad theorists.

Any one who is familiar with sketches and
biographies of Alexander Hamilton has doubtless
noted the obscurity that hangs about his parent-
age: some say that his mother died before he
was old enough to remember her, others say that
she came with him to New York when he was
sixteen years old; it is pretty generally agreed that
his father was of Scotch extraction and that
his mother was a "native" of the Isle of Nevis in
the British West Indies; but some assert shortly
that he was the illegitimate son of a rich West
Indian planter, and some, that his mother was a
"French" widow of Huguenot descent, who for
some obscure reason had been divorced from her
former husband, ahd one of Hamilton's biograph-
ers (Lodge) says that he was "dark of skin."
One well-known writer went to the West Indies
to look up Hamilton's early life, with the inten-
tion of writing his biography, but finding on every
hand evidences that he was a Negro, she fell
into the mood of fiction and wrote "The Con-
queror" instead.

Thank heaven, Hamilton's claim upon the
gratitude and admiration of mankind rests in
his life and deeds and not in his ancestry.

He was born in January, 1757, on the island of
Nevis, the son of some man and some woman.

THE NEW NEGRO 105

Like most creatures, plant or animal, of the south-
ern clime, he matured rapidly. At the age of thir-
teen he was put to work in a merchant's counting
house at St. Croix. His precocity and genius were
at once recognized by his friends, and in 1772 they
sent him to the continental colonies to be edu-
cated. In a school of EHzabethtown, N. J., he
quickly prepared for King's (now Columbia)
College in New York.

The anti-British sentiment was now growing
hot and events were rapidly moving toward the
Revolution of 1776. In the midst of the passions
and excitements of the times it is interesting to
see this lad of seventeen years deliberately read-
ing the discussions and looking into the merits of
both sides, preparing to make his choice. The
colonies were not his home, their quarrel was not
his quarrel; but he decided, spite of "Tory" of-
fers, that justice and humanity lay on the side of
the Patriots and espoused the cause of the latter.

And immediately that magnanimity and broad-
ness of sympathy, characteristic of Hamilton's
whole life, comes out in this ardent, high-spirited
boy: he opposed the mobbish spirit of the "pa-
triots," plead for justice and mercy, and endan-
gered his life by interposing himself between the
mob and the Tory.

At the age of seventeen he was writing anony-
mous articles in defense of the Patriot cause
which the public mind was ascribing to the emi-
nent and mature statesman, John Jay. He intro-
duced himself to the public by startling his hearers

io6 THE NEW NEGRO

with his grasp of the situation at a political stump-
speaking of the Patriots.

In 1776 he used his last "allowance" sent by
his friends from the West Indies in fitting up a
company of artillery, commissioned by the gov-
ernment of New York. Captain Alexander Ham-
ilton of this New York light battery was now
scarcely twenty, but his gallantry at once attracted
the attention of the commander-in-chief, and in
1777, at the age of twenty, he became aide-de-
camp to the most towering character of the eigh-
teenth century, Gen. George Washington of Vir-
ginia. Hamilton was very useful to Washing-
ton, managing all of the General's tremendous
correspondence with the multifarious state gov-
ernments and with the long-winded and verbose
but headless and factious "Continental Congress."

In personal character, self-control, and as a
leader of the masses of men, Washington was
Hamilton's superior, and the superior of every
other American of his day. In the genius of gov-
ernment, constructive ability, and as a leader of
the leaders of men, Hamilton was Washington's
superior, and the superior of every other man of
his day.

In 1780 Hamilton acquired the greatest for-
tune that can fall to the lot of any good man, — a
good wife, in the person of a daughter of Gen.
Philip Schuyler, a veteran of his adopted state.

The next year an incident happened which il-
lustrates the difference between the characters of
Hamilton and Washington. Washington ad-

THE NEW NEGRO 107

dressed Hamilton with the authority of a com-
mander and a superior and Hamilton resigned
his staff position on the spot. Washington apolo-
gized, but the proud spirit of Hamilton would not
again accept the position. This gives us a glimpse
of Washington's true superiority. But fortun-
ately for the American Republic the friendship
of these two men was not broken or permanently
strained. He was with Washington when Corn-
wallis surrendered and helped to carry that last
great fight against the British.

But Hamilton was more a statesman and finan-
cier than a soldier, was admitted to the bar in
1782 and elected from New York to the Conti-
nental Congress, — a giant in a body consisting
mainly of pigmies. He at once saw the weakness
of the "confederacy" of states, that it was in-
volved in financial chaos, had lost respect and
confidence, and was in great danger of becoming
a by-word among the nations. Congress could
do nothing but talk and it did plenty of that: it
voted the veterans of the war abundance of praise
but not one cent of cash. Hamilton was not sorry
to return to private life and the practice of law
in 1783.

Meanwhile "Shay's Rebellion" and jealousies
and commercial difficulties of the different states,
were teaching the thoughtful what Hamilton's
logic had not taught them : that the present gov-
ernment was weak and needed to be superseded
by a stronger one. Chnton, governor of New
York and leader of the destructionists, was trying

io8 THE NEW NEGRO

to break up the Confederacy, and did. But for-
tunately (and no thanks to him) this act of de-
struction made way for a better and truer Union.
Hamilton was elected from New York to a con-
vention to meet at Annapolis in 1786 and unify
the commerce of the states. He went, when be-
hold, there were the representatives of only four
states, — such was the indifference of the times to
anything like a national spirit or a centralized gov-
ernment. But this small meeting performed one
service: it issued a call for another meeting which
resulted in the famous Constitutional Convention
at Philadelphia in 1787.

Hamilton a member of the minority party in
New York, tactfully coerced his state to be rep-
resented at this Convention through himself and
two members of the opposition party. At the
opening of this convention he made the great
speech of his life.

Great as had been his services to his adopted
country theretofore, he now began the Herculean
labors for which America and all her heirs should
pay him everlasting gratitude. It is fitting right
here to notice just what were his distinctive ideas
of a general American government. His scheme
might be briefly called an "Aristocratic Republic";
the President and Senators to hold office "during
good behavior," the state Governors to be ap-
pointed by the President and to have absolute
veto power over all state legislation. This, of
course, would have made the central Government
everything and the state nothing.

THE NEW NEGRO 109

It can be readily believed that Alexander Ham-
ilton was the only man in America who had both
the physical and the moral courage to make such
a proposition to the democracy-mad fathers of
the American Revolution. His idea did not pre-
vail to its full extent but It performed its mission
in toning down the French-revolutionary senti-
ment of the times; it caused the government that
was organized to be made stronger than it other-
wise would have been. The first mad mutterings
of the French reign of terror and rain of blood
were arousing the hearts of men in the utmost
limits of civilization; in France it was "liberty,
equality, fraternity, or death," — and the greatest
of these was Death. Hamilton saw, or thought he
saw, that the American zealots were tending rap-
idly toward the brink of the same abyss.

The Constitution was adopted as we know it.
Hamilton signed it for all New York, as his two
opposition colleagues refused their assent. And
the next labor of the American Hercules was to
secure its ratification by his stubborn and Intract-
able state. In defense of the Constitution he
published, with some assistance from Jay and
Madison, the series of essays known as the "Fed-
eralist," which gives him a place in the literature
of this country; and then he went into his state
convention supported by a minority of only 19
out of its 65 members, and when the question
came to vote, the Constitution was ratified by a
majority of three. This is one of the greatest
recorded victories of persuasive and argumenta-

no THE NEW NEGRO

tive oratory. Great was the joy of his heart in
thus assuring the accomplishment of the ambition
of his hfe, — the American Republic: for the
strategic position of New York rendered it im-
perative that it be brought into the Union.

The new government was formed, and Wash-
ington was made its first Chief Executive. Here
again we have a pleasing reminder of the master-
ful character of that great Virginian. His quick
and superior knowledge of men always stood him
in good stead. The greatest task of American
history was to confront the first head of the
United States Treasury: foreign and domestic
credit were to be established, and order was to
be brought out of general financial chaos. Wash-
ington accordingly selected for this post a man
who Talleyrand afterwards said had the greatest
skill "in the appHcation of the elementary prin-
ciples of government to practical administration,"
a man who was only 32 years old, Alexander
Hamilton. The keen insight and statesmanship
of the new Secretary were at once brought to bear
on the condition of the new nation by his great
report to Congress on the Public Credit. It will
be remembered that at this time the Constitution
was a mere body of rules in which every effort
had been made by the jealous states to limit and
throttle the central government; it was a mere
lifeless form that could not even authorize the
United States to levy taxes, until Hamilton blew
into it the breath of life and made it the one
supreme thing in this country. He advanced the

THE NEW NEGRO iii

doctrine of the "implied powers" of the Consti-
tution, and showed to the satisfaction of Wash-
ington that "to provide for the general welfare"
could be construed to give the central government
authority to establish a National Bank and to levy
an excise tax. And when the levying of this tax
caused a "whiskey rebellion" in Pennsylvania, he
won respect for the Government by putting it
down with a show of national troops.

He wished for honorable and respectable gov-
ernment and did not care to cheat the Revolu-
tionary veterans out of their soldier's pay; so his
financial policy embraced payment of both the
Foreign and the Domestic Debt, and Assumption
of the war-debts of the States. He advocated the
"double standard" in coinage and originated poli-
cies upon which great political parties have since
divided.

And what was Jefferson doing, the "father" of
our present Democratic party? Jefferson was at
this time Secretary of State, but whenever Wash-
ington had a difficult matter of state or foreign
policy, he went to Hamilton, and not to Jefferson,
for his solution. He wanted a man who had the
energy to work out a plan from start to finish.

No clearer emphasis can be put upon a truly
great and constructive genius like Hamilton than
by showing his relation to a destructive and "op-
position" nature like Thomas Jefferson. Hamil-
ton's time was all spent in planning and building;
the chief activity of Jefferson was in opposing
what Hamilton had planned and tearing down

112 THE NEW NEGRO

what Hamilton was trying to build. They re-
spectively represent the positive and negative
forces of early American history. It Is significant
that Hamilton's followers assumed the name of
"Federalists," that is, constructive unionists, and
Jefferson's party became the "anti-Federalists,"
that is, destructive disunionists. The successor to
the Hamiltonian party is the present Republican
party; and the Jeffersonian party survives in the
present Democratic party. It makes us smile
when we hear a "stumping" politician say, "I am
a Jeffersonian Democrat," or that he beheves In
"the fundamental principles laid down by Thomas
Jefferson." Do you know what these "funda-
mental principles" are? Stripped of all their
cunning indirection and vituperation, and reduced
to their lowest and simplest terms, they were
simply this: "Down with Hamilton and the ac-
cursed Federalists!" The French fever in Ameri-
can politics rendered the populace violently hos-
tile to anything that smacked of aristocracy or
monarchy; Jefferson was cunning enough to take
advantage of this passion and use it for all it
was worth against Hamilton's centralization poli-
cies. For the sake of appearances he changed
the name of his "anti-Feds" to "Republicans." It
is the irony of fate that the party which he op-
posed has since acquired that name, and that the
aristocratic republicanism which he so bitterly op-
posed in Hamilton afterwards attained its highest
and most threatening reahzation in his own dear
Virginia and the other slave oligarchies of the

THE NEW NEGRO 113

South. Before Jeffersoa became such a bitter
enemy to Hamilton he had made a political "deal"
with him: he had secured votes for Hamilton's
Assumption policy and Hamilton had secured
votes to have the national capital located in the
South. The success of Assumption was particu-
larly offensive to the "anti-Federahsts," and Jef-
ferson explained his embarrassing deal by saying
that he had been "duped by Hamilton." The
truth is that an ingenuous man like Hamilton
could succeed at anything better than at duping
a fox like Jefferson. When duping was done Jef-
ferson did it: he duped old man Madison into
an essay polemic with Hamilton, a thing which
Jefferson feared for himself. Madison was not
a half match for Hamilton; Aaron Burr has tes-
tified that for a man to put himself on paper
against Hamilton was to seal his own destruction.

When there was trouble between France and
England in 1793 Hamilton inspired Washington
with a neutrahty policy on principles which gave
rise to the "Monroe Doctrine," which could more
properly be called the "Hamilton Doctrine."
Jefferson on the other hand wanted this country
to act in offensive and defensive alliance with
France, a policy which Hamilton saw would have
been dangerous for America. But Jefferson, who
always influenced people through their prejudices,
did not lose the opportunity to call Hamilton's
sympathies "British."

Jefferson's narrow political ideas rendered him
so uncomfortable in the Cabinet of Washington

114 THE NEW NEGRO

that he was forced to resign his Secretaryship.
Hamilton stayed at his post till 1795, when he re-
signed after demanding a full investigation of his
official conduct, to justify himself against the
many slanders and charges of his enemies. It
is hardly needful to say that the investigation left
his official integrity without a stain.

Hamilton now went back to the practice of law
and to private citizenship, but he continued to
be the influential adviser of President Washing-
ton. He was, in every good sense of the term,
the poHtical "boss" of his party. He supported
the unpopular "Jay treaty" with England. And
in the presidential election which followed, al-
though Adams was not his personal choice he
supported him as the regular nominee of the
party. Jefferson, the nominee of the opposition,
was defeated. Now, this man Adams was a
small man in mental stature and statecraft. He
hated Hamilton and Hamilton made the ingenuous
mistake of letting him know that he was not his
personal choice for President. This break be-
tween its two leaders sealed the fate of the Fed-
eralist party.

In our little war with France in 1798 Adams
asked Washington to take command of the Army.
Washington accepted only on condition that Ham-
ilton be made chief of staff and be given the full
commission for organizing the army and getting
it ready for the field. This greatly displeased
Adams but for fear of popular wrath he could
not bicker with Washington, and yielded. Ham-

THE NEW NEGRO 115

ilton soon had an army on foot which might have
kept Austerlitz out of history, had Napoleon come
to America. But amicable relations were re-es-
tablished and the war cloud passed. But Ham-
ilton's labors had borne abiding fruit in the es-
tablishment of the military school at West Point.

Hamilton was an imperialist: if hostilities had
continued he intended to seize Florida and Louisi-
ana, getting complete control of the Mississippi.
Hamilton disliked France on principle, although
the French soldiers with Lafayette had been much
attached to Hamilton. His dislike of pure and
unrestrained democracy caused him to support
the ill-fated Alien and Sedition laws.

The above laws together with the utter lack
of tact in President Adams wrecked the Federalist
party. The death of Washington left Hamilton
commander-in-chief of the Army, a thing which
Adams was pigmy enough to ignore.

The quarrel of the leaders caused disaffection
among the followers, and Pennsylvania was lost to
the Federalists. Then the struggle was for New
York. Now Hamilton had opposed to him in
New York a cheap politician named Aaron Burr,
a schemer and trickster, a master of little things.
The noble mind of Hamilton could not stoop to
Burr's petty methods of solicitation and vote-
buying, and lost New York City. And so, then as
now, that meant the loss of New York state, and
the loss of political power for the Federalist party.
And then came the one blot upon Hamilton's
political escuthcheon : he proposes to Governor Jay

ii6 THE NEW NEGRO

that they secure the choice of Presidential electors
through the old legislature before the new opposi-
tion legislature could convene, a plain proposition
to defraud the will of the majority. In despair he
saw the party of distruction headed by Jefferson
coming into power and argued the damnable
doctrine that "to do a great right one is justified
in doing a little wrong." — Jay, to his everlasting
honor, said, "I won't."

In the election which ensued it happened that
Burr and Jefferson, men of the same party, re-
ceived an equal number of votes and a higher num-
ber than Adams and Pinclvney, which left it to the
House of Representatives to choose between the
two former. Hamilton knew the cheap and
unprincipled man from New York and so used his
influence and secured the election of Jefferson.
This was the last great service which he rendered
his adopted country; he afterwards did only one
service which can in any way compare with this,
and that was when he again thwarted Burr in his
designs on the governorship of the state of New
York.

Meanwhile the busy lawyer, Alexander Hamil-
ton, had risen to the head of his profession in New
York state. He was moving and swaying juries,
not with his imagination, but by direct, impas-
sioned, irresistible appeals to their heads and
hearts. A small and narrow nature like Burr's was
bound to become embittered, and to pass from bit-
terness into a mad rage against this man for whose

THE NEW NEGRO 117

mind he was no match. He swells with vengeance
and literally forces a quarrel with Hamilton.

The "code of honor" was in force at that day,
and, strange to say, men obeyed it even against
the express command of God. Burr sent the
challenge, and Hamilton accepted, not as a
believer in the duello, but that no imputation of
personal cowardice might lessen his usefulness in
those future crises in which he felt sure his country
would need him. — His preparation for the duel
was in settHng up his business affairs and writing
his condemnation of the "code of honor." Burr's
preparation was in destroying his compromising
letters from worthless women and practicing with
his pistol.

They met on the bright morning of July 11,
1804, on the banks of the Hudson, the spot where
Hamilton's eldest son had recently fallen in a
duel. The son was 19; the father is 47. He falls
mortally wounded at the first fire. And Burr
becomes a leper and his name anathema to the
American public.

They did not know that they loved him so until
he was dead. And he blessed them even in his
death, for it created the first solid sentiment for
the abolition of the "code of honor."

He was under-sized, but erect and courtly in his
bearing. No one could be indifferent toward him,
— he must be either loved or hated with intensity.

He was a prophet: he wrote Washington in
1798 that even then could he see, in the action of
the South, the fatal oncoming of sectional and

ii8 THE NEW NEGRO

geographical politics, — how the country "from
the South of Maryland" was becoming solid, —
and he was one of the founders of the New York
manumission society for the abolishment of
slavery.

He made nothing for himself, he made every-
thing for America. The Frenchman Talleyrand
saw him, after his retirement to private life,
laboring at night in his law office in New York,
and said: "I have seen one of the wonders of the
world. I have seen a man laboring all night to
support his family, who has made the fortune of
a nation."

Chief justice Marshall, an American, says that
Hamilton is next to Washington. Talleyrand,
a Frenchman says: "I consider Napoleon, Fox and
Hamilton the three greatest men of our epoch,
and without hesitation I award the first place to
Hamilton."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

We shall now essay the praise of "arms and a
man." And in praising the wisdom of the man
or recounting the success of the arms it is no part
of our purpose to deride those who disagreed
with that man nor to taunt those who were van-
quished by those arms.

We are here in memory of the humblest citizen
of a nation and in honor of the greatest states-
man of his time. Abraham Lincoln's life ran the
whole gamut of American society. He was born
into the "poor white trash" of Southern back-
woods; he was pioneer and frontiersman; he was
rail-splitter and flatboat-man; he was champion
wrestler, cock-pit umpire and saloonkeeper; he
was merchant, surveyor and country lawyer; he
was the leading lawyer and politician, the acknow-
ledged head and the champion orator of a political
party in his state ; he was legislator, congressman,
statesman and President; he was leader in the
most remarkable war prior to the 20th century —
he was the tallest figure of the nineteenth century
— he was the liberator of a race and martyr to the
hfe of his country. Abraham Lincoln was the first
president of the United States who was character-
istically American.

One hundered and seven years ago in what was

119

I20 THE NEW NEGRO

then Hardin County, Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln
was born. In the aristocratic sense of the phrase,
he was a man of "no ancestry." His father prob-
ably decended from people who came first from
England to Massachusetts, thence to Virginia,
thence to Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln's grand-
father and namesake was a brother-in-law of
Daniel Boone and was one of the pioneers of the
middle West. This grandfather had been shot
by the Indians when Lincoln's father, Thomas
Lincoln, was about six years of age. Mordecai,
brother of Lincoln's father, Is reputed to have
been Industrious, but Thomas, the father of
Abraham Lincoln, was what we might call, with-
out exaggeration, lazy and trifling.

When we consider this man's ancestry and early
surroundings, we are both enlightened and con-
fused. We are enlightened in that we can see in
his humble origin the source of his sympathy for
his humblest fellow-man. In his frontier life we can
see the cause of his manly independence, and In his
early associations we can see the foundation of his
firm faith in the "plain people," — but we are con-
fused In that we cannot find In his immediate par-
entage and environment the necessary stimulus and
inspiration, and from his early lack of opportunity
we cannot account for the development of mental
power, tact and executive ability. In these latter
respects the law of cause and effect is apparently
broken.

His mother had been one Nancy Hanks, a
woman of very humble origin and of a melancholy

THE NEW NEGRO 121

disposition. His father Thomas was a thriftless,
ignorant fellow who loved to tell stories. He
seemed to lack the instinct or ambition to settle
down and build a decent home, even after he was
married. He moved and moved and moved, and
like the proverbial "roUing stone," he gathered no
moss. The ignorance and inconsequentiahty of
the Lincoln family may be gathered from the fact
that it had no uniform way of spelling its name :
sometimes it was spelled L-i-n-k-h-o-r-n, sometimes
L-i-n-c-k-o-r-n, sometimes even L-i-c-k-e-r-n.

As is well known, such poor white people in the
first half of the nineteenth century had very lim-
ited chances in a slave commonwealth, and so, to
escape the condition into which slavery forced the
poorer whites, when the son was but seven or eight
years old, the happy-go-lucky, unprogressive father
loaded all the family belongings on a boat of his
own construction and floated down the Ohio to
Indiana. This aimless traveler finally landed and
constructed a rude camp in a wild, uninhabited re-
gion near the present town of Gentryville, Indiana.
The structure which Thomas Lincoln here erected
to shelter his wife and young children, cannot be
named out of the terminology of the dwellings of
civilized man. It was not a house ; it was what was
known in pioneer days as a "half-faced camp":
that is, it was closed on only three sides and its
floor was the earth. The bed was constructed
from a number of poles fastened to the logs in
one corner of this cheerless habitation, the outer
corner of the bed being supported by a forked

122 THE NEW NEGRO

stick. In this camp the wife and children shivered
for one whole winter, before Thomas could rouse
himself to provide a better dwelling.

The melancholy, feeble mother died in the boy's
childhood; an event which is a great calamity to
most boys but was a great blessing to young Abe,
for it enabled him to acquire at the early age of
ten a very capable, energetic and motherly step-
mother. This God-sent stepmother treated Abe
and his little sister with impartiality among her
own children; she also aroused all of whatever
human aspiration there was in the father Thomas.
She became the boy's tutor and protector against
the educational indifference and hostility of his
father; for Thomas was quite willing that his
posterity should forever go the way their father
and their fathers had gone.

The neighbors say that the boy Abe was "awful
lazy," by which they mean that he was fonder of
thinking and studying and talking and reasoning
and story-telling, than he was of physical exertion.
But the sympathetic stepmother understood and
fostered the ambition of the boy. He had been
to school a little: all his schooling put together
would not amount to more than one year, some
say not more than six months. But this hmited bit
of schooling was spread over a period of nine years
and the boy made good use of what he learned in
school by self-culture in the intervals, all of which
might teach us the important educational principle
that it is not the quantity of schooling but the thor-
oughness of it. The boy even developed enough

THE NEW NEGRO 123

of the poetic spirit to be the author of this stanza :
"Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen.
He will be good, but
god Knows When."

The neighborhood of Gentryville was very su-
perstitious : it believed in the bad luck of Fridays
and in the influence of the moon on crops. So
Abraham Lincoln was superstitious till his dying
day. He was an ungainly looking lad and did not
arouse high expectations by his personal appear-
ance. He was lanky in appearance, with a head
of unmanageable hair, and had what at first struck
one as a lazy, dreamy look about the eyes. His
clothes were made of tanned deer hide, his trous-
ers usually being several inches too short and his
suspenders of the one-gallows kind. Thus endowed
by nature and thus clad in the garb of frontier pov-
erty, he was not an a^ttractive looking youngster,
and a lawyer of the time who saw him, described
it as "the ungodliest sight I ever saw." When
Abraham was twenty-one his roving father moved
again, still westward, and this time to a place near
Decatur, Illinois. Thus at the legal age of man-
hood he entered, unknown and unrespected, the
State which was to be the future theatre of his life
— of the greatest life of that State, of that Nation
and of that Century.

It is impossible for any fiction to be stranger
than the subsequent life of this poor boy. It was
now the year 1830, and in thirty years more he
was to be the chosen executive of the greatest re-

124 THE NEW NEGRO

public in history. He had worked at hard manual
drudgery since his babyhood. Now legally eman-
cipated from his father, he helped to build a house
for the family, split rails to make fences, and with
the small bundle of all his earthly possessions he
set out into the world to pursue his ambition. He
was physically powerful and wiry; mentally slow,
but patient, persistent and sure.

The story of this man's rise from that time forth
should make every American proud of American
institutions and American possibilities. The fact
of his rise is a proof of democracy, and the suc-
cess of his rise is a justification of republican gov-
ernment. His first trip into the wide, wide world
was taken in 1831 to New Orleans, where he met,
saw and hated slavery. On his return to Illinois
he out-wrestled Jack Armstrong, the champion
wrestler of the frontier, and ran for the General
Assembly in 1832. The fact that a man with
Lincoln's antecedents and attainments could enter
the race for legislator of Illinois, shows what
Western politics meant in that day. In this his
first political contest he announced a principle
which became the leading principle of all his after
life and the chief element of his great statesman-
ship: he said: "so soon as I discover my opinions
to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce
them." This was in New Salem. He was beaten
in this contest, but he could say with pride in after
years that it was the only time in which Abraham
was beaten on a direct vote of the people. In this
same year he had been a captain of volunteers in

THE NEW NEGRO 125

the Black Hawk War, and this man who was des-
tined to command an army of a million men, when
he gave his first order to this Httle volunteer com-
pany, received for a reply, "Go to the devil, sir."
Once forgetting the necessary word of command
for swinging his company endwise so that it could
march through a narrow gate, he simply shouted:
"This company is dismissed for two minutes, when
it will fall in again on the other side of the gate."
After his political defeat he went into the store-
keeping business and failed: his partner was too
lazy and Abe himself was too fond of talking and
reading politics to attend the success of the ven-
ture. He was also postmaster of New Salem in
1833, carrying the letters in his hat, and was as-
sistant to the county surveyor.

All the while he was studying law, which seemed
ridiculous to his acquaintances. He was successful
in getting to the legislature in 1834, where he
served four terms. His chief acts In this body
were protesting against its pro-slavery resolutions
and helping to enact some very disastrous finan-
cial legislation. He had been admitted to the bar
in 1836 and moved to Springfield in 1837.

Being a very susceptible lover he first fell in love
with a girl who died of a broken heart for another
man. He wished to marry on the slightest provo-
cation, and after a fruitless Platonic affair with
another woman he finally married Miss Mary
Todd in 1 842, she declaring that she did not marry
him because he was good-looking, but because she
thought he would some day be President of the

126 THE NEW NEGRO

United States. In 1847 he entered the lower house
of congress for one term, where he again put him-
self on record against slavery extension. It was
not until after this congressional term that he
was finally able to pay the last of the debts occa-
sioned by his business failure, and the faithful pay-
ment won him the useful title of "Honest Old
Abe."

He now seemed to retire from politics and to
settle down to the practice of law, when in 1854
the country became a volcano of political activity,
and Abraham Lincoln was again aroused to take
a hand in the greatest political battles in the his-
tory of free government. The repeal of the Mis-
souri Compromise had aroused the latent anti-
slavery feeling in the North to its highest pitch.
This compromise had limited the northward
spread of slavery to a certain parallel, and when
it was repealed, even conservative men like Lin-
coln felt bound to cry out. Douglas, the Demo-
cratic statesman, had fathered this "repeal" and
the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which
was to allow the people of those territories to de-
cide for themselves whether or not they should
have slavery. In 1854 Lincoln debated this ques-
tion against the Democratic champion, and at
Peoria he said: "Repeal the Missouri Compro-
mise, repeal all compromises, repeal the Declara-
tion of Independence, repeal all past history, you
still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be
the abundance of man's heart that slavery exten-

THE NEW NEGRO 127

sion is wrong, and out of the abundance of his
heart his mouth will continue to speak."

He at once became the recognized champion of
those who were opposed to the "repeal" and the
Nebraska bill. His oratorical powers had been
wonderfully developed by his constant law prac-
tice since his retirement from congress. He had
ridden the circuit and told stories with the West-
ern lawyers and judges and could fairly "skin"
his opponent in court. His method of argument
avoided sophistry and lead straight to the heart
of the matter. He was now well known in Illinois
and was universally esteemed, and was at once
accepted as just the man with the qualities to cope
with the doughty Douglas, the famous "Little
Giant." This Douglas was called "Little Giant"
because of the smallness of his body as compared
with the largeness of his mind.

Lincoln had been a Whig. In 1856 the Repub-
lican party was formed, which crystallized the op-
position to the spread of slavery. In his state he
became the undisputed leader of this party. Their
nominee for the presidency was defeated and
Buchanan was elected. Immediately followed
Judge Taney's "Dred Scott Decision," which fur-
ther drew the line between those who favored and
those who opposed slavery. Lincoln's comment
on the Dred Scott Decision is characteristic, show-
ing how his mind penetrated sham and technicality
and went straight to the fundamental justice of a
case. He said: "It seems strange to me that our
courts will hold that a man nev^er loses his title to

128 THE NEW NEGRO

his property if that is stolen, but that he imme-
diately loses his title to himself when he is stolen."

The next year, 1858, is famous for the Lincoln-
Douglas debates. Douglas's senatorial term was
about to expire and the Republicans put forward
Lincoln to contest for the prize. Lincoln had al-
ready magnanimously yielded one senatorial con-
test to secure the election of an anti-Nebraska
Democrat, and he had lost a nomination for the
vice-presidency. In the contest with Douglas he
won the debates but lost the senatorship. This
man's losses, however, later proved to be his
greater gains.

It is interesting to compare and contrast these
two champions. They were both conservative,
sober-minded men. But Douglas was a recog-
nized statesman, while Lincoln was but a novus
homo. Few outside of Lincoln's own friends and
better acquaintances expected him to come off with
any honor against the fierce "Little Giant." Doug-
las was quick; Lincoln was deliberate. Douglas
was polished and cultured ; Lincoln was an uncouth,
poor-mannered man, according to the tastes of
polite society. Douglas was cunning and devious
in argument; Lincoln was straight as an arrow.
Douglas was a powerful intellect; and so was
Lincoln.

The battle was eagerly watched throughout the
North, which had become a sort of political cal-
dron, because of what was felt to be the aggres-
sions of the pro-slavery element. Like a knowing
antagonist Lincoln attacked Douglas at his most

THE NEW NEGRO 129

vulnerable point, assailing his record in connection
with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and
the passage of the Nebraska Bill. Douglas, skill-
ful sophist that he was, dodged and attempted to
parry this blow by thrusting certain well-directed
questions at Lincoln. Whereupon Lincoln became
interrogatory himself and asked Douglas one
question which destroyed Douglas, split Douglas's
party in twain, and drew the issue squarely between
the opposing forces of the entire country. He
asked Douglas a question which, if answered in the
affirmative, would offend the South, and which, if
answered in the negative, would offend Illinois.
Douglas wanted the immediate senatorship from
Illinois, so he answered in the affirmative and
gained the senatorship, but he offended the South
and lost their support for the presidency two years
later — just as Lincoln had calculated. The famous
question was — "Can the people of a Territory, in
a lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the
United States, exclude slavery from that Terri-
tory, prior to its adoption of a State Constitution?"
Douglas was re-elected to the senatorship by the
state legislature, but Lincoln was from that day
the chosen man of the people of Illinois. In a
parade prior to one of the debates the Douglas
men had carried an inscription which read, "The
Little Giant," and the Lincoln men carried an
inscription which read, "Lincoln the Giant Killer."
Douglas had traveled on special trains, waving
banners and beating drums; Lincoln had jour-
neyed in the simplicity of the most undistinguished

I30 THE NEW NEGRO

citizen. Douglas had spent $80,000 in his canvass ;
Lincoln had spent less than $1,000. Lincoln had
lost and Douglas had won; Douglas had grown
weak, and Lincoln had grown strong.

Lincoln was now in the eye of the country and
was invited to lecture in the East, which he did so
acceptably as to utterly astonish all the bigots of
New York and New England, who had not be-
lieved that anything very remarkable could come
out of the West. Horace Greely and others who
did not like Seward, began to see in Lincoln a
"presidential possibility." In i860 he was nomi-
nated and elected by the RepubHcan party, the
first Chief Executive to come out of the great
North-West.

So slow is the world to believe, that even then
there was scarcely anybody who thought Lincoln
really competent to fill the office and accomplish
the task before him. Six states had seceded before
he could be inaugurated. The South was very
angry. The Union was actually going to pieces.
Europe was laughing and acting with the airs of
one who feels like shouting : "I told you so !" And
the greater sentiment in the North at this time
seemed disposed to let the States secede without
war; men were not inclined to fight, they were too
busy in their shops and factories — -they had no
time to measure the world-wide, age-long conse-
quences of the destruction of the greatest republic
in the world. Men poked fun at the new president
as an ordinary Western lawyer with no executive
ability. Cartoonists vied with one another In carl-

THE NEW NEGRO 131

caturing his homely looks, exaggerating the long-
ness of his arms and legs, and size of his feet and
the thickness of his lips. He was represented as
subhuman, as a gorilla, some even charging him
with the very heinous offence of being part "nig-
ger." All this he bore with the steadfastness and
courage of a man who knows himself. He never
swerved from his position that the Union must be
preserved, adding an element to our statesmanship
by showing that the first and foremost duty of a
government is to defend its own existence, and that
the right to do this is inherent in the nature of
government and does not have to be conceded to it
among any delegated powers. If the government
had, in any way whatsoever, either by grant or
conquest, acquired the right to exist, that very
right carried with it the duty of self preservation.
On the question of slavery he was not an Aboli-
tionist, by politics at least. It was his expressed
wish that all men everywhere might be free, but as
President of the United States he was not an offi-
cer of the Abolition Societies, but the chief execu-
tive of the American government under the Con-
stitution— and the Constitution protected slavery.
So, whatever were his private feelings on the ques-
tion, he intended to sacrifice them to his solemn
oath to defend the Constitution. He enforced the
"fugitive slave law" and in his inaugural he had
renounced any intention to interfere with slavery
where it already existed legally. But he was against
its further extension, and upon this he said he
would "hold firm as a chain of steel."

132 THE NEW NEGRO

So while the South was fast uniting and prepar-
ing for war, the North was rather undecided and
hesitant, but the guns of Sumter, which were
heard around the world and whose echo shall re-
sound through all the future history of a great
nation, did what neither Lincoln nor danger from
the South nor a mere latent love for the Union
could do — they absolutely united the North. Dem-
ocrats and Republicans, the followers of Douglas
and the followers of Lincoln, became of one mind
to settle the question of the perpetuity of the
Union; all Northern parties became one party,
which might be denominated the War Party. A
call for seventy-five thousand was answered by the
willing voices of a million, and Massachusetts had
a regiment on the way to Washington within 48
hours after the call.

Here again comes out the chief element of his
statesmanship: he did not call until he knew that
men were ready, and even anxious to come. If he
had called for troops as soon as he was inaugu-
rated, he would probably have received much the
same reply as when he gave his first orders to the
Black Hawk volunteers. "My policy Is to have
no policy," said he; he waited upon events and
acted according to the great heart and the great
will of the people. "Time was his prime minister."
After deciding upon a course of action he never
outran the opportunity: he made every effort con-
sistent with the authority of government to win
conciliation, but he called for troops when men
were ready to fight; he revoked the emancipation

THE NEW NEGRO 133

orders of his too hasty generals, but In response
to the popular demand he issued his Emancipation
Proclamation upon the heels of a Federal victory;
he returned fugitive slaves, but when the Northern
soldiers had become so weary as to be glad for
anybody to help to do the fighting, he called for
the black legions, whose appearance marked the
turning point of the War.

And the guns of Sumter had no less effect upon
the men of the South. Eleven seceded States
formed themselves into a Confederacy. The bor-
der States of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland
were with difficulty kept in the Union, and such
was the volcanic nature of the cleavage that the
State of Virginia was finally divided against itself.
Lincoln at once reaHzed the strategic situation of
the border states, and with the instincts of the
great strategist that he was, he concentrated his
first efforts upon their retention. So important
was the task and so earnestly did Lincoln apply
himself to It that some observer said: "Lincoln
would Hke to have God on his side, but he must
have Kentucky."

The line of cleavage did not limit itself to terri-
tory, but reached into the administrative branches
of the government, into the army and into the
navy. One-third of the officers, because of South-
ern lineage or Southern sympathies, left the regu-
lar naval and military forces of the Union. Among
those who deserted the government was one of the
ablest captains of history, Robert E. Lee. Many
Southern men, however, preferred to stand by the

134 THE NEW NEGRO

Government, notably among whom were Senator
Andrew Johnson, Generals Scott and Thomas, and
Commodore Farragut. And It is to be said of the
common soldier and sailor that not one of them
deserted his post before actual war.

Let us for a moment right here consider the
relation of slavery to the dreadful war that was
waged. Some say that slavery brought on the war,
and others say that the war was not waged in the
interest of slavery. Slavery was not the immediate
cause, the immediate "bone of contention," but
slavery was the underlying cause, the cause of the
cause of the war. We can best explain by a para-
ble. There are two neighbors living with no
fence between them and no definite boundary line.
One of those neighbors has a bad dog which the
other does not like. They often quarrel about this
dog. The one thinks that he has a right to keep
him and let him run free ; the other thinks that his
neighbor has no right to keep that dog, or that,
if he will keep him, he should keep him tied or
in a kennel. Finally one of the neighbors decides
to rid himself of the other neighbor by building a
dividing fence. A fight grows out of their dispute
about the right to build and the place to locate the
fence. They are fighting about the fence. But it
is not hard to see the relation of the dog to this
fence. Well, slavery was the dog of the Civil
War. Secession was the fence.

During the war there was a popular rhyme that
ran thus:

THE NEW NEGRO 135

"In sixty-one, the war begun;
In sixty-two, we'll put it thru ;
In sixty-three, the nigger'll be free ;
In sixty-four, the war'll be o'er —
And Johnny come marching home."

The prophecy of this popular doggerel was
fulfilled, almost to the letter. In 1861, in spite
of the president's protestations of non-interfer-
ence with slavery, war could not be averted. For
the question had shifted from a question about
the dog to a dispute about the fence. The price
which the South demanded for peace ;was no
longer slavery but secession. This price the gov-
ernment would not pay. The spirit of war was
full grown; the gaiidium certaminis swept the
whole manhood of the nation toward the front.
The first great shock at Bull Run resulted in a
Northern defeat; which perhaps did more good
for the North than it did for the South, for it
filled the South with confidence, but it filled the
North with caution. In "sixty-two" the war
was Hterally "put thru," and from the summer of
this year till the appearance of black troops the
outlook was very dark for the Union cause. In
"sixty-three" came freedom and the Negro soldier,
at the turning point of the war. The great com-
mander thus brought up his black reserves just
in time to strike the decisive blow. Lincoln had
the felicity of doing the right thing at the right
time. Negro troops would not have been wel-
comed by the Northern soldier before this time,

136 THE NEW NEGRO

and even now Lincoln found it hard to get the
Negroes into the government uniform; the white
soldier wanted the Negroes to be dressed in a
different color and sort of suit from his own.
But the Union's need of the Negro overcame this
prejudice. The Emancipation Proclamation was
just in time, too — just in time to make the masses
of foreign nations sympathize with the Northern
side of the struggle, as being a struggle for free-
dom as well as for Union. If issued earlier, it
would have been indeed a "Pope's bull against the
comet." In "sixty-four" the war was practically
over; even the Confederates had the feeling that
it was simply a question of time and a question of
terms. Lincoln steadfastly refused to consider any
terms but the restoration of the Union and the
authority of the government.

Through it all Lincoln had been prosecuting the
war with the energy of an experienced commander-
in-chief. He had been sifting and shifting gen-
erals until he had finally brought out Grant. Pope,
McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, had all gone be-
fore. Some of them were energetic and aggressive,
but none of them could be a match for the genius
of the Confederate captain, Lee. McClellan was
a great organizer but lacked the abiUty for ener-
getic command in the field. So hesitant and un-
aggressive was he that during his command there
came into existence the famous phrase, "All is
quiet on the Potomac." Somebody praised Mc-
Clellan for being a great "engineer"; Lincoln said
yes, but that he seemed to have a special talent for

THE NEW NEGRO 137

developing a "stationary" engine. It is a remark-
able thing to say of a man who was a civilian about
all of his life, but Lincoln was a better strategist,
excepting perhaps Grant, than any general that
ever came to the command of the Army of the Po-
tomac. By observation and study and sympathy,
he learned more of the art of war than did his
generals in the field. He warned Hooker not to
have his army crossing the Rappahannock River in
the presence of Lee, saying that Hooker's army
would then be "like an ox jumped half over a fence
and liable to be torn by the dogs front and rear,
without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the
other." He noted every detail in the movements
of armies; he saw every opportunity to strike a
deciding blow. Had he been in McClellan's shoes
after Antietam, he would have injured Lee. Had
he been in Meade's shoes after Gettysburg, he
might have crushed Lee. He kept telling his com-
manders that the objective of the Army of the
Potomac should be Lee's army and not Richmond.
And when Grant came to command in the East he
adopted the exact hnes of tactics which Lincoln
had been endeavoring to urge upon his other gen-
erals; and Grant's success attests the military sense
of Lincoln.

In his relations with his cabinet and other public
officials his justness and patriotism are plainly
shown. He chose the members of his cabinet with
a view to their fitness for serving the country, re-
gardless of other considerations; he chose Chase,
who was thinking that the country had made a

138 THE NEW NEGRO

great mistake In electing Lincoln to the presidency
instead of him; he chose Seward, who thought that
he knew much more about the presidential office
than the inexperienced Illinois lawyer, and was not
kind enough to hide his opinion even from Lincoln
himself; he chose Stanton, a Democrat, who had
personally insulted Lincoln as a lawyer a few years
before, who had despised Lincoln the President as
a frivolous story-teller, and from whom the presi-
dent had sometimes to compel subordination. It
is a marvellous record of tact and patriotic devo-
tion how he harmonized and ruled these conflicting
and contending spirits; how he remained both
master and friend.

But be it said to the undying honor of all these
men that they were devoted to their country and
rendered invaluable service in her defense. Espe-
cially Stanton: he was a tyrant and a relentless
prosecutor, — and that Is well, for he was a good
check upon the over-mercifulness of Lincoln.
These two characters complemented each other in
the great task of the administration : Stanton was
the grim, relentless Mars, the god of war, caring
more for the business than either for the sorrow
or for the joy of battle; while Lincoln was the
superior divinity, unlimited in power but preferring
mercy to justice, and restraining with patient but
authoritative hand, the too furious course of the
subordinate war-god. He sometimes referred to
Stanton as "Old Mars over there at the war de-
partment."

Lincoln also had many puny but pestiferous

THE NEW NEGRO 139

politicians on his hands. When asked how he
managed these, he told the story of an old farmer
who was a neighbor of theirs when he was a boy.
When this old farmer was asked how he got rid of
a bothersome log that lay in his field, he replied:
"I jes' ploughed around it!"

This great man also found it often necessary to
"plough around" the disaffection or the apathy of
the "plain people," in whom he had such noble con-
fidence. This is not better seen anywhere than in
his relation to the slavery question. On this ques-
tion he was too slow for some and too fast for
others; he was too cold for the Abolitionists and
too hot for the pro-slavery faction. It is the lot
of a great, level, even, balanced man like Lincoln
to be censured by both extremists. So normal was
he that we find different persons applying exactly
opposite epithets to him: some say that he was too
radical, others that he was too conservative; some
that he was too partisan, others that he was too
liberal; some that he was extremely democratic,
others that he was a tyrant; some say that he was
too subject to sentiment, others that he was as
feelingless as a stone ; while his friends were charg-
ing him with being too lenient and too merciful to
the enemy, the enemy was painting him as the in-
carnation of devilish malice. So it is not surprising
that while some say that the whole purpose of his
war and administration was to free and elevate
the Negroes, others declare that he would never
have issued the Emancipation Proclamation if he
had not been compelled to do so. The true posi-

I40 THE NEW NEGRO

tlon of Lincoln Is to be found about half way be-
tween all of these extremes. Personally he de-
spised slavery. But as President of the United
States he had sense enough to see that it was his
duty to look out for the interests of the govern-
ment, because the Negroes and all others would be
lost without the government. He would interfere
with slavery only when such interference was some-
how connected with the welfare of the Union; he
would save the Union either with or without
slavery. What he did for black men, he did be-
cause he saw that it was good for all men, white
and black. Said he: "In giving freedom to the
slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable
alike In what we give and what we preserve."

He was perfectly clear as to his personal inchna-
tlon, saying: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing
is wrong." He hated slavery most because of its
demoralizing effect upon white men; because it
compelled white men to engage in too many sham
arguments In their efforts to defend it; because it
often made them attack the very foundation of
human liberty; because it made them attack even
the Declaration of Independence. He issued his
proclamation of freedom deliberately and without
compulsion, because he saw it would be a winning
card in the great game of war which he was playing
for the prize of a united country. There is no doubt
about his estimation of the act; he called it "the
central act of my administration and the great
event of the 19th century." He also said: "It is
a momentous thing to be the instrument under

THE NEW NEGRO 141

Providence of the liberation of a race," and "If my
name ever goes into history it will be for this act."
The most valuable posession of all that he has left
us on this question of the Negro is his willingness
to learn and change his mind; he at first thought
that the Negro soldiers would not fight; but when
they fought, he acknowledged it; once he thought
that only white men should vote, but later he ac-
knowledged that to say that self-government is
right and to say also that for one race to govern
another against its wish and without its co-opera-
tion is likewise right, are as opposite "as God and
Mammon."

By 1 865 he had overcome opposition in America
and had outhved the sneers of Europe, and was
the most powerful man in the world. His favorite
general, Grant, by literally battering the Con-
federate army and pounding the defenses of Rich-
mond, with repeated strokes like the blows of
Thor's hammer, had finally opened the gates of
Richmond and compelled the retreat of the out-
numbered and outdone, but not outgeneralled,
Lee. Lincoln had entered Richmond, not as the
conqueror enters the fallen stronghold of the
enemy, but as the sympathetic man enters the scene
of the common scourge of his country. The
Negro troops who were among the first to enter
Richmond, fed and watered the starving Con-
federates from their canteens and acted more like
a rescue party after an earthquake than a victo-
rious army after a stubborn siege. On the 9th of
April Lee surrendered an army of the most nervy

142 THE NEW NEGRO

and long-suffering soldiers that had ever followed
an Anglo-Saxon captain. On April the 14th, after
a long season of the clouds and thunders and indis-
criminating fires of war, glad for the returning
sunshine of peace, filled with the milk of human
kindness, and with the tenderest feelings of merci-
fulness and pardon, the Great President was slain
by the bullet of a misguided zealot. The foolish
man expected some men to praise him for the deed,
but the whole world abhorred him, hunted him,
and killed him like a dog. Grant, himself a man
without the passion of hate, said of Lincoln: "In
his death the nation lost its greatest hero; in his
death the South lost its most just friend." At the
funeral, immediately behind his coflUn, marched a
detachment of the troops of the race he had
emancipated.

He was buried in Springfield, III., which had so
long been his home. No one knew his birthplace,
but the whole world knows his grave. At his
death he was just fairly entered upon a second
presidential term. Lowell calls him "the first
American." He was the first president of the Re-
public who was American through and through.
There was not one foreign element in his bringing
up ; he was an unmixed child of the Western plains,
born in the South, reared in the North. Most of
the presidents before him being reared nearer the
Atlantic, had imbibed more or less of Eastern cul-
ture and had European airs. This man Lincoln
M^as so thoroughly democratic as to astonish both
Old and New England. He never acted "the

THE NEW NEGRO 143

President," and was always a man among men,
the honored servant of the people.

From a five dollar fee before a justice of the
peace, he had risen to a five thousand dollar fee
before the supreme court of Illinois. From a
study of "Dilworth's Spelling Book" in his seventh
year, he had risen to write, in his fifty-seventh
year, his second Inaugural, which is the greatest
utterance of man and yet all of his days in school
added together, are less than one year. His
pioneer life had given him a vein of humor which
became his "Life-preserver" in times of stress;
it had also given him a love for human liberty
that was unaffected. He felt that the enslave-
ment of some men was but the advance guard, the
miner and sapper, of the enslavement of all men.
He respected, even revered, the Constitution of
his country, but he would violate a clause in order
to save the whole instrument — just as a good
surgeon will amputate a limb to save a life.
From a poor captain of volunteers in the scan-
dalous little Black Hawk War, where he jokingly
said he "bled, died, and came away," although
he never had a skirmish nor saw an Indian, he
had risen to the chief command in a war that num-
bered three thousand battles and skirmishes and
cost three billion dollars. Having no ancestry
himself, being able to trace his line by rumor and
tradition only as far back as his grandfather, he
became, like George Washington, the Father of
his Country. Born of a father who could not
write his name, he himself had written the Proc-

144 THE NEW NEGRO

lamatlon of Emancipation, the fourth great state
paper in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, —
the others being Magna Charta, the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution. If we accept
the statement of Cicero that the days on which we
are saved should be as illustrious as the days on
which we are born, then Lincoln the Savior must
always remain co-ordinate with Washington, the
Father of his country. Jackson was "Old
Hickory," Taylor was "Old Rough," and there
have been various names given to the other presi-
dents, but Washington and Lincoln were the only
ones whom the American people styled "Father."

Nature tried herself in the year of 1809;
many great and varied geniuses Vv^ere born.
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born
on the same day, one to the mastery of nature,
and the other to the mastery of men; both circum-
polar stars that never set.

European people could not understand how a
man like Lincoln, who was born what they call
a peasant in Europe, could wear supreme power
as lightly as Lincoln wore his. Thev had been
used to Cromwells and Napoleons, who rose to
rule and not to obey, to enslave and not to free,
the people. A Frenchman could not understand
why n ruler like Lincoln, in command of a million
armed men, would ieonardize his tenure of office
bv holding a presidential election in 1864. A
European might have declared the whole Consti-
tution suspended and himself Dictator during the
remainder of the war. But the Republican form

THE NEW NEGRO 145

of government was more respected by Lincoln In
time of war than by some other presidents in
times of the greatest peace. In this he rendered
a great service, not only to his country but to the
whole liberty-loving world; for he showed the
ability of a Republic to save itself in a life and
death grapple without abating the freedom of its
citizenship. After his death the French Liberals
sent Mrs. Lincoln a medal to the honor of the de-
ceased president, part of the inscription being:
"Saved the Republic without veiling the Statue of
Liberty." For the first time in the history of the
world democracy had demonstrated its right to
a place of respect beside the more ancient form of
government.

Again it is to the everlasting honor of the
American people that the death of a man like
Lincoln in a time like Lincoln's should cause such
a little stir and no revolution in the government.
The vice-president, a man who did not possess the
entire confidence of the party in power, was
allowed to assume the office of president without
a struggle. And it is a marvel of patriotism, of
order and self-control, that an army of a million
men, who held within their hands the nation's
fate, should march down Pennsylvania Ave., in
review before this new president, lay down their
victorious arms, and return to the fireside and to
the toil of factory and field. It was a sight for
the gods, the demi-gods and the crowned heads
of the ancient world. It was the triumph of
democracy.

146 THE NEW NEGRO

Child of the American soil, cradled and
nursed in the very bosom of nature, he loved
his country with the passion with which most men
love their human mothers. He could not bear the
thought of one iota of detraction from her honor,
her dignity or her welfare. Against her dis-
memberment he was willing to fight to the end of
his second administration or till the end of time.
He might tolerate anything else except disunion, —
even the right of some of his fellowmen to enslave
others. Of every concession which he made dur-
ing his administration, to friend or foe, the sine qua
non was Union. A house divided against itself
cannot stand. In this he left us a great heritage ;
it is a lesson for both sections, and all races of any
section. White men of America, black men of
America, by the eternal God of heaven,
there can be no division of destiny on the
same soil and in the bosom and in the lap of the
same natural mother. Men may attempt
and accomplish discrimination in a small way, but
Almighty God and all-mothering nature are abso-
lutely impartial. They have woven the fabric of
life so that the thread of each man's existence
is a part of the whole. He who sets fire to his
neighbor's house, endangers the existence of his
own; he who degrades his neighbor's children,
undermines the future of his own. Together we
rise and together we fall is the plan of God and the
rule of nature. We must lean together in the
common struggle of life: the syncline is stronger
than the anticline. — In a great nation with an

THE NEW NEGRO 147

increasing fame, the lesson of Lincoln's life must
grow in importance. Long as the human heart
loves freedom his name will be a word on the
tongues of men. His name will be a watchword
wherever liberty in her struggles with tyranny,
lifts her embattled banners. No man of the an-
cient or the modern world has a securer place in
the hearts and memories of men than this man
Lincoln, who was born in obscurity, who died
in a halo, and who now rests in an aureole of
historic glory.

INDUSTRY

For over three hundred years the "lazy" Negro
has done the hardest work in America. Theoreti-
cally freedom would keep any lazy being from
work, — that is, freedom from chains and the whip.
The Negro was expected to almost die of starva-
tion rather than work in a state of freedom. But
to-day out of seven million colored people above
the age of ten years, five million are at work, —
two million women and three million men. They
are still doing the hardest work in America : farm-
ing, gardening, dairying, fishing, mining, milling,
and all sorts of domestic and personal service.
There are nearly a million Negro farmers and
two million farm laborers ; a million Negro women
are working on the farms.

In the main the Negro is doing the work which
the white people wish most to shun. In slavery
he did the drudgery under compulsion, and the
white man naturally reasoned that the Negro
would escape from such work at all costs as soon
as he was set free. On the other hand the Negro
took advantage of the hard lessons he had learned
in slavery and began to lay his economic founda-
tion deep and firm in all the avenues of hard
work to which he was admitted. He had worked
two hundred and fifty years for board and clothes,

148

THE NEW NEGRO 149

and very poor board and clothes at that. He
is the one element in America to whom America
owes a large past debt, never to be paid and per-
haps absolutely unpayable. The African Negro)
was the forerunner of American civihzation in(
the South; he was the army which attacked the'
forests, the canebrakes and the swamps.

Instead of taking his freedom as a good op-
portunity to quit work and starve to death, he
has become such a competitor to those about him
that every possible effort is made to handicap and
check him. Only menial and hard work have
been opened willingly to him, and efforts are
being made in some places to push him out of
even the higher forms of menial service, — such
as hotel waiters, porters and barbers. Under
the pressure of late economic conditions, white
men have become more and more willing to do
such work. Twenty-five years ago it was a dis-
grace to a white man to be seen shaving another
white man; Booker T. Washington said that the
white man in the chair did not feel that it was safe
to let another white man get a razor under
his throat. Many Negro men on the other hand
got really wealthy at the barber's trade. In the
South white men have lately entered into sharp
competition against colored men In this field,
especially in the larger cities and In connection
with the hotels.

Again, the Negro worker is handicapped by
Inferior sanitary conditions of work, as a rule. In
print It Is merely proclaimed that the Negro Is

150 THE NEW NEGRO

physically unfit and Inferior to other peoples, but
in practice it is taken for granted that the Negro
can live under conditions that would kill a white
man. It always seems strange to me that anybody
could express surprise that the Negro's death
rate is higher in America than that of white folk;
and it seems even stupid to hear some ascribe it
to the Negro's color or race when it can be amply
explained by the unsanitary conditions of his life.
The house which the landlord or employer usually
offers to the Negro tenant or workman, is usu-
ally nothing but a bare shelter for the animal,
often one or two rooms and without sufficient
breathing space for the family. All modern sani-
tary arrangements are conspicuous by their ab-
sence, often even water is scarce. The great army
of Negro prisoners in the South Is kept under
conditions which impregnate them with diseases,
and when their terms expire, if they are alive,
they are sent back among the masses of colored
people to scatter these diseases. The greater part
of the living condition of Negroes in the South
is in the hands of white people, but the general
unsanitary living of the Negro masses and the
rate at which they die are often held up as the
fault of the Negroes alone. It is significant that
a recent publication by the United States Census
Bureau shows that the Negroes live better and
their death-rate decreases in proportion as they
gain posession and control of their own homes.

Again, the Negro laborer is practically every-
where underpaid. It is said that his standard of

THE NEW NEGRO 151

living is lower. It is forgotten that the standard of
living is as much an effect as a cause ; poverty and
low wages keep down the standard of living. Is the
Negro expected to raise his standard of living
before his wages are raised? Great organiza-
tions of white men have gone on strike to compel
the employer to pay the Negro workmen lower
wages for the same work for which they them-
selves were getting a higher wage. In Georgia
there was a great strike of the white railroad men
for lower wages — for black railroad men. It
seems to us that this will ultimately work against
the interests of white men, for if soulless cor-
porations are compelled to hire colored men at
lower wages, they will find every excuse possible
to hire more of the cheaper labor and less of the
higher labor.

This question of pay reminds us that it is
often said that white people prefer Negroes for
certain forms of work and service: colored men
for porters, butlers and house "boys," — and
colored women for cooks, maids, laundresses and
even sick nurses. This matter of pay has largely
determined that preference. The Negroes are
not preferred because they are black, certainly.
But the Negro servant can be had for lower
wages, or what amounts to the same thing, he will
do more work for the same wages. The Negro
trained nurse is expected to be the chamber maid
also, to empty the slops and clean the room. They
have even been required to serve meals to the
family. If a white woman is hired as cook, she

152 THE NEW NEGRO

will want a boy to bring in the wood and draw
water from the well. Or what amounts to the
same thing still, the Negro servant will work
longer hours and take more mistreatment and
accept inferior accommodations from the em-
ployer, not because the Negro prefers these con-
ditons but because of his disadvantages in the
struggle to live and because his other avenues of
employment are largely limited by prejudice and
labor unions. In short, the preference for a
Negro servant or workman is by no means a pre-
ference for the Negro. The Negro is such a
large competitor in some fields, like mining and
smelting, that he is admitted to the unions, usually
in segregated organizations, however. It is the
general practice of white labor unions to admit
Negroes wherever it is vitally necessary to protect
the interests of the white workingmen, and to
exclude the Negro whenever his membership
would benefit the Negro alone.

We must speak of the perils that beset the
Negro woman and child, especially as domestic
servants. In many communities we have found the
white people complaining that it is getting harder
and harder to persuade the "lazy" Negroes to
work as cooks, house-servants, washerwomen and
chamber maids. This is true, all except the ques-
tion-begging word "lazy." The reason is not
laziness : it is the unprotected condition of colored
women and girls. A Negro girl has little enough
protection against the stranger in the streets, and
when she goes into domestic service there is no

THE NEW NEGRO 153

protecting law that follows her; she is entirely
at the mercy of the honor of the white male
members of the household, and bitter experiences
have shown that in many, many cases that cannot
be relied upon. Consequently, whenever a
colored man can earn enough to barely keep his
wife and daughters at home, he does so. The
truth about the rapacity which the colored female
has had to withstand will never be fully told; and
if told, it would be incredible to most of those
who had not first-hand knowledge of conditions,
if one white female were outraged by a black man
to every ten black females that are outraged by
white men in America, the ninety millions would
start a war of extermination against the ten mil-
lions. And yet the Negro is the one who has been
advertised to the world as the rapist. What a
powerful agent the associated press is ! It can
literally make black white and white black. White
men own and operate practically the whole of the
free press in this country. The Negroes with a
few limited weekly and monthly sheets dare not
speak the truth on this subject.

In spite of these hindrances the Negro has de-
veloped a large industrial class and some business
organizations. The colored people have in the
main worked willingly at whatever their hands
found to do. Contrary to the popular impression,
they have not rushed heedlessly away from lower
forms of employment toward higher forms before
they were prepared to do so. Many of them have
left the farms, but not nearly in so large a propor-

154 THE NEW NEGRO

tlon as the white people of this civihzation have
left the farms. And besides the Negro had not
only the normal industrial development but also
abnormal conditions, political, civil and educa-
tional to drive him from the country.

The Negro is going forward also in business
organizations, especially in those sections where
prejudice is most unreasonable. Race prejudice
is responsible for many a Negro drug store and
other merchant businesses. The race is con-
tinually trying by indirect routes to get around the
obstructions that are put into its pathway. Some-
times, as in the case of these business enterprises,
it seems to reap a temporary benefit from the
very fact of the existence of the obstruction.
Therefore even some Negroes have made the
mistake of crediting race prejudice with race
prosperity, — which is about as logical as giving
credit to war for general prosperity because it
temporarily stimulates the iron industry and raises
the price of shares in the steel corporation.

In the South as a whole, it is a fact, to be
variously explained of course, but it still is a fact
that the Negro laborer is preferred and that the
white people would not substitute for him the
laborer of any other race in the world.

EDUCATION.

The foundations of Negro education in the
South were fortunately laid by generous and fair-
minded people of the North and East, through
church organizations hke the Freedmen's Aid
Society, the American Missionary Association and
the Baptist Education Society, and through inde-
pendent schools like Hampton and Tuskegee.
Such organizations and institutions have created
leadership for the race and made the education
of the race possible; but if such organizations
and schools were many times rnultiplied, they
could not educate the American Negro. That can
be done only by the pubhc school, the biggest
university of them all. These private efforts have
created a leadership and made the pubhc school
possible, but the pubhc school must do the job of
educating the Negro. As a rule in these essays we
are considering the Negro in his relations to the
body politic, rather than in relation to any private
interests. We wish to speak now especially of his
public school education.

What is the "public school?" For it seems to
be a prominent and permanent part of modern
education, and like all human institutions it must
have had a beginning and a sufficient cause for its
instituting. We speak of "the public school

156 THE NEW NEGRO

system," meaning sometimes the machinery of
public education, but often alluding to the type
of education as distinguished from that of sec-
tarian and private schools. The Greeks were
the first to develop a system of education distinct
from theology and priestcraft, and they recognized
at once the necessary two sides of a complete
system in mental and physical training, which they
termed respectively music and gymnastics. But
altho the Greek and the later Roman systems
recognized these two sides, still the Greek ideal
was self-culture, while the Roman ideal was what
we would call self-sacrifice, if that word were not
too specific in its meaning, and so we will call it
self-putting-forth or self-action. The Greek
looked upon the soul and wanted an ideal man of
well-defined principles and lofty virtues, — and
then trusted the results of his action. The Roman
looked out upon the world and wanted a practi-
cal man of efficiency and power to manage that
world, — and trusted the fate of his soul. But
no system of education is complete which does
not consider both, — the ideal and the opportune.
In the Middle Ages there had grown up two
educational institutions, the monastery and the
castle, for the training of monks and knights, and
learning was the jealously guarded privilege of
the classes until Martin Luther did for education
what Socrates is said to have done for philosophy,
— brought it down from heaven to dwell in the
huts of men. Luther contended that the child of
the humblest peasant was entitled to the best

THE NEW NEGRO 157

learning that his country could afford. That was
a great step forward, for it had been thought that
a book in the hand of the peasant would not be
a torch but a firebrand. — But still this did not
make a "public school:" it meant only that the
peasant should not be forbidden; it was not yet
the "golden rule" of education.

And thanks to the genius of the common people,
when once they were admitted to membership,
education got closer to real things and real life.
Teachers began to develop maxims and principles :
"Teach a thing first and then the reason for it,"
said Ratke. There grew up a co-operative and
mutually helpful companionship between theory
and practice, learning and wisdom, the mother
tongue and the other tongues. But there was
still no "public school system," except that the
general public was nominally entitled to learn.
Education was not a state concern, being con-
trolled not by the statesman but by the priest and
the pedagogue.

This was, however, a good foundation and
preparation for the public school. With the
growth of knowledge the spirit of freedom grew,
and the spirit of freedom is the creator of the
public school. Be it remembered to the honor of
America that she was the first to reach the public
school stage ; for she was first to have the necessary
cause, — universal suffrage. Universal education
is as necessary to popular self-government as air
is to life. New England recognized this early and
established the "public school," making it as vital

158 THE NEW NEGRO

an interest of the community as war and real
estate. We now reach what I choose to call the
"golden rule" of education : not that any man may
be schooled, but that every man must be educated.
Education had been a private matter, to be had
or done without according to the means or fortune
of the individual — like an automobile or a
diamond pin. The state had not been interested,
but when manhood suffrage is attempted, either
ignorance or intelligence must rule. Democracy
is the condition of the public school and the
ballot is its causa essendi.

At present all civilized nations, whatever their
form of government, are interested in public edu-
cation. A kingdom, like Prussia, may be in the
front rank. Such government is democratic in
spirit tho monarchic in theory. And the late
advent of the public school into the Southern part
of the United States was due to the persistence
of slavery. Under the slave regime the state
government was democratic in theory but oligar-
chic in spirit and in fact. This explains, too, the
comparatively slow development of our Southern
schools: they have suffered in the struggle of
democracy against oligarchy. If the few are to
rule, what is the need of universal education?
Besides, the rule of the few is precarious under
even the rudiments of popular instruction. But
we have advanced somewhat with the general edu-
cational advancement: we have public schools
maintained by the state and supported by public
taxes; and public lands and certain fines have

THE NEW NEGRO 159

been diverted to school purposes. The system
has grown up through graded school and high
school even into normal school and university,
so that it is possible for one to acquire even the
highest professional training under non-sectarian,
civil authorities.

And how has the Negro fared in this battle of
democracy and education against oligarchy and
ignorance? He has been the objective position of
much of the fighting; and his situation has been
all the more critical because the forces on both
sides have been not only in earnest but in many
cases sincere, — some believing that he should not
be admitted to full membership in the democracy
and therefore not to the fullest education, and
others believing that the destiny of democracy
and education and even of Christianity depends
upon their ability to meet the challenge of the
Negro and take him in. All the prejudices and
passions which the classes have always had against
the advance of the masses were aggravated and
enhanced against the ex-slave, who was not only of
a different class but of a different race and even of
a different color. This badged him to the very eye
of the jealous civilization that surrounded him.
His color had been the mark of enslavement and
was taken to be also the mark of Inferiority; for
prejudice does not reason, or it would not be
prejudice. If, for example, the slaves had been
white but only five feet high, for generations
afterward there would have been in this country
a strong prejudice against all short people. This

i6o THE NEW NEGRO

element cannot be ignored if one would under-
stand the development and the present condtion
of Negro education in the public and largely in the
private schools of this country.

At first very few of those who opposed and
not many of those who favored his education
believed him really capable of much education,
and so the debate was not interesting. As time
went he took the question out of debate by demon-
strating his capacity, and the opposition became
more determined. It was argued that the Negro's
educational advancement threatened the economic
well-being of the South, that what this section
needed was an unthinking mass of common labor-
ers and farm-hands, — not artisians and farmers,
mind you, but laborers and farm-hands, — and that
education was spoiling this class. But it has been
shown, not only in other countries like England
and Prussia where the people are educated, but
even in those parts of the South where the Negro
is better educated, that an intelligent workman
is better than a laborer and an intelligent, self-
directing small-farmer is more economical to the
state than a driven, irresponsible farm-hand. Be-
sides, the more intelligent the working class, the
more they want, — better shoes, better clothes,
better houses and more comforts, — and the satis-
fying of these wants stimulates trade and lifts
the general level of living. It pushes those who
are up further up. When you raise the bottom of
society you push up the top, you do not overturn
it. In a democracy individuals will naturally find

THE NEW NEGRO i6i

their way from the bottom to the top, and in-
ferior individuals will sink from the top toward
the bottom. But this is the reason for democracy
and the strongest argument in its favor; and there
is but one way to prevent this, and that is to have
no democracy.

Some say that the education of the Negro tends
p to pull him away from the farm and deranges the
economic system of the South, and that the city
Negro is not worth as much to the (white) South
as is the rural Negro, These views consider the
Negro in his relation to white people only as a
commodity. Suppose we consider the city Negro
from the standpoint of his own interests. Would it
be better for the American Negro if all Negroes
stayed in the rural districts and none went to the
cities? The Negro as a whole has been advertised
in his worst phase, but the city Negro, being under
the whiter light of the centers of civilization, has
had his baser and uglier traits more than exag-
gerated. Most of what the world has been told
about him is half truth. Everybody knows that
cities produce the most criminal Negroes, but
^ few know that they produce the most intelligent;
all have heard of the moral and physical disease
and death, but few have been told of his ad-
mirable organizations to promote material, moral,
and intellectual health; it is bruited abroad that he
fills proportionately more of the prisons and con-
vict stockades, but there is absolute silence about
the fact that he supplies by far the greater number
of teachers, professional and business men and

1 62 THE NEW NEGRO

the more competent preachers. If he fills the
city slums, he also fills the greater proportion of
the best homes of the Negro race; if his life
is shorter, it is more interesting; if he is weaker,
he is wiser. Better 20 years of Atlanta than
a century of the semi-slavery of the "Mississippi
bottoms." As is true of all races, the height to
which the Negro has attained is to be measured
in cities rather than elsewhere. This is due to
better educational advantages and to the fact
that city life tends more to inspire independence
of character.

Another argument which lends itself much more
to passion than to reason, is that the advance of
the Negro threatens race integrity, — that is, the
integrity of the white race. But experience, which
is the most reliable teacher in such matters, has
shown that ignorance and weakness in the one
race constitute a far greater danger to the integrity
of both than inteUigence and strength could pos-
sibly become. Put a poor, ignorant and defense-
less woman in the presence of a rich, powerful
and wicked man, and the only salvation for their
races is to educate that woman and her race. Igno-
rance and weakness are fertile soil for bad fruit-
age. The white race can never be strong and in-
telligent in the midst of a weak and ignorant race.
God never intended that a man should get entirely
free from the character of his neighbors : he must
always be in part at least what his neighbors are.
If we are surrounded by weak and ignorant
neighbors we are constantly tempted to cheat and

u

THE NEW NEGRO 163

oppress them ; sometimes we yield and sink. The
most helpful environment that a strong man can
have is to be surrounded by other strong men
whom he can neither cheat nor wrong. The race
is as the man.

But the economic and race-integrity arguments
are aimed against the progress of the race in
general, while there are some special charges
aglnst its educational progress in particular. It
is charged that the Negro does not pay taxes; that
education makes him more criminal and less use-
ful; and that his inferiority in general causes and
justifies the indifference and opposition to his edu-
cation.

^ Does the Negro race pay taxes? Does it bear
its share of the financial burden of state govern-
ment? In the matter of tax-burden the just
measure of a man's share is the measure of his
ability, — and I have never heard that the officials
of any state have even pretended to say that their
colored people do not pay as taxes the same pro-
portion of their posessions as the white race pays.
This could not be otherwise, for white people
assess and collect the taxes, — and it is generally
understood that the Negro who owns real estate
and other visible property, is assessed in a higher
valuation than anybody else. If the man who
owns a million dollars pays the same number of
mills out of each one of those dollars as the
man vv^ho owns one dollar pays out of his single
dollar, the millionaire bears no greater burden
of taxation than the man of a single dollar; and

1 64 THE NEW NEGRO

indeed our new inheritance and income tax laws,
in their graduated scale of assessments, recognize
the truth that in such case the man of many dollars
is not burdened as much as the man of few dollars.
All of the widow's mite is more than a tithe of the
rich man's hoard. In South Carolina, where the
Negro child receives two dollars for its education to
fourteen dollars for the white child, it was proven
one year on the authority of white investigators
that the Negroes paid by direct school taxation
every cent of the money that was spent on their
own schools and twenty thousand dollars of that
which was spent on white schools.

That is direct taxation. But what about indirect
taxes? Society has other ways of collecting taxes
thian by a visit of the tax-collector, and more
people pay taxes than ever see the inside of the
tax office. The great indirect tax, the most im-
portant tax-burden of all, is paid by every man
who eats food, wears clothes and occupies a rented
space upon the ground. A landlord with a hundred
tenants is but a tax-agent appointed by the laws
of society to gather the taxes of those tenants
and turn the same over to the tax-collector. He
raises rents or lowers wages in proportion to the
taxes he must deliver to the state. The man who
has the title to the property enjoys this vantage
and honor; he does not bear the burden, — the
worker and the consumer have the honor of doing
that. If vv^e count only direct taxes as taxes, the
cause of the non-landholding element will be
helpless and hopeless. Take our Southern rail-

THE NEW NEGRO 165

roads: in proportion as the Negro uses them, in
that proportion does he pay the company's taxes.
But a white man hands the money to the tax-
collector and gets the receipt, and it is recorded
among white men's taxes. The Negro customer
pays the merchant's taxes: the prices include both
license and tax. Your very servants share your
tax-burden. The man who blacks your boots
help to pay your taxes: he pays the tax on the
blacking when he buys it, and if the state would
forgive you your taxes you would gladly pay him
a dime where you now pay him a nickel. He
pays through the merchant and through you. It
is as impossible to live in the state and not pay
as to hve in the air and not breathe.

Does education make Negroes more criminal
and less useful? If this were true, the Negro
would be a contradiction to the experience of all
mankind in all previously recorded history. And
whoever makes the assertion should be required
to prove the proposition beyond the slightest
shadow of a doubt, — else we should continue to
expect the same thing of the American Negro
that is true in the Hves of all the peoples of the
past, namely, that they became better and more
useful as they gained more knowledge of man and
God. They have always fallen when they have
forgotten God and oppressed their fellowmen. I
will not beg the question by saying that education
Itself means making the man better and more
useful, but I call for the facts. The records
of our schools harmonize with the experience of

1 66 THE NEW NEGRO

mankind: do the graduates of Negro schools fur-
nish a bigger proportion in our state penitentiary
than do those Negroes who have never seen the
inside of any of these schools? No man is bold
enough to affirm a definite thing like that, and
yet men assert in a general way that education
makes Negroes criminals. If there is a greater
proportion of our colored population than of our
white population in the state penitentiary, it is
partially explained by the fact that it is easier for
a Negro to get into the penitentiary than for
a white man. Our white sheriff, white judge,
white jury and white lawyers are so partial to
the Negro who applies for admission to our penal
institutions that they never want to exclude him,,
while in the case of a white man there is more
dehberation, demurrer and objection. If you put
black men into these official positions and give
the accused white man a fair chance to get in,
I dare say that within a very few months he
would demonstrate his equality with the Negro in
this important particular. In the case of the
school it is easier for the white man and harder
for the Negro to get in, and consequently there
is a greater proportion of the v/hite race on the
inside. The law of least resistance is a partial
explanation of these phenomena.

As to the question of usefulness the opposition
also states its case in a general way, but coming
down to specifications, are the untrained farmers
and ignorant unskilled laborers of the Negro race
more useful to the state than his business and pro-

THE NEW NEGRO 167

fessional men, his teachers and the trained gradu-
ates of his industrial schools? I admit that an
ignorant man may be more profitable to some indi-
vidual employer who likes the advantage, but his
ignorance is unprofitable and expensive to society
as a whole. And when it is said that education
"unfits" the Negro, perhaps it is meant that it
makes him less fit to be cheated and abused. It
makes him less fit for individual exploitation but
more fit to serve the common interests of a civi-
lized community. How long will some of our
white people continue to think that a wasteful,
shiftless Negro is a good economic asset simply
because he will take kicking and "cussing?"

Again, those who are responsible for the poor
schools, few teachers and scant appropriations,
seek to ease their consciences and justify their
ways by charging the Negro race with general
incapacity and inferiority. There are seldom
offered any definite facts in support of this theory.
Sometimes it is said that Negroes do not deserve
or appreciate any better opportunities and almost
that they do not want them. In one of our
largest Southern cities, when an organization of
colored women went to complain against the bar-
barous treatment of their public schools, one of
the ofl^cials met their complaint with the significant
statement: "You have already gotten much more
than you ever asked for." And so the impres-
sion exists that not only the Negro's needs but
even his wants are inferior : that an uncomfortable
and unequipped schoolhouse will do for the Negro

1 68 THE NEW NEGRO

child, and that one dollar suffices for the Negro
teacher where three or five dollars are needed
by the white teacher. There is no surer way of
destroying sympathy for a man who is being mis-
treated than by establishing the belief that the man
himself does not care, that he is satisfied and
incapable of appreciating better treatment. We
feel different when the same thing happens to a
man and an animal. But there is a commonsense
philosophy which believes that men are more ahke
than different, that they are differentiated by the
modifying influence of circumstances, and that they
cannot be classified a priori from the color of their
skins or the shapes of their noses.

Is not the inferiority of the Negro's educational
status and progress amply explained by the in-
feriority of his educational advantages? Let us
look at a recent annual report of the Superinten-
dent of Education in the state of Alabama and see
what it reveals concerning the Negro. There
were more than 328 thousand Negro children
of school age and about 399 thousand white
children. In other words about half, or strictly
more than 45% of the children to be schooled
were Negroes. In the first place just six schools
were provided for each thousand of these colored
children, while twelve schools were provided for
each thousand whites. The property valuation
of the white schools was more than ten times the
value of the Negro schools; the equipment on the
inside of the white school was worth more than
the land, buildings and all the total property of

THE NEW NEGRO 169

the Negro school. If all went to school each
Negro teacher would have 138 pupils, and each
white teacher 56 pupils. But the Negro teacher
is saved by the fact that the people are so poor
and the schoolhouses so uncomfortable and incon-
venient that only 41% of the colored children can
attend, while 73% of the whites attend. The
average salary of rural white teachers is about
$300, — the average of rural Negro teachers is
less than $150 a year. In our cities also the
average salary of the white teacher with fewer
pupils is more than double that of the Negro
teacher with more pupils. The white schools have
20 times as many libraries as the Negro schools.
The state has no higher education for Negroes;
for the whites there is the university with
colleges and normal schools. There are white
high schools for over sixteen thousand pupils.
The figures given for Negro high school grades
is 1,476. All the agricultural and county high
schools are white. All the school officials are
white.

What a fearful thing it is to be a superior race 1
How much it costs to maintain that superiority!
I almost believe that the Negro race would be
tempted to retrograde into a superior race if it
could get hold of the money, the machinery and
the offices. To cope against an inferior race in
education, a superior race must have more than
ten times as much money, more than twice as many
schools, two or three times as many teachers, 36
more of school days in each year, fifteen to twenty

I70 THE NEW NEGRO

times as many auxiliary books, — and all of the
management and say-so.

The race which enjoys all the advantages of
official position and emolument, should be scrupu-
lously just if not generous to the cause of the race
that has none of these advantages. It is said
that the legislature in its annual appropriation
counts all children, white and black, and votes
the same number of dollars for each head. That
is but half the truth; the more important half of
this truth is in the apportionment of this appro-
priation. What earthly good is done the Negro
child by being counted equal in the voting of the
appropriation, if it is counted only one-tenth in
the distribution of the funds? The Negro child
simply helps the white child to get a few more
dollars than the white child would otherwise get.
One might as well try to justify disfranchisement
on the ground that every Negro in the state is
counted in the basis of the state's representation
in Congress: the Negro population is counted to
the advantage of the state of Alabama, but when
the representatives are elected they are all white
and represent white people. It might be better
for the Negro if his share of the representation
were disallowed altogether, for it only increases
the power of those who oppose him. The equal
count in the legislature will do the Negro child no
good unless he is counted equal by county boards
and local trustees.

Nobody will deny that in the payment of taxes
and fines the Negro race in America is treated as

THE NEW NEGRO 171

if it were absolutely the equal of any race. They
are assessed and fined as much as anybody. To
say the least they are given as long terms in
our penitentiary and on our convict farms as any
white man is given for the same offense. A people
v^^ho are required to bear equally the burdens
should be permitted to share equally the benefits
of government. To get a given amount of educa-
tion the Negro child needs at least the same
amount of money as the white child, — for the black
race can hardly be expected under the circumstances
to be very superior to the white race. Equal shar-
ing in school funds would be no favor to the Negro
race, but simply justice : his direct taxation is pro-
portionately as high as that of the white race, and
his indirect tax is almost always higher, — for ex-
ample, on almost every railroad in the South the
Negro pays proportionately much more for what
he gets than does the white man. Every landless
Negro in the state is paying taxes for some one
else, usually for a white landlord.

The South is now coming into the era of compul-
sory education. We believe in it with all our soul,
but the reform will miss more than half of its
great opportunity if it is schemed so as to leave
out the Negro race ; if the law is so worded that
the proposition can be juggled in the case of a
Negro child. If we want to be a civilized nation,
we must civilize all the people ; for we shall always
be barbaric in proportion as we have an ignorant
and barbarous population in our midst.

Vocational training is now occupying a large

172 THE NEW NEGRO

place in the program of our Southern states. This
is more fortunate for the Negro than even some
of the promoters suppose. There is but one
kind of education, and that is developing in a
man his individual possibilities. But there can
be no doubt of the value right now of voca-
tional training for a race economically situated
as the Negro race is in this country and having
the industrial opposition which it has, and
which in many instances must fight first to save
its body in order to give its mind a chance.
But when I speak in favor of industrial and voca-
tional training I am not speaking in favor of the
shams that are to be found in many of his schools.
Saws and hammers and rulers hanging on the
walls of some public schoolrooms do not always
mean training of any sort, except training in the
bad habit of wasting precious time. It is some-
times simply a game between the superintendent
and the colored principal : the superintendent try-
ing to graft another system on the already too
meagre system of academic instruction, and the
colored principal trying to satisfy the white
superintendent without really doing the thing sup-
posed. The chief sufferer is the helpless Negro
pupil: in this sham battle between his superiors
his chance for any sort of effective training is
utterly lost. He not only fails to get efficiency,
but he gets a bad moral lesson : he thinks he has
found out that the way to manage white people
is to keep them fooled. Surely our larger cities
should maintain distinct courses, and if possible

THE NEW NEGRO 173

distinct school buildings for academic and indus-
trial work. And there should be special teachers
for each class of work. Periods of handiwork
might accompany all the grades, but serious voca-
tional training should come after at least a good
graded school education. This will strengthen the
foundation, on which the student can build a better
vocation ; and at any rate a man should be a man
before he is a piece in the world's machinery.

What is the Negro going to do about it? He
must convince the white man that the education of
the Negro is worth while ; that it will not only not
hurt white people but will help them. It is not
enough to convince the well-disposed white man
only, but the average white person. What is the
white man going to do about it? We are all in the
same boat, and when this civilization reaches its
destiny we are all going to arrive together. The
slower the machinery works in any of its parts, the
slower will be our progress, and the later the day
of our arrival at a more perfect social adjustment.
The two races must see each other less as com-
petitors and more as co-workers, more as fellow
travellers on the road to destiny.

It is true that the untutored Negro has been
useful to American white people : he has been the
instrument by which they have felled their forests,
drained their swamps, tilled their fields and piled
their fortunes. Tho poor, he has made them rich.
He has been no burden : in the name of God he has
paid every cent of his "keep" with interest. On
his back their civihzation has been stable, and in

174 THE NEW NEGRO

his hand their life secure. He was not objected to
until he changed from an instrument into a co-
worker.

For nearly three hundred years in America the
Negro was chiefly an implement, the white man
supplying the thought. Upon this historic relation
is based the extraordinary question as to whether
the free Negro should better be trained in mind or
in hand. I will tell you which the American Negro
needs more, his mind or his hand, if you will tell
me which he can dispense with. It reminds me of
a debating society which I once ran across in the
backwoods of the Alabama "black belt," in which
the subjects for debate on the regular meeting
nights ran like these: "Which is the more useful
to man, the steamboat or the railroad?" or "which
is the more necessary to man, air or water?" It
is hard for some white men to think of the black
man other than as either a useful thing or a nuis-
ance. They cannot conceive him as a thinking,
self-active agent pursuing his own ends. As a free
'man he must put thought in front of his work and
industry. He must think first and act afterwards.
As a member of the body politic, instead of a mere
tool thereof, he must cultivate the intellect, which
is the guide both to the hand and to the heart. The
intellect is the dynamo, the hand is the motor; it
is also one of the eyes of conscience. The mind
of man is his pathfinder in industry and in moral
prudence : it is the most lordly and admirable thing
in the human world. Nothing is great in the world
but man, nothing great in man but mind. It has

THE NEW NEGRO 175

searched the inscrutable past and prophesied the
unsearchable future. It has delved to the center
of the earth and mounted to the invisible star. It
has taken the rocks of the earth as the pages of a
ponderous book and has read therein the history
of the prehistoric age and the records of a manless
world. From the scattered bones of the sohtary
plains it has reconstructed, clothed in flesh and
revived the ancestor of man and beast. With its
daring hand it has caught the loud-threatening
thunderbolt, tamed it and made of it a willing
messenger. In its magic hand it catches the ray
of light that has fled from the verge of the uni-
verse and compels it to "reveal the secrets" of its
far-off home. Standing in the present it links the
past and future, projects and extends the life of an
individual man over milleniums of history, and it
re-thinks the very thoughts of God.

FROM THE CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT

"Whom the gods would destroy they first make
mad." That is the method of inferior "gods" and
devils. But whom the true God loves and whom
he would make great, he challenges, he tries, he
tests, he proves. The Negro race in America is
God's high challenge and supreme test of Amer-
ican Christian democracy. Will it accept the chal-
lenge? Can it stand the test?

There are other tests which America has met
and is meeting, but this is the supreme test. The
question is not whether we can receive from for-
eign lands multitudes, who are of the same race
and color as ninety per cent of our American pop-
ulation, and assimilate them to our civilization, —
but here is a people who are a part of America's
own history, speaking her language and knowing
only her institutions, differing merely in race and
color, or, to speak more truly, differing only par-
tially in race and color, — and the question is : Can
American Christianity and democracy cross this
imaginary line, or is it easier to cross the ocean?
Will the American religion be exclusive like Juda-
ism, but without having as good reasons for its ex-
clusiveness? Judaism could justify its narrowness
on the deep grounds of national history and self-

THE NEW NEGRO i77

defense. The best test of American Christianity
is not whether we can send the most missionaries,
count the most converts and spend the most money
in India, China and Japan or even Africa, but
what can we do and what are we doing for ten
million Negroes in America. It is not whether we
can preach brotherhood to all the world, but
whether we can practice brotherhood in our neigh-
borhood.

With neither hope nor intention of detracting
from the glory and goodness of foreign mission-
ary work, we say that the spirit of the Founder of
Christianity is opposed to a sentiment which makes
it easier to practice Christian brotherhood through
the collection box, the mails and the missionary
magazines than to practice the same across the
street and over my neighbor's fence. The meek
but fearless Jesus of Nazareth would have called
such inconsistency the ne plus ultra of Pharisaism.
The principles of Christianity are pre-eminently
suited to a solution of our domestic problems. Its
teaching is necessarily democratic; it was founded
by a. democrat. Whatever the outward govern-
ment of the community, its Christianity must be a
democracy, — a democracy of souls. It is a radical
doctrine, and compromises are conspicuously ab-
sent from its fundamental teachings: Love thy
neighbor as thyself — Love your enemies — ' The
gain of the world will not compensate the loss of a
soul — All nations are of one blood — and in that
sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven there

178 THE NEW NEGRO

were not only beasts and birds but toads and
snakes.

Such is the doctrine that has proved to be of
greater vitality than any other in the history of
human nature. For nearly two thousand years it
has met no condition or phase of society where it
proved to' be inapplicable. It includes Jew and
gentile, Greek and barbarian; it began in the low-
est ranks of society, but has long ago reached the
highest. What will this simple doctrine mean if
applied to American race conditions without adul-
teration? Let us consider its application: in In-
dustry, in Pohtics, in the Church, and in our social
relations generally.

There is need of a higher ideal of Christian
brotherhood in the industrial forces of this coun-
try, not only as between employer and employed,
but also between different groups of the employed,
and especially between different race groups. In
all industrial pursuits race lines should be obliter-
ated. How can one laborer consistently or safely
deny to another the right to earn his bread in the
sweat of his face? Labor unions should be prin-
cipled not on social equahty but on the equality of
labor. Christianity is utterly opposed to denying
tfie black man the right to work in any sphere or
Calling for which he is individually fit: for if col-
ored folk are brothers in Christ, why are they not
also brothers in the machine-shop and the factory?
Besides, it is against the interest of the labor unions
themselves to exclude the Negro : if there is any
need for the union of labor, there is the same need

THE NEW NEGRO 179

for the union of all labor, white and black. When
the black man is excluded he is made a strike-
breaker and wage-reducer; he is forced into war
upon organized labor, and the fact that this war is
marked by the color line causes discord to grow
between the races. Some shrewd and unscrupulous
employers will foster race dissension in the labor-
ing forces, and thus keep all labor as near as pos-
sible to starvation wages by the strategy of "divide
and conquer." But the Christian rehgion, which
was founded by a laborer and originated among
the common people, should be the means of bring-
ing the industrial element of the two races into
closer fellowship and co-operation.

Christianity is opposed to any effort to restrict
colored people to any certain sphere of employ-
ment, be that sphere high or low. Not all Negroes
are fit to be lawyers, and not all Negroes are fit
to be farmers. The Negro race has a varied
genius, especially in America, where it seems to
be a part of all other races; and it is uneconomic
and wasteful of human energies to attempt to force
any race into any limited number of occupations.
The only sensible reason for engaging in any line
of work is individual fitness. For the useful activi-
ties known to mankind, color neither fits nor unfits.
The color line in work is not natural and the race
test is artificial; and segregation on this artificial
line, rather than on the natural basis of individual
fitness, not only wastes human energy by keeping
men out of activities for which they are naturally
fit, but, as in the case of the exclusive labor union,

i8o THE NEW NEGRO

it sows the seeds of discord and postpones the day
of race adjustment. And besides all this argument
on the lower plane of industrial and economic wel-
fare, we can say in a higher plane that Christ rec-
ognized the value and the rights of the individual,
so that the whole circumscription, restriction and
segregation idea is most cruelly unchristian.

The same logic and the same sense of justice
should forbid "colored wages," as well as "wom-
en's wages." Workers should be rewarded for
work, and not for sex or color. Wage discrimi-
nation on race and sex is a relic of barbarism, at-
testing the former enslavement of color and of
women. When white workmen combine to compel
the employer to pay Negro workmen a lower wage
for the same work, they throw a boomerang: they
force into the employer's hand a weapon to cut
down their own wages, and they justify the Negro
in accepting lower wages to secure employment, —
all of which disturbs our interracial peace. And
when the employer dehberately and of his own ac-
cord pays "colored wages," he not only commits
legalized robbery against the Negro, but he lessens
the motive to work in his white workmen who come
to feel that the margin of extra pay which they re-
ceive is not for any extra work which they should
do, but only the privilege of their birth and caste.
He sows the dragon's teeth of discrimination and
reaps repeated crops of demands for more privi-
lege, more immunity, less work and more recogni-
tion of mere color. And he is constantly tempted
to meet these demands in so far as possible at the

THE NEW NEGRO i8i

expense of the "colored wages." But what can
be expected In the lower walks of life, if in the
the United States Government, in some church or-
ganizations, religious societies and schools there
are special salaries and fixed places for the colored
co-laborer? Will not this tend to demoralize the
youth of both races? They will see that the value
is placed, not on individual worth and attainment,
but on the accidents of privilege and caste, and
they will feel in their hearts that our religious pro-
fessions and democratic declarations are largely a
sham. The white boy will strive less, thinking
that striving for him is less necessary; the black
boy will strive less, thinking that striving for him
is in vain.

And now we come to politics. We are not talk-
ing about demagogism and petty trickery, but poli-
tics in the noblest sense of that honorable word.
There are those who admit or concede that the
Negro should have the privilege of work : that he
should be allowed to labor In any industrial and
some professional lines, to receive equal pay for
equal work and accumulate property to any
amount, — and still they say that he should not take
part in politics. This position is Inconsistent: half
freedom Is half slavery, half civilization is half
barbarism, and an intentional half truth is a whole
lie. These people assume the impossible: that
there can be secure democracy in industry along-
side of oligarchy and repression In government, —
that the right of property is safe when the right
of self-government Is denied. They forget that

1 82 THE NEW NEGRO

the power to tax is the power to confiscate, and
that taxation without representation Is tyranny and
an irresistible temptation to legahzed robbery. Is
it not the purpose of votes to defend and advance
the interests of those who vote? Can it be that
people who would deny a man the means of self-
defense and advancement would still be wiUIng
that he should be defended and advanced? But,
they say consolingly, with the privilege of work
and the accumulation of wealth the political rights
will come. Will they ? Do rights ever "come ?" —
or must they be gone after and repeatedly gone
after until they are got? Has the accumulation of
dollars brought political rights to the Russian Jew,
or has It made him a richer prey for the oppressor
and a quicker temptation to the leader of pogroms?
Growing wealth without the capacity for self-de-
fense is an Increasing menace to the lives of those
who possess It and to the character of those who
covet it.

But when we speak of the Negro and politics
there are some who always speak of reconstruction
days ; they talk fifty years behind the times, — as if
the inevitable condition of the Negro fifty years
ago were proof against the Negro of to-day, —
as if the consequences of Ignorance were an argu-
ment against undeniable Intelligence. Does such a
man not know that the Negro's condition has
changed in fifty years, and that if he could even
prove that the race should not have been enfran-
chised fifty years ago, the proof would have little
bearing on the question of to-day? The present

THE NEW NEGRO 183

unreasonable opposition to an intelligent Negro
vote proves the wisdom of providence : providence
foresaw that if the Negro were not enfranchised
in the day of Sumner and Stevens, he could not be
enfranchised in the day of Vardaman and Blease.
The Negro cannot be normally included every-
where else and excluded from pohtics. And the
brotherhood of Christ and the "Golden Rule"
would deter any Christian group from placing such
a heavy handicap upon another and taking such
serious advantage.

Any attempt to exclude the Negro from politics
and equality of citizenship could be defended only
on some such assumptions as these : that the white
race is so highly developed morally and spiritually
that it can justly take absolute and unchecked con-
trol of another people, and that the Negro if ad-
mitted to self-government would make it worse for
himself and others. But, indeed, the Anglo-Saxon
race, which is somewhat new in the walks of civili-
zation, has nowhere shown such superhuman ca-
pacity for self-control as is implied in the first
assumption. Wherever it has been in control of
other peoples it has proven itself thoroughly hu-
man, and it would be unfair to the destiny of the
American white man to subject him to any such
temptation. The second assumption is rendered
unnecessary by the fact that the Negro can be ad-
mitted under fair, just and equal tests for his quali-
fication. There should be no "grandfather" tests,
— altho many of those who voted before the war
were grandfathers to the present generation of

1 84 THE NEW NEGRO

Negroes. The tests should apply, not to the con-
ditions of a previous generation, but to the attain-
ments of the present generation, — to the man who
wants to vote and not to his grandfather. As to
the severity of the test the Negro has no specifica-
tion ; whatever education or other attainable quali-
fication the white race may feel able to require of
itself, the Negro will not murmur if the same, no
more or less, is required of him. Less than this
no race with a sense of its own manhood and in-
terests could ask. Less than this no Christian-
spirited people would grant.

And we come now to the church itself. And
by church here we mean everything there is to it :
spiritual body, membership, organization, and
whatever else the term may connote. If the Negro
is to be counted as an equal in anything with which
Christian people have to do, surely that equality
should begin in the Christian church. But we find
church leaders, some of eminence and influence,
trying to twist the simple and straightforward gos-
pel of Jesus Christ to the support of color-preju-
dice and race injustice. There is nothing in any
religion that is clearer than the attitude of Jesus
Christ on the relation of his church to all men and
the universality of its principles and privileges.
The true Christian church is the best authorized
and the most inclusive democracy in the world.
But there are not wanting among its leaders men
who think behind the age, medieeval-minded men,
who would make the pulpit the mouthpiece of
Mammon and the church the citadel of privilege

THE NEW NEGRO 185

and caste. Can the American church stand for
righteousness as applied to the Negro in America?
Or is it easier to cross the ocean and help the Ne-
gro in Africa, where Mammon and the oppressor
have less objection? Jesus Christ would have made
a parable on such weakness and Inconsistency. If
the church beheves in itself it must believe in the
black man in this country, for there is no possible
(interpretation of the teaching of Christ which
would exclude the American Negro or any other
race.

It has been hinted that church leaders do not
find it easy to stand by the Negro outside of the
church because they have not yet whole-heartedly
accepted the Negro on the inside of the church.
Some seem to think that we can be separated on
earth but united in heaven, — or they take the atti-
tude that the church is primarily a white man's in-
stitution and that the Negro is to be tolerated only
in so far as will not seem inconsistent with what
they conceive to be the best interests of that in-
stitution,— somewhat as the politician relates the
Negro to state government or as the educational
authorities relate him to the public school. If any
church or religious organization takes this attitude
toward the rising generation of American Negroes,
it will seem hypocritical, it will lose them, it will
fail, — and it will create about the most serious
danger that our civilization has yet had to face.
The Christian church which lays so much stress on
the value and importance of the soul and relatively
so minimizes the importance of every other thing,

1 86 THE NEW NEGRO

even the human body, can have but one consistent
attitude on the question of the degradation, segre-
gation and "jim-crowing" of colored Christians.

And now we come to the phase of the question
in which men usually deliberate with their pre-
judices and decide with their passions. But we
believe that even this matter is amenable to reason
and commonsense and to the principles of Chris-
tianity. Some say : We know that the Negro must
work and that he should be secure in his property;
that it is inconsistent and perhaps even dangerous
to our own liberties to attempt to exclude him from
the democracy; and that without him the church
cannot really follow Jesus Christ; but, they con-
clude, we imagine and fear that the advance of the
Negro threatens race integrity. Let us look this
matter squarely in the face. We hold no brief
either for or against race integrity: we do not now
argue whether it is a good or a bad thing; for
present purposes we can grant anybody's opinion
on that question. We ask this question : Whatever
may be the correct position in that matter, will
not two educated, elevated. Christianized and
mutually respectful races be better able and more
likely to assume that correct position than two
degraded, un-Christian and mutually hateful
groups? If the Negro is civilized and Christian-
ized he can be all the more readily brought to
understand and agree to his proper relation to the
white race, whatever that may be. To take the
opposite view is to indict civihzation and Chris-
tianity. The case may be without exact precedent,

THE NEW NEGRO 187

but any other assumption contradicts commonsense
and arises from unreasonable fear. Commonsense
lighted by the torch of experience is our only g^ide
in a new matter. And if we must proceed at times
without experience, is not the kingdom of heaven of
as much concern to the church as the distinction
of race types? Is the salvation of the world of
less account than the preservation of an aquiline
nose?

The bases of co-operation are these : identity
of interest, mutual understanding, mutual respect
and mutual trust. As to identity of interest, — God
never bound two races more firmly to the same
destiny than the white and black people of this
country: we are all in the same boat, and when
we land we are all going to land together, however
much we may delay the journey by mutual bickering
and useless hostilities. And there must be mutual
understanding: naturally misunderstanding des-
troys co-operation, and the failure of co-operation
begets new misunderstandings, so that our mutual
troubles chase each other in a never ending, self
perpetuating cycle. When two differing parties
come thoroughly to understand each other, in that
moment do half of their differences dissolve, or
rather are found to be non-existent and imaginary.
To know each other we must cross the line, — or
come near enough to it to shake hands and talk.
And mutual respect will increase with mutual
understanding: we cannot be just to a man whom
we do not respect, for he will not let us, — he will
resent disrespect and that will embitter us. But

1 88 THE NEW NEGRO

mutual trust like a well-nurtured plant, will grow
out of understanding and respect, — and on trust
will blossom the flower of Peace!

But, think some, that means equality. Exactly I
Equality in the truest and noblest sense of the
word. The equality of manhood does not mean
that you are as tall as I am, that you weigh as
much, that you have as good health or that you can
commit a dozen lines of Homer's Iliad as quickly.
All men, as individuals, are unequal in those re-
spects. But it means that you are as free to do what
*you can do as I am to do what I can do, and that we
are equally accountable to the laws of man and the
laws of God. There is no other equahty worth
the mention. This is the foundation of real friend-
ship and lasting peace, and on such basis we can co-
operate. But if we approach each other in differ-
ent planes there will not be co-operation, tho there
may be a more or less distressing operation of
the one upon the other.

But perfect understanding, sound respect, mu-
tual trust and ideal co-operation are largely a mat-
ter of growth. In the meanwhile what is our
duty to each other? The Negro of brains and
character must not only feel responsible for his
individual conduct, but an interest amounting al-
most to a sense of responsibility for the rest of
his race. It is not enough for him to say simply
that he does not condone the criminals of his race
and to abjure responsibihty for their conduct: he
must show an active interest in their reformation.
For, whether or not as a matter of right, they do

THE NEW NEGRO 189

as a matter of fact affect him. It Is God's way of
keeping us interested in the lower element, by
weaving our destiny with theirs. On the other
hand, it is not enough for the enlightened and con-
scientious white man to say, when others kill or
degrade or plunder the Negro, that "they do not
represent the best white South." The worst white
South will help to make destiny for the best. In
this world certainly, and I expect in the next; for
before God we are all respondsible to the utmost
of our ability. The best white people of the South
are therefore more responsible than any other
single element, for they are the ablest and have
the greatest circumstantial advantages.

Finally we aver our faith In the Christian relig-
ion and its fitness to bring these two races into a
right and peaceful relationship. Christianity
has met and overcome hard things in its history:
the corruption of empires, the stubbornness of
superstition and the night of heathendom. It has
brought truer freedom and stabler self-govern-
ment than the world has ever known before. It
is the faith of the buoyant Negro race that this
most vital of all reforming and informing forces
will ultimately help us, white and black In this
country, to lay aside the sin of prejudice that doth
so easily and so sorely beset us and run with
courage and endurance the race of civilization
which God has set before us.

LYNCHING

The individual lyncher should be treated as
a lawbreaker and murderer. But the ultimate re-
moval of any such evil must come through the
evolution of public opinion, the persistent combat-
ting of lies and the gradual bringing out of truth.
No law and no executive can do away with such
evils until these civilizing influences have done
their work; but a good law and a strong executive
are powerful elements behind this evolutionary
process. They help along the evolution. But our
purpose here, as generally in these essays, is to make
the condition known. Our only apology is the fact
that conditions are not known to the American pub-
lic as a whole. Ignorance is the trench through
which all this deviltry has sneaked up close to
the very life of our civilization. The average
American white man does not know how distorted,
how absolutely false often, are the reports of the
causes which lead to a lynching. If the average
American knew, he would be opposed to lynching;
else the average American is not human. If a man
reads the press dispatches about the causes of
lynchings and thinks he is reading the truth even in
one case out of many, he is a novitiate, he is indeed
very, very "green." If he should witness one or
two such cases and then compare what he knows

190

THE NEW NEGRO 191

with what he reads in the newspapers, he would be
cured. These fabricated reports, however, have
fashioned public opinion. The pitiful and almost
helpless ignorance of this public opinion is shown
by what the good white man will usually ask or
say whenever he talks on lynching. "Well, why
don't the Negroes stop committing crimes?"
Think of the wisdom of that question 1 If some
malignant power should decide that white people
must be hanged and burned without trial until the
white race "stops committing crimes," for how
many thousand years do we suppose the hanging
and burning would continue ? Again we are asked,
"Why do colored men keep on assaulting white
women?" This question is asked in spite of the
fact that all the evidence of a decade proves that
such crimes are very exceptional, that criminal
assault is not the cause of the lynching of Negroes,
that only a small per cent of those lynched are even
so much as charged with any kind of connection
with women, and that in the South (as has often
been found after the Negro was dead and buried) ;
"charged" does not mean proven. One who lives
in the South for many years where Negro men
are in daily contact with the white race in private
life, is impressed with the fact of how exceedingly
rare it is for a colored man to impose in any way
upon a white woman. But the few scattered cases
are gatherd together by the white press and hurled
into the ears of the innocent outside world with
great effect.

If only colored women could be equally safe in

192 THE NEW NEGRO

the hands of white men ! The writer has lived
nearly all his life in the heart of the Southern South.
In all of that time he never stood face to face
with a case or personally knew of a case, in any
of the many communities in which he lived, of
a colored man committing assault upon a white
woman. But in the same time and in the same
places he knew of so many cases where white
men forcibly outraged colored girls that he can-
not now recollect or count them all. He knew
of cases where colored men suffered violence for
protecting the females of their families, and of a
few cases of colored men who were forced to leave
the community because they were vaguely
suspected of intimacy with white women. But
the average colored woman of the South thinks
that our moral world is upside-down indeed when
she hears that colored men are lynched for offering
indirect verbal insult to white women.

The cause of lynching is not Negro crime of any
sort. The temptation of the lyncher is the weak
administration of the law when the Negro is to
be protected and the helpless position into which
the colored race is forced by disfranchisement
and other forms of oppression. The ultimate
motive is human greed and the desire to keep the
Negro economically dependent. Lynching is one
of the necessary products of the general repres-
sion of the race. In short, the Negro will be
lynched and brutally handled by the lower elements
of the white race as long as he is disfranchised
and pushed down by the upper elements. The

THE NEW NEGRO 193

one thing which the Negro's white friends and
the more friendly statesmen seem not to under-
stand, is that no people could be held in the
position in which they wish to hold the Negro
without being made the prey of the baser elements
of the stronger race. It is hard really for even the
best white people to tell just exactly what position
they do want the Negro to occupy. But this seems
true : that the majority want him down and under,
but do not wish to brutally mistreat him in any
other way, — they would not hang and burn him
without law. They fail to see, however, that
brutality and murder are the necessary sequel to
their own finer forms of repression: if the better
whites keep the Negro down, the inferior whites
will take care of the hanging and burning. The
only way in civihzation to save the American
Negro is to permit him to save himself, — to
enfranchise him and give him otherwise a full
man's chance in America.

We will give a few illuminating cases, the truth
of which we learned in spite of the newspapers. —
In one Southern town where w^e lived for a number
of years, a Negro was brought in from a neighbor-
ing state to work in a new industry. He was an
expert at what he was to do, and the management
could not find a white man in the community who
could do the work as well. His wages were
accordingly above that of the white men. He
was a genial fellow, was liked by the superin-
tendent, but was the object of frequent petty
insult from his fellow workmen. One day they

194 THE NEW NEGRO

removed the dipper from the water-bucket so that
he could not drink. The Negro complained of
this, not in the presence of the men, but in the
presence of the boy who brought the water. The
boy told the men. They immediately began to
threaten the Negro, one of them actually telephon-
ing to the town for one of his friends to come out
and help kill a Negro, saying that there would be
"hell to play." This friend coolly announced to
others what was going to be done and got into his
buggy and went out. Meanwhile the Negro had
gotten anxious for his own safety, and had brought
back his revolver when he returned from noon
lunch. When the mill closed and he was emerging
from the door the white man and his friend, who
had been drinking preparatory to the deed, opened
fire on the Negro. The white superintendent
testified that the Negro was shot in the hand be-
fore he took his own revolver from his pocket.
But by good luck, and by virtue of not being alco-
holic, his first shot killed one of his assailants and
his second shot wounded the other. A clear case of
self-defense, but the white men of the town rode
out with dogs and guns, and the Negro was only
saved by the fact that he fled, covering his retreat
with his Winchester. For defending his life he
had to leave his employment and his home.

But the local newspaper, anticipating the pos-
sible capture of this man, prepared in its very next
issue a most perfect case against the Negro, in
terms that would not only tend to justify but even
to inspire his lynching if caught. The paper told

THE NEW NEGRO 195

how the Negro had sent "insulting remarks" to
white men who had done nothing to him, how these
innocent white men had gone peaceably to this
Negro to "talk" the matter over, and how the
vicious Negro, without provocation, had jerked
out his Colt's pistol and shot one of the gentlemen
dead before the unsuspecting whites could even
think of their guns, which, by the way, they only
accidentally had in their pockets. Thus the local
newspaper which controls the associated press dis-
patches, made out a most flagrant case of vicious-
ness and aggression against the Negro. But for
the Negro's immedate flight from the community
and the Winchester which he was reported to carry
with him, he would have been done to death before
sundown, and good white men away up in Maine
and Minnesota would have read their newspapers
and said: "Too bad, too, too bad — but what are
they going to do with such Negroes?"

Now for one or two little tales of horror from
the northeast corner of Texas and from famous
old Shreveport, La. These little stories are facts,
not fiction; they did not happen "once upon a
time" but most of them happened in the years of
our Lord's grace, 19 14 and 1915.

The writer lived for a while in the northeast
corner of Texas. In the memory of men who had
lived there for a quarter century no white man had
ever been punished for shooting a Negro, altho
the killing of Negroes by mobs or by individual
white men is one of the commonest criminal occur-
ences of the community. The Negroes of this

196 THE NEW NEGRO

locality are by no means backward or troublesome
or criminal. The two best institutions of learn-
ing for Negroes in the state of Texas are located
in this section. But in the county there are two
blacks to one white. This causes the lower instincts
of the whites to resent any, even the most legiti-
mate, effort of the Negro to hold up his head. I
have found it to be the rule in the South that more
meanness and murder are done the Negroes
wherever they are ambitious and outnumber the
whites, causing a certain element of whites to feel
that they hold their own position in the community
by virtue of a fraudulent exercise of power.

One such white man was riding around to hire
some "field hands," and came to a cabin where a
young Negro lived and supported his mother.
The young man informed him that there was no
one there but his mother whom he supported and
that he did not allow her to work in the fields.
Whereupon the white man remarked: "She's no
more'n any other damned wench!" The young
man resented this insult by mere verbal protest,
and in the ensuing quarrel and shooting scrape the
white man was killed. When the mob had the
rope over the limb of a tree, and all was ready to
draw the Negro up and shoot him, they first gave
him a chance to "speak," as he stood with hands
tied behind him and the noose around his neck.
Those witnesses who were unsympathetic with the
mob, say that he began thus : "You are nothing
but a lot of damned cowards! And this is what
you call a white man's civilization, is it? Hun-

THE NEW NEGRO 197

dreds of you with guns, ready to shoot one poor
Negro with his hands tied behind his back, and sim-
ply because he defended his own mother and his

own hfe ." "Pull him up!" yelled the mob,

who could not stand the sting of such words.

In this same community, a little colored boy was
playing with white children. They all became
fond of each other, and as children use, they
kissed, — the little Negro boy finally kissing one
of the little girls. These children were not old
enough to be wicked or to understand the mean-
ing of the color hne. But they were observed by
some older person. This child was advertised in
the press as a "young Negro," committing "as-
saults" upon little white girls. Finally he was
taken in charge by a mob, marched through the
streets of the little city toward midnight, and
set on the top of a huge pile of drygoods boxes
and other combustible material that had been
assembled in a public place to burn him alive. It
was so late and so far past his bedtime that the
little fellow sat on top of the pyre and nodded in
sleep. This phenomenon touched the heart of
one member of the mob, who had little ones at
home, and he suggested that the httle "nigger" be
not burned but be taught a lesson in some other
way. Being persuaded to mercy, the mob simply
cut off his ears and mutilated his body in other
unmentionable ways and turned him over to his
parents. One year later a black face was seen to
be hovering at nightfall about certain premises
where white women lived. He was watched, and

198 THE NEW NEGRO

when he entered, the mob rushed in, seized him
and mutilated his body in the same way in which
they had mutilated the little Negro boy twelve
months before. But when they brought in more
light, the smut was seen to be rubbing off the
victim's face. He was one of the young white
men of the town. Not a word of this got into
the associated press.

While I was in this northeast corner of Texas,
so much hanging and burning of Negroes without
trial was going on in the neighboring parts of
Louisiana, in and around Shreveport, that I de-
cided to go over there and find out some of those
whispered things which colored people always
know, but which they dare not tell in public. The
following is what I discovered and wrote at the
time, and which none of the newspapers to which
I sent it, in or out of the South, found it profitable
to print.

When one endeavors to find out the occasion,
motives and method of any particular lynching,
he is impressed with the difiicultness of the task.
This is due, first, to the fact that the white people
who know about it are either too much interested
or to indifferent to talk, and, second, to the fact
that the colored people who know about it are
afraid to talk. Fear makes the colored people
more absolutely silent than guilt and indifference
make the white people. Consequently the advert-
ised reports are usually endorsements of the
lynchers or excuses for them. Some colored men
in Shreveport, La., tried to find out the facts con-

THE NEW NEGRO 199

nected with some of the numerous lynchlngs in
and around that city. A colored man teaches
school in the locality where the aged and probably
innocent colored man was burned, — and when
asked to tell what he had learned about it, replied
that the school superintendent for his county
or parish had ordered him to keep his mouth shut
and attend to his own business. Fear for his per-
son and for his position reduced him to silence.

The following, however, was learned. A white
storekeeper a little way out of Shreveport was
robbed and murdered by unknown party or parties.
Three Negroes were arrested on suspicion, — the
suspicion being based solely on the facts that they
were customers of the murdered man and that
some of them were supposed to have traded at his
place on the evening before he was murdered.
Then an aged Negro was arrested, — the suspicion
against him being based solely on the fact that he
was acquainted with the white man and had some-
times done odd jobs for him. The little money of
which the murdered man was robbed seemed to be
a more tempting object of the mob's pursuit than
was anything else, and for some reason the old
man was suspected of knowing the probable where-
abouts of the cash. A detective was jailed with the
old man, and playing the part of another wronged
prisoner he wormed himself thoroughly into the
old man's confidence, but only secured from him
a stout denial of any connection with or knowledge
of the murder. This seemed to prove even to the
sheriff that the old man was innocent, — for when

200 THE NEW NEGRO

a Negro is arrested under such circumstances it is
his innocence and not his guilt that must be proven.
The sheriff is reported to have said : I believe the
old man is innocent and I am going to take him
to Shreveport and put him into jail there for safe-
keeping, but, "you all can have those other three
Negroes." Whether he said this or not, this he
did : he took the old man to Shreveport and left the
other three who were promptly lynched.

But the mob did not agree with the sheriff : the
mob did not think that a Negro who had committed
the awful crime of being arrested under suspicion
of having known about the hiding place of the
money of a murdered white man should be let off,
— even if he seemed not to know. So after lynch-
ing the other three the mob marched into Shreve-
port, was joined by some of the gallant citizens of
that place, broke into the jail, took the old man
out, and in order to repay him for the extra trouble
to which he had put them they gave him an extra-
horrible lynching in the style of being burned alive.

Whether any of these men had any part in or
any knowledge of the murder of that storekeeper,
only God knows.

It is significant that a few days after the murder
two white tramps, accompanied by a woman in
male attire, were discovered in this locality. It
is further significant that a few days after the
Negroes were lynched another white storekeeper
near Shreveport was similarly murdered. The
real murderers had perhaps been encouraged by
the ease with which their tracks were covered by

THE NEW NEGRO 201

the blood of the Innocent and helpless. What
happened then? Again several Negroes were
arrested on suspicion, for having lived in the
neighborhood of the murdered man. Lynching
was threatened, but as the attitude of the grand
jury toward the previous lynching was still a little
uncertain, the affair was postponed.' Meanwhile
detectives secured what they called good evidence
that certain white neighbors had murdered this
second man, but this evidence failed to convince
the district attorney, and at last accounts the whites
had not been arrested and the Negroes had not
been released.

What will the courts do ? Who runs the courts ?
Who elects the courts, and who will elect the next
court if that court condemns those lynchers? We
cannot fail to observe that the Negro is most
peculiarly helpless where he is disfranchised.

The coroner, a Jew, is said to have reported
that he saw some prominent Shreveport citizens
emerging from the woods where the old man was
burned, but not even the coroner has dared to
make those names public. Some business men
also admitted that they went out merely to see and
enjoy the affair, but that they were not personally
acquainted with any of the performers. It is evi-
dently very hard to get evidence against a white
man and very easy to get evidence against a Negro,
— and yet the Negro has been given a reputation
for hiding his criminals. A few nights after the
murder of the second storekeeper a white girl was
frightened by some one at night, and she said

202 THE NEW NEGRO

that it was so dark that she could not see him, but
that she felt sure that he was a "Nigger."

Another case, A white man was killed some-
where in the oil fields near Shreveport and several
Negroes were arrested and brought to Shreveport.
Late one night the officers were seized by a sudden
humane inspiration that the Negroes ought to be
taken to Mansfield for safe-keeping from mobs.
Those who know Mansfield say that it is a great
joke to take a Negro even from Shreveport to
Mansfield for the Negro's safety. At any rate five
miles out of Shreveport a mob was waiting, which
took the Negroes and lynched them. The officers
were not hurt.

Whether the officers knew of the presence of this
mob, I do not know. But I do know that most of
the Negroes who are lynched in the South to-day
pass conveniently through the hands of the law
into the hands of the mob. For some reason mobs
prefer not to capture Negroes themselves, but to
wait until the officers have arrested, disarmed and
tied the Negro or cooped him up in jail. This not
only undermines the mob's respect for law, but
it undermines the Negro's confidence in the officers
of the law, — so that there is surely coming into the
hearts of sound, sensible, peace-loving colored
folk in the South a conviction that in all cases of
color-line troubles the officer is but the agent of
the mob. This is a planting of "dragon's teeth!"

It is seen that none of these seven or eight mur-
dered Negroes had done any kind of personal
wrong to any woman. Readers of the Crisis,

THE NEW NEGRO 203

which has become the most reliable authority on
American Lynchings and other color-line questions,
must be impressed by the small proportion of mob
victims in any year who have done or who have
even been suspected of doing any wrong to women.
Beyond a doubt, if the editor of the Crisis could
learn the particulars in each case, even that small
percentage would be greatly reduced. The term
"rape" has been greatly widened in the mind of the
South where a black man and a white woman are
concerned. The same term has been greatly nar-
rowed in its meaning when a white man and a
colored girl even in her earliest 'teens are con-
cerned. In the case of the black man and the white
woman every possible relation that involves a mat-
ter of sex is covered by the word "rape."

Shreveport furnished a good example in the
middle of the year, both because of the unprovable
nature of the case and because of the savagery
attending the lynching performance. It seems
that a colored boy, of whom no one reports any
previous wrong, was the janitor in a local theatre.
A white girl was the ticket-seller. One morning
before ticket-seUing time the girl came in while
the boy was cleaning the floors. They quarreled
about something. Those who know say that the
boy and girl were friends, and that it was only
a friends' quarrel in which the girl was the aggres-
sor. She was evidently the aggressor, having gone
in where the boy was at work. Some say that the
quarrel was overheard, others say that she re-
ported it. At any rate the boy was arrested and

204 THE NEW NEGRO

jailed for rape. A great crowd of men, women
and children gathered in the midday, nobody wear-
ing a mask. A few officers were there to protect
the crowd but evidently not to interfere with the
performance. By accident, of course, the jailer
had placed the boy in a cell by himself and con-
veniently located so that no other prisoners would
be .released with him. And by accident again, the
mob battered in the jail walls at the very spot
where this cell was located. In their zeal some
cut his face, stabbed him in the back and made
him a bloody spectacle before he was led forth at
the end of a long rope. It seemed that some fero-
cious wild beast had been captured. They led
him to the most prominent city square, and tied
him to a telegraph pole near the court house, the
temple of justice. There he was further cut and
tortured, while the women and children jabbed
him with their umbrellas and spat upon him, till
he died.

The next thing on program was to be the burn-
ing, but a severe rainstorm prevented this. A few
days later one of the police officers was heard to do
himself credit with this remark: that it was he who
really forbade the crowd to drag the body through
the streets and burn it, — because he did not think it
would look nice before the women and children.

It is plain that those spectacles are degrading
our white people and embittering our colored
people.

This is the truth as best I could discover it at the
time. But who is going to tell the truth about

THE NEW NEGRO 205

such matters? Truth is powerful, but not when
it is unknown. Undiscovered gold has no market
value. It would make a great difference in
America if only these things could be rightly re-
ported and represented. For white men and black
men are alike human, and the truth would influence
them. But the telling of the truth is not a profit-
able business for any paper now. It will have to
be done largely as a missionary work, as a phil-
anthropy, through some such organization as the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and its organ, the Crisis. It
will have to be paid for largely by the Negroes
themselves, but by white people also. On the race
question the average newspaper does not take up
the facts and draw the necessary conclusion from
those facts. That is ordinary logic; but logic
does not work that way on the Negro. Just as
there are colored schools, colored churches,
colored cars and colored wages, there is also a
colored logic, which interested parties use when
they reason about the Negro : in which they take
the conclusion first, and then go hunting for facts
that are agreeable to that conclusion. There
is need of organized propaganda to make the
truth known along the color line. The best pro-
tection of wickedness is the darkness, its worst
enemy is the light.

THE ULTIMATE EFFECTS
OF SEGREGATION

From a moral point of view the Negro question
is the most important question before the American
people. And in the long run the morale of a nation
will be chief among the factors of its destiny. In
none of our problems is there more need of the
scientific spirit, which seeks the facts, all of the
facts, and faces the full meaning of those facts,
regardless of prejudice or preconception.

One of the greatest defects in the reasoning of
many who have dealt with this problem is the lack
of adequate knowledge of the Negro's real inter-
est, motives and opinions. On this question it is
very probable that colored people know the opin-
ions of white people much better than white people
know the opinions of colored people : The Negro
reads the white man's opinion in the daily, weekly
and monthly press; he hears it reiterated in the
debates of Congress and in a dozen state legis-
latures; he hears the white man talk much oftener
than the white man hears him talk. The inevitable
result is that the Negro knows his own opinion
and the white man's too, — while the white man
as a rule knows only his own opinion. This lack
of contemporary knowledge concerning the Negro
causes many white speakers to appeal to far-

THE NEW NEGRO 207

fetched evidence, even to the foreordainments of
providence : ever since my childhood I have heard
it said that providence ordained the Negro for
such-and-such a destiny, and that God created
the Negro to be so-and-so. I learned later that
the creation antedates all history and all human
experience, so that its facts and motives are inad-
missible evidence. My faith has been further
shaken by the gradual discovery that those who
quote providence are almost without exception the
Negro's most active enemies, — and the Negro
should be very suspicious of a providence that
reveals its will concerning him only to his enemies.
In our present discussion we aim to state plainly
the ultimate meaning of segregation and discrim-
ination in the life of the American Negro ; and we
make less appeal to providences, which we under-
stand not, than to the evidences of our senses, and
to the ordinary everyday arguments of justice and
humanity.

The Negro Opposes
Jim Crow Cars,
Residential Segregation,
Civil Service Segregation,
Separate School Laws, in large Nothern cities

with large Negro population.
And Laws Forbidding the Intermarriage of
the Races, in places where such prohibition
has not heretofore been established.
And finally, the Negro wants full, voting
citizenship.
How many of the Negro's friends know the

208

THE NEW NEGRO

motives behind his attitude ? I admit that I have
great patience with those who are shocked at his
position on the intermarriage question, and that is
just why I shall state plainly the motives which
hold the Negro to this position, so that his sincere
friends may judge for themselves whether there
be any justice in his contention. I have learned
through my acquaintance with some of these
friends that the shock which they feel arises not
from the Negro's real motives, which they know
not, but from motives which their own imagina-
tions postulate in the Negro. I have even seen
some shocked in the opposite direction when they
first saw the thing from the Negro's standpoint.

But first as to separate railway cars. The
Negro opposes them, and the real motive of his
opposition is wrongly assumed to be a desire
to ride with white people. The fact is ignored
that on every separate car system white people
are given superior accommodations and black
people are given inferior accommodations. Re-
verse the conditions and black people would prefer
Ito ride with black people, — and some white people
'would too. In Europe there are first, second and
third class accommodations on the railroads. In
America the difference between white and black
accommodations is often as great as the difference
between first and third class in Europe, — but in
Europe the fares are as different as the accom-
modations, while in America the fares are the same.
Now let an American white man imagine that in
Europe he is compelled to ride in third class but

THE NEW NEGRO 209

to pay for first class, while all other travelers, even
yellow and black, are admitted to first class for
the same fares. When he opposed this arrange-
ment as legalized robbery, what a joke It would
be for the yellow and black folks to ask, "Why
do you want to get away from your own people?"
The truth is, he would want to get away from that
injustice and carry all of his "own people" away
with him.

But suppose the Negro were given absolutely
equal accommodations, what then? That would
be a decent supposition if human nature and all of
the facts were not against it: nowhere in the whole
separate car system has there ever been systematic
equality of accommodations. In the majority of
cases colored men and women are put into one end
of a smoker, not always fully screened off from
smoking white passengers. This is just as if the
law required white people and black people to pay
three dollars for each pair of shoes, but allowed
the merc^hant to sell the Negro, for his three dol-
lars, shoes that were worth only one dollar. In
that case a merchant with a large Negro trade
could afford to sell to a hard-to-please white cus-
tomer shoes actually worth more than the three
dollars which he paid. The Negro would pay the
difference. The passenger in the "jim crow car"
, supplements the luxury of the "parlor car," — and
! the same principle of Indirect robbery pervades the
whole system of jim-crowism and segregation in
public coveniences.
I This glaring financial and material injustice

2IO THE NEW-NEGRO

makes it hardly necessary to mention the Christian-
democratic argument. But if a people were singled
out from among all the other peoples of the
world for public stigmatization, that people could
hardly be expected to accept it cheerfully even on
a plane of absolute equality. An insignificant right
becomes important when it is assailed: you do not
much value your right to walk the streets bare-
headed, but you would claim the right if it were
denied. If such a right were successfully denied,
the more vital rights would be exposed to attack.
Now, as to segregating Negroes into restricted
areas of our cities. Why are Negroes not willing
to live by themselves? To live by themselves
would be more comfortable for the Negroes, all
other things being equal. But there's the "rub:"
all other things are not equal and will not be, wher-
ever segregation opens the door and lays the temp-
tation to inequality. To make segregation just, con-
ditions would have to be equal; especially would
the Negro's representation in the government have
to be made consistent with his ratio of human inter-
ests: to make segregation impartial in Mississippi
every other alderman or commissioner should be a
Negro, every other governor, every other legis-
lator, every other tax officer, and by all means
every other member of whatever board or commis-
sion might have charge of public improvements.
We speak now of segregation by law; segregation
in fact has existed since the day of the "slave
quarters." Since emancipation this segregation has
been more or less continued by buying out the

THE NEW NEGRO 211

Negro, outwitting his ignorance, and even by vio-
lently forcing him out. But against this economic
and brute-force opposition the Negro had hope,
based on at least a fighting chance. He could
"fight It out on this line," if It took generations.
But the opponent, in spite of his overwhelming
advantages In the struggle, has appealed for laws
that will eliminate the Negro from the contest
altogether.

/ And why does the Negro oppose legal segrega-
tion? Because a generation of experience has
taught him the meaning of successful segregation :
a general absence of Improvements In the Negro
sections, — sometimes no pavements, no lights, no
sewers, and no police protection against brothels
and saloons. The Negro section Is equally taxed:
They must pay taxes on all the city improvements
and bonded Indebtedness. This Injustice Is simi-
tar to that Imposed by the jIm-crow car, for the
Negro is constantly paying to Improve other peo-
ple's property. If he could live on any street
anywhere, this discrimination would be Impossible;
but legal separation is a devil which drags In Its
tall a host of petty discriminations. Some fail to
see the difference between segregation by law and
the actual segregation which already exists In all
cities where there is a large number of Negroes.
But there is a vast difference; under the present
system the Negro has at least one chance, — he
can persuade the authorities to improve his section,
to provide lights, sewers and police protection; for
in order to persuade him to stay where he is, they

212 THE NEW NEGRO

must make the necessary Improvements at least.
But if he be shut in by the bars of legislation he
will lose the advantage of even this mutual
persuasion.

To ask the Negro to accept this ghetto and do
these things for himself, would be a capital joke
if it were not so serious a matter. The Negro
could only do that if his section were set apart
as an independent municipality, with its own mayor
and government and the control over its own taxes,
— and this will not be allowed. But, says the oppon-
ent, the law is just and equal and constitutional,
is it not? It does not discriminate: it says that
blacks shall not move in where there is a majority
of whites, but it also says that whites shall not move
in where there is a majority of blacks. That is
constitutional in letter and equal in phraseology,
but I believe it is unconstitutional in spirit and I
know it is unequal in effect. The effect of a law and
v'not its rhetorically balanced phrases, should be
the test of its constitutionality. It may be literally
constitutional to make a law that the rich shall
not lend to the poor, nor the poor to the rich, —
that the intelligent shall not teach the Ignorant, nor
the ignorant the intelligent. It should not make a
law constitutional to thus simply convert its terms
in successive phrases. The segregation law in
effect means that those who have no homes shall
not acquire homes of those who have homes; and
aspires to constitutionality by adding that those
who have homes shall also not acquire homes
of those who have them not. The segregation

THE NEW NEGRO 213

law is an effort to keep the Negro and the white
man where they now are; but it always looks
suspicious for the fellow who has a tremendous
advantage to try to make a hard and fast law to
forever maintain the status quo!

As to civil service segregation. The Negro's
opposition to this type of discrimination, which is
new, is not based directly on experience; but is
based indirectly on his experience with other forms
of segregation. But his reasoning by analogy is
being justified: in the Carolinas, as soon as it
proved possible to segregate the Negro railway
mail clerks, on one line they were given the hardest
runs and put on mostly at night; when bathroom
segregation appeared in one of the departments
at Washington, it proved convenient to assign the
colored women a toilet that faced the one assigned
to white men. Nowhere in this country have the
results of segregation inspired the Negro with the
hope of a "square deal."

The undermining of the democratic foundation
principles of a great government may be even
more serious than the injury done the Negro in
particular, but in this discussion we are taking up
only the Negro's independent case against segrega-
tion policies.

The separate school and intermarriage questions
come up chiefly in Northern communities where
there is not yet a rigid opinion on these matters.
Let us feel, if we can, as if we have no interest
in the whole matter and are now examining the
Negro's side of it for the first time, — not what

214 THE NEW NEGRO

others said about him, but what the Negro says
for himself.

The Negroes in Northern communities are gen-
erally opposed to the separate school idea and
face the usual accusation that they "do not want
to associate with their own people," which ignores
the more positive reason which the Negro himself
advances, — the universal tempation and tendency
of the school authorities to degrade the Negro
schools wherever they have been successfully
segregated. The separate system prevails in the
South, and in many of those states the neglect of
the Negro school is a disgrace to civilization.
Besides, there is perhaps not a state in the Union,
certainly not in the South, with a segregated
school system which gives the Negro an absolutely
equal chance for public education. The legislature
may determine the amount to be appropriated by
a per capita reckoning including black and white,
but when this appropriation is expended the Negro
child may get only one dollar out of eight or ten,
on the same per capita basis. By having been ac-
counted equal for appropriation purposes he has
helped the white child to a per capita expenditure
that is higher than the per capita appropriation.
I heard a state supervisor of education say to
Negroes that whenever retrenchment was neces-
sary the Negro's share was always trimmed down
first. He said that the white officers dislike to do
this, but he defended it on the plea of "human na-
ture." Perhaps the Northern Negro who opposes
the separate school movement, has reckoned on

THE NEW NEGRO 215

this same human nature and has little hope that
mere geography will modify it. He knows that
where black and white ^attend the same school this
discrimination is forever impossible. The Negro
pays an equal rate of direct school taxes, and
where other forms of discrimination exist, hke jim
crow cars and exorbitant rents, he pays a higher
indirect tax. A man may pay a tax without know-
ing the tax exists : the buyer pays the seller, — the
consumer pays the retailer. Besides, a percentage
paid out of poverty means more as a sacrifice than
the same percentage paid out of wealth. By the
law of marginal utilities, ten per cent to the pos-
sessor of a few hundred dollars may mean more
than ten per cent to the possessor of thousands.

Cincinnati, Washington and St. Louis have the
best separate schools for the Negro in the United
States, and it is significant that the percentage of
attendance of colored children at these schools is
lower than at the mixed schools of Boston, Cleve-
land and New York. The percentages of attend-
ance of Negro children from ten to fourteen years
of age are these —

In the segregated school: Cincinnati, 93.1;
Washington, 90.5; St. Louis, 89.4.

In the mixed schools: Boston, 95; Cleveland,
94; New York City, 93.1.

These figures made from the United States Cen-
sus, Indicate at least that even the best separate
schools are unfavorable to the attendance of col-
ored children. The figures for divisions and states
show that the percentage of the Negro's school

2i6 THE NEW NEGRO

attendance is higher in the schools that are open
to all than in the segregated schools. It is not to
be supposed that colored children simply enjoy
going to school with white children, where in
fact they are often woefully ostracized, but it is
rather to be supposed that the white school attracts
colored people for the same reason why it would
attract any people, because of its superior location
and equipment. The low pubhc school atten-
dance of colored children in the South is largely
due to the inconveniently located and miserably
equipped school houses.

And now we come to the most interesting ques-
tion of all, — the one on which more passion is felt,
more opinions expressed and less investigation and
thought are put than on any of the others. Why
under heaven do Negroes oppose laws forbidding
white to marry colored and colored to marry
white ? Is it not simply because the Negro wants
to marry a white person? Some say, the Negro
may be right on other questions, but surely he
is wrong here : this law cannot possibly discrimi-
nate, it always concerns both a white and a col-
ored person, and squares absolutely with the 14th
and 15th amendments. Let us see if the Negro
has any decent motive to state for himself. The
literal constitutionality of such a law must be
admitted; it would also be constitutional to make
a law to hang children of six years or to grant
divorces for poorly prepared meals, — but it
would not be humane or wise. It would be a mad
legislature that considered only the constitutional-

THE NEW NEGRO 217

ity of a bill; bare constitutionality is no proof of
its wisdom, its morality or its justice. The ulti-
mate test of a law is its effect, — and the Negro
/ claims that the effect of a law forbidding inter-
/ marriage is to lower the status of colored women,
'/without raising the status of white women, and
that it protects and fosters miscegenation and bas-
tardyw Such a law promotes the very thing it in-
tends to defeat, race intermixture, by giving per-
fect immunity to the men of the stronger race.
It is natural and logical to ask — Does it not give
like immunity to the men of the minority race?
No. For not since the foundation of human so-
ciety has any serious problem existed between the
men of a weaker and the women of a stronger
group. ^ The weak are never tempted to impose
upon the strong, and a prohibition of marriage
simply further protects the strong in its imposi-
tions upon the weak, by nullifying the traditional
rule of objective morality which compels the man
to accept his mate and acknowledge his offspring.
The intermarriage law is in effect a discrimination
against the women of the weak. And wherever
any race is ninety millions and rich and powerful,
while another race is ten millions and poor and
disadvantaged, the case will be the same.

The constitutionality of a law, I suppose, can
be taken care of in its phraseology, but its wisdom
and justification must exist in the conditions to
which the law is to apply. This is the special
nature of laws intending to regulate the relations
of a stronger and a weaker group; for here the

21 8 THE NEW NEGRO

actual conditions, the laws of human nature and
the laws of relative power must be figured into a
fair equation. It is said to be one of the worst
methods of partiality and injustice to deliberately
treat unequals as if they were equal. A color-
line law is not fair simply because it has "black"
written into one phrase and "white" written into
the homologous part of the next phrase. It may
be unconstitutional in spirit and effect. To show
the insecurity of mere verbal equality: if the
weaker race were put temporarily in charge of
Congress it might think out a law on this very
question of miscegenation which would be abso-
lutely "constitutional" in a literal sense and yet
bear harder upon the stronger race — for example,
"Be it enacted that when a white child is born into
the colored race, or a black child is born into
the white race, the father of such child is to be
immediately hanged." Such a law would not hang
one Negro in a hundred thousand, and I know
communities, where the Negro does not vote, and
where such a law would be so unpopular as to
be overwhelmingly defeated in a referendum.
Why would a law to hang the father work a
special hardship upon the white race? Because
it would be based on the false assumption that
white men in general sustain the same relation of
innocence to colored women which colored men
in general sustain to white women. Why, then,
is a law forbidding intermarriage unjust to the
colored race? Because of the unfair assumption
that colored women are as well protected against

I

THE NEW NEGRO 219

the lower instincts of whites as white women are
protected against the lower Instincts of blacks.
And "there is no greater inequality than the equal
treatment of unequals."

The primary motive of the black man is not a
desire for a mixed family but for the protection of
his own colored family. He believes that a law
to compel fathers to marry the mothers would
break up more miscegenation in a week than a
law prohibiting marriage will break up in twenty-
five years. This motive is proven by the fact
that the Negroes who oppose the prohibitive laws
are already married, and would not consent for
their children to get into the trouble which it costs
to marry a white person in America, legally or
illegally Again the Negro's contention is sup-
ported by the United States Census. Listen, — in
forty years the mulatto part of the population has
increased

In Michigan, where there are no laws against
intermarriage, 48 per cent,

In Arkansas, where there are strict prohibitive
laws, 559 per cent.

It is further noticeable that in Indiana, just
over the line from the South and where a
considerable sentiment is prohibitive of lawful
relations, the Increase of mulattoes was still
only 107 per cent, — while in South Carolina,
where strict law is added to the most violent sen-
timent, the Increase was about 383 per cent. In
whatever way the figures for mulattoes are
manipulated, they always tell the same story:

220 THE NEW NEGRO

namely, that there is more miscegenation in those
states which degrade their colored women by laws
forbidding intermarriage than in the states which
offer equal protection to all women. This appears
whether we consider the mulattoes in the rate
of their own increase or in their increasing pro-
portion to the whole Negro population. The
law seems to help the violator of "race integrity;"
for the mulatto is not a theory, he is a fact. Ac-
cording to these figures, while one mulatto is being
added to a given number of Negroes in Michigan,
about twelve mulattoes are being added to the
same number of Negroes in Arkansas. And the
still more impressive consideration is, that the one
mulatto in Michigan may be legitimate, while the
twelve mulattoes in Arkansas must be illegitimate.
Which would civilization choose? Which should
the opponent of miscegenation prefer? What is
the difference between Michigan and Arkansas?
In Michigan the man of the stronger race is faced
by at least the legal threat of compulsory inter-
marriage, if he crosses the line, while in Arkansas
he is so far protected by law. I ask in the most
solemn earnestness, might it not prove more sob-
ering to a white youth to be directly told, "You
would have to marry your colored associate," —
than to be indirectly informed that he will have
immunity in that case ?

We have purposely confined our discussion to
the Negro's vital interest in this question, and
have avoided its wider phase, — the revolutionary,
or the devolutionary, idea of taking marriage, the

THE NEW NEGRO 221

most honorable institution of the human species,
and putting it on a legal plane with fornication,
adultery and all the other most horrible sins cata-
logued in the Old and New Testaments. Such a
subversion of objective morality may have far-
reaching consequences, indeed, in which white and
black will reap equally.

These are the opinions and the arguments of
practically all of the most intelligent Negroes in
the United States, many of whom I Icnow person-
ally, and if they do not convince the race's avowed
enemies they should at least cause the impartial
to believe that the real motives are not what they
are popularly said to be. The intelligent Negro,
in his arguments against segregation and discrimi-
nation, seldom sinks to the level of mere "social
equality" consideration.

Finally, is the reason not now apparent why the
Negro wants to vote? Is he after "black suprem-
acy" in a country where his ratio is one to ten and
growing less all the time? Segregation and dis-
crimination are a sufficient justification of his de-
sire for the ballot; these evils get their greatest
support from disfranchisement, and they vary
directly as the Negro's unjust exclusion from par-
ticipation in self-government. A minority group
in a democratic-republican form of government
needs the ballot more desperately than the major-
ity group needs it. It is unfair to expect a white
administration to protect the Negro when the
Negro has been stripped of his only power to
support or check that administration. Neither

222 THE NEW NEGRO

"'lucatlon nor money will settle the question with-
-ut the ballot: for a ballotless group cannot com-
iTiand the resources of public education, and a sub-
ject and helpless class by growing richer only en-
dmgers its life by becoming a more tempting
,^rey to any powerful oppressor. The officers of
the law could not, if they would, be impartial to a
decitizenized people : the elected are obligated to
the electors. A disfranchised group could fare
much better under hereditary independent rulers
than under elective obligated officers. The very
advantages of a democracy make disfranchise-
ment therein the worst of tyrannies.^ This prin-
ciple will be true as long as human nature is human
and not divine. The only way to insure the Negro
against injustice in other particulars is to remove
the most effective defense of injustice, — dis-
/ criminatory disfranchisement. The Negro does
not object to impartial disfranchisement, incident
upon a failure to meet prescribed and attainable
qualifications; the white man may prescribe a col-
lege education, if he deem it reasonable and make
it impartial. Besides, the white population out-
numbers the Negro population ten to one, and
according to the census it is outgrowing the Negro
population by immigration and natural increase;
so that the statesman does not have to look out for
"white supremacy," — the history of three hun-
dred years has already looked out for that. What
the statesman does need to look out for is justice
to the Negro and the avoidance of national moral
degeneration because of injustice to the Negro.

THE NEW NEGRO 223

Impartial suffrage cannot mean "black suprem-
acy" in America, but would mean healthier self-
government by giving the Negro here and there
a better chance to speak for himself and locally
to defend his nearest and dearest interests. Sup-
pose the Negro should be given his full ratio in
the Congress of the United States: at present
there would be one Negro congressman to nine
white congressmen. What could the white lose?
Nothing. They would still have the vote and the
real power. But what would all gain, white and
black alike? The blacks would gain voice, hope,
a high sense of American justice, patriotism, —
civilization. And the white would gain a sounder
knowledge of the Negro's condition, needs,
thoughts and aims, so that on bills affecting the
interests of the Negro race the white majority
would vote more wisely than it now votes. One
of the greatest handicaps to our mutual adjust-
ment is the American white man's general ignor-
ance of the Negro race.

THE NEW NEGRO

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me :

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

— From Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra."

The "new Negro" is not really new: he ir, the
same Negro under new conditions and subjected
to new demands. Those who regret the passing
of the "old Negro" and picture the "new" as
something very different, must remember that
there is no sharp hne of demarcation between the
old and the new in any growing organism like a
germ, a plant or a race. The present generation
of Negroes have received their chief heritage
from the former and, in that, they are neither
better nor worse, higher nor lower than the previ-
ous generation. But the present Negro is differ-
ently circumstanced and must be measured by dif-
ferent standards. He has not less fidelity to
duty than had the old Negro : the present Negro
soldier is just as true to his uniform, his flag and
his country as was the old Negro slave to his
master's family. He is not more indolent: cer-
tainly the present Negro does a great deal more
of voluntary work than did the Negro slave. He
is not as much more criminal than the old Negro
as his criminal record would seem to indicate : the
present Negro gets into jail for offenses and

224

THE NEW NEGRO 225

charges for which the slave received thirty-nine
unrecorded lashes. Besides, a repressive attitude
toward a man in freedom subjects him to worse
temptations than a bond-slave is subjected to.
Furthermore and quite as important as anything
else, there has been some change of attitude in
the white people among whom the Negro lives:
there is less acquaintanceship, — less sympathy and
toleration than formerly.

The average white man of the present genera-
tion who sees the Negro daily, perhaps knows less
of the Negro than did the similarly situated white
man of any previous generation since the black
race came to America. This lack of knowledge
has a fearful influence on the judgment: it is both
history and psychology that where knowledge is
wanting, imagination steps in. What naive ex-
planations men once gave of natural phenomena,
what odd shapes they ascribed to the earth, and
what erroneous proportions and fanciful rela-
tions they imagined among the heavenly bodies.
The most serious handicap to the creation of a
wholesome public opinion on matters affecting the
Negro, is the ignorance of the better class of white
people concerning the better class of colored peo-
ple who live in their community. They often
know the other classes : the servants through their
kitchens and the criminals through the news-
papers. In a large Southern city lived the most
experienced Negro banker in the United States,
with his bank, for twenty-five or thirty years ; but,
excepting the few bankers and others with whom

226 THE NEW NEGRO

he came into business contact, practically the
whole group of intelligent white people in that city
were ignorant of the fact that this Negro existed.
In another Southern town of seven thousand peo-
ple, half white and half colored, an elderly, cul-
tured, Christian white woman, who had lived
there all here life, did not know that the Negroes
were not given a public school building by her
municipahty, and had supposed that a primary
school for Negroes which had been maintained by
a missionary society for thirty or forty years, was
the Negro public school. From an old Maryland
community a young Negro went out, got an edu-
cation in some of the best schools, took a course
in theology at Yale, and then returned to that
community to pastor a church. He worked with
great energy, aroused his people to build a fine
new church, and awakened so much enthusiasm
in the colored masses that finally some inklings of
his success trickled in behind the ivied walls of an
old mansion where lived two wealthy white ladies
of the "good old days," when the Negro was so
much better than he is now, as they could well tes-
tify from the superb character of the "black
mammy," now dead and gone, but who had been
for many years an indispensable part of their
household conveniences. Hearing of the fine new
building, for the first time in their lives they de-
cided to attend the dedication of a Negro church.
On learning the name and antecedents of the young
pastor they found him to be the son of their be-
moaned "black mammy," — him whom they sup-

THE NEW NEGRO 227

posed had long since gone to the dogs, whither
their daily newspapers were saying all the young
and aspiring Negroes were bound. The mother
had been a "member" of their family, but the son
had struggled against poverty and prejudice, had
got his education and done his work without any
encouragement from them, without even so much
as their confidence or their knowledge. How can a
people so hedged about by tradition and handi-
capped by prejudice "know the Negro" as he now
is, even though they be good people and knew him
as he once was?

Not only does this ignorance of the Negro
prevent many white people from sympathizing
with his condition and struggles, but it does a
mischief more positive than that: it prepares
them to believe any charge of crime or viciousness
or depravity which may be brought against the
race. They will not analyze the evidence. If it
is said that in proportion to their population there
are four or five times as many blacks as whites in
a Southern penitentiary, men will conclude at once,
without thought or investigation, that such is the
ratio of the criminality of the Negro and the
white man. They overlook the multitude of other
differences which may account for this difference
in criminal statistics: the poverty, the ignorance,
the homelessness and helplessness, and the very
sort of prejudice which they themselves are sub-
stituting for thought. The ease with which a
Negro can be lynched in the South schould make
them know how much more easily he can get into

228 THE NEW NEGRO

the penitentiary. Another thing that largely ac-
counts for the Negro's superior numbers among
the prisoners : most Southern states allow the dis-
cretion of the court a very wide latitude as to the
number of years for which the condemned is to
be sentenced. The law is often like this: a fine
of so many dollars, or ten years in prison, or both.
The Negro usually gets the limit, perhaps "both."
To make an extreme but simplifying case, suppose
one Negro and one white man commit a certain
crime every year; if the white criminal is either
fined or given only one year in prison, while the
colored criminal is given ten years, in the tenth
year when the visitor goes to that prison he will
find nine or ten Negroes there for a certain crime,
but only one white man. The easy-going investi-
gator might conclude that the Negro is ten times
as criminal in that respect as is the white man,
while as a matter of fact both races would have
committed exactly the same number of crimes.
The long-term sentences of Negroes cause them to
accumulate In prison. There are much more
scientific ways of explaining the Negro's situation
in this country than by reference to an unprovable
something like Innate depravity.

One of the greatest handicaps under which the
new Negro lives is the handicap of the lack of
acquaintanceship between him and his white
neighbor. Under the former order, when prac-
tically all Negroes were either slaves or servants,
every Negro had the acquaintance of some white
man; as a race he was better known, better under-

THE NEW NEGRO 229

stood, and was therefore the object of less su-
spicion on the part of the white community. But
under the present order there are many Negroes
who are independent, in occupation or in fortune,
doing business for themselves, rendering profes-
sional service to their own race or living inde-
pendently at home. These Negroes, unknown to
the white mass, are the objects of its special su-
spicions and distrust, for they are "something
new under the sun." When riots break out, this
unknown Negro, well-to-do and equally well-be-
haved, the one who ought to be safest, is the one
most liable to attack by the mob. This is because
ignorance and prejudice have made the very things
which pass for virtues in white men, seem like
vices in the Negro; pride, ambition, self-respect,
un-satisfaction with the lower positions of life,
and the desire to live in a beautiful house and
to keep his wife and children at home and out
of "service." There can be no sympathy where
there is no knowledge, and the Negro of this class,
being rather a stranger to his white neighbors, is
regarded as a bad example to those humbler and
more helpless Negroes who are servants. This
is not so in every case, but this is the rule, and the
rule is the thing. And we are not talking hearsay
but speaking out of the experiences of our life-
time.

If prejudice could only reason, it would dispel
itself. If it could think, its thoughts might run
like this: If it be true that the Negro is innately
low and criminal in his instincts, then the Negro

230 THE NEW NEGRO

must be the same In all places, — but the Negroes
of other countries do not bear this reputation;
those of Brazil and the rest of South America, of
Central America, of the West Indies and of
Mexico, are not distinguished as criminals. There
are great numbers of Negroes In parts of these
countries, and being in many of them unrestricted
as to the position to which they may aspire in
society and state, they would have a better chance
to demonstrate any essential inferiority In those
lands than in the United States. The truth is,
that If the Negro be Inferior, in the United States
he has never yet had a chance to prove his inferi-
ority. But prejudice does not investigate or rea-
son.— What we are trying to do In this essay, con-
cerning the new Negro, Is to tell what is, and not
what ouffht to be, though the latter would make a
more pleasing story than the former.

Another thing which gets the better of our
normal psychology and causes us to believe almost
any wild report about the Negro, Is the free and
superior advertising given Negro crime above that^
accorded to any other form of Negro achieve-
ment. Booker Washington used to tell with great
amusement how he entered a little town and spoke
to a large gathering, making as good a speech as
he was capable of. The next morning he picked
up the town paper, expecting to see himself and
the meeting given considerable and prominent
space, but found only an Inch or so of recognition
on the last page. He had made a successful
speech, but the whole front page was given to a

THE NEW NEGRO 231

Negro who at the same time had made an unsuc-
cessful attempt to snatch a woman's purse. An
unsophisticated outsider, reading that paper,
would have concluded that the constructive work
which such Negroes as Booker Washington are
doing, is of small consequence as compared with
the faihng efforts of a Negro criminal. Again,
when a white person commits a crime, the papers
say simply that a burglar was caught, a man shot
a woman, or a highwayman has been sentenced, —
not white burglar, not white man and woman, and
not white highwayman. In the case of colored
people, however, it is reported as Negro thief,
Negro, loafer, black brute, Negress. This forms
in us an association of ideas : black and Negro are
made to suggest crime. The one term calls up the
other in the pubHc mind; they are tied together by
as definite a law as the law of gravitation. If the
word white were written with every Caucasian
criminal, it would be as bad for the word white, —
or worse. We might say that we also give the
Negro credit for his good deeds by attaching the
word black or colored. But do we, with the same
emphasis and persistence with which we link him
with his bad deeds? Booker T. Washington
was given an inch on the last page, and the Negro
purse-snatcher was given the whole of the front
page. I know a black Negro who did well in a
Northern University, and I have his picture from
some newspapers wherein they deliberately light-
ened his complexion, straightened his hair, peaked
his nose and labeled him thus as a mulatto. And

232 THE NEW NEGRO

often we refuse to mention the racial Identity at
all when the Negro's deed is good. While we
write, every newspaper in the United States is
mentioning the good work of the Tenth Cavalry
In Mexico, but very few of the dailies take time
to say that the Tenth Cavalry Is a regiment of
black men. When the Negro soldiers were dis-
charged for shooting up Brownsville, Tex., not
a newspaper In the whole Republic failed to men-
tion the race to which they belonged. Suppose
we pursued the same policy with respect to the
red-heads among us : whenever a black-haired,
brown-haired or gray-haired person committed a
crime, we should say simply that a man or woman
did this or that, but when the hair was red, should
say red-headed burglar, red-headed embezzler,
red-headed murderer, red-headed rapist, — very
soon the red-haired would be marked as criminals
among us and we should be prejudiced at the very
sight of them.

It is an Interesting Inquiry as to how the Negro
stands to-day as a patriot. In that regard he is
still one of the soundest classes in America, but
he does not stand to-day where he used to stand.
He still loves America, his native land, — it is the
only country he has or knows anything about, —
but he Is more prone to-day to identify "the coun-
try" with the powers who happen, for the time
being, to have control thereof. One hears expres-
sions from Individual Negroes now which were
not to be heard twenty years ago : that the United
States needs humiliation; that it would "help the

THE NEW NEGRO 233

Negro If any foreign power should humble this
country;" that the Negro has "nothing to fight
for" in the United States, and "nothing to de-
fend;" that he (the individual who may be speak-
ing) "would not volunteer;" that it would be "in-
consistent for the Negro to fight the Japanese,
who have done nothing to him, and in behalf of
American white people;" that no foreign con-
queror could possibly "make conditions any worse
for the Negro here;" and many other expressions
which show that the Negro is beginning to look
for dehverance from abroad rather than at home.
This is a small and at present impotent beginning,
but it is foreboding. And it is too bad that some
American newspapers and congressmen are sec-
onding these thoughts of the Negro by proclaim-
ing a "white man's country" and a "white man's
war," and by obstructing the enlistment of pa-
triotic colored people in the army and navy. How
different is the present Negro spirit from that of
1898 when his youth, wherever admitted, rose as
one man to meet the Spaniard; from many of his
Southern schools the whole male student body who
could qualify as soldiers went into the camps.
That is not because the Negro was not mistreated
or oppressed at that time, but because he still
looked upon "Uncle Sam" as being some person-
ality separate and apart from the oppressor. He
then regarded the oppressor as a merely local
character; but he looked up to the great Nation
with hope and confidence, as the embodiment of
rigid justice and high ideals. He thought that

234 THE NEW NEGRO

the spirit of the Emancipator and of the defenders
of the Union still ruled in the highest councils of
the land, and he swore by "Uncle Sam." He
hoped, too, to better his local conditions by this
opportunity to show his patriotism at San Juan
Hill and in the Philippines. But since that time
one or two weak Republican administrations and
a very hostile Democratic term have made him
identify his former ideal of the nation with the
oppressor himself. This impression has been
deepened especially by lynchings, segregation and
discrimination in the North, from which he once
expected ultimate justice. We fear that the ex-
tent and importance of this new feeling is not
generally understood by white people. The foun-
dation of preparedness should be laid in the mind
and the heart. As we write, the newspapers are
full of comments on the fact that a little black
boy of Des Moines, Iowa, refused under threats
to salute the American flag, on the ground that it
meant nothing to him and his. Some are advocat-
ing punishment for this lad as the remedy. That
reminds us of the "remedy" offered by the httle
boy who, when he was frankly told by the little
girl that she did not love him, replied, as he sailed
into her with his fists : "When I get through beatin'
the stuffin' out o' you, I bet you'll love me!" He
was adopting the method which would not only
fail to change indifference into love but would
finally arouse hatred and hostility. The Negro
will not fail to love the flag and be its staunchest
defender, if it means to him a reasonable measure

THE NEW NEGRO 235

of protection for life, liberty and property and
civil and political rights. If these things are
denied him, no amount of preaching or cussing or
killing will make him love America. He could be
compelled for the time being to employ the weap-
ons of the weak, — pretense and cunning.

But the colored soldier and the masses of the
race are still loyal. There is no hyphen in the
short word Negro; he is every inch American;
he is not even Afro-American. One Negro regi-
ment beat all records by not having a single de-
sertion in twelve months. Nobody has any doubt
as to what the Negro soldiers are doing in Mexico
now; that they can be relied on implicitly to carry
out orders and serve the interests of the American
people. During our strained relations with vari-
ous European nations there have been frequent
expressions of doubt as to the loyalty of many ele-
ments of our population, but never one word of
doubt as to the Negro's loyalty has parted the lips
of even his fondest enemies. He is loyal and is
understood to be loyal, but a continuous adverse
pressure will finally break even the strongest
bar, — or bend it.

At present the Negro would stand fast and
firm by America against any European state; but
on the other hand when the Negro goes into any
European state he finds himself better treated and
freer from insult than in any state of the American
Union. How long will his loyalty last under that
test? The Negro abroad in any of the other
really civilized countries of the world, is practi-

236 THE NEW NEGRO

cally never insulted or treated as an inferior un-
less he runs into a party of his own white fellow-
citizens from the United States. There are
Americans, of course, to whom this inconsistent at-
titude toward one of the most loyal classes of all
our citizenry is a shame and a distaste.

Naturally it proves disagreeable, at first, for
many American white people to turn from the old
to the new Negro: from the patient, unquestion-
ing, devoted semi-slave to the self-conscious, as-
piring, proud young man. It always shocks our
psychology to have our old and accustomed ideals
contradicted. The changes from tallow candles
to oil lamps, to gas lights and to electric bulbs
must have been unpleasant experiences for many
of the older members of the community. The
older folk did not want to put pipe organs and
other musical instruments into the church service.
It is a plain matter of psychology: the old ideal
was being smashed by something new, which is
disagreeable even when the something new 5s
something better. Nearly all concede that there
are good Negroes, but they are very slow to
revise their ideals as to what constitutes a "good"
Negro. To some it means the old "uncles" and
"aunties" or the present usable servants. It is
difficult for them to conceive of an independent,
self-respecting, self-directing Negro as good.
There is a great motion-picture film, the chief
fault of which, aside from its perversions of com-
mon history, is the fact that it attempts to teach
that the Negro is good only as a slave or servant,

THE NEW NEGRO 237

and that every Intelligent and aspiring Negro in
society, law or state, is bad and criminal. This
hoary prejudice is our great stumbling block:
it causes intolerance and opposition to the rising
and aspiring but perfectly human and normal
younger Negroes. There are white people, ap-
parently fair-minded, who probably wish the
Negro well, and who can stand or sit and talk for
a long time with a dirty, ignorant and comical
Negro, but who could not have five minutes of
patience with one that is clean, intelligent and
self-respecting. I heard a Negro say that it
mystified him how white people would hire as
servants in their homes, or nurses for their chil-
dren Negro men and girls whom he would not
permit to touch his children. In the other direc-
tion, too, the thing often runs to the ridiculous:
a young Negro was to be ousted by his white as-
sociates from a certain position; they admitted
that his morals were sound, that his education and
general qualifications were all right, that his logic
was good and his arguments irrefutable, — but,
they explained, when he talks on some phases of
the race question he sometimes clinches his teeth!
They evidently preferred that when he talked of
the great injustices he would not do what Horace
says the speaker should always do (show the feel-
ing himself which he would arouse in others), but
that he would rather show his teeth in the concilia-
tory, apologetic grin of the old-fashioned Negro.

The greatest risk that the strong have to run is
the risk of their morals and ideals. The white

238 THE NEW NEGRO

people of America are In a position to be greatly
tempted to regard the Negro only in the Hght
of his usefulness to them, — only as a utility, and
not as a personality to pursue his own ends and
fulfil his own destiny. This little drop of selfish-
ness is likely to vitiate a great many efforts "on
behalf of the American Negro." The Negro
is beginning to insist, however, that he must be
regarded first as a man and only incidentally as a
usable article. For example, the Negro really
beHeves in all kinds of education, and especially
in those forms of training which will best fit the
masses to become independent workers and of
the greatest service to themselves and others. But
that little drop of gall has caused many of those
who are trying to educate him, to view their mis-
sion exclusively from the selfish-utilitarian stand-
point. These enthusiasts have themselves put the
Negro on the defensive as to his right to pursue
other forms of culture. And that is why many of
his best friends and the ablest thinkers of his own
race have insisted and do insist that the race needs
not only farm-hands, domectic servants, carpen-
ters and other industrial workers, but also business
men, doctors, lawyers and well educated preach-
ers. The white people who desire that the Negro
be a separate race in America, often fail to see
that this very separateness would make it more
imperative that the race develop all occupations
and professions and advance along all line^. I
heard a white speaker, at a great missionary meet-
ing held "on behalf of Negro education," say:

THE NEW NEGRO 239

We want the Negroes to produce farmers and
other industrial workers, — we already have plenty
of lawyers, doctors, historians and poets. His
"we" could not really include the Negro, about
whom he was supposed to be speaking, for the
Negro has very few lawyers, doctors, historians
and poets, — and the white historian and poet will
not really write the Negro's history nor sing his
songs. !

The new Negro is a sober, sensible creature,
conscious of his environment, knowing that not all
is right, but trying hard to become adjusted to this
civilization in which he finds himself by no will
or choice of his own. He is not the shallow, vain,
showy creature which he is sometimes advertised
to be. He still hopes that the unreasonable op-
position to his forward and upward progress will
relent. But, at any rate, he is resolved to fight,
and live or die, on the side of God and the Eter-
nal Verities.

'For thence, — a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks, —
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail.

FINIS.