CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 5
Address of Chairman 9
By Mr. William Hayes Ward
Race Differentiation Race Characteristics 14
By Prof. Livingston Farrand
The Negro Brain 22
By Prof. Burt G. Wilder
Address 67
By Prof. Edwin R. A. Seligman
Address 71
By Prof. John Dewey
Race Reconciliation 74
By Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley
Politics and Industry 79
By Prof. W. E. B. DuBois
Race Prejudice as Viewed from an Economic Standpoint. .. 89
By Dr. William L. Bulkley
The Negro and the South 98
By Mr. William English Walling
Discussion no
Address of Chairman 121
By Judge Wendell Phillips Stafford
Address 127
By Mr. John T. Milholland
The Race Problem 131
By the Rev. Jenkins Lloyd Jones
Is the Southern Position Anglo-Saxon ? 136
By Prof. John Spencer Bassett
Evolution of the Race Problem 142
By Prof. W. E. B. DuBois
The Problem s Solution 159
By the Rev. J. Milton Waldron
Civil and Political Status of the Negro 167
By Bishop A. Walters
341993
Lynching Our National Crime 174
By Mrs. Ida Wells-Barnett
Negro Disfranchisement as it Affects the White Man 180
By Hon. Albert E. Pillsbury
The Need of Organization 197
By Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard
Effect on Poor Whites of Discrimination Against Negroes.. 207
By Hon. Joseph C. Manning
The Negro and the Nation 211
By Dr. William A. Sinclair
Address 214
By the Rev. C. E. Stowe
Address 217
By the Rev. E. W. Moore
Address 220
By Mr. Charles Edward Russell
Resolutions 222
Letter from Mr. William Lloyd Garrison 226
Letter from Hon. Brand Whitlock . . .228
PREFACE
Early in 1909 some twenty persons met together in
New York City for the purpose of utilizing the public in
terest in the Lincoln Centennial in behalf of our colored
fellow citizens. Within a few weeks this number was
enlarged to about fifty, one-third of whom were from
other cities than New York. From the outset this com
mittee was composed of white and colored people alike,
and represented the most varied opinions; all agreed only
in the feeling that no one of the great efforts now being
made by the Negroes or by whites in their behalf or all
of them put together fully responded to the needs of the
situation.
It was the opinion of all the members of the prelimi
nary committee,* and I believe also of every one of those
since interested in the Conference, that the most neglect
ed side of the Negro s welfare is his right to civil and
political equality, recognized for nearly half a century in
this country and clearly expressed in the Constitution.
It was realized that no organization then ex
isted, composed of colored and white people alike, that
was making its main object the preservation of these
rights, now threatened from so many quarters. It
was considered highly important to establish a re-
*The Committee invites communications of all kinds, not only
questions as to its work, but all possible information and sug
gestions concerning the civil and political status of the colored
people and related matters, the deteriorating effects of civil and
political wrongs on general welfare; and also with reference to
the indirect effect of such civil and political disabilities on those
white elements of the population which, being most similarly
situated to the Negroes in their daily life and occupations, are
often similarly affected by the prevailing persecution.
lation between organisations already in existence
as well as among individuals who, while working for the
colored population primarily in some other direction, were
also, firmly decided to stand for the Negro s political and
civil rights, but were unable to do so effectively on ac
count of the absence of such an established relationship.
The same unanimity that prevailed in regard to the
main objects of the new organization extended also to
its choice of methods. It was decided that a series of
conferences would be the best means at once to
attract the attention of all those who might become
interested in the proposed organization, to put the pres
ent situation of the Negro in its entirety in the fore
ground of public interest and to establish a basis of fact,
reasoned policy and even of science for its future
conduct.
The first Conference was necessarily of a general char
acter. It is hoped and believed that each of the coming
conferences will be limited to a more definite field,
and therefore give results of a still greater scientific
value. The intention is, also, to make them even more
thoroughly representative of the whole body of opinion
in this country that stands for all the rights of the col
ored population including equal opportunity to enter
into and to rise in every field of employment, public and
private, ivithout exception.
The results of the first Conference more than justified
the greatest hopes of its promoters. The programme,
as arranged, while covering a very broad field, showed
the feasibility of building up an organization on these lines.
The character of the delegations composing the Confer
ence and its final action proved the possibility of secur
ing harmony between half a dozen different currents of
opinion favoring the Negroes, already existing among
the white population, and a similar number of diverging
movements among the colored people themselves.
It is confidently believed that the proceedings of the
first Conference of 1909 and the resolutions passed will
serve as a convincing appeal for public support, that they
will bring not only a very large increase in the number
of those attending the conference but also new forces
which will strengthen it for the work it has already un
dertaken, broaden its scope and define still more clearly
the friendly attitude of all public-spirited and democratic
citizens.
In view of the resolutions adopted in 1909 it is
scarcely necessary to state that it is the deep conviction
of all that not only the ultimate solution of the problem
but the crying necessities of the moment will be best met
not by any suppression or postponement of the fullest
and freest possible discussion of the question in all its
aspects, but by bringing it into the very foreground of
public attention. Every available means should be adopt
ed for this purpose, not only investigations of the situa
tion in all of its manifold forms and in every section of
the country, but also conferences, public meetings,
speeches and articles by members of the organization and
all others interested, co-operation with other organiza
tions and the furnishing to the public press of news hith
erto suppressed or difficult to obtain.
By all these and other means it is hoped and believed
that the so-called Negro question, in its broader aspects,
will become more and more a subject of daily interest
to all classes of the American people, until the nation
is at last in a mood to deal with this momentous evil
of race discrimination in the thoroughgoing spirit with
which alone it can be successfully handled.
W. E. W.
NATIONAL NEGRO CONFERENCE HEADQUARTERS,
500 FIFTH AVENUE,
NEW YORK CITY.
Morning Session, May 31
William Hayes Ward, Chairman
Address of
William Hayes Ward
Editor The Independent
New York
The purpose of this conference is to emphasize in word
and, so far as possible, in act, the principle that equal jus
tice should be done to man as man, and particularly to the
Negro, without regard to race, color or previous condi
tion of servitude. It is not strange that with the aboli
tion of slavery, and the legal and nominal grant of suf
frage and equal rights to care for himself, there should
have followed, with many among us, a cooling sympathy,
or the thought that our duty was all done and that now
the freedman could look out for himself as the rest of
us do. As the years have passed and a new generation
has come which has no memory of the Civil War or of
the Proclamation of Emancipation, and no knowledge of
the efforts made during the period of reconstruction and
the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend
ments to reduce the Negro back to a condition of serf
dom, we need not wonder that the old fervor of sympa
thy has much subsided, while at the same time there has
been a readiness to apologize for old wrongs; and we
have even seen the effort, too often successful, to pervert
the history of the old struggle.
There is an absolute divergence of view between the
ruling majority in the South, who desire to hold the
9
Negro in virtual serfdom, and ourselves. They are, in
a degree, honest in their position, if not Christian. They
believe that the Negro is essentially inferior, something
less than fully human, half a brute, and incapable of
reaching the standard of civilization. This is an ignor
ant position, but yet actually held and believed. I sup
pose that it is not generally known what is the scientific
basis of that popular opinion which still finds its ex
pression in speeches, editorials, and books, and even in
popular novels and plays. For that belief the respon
sibility rests on a book which for some years before the
Civil War had great circulation and influence, and which
was the armory from which the defenders of slavery
drew their weapons and ammunition. It was entitled
The Types of Mankind" by Nott and Glidden. Dr. Nott
was a physician and he contributed to the work all the
data of anatomy and ethnology which could be gathered
to show the physical and mental inferiority of the Negro.
Particularly he argued that the smaller brain and simpler
brain structure of the Negro made it absolutely impossi
ble that he could ever rise to be anything more than an
inferior and subject race. Mr. Glidden had been a trav
eler in Egypt, somewhat of a student of its antiquities,
and he contributed the evidence that in the time of the
Egyptian grandeur the Negro was also subject and
slave; and to this he added all the proofs possible to
show the degraded condition of the various Negro tribes,
their cannibalism and sensuality, their resistance to civi
lization, and the conclusion that to them slavery has
been the greatest blessing. The book had a great vogue.
It claimed to give the last word of science. Its con
clusions were very pleasing to those who profited by
slavery, and to this day, while the book is forgotten, its
assertions are repeated as if they were still uncontra-
dicted, and a multitude of people believe them true.
Doubtless Dr. Nott believed them true. Immediately
TO
after the Civil War he had occasion to reiterate them with
intense and personal emphasis. He was at the head of
a medical school in Mobile, Alabama. The school was
broken up, and the premises vacated. General O. O.
Howard, at the head of the Freedmen s Bureau, seized
the building for a school for Negroes. It was actually
an attempt to disprove the assertions which Dr. Nott
had made of Negro incapacity. Dr. Nott was most in
dignant and utterly outraged. He wrote a pamphlet in
protest, a copy of which I have in my hands, in which
he not only bitterly assailed our government for seizing
the premises, but with all the fury of an old prophet he
foretold the sure failure of emancipation. He declared
that the Negro could not support himself, that he would
starve to death, unless the country, that is, the North,
which had emancipated him, should feed and clothe him
as a pauper. Let me read a few sentences which are
mere fragments of the entire argument.
"History proves indisputably that a superior and an
inferior race cannot live together practically on any other
terms than that of master and slave, and that the
inferior race, like the Indians, must be expelled or ex
terminated."
"I was born among the Negroes of the South, have
spent many years in the study of their natural and civil
history, and feel confident in the prediction that they are
doomed to extermination which is being cruelly hastened
by the unwise action of a party that will not study and
comprehend the subject it is dealing with. The Negro
has an instinctive and unconquerable antipathy to steady
agricultural labor, and must therefore be gradually sup
planted by the whites, whose energy, industry and in
telligence will rule in this and all other important pur
suits."
"The blacks, like the American Indians, Tartars, and
other nomadic races, are instinctively opposed to agri-
i j
cultural labor, and no necessity can drive them to it.
Slavery is the normal condition of the Negro, the most
advantageous to him, and the most ruinous, in the end,
to a white nation.
"After removing your Bureau and the troops, I see
but one duty remaining for you to perform, and that
is, to assist us in feeding and clothing colored paupers.
The old, the infirm, the women and children, the worth
less vagrants, will form a burden that we are unable to
carry. As long as women and children were property,
and the unproductive child was one day to be a profit
able producer, the owners could afford to feed women
and children that constitute one-half this population. All
this is now changed, and the capital of the South is no
longer adequate to provide for such enormous charity.
"I say, then, that you have brought this state of things
upon the South, in spite of remonstrances, and you must
pav out or see the victims of your policy starve,"
Such was the prophecy of the leading ethnologist whose
science taught and still teaches a large section of our
people. He declared that the Negro could never be fit
to live on equal terms with the white, to be anything
,more than a slave, because nature had given him nine
I/ less cubic inches of brain than she had given us of the
Germanic stock. Now consider how this gloomy pro
phecy with all its science has been exploded. The Negro
freedman has proven that he is willing to work, and
that he is capable of thrift. He has supported himself
and his dependent children and invalids. He has been
the chief agricultural producer in the southern states,
and in twenty years had doubled the cotton crops, and
nearly quadrupled other farm products. By the last
census 34% of the white people of Massachusetts owned
their homes, but 37% of the Negroes of Virginia owned
theirs.
Negroes own more than 177,000 farms in the country,
12
and operate 581,000 more, a total of 38,250,000 acres.
In Mississippi and Louisiana there are more Negro farm
owners than white. . Thus a large part of the agricultu
ral South is coming into the possession of Negroes. As
to pauperism there are over a third more white paupers
per thousand than Negro. And meanwhile the less than
four million Negroes when Dr. Nott was writing have
increased to about ten million. That does not look like
extermination.
RACE DIFFERENTIATION RACE
CHARACTERISTICS
Livingston Farrand M. D.
Professor of c-/4nthropology
Columbia University
I have been asked to say a word here this morning on
the general problem of race differentiation and race
characteristics from the anthropological standpoint; and
I am afraid I must indulge in what I wish particularly to
warn against, and that is, generalities, because of the
short time at my disposal.
If there is one subject in the discussion of which cau
tion is to be observed it is this very theme which we
are here to consider. There is no field of investigation
in which generalization is more frequent or in which it
is more often unjustifiable. At the same time during
recent years when the problem has been actively inves
tigated it would seem that certain trends of authorita
tive opinion have appeared, some of which it may be
worth mentioning.
Let me add another word of explanation, and that is
with regard to the term "race." I believe that word
to be at the present time in hopeless disrepute. We do
not know what it means and are unable to agree upon
an arbitrary definition of it. While I shall use the
word . T wish it distinctly understood that I use it in a
general and popular sense.
When we are speaking of race differentiations we are
not necessarily dealing with permanent or invariable dif
ferences, but are simply using a convenient term and
vehicle of discussion. Any classification of so-called
"races" becomes a pure matter of description, and, from
the point of view of accuracy, physical characteristics
afford perhaps the most defensible basis for such classi
fication. At the same time, no matter what physical fac
tor may be taken as a criterion, we find that the varia
tions within the groups so defined are so wide as to cause
overlapping in every direction and make definite conclu
sions difficult, or even impossible. This difficulty is il
lustrated as well by the criterion of skin color as any
other, and yet it is probably the most commonly used
and certainly the most convenient of any of the physical
factors suggested as a basis.
It has been hoped that the accurate measurements of
the skull would afford material of a character so defi
nite that a safe foundation might be afforded, and yet
in recent years it has become evident that even so rela
tively stable a character as the shape of the head exhibits
variability of the most pronounced type. It has recently
been shown that among the Jews, distributed as they are
throughout the civilized world among different racial
groups of all kinds and yet retaining to a marked degree
an apparent purity of stock or race, the head form
varies according to the environment, that is, it tends to
approach the head form of the group among which the
given Jews in question may reside.
All this by way of caution as to the difficulty in reach
ing a classification acceptable to even a small number of
anthropologists or others competent to form an opinion.
The problem which more immediately concerns a con
ference such as this is the question whether it is possible
from an anthropological standpoint to classify groups
of men upon a psychological basis. In other words,
15
are there permanent mental or psychological differences
which will permit definite group differentiations?
In attacking this problem we are forced to deal with
the mental expressions and mental reactions of men in
groups which naturally exhibit themselves as customs.
That there are differences in such mental expressions no
one can deny. The Australian savage differs from the
German and the Negro differs from the Chinaman, the
problem being to determine upon what these differences
of mental expression ultimately rest.
It is commonly held that two possible lines of expla
nation are open. These psychological differences may
represent actual differences in mental organization, which
in turn represent different degrees of mental evolution,
or, they may be the results simply of the mental experi
ences of the individuals which constitute the groups in
question. In other words, there may be differences of
mental capacity representing the grades of development,
or they may be the result of differences of environment
and training which modify the mental contents of the in
dividuals of the groups, but which do not necessarily
represent any appreciable difference in mental organiza
tion or development.
The question as it is ordinarily put resolves itself into
this : Does civilized man represent a higher stage of men
tal evolution than the savage?
In considering the problem we must remember that we
are apt to form our judgments very largely upon
differences of culture, and in so doing we are apt to con
fuse a perfectly obvious cultural evolution with a perfect
ly problematical mental evolution. The two terms are
by no means synonymous. It seems clear that one may
accumulate the products of men s minds and hand over
the material so assembled to the child, which process car
ried on throughout a given group will necessarily pro
duce a higher stage of culture without making necessari-
16
ly one iota of difference in the initial mental capacity of
the individuals so treated.
There is another point which perhaps ought to be
considered as preliminary, and that is the light which
anatomical considerations might throw upon the question.
I am very glad to see that this aspect of the subject is
to be discussed by one far jriore qualified than I Profes
sor Wilder who is to follow me this morning. But for
fear Dr. Wilder will not say just what I would like him
to say let me speak for a moment of my own point of
view.
If we consider the brain, which it is agreed is the
anatomical factor most closely concerned with the ques
tion, from the point of view of size, weight, and complex
ity, we shall find undoubtedly certain differences existing
between the brains of one racial group and those of an
other racial group. It is true that a large series of brains
from Central African Negroes compared with an equal
number taken at random from Central Europe would
show a slightly less degree of size and weight in the Afri
can brains as compared with the European. On the other
hand this would simply mean that the great mass of the
two series so compared would coincide and it would only
be in the extreme members of the two groups that any
recognizable differences would appear. Stated in another
way it appears that the variation within each group is so
wide that for nearly every African brain there would be
a corresponding European brain so far as size and weight
are concerned. This being the case it seems obvious to
any candid mind that inferences with regard to the de
velopment of groups so treated are extremely dangerous
and that inferences with regard to the mental develop
ment of the groups so considered are entirely unjustifi
able. This is naturally still more true from the fact that
we are quite unable to state the correlation which may
exist between mental capacity and brain development.
17
Let us not, however, fall into the similar error on the
other side and deny with equally indefensible dogmatism
that such differences as do exist have no significance and
can be left entirely out of account. The only statement
which it seems to me will bear the scrutiny of candid
science is that thus far the investigations of this point
are negative.
Returning again to the question of psychology it is
obvious that there are differences of mental expression
in different groups of men. On the other hand if we
inspect these groups broadly we find it equally obvious
that the general mental processes are similar or identical.
If we attempt to decide whether the mental capacity, so-
called, of one group of men is greater or less than that
of another group of men we are met at once by the dif
ficulty of determining a criterion by which we may judge
such differences. I have never yet been able to find psy
chologists who could lay down exact standards appli
cable to field observation which could be used in solving
this particular problem.
If we inspect the more obvious conscious processes
such as sense perception there is certainly no difference
to be described. The acuteness of vision of the English
man and the American Indian are perfectly comparable
The Indian or Australian may exhibit marvellous powers
in following trails or in tracking game, but it has been
shown that this skill is based not upon increased visual
acuteness but upon training in perception of certain stim
uli through a life of necessity. The same principle holds
true of differences which present themselves in the other
senses.
If we consider certain of the more complex mental
processes in which it might be thought that differences
in kind might exist it seems to me that the results of
analysis are similar to those obtained in an inspection of
the simpler processes.
18
It has often been held that the ability to inhibit im
pulses is a mark of high mental development, whether
individual or racial. Inhibition expresses itself ordi
narily in the individual as self-control, the ability to
check impulse to action of one sort or another, and it
has been assumed that the savage or more primitive in
dividual is characterized by a lack of self-control; that
is that he tends to yield to the impulse of the moment
whatever it may be. It would seem that an inspection of
the evidence would not bear out this contention. It is
clear that the self-control exerted by the individual in
any group is to a large extent a conventional one. He
is taught to inhibit along certain lines in certain groups,
and what is conventional or good form for the individual
in one group is not necessarily so in another. You and
I are taught from childhood to inhibit certain reactions
and expressions and as we grow older such repression
becomes habitual with us. The same is true of the savage.
It was impressed upon the American Indian from his "
earliest days that if he were put to torture by his enemies
he was not to give way to any expression of pain, but
to endure the utmost agony without a moan. Should
the crucial test arrive he seldom failed to meet the de
mand, but that same Indian in the bosom of his family
would exhibit behavior of the most childish character
over an injury of the slightest kind. Where there is no
necessity or conventional call for inhibition he does not
exhibit it.
Further, the savage often exhibits self-control under
conditions where you and I would be incapable of it.
The Eskimo may be in a state of semi-starvation with
seals lying all around him on the ice, yet if for religious
reasons a taboo has been placed upon these seals the
Eskimo will starve to death before he will kill and eat
one. You and I would not do that. Your religious pre
judice and mine would disappear in the face of hunger
and the innate nutritive impulse. What is true of the
Indian or the Eskimo is true of the Negro, Australian,
and every other primitive group. The direction which
the inhibition of impulse or self-control shall take is
dependent largely upon training and convention, and so
far as we can see does not exhibit particular differences
of degree or strength.
Probably equal attention has been given to the ques
tion of the evolution of ethics. It seems clear that there
are two problems involved in this discussion, one the evo
lution of ethical standards as such, and the other the de
gree of conformity to these standards, whatever they may
be, as exhibited by different racial groups. We find, of
course, that different standards exist in different groups
and that what is right in one group may not be right in
another, or what is right at one time may not be right
at another, but the point which concerns us, it seems to
me, is chiefly the degree of conformity to the standards
recognized by particular groups rather than the standards
themselves. Viewed in this way the strictness of con
formity to ethical standards among savages is quite com
parable to that which exists among civilized man.
Time does not permit discussion of this point in de
tail, but ethnology is full of evidence to that end.
If I may be permitted to sum up these discursive re
marks I have been making and to express what I believe
is the point of view of an increasing school of anthropolo
gists, it is that the apparent differences of mental capacity
in different groups of men are probably to be assigned
much more to the contents of the minds of the individuals
of these groups than to any inherent differences of men
tal capacity which would indicate a recognizable differ
ence of mental evolution.
I don t believe it is possible, I don t believe it is right
to say that there are no differences of degree of evolu
tion between different groups. Such a thing, of course,
20
is possible theoretically and I believe it is to a certain ex
tent actually. It is reasonable to suppose that a certain
selection has operated which would have produced pos
sible differences of mental organization, but let us not
forget that the time during which such special selection
can have operated is extremely short and that further
it is equally possible that a similar selection may have been
going on in savage groups where conditions have not been
favorable for the development of a culture to the point
which we call civilization.
Now I will inhibit. In conclusion I wish to bring
out this one point that it is absolutely unjustifiable to
assert that there is trustworthy evidence for the view
that marked differences of mental capacity between the
different races exist; that if they exist they are certainly
of a much slighter extent than would appear from hasty
observation. On the other hand it is equally unjustifi
able to assert that no differences exist.
A very wise remark was made a few years ago by an
American sociologist when he said : "It may be true that
blood will tell, but we must not be too hasty in saying
just what it is that the blood tells, or which particular
blood it is that speaks."
21
THE BRAIN OF THE AMERICAN
NEGRO
Burt G. Wilder
Professor of Neurology and Vertebrate
Zoology in Cornell University
[The address on this subject, as delivered extemporaneously at
the Negro Conference, was prepared within a necessarily lim
ited time. For present publication it has been recast and much
new material has been added, mainly in the form of Notes,
Tables, Illustrations, and a List of Publications referred to.]
Do any physical characteristics of the brain of the
American Negro warrant discrimination against him, as
such ?
The American Negro is on trial, not for his life but
for the recognition of his status, his rights and his
opportunities. At this, as at most other trials, experts
disagree. Fortunately, against none of them can be
laid the charge of being influenced by the hope of
"power or pelf." But prepossessions may result from
circumstances, and even in science the "personal equa
tion" must be reckoned with. Approximate impartiality
is claimed by me because, on the one hand, as a believer
in the derivation of the human body from some anthro
poid stock, I incline to minimize the differences be
tween man and the higher apes ; and because, on the
other, during both my army and university experiences,
there have been occasions when I was tempted to
exclaim, "Yes, a white man is as worthy as a colored
man provided he behaves himself as well."
22
To the initial question jny reply is, in brief : Respect
ing the brains of American Negroes there are known
to me no facts, deductions, or arguments that, in my
opinion, justify withholding from men of African de
scent, as such, any civil or political rights or any educa
tional or industrial opportunities 1 that are enjoyed by
whites 2 of equal character, intelligence, and property.
To the above negative testimony I add the affirma
tion, based upon personal observation, that the title to
such rights and opportunities was earned during the
Civil War by the general conduct of soldiers of African
descent, by their valor, by their initiative under trying
conditions, and by their deliberate self-sacrifice for the
sake of a principle.
The consideration of special aspects of the subject
may well be prefaced by two general declarations re
specting the African race by the late Professor Huxley;
1. Among the matters here named should not be interjected
questions of social or marital relations ; they are no more ger
mane than religious affiliations. The case has been well stated
by President Kilgo (South Atlantic Quarterly, vol 2, p. 383) :
"Social equality is everywhere a matter of individual choice. Each
man chooses his companions and on the grounds of personal
congeniality. The Negroes are not socially equal among them
selves, neither are the white people, and the wild cry that the
time will come when one man will be forced to associate with
another contrary to his wishes is a nightmare and a political
hocus-pocus." Let me say here that among the cleanest phys
ically and morally men that I have known have been some
of African descent. As to the interdiction of legal intermar
riage, but for the tragic aspect of the whole subject there would
be something ludicrously inconsistent in the horror at the mere
entrance of an African male into a southern mansion pother-
wise than in a menial capacity) when far closer relations of
occupants of those mansions with African females are attested
by the numerous mulattoes, some of them rightly bearing "first
family" names.
2. To avoid complications all the statements in this address
refer to males only. Unless otherwise stated, by whites are
meant male Caucasians of the United States or Canada; by
Negroes, Afro-Americans, men of African descent in the same
countries.
23
they exemplify the clearness, consistency, conciseness,
and correctness that characterize his writings; if they
lack completeness (the last of the "five CV that I have
for many years commended to my pupils) it is because
nearly half a century has elapsed since they were
penned,, and because he had had no opportunity of ob
serving the modern American Negro and his treatment
by certain individuals and communities :
"Middle Africa exhibits a new type of humanity in
the Negro, with his dark skin, woolly hair, projecting
jaws, and thick lips. As a rule, the skull of the Negro is
remarkably long; it rarely approaches the broad type,
and never exhibits the roundness of the Mongolian.
A cultivator of the ground and dwelling in villages; a
maker of pottery, and a worker in the useful as well
as ornamental metals; employing the bow and arrow as
well as the spear, the typical Negro stands high in
point of civilization above the Australian." Essays,
vol. 7, p. 233.
"It may be quite true that some Negroes are better
than some 3 white men ; but no rational man, cognisant of
the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal,
still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if
this be true, when all his disabilities are removed, and
our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour,
as well as no oppressor, 4 it is simply incredible that he
will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-
brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is
to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites." Essays,
vol. 3, p. 67.
3. Were this valiant champion of justice alive to-day and fa
miliar with the character and achievements of leading Afro-
Americans he might change "some" in the first line to many,
or even echo the opinion of the former editor of the
South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 2, p. 299.
4. Not to adduce more savage methods, is oppression or mere
ly repression the appropriate term for the exclusion of a Uni
versity professor of African descent from a public library for
which he and his fellows are taxed?
24
In the foregoing paragraph Huxley meant, of course,
that prognathism is more common among Africans than
Caucasians ; but every observer knows that it is by
no means either constant with the former or absent with
the latter. In fact, by far the most prognathous human
being that I ever saw was a trained violinist from the
interior of Europe. In the museum of Cornell Univer
sity the following incident was witnessed by me :
Among a party of visiting youths were a "low-down"
Negro and a rough Irishman. From opposite direc
tions they chanced to approach a stuffed chimpanzee.
As each caught sight of it he raised his finger and
pointed, with a grin, at the other fellow. The resem
blance was not a matter of race, but, as Prof. Farrand
has remarked, .of individual culture.
It will be noted that, like all other scientists known
to me, Huxley recognizes the African as one of the
human races. The contrary view is doubtless enter
tained by some, but as yet, so far as I am aware, it has
been publicly formulated only by a clergyman of the
Lutheran denomination, Rev. G. C. H. Hasskarl. In the
subtitle of his little book, The Missing Link" (1898),
is the query, "Has the Negro a Soul?" His own reply
seems to be contained in the following passages :
"The Negro is a separate and distinct species of the
genus homo from Adam and Eve"; p. 29. "The Negro
is not a human being" ; p. 28. "He is inevitably a beast
and as a beast entered the ark" ; p. 29. "The differ
ence between the white man immortal and the Negro
soulless"; p. 33.
"The Missing Link" is evidently based upon narrow
and prejudiced interpretations of the literal sense of
certain passages of Scripture, and the arguments would
5. A letter from Mr. Hasskarl, dated Williamsport, Pa., Dec.
24, 1909, says : "For want of time I am unable at present to
enter into a discussion of your soul-problem concerning the
25
probably appeal only to persons of comparatively lim
ited knowledge and influence. But no such mitigating
circumstances apply in the case of a liberally educated
writer who had every opportunity for ascertaining the
facts and whose statements would undoubtedly and ma
terially affect the numerous readers intelligent but
uninformed of a popular periodical.
In order to avert further misapprehension of which
there has been too much already this matter shall be
told, so far as practicable, in selections from a corre
spondence between Mr. Owen Wister 6 and myself. In
terpolations are in brackets.
My second letter to Mr. Wister was dated Dec. 29,
1905, and ran as follows :
"I beg to acknowledge the receipt, yesterday, of the
reply to my queries of the 2Oth. Pardon my persistence,
but there is more to be said. In your [very interest
ing] story, "Lady Baltimore," in the Saturday Evening
Post of Dec. 9th, the relator, evidently a man of at
least average intelligence and discrimination, when shown
three skulls, viz., of an Aryan (ordinary white), of a
gorilla, and of a South Carolina nigger (to .quote a
word that I would not otherwise employ), recognizes
Negro. In about two months there will be out a publication of
mine on Christian Pedagogy. In it I am treating of the souls
of both man and beast, and when you have examined the same
you will understand what I mean by the adjective soulless
when speaking of the Negro in contrast to the white man."
"The Missing Link" was discussed by several colored clergy
men in the New York Tribune for May 28 and 29, 1899.
As reported in the Tribune for February 4, 1910, the Rev. E.
H. Richards, for thirty years a missionary in Uganda, Africa,
believes that the Negro is descended from "one of several
brothers of Adam."
6. Strictly speaking the correspondence was with the private
secretary of Mr. Wister. That the latter evidently did not
know me from Adam or Ham was, of course, a blow to my
self-esteem; it may also be interpreted as signifying that, while
the scientist must have romance, the novelist may or sometimes
thinks he may dispense with science.
26
a gap between the first and the other two, but between
those two a brotherhood, a kinship which stares you
in the face ; he avows that the difference in their names
was the only difference he saw between them, e.g., be
tween the skulls of a gorilla and of a South Carolina
Negro.
"To my inquiry as to whether this comparison was
intended to indicate merely your own impression or was
based upon some anthropologic authority, you reply
that it incorporates no special knowledge, but only
information of the ordinary kind which is to be found
in any museum of anatomy or academy of natural
sciences.
"Before expressing my own opinion permit me to call
your attention to the following paragraph from the
first scientific account of the gorilla in the Boston
Journal of Natural History, vol. 5, Aug. 18, 1847. Its
author, Professor Jeffries Wyman of Harvard Univer
sity, was noted for his freedom from prejudice, for
his accuracy of observation, and for his clearness of
expression. He says (using orang as a general name
for the tailless or anthropoid apes, and thus as embrac
ing not only the true orang but the chimpanzee and the
gorilla) : Any anatomist who will take the trouble
to compare the skeletons of the Negro and the orang
cannot fail to be struck at sight with the wide gap
which separates them. The differences between the
cranium, etc., in the Negro and the Caucasian [here
used, like your Aryan, as a term for the white race]
sinks into comparative insignificance when compared
with the vast difference which exists between the con
formation of the same parts in the Negro and the
orang.
"Under Jeffries Wyman I began to compare the skulls
of men and apes in the fall of 1859, nor has my interest
in them ceased merely because it is now surpassed by
my interest in their brains. Not to risk the mixing
up of things, which Mrs. Carlyle so aptly denounced as
27
the great bad, let us agree that (i) There are racial
differences; and (2) When all things are considered,
the whites have advanced further than the blacks from
our [presumed] ape-like ancestors. 7
"But I believe the present state of our knowledge
warrants the following propositions : First, in an as
semblage of adult male skulls of the apes and the various
human races a child would unhesitatingly separate the
men from the apes, and might go further and set apart
the gorilla by reason of the prominent bony crests.
Secondly, among three skulls such as are indicated in
your story the expert anatomist might recognize one as
presenting certain features that are more often found
in Africans ; but even to him, and, a fortiori, to the lay
man, these peculiarities, as compared (to use Wyman s
phrase) with the Vast difference between the Negro and
the gorilla, would sink into comparative insignificance.
The validity of these propositions may be ascertained
from any comparative anatomist or from the collec
tions in your city, and I venture to express the hope and
belief that you will feel called upon to make immediate
retraction of the contrary statements in your story.
"At best, however, a month would have elapsed since
the original publication. Hence, failing to receive
within a reasonable time assurance of your intention to
take such action, unwelcome as the task would be, I
could not evade what seems to me the obligation to try
7. This is also warranted by the following passage from the
same paper of Wyman : "It cannot be denied that the Negro
and the orang [meaning the tailless apes, as above] do afford
the points where man and the brute, when the totality of their
organization is considered, most nearly approach each other" ;
1847, p. 441. In this connection, however, it should be added
that, in respect to the location of the foramen magnum, the hole
in the base of the skull where the brain is continuous with the
spinal cord, Wyman found the North American Indian to rank
lower than the Negro; 1868, p. 447. Likewise should not be
overlooked the fact that the hair of apes and monkeys is
straight and thus resembles that of the Negro less than it does
the curly locks of many Caucasians.
to arrest the further diffusion of the scientific error
and the political venom that characterize the passages
in question." At a meeting of the American Anthropo
logical Society, Dec. 28, 1905, I laid the matter before that
Society in a paper.
Under date of Jan. 3, 1906, was given this assurance:
"Mr. Wister will investigate the matter at the earliest
opportunity, and if he find that what he said is not
justified by sufficient scientific authority he will take
every step in his power to set the matter right."
In the February number of Alexander s Magazine, as
part of an Appendix to the Garrison Centenary address
as printed in the preceding number, and under the cap
tion, "A Novelist s Needless Error," I said: "Even
if the misstatement is qualified or retracted in the
book- form of "Lady Baltimore," the atonement will be
far from adequate. I print this note (and trust it may
be reprinted) as an authoritative correction of an inju
rious scientific error."
Under date of Feb. 24th, in the acknowledgment of
the receipt of a reprint of the Address and Appendix
above mentioned, it is stated : "Mr. Wister is very
glad you have taken the step of personally correcting
his overstatement. It seemed to him that the personal
and public retraction which you demanded was out of
proportion with the error. The passage stands cor
rected after having been submitted to Mr. Arthur Erwin
Brown. It is a middle course between the extreme one
originally taken in Mr. Wister s sentences, and the other
extreme one taken in your own."
The passage in question, on p. 171 of "Lady Balti
more," is now as -follows :
"There was a similarity of shape, a kinship there be
tween the three, which stared v you in the face; but in
the contours of the vaulted skull, the projecting jaws,
and the great molar teeth what was to be seen? Why,
29
in every respect that the African departed from the
Caucasian, he departed in the direction of the ape."
Neither the emendation, nor the disclaimer in the
preface of a "feeling against the colored race," seem
to me to constitute reparation for the original wrong.
For one cultivated and discriminating reader of the
volume there are probably ten who have been directly
or indirectly misled by the statement in the periodical.
In my judgment, especially in view of the declaration
quoted above from the letter of Jan. 3rd, "he will take
every step in his power to set the matter right," the
author was and still is bound to publish an explicit
retraction in the same periodical. A nearly equal re
sponsibility rests upon the conductors of the periodical.
The episode narrated above has an indirect as well
as direct significance. So far as known to me no other
person protested against the original allegation. This
might be taken to signify merely indifference. But it
may also be interpreted as indicating a general lack
of accurate knowledge respecting the skulls of apes and
of races of men. Since such specimens are readily ob
tained and easily prepared, and since they are exhibited
in all large museums and represented in comprehensive
works, there may fairly be assumed an even greater and
more widely spread ignorance concerning the contents
of these bony cases. Such brains are far less easily
obtained and preserved ; in museums they are less com
mon and less accessible; they are very complex (the
human brain presents at least five hundred features,
parts, and combinations of parts visible to the naked
eye and provided with one or more names) ; and
fewer anatomists devote themselves to their study and
comparison. 8 Hence it may not be out of place to offer
a few elementary statements, general and particular.
8. It is encouraging to note that the reorganized Wistar In
stitute of Anatomy in Philadelphia has made early and special
30
1. Among the brains of vertebrates, from the lamprey
up to man, under multifarious differences of detail,
there is recognizable such unity of type as to furnish one
of the strongest arguments for the belief that the higher
or more specialized forms have been evolved from
lower or more generalized.
2. The animals most nearly resembling man in struc
ture are the three true apes, orang, chimpanzee, and go
rilla. Among the points in common are the total absence
of a tail and the presence of the cecal appendix. 9
3. When human and ape brains are compared, whether
from the several external surfaces (Figs. 5, 6, 7) or after
division into right and left halves as shown in charts
not reproduced here 10 the resemblances are so numerous
and impressive that anyone who accepts the general
doctrine of evolution can hardly resist the conclusion
that men and apes have been derived from some common
stock.
4. Nevertheless, and irrespective of absolute size (the
smallest human brain [680 grams or 24 ounces] out
weighs the largest ape brain [500 grams or 17 ounces],
see Tables I and III), between the brains of
all animals, including the apes, and those of all human
races, so far as examined, the differences are several,
provision for neurologic research by experts. Even more
imperative, in my judgment, is the acquirement by all persons
of a certain amount of personal familiarity with brains repre
senting the principal vertebrate groups. Upon several occa
sions I have urged that this practical work begin in the pri
mary school, and during the last five years I have specified, as
most favorable for beginners, the brain of the Acanth shark
(Squalus acanthias) commonly known as the "spiny or horned
dog-fish"; sec the paper, 1907, and the references in it.
9. In these respects and some others man is also approached
by the gibbons, but in other respects these are evidently less
removed from the tailed monkeys than are the other apes.
10. Some of these charts included the entire brain ; but the
figures here given represent only the cerebral hemispheres, the
parts related most directly to consciousness, volition, and intel
lectuality.
31
considerable, and practically constant. So far as I know
there has never been examined a brain respecting which
there could be a doubt as to its human or ape nature. 11
5. At various times and by various writers certain
differences have been alleged to exist between African
and Caucasian brains, viz., color, the presence of the
"ape-fissure" (named "pomatic by me in 1889, and "lu-
natus" by G. Elliott Smith later), the greater frequency
and distinctness of the postrhinal fissure (to the presence
and morphologic significance of which I called attention
at the American Neurological Association in 1885), the
absence of r the "sulcus frontalis mesialis," the brevity
of the Sylvian fissure, the lateral extension of the occip
ital fissure, the general simplicity of fissuration, less
development of the frontal portion of the callosum (the
great band of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemis
pheres, Fig. 13), ventral concavity or lateral flatten
ing, or both, of the prefrontal lobe, less relative size of
the entire frontal lobe, and less weight of the entire
brain.
6. So far as I have been able to ascertain from the
writings of others and from my own observations, none
of the features above ^numerated is comparable in extent
and significance with the differences between all human
and all ape brains ; none is constantly present in the
African, and each occurs sometimes in the Caucasian.
Before considering some of these alleged differences
more in detail I state my conviction that, even were
they more numerous, more considerable, and more con
stant, they should not invalidate conclusions legitimately
derived from conduct indicative of lofty ideals and of
the ability and disposition to act in accordance with them.
IT. This remark applies, of course, only to forms now living.
Speculation as to the conditions in Pithecanthropus crcctus, the
fossil primate of Java, would be out of place here.
Color.; Since the brain, like the rest of the central
nervous system, is primarily derived from the same
embryonic layer as the skin, and since part of the mem
brane covering the sheep s brain is black, and with the
"spoon-bill sturgeon" (Polyodon) the fatty connective tis
sue surrounding the brain is richly pigmented, one might
not unnaturally expect to find the African brain of a
darker hue. Such was claimed to be the case in a
mulatto by Laboulbene in 1849, but it was probably an
individual peculiarity. Museum specimens present many
shades of color due to the nature of the preservatives
employed. For example, in the Cornell University col
lection the darkest brain (3531) was from a physician
and poet, while that of a Negro (3808) is one of the
lightest.
Most of the other alleged characteristics of the Af
rican brain 12 could not be discussed without technical
ities out of place on this occasion.
Fissural or gyral simplicity. The surface of the
cerebrum is smooth in early stages of development and
remains approximately so with the lower monkeys; with
the higher monkeys and with the apes the arrangement
is simpler than in man. Hence, upon the supposition
that the African race, as a whole, has made less progress
than the Caucasian from ancestral and infantile condi
tions, the cerebral fissures of Negroes might be expected
to present a less degree of complexity and a more ob
vious symmetry between the right and left sides.
The literature of this subject has been reviewed by
12. It will be interesting to ascertain from the careful examina
tion of many well prepared African brains whether there is
any resemblance to the lower mammals, including the apes, in
a greater absolute or relative size of the olfactory bulb, or of the
part variously called thalamic fusion, middle commissure, and
massa intermedia; my own observations do not look that way,
but they are too few for generalization.
33
Mall who has also compared many brains of the
two races ; he makes the two following statements :
"Brains rich in gyri. and snlci (fissures) of the
Gauss type, 13 are by no means rare in the American
Negro"; p. 24. "With the present crude methods the
statement that the Negro brain approaches the fetal or
simian [ape] type more than does the white is entirely
unwarranted"; p. 20.
In this connection my own experience, while not per
haps unique, may be related as exemplifying the undesir-
ability of drawing conclusions from a small number of
cases. One of the first brains obtained entire for Cor
nell University was that of an unknown and presumably
obscure mulatto of medium color. It was hardened
within the skull so that the contours, both general and
special, were perfectly preserved. Although the fissure^
were peculiar in some respects they and the intervening
gyres w r ere far simpler than any known to me and were
employed as the basis of. diagrams that have served my
pupils and those of others in the elucidation of the more
complex usual conditions.
Later acquisitions showed how unwise it would have
been to regard this mulatto brain (Fig. 3) as a type of the
mixed black and white, or to assume that all Caucasian
brains are more complex, and that still greater simplicity
prevails with the full blacks. The next three African
brains obtained by us (3118, 3808, and 2912) presented
various degrees of the usual fissural complexity, and the
last of these, from an illiterate janitor, apparently full
black, is comparable with that of a mathematician and
hilosopher (3334, Fig. 8). 14
13. Gauss was a German mathematician and his cerebral fissures
were unusually complex.
14. So altruistic was this man, and so keen his sense of justice,
that he would surely rejoice to know that his brain had con
tributed in any way to the increase of knowledge and the
righting of wrong.
34
On the other hand, the cerebrum of Chauncey Wright,
another philosopher and mathematician (Fig. 4), dis
tinctly recalls that of the mulatto in what may be termed
its "Egyptian" style of architecture as contrasted with
the more common "Corinthian" style. Finally, and to
complete this series of warning paradoxes, in the Cornell
collection the nearest approach to the Wright-mulatto
type is made by the brain of Ruloff (965) who, although
a murderer, was fairly educated and interested in
linguistic problems; his skull is the thickest that I ever
saw, while the thinnest is that of the mulatto; Figs,
i and 2.
Alleged pre frontal deficiency in the Negro brain.
The anterior portion of the cerebrum, sometimes dis
tinguished as the prefrontal lobe, includes a part, at
least of the "anterior association areas" which are sup
posed to subserve the higher psychic faculties, especially
reason, judgment, and self-control or voluntary inhibi
tion. In apes and monkeys this region is both absolutely
and relatively smaller than in man (Fig. 10, orang and
baboon), and although the other contours are more or
less rounded there is a distinct ventral concavity. Upon
information of Hrdlicka and at the suggestion of Mall,
I Jean undertook to determine whether the brains of
American Negroes are deficient in this important region,
and examined many specimens to that end. His obser
vations and conclusions were published in the same year,
1906, in the American Journal of Anatomy and in the
Century Magazine for September; these periodicals will
be distinguished as A. J. A. and Century; the article in
former is fuller but that in the latter is less technical
and more likely to be accessible to the laity.
On p. 412 of the A. J. A., Bean claims, mainly if not
wholly from the form and size of the frontal lobe, that
"the Negro brain can be distinguished from the Cau
casian with a varying degree of accuracy according to
the mixture of white blood."
In a later number of the same journal Mall reviews
(1909) the several statements of Bean in the light of an
extensive series of his own observations. He says
(p. 18) that the flattening over the anterior association
area may be seen in most full-blood Negroes, certainly
in more than one-half. A mixed lot of sixty Negro
brains and thirty white were assorted correctly in seven-
ty-five per cent, of the cases. A more satisfactory test
would be the assortment of larger and equal numbers
of the two races. No one would be justified in the in
ference that the determination could be made with any
such certainty as that between the brains of all apes and
those of all human races.
In the Century article, however, p. 782, Bean makes
this sweeping declaration :
"The size and shape of the front end of the brain is
different in the two races, being smaller and more angu
lar in the Negro, while it is larger and more rounded in the
Caucasian. Fig. i shows vertical sections taken through
the frontal lobes between 1.5 and 2 centimeters from
the front end of the brain of a Negro, and between 2
and 2.5 centimeters from the front end of the brain of a
Caucasian. 15 The section of the Caucasian brain is larger
and more circular than that of the Negro, not exhibiting
15. Since the frontal lobe commonly tapers forward a section
nearer the front end will usually be smaller than one further
back; hence it was only just in Bean to state (as in the above
extract) that the Negro brain was cut nearer the front end.
Unfortunately, however, this qualification is not repeated in
connection with the figure itself, which is on the following
page. Now figures are so much more impressive than descrip
tions that probably most readers would infer that the two
sections were made at the same level and would interpret the
difference in size to the disadvantage of the Negro. This un
warranted interpretation seems to have been made in an edi
torial in American Medicine (April, 190? p. 197) which stig
matizes the enfranchised Negroes as "an electorate without
brains."
36
the narrow projecting sides and pointed tips above and
below."
From the foregoing and from the accompanying fig
ures it might naturally be inferred that the two forms of
the prefrontal lobe are constant and characteristic of the
two races. That this is not the case may be seen from
my Figs. 10 and n. These are photographic reproduc
tions of transections of eight primate 16 cerebral hemis
pheres in the prefrontal region. In order that the
sections might be at the same structural level in all,
there was adopted the "base-line" employed by Bean
(A. J. A., p. 404, said by him, p. 354, to have been
suggested by Mall), passing just below the hinder end
of the callosum and just above the precommissure
("anterior commissure") and usually coinciding nearly
with the greatest length of the hemisphere. By means of
a frame the several sections were made at right angles
with this line at a level half-way between the end of the
hemisphere and the precommissure.
The sections of the orang and the baboon (both un
usually intelligent, individuals) display decided inferior
ity as to both form and extent. Between the two jurists
there is little difference, but what there is seems to
favor him of the higher character and greater self-
control (2870). With the white philosopher (3334) and
the illiterate black janitor (2912) the ventral excavation
is nearly equal, but the latter presents a dorso-laterai
flattening that is wholly absent from the former.
The white murderer (3335) equals the other three
whites in form and surpasses them in area. There is a
slight ventral concavity which does not appear at all in
the mulatto thief (3118); in the latter, moreover, the
slight dorsal concavity is deceptive, and due to the break-
16. This word relates to any member of the order Primates,
including man, apes, monkeys, baboons, marmosets, and lemurs.
37
ing off of a slightly attached piece; the natural outline
at that point is rounded.
Surely no detailed arguments are required to expose
the fallacies lurking in any comparisons of small num
bers of specimens. Bean s collocation of the transec-
tions of the prefrontal lobes of a Negro and a Caucasian
(even if made at the same level) as if they represented a
constant racial difference, is no more conclusive as to
the two races than would be my collocation of the white,
3652, with the Negro, 3118, as proving the cerebral
superiority of the African race, or the collocation of the
righteous judge (2870) with the executed murderer
(3335) as a guide to our relative esteem for the crim
inal classes and those who pass upon their misdeeds.
Alleged less size of the entire frontal lobe in the
Negro. According to Bean (A. J. A., p. 377) the whole
region in front of the central fissure ("fissure of
Rolando") is smaller in the Negro than in the white.
Mall reviews the evidence and concludes (p. 13) that
"it is incorrect to say that the frontal lobe of the Negro
is lighter than that of the white."
In the concluding paragraph of his article Mall em
phasizes the need of more material and better methods
as follows:
"In this study of several anatomical characters, said
to vary according to race and sex and intellectuality, 17
the evidence advanced has been tested and found want
ing. It is found, however, that portions of the brain
vary greatly in different brains and that a very large
number of records must be obtained before the norm
will be found. For the present the crudeness of our
methods will not permit us to determine anatomical
characters due to race, sex, or genius, which if they
exist are completely masked by the large number of
17, In a private letter Dr. Mall authorizes me to interpolate this
word, not included in the original.
38
marked individual variations. The study has been still
further complicated by the personal equation of the in
vestigator. Arguments for difference due to race, sex, or
genius will henceforward need to be based upon new
data, really scientifically treated, and not on the older
statements."
Brain-weight. Just how much significance should be
ascribed to the weight of the brain is by no means certain ;
it is, however, a subject of natural and general interest
upon which statements are not always correct and inter
pretations not always sound. The following nine tables
have been compiled from the latest reliable sources ac
cessible to me. An effort has been made to construct
them so as to tell their own story. The notes and com
ments are numbered to correspond with the lines in each
Table, whether or not the lines are numbered. 18
Upon the present occasion it has been found impracti
cable to take into account several very important quali
fying factors, viz., the absolute and relative size of the
cerebrum alone, the thickness and histologic structure of
the cortex, and the correlations with stature, body-
weight, age, and disease ; these last four topics have been
ably discussed by Donaldson, 1895, 1908, and 1909.
General conclusion. So far as I can determine from
the publications of others and from my own observations,
the utmost that can be said at present is: (i ) The aver
age brain-weight of obscure American Negroes is a little
(about 2 ounces, or 50-60 grams) less than that of
obscure American whites, and (2) With Negroes more
frequently than with whites does there occur prefrontal
deficiency. I Jut (i) Many Negro brains weigh more
than the white average, and many white brains weigh
1 8. The ounce is the avoirdupois, sixteen to the pound, equiva
lent to 28.349 grams; in reducing from one system to the other
the ounce is reckoned as 28.35 Drains. Conversely, 100 grams
equals 3.52 ounces, roughly three and one-half.
39
less than the Negro average; (2) Some white brains
present lateral or ventral depression of the prefrontal
lobe, and some Negro brains do not. As yet there has
been found no constant feature by which the Negro brain
may be certainly distinguished from that of a Caucasian ;
whereas either of them is at once distinguishable from
the brain of an ape, and would be by a dozen or more
points of structure, even if they were of the same size.
For the determination of possible racial peculiarities
larger numbers of brains of both races should be exam
ined with impartiality and by more exact methods. Par
ticularly useful would be the brains of persons of Af
rican descent who have achieved eminence in any respect. 19
Yet, even if it should appear that certain features or
conditions occur more frequently in the Negro, so long
as these conditions are not constant in the Negro and so
long as they sometimes occur with whites, and even with
those who are morally and intellectually superior, the
greater average frequency in the Negro should not be
interpreted to the disadvantage of worthy individuals of
that race.
TABLE I. APPROXIMATE BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SOME ANIMALS
LARGER THAN MAN
Pounds Ounces Grams
Gorilla, the largest ape . . 17 500
Bison, four years old . . 18 529
Some whales 5 80 2265
Rhytina, extinct "sea-cow" 5 79 2242
Elephants 10 160 4500
i. Of five adult male gorillas Turner found (1897, P- 45 1 ) the
largest to have a cranial capacity of 590 cubic centimeters. Em
ploying as the coefficient .87 (stated by Spitzka [1907, p. 218] to
19. Should the Afro-American leaders of to-day bequeath their
brains to some institution that would preserve them properly
and study them fairly and thoroughly the next generation might
find the statistics of brain-weight telling a very different story.
Copies of a "Form of Bequest of Brain" may be obtained from
the writer.
40
be that of Manouvrier), gives as the weight of its brain 513
grams ; but as the average cranial capacity of the five was 494
c.c., the round number, 500, is here provisionally adopted. The
adult male gorilla is estimated by Owen (1868, p. 144) to weigh
nearly 200 pounds, considerably more than the average man.
2. The bison, although young, had probably gained the full
size of both body and brain ; the latter is said by Hrdlicka
( 1 95, P- 98) to have weighed 529 grams, something more than
a pound.
3. From the nature of the case the brains of large cetaceans
have seldom been weighed fresh. According to Bischoff (1880,
p. 23), that of an individual 75 feet long weighed 1942 grams
after hardening in alcohol, and he estimates the fresh weight
as 2816; even if this be excessive the general weight assigned in
our Table is certainly moderate.
4. The Rhytina inhabited the shores of Bering s Strait; it
resembled the manatee, or "sea-cow," but was much larger; no
brain was actually weighed, but Bischoff states (p. 24) that
from a cast of the cranial cavity the weight was estimated by
Brandt at 2242 grams; see also Smith*, p. 347.
5. Like the manatee s, the brain of the rhytina was probably
simple, with large ventricles. But the elephant s brain is
very substantial and richly convoluted. The average weight
of five brains enumerated by Bischoff (p. 23) is 4485 grams,
in round numbers 4500, or nearly ten pounds.
Although three of the above-named animals surpass man in
the absolute weight of the brain, their bodies are so gigantic
that the relative weight falls far below the human, about one
to forty-five ; in this respect, also, man surpasses the bison, the
gorilla, and indeed most animals larger than a cat. But. as
may be seen from the Table in Hrdlicka s paper (1905) the
brain is relatively larger than in man with some small monkeys
(marmosets), with some birds, with several rodents, and with
a shrew-mole. In all these, however, the cerebrum is nearly
or quite devoid of convolutions.
It appears from the above statistics that any statement as to
the comparative brain- weight of animals and man must be ac
companied by several qualifications.
TABLE II. AVERAGE BRAIN-WEIGHTS F<;R CERTAIN RACES, COLIN
TKIES AND STATUS
Number Race
Country
Ounces Grains
i
27
Cauc.
U. S. & Can.
Notable
53
53-25
1510
2
14
"
Gt. Britain
"
52
52.24
1481
3
24
"
U. S.
Soldiers
52
52.06
1475
4
108
"
Various
Notable
52
51-95
H73
5
70
"
**
52
5L92
1472
6
3
Eskimo N. A.
Various
51
51-39
M57
7
20
Cauc.
France
Notable
51-35
M57
8
3
"
Ger. & Aus.
"
51
50.75
M39
9
2,000
(t
Europe
Various
49
49,38
1400
10
51
"
U. S.
Obscure
47
47.26
M4i
it 381 African
Soldiers
47
46.73
1325
12
51
*
* (
Obscure
46
45-57
1292
13
70
"
i(
"
45
45-39
1287
4
10
(<.
Africa
"
43
42.64
1209
i, 2, 4, 5, 7. and 8 are derived from the "List of the brain-
weights of 1 08 notable men" constituting Table I of the paper
(1907) by E. A. Spitzka. 21 In that Table the individuals are
named in the order of their brain-weight, beginning with the
highest. In using it I have found it convenient to number the
individuals, serially, 1-108; then, in a separate column, to pre
fix the numbers under which the cases are discussed at greater
or less length upon pages 107-209. From these fuller accounts,
and with the cooperation of the author were corrected the fol
lowing errors : the brain-weight of E. C. Seguin (40) should
be 1502, not 1505; that of Oliver (65), 1416, not 1418; that of
Agassiz (43), 1514, not 1495, and that of Zeyer (95), 1310, not
1320. It was not noticed at first that No. 31 is Taguchi, a
Japanese anatomist; his brain, however, weighed 1520 grams,
coming thus within the middle fifty of the series and not af
fecting materially the average or the comparison with other
series.
I. These include twenty-five residents of the United States
and two Canadians; from the standpoint of climatic environ
ment there seems to be no reason for separating them. The
superior brain-weight, as compared with the fourteen
Hritish notables, may have accompanied greater stature
and body-weight, as remarked by Hunt (1869, p. 53), in the
case of soldiers of this country and of Europe; but such data
20. The worthy son of an eminent father, E. C. Spitzka ; were
the latter not fully occupied in other directions his knowledge
and his nature (as exemplified in his almost single-handed de
fiance of the c o.r turbac respecting the mental status of the
assassin, Guiteau) would naturally enlist him in behalf of the
still oppressed Afro-American,
42
are not available with these notables. The average brain-
weight of these twenty-seven American notables is nearly iden
tical with that (1513) of the nine eminent Caucasians in Spitzka s
Table A, p. 304.
3. This item is from Hunt. The superior brain-weight may
be compared with that of the obscure whites in line 10.
5. These seventy were chosen by lot for comparison with an
equal number of obscure Negroes in line 13 (from Table VI.).
The 108 serial numbers were written upon small cards together
with the corresponding brain-weights. The cards were shaken
thoroughly in a box. The drawer, blindfolded, drew out seventy,
and their average weight was ascertained; the cards were shaken
a second time and the drawing repeated. The first average was
1481, the second, 1462. The average of the two is 1471.5, tab
ulated as 1472, or 51.9 ounces, nearly identical with that of the
entire 108.
6. These three Eskimo weights, as found, respectively, by
Chudzinski, Hrdlicka, and Spitzka, to be 1398, 1503, and 1470.
are recorded by the last named (1902, p. 31). The average is
interestingly high, and may be correlated with the necessity for
strenuous effort for self-preservation in high latitudes, but the
number is too small for generalization.
9. According to Bean (Century, p. 782, the averages for males
and females were obtained from several sources respecting 4000
European Caucasians; I have assumed that the sexes were equally
represented.
10 and 12. These items are from Bean s Century article, p. 782,
and are presumably based upon his Table I in the A. J. A.
So far as I can judge, in most cases the brains were not weighed
until after they had been subjected to a preservative, either
before or after removal ; see under Table V. Without attempt
ing to account for the sudden drop from the European average
(excepting upon the supposition that the latter included eminent
as well as obscure individuals), Bean s average for the obscure
Africans coincides nearly with that derived from the seventy in
the next line, and as an average may be accepted even if doubt
exists respecting individuals.
II. These 381 Afro-American soldiers are from Hunt, 1869,
p. 51; see Table VII. The higher average, as compared with
the obscure negroes, recalls that of the white soldiers in line 3.
As indicating the selection of individuals more or less superior
as to mental and physical endowment it illustrates the force of
an argument in favor of peace, viz., the undesirability of ex
posing such potentially efficient citizens to wounds and death.
13. These are from Lamb, as stated under Table V.
14. From Waldeyer, 1894, p. 1220; see Table 4. The contrast
between the two averages recalls the possibility of climatic in
fluence as with the 27 North American notables; it is regarded
by Waldeyer (1894, p. 1221) as indicating an interesting and
difficult problem probably involving several factors; he speci-
43
fies only one, viz., the mixture of white blood; but from the
right column of Table 5 it will be seen that the average brain-
weight of the 29 full-blacks is 1283 grams, 74 above that of the
native Africans and only 4 below that of the 70 of all grades.
TABLE III. BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SELECTED INDIVIDUALS OF VARIOUS
RACES, COUNTRIES., AND STATUS
Name; race; country; status Ounces Grams
1 Turgenev ; Russian writer; eminent 71 70.90 2012
2 Negro; nearly white; U. S. ; obscure.... 56 55.97 1587
3 Negro, black ; U. S. ; obscure 55 55.02 1560
4 Kishu ; Eskimo; chief of tribe 53 53.01 1503
5 Native East African 51 51.14 1450
6 Hottentot ; unusually tall 50 50.00 1417
7 J. E. O. ; mathematic teacher ; philosopher 50 49.94 1416
8 G. F. ; black janitor; illiterate 44 44.09 1250
9 Gall ; German phrenologist 42 42.25 1198
10 X. Y. Z. ; jurist, politician; drunkard ... 39 38.90 1103
1 1 Native East African 36 36.40 1030
12 D. L. ; white watchman 24 24.00 680
13 F. W. B. ; congenital idiot 13 12.52 355
1. From Spitzka, head of his Table T.
2. and 3. From Lamb ; see TaHe V.
4. From Hrdlicka and Spitzka; see Table II, 6.
5. From Waldeyer; see Table IV, first entry.
6. From Wyman (1862) ; the man was 5 ft. 5^/2 in. high, un
usual for that race ; I saw him alive and took part in the dis
section.
7. Prof. James Edward Oliver of Cornell University, a pro
found thinker, an enthusiastic teacher, and of the loftiest char
acter. His brain was represented and described by me in 1889
and 1900.
8. George Field; apparently full black; illiterate; janitor of
the Zeta Psi Chapter House at Cornell University ; said to have
been faithful and worthy.
9. From Spitzka s Table I, near foot of list.
10. X. Y. Z., said to have been an able lawyer and successful
politician in a large city; see p. =,/ and fig. 5.
11. See last item of Table IV.
12. So far as known to me this is the smallest brain of a ra
tional man ; it has been kindly loaned to me by Prof. J. H.
Larkin of Columbia University, and will be described at the
coming General Meeting of the American Philosophical Society.
Compare the exceptionally small native African brain men
tioned in the note under Table IV.
13. From Macnamara and Burne, 1903. The brain is said to
have presented ape-like features, but it was unmistakably human.
See also Smith, p. 463.
44
TABLE IV. BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF TEN NEGROES FROM GERMAN
EAST AFRICA (WALDEYER)
Original Original
Number Ounces Grams Number Ounces Grams
12 50.15 1450 6 43.20 1225
10 45.30 1285 8 40.50 1150
4 45.00 1275 3 3970 1125
2 44.10 1250 i 37.10 1050
11 44.10 1250 7 36.40 1030
Average of the ten, 42.64 oz., equals 1209 grams.
These cases are from Waldeyer, 1894. In the originai there
are twelve brains. The weighing was done in Africa by Dr.
Steudel and recorded in grams, here reduced to ounces. Neither
Waldeyer, in publishing the weights, nor Duckworth in quoting
the average (1904, p. 436), seems to have been impressed with
the preponderance of round numbers. Accepting them as given
they have been reduced to ounces, and ten have been rearranged
so as to bring the higher weights above, but retaining the num
bers of the original list. Two have been omitted. No. 5 was
not weighed till after hardening ; the fresh weight was then
computed at 907, markedly below the fresh weights known for
the ten here included. No. 9 was from a youth of 18, dying
of sepsis and greatly emaciated ; the fresh weight is given as
780 grams, reduced to 630 by hardening. The fresh weight is
so low as to suggest subnormal intelligence, perhaps imbecility,
that invalidates comparison with what seem to be representative
individuals ; were these more numerous its inclusion with them
might be warranted, as would be the inclusion of the excep
tionally small brain of "D. L." (Table III, item 12), among
hundreds or thousands of whites. The omission of the two
doubtful cases above mentioned raises the average weight of
these ten native Africans from 1148 to 1209, sixty-one grams
or a little more than two ounces ; but this still leaves consider
able and probably significant margins between it and 1287 for the
obscure Afro-Americans, and 1325 for the United States soldiers
of African descent ; the inclusion of the two doubtful cases
would increase the size of the margins.
45
TABLE V. BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SEVENTY OBSCURE AMERICAN
X ECHOES IN Six GROUTS ACCORDING TO COLOR (LAMB)
Various Sliades
Serial No. Grains
50 1446
62 1432
1261
33
Av. of 3
1 380
Mulatto
83
1446
68
1403
59
1403
42
1361
44
1318
4i
1304
98
1304
32
1261
7i
1247
24
1247
i8
1148
94
IT20
Av. of 12
1297
Light Mulatto
96 1247
36 1191
7 no?
Av. of 3 1181
Nearly White
21 1587
Dark
Mulatto
Serial No.
Grams
Si
1417
52
14.17
88
1375
82
1375
69
1361
73
1361
27
1318
22
1304
87
1304
45
1304
57
1290
23
1290
79
1276
85
1247
49
1247
64
1219
77
1205
51
14
20
Av. Of 22
II9I
Il62
Il62
1134
1 1 2O
1276
Black
Serial No. Grains
1660
89
58
37
55
2521
56
9i
30
2522
43
63
28
66
61
40
2912
84
75
92
93
35
80
29
67
95
17
1661
1560
1530
1502
1502
1417
T395
1375
1361
1361
1350
1332
1332
1304
1276
1276
1261
1261
1219
1219
1191
1191
1191
1162
1148
1077
1063
1063
1040
Av. of 29 1283
In view of the n .rity of available records of the brain-
weights of individual American Negroes I have added to the
65 males in Lamb s series the only other five known to me, viz.,
2912, the illiterate black janitor mentioned under Table III,
and numbers 1660, 1661, 2521, and 2522 of Bean s series; as I
understand his Table I and the statements oh pp. 358-9, these four
are the only ones that were weighed fresh and before the in
jection of a preservative that might affect the weight.
45
TABLE VI. AVERAGE BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SEVENTY OBSCURE
\KGKOF.S IN SlX GROUPS ACCORDING TO COLOR (LAMB)
Averages
Num
ber
Racial Admixture
I
i
Nearly white
2
3
Light mulatto
3
12
Mulatto
4
3
Various shades
22
Dark mulatto
6
- J 9
Black
Ounces
Grams
Totals
56.00
1587
1587
41.65
1181
3543
45-75
1297
15562
48.68
1380
4M9
45-00
1276
28079
45-25
1283
37209
70 Totals 45-39 1287 901 19
4. The few individuals included under this vague title have
been given an intermediate place.
6. The greater brain-weight of the full-blacks than of those
with slight admixture of white blood is interesting and has been
commented upon by others; see Table VII; its cause and signifi
cance are yet to be determined.
TABLE VTI. AVERAGE BRATN-WETGHTS OF 381 UNION SOLDIERS
OF AFRICAN DESCENT (HUNT)
Racial Admixture Ounces
Number
25
47
51
95
22
141
Grams Totals
4 White [quadroon]
[mulatto]
j sambo] . .
49-05
47.07
46.54
46.16
45-18
46.96
1390
J334
1319
1308
1280
1 33 1
34750
6269^
67269
124260
28160
187671
46.73 1325 504808
This is based upon the "Ethnographical Table" of Hunt, 1869,
pp. 40-54. The records were made under the direction of Sur
geon Tra Russell, nth Massachusetts Volunteers, during the
Civil War. The original weights are given in ounces; thc^ re
ductions to grams here offered coincide with those of Work
(1906), p. 27, note). In the Century (1906, p. 782) Bean under
takes to reproduce Hunt s Table, but the average weights are
stated in grams only; for the. three-fourths white his number,
1390, is the same as ours; for the whites (see Table X) his
number is three grams higher, while for all the other grades of
the colored the numbers are three, four or five lower; prob
ably the reductions were made in haste and not verified. The
Century article of Bean (1906) contains (p. 782) an independent
column of weights for several grades of color to which he
refers in the A. J. A., p. 410, as warranting practically the same
conclusions as those of Hunt. See, however, under Tables II
and V.
As to the degrees of racial admixture, in the absence of
statement to the contrary it is assumed that the fractions in
the second column represent declarations as to parentage made
47
by the soldiers and recorded at or subsequent to enlistment.
In estimating the extent of admixture from the degree of color
ation two observers are apt to differ.
TABLE VIII. COMPARISON OF BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF OBSCURE AFRO-
AMERICANS WITH THOSE OF OBSCURE EUROPEANS
Can- Afri-
casians cans
Total number , 559 70
Below the lowest Caucasian, 1018 oo
Above the highest African, nearly white, 1587. . 24
Above the highest black, 1560 29
Approximately equal, within 5 grams 55 55
Unrepresented witnin 5 grams: 1261 (3); 1250
(i); 1247 (4); 1191 (4); 1148 (2); 1105 (i) 15
The Africans are the same seventy as in Tables V and VI.
The Europeans are from the first part of Table I of Bischoff s
series (1880) following p. 171. For fifty-five of the seventy
African weights were found in the European series counter
parts, either exact or differing not more than five grams. Of
the fifteen for which no such approximate counterparts oc
cur in the European series there are three of 1261 grams; one
of 1250; four of 1247; four of 1191; two of 1148, and one of
1105.
This and the following table substantiate the eminently clear
statement of the .case by Prof. Farrand, p. 17.
TABLE IX. NEARLY IDENTICAL BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF 27 NOTABLE
WHITES AND 27 OBSCURE NEGROES SELECTED FROM 108 OF THE
FORMER AND 70 OF THE LATTER; THE HEAVY-FACED NUMBERS
ARE FROM FULL-BLACKS.
Serial Notable
Number Whites
[19 higher]
Obscure Serial Notable Obscure
Negroes Number Whites Negroes
20
23
29
38
40
60
62
64
65
67
72
73
76
83
1590
1560
1530
1503
1502
1445
1437
1418
1416
1415
1403
1403
1395
1374
1587
1560
1530
1502
1502
1446
1432
1417
1417
1417
1403
1403
1395
1375
84
85
86
87
88
91
92
96
97
99
100
101
103
Averages
48
1373 1375
1370 1375
1365 1361
1361 1361
1358 1361
1349 1350
1332 1332
1300 1304
1290 1290
1276 1276
1272 1276
1257 1261
1250 1250
[24 lower]
1390.52 1391.04
This is based upon Spitzka s Table I, "List of brain-weights
of 108 notable Caucasians of various nations," and Bond and
Lamb s list of brain-weights of 65 obscure Afro-Americans plus
the 5 mentioned in connection with Table V. The serial
numbers of the notables are given at the left of each column.
At the head of the first column "19 higher," in brackets, indi
cates that so many notable weights were greater than any of the
obscure; at the foot of the second column "24 lower" indicates
that so many obscure weights were less than the lowest notable.
The gaps in the serial numbers indicate notables for which
there were no approximate counterparts among the obscure.
Of course a natural and fairer comparison would have been
between equal numbers of the same general status; but there
is available to me no such scries of obscure white Americans.
It is not surprising to find that 24 of the obscure Negro brains
are lighter than the lightest of the notables ; that 19 of the latter
are heavier than the heaviest of the former ; or that, among the
higher weights, are omitted more than fifty serial numbers be
cause there were no approximate counterparts among the
Negroes. But surely it is worthy of note that in n cases there
should be absolute equality; that in the remaining 16 the
difference should not exceed 5 grams (one-sixth of an ounce). ;
that the excess should be so evenly distributed that the averages
are practically identical ; and that of these 27 obscure men of
African descent whose brains approximately equalled in weight
those of 27 notable whites, 16, more than half, were full-blacks.
TABLE X. SOME STATISTICS OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH REGIMENT OF
MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, COLORED; THE COM
MISSIONED OFFICERS WERE WHITE; ONE, GEORGE T. GARRISON,
WAS A SON OF HIM WHOM GoLDWIN SMITH (1892) CALLED
A "MORAL CRUSADER "
980 Total number of enlisted men
430 Mixed blood
550 Apparently pure black
247 Had been slaves
319 Could read and write
477 Could read only
184 Could neither read nor write
52 Were church-members
219 Were married
112 Died from disease
54 Killed in action or died from wounds
49
TABLE XI. ABRIDGED RECORD OF THE ENLISTED MEN OF THE
FIFTY-FIFTH MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, COLORED.
1863 Jan. 26. Authority of Secretary of War for enlistment on
same terms as white soldiers, $13.00 per month, plus
$3.00 allowance for clothing
May 12, Enrolment began
July 25, Service in South began
Nov. 28, Refused $10.00 per month, pay of laborers, less
$3.00 for clothing
December, Refused balance, $6.00, from Massachusetts
1864 Persistent refusal of lower pay
June 18, One shot for resisting officer
July 2, "Rivers Causeway," took initiative in action; out of
about 350, 7 killed and 19 wounded
Oct. 7, First payment, after more than 14 months
October, Celebration decorous; all loans repaid; by Adams
Express alone, over $60,000.00 to families
Nov. 30, "Honey Hill"; out of about 360 engaged, 32
killed and 88 wounded
1865, Sept. 23, Mustered out
American Negroes in the Civil War
I was asked to speak of the brain, and was also told
that I might emphasize my opinion of the African race
by a few words upon a different subject. It was my good
fortune to enter the medical service of the army in
July, 1862, and to be commissioned in the spring of 1863
as one of the medical staff of the Fifty-fifth Massachu
setts Infantry (colored) ; see Tables X and XL
I think the youths of to-day, white or black, do not
realize under what circumstances those two regiments,
the Fifty-fifth and the Fifty-fourth, went into the field.
They went not only against the prejudice of the commun
ity and the indifference of the government, but in the face
of Confederate declarations to the effect that if captured
they should be treated as runaway slaves. 21 The situation
is outlined in the following extract from Col. Henry Lee s
"Shaw Monument Address," 1897, PP- 58-59-
"No one can appreciate the heroism of the officers
and soldiers [of the colored Massachusetts regiments]
without adding to the savage threats of the enemy the
50
disapprobation of friends, the antipathy of the army,
the sneers of the multitude here; without reckoning
the fire in the rear as well as the fire in front. One
must have the highest form of courage not to shrink
from such dismaying solitude."
The composition and record of the Fifty-fifth are
indicated in Tables X and IX, below.
After our regiment had been arduously engaged in
the siege of Charleston, S. C, in the summer of 63, for
some months, the paymaster appeared with orders to
pay the enlisted men ten dollars a month, the wage of
laborers, less three dollars a month for clothing! 22
The Fifty-fourth and the Fifty-fifth had been enlisted
in Massachusetts under orders of the Secretary of War.
which are on record, and under authority from Governor
Andrew, and with the full understanding upon the part
of everyone concerned in Massachusetts, and with the
understanding of the men themselves, that they were
to be treated in every respect like white troops, the pay
of which was thirteen dollars besides the regular uni
form. The men consulted and decided that they would
not accept ten dollars a month. That was on the 28th
of November.
21. The actual treatment of colored prisoners is described by
Emilio, "Appendix." For various official Confederate utter
ances see "War Records," vol. 22, p. 965; Serial No. 117, p. 946,
and Serial No. 118, p. 940; the last is a joint resolution of the
Confederate Congress, May I, 1863, to the effect that the white
officers of colored troops should be put to death; this threat
was never carried out. h>ee also extracts in The Nation, Sep
tember 28, 1899, p. 241.
22. For various accounts of the matter of the pay of these and
other colored troops see Fox (1868), Emilio (1894), Hallowell
(1897), Lee and Kennard (1897), Pearson (1904, vol. 2, pp. 94-
120), and my Garrison address (1905). So moderate a man as
Jeffries Wyman whose most violent expletive, "By George,"
was heard by me only once wrote me as follows under date of
May 26, 1864 : "All you say about the pay of the soldiers puts
the Government in a very shabby light ; its members are dis
gracing themselves in the eyes of the world."
51
In December, knowing the circumstances, knowing
that a goo;l many of them were without other means,
that some were married, and that others had mothers
or fathers or friends that they wished to help the
Legislature of Massachusetts passed a law to the effect
that provisionally the state should make up the differ
ence between what was offered by the United States and
what the men felt they had a right to receive.
The State Commissioners and the officers of the regi
ment urged the men to accept this as a compromise for
the sake of their families. Again they met and con
sulted and decided, almost unanimously, that they would
net take the money. They said, "We have not enlisted
in this war for pay ; we are here to fight for our coun
try and for the honor of our race, and we will take
nothing until the United States government pays what i^
our due, and what we were promised when we enlisted."
Months passed. The men continued to work, to
watch, to fight and to wait for justice.
In the meantime a few of them had lost control of
themselves some of us whites lose control of our
selves ami one resisted an officer. For his offense I
saw that man shot. The government that could not
find law to pay him otherwise than as a laborer could
nevertheless find law to shoot him as a soldier.
During this payless period both regiments had fought
bravely. The attack of the Fifty- fourth upon Fort
Wagner (see Fmilio, Hallowell, Lee and Kennard)
could not be surpassed for heroism. Col. Shaw and the
other officers gallantly led and were as gallantly sup
ported by the enlisted men.
If it be said, Negro soldiers merely follow their offi
cers and do what they are told, I reply that on one
occasion 23 when our officers suppose:! the order was to
23. At Rivers Causeway, James Island, near Charleston, S. C..
(July 2, 1864,), as described by Fox (1868, pp. 29-32) and myself
52
retire, the enlisted men rushed forward, captured two
field-pieces, and fired them upon the retreating foe. If,
again, it be said, it is natural for the male animal to
fight, and physical courage is shared with the brutes;
then I reply that these men displayed moral courage and
self-restraint under the very trying conditions described
above in respect to their pay. Nor was this all. When
at last the United States government came to its senses ;
when at last it decided to do justice, fourteen months
after their service began, 24 then these men received their
money, and they had a celebration not nearly as boister
ous as that in a college town after the victory of an
athletic team.
To refute the declaration that the Negro, when he
gets his money, squanders it, I add that out of that first
payment to the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts there was sent
home to the wives and families and friends in Massa
chusetts by the Adams Express Company alone not
counting other express companies, and other means of
conveyance there was sent home by these soldiers,
majiy of whom had been slaves, $60,000 ! 25
Xor is this all. Some months earlier, at the urgent
request of the soldiers, the officers had received their
pay. Then we had loaned various sums to them, and
out of what had been loaned during that year and a quar
ter by the officers, in sums ranging anywhere from fifty-
dollars down to twenty-five cents, there is not on record
or in recollection a single instance in which payment was
not made and made promptly. I will not say what white
soldiers would have done under similar circumstances.
Hut could they have behaved any better ?
(1906, p. 24). A comparable action of white enlisted men is
said to have occurred at Missionary Ridge.
24. With the Fifty-fourth the service in the field began two
months earlier.
25. See Fox (1868, n. 37) J niy letter of Oct. 16, 1864, says $65,-
ooo.oo, but Fox is probably correct.
53
Being myself merely a student of natural history, I have
appealed to several professors of wnnatural history, and
have failed as yet to learn that, taking into account all the
circumstances of the payment of the two colored Massa
chusetts regiments, there has ever been a finer example
of self-renunciation and sacrifice for the sake of what
was regarded as a principle. 20
Shall we now deny civil and political rights, and educa
tional and industrial opportunities, to men merely be
cause they are black, because the average weight of their
brains is a little less, and because a certain region of the
brain may be more frequently less developed, when two
4 housand of their fellows, nearly half a century ago.
could manifest not merely the highest kind of physical
courage, but as high a kind of moral courage, as has
been chronicled in the history of the world?
26. Should the writer be spared until other conditions permit
he will regard it as a sacred duty to put in a form accessible
to others his observations and impressions of the military and
personal conduct of the members of the Fifty-fifth Massachu
setts as recorded in daily letters, all of which have been pre
served.
Fig. i, No. 322, Obscure Mulatto.
Fig. 2, No. 965, White Murderer, Ruloff.
The specimens represented above were photographed together
and reduced to a little less than one-third natural size. They
are the "skull-caps" (calvas or calvaria), as sawn off the top
of the skull for the removal of the brain. That of the mulatto
was cut at a lower level than the other ; had the latter been
sawn at the same level some portions of the cut edges might not
have been quite so wide, but the rest of the skull was not pre
served and the question cannot be settled ; even allowing for
this the white skull is much thicker than the mulatto; both are
exceptional; see p. 34.
As remarked by Huxley in the passage quoted on p. 23, the
African skull is usually narrow, and^the one figured above may
be fairly representative ; the Caucasian skull seems to me un
usually short and rounded. In the latter the small hole at
either side is artificial. In Fig. I, at the upper end. corre
sponding with the forehead, are seen the slight frontal sinuses
between the inner and outer tables of the skull; they do not
appear in the other skull, but may have existed at a lower level.
55
Fig. 3, No. 322, Obscure Mulatto.
Fig. 4, White Philosopher and Mathematician, Chauncey
Wright.
Dorsal (upper) aspects of two cerebral hemispheres, photo
graphed together so as to be a little less than one-half natural
size. With both there is an unusual simplicity of the fissures
and the intervening gyres (convolutions), as mentioned on p. 34.
The more common conditions appear in Fig. 5.
The mulatto brain was hardened in the skull and hence re
tains its original form. That of Wright evidently underwent
some distortion after removal, but as appears when viewed
at a different angle the front (upper, in cut) end was unusually
square. The mulatto brain was not weighed fresh ; Wright s
weighed 1516 grams, 53.50 ounces.
Both brains present fissural peculiarities which are discussed in
my "Handbook article, Figs. 762 et seq., and Fig. 770. In Fig.
4 the Central fissure is interrupted by an isthmus marked by a
black x ; in Fig. 3 the continuous fissure passes behind the two
similar marks and the paper strip bearing the number.
56
p
Fig. 5. The continuous black line is the outline of the left
cerebral hemisphere of No. 3652; the interrupted line is the out
line of the right hemisphere of No. 2912. They were photo
graphed together so as to be about one-third natural size. On
2912 the Central fissure is marked C; on 3652 its course is shown
by the undulating black line ; the shorter line at the lower margin
represents part of the Sylvian fissure.
These are the opposite halves of the cerebrums of two
very unlike persons. The right half is from G. F., an illiterate
black janitor. The left from a white jurist and politician. As
an ally of Tammany Hall he probably condoned, if he did not
encourage, the race riots in this city in the spring of 1863 when
the first northern colored troops enlisted in spite of Democratic
opposition. If so, we may charitably ascribe his conduct to
sharing the general belief that every Negro s brain is so small
as to unfit him for citizenship or even for military service. ; Yet
the brain of the black janiter weighed 5 ounces more than that
of the white jurist (Table 3), and now, when the left half of the
latter is held against the right half of the former so that the
lower margins coincide, at nearly all other points the black s
outline may be seen beyond the white s. Let us hope that
X. Y. Z. now rejoices that at least one of the blunders of his
^ fe has been rectified after his death.
57
Fig. 7
No. 3564
Orang
Fig. 6
No. 3557
Baboon.
All about two-thirds natural size.
58
Fig. 9, No. 3334, White Philosopher and Mathematician.
This and the figures on the opposite page are from photo
graphs of blackboard diagrams (themselves based on photo
graphs) of the left cerebral hemispheres, reduced to about two-
thirds natural size. The Sylvian fissure is named on all; the
upper end of the Central is indicated by C; the O indicates the
location of the Occipital fissure, most of which is on the mesal
(median or inner) aspect. There is an obvious community of
general pattern of fissuration, by which any of them would be
recognized as a primate rather than a dog, sheep, or other
mammal. The orang was unusually intelligent, and the baboon
was highly trained in a show. The black was the illiterate
janitor, G. R, mentioned on .p. 34; he and the white philos
opher are included in Table III. The two present individual
differences of fissuration, such as might occur between two
whites or two blacks, but no racial differences recognized by me.
Transactions of the frontal lobes are represented in Figs. 10
and ii.
59
Upright
Jurists
Unscrupulous
Orang
Baboon
Fig. 10. Transactions of the frontal lobes of a baboon, No.
3557, an orang, No. 3564, an "upright judge," No. 2870, and
an unscrupulous, intemperate jurist-politician, No. 3652. These
specimens and the four represented on the opposite page were
prepared in the same manner as described on p. 36 and photo
graphed all together so as to be. reduced in the same degree to
about five-sevenths of the natural size.
The sections of the orang and the baboon (both unusually in
telligent individuals) display decided inferiority as to both form
and extent. Between the two jurists there is little difference,
but what there is seems to favor him of the higher character
and greater self-control (2870).
60
Mulatto thief
White murderer
Black janitor White philosopher
Fig. ii. With the white philosopher (3334) and the illiterate
black janitor (2912) the ventral excavation is nearly equal, inn
the latter presents a dorso-lateral flattening that is wholly absent
from the former.
The white murderer (3335) equals the other three whites in
form and surpasses them in area. There is a slight ventral
concavity which does not appear at all in the mulatto thief
(3118) ; in the latter, moreover, the slight dorsal concavity is
deceptive, and due to the breaking off of a slightly attached
piece ; the natural outline at that point is rounded.
For general commentary see p. 37.
61
Fig. 12. .Transaction of Cat s Brain, enlarged. This and
Fig. 13 on the opposite page are to be considered together. Both
are from drawings kindly loaned by Spitzka; similar reproduc
tions form part of Plate XVI of his paper, 1907. They are semi-
diagrammatic representations of the main features of the two
cerebrums when cut across at nearly the same level. The meson
(middle plane) corresponds with the cleft nearer the right of
each figure, most of that half being omitted to save space. The
two are represented as of the same size. The darker marginal
zone represents the cortex; this and the other dark areas are
cinerea or gray matter, composed in part of nerve-cells ; the
light areas represent alba, composed of nerve-fibers. The black
lines in the ahba indicate the general direction of the fibers. The
callosum (indicated by C on Fig. 12) is a thick oheet of fibers
connecting the two cerebral hemispheres at the bottom of the
mesal cleft.
6s
Fig. 13. Transection of Human Brain, reduced. For the
general features see the description of Fig. 12.
Contrary to the general impression the human brain has a
relatively larger amount of the alba (white matter) composed of
fibers connecting (a) the cerebral cortex with the lower parts
of the brain and so, indirectly, with the body; (b) the right and
left hemispheres, the callosum; (c) the several portions of the
same hemisphere, the association fibers; p. 34. Man s su
periority is supposed to be correlated with the development of
these association fibers and of the cortical areas \vith which
they are connected. Spitzka found the callosum unusually large
in an eminent naturalist, Joseph Leidy, and thinks there is evi
dence of correlation in this respect as between individuals and
perhaps races.
63
List of Publications Referred to
Bean, R. B., 1906. The Negro brain. The Century, Septem
ber, 1906, pp. 778-784, with map, figures and tables. (Unless
otherwise indicated by A. J. A. this article will be understood
as referred to since it is the more likely to be accessible to
readers of the present publication.)
1906. Some racial peculiarities of the Xegro brain.
American Journal of Anatomy, vol. 5, No. 4, September, 1906.
Pp- 353~43 2 with many tables, charts, and figures.
Bischoff, T. L. W. v., 1880. Das Hirngewicht des Menschen.
O., pp. 171, with about as many pages of Tables.
Boas, F., 1906. Commencement Address at Atlanta Univer
sity, May 31, 1906. Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19.
Carnegie, Andrew, 1908. Scotch and Negro Progress Weigh
e:l. Remarks, as reported in the New York Tribune, December
20, 1908.
Donaldson, H. H., 1895. The- growth of the brain. Con
temporary Science Series, O., pp. 374. London.
1908. The weight of the brain as modified by nutrition
and disease. Read before the American Neurological Associa
tion. May, 1908. (Manuscript copy.)
1909. Some conditions modifying the interpretation of hu
man brain-weight records. Read at the General Meeting of the
American Philosophical Society, April 23, 1909. (Manuscript
copy. )
Emilio, L. K, 1894. A Brave Black Regiment. History of
the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865.
Second ed., O., pp. 452, portraits and maps. Boston.
Fox, C. B., 1868. Record of the service of the Fifty-fifth
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Privately printed by the
Regimental Association, Cambridge. O., pp. 194, 1868.
Hallowell, N. P., 1897. The Negro as a Soldier in the War
of the Rebellion. Read before the Military Historical Society
of Massachusetts, Jan. 5, 1892. O., pp. 29, Boston, 1897.
Hasskarl, G. C. H., 1898. The Missing Link, or the Negro s
Ethnological Status. D., pp. 176. Reprinted from the East
ern Lutheran. Published by the author, Philadelphia.
Hrdlicka, Ales, 1905. Brain-weight in vertebrates. O., pp.
89-112. Reprinted from Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections,
Quarterly Issue, vol. 48.
Hunt, San ford B., 1867, 1869. The Negro as a soldier. Jour
nal of Psychological Medicine and Jurisprudence, October, 1867,
p. 182. Also in the Anthropological Review^ vol. 7, pp. 40-54,
January, 1867. [From the footnote to p. 40 it may be inferred
that this paper was printed originally as a report to the U. S.
Sanitary Commission, but I have been unable to locate it
among its publications.]
Huxley, T. H., 1865. Emancipation, black and white. Col
lected Essays, vol. 3, Science and Education, 1894, pp. 66-75.
On the African Negro. Methods and Results of
Ethnology, Essays, vol. VII, 233.
Laboulbene, 1849. Comptcs Rendus des Seances et Memoires
de la Societc de Biologic dc Paris, p. 6.
Lamb, D. S., 1894. Some brain-weights in the Negro race.
American Anthropologist, N. S., vol. 6, pp. 364-366. For
original records of 1865-6, see under Table V, supra.
Lee, H., and Kennard, M. P., Committee, 1897. The Monu
ment to Robert Gould Shaw. Q., pp. 98, Boston.
Macnamara, N. C, and Burne, R. H., 1903. The Cerebrum
of a Microcephalic Idiot. Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,
N. S., vol. 17, pp. 258-265, 6 figures.
Macnamara, N. C., 1908. Human speech. The International
Scientific Series, vol. XCV. O., pp. 284. London.
Mall, F. P., 1909. On Several Anatomical Characters of the
Human Brain, said to Varv According to Race and Sex, with
especial reference to the Frontal Lobe. American Journal of
Anatomy, vol. IX., 1-32, February, 1909.
Owen, R., 1868. On the Anatomy of Vertebrates, vol. 3, O.,
pp. 915.
Pearson, H. G., 1904. The life of John A. Andrew, Gover
nor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865. O., 2 vols. Boston and New
York.
Smith, Goldwin, 1892. The Moral Crusader, William Lloyd
Garrison. D., pp. 190, Toronto.
Smith, G. Elliott, 1902. Descriptions of the Brains of Verte
brates in vol. 2 of the Physiological Catalogue of the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 1902.
Spitzka, E. A., 1902. Contributions to the Encephalic Anato
my of the Races; First paper; Three Eskimo brains. American
Journal of Anatomy, vol. 2, pp. 25-71.
1903. Brain-weights of Animals with special Reference to
the Weight of the Brain in the Macaque Monkey. Jour, of
Comp. Neurology, vol. 13, pp. 9-17, 1903.
1907. A Study of the Brains of Six Eminent Scientists
and Scholars, etc. Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, N. S., vol. 21, part 3. Philadelphia.
Turner, Sir William, 1897. Some Distinctive Characters of
the Human Structure. Address before the Anthropological
Section of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science. Abstract in Britisli Medical Journal, August 2ist,
1897, PP- 450-453-
65
Waldeyer, 1894. Ueber einige anthropologisch bemerkens-
werthe Befunde an Negerhirnen. Berlin Akad. d. Wissenschaften,
Sistungsberichte, 1894, Band II, pp. 1213-1221.
Wilder, B. G., 1885. On Two Little-known Cerebral Fissures,
with Suggestions as to Fissural and Gyral Names. Amer.
Neurol. Asso., Transactions. Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease, vol. 12.
1889. Article, Brain, Gross or Macroscopic anatomy. Buck s
Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences, vol. 8, pp. 107-
164; also vol. 9, pp. 99-110. Second edition, vol. 2, pp. 136-218,
1900.
1905. Two examples of the Negro s Courage, Physical
and Moral. Address at the Garrison Centenary, Dec. 10, 1905.
Alexander s Magazine, January and February. 1906. See also
the Sunday News, Charleston, S. C, Dec. 7, 1902.
1907. The Educational Uses of Sharks and Rays, especial
ly the Acanth Shark. Proceedings of the I2th annual meeting of
the New York State Science Teachers Association, Bulletin of
the University of the State of New York, No. 431, 1907, pp.
95-96. (This refers to my previous papers on the same sub
ject.)
Woodworth, B. S., 1909. Racial Differences in Mental Traits.
Address before the Section in Anthropology and Psychology,
American Association Adv. Science, 1909. Science, February
4, 1910. 171-186.
Work, M. N., 1906. The Negro Brain. Article 3 of "The
Health and Physique of the Negro American." The Atlanta
University Publications, No. n, 1906. Pp. 24-27. W. E. B.
DuBois, Editor.
Wyman, Jeffries, 1847. Osteology of the Gorilla. Part of a
paper by Savage and himself. Boston Society of Natural His
tory, Proceedings, Aug. i8th. Boston Journal of Natural His
tory, vol. 5, part 4, pp. 417-442. [Of this very important memoir
some reprints were made for the author in quarto form ; for
information as to the whereabouts of such the present writer
will be grateful.]
1868. Observations on Crania. Boston Society of Natural
History, Proceedings, vol. n, 1868, pp. 440-462.
1862. Account of the dissection of a Hottentot. Boston
Society of Natural History, Proceedings, April 2, 1862, vol. 9,
PP- 56-57; also pp. 352-357, and Anthropological Rei iew, III,
330-335-
66.
Address of
Edwin R. A. Seligman
Professor of Political Economy
at
Columbia University
As one of the advocates of that unnatural science of
which we have just heard, 1 desire to say a word only
as to the phase of the subject which falls directly within
my own sphere, that is, of economics an.l social science.
If there is anything that has been brought out in the
papers this morning, I think it is the keen realization of
the fact that we must indeed not overlook the forces of
heredity or disparage them. After all, the controlling,
the really important point to the student of social evolu
tion is the fact of social environment. We may take a
leaf out of the book of that great wizard of California,
Mr. Burbank, who has shown us how in the course
of several generations the character of a plant can be so
completely changed that we will have a new genus. Any
one who has given much study to the forces of asso
ciation, and especially of economic progress, must realize
that within a space of a very few generations we find
the most profound alterations in what seems to be
the very texture of human life.
While I do not wish to range through the whole field
of social life, I desire to call attention to the fact that
amid all the other important forces at work, the economic
67
consideration is the one which is receiving far more at
tention to-day than it ever did before. And therein
lie the hope and the potency of the future. It is just
because the economic environment is changing, just
because there is a hope in the future of such funda
mental alterations in the environment of the American
Negro, that we can look forward with confidence to a
point yet to come. At the same time I desire to empha
size in the few words I have to say, one scientific con
clusion : the necessity of distinguishing between the
individual and the group and the danger of making
unduly broad generalizations. What we need above all
in social life is to be able to distinguish in our attitude
to our fellows, between the individual and the group.
As a member of a race which has also borne hard
ships, I wish to call attention to this particular fact : It is
often said of the Jews that they run through the whole
gamut of society; they have both the Jesus type and the
Shylock type, coming from one and the same race. Now
the trouble with the Negro is that the ordinary man con
siders only the Shylock type, if there is a man that cor
responds to the Shylock type, and that we have not yet
learned to appreciate the Jesus type. To me there is
nothing more tragic in the whole of human experience
than the lot of that American Negro, cultivated, refined
gentleman, who at the same time is thrown into the cal
dron and fused with a mass of his unhappy and more
unfortunate brethren. The scientific man, of course,
knows no prejudice. I say that, and yet I remember
that when I was a student at a German university,
shortly after the Franco-Prussian war, there was a strain
for some time between the French and the Germans,
which shows of course that we- are first human and
secondly scientific. But at least it may be said that the
more scientific we are, the less prejudice we have.
68
The great advantage of a meeting like this and the
great benefit of all knowledge and of all science, is that
it tends gradually to enable the ordinary man to distin
guish between the individual and the group. That
see mVto me to be the real hope for the future, because
after all, we can expect to see the elevation of the great
mass come about only very, very slowly. The great
mass of any nation to-day is very little different from
the great mass of people thousands and thousands of
years ago. It is the great man, it is the sport or freak,
of whom the naturalists tell us, who gradually by his own
influence, by his own great personality and example, is
able slowly to mold and to change these general forces.
As regards the general forces, you must not be misled
even if you look at the economic point of view. My own
conviction is that things are going to get worse before
they get better in this country, so far as the Negro ques
tion is concerned, simply because of the exceeding diffi
culty of bringing to bear the forces of science upon popu
lar imagination. I do not share the pessimistic view, be
cause my view is not pessimistic. But it is nonetheless
true that certain economic conditions are now at work
in the South which are temporarily going to make
things worse. It is because the "poor white trash,"
as he is called, the ordinary white man, is now
coming to his own in the South, that the economic
competition and the economic pressure are going to be
felt more severely than before. And the hope we have
of the future is that slowly and gradually the great men
both the white and the black that those great men will
utilize all the forces of science and all the forces of the
higher ethics, and will gradually bring to bear upon this
larger mass that environs us all, an appreciation of the
more human and the more scientific aspect of the case.
Therefore, gentlemen, let us not be mistaken; let us be
69
prepared to face the future as it comes; but let us be
prepared also to put up a good fight.
By that I do not mean to say that I have not
the utmost sympathy with our friends of the South,
both white and black. The human race is about the same
all over. We are all, so far as we are not suffused with
the scientific instinct, full of prejudice. Put yourselves,
the Negro man and woman, into the conditions in which
the white man and woman are, and many of you would
feel about the whole subject as they do. We have a com
paratively easy time in the North. We have not the great
temptations to meet. We must not be too harsh in our
judgments. But what we must always do is to hold forth
and emblazon on our banner the scientific aspect of the
question and then there can be only one answer.
That being true, I say there is call for two qualities
on the part of the rank and file, as well as among the
leaders, of the Negro race the quality of patience,
of recognizing that mankind moves very slowly,
and that prejudice gives way to science still more slow
ly; but on the other hand, the fervent hope and the con
fident expectation that in the long run, and in the not too
long run, the forces of science and the ethical forces,
which after all are deep down in the heart of every one
of us, white and black that those forces will continue
to grow in their influence and finally achieve their
desired and deserved success.
Address of
John Dewey
Professor of Philosophy
Columbia University
The ground has already been so well covered in the
matter of this scientific discussion, that I shall de
tain you but a moment or two, in fact I should not have
appeared at all, were it not that it gave me the oppor
tunity to express my sympathy with the purpose of this
gathering and to give myself that privilege, I venture to
detain you for these very few moments. One point that
has been made on the scientific side, might perhaps be
emphasized, namely with reference to the doctrine of
heredity.
It was for a long time the assumption an assumption
because there was no evidence or consideration of evi
dence that acquired characteristics of heredity, in other
words capacities which the individual acquired through
his home life and training, modified the stock that was
handed down. Now the whole tendency of biological
science at the present time is to make it reasonably cer
tain that the characteristics which the individual acquired
are not transmissible, or if they are transmissible, then
in such a small degree as to be comparatively and rela
tively negligible. At first sight this taken by itself may
seem to be a disappointing and discouraging doctrine,
that what one individual attains by his own effort and
training, does not modify the level from which the next
generation then starts. But we have put over against
that this other point that has been made with reference
to social heredity, and the fact that there is a great dif
ference between mental culture from the standpoint of
the individual and mental culture from the standpoint of
society.
This doctrine that acquired characteristics are not trans
mitted becomes a very encouraging doctrine because it
means, so far as individuals are concerned, that they have
a full, fair and free social opportunity. Each generation
biologically commences over again very much on the
level of the individuals of the past generation, or a few
generations gone by. In other words, there is no "in
ferior race," and the members of a race so-called should
each have the same opportunities of social environment
and personality as those of a more favored race. Those in
dividuals start practically to-day, where the members of
the more favored race start again as individuals, and if
they have more drawbacks to advance, they lie upon the
side of their surrounding opportunities, the opportunities
in education, not merely of school education but of
that education which comes from vocation, from work
responsibilities, from industrial and social responsibilities,
p.nd so on. It is therefore the responsibility of society as
a whole, conceived from a strictly scientific standpoint
leaving out all sentimental and all moral considerations
it is the business of society as a whole to-day, to see to
it that the environment is provided which will utilize all
of the individual capital that is being born into it.
For if these race differences are, as has been pointed
out, comparatively slight, individual differences are very
great. All points of skill- are represented in every race,
from the inferior individual to the superior individual,
and a society that does not furnish the environment and
72
education and the opportunity of all kinds which will
bring out and make effective the superior ability wherever
it is born, is not merely doing an injustice to that particu
lar race and to those particular individuals, but it is doing
an injustice to itself for it is depriving itself of just that
much of social capital.
72
Afternoon Session, May 31
Celia Parker Woolley, Chairman
RACE RECONCILIATION
Celia Parker Woolley
Head-worker Frederick Douglass Centre
Chicago
The color problem does not pertain to this country
alone, still less to a particular section of the country. The
cry so often heard, "This is a southern problem," "The
South alone understands the Negro," "Leave this matter
to us" is but a repetition of the old cry which we heard
before the war. The same human passion and sectional
pride, the same sense of special ownership and right of
final appeal inspires the later as the earlier cry. The color
question is a national problem, it is a question of repub
lican faith and well-being. Its just settlement is a mat
ter of national honor and moral consistency. If the
Negro is a citizen of these United States then his safety
and welfare should be as much a matter of patriotic con
cern in Massachusetts and Illinois as in Mississippi and
Alabama. Sectional feeling has no place in the settle
ment of this problem any more than in questions of the
tariff and railway control.
We know what the situation is in India and South
Africa, in the Philippines and on the California coast.
Everywhere the dark-skinned man is coming to the
74
front, claiming his share in the great comprehensive boon
of civilization, with all it holds or implies of material
benefit, of individual opportunity, of intellectual gain and
social partnership in the common task of building a race
that is only incidentally white or black, Oriental or Occi
dental, Teutonic, Asiatic or Negroid, but first and mainly
human. Had we a tithe of the faith and courage which
our political and religious professions are supposed to
bestow we should recognize in this race or color question
but one more demand for those manhood rights which we
pretend to grant to all alike, one more application, in a
case of special urgency and need which should win in
stant response, of that religion of reason and righteous
ness which we profess.
It is not the Negro who is at stake in this controversy,
deep and widespread as are his wrongs. It is the white
man, the white man s civilization, the white man s repub
lic. It is not a question of Negro supremacy, but of the
worth of those claims to superiority which are so easily
alarmed for their own safety and continuance. It is not
a question of the black man s political enfranchisement,
important and just as this phase of the question is. The
Negro can better afford to lose his vote than the white
man can afford to deprive him of it. The main question
underlying this and all our social problems the woman
question, the labor question, and a host of minor prob
lems is one that casts doubt on all our high professions
of democracy and humanity. What is our republic
worth ? How long and in what fashion will it continue
to exist? What is our Christianity worth? Whence do
we derive it, from the Sermon on the Mount or from
those notions of hierarchy and social separation which
the church as an institution condones and fosters?
The present greatest need of the Negro in this coun
try is the discriminating friendship of the white man.
75
The Negro suffers from a wholesale judgment that makes
no distinctions or exceptions. It is only the Negro as
cook or butler, waiter or porter, whom the average white
man knows and takes into account. What a commen
tary on our Americanism is that state of mind which de
crees an entire class or portion of the state and com
munity to a position of fixed inferiority. The crux of
the race question lies not at all in any feeling we may
have, favorable or unfavorable, towards the colored cook
or butler. It is not the class to which these belong that
suffers most from race prejudice, but the colored man
and woman who has risen far above the position of
menial service, necessary and honorable as this may be.
It is the educated man who through hardship and sacri
fice, such as in any other case than the American Negro s
would have won for him friendly recognition and re
ward, finds himself in spite of all his efforts still subject
to the same popular disfavor, the same restrictions as
before.
I do not forget the Negro s share of responsibility for
the situation from which he and we suffer. I do not for
get the mass of black idleness, ignorance and vice with
which the social reformer must deal. The Negro has
accomplished marvels for himself in many cases of in
dividual worth and attainment, signalized in names like
Washington, Du Bois, Kelly Miller, Scarborough, Keal-
ing, the Grimke brothers, but no one knows so well as
these how deep and dire, how constant and pressing are
the needs in the lower stratum of Negro life, not in the
South alone but in the large cities of the North.
We are in less danger to-day from the crass barbari
ties of the Tillmans, the Dixons and the Vardamans than
from the super-refined and highly intellectualized utter
ances of certain distinguished scholars. When Senator
Tillman accidentally runs across Booker Washington in
76
the White House and, having never before seen the dis
tinguished man of color, improves the occasion to look
him over carefully, arid says to a waiting reporter after
wards, "He has white blood in him," we only smile with
amusement, and comfort ourselves with the reflection
that if Mr. Tillman represents the type that is purely
white we have reason to be thankful for the mixture of
blood currents in the veins of his dark-skinned com
patriot.
But when the venerable leader of our most dis
tinguished seat of learning, founded on Pilgrim faith
and love of liberty, speaks with unqualified condemna
tion of race unions of every kind and degree, even be
tween separate families of the same race household, as
the English and the Scandinavian, we are in truth griev
ed and discouraged. But we are at the same time thank
ful that men like Frederick Douglass and Booker Wash
ington were luckily born and given to the world before
the monstrous evil of their mixed race inheritance was
discovered.
If race mixture, particularly the mixture of black and
white, is of such injurious effect, let us address our argu
ments and appeals, our warnings and rebukes, to the
guilty party the white man of the South and of the
North, Let us attach the crime and the crime s punish
ment to the sinning factor, and not darken innocent lives
and increase ill-doing, punishing the guiltless progeny of
such unions. The attitude of the average mind, learned
or unlearned, on this phase of the question is as shame
less as it is cruel, in its open connivance at crime and so
cial misdoing The majority of people care very little
about race mixture so long as it keeps itself safe from
polite observation under the dark cloak of illicit prac
tices. It is only when seeking to lift itself from the
level of passion and shield itself in honest marriage,
graced and upheld by the moralities and amenities of the
77
home, that the sense of moral outrage is aroused. A
strange anomaly.
This Race Conference meets at a timely hour and it
should be the beginning of a permanent organization, with
branches in every large center, whose work is to complete
the upbuilding of the republic, to make good our pro
fessions of human brotherhood. Its aim must be two
fold, to arouse the sense of responsibility among the
more privileged and powerful, where social favor and
opportunity are found on the white man s side. Its
work for the black man is to help and encourage in all
ways which conduce to a high and self-respecting, self-
sustaining type of manhood.
POLITICS AND INDUSTRY
W. E. B. DuBois
Professor of Economics and History
Atlanta University
Atlanta, Georgia
In discussing Negro suffrage we must remember that
in the three hundred years between the settlement of
this country and the present, there never has been a time
when it was not legal for a Negro to vote in some con
siderable part of this land. From 1700 to 1909 Negroes
have probably cast their ballots at some time in every
single state of the Union, and all the time in some states
and there has been no period in the history of the land
when all Negroes were disfranchised. The early move
ment for disfranchisement came in two waves: the first,
early in the i8th century when Negro freedmen first
appeared with required qualifications for voting. In this
case Negroes along with Jews and Catholics, were de
prived of a vote. This initial movement was persisted
in only in South Carolina and Georgia. In all other
states, South and North, it subsided and Negroes regu
larly voted in nearly every other state. Then came a
second wave of disfranchisement in the North, about the
beginning of the i8th century, which had the same ob
ject as the disfranchising clauses in the western states
79
early in the next century : namely, to discourage and drive
out free Negroes. The third wave of disfranchisement
came in the South about 1830 and marked the end of the
abolition movement there, and the beginning of the cot
ton kingdom. The population of free Negroes began to
decrease and the complete subjection of the black race
was in sight.
The last wave of disfranchisement began in 1890 in
Mississippi and now embraces Virginia, North Carolina
and the Gulf states excepting Florida and Texas. These
states have adopted four kinds of qualifications: i. Edu
cational qualifications; 2. Property qualifications; 3.
Qualifications of birth ; 4. Other miscellaneous qualifica
tions the effect of which depends entirely on local elec
tion officials. These qualifications have been proposed
with two reasons: (a ) To keep the Negroes from vot
ing, (b ) To eliminate the ignorant electorate.
Against both these excuses there were strong argu
ments, but at the time they were gathering force and mo
mentum there came a counter argument that practically
stopped all effective opposition to the disfranchisement
laws. This argument was that the economic develop
ment of the Negro in right lines demanded his exclusion
from the right of suffrage at least for the present. This
proposition has been insisted on so strenuously and ad
vocated by Negroes of such prominence that it simply
took the wind out of the sails of those who had proposed
defending his rights, and to-day so deeply has this idea
been driven that to most readers minds the Negroes of
the land are divided into two great parties one asking
no political rights but giving all attention to economic
growth and the other wanting votes, higher education
and all rights. Moreover, the phrase "take the Negro
out of politics" has come to be regarded as synonymous
with industrial training and property getting by the black
men.
80
I want in this short paper to show that, in my opinion,
both these propositions are wrong and mischievous. In
the first place there is no such division of opinion among
Negroes as is assumed. They are practically a unit in
their demand for the ballot. The real difference of
opinion comes as to how the ballot is to be gained. One
set of opinions favors open, frank agitation. The other
favors influence and diplomacy; and the result, curious
to say, is that the latter party has to-day an organized
political machine which dictates the distribution of of
fices among black men and sometimes among Southern
whites. It is not too much to say that to-day the politi
cal power of the black race in America is in certain re
stricted lines very considerable. But those of us who
oppose this party hold that this kind of political develop
ment by secrecy and machine methods is both dangerous
and unwholesome and is not leading toward real de
mocracy. It may and undoubtedly does put a large num
ber of black men in office and it lessens momentary fric
tion, but it is encouraging a coming economic conflict
which will threaten the South and the Negro race.
And this brings me to the second proposition : that po
litical power in the hands of the Negro would hinder-
economic development. It is untrue that any appreci
able number of black men to-day forget or slur over the
tremendous importance of economic, uplift among
Negroes. Every intelligent person knows that the most
pressing problem of any people suddenly emancipated
from slavery is the problem of regular work and accu
mulated property. But this problem of work and prop
erty is no simple thing it is complicated of many ele
ments. It is not simply a matter of manual dexterity
but includes the spirit and the ideal back of that dex
terity.
We who want to build and build firmly the strong
foundations of a racial economy believe in vocational
81
training, but we also believe that the vocation of a man
in a modern civilized land includes not only the tech
nique of his actual work but intelligent comprehension
of his elementary duties as a father, citizen, and maker
of public opinion, as a possible voter, a conservor of the
public health, an intelligent follower of moral customs,
and one who can at least appreciate if not partake some
thing of the higher spiritual life of the world. We do
not pretend that all of this can be taught each individ
ual in school but it can be put into his social environ
ment, and the more that environment is curtailed and
restricted the more emphatic is the demand that some
part at least of the group shall be trained and trained
thoroughly in these higher matters of human develop
ment, if and here is the crucial question if they are
going to be able to share the surrounding civilization.
This brings us to the matter of voting. It is possible
easily possible to train a working class who shall
have no right to participate in the government. Most
of the manual workers in the history of the world have
been so trained. It is also possible, and the modern
world thinks desirable, to train a working class who
shall also have the right to vote both these things are
possible although the overwhelming trend of modern
thought is toward making workers voters. But the one
thing that is impossible and proven so again and again
is to train two sets of workers side by side in economic
competition and make one set voters and deprive the
other set of all participation in government. To attempt
this is madness. It invites conflict and oppression. A
nation cannot exist half slave and half free. Either
the slave will rise through blood or the freeman will
sink.
So far tremendous effort in the South has been put
forth to keep down economic competition between the
races by confining the Negroes by law and custom to
82
certain vocations. But, for two reasons, this effort is
bound to break down : First there is no caste of ability
corresponding with the caste of color, and secondly be
cause if every Negro in the South worked twenty-four
hours a day at the kinds of work which are tacitly as
signed him, he could not fill the demand for that kind of
labor. Economic competition is therefore inevitable as
facts like these show : In Alabama there are 94,000 Negro
farm laborers and 82,000 whites. In Georgia there are
1,100 Negro barbers and 275 white barbers. In Florida
there are 2,100 Negroes employed on railroads and 1,500
whites. In Tennessee there are 1,000 white masons and
1,200 black masons. And so on we might go through
endless figures showing that economic competition among
whites and blacks was not only existent but growing.
Moreover the schools that increase the competition are
the industrial schools and this is both natural and proper.
Negro professional men, teachers, physicians and artists
come very -seldom in competition with the whites. But
farmers, masons, painters, carpenters, seamstresses and
shoe repairers work at the same work as whites and
largely under like conditions. This competition accen
tuates race prejudice ; when a whole community, a whole
nation, pours contempt on a fellow-man it seems a
personal insult for that man to work beside me or at the
same kind of work. Thus one of the first results of the
denial of civil rights is industrial jealousy and hatred.
Here is a man whom all my companions say is unworthy
and dangerous as a companion on the street car or steam
car, as a fellow listener at a concert, theatre or lecture,
as a table companion in the same house or restaurant,
often as a dweller in the same street or same neighbor
hood and always as a worshipper in the same church or
occupant of the same graveyard. If all this is so
and this the Southern white working man is industrious
ly taught from the cradle to the grave if this is so then
83
why shonl 1 I be forced to work at the same job as this
man or be engaged in similar kinds of work, or receive
the same wages? If we cannot play together why should
we work together?
Not only is there this feeling but there is also power
to act. After the Atlanta riot the police and militia
searched the houses of colored people and took away
guns and ammunition, while the sheriff almost gave away
guns to some of the very men who had composed the
mob. We think this monstrous but it is but a parallel
of the action of the whole nation : they have put the
ballot in the hands of the white workingmen of the
South and taken it away from the black fellow- workmen.
The result is that the white workman can enforce his
feeling of prejudice and repulsion. Other things being
equal the employer is forced to discharge the black man
and hire the white man public opinion demands it, the
administrators of government, including police, magis
trates, etc., render it easier, since by preferring the white
many intricate questions of social contact are avoided and
political influence is vastly increased.
Under such circumstances there is nothing for the
Negro to do but to bribe the employer by underbidding
his white fellow : to work not only for less money wages,
but for longer hours and under worse conditions. No
sooner does he do this than he is mocked at as a "scab"
from Mexico to Canada, and visited with all the conse
quent penalties. He is said to be dragging down labor
and he is said to be taking bread from others mouths
and he may be, but his excuse is tremendous : he is
dragging others down to keep himself from complete sub
mergence and he is taking some of the bread from others
mouths lest his children starve. Does he want to do
this? Does he like long hours? Ignorant as he is as a
mass, has he not intelligence enough to perceive the value
of the labor unions and the meaning of the labor move-
84
ment ? No, it is not because the black man is a fool but
because he is a victim that he drags labor clown.
Faced by this situation the next step of the white work
men is to enforce by law an 1 administration that which
they cannot gain by competition. In the past these laws
have been laws to separate an 1 humiliate the blacks, but
more aggressive laws are demanded to-:!ay and will be in
the future. The Alabama child labor law excepts from
its operation children in domestic service and in agricul
ture i. e., Negro children. They may grow up in ab
solute ignorance so far as the law is concerned. The
Alabama law makes the breaking of a contract to work
o
by a farm laborer a felony punishable by a penitentiary
sentence. Such a breaking of law in other industries is
a misdemeanor punishable by a fine. Certain oppres
sive labor regulations in many southern states are only
applicable to such counties as vote their enforcement.
Counties with white workmen vote it down. Counties
with disfranchised black workmen vote it in. In the
state civil service no Negro can be employed at any job
which any white man wants, for obvious reasons. More
than that no white man whose business depends on pub
lic approbation, or political concession can dare to hire
Negroes or if he hires them promote them as they may
deserve. He must often be content with a distinctly in
ferior grade of white help.
Judges and juries in the South are at the absolute
mercy of the white voters. Few ordinary judges would
dare oppose the momentary whim of the white mob and
practically only now and then will a jury convict a white
man for aggression on a Negro. This is true not only
in criminal but also in civil suits, so much so that it is a
widespread custom among Negroes of property never to
take a civil suit to court but to let the white complainant
settle it. In all public benefits like schools and parks
and gatherings and institutions, Negroes are regularly
85
taxed for what they cannot enjoy. I am taxed for the
Carnegie Public Library of Atlanta where I cannot en
ter to draw my own books. The Negroes of Memphis
are taxed for public parks where they cannot sit down.
The public schools of the South on account of virulent
opposition of the white working classes are (save in a
few cities and a few exceptional counties), worse off than
they were twenty years ago with poorer teachers, lower
salaries and more negligent supervisors. This statement
covers nine-tenths of the public Negro schools of the
South.
Even in serving his own people and organizing
his own business the Negro is at the absolute mercy of
the white voters. It is often said grandiloquently: let
the Negroes organize their own theatres, transport their
own passengers, organize their own industrial companies ;
but such kinds of business are almost absolutely depend
ent on public license and taxation requirements. A thea
tre built and equipped could by a single vote be refused
a license, a transportation company could get no fran
chise, and an industrial enterprise could be taxed out of
existence. This is not always done, but it is done just
as soon as any white man or group of white men begin
to feel the competition. Then the voters proceed to
put the industrial screws on the disfranchised. Witness
the strike of the white locomotive firemen in Georgia to
day. Negro firemen get from fifty cents to one dol
lar a day less than the white firemen, have to do menial
work and cannot become engineers. They can, how
ever, by good service and behavior be promoted to the
best runs by the rule of seniority. Even this the white
firemen now object to and say in a manifesto: the
"white people of this state refuse to accept Negro equal
ity. This is worse than that." The other day the white
automobile drivers of Atlanta made a frantic appeal in
the papers for persons to stop hiring black drivers. The
86
black drivers replied, "We have had fewer accidents than
you and get less wages," but the whites simply said,
"This ought to be a white man s job."
This sort of thing is destined to grow and develop.
The fear of Negro competition in all lines is increasing
in the South. The demand of to-morrow is going to be
increasingly not to protect white people from ignorance
and degradation, but from knowledge and efficiency
that is, to so arrange the matter by law and custom as
to make it possible for the inefficient and lazy white
workman to be able to crush and keep down his black
competitor at all hazards, and so that no black man shall
be allowed to do his best if his success lifts him to any
degree out of the place in which millions of Americans
are being taught he ought to stay.
This is bad enough but this is not all. The voteless
Negro is a provocation, an invitation to oppression, a
plaything for mobs and a bonanza for demagogues. They
serve always to distract attention from real issues and
to ride fools and rascals into political power. The
political campaign in Georgia before the last was avowed
ly and openly a campaign not against Negro crime and ig
norance but against Negro intelligence and property
owning and industrial competition as shown by an 83%
increase in their property in ten years. It swept the
state and if it had not culminated in riot and bloodshed
and thus scared capital it would still be triumphant. As
it is the end is not yet. The political power of a mass
of active working people thus without votes is greater
for harm, manipulation and riot than the power of the
same people with votes could possibly be, with the addi
tional fact that voters would learn to vote intelligently
by voting. Fourteen years ago Mississippi began dis
franchising Negroes. You were promised that the re
sult would be to settle the Negro problem. Is it settled?
No, and it never will be until you give black men the
,87
power to be men, until you give them the power to
defend that manhood. When the Negro casts a free and
intelligent vote in the South then and not until then will
the Negro problem be settled.
RACE PREJUDICE AS VIEWED FROM
AN ECONOMIC STANDPOINT
William L. Bulkley
Principal in the Public Schools
New York
I wish to preface my argument with the following in
dictment: Race-prejudice in the South
( i ) Does not recognize the value of an intelligent, con
tented laboring class. (2) Closes the door to occupa
tions requiring skill and responsibility. (3) Drives out
of the South, by humiliating and oppressive laws and
practices, many of its most desirable citizens. (4)
Forces across the line thousands of mixed bloods. (5)
Forces into the ranks of unskilled labor in the North
and West many who are skilled.
Considering the race question from a purely economic
standpoint, no part of this country, North, South, East
or West, ought to continue the unjust industrial restric
tions upon us as a people. In the North these restric
tions act as an injustice to the weaker race, but do not
cause any perceptible economic loss to the community.
In the South, on the contrary, any limitation put upon
the development of the Negro in any line of manual
labor or skill seriously affects its economic development.
Already is this loss to its industrial life evident in the
desperate efforts exerted to induce European immigra
tion. But the suggestion that this need of more and bet
ter labor is caused by her sins of omission or commis-
89
sion would doubtless meet from the South the most fo^
bust denials. And yet, any thoughtful student of econ
omics would readily see that this lack of reliable labor
is at least in part, due to the absence of effort on the
part of the South to enlighten, to encourage and to ren
der contented its laboring classes. With the exception
of a makeshift of a school lasting for a few weeks each
year, the South offers its farming masses absolutely no
other inducement to a larger and better life. Little won
der is it that there are hundreds of thousands of acres
cultivated in the same sort of indifferent way year after
year.
And again, from the ranks of skilled labor, race op
pression is driving out of the South a host of the best
Negroes, best in culture of mind, best in sturdiness of
character, best in skill of hand. A census of the Negroes
in any city in the North would show that the majority
of the most progressive of them, whether in the pro
fessions, in business, or in the trades, were more or less
recent arrivals from the South. Can the South afford to
lose this class? Can any country afford to drive out
its best? Does not the South need the influence of such
men and women over the ignorant, the idle, or the de
praved of our race ? Is it wise to make living conditions
so unbearable that only the most ignorant or the most
unworthy are contented to remain and endure with the
characteristic grin of a sycophant?
The desirable, the progressive, the intelligent Negroes
who remain South are there for one of two reasons : be
cause they can t get away ; or because they feel they
ought to stay and suffer with their own. And all these
heave from the depths of their hearts the despairing cry,
"How long, O Lord, how long?"
If only a small part of the time that is devoted to
schemes to restrict, to humiliate, and to oppress the Ne
groes were spent in an effort to study means by which
90
they might be made more intelligent, mort thrifty as
laborers, more skillful as artisans, more contented as
citizens, there are few spots on the globe that would show
so great an industrial awakening during the twentieth
century.
Wise legislators in any community would endeavor to
enact such laws or establish such customs as would de
velop a contented middle and a hopeful laboring class.
Indeed, the North and West, with their attractive wages,
with their excellent schools, libraries, reading-rooms,
clubs, and settlement houses, with a cordial welcome to
full American citizenship, have beckoned invitingly the
millions of Europeans that make the wealth of these
great sections of our nation. During these same years
another part of our land has spent its time in devising
plans to keep down in dependence and hopelessness its
millions of laborers, millions native to the soil, ready and
willing to do whatever they are able for the development
of the only land they know and the only land they care to
know.
In the second place, there is a decided economic loss
in keeping within the bounds of unskilled labor those
who might do credit in the ranks of skilled labor; and
yet that is what the South or any part of the country does
when it inhibits and circumscribes the vocations of a
part of its people. There are certain classes of skilled
labor which it is not permitted a Negro to enter. In fact,
my observation convinces me that even certain vocations
which belonged almost exclusively to the Negroes ever
since the days of slavery are fast being- closed against -
them. The present railroad strike in Georgia illustrates
this point. Parenthetically I may say that due credit
should be given to the papers, North and Sotfth, that
have rung out with no uncertain sound about this strike ;
and yet it would seem impossible to counteract in one day
in the year all the evil that these same papers will do us in
the other 364 days in written words or insinuations
against us as a people. And so down the line there seems
to be a purpose to restrict the Negroes within the limits of
unskilled labor, to reduce them to a state which, while not
nineteenth century slavery may be twentieth century
peonage.
Thirdly, as was suggested previously, the humiliating
laws and practices are forcing out of the South thou
sands of its best Negroes, Negroes who love their birth
place, love its balmy air, its sunny skies, its fertile
fields, its luxuriant forests, the comradeship of their kith
and kin. To us there never cease to come times of yearn
ing to revisit the old spots of our childhood and of our
youth, to meet our brethren, to hear their tale of woe,
to weep with them over their distresses, to rejoice with
them in their successes, to share with them the soul-re
freshings that only a Negro revival can give. How near
they seem to get to the great loving heart of God in their
deep, religious fervor, and childlike trustfulness! But
when our yearning seizes us, there appears before us the
spectral hand of blighting prejudice, inviting uninvit-
ingly.
I never cease to wonder whether far-sighted white
men of the South see the loss in letting so many of their
best Negroes leave ; whether they ever think that it would
be wise to abate their prejudices to the extent of consult
ing with us for some ground of mutual understanding
and sympathy. It is too high a compliment to be credi
ble that we have developed such a large class of desir
ables that the thousands who leave are easily spared. If
a community seeks to acquire and to retain the largest
possible number of upright, cultured, property-holding,
progressive people, it should inquire into the causes that
drive out and keep out this very class. But has there
been a single act of a southern Legislature in 35 years
aimed to render more comfortable the lot of that class
92
of Negroes who, out of great tribulation, have struggled
up and are still struggling up, and rearing their families
into clean and commendable manhood and womanhood ?
We are needed in the South, needed to help our
brethren up, needed to give our white neighbors the as
surance of our confidence, needed to join with all honest
and earnest men for the regeneration of the land of our
birth, scarred by slavery, blighted by the ravages of war,
crippled by years of post-bellum misrule, hampered by
narrow, near-sighted, selfish prejudice. There is not
one of us who would not gladly go back home if we did
not know that every right dear to any full man has been
ruthlessly torn from our grasp. Gladly would we rush to
the embrace of our loved ones in bonds, but we cannot,
we cannot.
In the fourth place, we do not get the full economic
credit due to us, because of the loss of a host of mixed-
bloods who cross the line. Even in the South this cross
ing occasionally happens. Sometimes the white know it
and wink at it, as was evidenced some time ago in the
South Carolina State Constitutional Convention in a
speech by Mr. Tillman, brother of Senator Tillman.
There is scarcely a colored man who could not tell of
some friend or relative who has crossed the line North
or South, now prominent in business, professors in insti
tutions of learning, married into good society, and rear
ing families that have no dreams of the depths that their
parent has escaped. We could tell the story, if we would
but who would be the knave to disturb their peace?
Lastly, intolerance drives the ambitious, competent, skill
ed laborer out of the South, but in coming into the North,
he meets an industrial competition which he had not fig
ured on. Here he finds the field of skilled labor pre
empted by the native white man and the foreigner. They
guard jealously all approaches to it, whether threatened
by Negro or Japanese or Chinaman, or what not. The
93
new arrival attributes to prejudice the difficulties he en
counters. I can hardly believe that it is prejudice that
keeps Negroes out of the industrial fields in the North
as much as other reasons. Only to-day I was talking
with a young man, a graduate of Hampton, who has
worked his way up to a successful upholstery business in
this city. He said, "I had a hard time at first because
people didn t believe a colored man could do upholstery
work satisfactorily. Now that I have made good, I get
plenty of work." I could weary you with numerous in
stances of this kind.
There are, as I see it, three chief reasons why we are
not working easily into the skilled trades in the North:
(i) Skepticism as to our ability; (2) The already crowd
ed labor market, that looks with disfavor upon inroads
from any source; (3) A feeling, which I think is human,
viz., the pleasure found in knocking the weaker fellow.
Joseph Bernstein and Max Robinsky would not likely
have any feeling against Jim Smith as a man ; but as
Joseph and Max have just come from a kicking them
selves there may be some comfort in finding the chance
to try the dose on another fellow. So Pat O Flannagan
does not have the least thing in the world against Jim
from Dixie, but it didn t take Pat long after passing
the Statue of Liberty to learn that it is popular to give
Jim a whack. He would be a little more than human if
he did not want to try on Jim what his English lord had
so long tried on him. These people who have escaped
the persecutions and the class-proscriptions of Europe
feel a newly awakened consciousness that they are not
after all at the bottom of the heap. They would strike
in like manner against any other individual, or religion,
or language, or race, provided that they were prompted
to it by prevailing custom.
Labor discriminations in the North are not deep-seated
and inerradicable. It is impossible to educate the youth
94
of a land in the same schools, in the same classes, side
by side in their recitations, united in their sports, shout
ing the same yell, feeling the same thrill at the success
of their colleagues, whether white or yellow or brown or
black, without at the same time developing a better un
derstanding with each other, a kindlier feeling toward
each other. The thing we call race prejudice in the
North differs from race prejudice in the South as a skin-
affection differs from scrofula. The latter is organic, in
the very blood, drawn in with the mother s milk, and fed
by the virus of public sentiment. The other is superfi
cial, readily subject to treatment, and not difficult to cure.
But whatever may be the outcome of the people who
leave the South, there is one thing certain the South
is losing a class of citizens which it should wish to re
tain. Men and women of culture and of character are
needed in every community, and in no place more than
in the South; but when the Southern whites, by every
conceivable means, humiliate, proscribe, and hamper the
best of us, there should be no surprise if we seek more
congenial climes, where we can at least protect our wives
and daughters from the contumely that the lowest white
man can heap upon them with absolute impunity.
Whither are we tending? Are we drifting with a sort
of fatalistic indifference? Or is there a purpose behind
all these restrictions, all these proscriptions?
If there be a purpose what can it be? Is the purpose
to go back to slavery ? I had hoped that it had been set
tled, forever settled, that this country cannot exist part
slave and part free. If there be no purpose behind it all,
there is lacking that far-seeing statesmanship which every
government should have. It is difficult to believe that
the problem of ten million citizen-aliens does not merit
the wisest statesmanship. We are forty-six years from
the Emancipation Proclamation, and yet to-day so wide
spread is this race-oppression that a gathering of this
95
kind is imperative. At the same rate of retrogression, in
forty-six more years the then twenty millions of colored
people will be veritable serfs.
What would that mean to the country at large? A tu
berculous bacillus from a black man s lung is as conta
gious as a bacillus from a white man s lung. Black men
of vicious lives cannot fail to affect to a greater or less
degree the communities where they live. You cannot cir
cumscribe vice ; it is contagious. Leave these millions
of Negroes to battle alone with this terrible weight with
which they are now burdened and they would prove
themselves little better than mortals if they did not follow
the lines of least resistance and sink lower and lower
into indolence, vagrancy and criminality. You may de
prive a man of the right to vote, but you cannot deprive
him of the right to steal.
Give them encouragement. Offer them incentives for
intelligence, for skill, for sobriety, for character. Let
them feel that as they push themselves out of the quag
mire, they will be recognized on their merits. Reward
industry. Recognize proved ability. But, if for the
sake of argument, it be granted that they are all that
their most virulent enemies charge them with being, so
much greater is the need of sparing no efforts for their
uplift, not so much for their sakes as for your sakes..
If it were only one man or a hundred men, there might
be some hope of their dying or some way might be sug
gested to get rid of them ; but here is a race of 10,000,-
ooo, as many people as are in all British America and all
Central America; they are not dying out; they are not
going to die out. As I see it there are only four things
possible: (i) Expatriate them; (2) Annihilate them:
(3) Degrade them; (4) Elevate them. If they remain
here and are allowed no incentives to pull upward, it
must follow as the night the day, they will surely run
downward.
96
To work in any way that one has the ability should
be the inalienable right of every American citizen. A
clean, attractive, honest-looking young man came to my
office last week to see if I "could help him. He stated
that he is a Junior in the pharmaceutical course at Colum
bia. He desires to spend his vacation in a wholesale drug
concern for the sake of needed information and exper
ience. He had written to several drug establishments
in this city. He received replies to call, intimating that
there were opportunities for work. He stated that he
had just come from a useless round of visits to the stores,
for the proprietors had suddenly changed their minds on
seeing him. Now, that young man is good enough to
sit by the side of and work with the best in Columbia
University; is it not presumable that he is good enough
to work out in the world by the side of those who are
no better than his mates in college?
We do not ask for charity; all we ask is opportunity.
We do not beg for alms ; we beg only for a chance. The
right to work ; opportunity to work ; encouragement to
work ; reward for work ; this is all we ask ; less than
this should not be given.
97
THE NEGRO AND THE SOUTH
William English Walling
Secretary of the Committee
The chief object of any movement in behalf of the
American Negro must be to enlighten the public opinion
of the whole country. In no section is it in a satis
factory state. Yet in the East, West, and North, the
Negro has friends in every social class, sometimes many,
sometimes few, who are ready to treat him in every way
as on his individual merits. As a southerner born, and
one familiar with the southern view through family
and friends, from infancy, I am peculiarly conscious
that it is in the South alone that the Negro seems to
find no true brotherly feeling in any element of the
white community. It is my chief purpose to point out
that the situation is not so bad as it appears, but the
fact that the sentiment friendly to the Negro in the
South receives at the present moment no effective pub
lic expression. That it is disorganized, that it is only lo
cally known in the South and never reaches the North
is only too obvious. I shall also admit that this new
friendliness is only slightly developed and only half-
conscious, that it must oppose at every point the dominant
note of prejudice and oppression that pervades and
dominates the press, the politics, the pulpit, and even
the universities of that section. But whether developed
or not, whether discouraging or the reverse, whether
we like it or not, it is southern opinion that must ulti
mately play the chief part in the settlement of this
question.
98
Now what ivS the present state of opinion in the south
ern states? To give an intelligent answer we must
adopt a new method, we must speak separately of the
various .elements of the community. Doubtless there
seems to be a solid South and there is some truth in
the expression, perhaps more than there would have
been a generation or two or three generations ago. Yet
chemical substances and biological organisms were nev
er understood until they were pulled to pieces, analyzed
in every conceivable manner, and we shall not know
anything whatever of southern opinion as long as we
think of a solid South. The South never was solid.
Economic conditions may have produced a tendency
towards solidification for the first half of the last cen
tury and political sectionalism both North and South
may have strengthened this tendency for another fifty
years, but the differences within the South on this ques
tion during all this period remained, and still remain,
infinitely more important and instructive than the points
on which unity seemed to prevail. Within the last two
decades, moreover, political and economic sectionalism
are both decreasing, the same economic questions are
dividing the South as divide the rest of the country,
each of the new economic or political groups that results
takes a new attitude on the Negro problem.
Hitherto the Negroes themselves and their northern
friends have placed altogether too much hope in the
more cultivated and benevolent of the southern aristoc
racy, the descendants largely of the wealthier and more
humane slave owners of the past generation. But even
when such individuals succeed in freeing themselves en
tirely from local tradition and interests, which happens
but rarely, even when they have the tremendous courage
to speak out against the overwhelming power of the
firmly seated oligarchies that govern the southern states,
they represent only isolated individual opinions. In-
99
deed, all the humanitarian opinion of the country com
bined with that of science could have little effect.
We have been taunted by the fact that we have only
three white southerners on our programme. Such crit
icism ignores the fact that none can speak with such
knowledge and even breadth on the condition of the
Negroes as some of the enlightened colored southerners
we have with us. But it ignores further the very crux
of the whole problem, that liberal southerners have giv
en up in despair before the wave of aggressive and ugly
reaction that rules the section.
A gentleman from the far South who has written that
the racial discrimination had no other basis than the de
sire to establish by law and custom a legally inferior
caste in the place of slavery has written us the reasons
why he does not consider it admissible for him to ad
dress this conference. Referring to his published writ
ing he says: "I wrote for the country at large to repel
false statements which are constantly being made concern
ing our Negro population, and which, I felt, were doing
much to make the Negro obnoxious to those who would
naturally be his friends." But he refuses to repeat this
denunciation of false statements because he does not
feel that most southerners are open to the truth. He
writes further, "Should I give utterance anywhere in
the North to what I think about the race question, I
feel that I should convince nobody in the South that I
was right." He then shows the hopeless isolation even
of moderate liberals like himself in the South in the
statement "there are doubtless other southern men who
think as you and I do, but they are certainly not many
enough to escape the epithets, crank and fanatic."
What could be more ill-founded and misleading then
than the view so widely held in the North and just ex
pressed by President Taft at Howard University, that
"the white men of progress were coming to appreciate
100
the advantage of having a class like the colored men
that they have there." The slave-owners and all their
successors who have secured any advantage from hav
ing the Negroes there have always appreciated their
presence only the poorer whites have complained of
the competition of their cheap labor and wished them
in Liberia. It is made a crime in some southern states
to entice the colored laborer out of the state even for
his benefit. The Negro is recognized as highly valuable,
but not as having any rights.
In other words, there are two Souths, those who em
ploy Negro labor and those who compete with it. Those
who employ want their labor to be cheap and skilled.
To keep it cheap, they hold all the positions of power in
the community and in agricultural sections make strik
ing a crime, while they discourage the higher education
necessary to produce Negro leaders and drive the most
courageous and intelligent to the North. To make it
skilled they encourage industrial education. Those who
compete with Negro labor cannot wish it to be cheap.
One recourse is to keep it unskilled, to exclude it from
the unions, but another way is to make common cause
in the organized fight for higher wages. Both courses
are being followed, and it is right here where the in
fluence of a powerful public sentiment could best aid
the Negroes. The white workingmen must be persuaded
that their only permanent welfare is co-operation with
their colored fellow-workers and that opposition must
inevitably lead to total demoralization of all organized
effort of both classes.
What is still more interesting is that these two econ
omic Souths coincide to a very large extent with the
two geographical Souths. In the Black Belt in the far
southern states, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mis
sissippi, Louisiana and Florida, the employers, especially
of the large plantations, have no choice but to employ
101
Negro labor. They are therefore influenced exclusive
ly by the desire for labor both cheap and as skilled as
it may be without becoming discontented. On the other
hand, the employers and manufacturers of North Caro
lina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Ten
nessee and Missouri employ more white than colored
labor and recognize that it is impossible to legislate
against white labor, and, therefore, very difficult to legis
late against the colored. On the other hand, it is in these
border states exclusively where the competition between
colored and white labor assumes very important pro
portions. In those counties where the prejudice is most
strong as well as in the corresponding counties north of
the Ohio there are frequent efforts to drive the Negroes
out. On the other hand, many of the trade unions
make a serious and often successful effort to organize.
In other words, employing whites absolutely dominate
the far South, whereas employed whites have a consid
erable voice in the government of the border states.
Geographically as well as economically there are two
Souths. In the first, undeveloped workers are held in
slavery while the most developed are expelled. In the
second, the most developed may often be welcomed
while the undeveloped or half -skilled are likely to be
expelled. It is from the first South that the leaders of
southern opinion are for the most part developed. It
is they, at any rate, almost exclusively the descendants of
slave-owners, that set the whole tone of public opinion
of the whole section. This is why it is almost impos
sible that a truly friendly sentiment should be devel
oped in the South among the so-called better element.
Not among the so-called better element, the class that
refers to itself in the South as the aristocary, is the
Negro to expect his friends, but from the despised
"poor whites." It is upon these that the burden of com
petition with cheap Negro labor chiefly falls, and it is
102
they that are most sorely tempted by demagogues like
Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia to steal the Negro s
job. Governor Smith said in 1907 that he stood for the
elimination of all competition between blacks and whites,
and he has shown a dozen times during the recent strike
that he is using his power as governor to this end. He
favors for the Negro the "natural status of his race, that
of inferiority." Why should we be surprised, then, if
a union asserts that the "South is a white man s coun
try," and that therefore no Negro is to be placed above
any white?
But this is not what the ex-slave-owners or "those
who appreciate the advantage of having the colored men
there" mean by a white man s country. They mean that
the white man is to have the Negro do his work on his
own terms. The white laborer at his worst wants the
Negro s job. He has nothing to gain and everything
to lose by the establishment of any form of industrial
slavery whether first applied exclusively to Negroes or
not.
The white laborer s race antagonism has an easy
remedy. When there are plenty of jobs he works gladly
beside the Negro and admits him in his union. Only
when jobs are scarce is he tempted to take advantage
of the protection of local governments to drive the
Negroes from their jobs or in some border districts,
North and South, to drive him from town.
In industries where the Negroes are numerous, the
whites necessarily organized in the same unions have
no notion of demanding preferential treatment. On the
contrary, they fight with the Negroes against those very
oligarchies that maintain themselves solely by anti-Negro
agitation. Mr. Fairley, head of the United Mine Work
ers for the Alabama district, has written the conference,
"I may say that the treatment accorded to the southern
working white man by the southern oligarchy is little
103
if any better than accorded to. the Negro, and therefore
I agree with you that the interest of the Negro and white
laboring man are inseparably one. The action of the
state government in our recent strike last summer in
Alabama proved that beyond the possibility of a doubt."
The effort of the laboring people to organize and
fight collectively for better wages and better conditions,
has in fact met with measures of coercion such as have
prevailed in no other part of the country unless we ex
cept some of the Rocky Mountain states. Leaders of
powerful labor unions which have branches in the
South are agreed that the southern white laborer can
scarcely expect greater justice from the present state
governments than the Negro himself. A very import
ant union official (whose name I am not able to dis
close), a man widely respected through the country, was
ordered to leave the state by one of the governors of a
large southern commonwealth.
If justice is to be done to the Negro in this demo
cratic country, it must be done through the enlightened
and active interest of some important element or ele
ments of the population. Already a certain part of the
people of the South have learned that the disfranchise-
ment and civil discriminations must necessarily affect
at the same time the poorer elements of the white pop
ulation. This has happened largely as follows : Econ
omically considered, the Negroes constitute (with im
portant exceptions), the lowest third of the population,
the poor whites the middle third, and the descendants of
the former slave-owning aristocracy and gentry and
their direct dependents, together with the well-to-do
classes with which they are politically allied, the third
on top. When the Negroes or a large part of them, were
allowed to vote, the "poor whites" held the balance of
power, and it was through this balance of power that
the Populists at one time obtained such a wide hold
104
on this section and that such men as Governor Varda-^
man of Mississippi were able to overthrow the old aris
tocracy. Now that the overwhelming part of the Ne
groes are prevented from voting (by legal or illegal
means), the poorer whites are forced to share their
power with their former rivals, or rather, the political
power has passed into the hands of a social group plac
ed somewhere between the poorer whites, properly
speaking, and the so-called aristocracy.
As a result of this loss of political power by the
"poor whites" we see in various parts of the South the
economic system of peonage and the political system of
government by terror, invented originally for use against
the Negroes turned against certain elements of the
white population, especially foreigners. It was even
proposed recently in certain Mississippi towns to segre
gate the Italians in the public schools. In Biloxi, Mis
sissippi, the disregard for the propertyless classes has
gone so far that an effort has been made recently to
force those who could not pay their municipal taxes to
work on the streets. Innumerable examples of a grow
ing despotism can be collected from all the southern
states. Let us mention only the convict labor system
applied in some places to whites as well as, blacks, by
which a shortage of labor is supplied by the loan of
prisoners, and judges friendly to employers are placed
tinder the temptation of increasing this supply.
All this in the far South. As is well known, all of
the border states have been more or less evenly divided
politically for many years and among these states we
may soon be able to include both North Carolina and
Tennessee. This condition of comparative political
health has already led to a very rapid and most encour
aging increase of true democracy in government, and
there is every reason for belief that if the other sec
tions of the country took a stand for the Negro s rights
105
at the same time that they assumed a friendly attitude
to the true democracy of the South and ceased to view
the Negro situation as a sectional question, all the bor
der states would begin to assume a fairer attitude to
wards the persecuted race.
This leaves only to be considered the eight states of
the far South and Virginia. As we have pointed out
the white laboring element of the section is already wav
ering. Only twelve or fourteen years ago a large ele
ment of the white farming population in several states
was co-operating with a similar Negro element. The
object of any promising movement, first, last, and all
the time, must be to find in behalf of the Negro means
to encourage these small beginnings of the feeling of
friendliness.
With these facts and this possibility in view, why
can we not hope that a few years of the right policy
may secure an increasing measure of justice for the
Negro in the border states and that a generation of na
tional co-operation and education, national organizations
of farmers and workingmen, may even convert the
white masses of the far South to a correct attitude?
The more numerous elements of the population are
those who will finally decide, and they are almost cer
tain to decide justly since it is precisely these poor far
mers and laboring people that are economically most
nearly related to the Negro.
This policy does not imply that an appeal should not
be made at the same time to the descendants of slave
owners, in their own interests and those of the South,
as -well as in the interest of justice and humanity; nor
on the other hand that the rest of the nation should re
lent in any way its demand for the enforcement of the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, for they bring
to bear that very form of pressure, just and gentle, that
conscience does not allow us to dispense with, and that
106
is the only way one brother may really hope to prevent
even the worst errors of another. But as long as the
solid South resists we can hardly expect a very thor
ough enforcement. To accomplish this, we must first
break the solid South. The effort that has been made
in the name of imperialism and a prohibitive tariff must
be made in the name of democracy.
The masses of the southern population must be shown
that their interests lie in a gradual extension of the suf
frage to the Negroes as fast at least as the latter can
receive a moderate school education. They must real
ize that it is to their interest to provide for this educa
tion as rapidly as possible, and in spite of their poverty
they must show the widest liberality in this respect.
The northern democracy, on the other hand, would be
tremendously strengthened, if Senators Tillman and
Bailey and their like were replaced in the national coun
cils by true Democrats representing the educated white
laborers and farmers as well as the educated Negroes of
those or other economic classes. Such an accession to
the national legislature would immensely strengthen the
popular cause throughout the whole nation. In return,
a body of true southern representatives could demand
effectually from the nation a fair treatment not only
for the southern farmers and workingmen but of the
whole South a fairer treatment than has ever been re
ceived or ever could be through any alliance based upon
any other principle than that of democracy itself.
As some Negroes have expressed it, it is now pro
posed by certain parties, to cement the friendship of the
whites of the North with the whites of the South over
the prostrate body of the Negro. On the contrary, it is
to the direct economic and political interest of the true
southern democracy, whether white or colored, whether
of the Republican or Democratic parties, to join hands
with the corresponding democracy of the North. Im-
107
perialism or the cause of a prohibitive tariff could unite
only certain restricted elements of the two sections, how
ever powerful socially and economically these elements
may be. Only by the nationalization of our existing
democracy, by its extension into the South through the
better organization and representation of the masses of
the southern people, can sectionalism be eliminated. Any
other method must first leave the masses of the country
divided on geographical lines as before, and then by
forcing the Negro backward, endanger the very founda
tion of their power. For if the class that rules the
South at the present moment, with its anti-Negro propa
ganda, once succeeds in making a permanent alliance
with the corrupt corporations and politicians of the
North, now fortunately segregated in another party, a
far more dangerous system of class rule will be evolved
in America than we had before the Civil War; and this
unholy alliance is impending this very moment. The
class that stands for persecution of the Negro once giv
en a share in our national government will stand for
any and every other form of attack on free and demo
cratic institutions, every form of reaction known to
eastern Europe.
No greater peril stands before democrats of every
race in this country than the permanent participation of
the southern reactionary element in our national legis
lature, no greater hope than that the true democracy of
the South shall be properly presented in our national
counsels, no matter through what party. The Negro s
only hope is at the same time the sole safeguard of the
nation. This is the thought and the hope of the farmers
and workingmen of the whole nation to their southern
brethren : By lowering the political and economic status
of the colored population which furnishes half your co-
workers in agriculture and industry, you inevitably cut
in half your own ability to resist greedy employers, or
108
those economic forces against which farmers have to
contend. You gain nothing from cheapened labor in the
towns and cheapened prices on the farms that inevitably
result from the crushing of the colored population.
Many of you have already learned what you suffer at
the hands of the present oligarchies and have frequent
ly found yourselves forced to unite with the Negroes
against them. Now join yourselves once for all with
us your brother farmers and workingmen from other
sections of the country. Do not allow yourselves to be
longer divided from us by the false fear of Negro dom
ination. By so doing you not only rivet your own chains
but you hold back the whole country. Join us, bring
with you the best elements of the colored population,
whose aid you will find indispensable for your own
emancipation in the South, and we will see to it that
your interests and welfare are advanced in the national
government as never before for a hundred years.
Remain divided from us and we are helpless to aid
you or protect ourselves. Join us and victory of the
cause of progress and democracy is assured.
IOQ
DISCUSSION
MR. WALDRON : There are many things that I would
like to say, but I want to emphasize that I believe we
have not laid enough stress on the white side of this
thing. The Negro side is bad, but unless something is
done to change things, the poor white man not only of
the South, but particularly in the South, is going to feel
the pinch of the shoe just as much as the Negro.
MR. BANNON: We are very much encouraged that
we are permitted to have the privilege and opportunity
of meeting with white men and white women and con
verse about these matters. I think my Negro friends,
that if the Negro will show a little more spirit, and
stand up on his feet, the white man will stand by him.
MR. STEMMONS: The man must be dull indeed who
does not realize the crisis reached in the race situation
in this country. I believe that no better opportunity has
ever been presented and that no better ever will be
presented again for starting the flood of influence which
controls the situation flowing in the right direction. But
let us not be deceived. Unless we meet this situation
with dignity, wisdom and foresight, we will merely add
fuel to flames already raging in this country, and make
it more difficult than ever before to overcome the same.
Everybody in this presence very likely has the same idea
of the race situation in this country. For a few indi
viduals to hold an ideal, to create an ideal which they
are willing to live up to, and which they believe the gen
eral public ought to live up to, is a noble thing; but for
them to produce a line of action that will override op
position and make this ideal part of the public life, is
quite another thing. If mere conferences and talks and
no
resolutions and protests and appeals were all that are
needed, we have already enough of these to settle a dozen
such questions instead of making it worse and worse,
as has been the case with the race situation in this coun
try for thi? past forty-five years. The trouble has been,
I think, oar failure to recognize and act upon the in
fluences that control this situation and keep it alive, fail
ure to recognize and appreciate the basic conditions upon
which depend the development of the race.
Give us an economic opportunity, that is what the
race asks. The physical conditions of the race depend
upon it. For example, a good many people say to me
that the conditions of the Negro are gradually improv
ing throughout the country. Ask them for their basis
for such an assertion, and they say the colored people
are owning better houses, building bigger churches, en
gaging in more businesses and in more diversified
branches of labor than ever before. We admit this, but
I refuse to admit it without ample qualifications.
I refuse to accept that point, because while a few
Negroes are successful in this way, in business and in
professional lines, at least eighty per cent, of the col
ored people are engaged in domestic and personal labors,
and the lines against them in these avenues of labor are
being drawn closer and closer each succeeding year.
Why, the most important field that we have had in the
North for colored men has been working at the hotels.
But now, with very few exceptions, none of the first-
class hotels will employ a colored waiter. There is not
a first-class hotel in any northern city that will employ
colored men. Furthermore, on the menus of these hotels
you will find a statement: "Nothing but white help em
ployed in this establishment." Ten years ago in reading
in the help wanted columns of any daily newspaper, you
would find a large percentage of domestic situations
specifying Negroes. To-day there are comparatively
in
no calls for a Negro domestic, while an increasing per
centage of the calls foi Domestics specify that none but
white are needed.
But notwithstanding the extent to whidi they are
being excluded along lines of these domestic and per
sonal services, we all know that it is almost impossible
for them to find lucrative employment in any other line.
I say, and I challenge anyone to refute my contention,
that the opportunities of the colored people are growing
fewer and fewer throughout all parts of this country.
And I believe there is not another race of people who
will so placidly and indifferently permit themselves to
be pushed aside in the industrial enterprises of this
country, as will the Negro.
MR. STEMMONS : Did you ever sit down and se
riously ask yourself the question, why the colored people
stay in the South and submit to the indignities and in
sults heaped upon them? I will tell you why. It is
because of their knowledge that they cannot make an
honest living in any other part of the country. That
is the sum and substance of the matter, to make it pos
sible for the Negroes to live in the South, to so adjust
and regulate industrial opportunities throughout the
country that no man more than any other may have an
advantage.
MR. J. MORGAN, of Brooklyn: The question is sim
ply one of bread and butter. If there be not suffi
cient bread and butter to go around, the white man cer
tainly has every reason to think that he has a right to
attack the Negro as he has attacked him to-day.
The problem confronting us to-day is simply that the
Negro is placed in a position where he is losing his
political rights. As Professor DuBois has well said,
as he loses his political rights, he naturally loses those
economic rights that he is heir to. He is just as much
an heir to his economic rights, I say, as the whitest man
112
or the blackest man is heir to Milton, or is heir to
Galileo, or whatever the world has done ; to all these
the Negro is just as much heir as any other member of
you here.
MR. WILLIAM M. TROTTER, of Boston: The exist
ence of color lines in industrial matters is calamitous
the industrial and civil differentiation of political mat
ters, as has been so well described to-day. But to my
mind that which is the grossest calamity and the most
telling, and 1 must say the grossest outrage, seems to
me the attitude of the federal government, which is
guilty of standing in the position of giving its authority
to color proscription. Now, I think the strike in Geor
gia has opened our eyes. It has been the boast of the
South that while they have denied the colored man
political rights, they give him industrial freedom and
liberty. And what do we find ? We find that in the
South the right of the colored man to work is being
denied. When they can do it, they can turn a colored
man out of any line of work for which they can secure
a white. And why is this? Because he is disfranchised.
We know that Congress refused to take hold of this
political situation, either to stop this disfranchisement
or punish it, although in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments Congress specifically has this power, and
it is its duty to do so. We know the Supreme Court
dodges the issue, and when it is finally face to face with
it, asserts that it is not for the Supreme Court, it is
for Congress. And with reference to the declaration
of the President of the United States, I think that is
most serious. I have read and re-read it, and it seems
to me that it is the most insidious and skilful, and there
fore the most dangerous attitude ever taken by a Presi
dent. He admits that a man is not disfranchised on
account of color, and he calls that a step in the right
direction. Now he goes on to discuss these revised
statutes under which he admits we have a franchise, and
finally he comes down to a statement something like
this: That as long as these laws stand, it is neither the
disposition nor is it within the province of the federal
government to interfere with the southern states in the
handling of their domestic affairs.
Now, my friends, that reads to me like a justification
of colored disfranchisement. As a matter of fact, it is.
And I have come to this conference to say that we have
to face the facts that are before us, and the conditions
that are before us, no matter in how high places. Some
one has said here that we have too much agitation ; that
what we want is to get industrial opportunity. We do
want to get industrial opportunity, but if we are not
to have our franchise, it certainly has been shown that
we will lose industrial opportunity. Mr. Taft goes one
step further. He says something which it seems to me
absolutely indefensible, and which is in line with our
talk. He has announced, and you all know it, that col
ored men should be given office by the colored people,
not as a right of citizenship, and that the government
should see to it whether or not the appointment is going
to help the race. Now, my friends, if the President of
the United States is going to openly announce as Pres
ident of this country, that the colored citizens or the
white citizens are to be consulted about the positions to
be held by colored men, you have the authority and
seal of our highest official behind the idea that the col
ored people cannot hold positions that other people do
not want them to have, because it will do the colored
people more harm than good.
MR. CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL: I don t believe my
self, as a matter of fact, that we are going to help the
situation very much by moving our colored brethren
from the South to the North, or from the North to the
South. I don t believe it is going to help very much to
114
assist him if he is a good workman; but I do believe
that the remedy, if you want one, lies only in an appeal
to the innate conscience of the American people. I can t
think that we have had too much agitation. I can t
think that we have had enough agitation. I have been
following my colored brother with my sympathy, with
all my heart, because my father was an abolitionist, and
I am bound to say that I have had more education on
this question since ten o clock this morning, than I have
had before in all the rest of my life, and I think I have
been a pretty close observer. I can tell you that what
I have heard to-day has opened up an entirely new hori
zon to me. And I say this although I am a student more
or less and in a position where I can see the world as
it goes by. Now there are only a few of us here, but
it is a beginning, and everything has to have its begin
ning, every great movement has to. have its beginning,
and if we will strike hands together and increase our
numbers and look forward, we will have our remedy, if
we faint not, believe me.
MR. BARBER: It is because I wish to go on record,
as regards the question which has been raised by one of
my friends here, that I am so anxious to speak. I want
to say that there is a great fundamental difficulty at the
bottom of this problem, and it lies not in economics but in
politics. On that question I am with William Lloyd Gar
rison, Mr. Russell, and the other men that have taken the
stand here. If you will give a man the right to vote,
if you will put the ballot in his hands, if you will give
him the right to protect himself, and if he will see that
the proper man goes to Congress, a man who will see
that American citizens are protected in their rights, then
you will get these other things. If you want to solve the
race problem, you have to get men who have the right to
vote, to say who shall be the governor or the judge, with
the right to sit on juries to protect themselves, the right
to punish sheriffs for doing what they have done in
office. And when you come to this place and tell me
that economics and industry are going to solve this prob
lem, I think you are radically wrong. Industry should
be just merely a stepping stone to higher things in
this republic, and I wish to say the thing that is
needed more particularly in this problem is more back
bone. If you are going to solve the race problem, you
must have men of the William Lloyd Garrison stripe. .
You must have men that will be willing to stand up for
humanity, and for their convictions on this question.
MR. BENSON : I did not expect to have anything to
say until some one spoke about moving the Negroes from
the South to the North. I believe that if we are going
to settle this problem that it is the white who must set
tle it, and not the other, and I hope that whatever meth
ods are determined upon by this conference, they will
be planned upon methods that are natural to us natural
to us in the South, and natural to us in the North. I
am only going to speak for one particular section of
the country, and that is the South, and I am only going
to speak for one particular section of the South, and that
is the rural district, because that is where my exper
ience has been, and I don t know very much about any
thing else. What arc we going to do to keep the Ne
groes from going to the north? It is to make labor
remunerative so that he can exist in the South.
I was born and reared in a little rural community in
Alabama to which I returned after graduating from
college, and to which I have devoted my life, and I
want to say that there is probably not a community in
the South where the relations between the two races
have been so pleasant, and where the people are so well
satisfied as they are there. Why? Because they have
something to do, and you can t ride through that com
munity and look at the schools and tell which is the
1 16
white man s school, or which is the black man s school.
I only mention this to tell you that we are not dissat
isfied down there. We will welcome all that you can
do for us in the way of bringing us our rights to vote,
but we can t sit down and argue while you are bringing
us this right. And the most healthful thing that we all
can do, is to bring into the communities those influences
which are going not only to help to make a revenue,
but are going to help make life as pleasant and attractive
there as any other place in the world.
MR. MILLER: We are fully convinced, from the ad
dress delivered by Mr. DuBois this afternoon, that the
millennium has not come as yet. But in seeking
the solution of these questions we are confront
ed by the question as to whether Mr. Barber
is correct in saying that it is not an economic,
but a political point of view. Well, it depends
largely upon the point of view. I think economics is at
the foundation of the whole thing. But we must come
to economics through politics, so it depends upon the
viewpoint largely as to the truth of the whole thing.
I have studied the colored man pretty well, and I find
the greatest difficulty with the colored man as a rule is
that he is true to one thing. I don t find him ordinar
ily true to his religion, I don t find him true to his
friends, I don t find him true to his trusts. He is just
as derelict in these things as the white man. But I find
the one thing that the colored man is devoted to, and
that ideal is Republicanism. That is his religion. Now
it is not until a colored man can break away from this
ideal, this religion of Republicanism, that he will get his
liberty through economics. Of course Mr. Taft, or Mr.
anybody else, can treat the colored man as Mr. Taft
treats him, and the colored man can be treated as
the Supreme Court treats him, he can be treated as Con
gress treats him, as long as this colored man will
117
stand firmly by the Republican ticket. We know that
in various parts of the country they rebel, they say we
will cut the party, we will organize an independent
party, or we will stand by some other old party, but on
the eve of election day, the great majority of them will
come together and say, let us trust the dear old party
one more time and the Republicans know it. Now,
there is the great Socialistic party which stands for
economic independence, which is the hope of the future
to-day. I stand for rights. There are some people who
say they want certain rights and do not want others.
Some people say they are not looking for social equal
ity. I want every kind of equality I can have. By that
I do not mean that I want to force myself upon any
man s presence. I never sought a man socially in my
life, and I don t expect to. I don t care whether he be
rich as Carnegie, holy as St. John, wise as Socrates, or
white as the Albanian fathers, but what I want is equal
ity, and if I don t get equality, then I want superiority.
Under Socialism we have economic independence.
Everyone has the right to work and every man has the
full reward of his labors.
MRS. IDA WELLS BARNETT : I think perhaps I ought to
say something regarding what has been said about agita
tion, about the beginnings of things, about the small
things. Our people of course cannot very clearly see these
things from the scientific standpoint, they have not the
training necessary to see abstract things as clearly as
they see the concrete. To them, therefore, as has been
said here this afternoon, this question of talking seems
to be a rather small thing, and it is in a way. There is
a kind of talking that does not accomplish anything, and
there is a sort of talking that does, that makes for the
beginning of great things. I have had in mind some
thing which might be called recrimination and we will
not hold ourselves blameless in all these matters of
118
which we speak. I want to say as a last word to my
own fellow-citizens of the darker side of this house:
Let us ask ourselves first if we ourselves have done all
that we should do in helping to bring about the things
so necessary, and in helping others. Fifteen years ago
when the agitation was begun in this country, or launch
ed in England and afterwards in this country, and the
question of funds arose with which to do the work of
spreading information regarding lynching, a plea was
sent out from the Atlantic to the Pacific to get contri
butions of nickels and pennies and dimes for our own
people. That was the beginning of things to show the
American white people that they did not know the facts.
It was your duty and it was my duty to tell them these
facts, to put them in their minds and to read them to
them. Did we do it? How much money did we give?
How much more did we tax ourselves in order that we
might help in bringing about this work? Now don t
let us discourage these friends that have come to help us.
Let us not spend the time talking about who is to blame
on the other side of the line, but let us close up our
lines, and not forget that this is only the beginning of
the thing. Let us prepare to spread the information in
order to get these other people interested in the matter
and we will find that with their help we will be able to
go forward.
MR. TRIDON : What we white people need is educa
tion. I am sick of hearing white people talk about edu
cating the Negro. I am sick of hearing about uplifting
men. It seems to me when a man needs to be uplifted,
he ir not worth bothering about., But you need to get
the white people. You need to show that you are not
beasts. The white people think you are beasts. They
know it. They learned it in school. The boys should
not doubt the words of their teachers. Why should
those white people doubt the words of their teacher?
119
But they will if you give them proofs to the contrary.
If you will distribute pamphlets and literature; if you
will blow your own horn you will get your audience. We
must find books and pamphlets published by the col
ored man, and we must have some kind of a publication
which at least shall show not only when a colored man
assaults a white woman, but when a colored man saves
the life of a white woman.
MR. ROBINSON : A remedy has been asked for, and
I would suggest that the remedy used by William Lloyd
Garrison is a very good one. It is a very slow but a
very effective one. When Mr. Garrison first began his
addresses against slavery, he could not get a room in a
house in Boston, and he had to give his first talks on
the streets. It seems to me that we never bring about
any desired results without a little time. It takes time
to make men competent. Our best workmen are those
who have suffered, who have been the men who worked
the hardest and who became competent very slowly,
and many of them not at all. I was born and brought
up in Louisiana, in the rural districts, and I worked for
five or six years for a farmer. One day I said to him,
"Captain, what do you think of the so-called race prob
lem? I see it in all the papers. What do you think of
it?" He said, "I don t think there is any race problem.
You are working for me, do I give myself any concern
about your work?" I said, "You don t." He said, "It
is the same thing with regard to your race. I give my
self no concern with regard to your race. You are
solving your own problem, aren t you?" and I said, "I
am"; and he said, "That is just how it will be with your
race." And I said, "I believe you."
1 20
Wednesday Evening Session
Judge Wendell P. Stafford, Chairman
Address of
Judge Wendell P. Stafford
of the
Supreme Court of the District of Columbia
I believe in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man. Not the brotherhood of white men but the
brotherhood of all men. I believe in the golden rule and
the Declaration of Independence, and I stand by the Con
stitution of the United States, including the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments. That is my creed and my
platform.
Some questions are difficult because they are so com
plicated. Others are difficult because they are so sim
ple. Duty is apt to be difficult, and the simplest duty
may yet be the hardest. I assume that human nature is
substantially the same in every climate and under every
skin. I assume that the white people of the South are
in themselves no better and no worse that the white
people of the North. I assume that their opinions and
conduct are what ours might have been if we had come
under the same influences and conditions. But such con
siderations do not settle the question : what is right ?
The broad subject of our conference is the Negro and
the nation, not the Negro and the North, not the Negro
121
and the South, not the Negro and the white man, but
the Negro and the nation. The questions it brings up are
national. They cannot be settled by any one race and
still less by any one section. They concern the whole
country and they must be answered by the country as a
whole. If the Constitution is not binding in South Caro
lina it is not binding in New York. If it cannot protect
the black man it cannot long protect the white. If fif
teen states can set aside the Constitution at their pleasure
there is no Constitution worth the name. If a state can
nullify one clause it can nullify the whole. If a state
can, in a single congressional district, deliberately exclude
three-fourths of its eligible voters from the polls on the
real ground of color, and yet insist upon having them all
counted for the purpose of holding a seat in the national
assembly, it can perpetrate a fraud on every legally con
stituted congressional district in the United States, and
there is no security for representative government in any
corner of the land. If any class or race can be perma
nently set apart from and pushed down below the rest
in political and civil rights, so may any other class or
race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more pow
erful associates, and we may say farewell at once to the
principles on which we have counted for our safety.
We are confronted not by a theory but by a fact. That
fact is the deliberate and avowed exclusion of a whole
race of our fellow citizens from their constitutional
rights, accompanied by the announcement that that ex
clusion must and shall be permanent. It is not that the
Negro is ignorant, nor that, he is poor, nor that he is
vicious, but that he is a Negro. Even when he is good
and learned and rich, he must still be excluded because
he is still a Negro. That is the proposition, and that
122
it is which makes it the duty of all who dissent from
such a doctrine to make their dissent known and to make
it uncompromising and clear.
If the southern states were only taking the ground
that all voters white and black alike must possess cer
tain high qualifications in property and education, the
situation would not be what it is. Such restrictions
might result in the exclusion of the great mass of colored
men as it would result in the exclusion of large num
bers of the white. Yet we might well wait for the ef
fects of time. If any indication were to be found that
the South is looking forward to a day when the colored
man shall exercise his political rights and that it is pro
viding some process, no matter how slow and gradual,
by which that result may be attained, it might be our
patriotic duty to hold our peace. But when no such in
dication is to be found, when no encouragement is held
out that the Negro shall ever have any, even the slightest,
part in the government under which he lives, patriotic
duty forbids that we should be silent. When will there
be any change why should there be any change as long
as the whole country. North as well as South, acquiesces
in the present order?
But there is a still deeper consequence involved. If laws
can be made and enforced which every child knows were
intended to deprive and do in fact deprive millions of
American citizens of the rights guaranteed them by the
Constitution of their country, it is vain to call on men to
reverence the law, and when we swear to the Constitu
tion we swear to a rotten reed. "When the Son of Man
cometh shall He find faith on the earth ?" That was the
old prophetic question. Not faith in the mystic spirit
ual sense but fides, good faith, common honesty. When
123
multitudes of men take an oath which on their own con
fession they have no thought of keeping, the public con
science is debased and the bond that holds society to
gether is well nigh dissolved. The grossest barbarian
that ever shed human blood to solemnize his oath has
had some form of words that would bind his darkened
conscience, and to break which he counted as damnation.
It was left for the nineteenth Christian century to ex
hibit the spectacle of thousands of civilized men taking
upon their lips an oath, in the most solemn form of their
religion, which they themselves publicly and shamelessly
admit they never intended to observe. From such a
position it is but a short step to verdicts on the unwritten
law and trial and execution by the mob. When the
Constitution is defied it can make no essential difference
whether that defiance is expressed in Tillman s coarse
and brutal words, "To hell with the Constitution," or is
couched in some honeyed, euphemistic phrase that ap
peals to Anglo-Saxon prejudice and pride. In either
case the thing is done.
It is a fitting day for such a subject. It has become
the fashion of recent years to treat the Civil War as noth
ing but a political contest, ignoring the tremendous moral
issues that alone justified its sacrifices. But read Lin
coln s second inaugural, where he spoke as the prophet
of his people and uttered the deep secret of the conflict.
It will not do to shut our eyes to the real causes and
results of the war especially now when northern indif
ference and southern injustice strike hands to keep the
black race in a new bondage as helpless and hopeless as
the old. As a member of the white race and turning for
the moment to white men, I say that our race will deserve
any calamity the presence of the black race may bring.
124
We brought it here by theft and force. We owed it
liberty and we gave it a chain. We owe it light and
we give it darkness. We owe it opportunity and we
hedge it round with restraints. We owe it the court
house and we give it the lynching tree. We owe it an
example of order and self control; we give it an example
of lawlessness and hate. We are sowing the wind and
if we reap the whirlwind we shall have ourselves to
blame.
The strong imagine they have a mortgage upon the
weak, but in the world of morals it is the other way. We
complain that virtue and intelligence cannot be safe in
the neighborhood of ignorance and vice. God means that
it should be so. So does he take bonds from the mighty
to do justice by the weak. Shame on the race that holds
in its hands the wealth of the continent and carries in
its brain the accumulated culture of the centuries and
yet, refusing to lift ignorance and vice to the level of
enlightenment and virtue, makes that ignorance and vice
an excuse for the denial of human rights. Never until
the white man has spent his last surplus dollar and ex
hausted the last faculty of his brain in the effort to lift
up his weaker brother never until then can he stand
in the presence of infinite justice and complain of the
ignorance or the criminality of the black.
It is really a contest between caste and equality a
contest as old as the world and possibly as permanent.
The spirit of caste is nothing else than that self worship
that is fostered and gratified when it can look down upon
another. The secret of caste is inordinate self love and
pride. It can find no welcome in the heart where the
Son of Man is made at home. Underneath every politi
cal or social phase of the subject lies the profounder
phase which makes it a question of duty and of true re
ligion. If we can do nothing else, we can at least, on
this day of sacred memories, purify our ideals, and test
our conduct by them. We do not make our ideals, our
ideals make us. America did not choose the great doc
trine of equal rights that immortal truth chose America.
It has moulded her from the beginning ; it will mould her
until the end ; or if it cannot it will cast her off with the
wreckage of the past and take up some other nation that
shall be found worthy.
There is a power that has been working here from the
beginning. It is the power that will be working here
when you and I are gone. It is the power whose pur
pose is that all men shall be free. Various races have at
various times flattered themselves that they were a chosen
people. But if history shows anything it shows that a
nation is nothing but a tool in the han 1 of the Almighty.
If it serves His purpose it is used. If it breaks in His
hand it is thrown away, and another is chosen in its
stead. If this nation has any mission it is to make the
Declaration of Independence good that and the three
great amendments to the Constitution which were the
logical result of that sublime pledge. It is true those
amendments were adopted in a glow of idealism. But
so was the Declaration itself. It is true they have not
been lived up to any more than the Declaration was lived
up to in the first seventy years of the republic. But
now as then and at all other times the test of our institu
tions, both of their power to last and of their worthiness
to last, is simply and solely this : Do they serve to keep
the rights of men sacred and secure?
Address of
John T. Milholland
of the
Constitution League, New York
Frankly it must be said the forces at work for the
colored man s uplift in the South are not the prevailing
forces. The sentiment for his just, equitable treatment,
for the vindication of his constitutional rights as a cit
izen and a man is neither yet strong enough nor suf
ficiently widespread to be compared for an instant with
the Satanic energies behind that avowed determination
to crush him down again to the low level of physical as
well as political slavery. To deny this is to blind one s
self to the every day evidence that has been multiplying
with cumulative effect since the surrender of Lee at
Appomattox.
Mr. Chairman, the value of the Georgia Railroad
strike as an illuminant of the situation cannot easily be
exaggerated. It puts the whole case in diamond light,
revealing with the clearness of noonday the manifest
tendency towards the utter degradation of the Negro
about which we of the Constitution League and other
disturbed spirits have been preaching and prophesying
these many years.
Deplorable as it is, 1 welcome it. Disgraceful to the
South that permits it; disgraceful to these northern
trades unions that have aided and directed this latest
conspiracy against the rights of man ; a blot on the escutch
eon of our Republic and a shame to modern civilization;
nevertheless, I for one, am glad that it has come to
pass. Such results were and are inevitable. Bad as
they are, worse will follow unless this great nation
opens its eyes to the actualities that confront it upon
this Memorial day, this day that brings back to us those
momentous times that tried men s souls but warmed all
hearts, those rays of great misery but of a great hope
that have been succeeded so soon by the days of forget-
f ulness !
Conditions, I repeat, desperate as they are in the
South must grow worse before they grow better. I
said this years ago when the Republican traitors, leaders
at Washington, aided by misguided zealots elsewhere, re
fused to see anything very serious in the failure of the
bill for honest Federal elections in the South or the de
feat of the Blair education measure a calamity that
has cost the South twenty years of genuine progress ;
in the nullification by southern states of the great war
amendments to the Constitution, those sublime declara
tions which represent the highwater mark of American
statesmanship, the loftiest declaration of human rights
that has ever been promulgated by any national law-
making assembly since the years of jubilee rang out
among the hills of old Judea "proclaiming liberty
throughout the land and to the inhabitants thereof."
The Negro s condition, I contend, in this country is
growing worse every year. He is standing on the very
threshold of a physical slavery almost as bad and hope
less as that from which he was emancipated by one of
the bloodiest wars ever waged in Christendom. Practi
cally a political serf in a dozen states, without right to
vote or liberty to speak; trial by a jury of his peers
denied him, and in such imminent danger of lynching
128
that he lives under a reign of terror as awful as that
inspired by Ku-Klux depredations or the old Spanish
Inquisition to talk about such a man enjoying the
liberty that is supposed to be the normal condition of
every American citizen is to fly in the face of truth and
proclaim oneself incapable of observation.
Passing the bloody massacres of the Reconstruction
period, we have seen year after year, for nearly two
decades, no less than three citizens every week lynched
or burned or shot to death without the semblance of
judicial procedure to ascertain their guilt or innocence.
And yet these mob murders do not reveal the worst of
it ; they only suggest the brutal tyranny, the horrible
beatings of defenseless men and boys, girls and women;
the humiliations of mind and hearts, sensitive by nature
and cultivation ; the breaking of strong men s wills and
the unspeakable degradations of mothers and daugh
ters whose sons and husbands are powerless to afford
them the protection that is even denied them by the law.
Senator Tillman of South Carolina is not an author
ity I quote but what he says on this point is so thorough
ly in accordance with known facts as to make this tes
timony relevant and of value. On July 20, 1907, he
declared in the United States Senate: "Race hatred
grows day by day. There is no man who is honest, go
ing through the South and conversing with the white
people and blacks, but will return and tell you this is
true. Then I say to you of the North who are the
rulers of the land, who can change this or do something
to relieve conditions, what are you going to do about it?
Are you going to sit quiet? If nothing else will cause
you to think, I notify you, what you already
know, that there are a billion dollars or more of
northern capital invested in the South in railroads, in
mines, in forests, in farm lands, and self interest, which
fact if nothing else, ought to make you set about hunt-
129
ing some remedy for this terrible situation. Therefore
we say to you it is your duty to do something. It is
your duty to move. It is your duty to begin the discus
sion. For the time being the South is occupying an at
titude of constant friction, race riot, butchery, murder
of whites by blacks and blacks by whites, the inevitable,
irresponsible conflict."
This is a note different from that usually sounded at
Carnegie Hall and Tremont Temple, but every man
familiar with the case knows that the South Carolina
Senator, in this instance at least, speaks the truth, and
because it is the truth, I think the raison d etre of this
conference has been sufficiently established.
130
THE RACE PROBLEM
Jenkins Lloyd Jones
of
Chicago
The civilized world, with impressive unanimity and
inspiring heartiness, has just been celebrating the cen
tennial of the birth of him who signed the Emancipa
tion Proclamation. When the second centennial comes
round this document will be more prized and better
known than now. Many things conspire in these days
to obscure the light that should and will emanate through
all time from this glow point in the history of the
United States.
The character and place of Abraham Lincoln in his
tory can never be understood if the title of Emancipa
tor is ignored, evaded or minimized. "Emancipator"
is the key-word to the great President, and the Eman
cipation Proclamation is the pivotal point not only in
the war but in the history of the United States. We
ought all to see it now, but it took a poet s vision to
see it then.
Let apologists and politicians North or South trace
the inspirations of the civil war to petty and secondary
causes, the only adequate explanation of the acceptance
of war by the unwarlike people of the North is found
in the word "Liberty," and so far as ethical questions
can be settled by war alas, how little can be done that
way the human theory of the Negro was vindicated.
It was an awful price to pay, but for myself I deem the
abolition of the human auction block cheap at any price ;
much as I hate war, I would accept the bitter experience
again if the end could not be attained otherwise. I
would march every foot of the weary ground that I
traversed from 1862 to 1865 for the sake of knowing that
a slave-mother s child could become the guest of Eng
lish nobility, the poet laureate of the Negro race, deserv
ing and receiving the praise that belongs to a poet, ir
respective of rank or color. With prophetic insight did
the Great Emancipator say of the war: "Yet, if God
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the
bondman s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it
must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.
But alas, by what slow processes do liberty and jus
tice come to their own ? There has come a recrudescence
of the ethnology of slavery under the guise of a super
ficial science. In many quarters a painful reaction has
come that has silenced the voice of religion, confused
the problems at the ballot, and intimidated the one-time
champions of the despised race. We still hear preach
ers in the pulpit pleading for segregation; educators de
ploring the education of the black ; legislators, by down
right subterfuge and the tricks of circumlocution which
only a demagogue can use, disfranchising those who
were enfranchised by the decrees of war, the acts of
Congress, and the signature of the great emancipator.
All this in the face of the cold, hard facts that prove
the colored man worthy the confidence placed in him
by those who died for his freedom. He has justified
the momentous signature, the holiest autograph in Amer-
132
lean history that attached to the Emancipation Procla
mation. In the space of a short half-century, and that
demoralized by war, the colored man is on his way
towards the full justification of the Thirteenth, Four
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution.
The story of his emancipation is outdone by the still
more wonderful story of his education. Civilization
offers no parallel to the rise of the enslaved race. The
memory of Lincoln has been glorified and most splend
idly vindicated by the triumph of the black man.
Lincoln s work cannot be undone. There is no ground
for despondency, but there is for vigilance. Timidity,
racial prejudice, pride, social cowardice and inherited
bias still combine to create lines where none exist, per
petrate prejudices unjustified, and foster assumptions
unwarranted by science and condemned by religion.
The ante-bellum cry was "Do not interfere with our
peculiar institutions. - There is a post-bellum prattle
about southern problems being handled by southern peo
ple. This assembly should send forth the note, far and
clear, that there is no North or South in freedom now,
any more than was there in 65. In times of peace, as
in times of war, the question of justice knows no state
limits. In the eyes of enlightened statesmanship and
in the eyes of God, the status of the Negro in New
Orleans is the same as that of the Negro in Chicago.
He demands a square deal, and only a square deal, in
the one place as in the other. The Negro is a candi
date now as always, North, South, here, everywhere,
for all that nature and human nature can fit him for,
and all the legal sophistries, and legislative double-deal
ings that breed injustice towards him are a greater men
ace to the white perpetrators thereof than to the black
victims of the same.
There are no "southern problems" that are not na
tional; no "race problems" that are not lost in human
133
problems. Providence is kinder to the oppressed than
to the oppressor; the wronged than the wronger. The
rise of the black man under the inspiration of freedom
is surely inevitable, inspiring. The emancipation of the
white man, his former master and his descendants, is
perhaps a slower process; one that awakens deeper anx
iety, and the failure of which is a far greater menace
to the growth and prosperity of our nation.
To talk of a "southern problem" to-day, as distin
guished from the "northern problem" ; for any section
of this country to ask to be let alone to adjust its own
social affairs, is harking back to an old regime, forever
past. So far as there is a Negro problem, whether it
springs from the incapacity or depravity of black men
or the narrowness, arrogance and commercial conceit
of the white man, like Eliza in the story, it has crossed
the Ohio River on floating ice. Mob violence, brutal
lynchings and lawless panics appear in Illinois as in
South Carolina; they have disgraced the records of
courts and stained the soil with blood, in Ohio as in
Mississippi. The supremacy of the national government
and the urgency of national education and national leg
islation, in social as well as commercial adjustments, are
becoming daily more imperious.
A limited suffrage may be good statesmanship ; we
only demand that that limitation be honestly stated and
impartially enforced. It may be wise under some con
ditions to separate white and black children in the schools,
but for the legislature of Kentucky to call upon the trus
tees of Berea to violate their sacred trust to the dead, to
disturb the benign traditions and precedents of decades,
and to shut the doors of the college against diligent, law-
abiding and self-respecting students because of a tint
in the skin and a kink in the hair, though the tint and
the kink be ameliorated by ninety per cent, of blood
drawn from the veins of the Kentucky chivalry that
134
breeds nothing meaner than "colonels," is an indignity
to justice, a violation of the fundamental principles of
democracy- and the more precious decrees written in the
blood of the heroes of 76 and of 61 to 65.
We should demand that the race theories born of ig
norance and prejudice be revised by the latest science;
that no illegitimacy of parentage be allowed to interfere
with the divine legitimacy of children; that womanhood
be protected by statute and public sentiment, whatever
its complexion ; that virginity be held as sacred in the
colored as the white maiden and the violators thereof be
held with equal severity by law and by public sentiment,
whether they be white or black. We should call for im
partial enforcement of statute rights of all citizens of
any color. We protest against decreed distinctions and
gradations of rights under the Constitution of the Uni
ted States and declare there are no privileges according
to the laws and constitution of the United States vouch
safed to the black man in Minnesota that are not de
creed in Louisiana. These demands are imperative.
The situation is urgent.
Out of our dire disgraces the urgent needs, the pathet
ic cries of the victims of past tyranny and present
prejudices, and the more pathetic fears, social anxieties
and political confusions of the white victims of past
wrongs, there must rise a new movement that will seize
the fallen flag and hold it aloft once more, bearing it
forward until the nation is awakened and liberty and
justice find fresh endorsement, and until community life
shall overreach sect, party, industrial, or racial lines.
In this movement state lines must fade in the presence
of national inspirations and obligations, and national
boundaries will sink out of sight in the presence of in
ternational sympathy and confidence.
It is to help on such a movement, is it not, that we
are here?
135
IS THE SOUTHERN POSITION
ANGLO-SAXON?
John Spencer Bassett
Professor of History
Smith College
There is such a thing as the Anglo-Saxon attitude to
ward inferiors. By observing the feelings on the sub
ject in the places in which the English stock has ruled
inferiors we may have the general features of this Anglo-
Saxon attitude. And when this has been found it will
be seen that the southerner goes somewhat further in
repression than the Englishman, and that this surplusage
is the part of the southern race antipathy which appears
most artificial. It is an outgrowth of peculiar historical
conditions, and we may hope to lessen its intensity.
Cape Colony is that British possession in which con
ditions with reference to the Negro are most like those
in our southern states. In each locality the Negro strikes
the white man in much the same way. It is the recoil
of the superior from the inferior. But in Africa the
aversion is not solidified as in the South. In one place
the individual white man determines his attitude toward
the black man, in the other the community determines it,
and woe to him who disputes the decision. In one place,
in spite of a large number who are antagonistic to Negro
development there are many who seek to bring it about,
and they are allowed to do what they choose. In the
other there is a public opinion about the Negro, and its
dictum is final. In one a Negro of great capacity may
136
rise out of the sphere of inferiority without a great shock
to the whites around him ; in the other he may rise till
he is esteemed great in all the rest of the world, but he
will ever have "the place" of the most inferior member
of his race in the eyes of his white neighbors.
Mr. Bryce gives us some good illustrations of the feel
ing in Cape Colony. For example, a gentleman there
may invite an educated Negro to dinner, but before doing
so he will ask his white guests if they object to such
company. Nor does it happen that he loses position in
society because he has been host to a native. He is
eligible thereafter as a guest himself at the home of
those who would not accept his invitation under the con
ditions specified. The same is true as to intermarriage:
it occurs rarely and there is no law against it. Some
times a poor white man will work for a Negro who has
employment for him. Generally the children of the two
races attend separate schools; but it happens at times
that poor white people send their children to schools
for blacks because the fees are smaller and no one ob
jects. White people are concerned in philanthropic work
for blacks, acting individually and as churches, and by
so doing they do not lose their efficiency in other work
for and with white people. Social relations with Negroes
are not desired by the majority of the whites but those
who oppose such relations do not think the safety of so
ciety demands that the advocates of other views be held
as enemies of the public good. On this subject people
seem to think that the best safety of the public lies in
allowing a man to believe as he chooses without making
him pay any penalty.
Now, I do not say that this is a desirable thing. It
may or may not be so ; but my present contention is that
this is entirely unlike the position of our South. And
since the conditions are relatively the same in Jamaica
and in other British colonies in which whites rule blacks,
137
I think it fair to say that it stands for the Anglo-Saxon
attitude toward the Negro. That is to say, the British
are unwilling to accept the inferior as an equal, but they
are willing to try to make him equal, and their sense of
fair play tolerates and even applauds the successful ef
forts to raise him above himself. It is a doctrine which
sprang from the English instinct of liberty, and it was
brought to America by the British founders.
Thus it happened that the Methodist and Missionary
Baptist churches became the strongest popular religious
organizations in the South, and they so remained through
out the eighteenth century. Although others labored as
they could these two popular churches were particularly
active in work for the Negro. In true Anglo-Saxon
spirit they took him into the churches and in exceptional
cases they allowed him to preach, but they did not give
him the right to hold office. They believed, and he ac
quiesced in it, that he was not capable of directing the
affairs of the church. This mingling of blacks and
whites in a field of common concern was the best guar
antee of mutual peace and sympathy; and since religion
was the sphere of mental activity at which the white
man s ideals were most likely to enter the Negro s life,
this association in the churches promised much for the
future. When the nineteenth century began, and for
three decades thereafter, the whites had the Anglo-Saxon
attitude toward the Negro. They sought to develop him,
they recognized his inferiority in the mass while they
encouraged all efforts in the individual which seemed to
work for his uplift. Some illustrations of this state of
affairs will show how harmonious the situation was at
this time.
The position of the southern churches at this time has
its parallel in that of some of the leading public men.
Washington and many prominent Virginians were well
known for their mild views of the Negro. In 1791, Jef-
138
ferson, secretary of state, appointed a Negro mathema
tician to office in his department because he wanted to see
if a Negro would succeed in that capacity. His letter
to a gentleman in France telling of the matter shows
that he did not disapprove of Negro office-holders. And
it was under Andrew Jackson, the second founder of the
Democratic party, that Negroes, so far as I can learn,
were first received at a social function in the White
House.
Now these incidents do not prove everything, but they
show that public opinion in 1791 and in 1829 was not
like public opinion in the South at present. All that I
claim is that in the first three decades of the nineteenth
century the Southern whites had the typical English at
titude toward the Negro. They recognized his inferiori
ty, they sought to secure his development, and that pain
fully solid opinion which demands that white hands shall
never touch black ones had not come into existence. If
the problem of the inferior could have been worked out
under this gentler system, this conference, probably,
would not have been called. But mild measures could
not be followed. To destroy slavery was of greater im
mediate importance than to develop the Negro. About
1830 the storm began which was to secure emancipation
and the blue sky has been darkened ever since. It was
perhaps a necessary storm, but it has been unnecessarily
prolonged.
The controversy which was to work so much that was
good and so much that was not good for the Negro was
at first concerned with slavery; since 1865 it has been con
cerned with the position of the Negro. The slavery
problem and the Negro problem are distinct by nature,
but in their development in America one ran into the
other. Northern men declared that slavery wronged the
Negro by taking from him his inalienable rights; south
ern men replied that the Negro had no inalienable rights
and that slavery was the condition best suited for his de
velopment. And it happened that by a process of ac
tion and reaction each side became more emphatic in its
assertions until at last one was declaring for Negro suf
frage, thus ennobling the inferior to the position of equal
citizenship, and the other was declaring that slavery was
a divinely appointed institution. Southern churches
which in 1800 worked for the conversion of Negroes and
taught that slavery was an evil were in 1850 teaching that
the African was divinely ordained to bondage; and the
most radical of Southerners were beginning to ask if he
had any soul which God was bound to respect. It was
a conviction which did not rest on failure in the efforts
to elevate him but which grew out of a heated condition
of the public mind in the great sectional controversy.
Then came the war with its failures and reconstruc
tion with its fury. Whether we condemn or approve
Negro suffrage which the North forced on the South
while it could, we shall see that it did not improve the
South s opinion of the Negro. From 1830 to 1909 is
a long period. There is not a man living in the South
to-day who remembers the time when the Negro question
was not associated with passion. The people there not
only have forgotten that they ever planned and strove to
develop the race in the old English way, but they have
difficulty to believe the historian when he proves it from
their own history. They have not thought it possible to
return to the former attitude, and yet what has been done
can be done again.
If we could return to the attitude which existed in the
days of saner conditions, the days of Jefferson and Wash
ington, we should not have social intermingling of the
races. The difference between that condition and the
present would be in the absence of friction. A white
man would not hate a Negro because he was a Negro.
and a black man would not hate a white man because he
140
was white. We should then lose that apprehension, as
old as slavery, that some day there will come a great
bloody struggle between the two hostile races, a struggle
whose -great probability lies in the habitual anticipation
of it.
The North and the South are jointly responsible for
the struggle which brought race antipathy to its present
condition; and they have joint responsibility for its re
moval. The best thing they can do is to let the fires go
out. But patience is not our only obligation. There
ought also to be wise and persistent effort for Negro
uplift. And this is a duty which ought to fall on the
South as well as on the North. People who are striving
to help the Negro will not hate him. If this conference
can suggest some means of bringing the many efforts
of the North to improve the condition of the Negro into
touch with the southern whites, it will do the best day s
work clone in many a month in the cause of the black
man s progress. For example, if the missionary agencies
in a southern state should hold a conference to consider
their own work in which they could induce southern
clergymen to take part, there would be laid the foundation
of mutual understanding and good will, and it would
result beneficially to all concerned. If such harmony can
be obtained, we shall be in a fair way to return to the old
Anglo-Saxon attitude, which sprang from English love
of fair play, and which is only obscured by events which
in their nature are transitory.
141
EVOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM
W. E. B. DuBois
Professor of Economics
Atlanta University
Those who complain that the Negro problem is al
ways with us and apparently insoluble must not forget
that under this vague and general designation are gath
ered many social problems and many phases of the same
problem; that these problems and phases have passed
through a great evolutionary circle and that to-day es
pecially one may clearly see a repetition, vaster but simi
lar, of the great cycle of the past.
That problem of the past, so far as the black American
was concerned, began with caste a definite place preor
dained in custom, law and religion where all men of black
blood must be thrust. To be sure, this caste idea as ap
plied to blacks was no sudden, full grown conception, for
the enslavement of the workers was an idea which Ameri
ca inherited from Europe and was not synonymous for
many years with the enslavement of the blacks, although
the blacks were the chief workers. Men came to the
idea of exclusive black slavery by gradually enslaving
the workers, as was the world s long custom, and then
gradually conceiving certain sorts of work and certain
colors of men as necessarily connected. It was, when
once set up definitely in the southern slave system, a
142
logically cohering whole which the simplest social philo
sopher could easily grasp and state. The difficulty was
it was too simple to be either just or true. Human na
ture is not simple and any classification that roughly di
vides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave
and free, is and must ever be ludicrously untrue and uni
versally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classifica
tion. So in the southern slave system the thing that from
the first damned it was the free Negro the Negro legal
ly free, the Negro economically free and the Negro spir
itually free.
How was the Negro to be treated and conceived of who
was legally free? At first with perfect naturalness he was
treated as a man he voted in Massachusetts and in South
Carolina, in New York and Virginia ; he intermarried with
black and white, he claimed and received his civil rights
all this until the caste of color was so turned as to corre
spond with the caste of work and enslave not only slaves
but black men who were not slaves. Even this system,
however, was unable to ensure complete economic de
pendence on the part of all black men; there were con
tinually artisans, foremen and skilled servants who be
came economically too valuable to be slaves. In vain
were laws hurled at Negro intelligence and responsibili
ty; black men continued to hire their time and to steal
some smattering of knowledge, and it was this fact that
became the gravest menace to the slave system. But
even legal and economic freedom was not so dangerous
to slavery as the free spirit which continually cropped out
among men fated to be slaves : they thought, they dreamed,
they aspired, they resisted. In vain were they beaten,
sold south and killed, the ranks were continually filled
with others and they either led revolt at home or ran
away to the North, and these by showing their human
qualities continually gave the lie to the slave assumption.
Thus it was the free Negro in these manifold phases
143
of his appearance who hastened the economic crisis which
killed slavery and who made it impossible to make the
caste of work and the caste of color correspond, and
who became at once the promise and excuse of those
who forced the critical revolution.
To-day in larger cycle and more intricate detail we
are passing through certain phases of a similar evolu
tion. To-day we have the caste idea again not a sud
den full grown conception but one being insidiously but
consciously and persistently pressed upon the nation. The
steps toward it which are being taken are: first, political
disfranchisement, then vocational education with the dis
tinct idea of narrowing to the uttermost the vocations
in view, and finally a curtailment of civil freedom of
travel, association, and entertainment, in systematic ef
fort to instill contempt and kill self-respect.
Here then is the new slavery of black men in America
a new attempt to make degradation of social condition
correspond with certain physical characteristics not to
be sure fully realized as yet, and probably unable for
reasons of social development ever to become as systema
tized as the economic and physical slavery of the past
and yet realized to an extent almost unbelievable by those
who have not taken the pains to study the facts to an
extent which makes the lives of thinking black men in this
land a perpetual martyrdom.
But right here as in the past stands in the path of this
idea the figure of this same thinking black man this new
freedman. This freedman again as in the past presents
himself as free in varying phases : there is the free black
voter of the North and border states whose power is far
more tremendous than even he dare think so that he is
afraid to use it; there is the black man who has accom
plished economic freedom and who by working himself
into the vast industrial development of the nation is to
day accumulating property at a rate that is simply as-
144
tonnding. And finally tnere is the small but growing
number of black men emerging into spiritual freedom and
becoming participators and freemen of the kingdom of
culture around which it is so singularly difficult to set
metes and bounds, and who in art, science and literature
are making their modest but ineffaceable mark.
The question is what is the significance of this group
of men for the future of the caste programme and for
the future social development of America? In order to
answer this question intelligently let us retrace our steps
and follow more carefully the details of the proposed
programme of renewed caste in America. This pro
gramme when one comes to define and state it is elusive.
There are even those who deny its existence as a defi
nite consciously conceived plan of action. But, certain
it is, there is growing unanimity of a peculiar sort on cer
tain matters. And this unanimity is centering about
three propositions :
1. That it was a mistake to give Negroes the ballot.
2. That Negroes are essentially an inferior race.
3. That the only permanent settlement of the race prob
lem will be open and legal recognition of this inferiority.
When now a modern nation condemns ten million of
its fellows to such a fate it would be supposed that this
conclusion has been reluctantly forced upon them after
a careful study and weighing of the facts. This, how
ever, is not the case in the Negro problem. On the
contrary there has been manifest a singular reluctance
and indisposition carefully to study the Negro problem.
Ask the average American : Why should the ballot have
been withheld from the Negro, and he will answer: "Re-
cause he wasn t fit for it." But that is not a sufficient
answer : first, because few newly enfranchised groups of
the most successful democracies have been fit for the
ballot when it was first given, and secondly, because
there were Negroes in the United States fit for the ballot
145
in 1870. Moreover the political philosophy that con
demns out of hand the Fifteenth Amendment does not
often stop to think that the problem before the American
nation 1865-1870 was not a simple problem of fixing the
qualifications of voters. It was, on the contrary, the im
mensely more complicated problem of enforcing a vast
social and economic revolution on a people determined
not to submit to it. Whenever a moral reform is forced
on a people from without there ensue complicated and
tremendous problems, whether that reform is the cor
rection of the abuse of alcohol, the abolition of child
labor or the emancipation of slaves. The enforcement of
such a reform will strain every nerve of the nation and
the real question is not : Is it a good thing to strain the
framework of the nation but rather: Is slavery so dan
gerous a thing that sudden enfranchisement of the ex-
slaves is too great a price to pay for its abolition?
To be sure there are those who profess to think that
the white South of its own initiative after the war, with
the whole of the wealth, intelligence and law-making pow
er in its hands, would have freely emancipated its slaves
in obedience to a decree from Washington, just as there
are those who would entrust the regulation of the whis
key traffic to salo<::i keepers and the bettering of the
conditions of child labor to the employers. It is no
attack on the South or on saloon keepers or on employ
ers to say that such a reform from such a source is un
thinkable. It is simply human nature that men trained
to a social system or condition should be the last to be
entirely entrusted with its reformation. It was, then, not
the Emancipation Proclamation but the Fifteenth Amend
ment that made slavery impossible in the United States
and those that object to the Fifteenth Amendment have
simply this question to answer : Which was best, slavery
or ignorant Negro voters? The answer is clear as day:
Negro voters never did anything as bad as slavery. If
146
they were guilty of all the crimes charged to them by the
wildest enemies, even then what they did was less dan
gerous, less evil and less cruel than the system of slavery
whose death knell they struck. And when in addition
to this we remember that the black voters of the South
established the public schools, gave the poor whites the
ballot, modernized the penal code and put on the statute
books of the South page after page of legislation that
still stands to-day when we remember this, we have a
right to conclude that the Fifteenth Amendment was a
wise and far-sighted piece of statesmanship.
But to-day the men who oppose the right of Negroes
to vote are no longer doing so on the ground of ignor
ance, and with good reason, for to-day a majority and an
appreciable majority of the black men of the South twen
ty-one years of age and over can read and write. In
other words, the bottom has been clean knocked out of
their ignorance argument and yet the fact has elicited
scarcely a loud remark.
Indeed we black men are continually puzzled by the
easy almost unconscious way in which our detractors
change their ground. Before emancipation it was stated
and reiterated with bitter emphasis and absolute confi
dence that a free Negro would prove to be a shiftless
scamp, a barbarian and a cannibal reverting to savagery
and doomed to death. We forget to-day that from 1830
to 1860 there was not a statement made by the masters
of slaves more often reiterated than this, and more dog
matically and absolutely stated. After emancipation, for
twenty years and more, so many people looked for the
fulfilment of the prophecy that many actually saw it
and we heard and kept hearing and now and then still
hear that the Negro to-day is worse off than in slavery
days. Then, as this statement grew less and less plausi
ble, its place came to be taken by other assumptions.
When a Louisiana senator saw the first Negro school he
147
stopped and said: "This is the climax of foolishness!"
The Negro could not be educated he could imitate like
a parrot but real mental development was impossible.
Then, when Negroes did learn some things, it was said
that education spoiled them; they can learn but it docs
them no practical good ; the young educated Negroes be
come criminals they neither save nor work, they are
shiftless and lazy. Now to-day are coming uncomforta
ble facts for this theory. The generation now working
and saving is post-bellum and yet no sooner does it come
on the stage than accumulated property goes on at an
accelerated pace so far as we have measurements. In
Georgia the increase of property among Negroes in the
last ten years has been 83%. But no sooner do facts
like these come to the fore than again the ground of op
position subtly shifts and this last shifting has been so
gradual and so insidious that the Negro and his friends
are still answering arguments that are no longer being
pushed. The most subtle enemies of democracy and
the most persistent advocates of the color line admit al
most contemptuously most that their forebears strenu
ously denied : the Negroes have progressed since slavery,
they are accumulating some property, some of them work
readily and they are susceptible of elementary training;
but, they say, all thought of treating black men like white
men must be abandoned. They are an inferior stock of
men, limited in attainment by nature. You cannot legis
late against nature, and philanthropy is powerless against
deficient cerebral development.
To realize the full weight of this argument recall to
mind a character like John Brown and contrast his atti
tude with the attitude of to-day. John Brown loved his
neighbor as himself. He could not endure, therefore, to
see his neighbor poor, unfortunate or oppressed. This
natural sympathy was strengthened by a saturation in
Hebrew religion which stressed the personal respon-
148
sibility of every man s soul to a just God. To this re
ligion of equality and sympathy with misfortune, was
added the strong influence of the social doctrines of the
French Revolution with its emphasis on freedom and
power in political life. And on all this was built John
Brown s own inchoate but growing belief in a juster and
more equal distribution of property. From all this John
Brown concluded and acted on that conclusion that all
men were created free and equal and that the cost of
liberty was less than the price of repression. Up to the
time of John Brown s death this doctrine was a growing,
conquering social thing. Since then there has come a
change and many would rightly find reason for that
change in the coincidence that the year John Brown
suffered martyrdom was the year that first published the
Origin of Species. Since that day tremendous scientific
and economic advance has been accompanied by distinct
signs of moral change in social philosophy; strong argu
ments have been made for the fostering of war, the social
utility of human degradation and disease, and the in
evitable and known inferiority of certain classes and
races of men. While such arguments have not stopped
the efforts of the advocates of peace, the workers for
social uplift and the believers in human brotherhood, they
have, it must be confessed, often made their voices falter
and tinged their arguments with apology.
Why is this ? It is because the splendid scientific work
of Darwin, Weissman, Galton and others has been wide
ly and popularly interpreted as meaning that there is
such essential and inevitable inequality among men and
races of men as no philanthropy can or ought to elimi
nate ; that civilization is a struggle for existence whereby
the weaker nations and individuals will gradually suc
cumb and the strong will inherit the earth. With this
interpretation has gone the silent assumption that the
white European stock represents the strong surviving peo-
149
pies and that the swarthy, yellow and black peoples are
the ones rightly doomed to eventual extinction.
One can easily see what influence such a doctrine would
have on the race problem in America. It meant moral
revolution in the attitude of the nation. Those that
stepped into the pathway marked by the early abolition
ists faltered and large numbers turned back. They said :
They were good men even great, but they have no mes
sage for us to-day John Brown was a "belated cove
nanter," William Lloyd Garrison was an anachronism in
the age of Darwin men who gave their lives to lift not
the unlifted but the unlif table. We have, consequently,
the present reaction a reaction which says in effect : Keep
these black people in their places, and do not attempt to
treat a Negro simply as a white man with a black face ;
to do this would mean moral deterioration of the race
and nation a fate against which a divine racial preju
dice is successfully fighting. This is the attitude of the
larger portion of the thinking nation to-day.
It is not, however, an attitude that has brought mental
rest or social peace. On the contrary, it is to-day involv
ing a degree of moral strain and political and social
anomaly that gives the wisest pause. The chief difficul
ty has been that the natural place in which, by scientific
law, the black race in America should stay cannot easily
be determined. To be sure, the freedmen did not, as the
philanthropists of the sixties apparently expected, step in
forty years from slavery to nineteenth century civiliza
tion. Neither, on the other hand, did they, as the ex-
masters confidently predicted, retrograde and die. Con
trary to both these views, they chose a third and appar
ently quite unawaited way: from the great, sluggish, al
most imperceptibly moving mass they sent off larger and
larger numbers of faithful workmen and artisans, some
merchants and professional men, and even men of educa
tional ability and discernment. They developed in a
150
generation no world geniuses, no millionaires, no captains
of industry, no artists of first rank ; but they did in forty
years get rid of the larger part of their illiteracy, accu
mulate a half billion of property in small homesteads and
gained now and then respectful attention in the world s
ears and eyes. It has been argued that this progress of
the black man in America is due to the exceptional men
among them and does not measure the ability of the mass.
Such admission is, however, fatal to the whole argument.
If the doomed races of men are going to develop excep
tions to the rule of inferiority then no law, scientific or
moral, should or can proscribe the race as such.
To meet this difficulty in racial philosophy a step has
been taken in America fraught with the gravest social
consequences to the world and threatening not simply the
political but the moral integrity of the nation : that step
is to deny in the case of black men the validity of those
evidences of culture, ability and decency which are ac
cepted unquestioningly in the case of other people, and
by vague assertion, improvable assumption, unjust empha
sis, and now and then by deliberate untruth, to secure not
only the continued proscription of these people, but by
caste distinction to shut in the faces of their rising classes
many of the paths to further advance.
When a social policy based on a supposed scientific
sanction leads to such a moral anomaly it is time to ex
amine rather carefully the logical foundations of the
argument. And so soon as we do this many things
are clear. First, assuming that there are certain stocks
of human beings whose elimination the best welfare of
the world demands; it is certainly questionable if these
stocks include the majority of mankind and it is inde
fensible and monstrous to pretend that we know to-day
with any reasonable certainty which these stocks are.
We can point to degenerate individuals and families here
and there among all races, but there is not the slightest
warrant for assuming that there do not exist among
the Chinese and Hindus, the African Bantus and Ameri
can Indians as lofty possibilities of human culture as
any European race has ever exhibited. It is, to be sure,
puzzling to know why the Soudan should linger a thou
sand years in culture behind the valley of the Seine, but
it is no more puzzling than the fact that the valley of
the Thames was miserably backward as compared with
the banks of the Tiber. Climate, human contact, facili
ties of communication, and what we call accident have
played great part in the rise of culture among nations:
to ignore these and to assert dogmatically that the pres
ent distribution of culture is a fair index of the distri
bution of human ability and desert is to make an asser
tion for which there is not the slightest scientific war
rant.
What the age of Darwin has done is to add to the
eighteenth century idea of individual worth the comple
mentary idea of physical immortality of the human race.
And this, far from annulling or contracting the idea of
human freedom, rather emphasizes its necessity and eter
nal possibility the boundlessness and endlessness of pos
sible human achievement. Freedom has come to mean
not individual caprice or aberration but social self-reali
zation in an endless chain of selves, and freedom for such
development is not the denial but the central assertion
of the evolutionary theory. So, too, the doctrine of
human equality passes through the fire of scientific in
quiry not obliterated but transfigured; not equality of
present attainment but equality of opportunity for un
bounded future attainment is the rightful demand of
mankind.
What now does the present hegemony of the white
races threaten? It threatens by the means of brute force
a survival of some of the worst stocks of mankind. It
attempts to people the best part of the earth and put in
152
absolute authority over the rest not only, and indeed
not mainly, the culture of Europe, but its greed and de
gradation not only some representatives of the best
stocks of the west end of London, upper New York and
the Champs Elysees but also, and in as large, if not lar
ger, numbers, the worst stocks of Whitechapel, the East
Side and Montmartre ; and it attempts to make the slums
of white society in all cases and under all circumstances
the superior of any colored group, no matter what its
ability or culture; it attempts to put the intelligent,
property holding, efficient Negroes of the South under
the heels and at the absolute mercy of such constituencies
as Tillman, Vardaman and Jeff Davis represent.
To be sure, this outrageous programme of wholesale
human degeneration is not outspoken yet save in the
backward civilizations of the southern United States,
South Africa and Australia. But its enunciation is lis
tened to with respect and tolerance in England, Germany
and the northern states and nowhere with more equani
mity than right here in New York by those very per
sons who accuse philanthropy with seeking to degenerate
white blood by an infiltration of colored strains. And
the average citizen is voting ships and guns to carry out
this programme.
This movement gathered force and strength during the
latter half of the nineteenth century and reached its cul
mination when France, Germany and England and Rus
sia began the partition of China and the East. With
the sudden self-assertion of Japan its wildest dreams col
lapsed, but it is still to-day a living, virile, potent force
and motive, and the most subtle and dangerous enemy of
world peace and the dream of human brotherhood. It
has a whole vocabulary of its own : the strong races,
superior peoples, race preservation, the struggle for sur
vival and a peculiar use of the word "white." And by
this it means the right of white men of any kind to club
blacks into submission, to make them surrender their
wealth and the use of their women, and to submit to the
dictation of white men without murmur, for the sake of
being swept off the fairest portions of the earth or held
there in perpetual serfdom or guardianship. Ignoring
the fact that the era of physical struggle for survival has
passed away among human beings and that there is plenty
of room accessible on earth for all, this theory makes the
possession of Krupp guns the main criterion of mental
stamina and moral fitness.
Even armed with this morality of the club and every
advantage of modern culture, the white races have been
unable to possess the earth ; many signs of degeneracy
have appeared among them ; their birthrate is falling, their
average ability is not increasing, their physical stamina
is impaired, their social condition is not reassuring, and
their religion is a growing mass of transparent and self-
confessed hypocrisy. Lacking the physical ability to
take possession of the world, they are to-day fencing in
America, Australia, and South Africa and declaring that
no dark race shall occupy or develop the land which
they themselves are unable to use. And all this on the
plea that their stock is threatened with deterioration from
without, when in fact its most dangerous fate is deterior
ation from within. We are in fact to-day repeating in
our intercourse between races all the former evils of
class injustice, unequal taxation and rigid caste. In
dividual nations outgrew these fatal things by breaking
down the horizontal barriers between classes. We are
bringing them back by seeking to erect vertical barriers
between races. Men were told that abolition of com
pulsory class distinction meant leveling down, degrada
tion, disappearance of culture and genius, and the triumph
of the mob. As a matter of fact, it has been the salva
tion of European civilization. Some deterioration and
leveling there was, but it was more than balanced by the
i54
discovery of new reservoirs of ability and strength. So
to-day we are told that free racial contact or "social
equality" as southern patois has it means contamination
of blood and lowering of ability and culture. It need
mean nothing of the sort. Abolition of class distinction
does not mean universal intermarriage of stocks, but
rather the survival of the fittest by peaceful personal and
social selection, a selection all the more effective because
free democracy and equality of opportunity allow the
best to rise to their rightful place.
The same is true in racial contact. The abolition of
the lines of vertical race distinction and their tearing away
involves fewer chances of degradation and greater op
portunities of human betterment than in the case of class
lines. On the other hand, the persistence in racial dis
tinctions spells disaster sooner or later. The earth is
growing smaller and more accessible. Race contact will
become in the future increasingly inevitable, not only in
America, Asia and Africa, but even in Europe. The
color line will mean not simply a return to the absurdi
ties of class as exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but even to the caste of ancient days. This,
however, the Japanese, the Chinese, the East Indian and
the Negroes are going to resent in just such proportion
as they gain the power; and they are gaining the power,
and they cannot be kept from gaining more power. The
price of repression will then be hypocrisy and slavery and
blood.
This is the problem of to-day, and what is its mighty
answer? It is this great word: The cost of liberty is
less than the price of repression. The price of repress
ing the world s darker races is shown in a moral retro
gression and economic waste unparalleled since the age
of the African slave trade. What would be the cost of
liberty? What would be the cost of giving the great
stocks of mankind every reasonable help and incentive
to self-development opening the avenues of opportunity
freely, spreading knowledge, suppressing war and cheat
ing, and treating men and women as equals the world
over whenever and wherever they attain equality? It
would cost something. It would cost something in pride
and prejudice, for eventually many a white man would
be blacking black men s boots; but this cost we may ig
nore its greatest cost would be the new problems of
racial intercourse and intermarriage which would come
to the front. Freedom and equal opportunity in this re
spect would inevitably bring some intermarriage of
whites and yellows and browns and blacks. If such
marriages are proven inadvisable how could they be
stopped? Easily. We associate with cats and cows but
we do not fear intermarriage with them even though they
be given all freedom of development. So, too, intelligent
human beings can be trained to breed intelligently with
out the degradation of such of their fellows as they may
not wish to breed with. In the southern United States
on the contrary it is assumed that unwise marriage can
only be stopped by the degradation of the blacks, the
classing of their women with prostitutes, the loading the
whole race with every badge of public isolation, degrada
tion and contempt and by burning offenders at the stake.
Is this civilization? No. The civilized method of
preventing ill-advised marriage lies in the training of
mankind in ethics of sex and childbearing. We cannot
ensure the survival of the best blood by the public mur
der and degradation of unworthy suitors, but we can
substitute a civilized human selection of husbands and
wives which shall ensure the survival of the fittest. Not
the methods of the jungle, not even the careless choices
of the drawing room, but the thoughtful selection of the
schools and laboratory is the ideal of future marriage.
This will cost something in ingenuity, self-control, and
toleration but it will cost less than forcible repression.
156
Not only is the cost of repression to-day large it is
a continually increasing cost, because of the fact that
furnished the fatal moral anomaly against which physical
slavery could not stand the free Negro the Negro who
in spite of contempt, discouragement, caste and poverty
has put himself on a plane where it is simply impossible
to deny that he is by every legitimate measurement the
equal of his average white neighbor. The former argu
ment was as I have mentioned that no such class existed.
This assertion was persisted in until it became ludicrous.
To-day the fashion is come to regard this class as excep
tional so far as the logic of the Negro problem is con
cerned, dangerous so far as social peace is concerned,
and its existence more than offset by an abnormal num
ber of criminals, degenerates and defectives.
Right here, then, comes the center of the present prob
lem, namely : What is the truth about this ? What are
the real facts ? How far is Negro crime due to inherited
and growing viciousness and how far to poverty, degra
dation and systematic oppression ?
How far is Negro labor lazy and how far is it the
listless victim of systematic theft?
How far is the Negro woman lewd and how far the
helpless victim of social custom?
How far are Negro children being educated to-day in
the public schools of the South and how far is the effort
to curtail that training increasingly successful?
How far are Negroes leaving the farms and rushing
to the cities to escape work and how far to escape slav
ery?
How far is this race designated as Negroes the de
scendants of African slaves and how far is it descended
from the most efficient white blood of the nation?
What does actual physical and social measurement
prove as to the status of these descendants of black men?
All these are fundamental questions. Not a single
valid conclusion as to the future can be absolutely insisted
upon without definite skilful scientific answers to these
questions and yet not a single systematic effort to an
swer these questions on an adequate scale has been made
in these United States from 1619 to 1909. Not only this
but on all sides opposition ranging from indifference and
reluctance to actual force is almost universal when any
attempt to study the Negro problem adequately is pro
posed. Yet in spite of this universal and deliberate ig
norance the demand is made that one line of solution,
which a number of good men have assumed is safe and
sane, shall be accepted by everybody and particularly by
thinking black men. The penalty for not accepting this
programme is to be dubbed a radical, a busy-body, an
impatient dreamer and a dangerous agitator. Yet this
programme involves justification of disfranchisement, the
personal humiliation of Jim-Crowism, a curtailed and
purposely limited system of education and a virtual ac
knowledgment of the inevitable and universal inferiority
of black men. And then in the face of this we are
asked to look pleasant and do our very best. I think
it is the most cowardly dilemma that a strong people ever
thrust upon the weak. And I for one have protested
and do protest and shall protest that in my humble opin
ion the assumption is an outrageous falsehood dictated
by selfishness, cowardice and greed and for the righteous
ness of my cause and the proof of my assertions, I ap
peal to one arbitrament and one alone and that is : THE
TRUTH.
158
THE PROBLEM S SOLUTION
J. Milton Waldron
President of
The National Negro American Political League
Washington, D. C.
That fearless, able and broad-minded author of "The
Negro and the Sunny South" a book, by the way,
every American citizen should read Samuel Creed
Cross, a white man of West Virginia, takes up an en
tire chapter in his excellent work in giving with the
briefest comments even a partial list of the crimes com
mitted by the whites of the South against the Negroes
during his recent residence of six months in that sec
tion. And last year eighty or ninety colored persons,
some of them women and children, were murdered,
lynched or burned for "the nameless crime/ for murder
or suspected murder, for barn burning, for insulting
white women and "talking back" to white men, for strik
ing an impudent white lad, for stealing a white boy s
lunch and for no crime at all unless it be a crime for a
black man to ask southern men for his rights.
Within the last twelve months Georgia disfranchised
her colored citizens by a constitutional subterfuge and
Florida attempted the same crime, and almost every
white secular newspaper and many of the religious jour
nals of the South contained in every issue of their pub-
lications abusive and malicious articles concerning the
Negro in which they inflamed the whites against the
brother in black and sought to justify the South
in robbing him of his labor, his self-respect, his
franchise, his liberty and life itself. Many of the of
ficials of southern states, including numerous judges and
not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these
Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable
onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of
business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict
and contract labor and the "order system."
Not satisfied with the wrongs and outrages she has
heaped upon the colored people in her own borders, the
South is industriously preaching her \vicked doctrine of
Negro inferiority, Negro suppression and Negro op
pression in the North, East and West. And yet, in
the face of this terrible record of crime against the
life, liberty, manhood and political rights of the colored
man which is being repeated in the South every day, there
are those in high places who have the temerity to tell
us that "the Southern people are the Negro s best
friends," and that "the Negro problem is a southern
problem and that the South should be allowed to solve
it in her own way without any interference on the part
of the North."
The North and the South together stole the black man
from his home in Africa and enslaved him in this land,
and this whole nation has reaped the benefits of his
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil, and the
whole nation must see to it that he is fully emancipated,
enfranchised, thoroughly educated in heart, head and
hand and allowed to exercise his rights as a citizen and
earn, wherever and however he can, an honest and suf
ficient living for himself, his wife and children this
the South cannot do alone and unaided.
Nearly three millions of the ten million Negroes in
160
this country live north of Mason and Dixon s line and
thousands of others are coming North and going West
every month; over four hundred thousand of the three
millions mentioned above live in Washington, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis and Chicago; if
the Negro problem was ever a southern problem, the
colored brother has taken it with him into the North
and the West and made it a national problem.
The life, liberty and happiness of the black man and
of the white man of this country are so wrapped up
together that it is impossible to oppress the one with
out eventually oppressing the other. The white man
of the South was cursed by slavery as much almost as
the black man whom he robbed of life, liberty and vir
tue. In many parts of the South to-day the masses of
poor white men are no better off in any sphere of life
than the colored people, with the single exception that
their faces are white. The rights and liberties of the
common people of this entire country have grown less
secure, and their ballots have steadily diminished in
power since the colored man has been robbed of his
franchise by the South; the trusts of the country have
seen the rights of millions of loyal black citizens taken
from them by the states of the South in open violation
of the federal constitution and that with the tacit appro
val of the highest courts of the land, and they have come
to feel that constitutions and laws are not binding upon
them, and that the common people white or black
have no rights which they are bound to respect. The
South alone cannot right these gigantic wrongs nor re
store to the white people (not to mention the Negroes)
in her borders the liberties and privileges guaranteed by
the Constitution of the United States.
In discussing the Youth s attitude towards the colored
man we seek only to hold up to scorn and contempt
the spirit which predominates in that section ; and we de-
161
sire to condemn only the men of that section who hate
their fellow-men, and we wish to bear testimony now and
here to the fact that there is an under-current in the
South, which is making for righteousness, and that
there are a few noble and heroic souls like Rev. Quincy
Ewing of Louisiana, and the late Dr. J. L. M. Curry of
Virginia, in each southern state who believe that
the Negro ought to be treated as a man and given all
the rights and privileges accorded any other man. This
righteous spirit must, however, be encouraged and
strengthened and the number of noble and fair-minded
men and women in the South must be greatly augment
ed, or the battle for human liberty and the manhood
and political rights of both races in that section will
never be won.
We beg to say that all the enemies of human rights in
general, and of the rights of black men in particular, are
not in the South ; the wrongs complained of by the Negro
in that section are, for the most part, the same as those be
wailed by the Negro in the North, with this difference:
the northern Negro s right to protest against the wrongs
heaped upon him is less restricted, and his means of
protection and defense are more numerous than those
of his southern brother. Already in at least one state
north of Mason and Dixon s line Herculean efforts
are being put forth to disfranchise the colored man by
constitutional enactment; the discrimination against a
man on account of his color, and the lynching of
Negroes and the burning of their houses by infuriated
mobs of white men are not unheard of things in the
North and West. Most of the labor unions of these sec
tions are still closed to the brother in black, and most
white working men here are determined that the Negro
shall not earn a living in any respectable calling if they
can prevent it; many of the newspapers North and
West (and a few right here in New York City) often
162
use their columns to misrepresent and slander the col
ored man, and it was only last week when one of the
highest courts in the Empire state rendered a decision
in which it justified discrimination against a man on
the grounds of his color and his condition of servitude.
Verily, the Negro problem is not a southern but a
national problem.
The most recent solvent proposed for the race prob
lem is the one brought forward by President Taft
which by the way is simply Dr. Washington s prescrip
tion revised and amended. Mr. Taft thinks that the
Negro problem will be eventually solved if the col
ored man will make himself useful to the business
interests of the community and keep out of sight and
out of public office where he is by reason of his num
bers or prominence offensive to white people. With
regard to the President s solution for the race problem
it ought to be said that the reaction in public sentiment
in the last twenty years regarding justice to the Negro
is as much the result of what is known as the prosper
ity of the country and the development of its resources
as of anything else. In fact, the desire to put the Negro
to one side, to segregate him, to assign him to a place
at the bottom of the social scheme, has its origin in and
receives its support from the dominant commercial and
industrial elements of the country. We have been told,
and are still told that agitation concerning the Negro
hurts business, frightens prosperity and arrests the de
velopment of material and commercial resources.
The usual plea now heard in behalf of the Negro and
the one which President Taft makes is that his labor
is necessary to a section of the country, and that his
freedom, his happiness, his morals and his education are
to be looked after to the extent that they add to the pro
ductiveness and efficiency of his labor and, as a conse
quence, the enrichment of his employers. It is regarded
163
as good form to refer to the Negro as "an economic asset
of the communities where he is found in large num
bers," and the idea is spread abroad that whatever de
cency or consideration is extended to him is for the
profit and advantage of others and not for him as a
man. While chattel slavery is no longer upheld by the
supreme law of the land, the habit and practice in
thought and speech of looking at Negroes from the
chattel plane still persists. President Taft s advice, if
followed, may make slipshod servants of Negroes but it
will not train them into good citizens or noble men.
Many solutions for the Negro problem have been pro
posed, but to our mind there is one and only one
practical and effective answer to the question. In the
first place we claim that the early friends of the Negro
grasped the true solution, which is that his needs and
possibilities are the same as those of the other mem
bers of the human family; that he must be educated
not only for industrial efficiency and for private gain,
but to share in the duties and responsibilities of a free
democracy; that he must have equality of rights, for
his own sake, for the sake of the human race and for the
perpetuity of free institutions. America will not have
learned the full lesson of her system of human slavery
until she realizes that a rigid caste system is inimical
to the progress of the human race and to the perpetuity
of democratic government.
In the second place, the Negro must make common
cause with the working class which to-day is organ
izing and struggling for better social and economic con
ditions. The old slave oligarchy maintained its ascend
ency largely by fixing a gulf between the Negro slave
and the white free laborer, and the jealousies and ani
mosities of the slave period have survived to keep apart
the Negro and the laboring white man. Powerful in
fluences are at work even to-day to impress upon the
164
Negro the fact that he must look to the business men
of the South alone for protection and recognition of his
rights, while at the same time these influences inflame
the laboring white man with fears of social equality
and race fusion. The Negro, being a laborer, must see
that the cause of labor is his cause, that his elevation
can be largely achieved by having the sympathy, sup
port and co-operation of that growing organization of
working men the world over which is working out the
larger problems of human freedom and economic op
portunity.
In the third place, wherever in this country the Negro
has the franchise, and where by complying with re
quirements he can regain it, let him exercise it faithfully
and constantly, but let him do so as an independent and
not as a partisan, for his political salvation in the future
depends upon his voting for men and measures, rather
than with any particular party.
For two hundred and fifty years the black man of
America toiled in the South without pay and without
thanks; he cleared her forests, tunneled her mountains,
bridged her streams, built her cottages and palaces, cul
tivated her fields, watered her crops with his tears, fer
tilized her fields with his blood, nursed her children,
protected her women and guarded her homes from the
midnight marauder, the devouring flames and approach
ing disease and death. The colored American willingly
and gladly enlisted and fought in every war waged by this
country, from the first conflict with the Indians to the last
battle in Cuba and the Philippines ; when enfranchised he
voted the rebellious states back into the Union, and from
that day until this he has, as a race, never used his ballot,
unless corrupted or intimidated by white men, to the
detriment of any part of America. When in power in
the South, though for the most part ignorant and just
out of slavery and surrounded by vindictive ex-slave
165
owners and mercenary, corrupted and corrupting
"carpet baggers," he did what his former masters
had failed for centuries to do he established the free
school system, erected asylums for the insane and in
digent poor, purged the statute books of disgraceful
marriage laws and oppressive and inhuman labor regu
lations, revised and improved the penal code, and by
many other worthy acts proved that the heart of the
race was, and is, in the right place, and that whenever
the American Negro has been trusted, he has proven
himself trustworthy and manly. And when the colored
man is educated, and is treated with fairness and justice,
and is accorded the rights and privileges which are the
birthright of every American citizen, he will show him
self a man among men and the race problem will vanish
as the mist before the rising sun.
166
Morning Session, June 1
Bishop A. Walters, A.M., D.D., Chairman
CIVIL AND POLITICAL STATUS OF
THE NEGRO
Bishop A. Walters, A. M., D. D.
of
New York City
Through a bloody conflict and the act of the great Lin
coln we were emancipated, and later in 1865 we were
confirmed in our freedom by the passage of the Thir
teenth Amendment to the federal Constitution.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, made us
citizens of the United States and confirmed us in our
civil rights. In 1872 the Fifteenth Amendment was
ratified which was intended to confirm us in the right of
suffrage. We plead for our constitutional rights on the
ground that the right of suffrage, when it has been once
conferred by the federal government, becomes the in
violable right of every citizen of whatever color, race or
rank in social life, and therefore suffrage is not a privi
lege to be conferred or withheld by the states. The pow
ers of the federal government were not conferred by a
single state, but by all the states, therefore, the general
government, through congress, can enforce the provisions
of the Constitution.
The Negro believes that he should be allowed to retain
the franchise in all parts of this land, because of the
military service he has rendered the nation. Side by
side with his white brother, the Negro has fought brave-
167
ly in every war of the nation to save the honor of the
flag. No one has been more loyal to its colors than he,
and he sees no reason why it should not protect him.
He believes that he should be allowed to retain his po
litical rights because he is becoming educated and is being
made a strong man; because he is a considerable tax
payer and his wealth is increasing every day. He knows
that the cardinal doctrine of this republic is that there
shall be no taxation without representation.
The Rev. Frances J. Grimke of Washington, in a re
cent publication says : "The South does not believe in
the civil and political equality of the colored man; does
not believe that he should vote, and does not believe that
he should hold office. It is not enough that it has de
prived us of our civil and political rights within its own
territory; it is not enough that within the South itself
we have been reduced to a political nonentity, have been
placed where the South thinks we belong and where we
ought to be kept ; but it is now actively engaged in press
ing these views upon the whole country. It is working
just as zealously now to nationalize its views on the civil
and political status of the Negro as it did to nationalize
its views on the subject of slavery. Wherever southern
men are found, with here and there an exception in nor
thern pulpits, editorial chairs, professorships in colleges
and universities, in places of business, they are always
actively engaged in propagating this moral and political
heresy in regard to the Negro s proper place in the na
tion, in urging their views upon others." The same ar
gument used to-day was used in the days of slavery to
keep the slaves in bondage, but it failed and it will fail
again.
Mr. Quincy Ewing, of Louisiana, in an article in
the March number of the "Atlantic Monthly," says:
"The foundation of the problem, true or false, is the
white man s conviction, that the Negro as a race, and as
168
an individual, is his inferior ; not human in the sense
that he is human, not entitled to the exercise of human
rights in the sense that he is entitled to the exercise of
them. The problem itself, the essence of it, the heart of
it, is the white man s determination to make good this
conviction, coupled with constant anxiety lest, by some
means, he should fail to make it good. The race prob
lem, in other words, is not that the Negro is what he is
in relation to the white man, the white man s inferior;
but this, rather : How to keep him what he is in relation
to the white man ; how to prevent his ever achieving or
becoming that which would justify the belief on his part,
or on the part of the other people, that he and the white
man stand on common human ground."
Says Dr. Grimke : "We are governed but have no part
in the government in the making of laws, in the levy
ing of taxes, in legislation in any shape or form ; we are
tried and convicted but always, or so nearly always as to
make it the rule, by a white jury, by men who from the
start are prejudiced against us; we are permitted to tes
tify, but our testimony counts for nothing against the
word of a white person. Now the presumption always
is, that the white man is innocent until he is proven guil
ty; the presumption, in case of a colored person, is al
ways that he is guilty until he has proved his innocence,
which is well nigh impossible, especially if his accuser
happens to be a white person. The disposition always
is to accept the statement of the white man against the
black man, and never the statement of the black man
against the white man. The disposition always is to in
criminate the one and to clear the other where there is
any conflict between the two."
Now comes the infamous decision of Judge Dugro, of
the Supreme Court of New York, who declares that the
Negro has no such sensibilities as the white man, for
getting that there are Negroes and Negroes.
169
"In one sense," says Judge Dugro, "a colored man is
just as good as a white man, for the law says he is, but
he has not the same amount of injury under all circum
stances that a white man would have. Maybe in a col
ored community down South, where white men were
held in great disfavor he might be more injured, but
after all in this sort of a community I dare say the amount
of evil that would flow to the colored man from a charge
like this would not be as great as it probably would be
to a white man."
This outrageous decision is followed by the locomotive
engineers of Georgia going on a strike to force the Negro
firemen from the engines, a position they have held for
years. Says the Richmond, Va., "Times-Dispatch :" "It
would be easier to sympathize with these striking Geor
gia railway men if it was felt that their quarrel was
reasonable and just, but the reverse seems to be true.
The ostensible reason for the strike was the substitution
of some Negro fireman for some white firemen, and the
presumable reason for these changes was that the Negroes
would do the work equally well for less money. A deep
er cause for the trouble is suggested by the report that
the coming of a certain labor leader from Toronto to
Georgia was for the purpose of helping the white firemen
to get a raise in pay, a plan which was made difficult or
impossible by the presence of the colored firemen.
There is some ground for believing that the race issue
has been deliberately emphasized a good deal more than
was necessary with a view to enlisting popular support
in what is otherwise a simple dispute between capital and
labor. But in any case, the root of the trouble appears
to lie in the willingness of the Negro to do certain labor
for less pay than white men.
Here is a plain economic fact which should be frankly
faced. No one can deny that the Negro fireman would
like to draw the same pay that goes to the white fireman.
170
The fact that he has to content himself with less, assum
ing that he does the work equally well, is an economic
discrimination against him on the ground of his color.
To insist that the railway pay a higher price than neces
sary for this work, in order to have it done by a white
man, is simply to unionize race prejudice. Unions are
supposed to represent all labor, not simply white labor.
What they now ask, in effect, is that Negroes shall no
longer be employed.
This is the demand which has led to a condition of
chaos in Georgia, to the inconvenience of thousands of
people. But it must be evident that shoveling coal for
an engine is entirely suitable work for a Negro, and that
unless he is to be denied all rights, he has a full right to
be protected in it. Georgia locomotives have long been
stoked by colored firemen. These men have done the
work efficiently, and there is no pretense that white en
gineers object to associating with them in this way. It
is all the question of a pay envelope. Georgians who
have thoughtlessly sided with the strikers on the appeal
to race prejudice, would do well to consider the economic
side of this question. If the Negro cannot fire locomo
tives, what work shall he be allowed to do? Would
Georgia rather have her Negroes occupied at hard physi
cal work or loafing around the street corners of At
lanta?"
"The whole trend of this movement among the south
ern whites," says the "Guardian," "is to keep the Negro
down to the same place of social and economic inferiori
ty that he occupied during slavery and restrict them to
work as farm laborers, mule drivers, roustabouts, por
ters, waiters, whitewashers and general utility men."
In view of the foregoing, it is the duty of the mem
bers and friends of our race to labor as zealously to
change these unfavorable conditions, as the enemy has
labored to bring them about. To do this we must first
171
of all determine to make no compromise when manhood
rights are involved, and second, as far as possible, the
work must be done through organized effort. Every
thing in our power should be done to encourage the race
to continue its intellectual, moral, financial and educa
tional progress. The black man like any other man must
so live and act as to command respect as well as to de
mand it. In the last analysis it is worth that tells.
The need of the hour is the creation of a healthy pub
lic sentiment in favor of the enforcement of the Four
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the federal Consti
tution. We should hold public meetings in different
sections of the country, and have the best informed men
in this and other countries to prepare papers and discuss
subjects bearing on this problem. A publication bureau
should be organized which should employ first-class
writers, black and white, to prepare articles for such
magazines as will accept them. In this way we can meet
and counteract the insidious attacks which are now being
systematically made on the race by those who pretend
to be our friends, but who at every turn question our
moral, intellectual and financial progress; they take ad
vantage of false criminal statistics in order to change
favorable public opinion in the North. We ought to
have a lecture bureau, the duty of which should be to
secure able and distinguished orators to go up and down
the country and to present our cause wherever it is pos
sible to do so.
And, further, I believe that the division of the vote of
the black man between the two great parties will greatly
aid in the solution of the political problem, especially in
the South. The ballot is the badge of political equality,
the insignia of one s citizenship, and whenever and
wherever there is a disposition on the part of the Demo
cratic party to accept a Negro as an ally and treat him
fairly, we should be willing to affiliate with that party.
172
It is the surest and quickest way to break down political
prejudice and have the South permanently recognize our
political equality.
We are grateful to President Taft for his expressions
of kindness and interest manifested in our welfare, but
deeply deplore the impression made upon the South by
the question raised in his inaugural address of the ex
pediency of appointment of colored men to office in that
section. I am of the opinion that the Negroes of the
country are in hearty accord with President Taft in
bringing about a closer union between the North and the
South, but not at the expense of the black man. I be
lieve them to be in favor of peace between sections, but
peace with honor. It is not platitudes we need just now
from the President, but the enforcement of the laws
which he has sworn to enforce.
173
LYNCHING OUR NATIONAL CRIME
Mrs. Ida Wells-Barnett
of
Chicago
The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits
the thoughtful study of the American people. It pre
sents three salient facts:
First : Lynching is color line murder. .
Second: Crimes against women is the excuse, not
the cause.
Third : It is a national crime and requires a national
remedy.
Proof that lynching follows the color line is to be
found in the statistics which have been kept for the past
twenty-five years. During the few years preceding this
period and while frontier lynch law existed, the execu
tions showed a majority of white victims. Later, how
ever, as law courts and authorized judiciary extended
into the far West, lynch law rapidly abated and its
white victims became few and far between.
Just as the lynch law regime came to a close in the
West, a new mob movement started in the South. This
was wholly political, its purpose being to suppress the
colored vote by intimidation and murder. Thousands of
assassins banded together under the name of Ku Klux
Klans, "Midnight Raiders," "Knights of the Golden Cir
cle," etc., spread a reign of terror, by beating, shooting
174
and killing colored people by the thousands. In a few
years, the purpose was accomplished and the black vote
was suppressed. But mob murder continued.
From 1882, in which year 52 were lynched, down to
the present, lynching has been along the color line. Mob
murder increased yearly until in 1892 more than 200 vic
tims were lynched and statistics show that 3,284 men,
women and children have been put to death in this quar
ter of a century. During the last ten years from 1899
to 1908 inclusive the number lynched was 959. Of this
number 102 were white while the colored victims num
bered 857. No other nation, civilized or savage, burns
its criminals;, only under the stars and stripes is the
human holocaust possible. Twenty-eight human beings
burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of
them children, is the awful indictment against American
civilization the grewsome tribute which the nation pays
to the color line.
Why is mob murder permitted by a Christian nation?
What is the cause of this awful slaughter? This ques
tion is answered almost daily always the same shame
less falsehood that "Negroes are lynched to protect wom
anhood." Standing before a Chautauqua assemblage,
John Temple Graves, at once champion of lynching and
apologist for lynchers, said: "The mob stands to-day
as the most potential bulwark between the women of the
South and such a carnival of crime as would infuriate
the world and precipitate the annihilation of the Negro
race." This is the never varying answer of lynchers
and their apologists. All know that it is untrue. The
cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks to shield
himself from public execration by claiming devotion to
woman. But truth is mighty and the lynching record
discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as his
crime.
The Springfield, Illinois, mob rioted for two days, the
i75
militia of the entire state was called out, two men were
lynched, hundreds of people driven from their homes, all
because a white woman said a Negro had assaulted her. A
mad mob went to the jail, tried to lynch the victim of
her charge and, not being able to find him, proceeded to
pillage and burn the town and to lynch two innocent
men. Later, after the police had found that the woman s
charge was false, she published a retraction, the indict
ment was dismissed and the intended victim discharged.
But the lynched victims were dead. Hundreds were
homeless and Illinois was disgraced.
As a final and complete refutation of the charge that
lynching is occasioned by crimes against women, a par
tial record of lynchings is cited ; 285 persons were lynched
for causes as follow :
Unknown cause, 92; no cause, 10; race prejudice, 49;
miscegenation, 7; informing, 12; making threats, u;
keeping saloon, 3 ; practising fraud, 5 ; practising voo-
dooism, 2; bad reputation, 8; unpopularity, 3; mistaken
identity, 5 ; using improper language, 3 ; violation of con
tract, i ; writing insulting letter, 2 ; eloping, 2 ; poisoning
horse, I ; poisoning well, 2 ; by white caps, 9 ; vigilantes,
14; Indians, i; moonshining, i; refusing evidence, 2;
political causes, 5 ; disputing, i ; disobeying quarantine
regulations, 2 ; slapping a child, i ; turning state s evi
dence, 3 ; protecting a Negro, i ; to prevent giving evi
dence, i ; knowledge of larceny, i ; writing letter to white
woman, i ; asking white woman to marry, i ; jilting girl,
i ; having smallpox, i ; concealing criminal, 2 ; threaten
ing political exposure, i; self-defense, 6; cruelty, i; in
sulting language to woman, 5 ; quarreling with white man,
2 ; colonizing Negroes, i ; throwing stones, i ; quarreling,
i ; gambling, i.
Is there a remedy, or will the nation confess that it
cannot protect its protectors at home as well as abroad?
Various remedies have been suggested to abolish the
176
lynching infamy, but year after year, the butchery of
men, women and children continues in spite of plea and
protest. Education is suggested as a preventive, but it
is as grave a crime to murder an ignorant man as it is
a scholar. True, few educated men have been lynched,
but the hue and cry once started stops at no bounds, as
was clearly shown by the lynchings in Atlanta, and in
Springfield, Illinois.
Agitation, though helpful, will not alone stop the
crime. Year after year statistics are published, meetings
are held, resolutions are adopted and yet lynchings go
on. Public sentiment does measurably decrease the
sway of mob law, but the irresponsible blood-thirsty
criminals who swept through the streets of Springfield,
beating an inoffensive law-abiding citizen to death in
one part of the town, and in another torturing and shoot
ing to death a man who, for threescore years, had
made a reputation for honesty, integrity and sobriety,
had raised a family and had accumulated property, was
not deterred from its heinous crimes by either educa
tion or agitation.
The only certain remedy is an appeal to law. Law
breakers must be made to know that human life is
sacred and that every citizen of this country is first a
citizen of the United States and secondly a citizen of the
state in which he belongs. This nation must assert it
self and defend its federal citizenship at home as well as
abroad. The strong arm of the government must reach
across state lines whenever unbridled lawlessness de
fies state laws and must give to the individual citizen un
der the Stars and Stripes the same measure of protec
tion which it gives to him when he travels in foreign
lands.
Federal protection of American citizenship is the
remedy for lynching. Foreigners are rarely lynched in
America. If, by mistake, one is lynched, the national
177
government quickly pays the damages. The recent agi
tation in California against the Japanese compelled this
nation to recognize that federal power must yet assert
itself to protect the nation from the treason of sover
eign states. Thousands of American citizens have been
put to death and no President has yet raised his hand
in effective protest, but a simple insult to a native of
Japan was quite sufficient to stir the government at
Washington to prevent the threatened wrong. If the
government has power to protect a foreigner from in
sult, certainly it has power to save a citizen s life.
The practical remedy has been more than once sug
gested in Congress. Senator Gallinger of New Hamp
shire in a resolution introduced in Congress called for
an investigation "with the view of ascertaining whether
there is a remedy for lynching which Congress may ap
ply." The Senate Committee has under consideration
a bill drawn by A. E. Pillsbury, formerly Attorney-Gen
eral of Massachusetts, providing for federal prosecution
of lynchers in cases where the state fails to protect citi
zens or foreigners. Both of these resolutions indicate
that the attention of the nation has been called to this
phase of the lynching question.
As a final word, it would be a beginning in the
right direction if this conference can see its way clear
to establish a bureau for the investigation and publica
tion of the details of every lynching, so that the pub-*
lie could know that an influential body of citizens has
made it a duty to give the widest publicity to the facts
in each case ; that it will make an effort to secure expres
sions of opinion all over the country against lynching
for the sake of the country s fair name ; and lastly, but
by no means least, to try to influence the daily papers
of the country to refuse to become accessory to mobs
either before or after the fact. Several of the greatest
riots and most brutal burnt offerings of the mobs have
been suggested and incited by the daily papers of the
offending community. If the newspaper which suggests
lynching in its accounts of an alleged crime, could be
held legally as well as morally responsible for reporting
that threats of lynching were heard"; or, "It is feared
that if the guilty one is caught, he will be lynched"; or,
There were cries of lynch him, and the only reason
the threat was not carried out was because no leader
appeared," a long step toward a remedy will have been
taken.
In a multitude of counsel there is wisdom. Upon
the grave question presented by the slaughter of inno
cent men, women and children there should be an hon
est, courageous conference of patriotic, law-abiding cit
izens anxious to punish crime promptly, impartially and
by due process of law, also to make life, liberty, and
property secure against mob rule.
Time was when lynching appeared to ho sectional,
but now it is national a blight upon our nation, mock
ing our laws and disgracing our Christianity. "With
malice toward none but with charity for all" let us
undertake the work of making the "law of the land,"
effective and supreme upon every foot of American soil
a shield to the innocent and to the guilty punishment
swift and sure.
170
NEGRO DISFRANCHISEMENT AS IT
AFFECTS THE WHITE MAN
Hon. Albert E. Pillsbury
Ex- Attorney-General
Massachusetts
The view of Negro disfranchisement and its results
which I shall present is not new to many in this audience,
but it has never been pressed as it ought to be upon the
attention of the country. The indifference with which
the people have suffered the process of disfranchisement
to go on, without a hand and with hardly a voice raised
against it, can be accounted for only upon the belief
that they do not understand what it means. I object to
it not merely because the Negro is disfranchised in cer
tain states, but because the scheme is a fraud upon the
whole country, directly impairing the political rights of
every other state, and of every voter in every other
state, the white as well as the black.
If it stopped with fraudulent disfranchisement of the
Negro, the case would be bad enough, and the public
apathy would still be discreditable, though perhaps not
unaccountable. It does not stop there. It has multi
plied by two or more the political power, in the Federal
government, of every white voter in the disfranchising
states, and it has to the same extent disfranchised every
voter in every other state. It is not merely a ques
tion of Negro suffrage, or Negro equality. It is a ques
tion of the equality of white men. The question now is
180
whether every white man, in any state, shall be politi
cally the equal of every other white man, in any other
state. This question does not belong to any section,
but to the whole country. In the face of the claim that
Negro suffrage is the affair of the South, with which
no other people have any business to interfere, the
course of the South has made it the affair of every
white citizen in the other thirty-six states who wishes
to preserve and defend his own political rights.
Let us first dispose of one or two delusions. They
attempt to justify the disfranchisement of the Negro
upon various false pretenses, so often repeated and so
little denied that they have come to be generally be
lieved. It has been long and loudly asserted that Negro
suffrage was forced upon the South. It is not true, and
it was never true. The Thirteenth Amendment makes
the Negro a freeman, and nothing more. The Four
teenth Amendment makes him a citizen of the United
States, with the personal rights of a citizen, and nothing
more. The Fifteenth Amendment entitles him to be
treated, in respect of the suffrage, only as other men
of the same standing or character are treated, and noth
ing more. The federal law does not make a single
Negro a voter, in any state of the Union. The ex-
tremest requirement of it is only that the color of his
skin shall not disqualify him, if he is otherwise quali
fied under such laws as any state sees fit to adopt.
Neither is it true that Negro suffrage means Negro
control or domination, in any state of the Union. There
is not a state in which impartial suffrage, honestly ad
ministered, would endanger white supremacy for a day.
These two assertions, iterated and reiterated as they
have been, and relied upon to justify disfranchisement
and reconcile the country to the fraud, are equally and
absolutely without foundation.
This is so well known that it cannot be denied. But
181
when they complain that Negro suffrage was forced
upon the South, they will tell you that they mean the
forcing of it upon the South by the Reconstruction Acts.
Is their case any better here? The Reconstruction Acts
did not force Negro suffrage upon the South. They of
fered restoration to the political rights and privileges
forfeited by armed rebellion, on condition that suffrage
should be impartial among all citizens of the United
States. In view of the penalties which might have been
exacted, these terms, unexampled in history for their
mildness, do not seem severe. So far as the federal
law goes, there has never been a day when any state
of the Union could not, by impartial tests applied alike
to all citizens, exclude from its suffrage the ignorant,
the criminal, the depraved, or even the poor. But the
history of the country from 1867 down to this time
shows that even these terms, so far as accepted by the
white South, were accepted with the fixed purpose to
disregard them, so that the Negro should not be allowed
to vote. The first experiments in Negro suffrage were
met and resisted by armed violence, until it was per
ceived that fraud is less dangerous and more politic than
murder. Then the tissue ballot appeared, and other
similar devices. The tissue ballot has now developed
into the "grandfather" constitution. Fraud has done
its perfect work.
It all comes to this. As a Negro, they like him; in
deed they must have him. As a man, a citizen, or a
voter, they will have none of him. So far as the suf
frage is concerned they have made good this determi
nation, by open disregard and defiance of the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments. This is simply rebellion
against the government of the United States, as in 1861,
the instrument employed being fraud instead of force.
In this, as in all that I say, I refer only to the states
where the crime is flagrant, and I acknowledge, with
182
grateful appreciation, the attitude of a minority of the
best citizens even in these states, who see the folly and
the wickedness of fraudulent disfranchisement of the
Negro and have tried to stay its mad career.
While the Fifteenth Amendment gave the Negro noth
ing but the right to be treated, according to his merits,
as other men of equal merit are treated, the white South
was even more unwilling to accord him impartial treat
ment under the Fifteenth Amendment than it was to
accept him as a citizen under the Fourteenth, or as a
freeman under the Thirteenth. They have nullified, to
a substantial extent, all three of the War Amendments.
In most of the southern states the Negro has been de
spoiled, by one sinister device or another, of a substan
tial share even of the personal liberty supposed to be
secured to him by the Thirteenth Amendment. In but
few if any of these states is he accorded the privileges
of a citizen or the equal protection of the laws, sup
posed to be secured to him by the Fourteenth Amend
ment. And now, by a series of fraudulent enactments
which began with Mississippi in 1891 and running
through and around the "black belt" has finally em
braced, actually or practically, every state that seceded
from the Union in 1861, the Negro is eliminated from
their political system almost as completely as though he
did not exist.
That this is a fraud does not need to be asserted. It
is self-evident, and is admitted. The disfranchising con
stitutions, even of the "grandfather" type, are fair
enough upon their face, revealing to the eye no open
discrimination between the races. So much had to be
conceded to the Fifteenth Amendment. But every one
of them is calculated, intended and administered, to ex
clude the Negro from the suffrage, whatever his char
acter and qualifications, while admitting to it every white
man, however ignorant, worthless or depraved. It is
183
common knowledge that many of the most distinguished
personages concerned in the movement, more candid if
less discreet than the rest, have confessed this charge
and openly exulted in it.
A new feature has just appeared in the disfranchis
ing process which may be of some significance. We
read in the newspapers the other day that the legisla
ture of Florida is proposing to write the word "white"
plainly into the constitutional suffrage qualification of
that state, openly discarding even the pretense of im
partiality between the races which thinly veils the fraud
in other states. This looks as though the white South is
now confident that the country has abandoned the Negro
and that the Fifteenth Amendment may be openly
repudiated. The Mississippi senator who appears to be
active in the Florida movement probably knows, if the
Florida legislature does not, that the Supreme Court has
often declared the word "white," if found in the suf
frage laws of a state, to be effaced and annulled by the
Fifteenth Amendment, of its own force. In view of
this, it is difficult to believe that they really expect to
do this thing effectively. Whether they think they have
discovered a new device, or what the particular pur
pose is, I do not undertake to say. It may be nothing
but a mere piece of bravado, but it needs watching.
Now let us see how disfranchisement of the Negro
affects the white man. The Fourteenth Amendment ap
portions representatives in Congress and presidential
electors among the states in proportion to their popula
tion, and prescribes that if the suffrage is denied or
abridged by a state to any male citizens of the United
States of voting age, its representation shall be reduced
in the same proportion. At least ten southern states, by
fraud or intimidation, under the forms of law or other
wise, have practically or actually disfranchised the
Negro. These ten states had by the census of 1900 a
184
population of 15,926,955, of which 9,349,622 are white
and 6,565,894 colored. They have 3,675,454 male citi
zens of voting age, of whom 2,238,720 are white and
1,436,734 colored. The disfranchised colored citizens,
a million and a half in round numbers, represent a col
ored population of six and a half millions. These ten
states elect the full number of 82 representatives in Con
gress, based upon their whole population, and the same
number of presidential electors, who represent 2,238,-
720 white voters. This is an average of 27,301 voters
to each representative and elector. In the other thirty-
six states of the Union, 17,122,940 voters elect 309 re
presentatives and presidential electors, an average of 55,-
414 voters to each representative and elector. This is
more than double the number which exercises the same
power in the disfranchising states. A white vote in
these states outweighs, in the federal government, two
votes of any color in the other states of the Union. A
white voter in these states goes to the polls with some
what more than double the federal power of any voter
in the other states.
In fact, the situation is worse than this. The actual
voting oligarchy in the disfranchising states is but a
small fraction even of the white electorate. I have not at
tempted to compile any recent figures, but they have often
been published. For example, it is said that the con
gressional vote of a single district in Iowa exceeds the
vote which elects the whole congressional delegation of
Louisiana ; that the average congressional vote in each
district in Ohio exceeds the whole congressional vote of
Mississippi ; and that the vote cast in electing ten con
gressmen in Wisconsin is more than three times as large
as that cast in electing twenty congressmen in South
Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi. Any white voter, in
any of the thirty-six states where citizens of the Uni
ted States are allowed to vote, may figure out for him-
185
self, at his leisure, what particular fraction of his own
vote the disfranchising states allow him to cast in the
choice of the federal government.
One of the sorest spots in the old slave Constitution
was the political representation of three-fifths of the
slaves, giving the South that undue share of political
power. The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to
set this right, and to restore and maintain for all time
an honest balance of political power between the states.
We are now so much worse off than we were then, that
whereas but three-fifths of the Negroes were then count
ed in the basis of representation, the whole are now
counted and represented, and the whole political power
belonging to about sixteen millions of people is exer
cised by a white electorate representing about nine mil
lions. Instead of carrying us forward to political equal
ity, the actual results of the war have carried us back
ward to more inequality.
All this has been done in plain and open disregard and
violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
It has passed into a political truism that the three
amendments of the Constitution were the whole fruits of
the war. We have suffered ourselves to be robbed of
the fruits, by a new rebellion against the federal gov
ernment, in which the states of the late Confederacy
have taken and hold more political power than they for
merly had by virtue of slavery itself. In the recent bill
of Congressman Bennet, of New York, to enforce the
representation clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
based upon the figures of the census of 1900, it appears
that the ten disfranchising states there dealt with, now
represented on the basis of the whole population by 82
congressmen and the same number of electors, are en
titled to but 50 congressmen and electors, and that 32
representatives and electors of these states are now vot
ing in Congress and in the election of president and
186
vice-president without right, and in open violation of
the federal Constitution.
It was long. hoped, and perhaps believed, that the ju
dicial remedy for disfranchisement in violation of the
Fifteenth Amendment would be effective. One mistaken
view of the judicial remedy has obtained some currency
and ought to be corrected. Mr. Elaine seems to have
thought, when he wrote his Twenty Years of Con
gress, that it must be the only remedy. He there ex
pressed the view that the Fifteenth Amendment, direct
ly forbidding discrimination against the Negro in the
suffrage, superseded the representation clause of the
Fourteenth which appears to permit it at the pfrice of
reduced representation; that as the Fifteenth wholly
forbids denial of the suffrage on the ground of color, a
state can no longer deny it, or be found or held to have
denied it, on that ground; and that the only thing to
be done upon violation of the Fifteenth Amendment is
to appeal to the courts. In this he was plainly wrong,
and his view has not been and is not to be accepted.
The Fourteenth Amendment is not a permission to the
states to deny the suffrage to any class of citizens.
Suffrage, in general, is the affair of the states. They
need no permission of the federal government to regu
late it. This Amendment says to the states: If the Ne
gro is not admitted to the suffrage, the Negro shall not
be counted in the basis of representation. The Fifteenth
Amendment says to the states : While you may regulate
the suffrage to suit yourselves, you shall not deny it to
the Negro merely because he is a Negro. This does not
supersede the other provision, first, because there is no
inconsistency between the two, the later being cumulative
and supplemental, not repugnant, to the other; second,
because to forbid an act does not repeal a penalty other
wise laid upon it ; and third, because the judicial rem
edy, under the Fifteenth Amendment, may be sought by
187
any aggrieved citizen, and perhaps only by a citizen,
while the remedy by reduction of representation, under
the Fourteenth Amendment, is a public remedy, enforce
able only by Congress, which the additional private
remedy under the Fifteenth cannot be held to supersede
or disturb.
And further, Congress is expressly empowered to en
force the Fifteenth Amendment, by "appropriate" legis
lation. No legislation can be more appropriate than to
reduce the representation of a disfranchising state, in
pursuance of the plain mandate of the Fourteenth
Amendment that its representation "shall be reduced"
in such a case. In framing the Fifteenth Amendment, it
may have been foreseen, as the case has actually turned
out to be, that the suffrage might be denied or abridged
by some device which could not be brought to the
judicial test, or that the court might hold the political
remedy to be exclusive. It may be, in theory, that a state
is incapable of doing what the federal Constitution for
bids it to do, so that, abstractly, a state cannot now deny
or be found to have denied the suffrage on the sole
ground of color, as the attempt to do it is legally void.
But this is mere casuistry. The law knows no such re
finement as to assume that a forbidden act cannot be
done because it is forbidden. Such an assumption would
nullify all penal legislation. It is common knowledge
that acts forbidden by law are done, and punished, every
day. The Amendments deal with facts, not theories, and
Congress may deal with the facts, as it finds them to be.
The two Amendments must be read together. Taken
together, they mean that a state shall not deny the suf
frage to any citizen of the United States on the sole
ground of race, color or previous servitude, but if ac
tually denied, upon this or any other ground, it shall
be at the cost of reduced representation.
It is now familiar that the Supreme Court, in the few
188
cases which have reached it, has avoided the direct ques
tion of the conflict of the disfranchising constitutions
with the Fifteenth Amendment. The scheme is so cun
ningly contrived as to make it difficult or impossible to
present an effective case. The court has not yet been
squarely faced with the main question, and has plainly
shown a reluctance to meet it. The nearest approach
was in the Alabama case,* in 1903, where the subject is
briefly surveyed, and a majority of the judges declares
the court incompetent to give the desired relief. If this
declaration was extra-judicial, as it may be regarded,
it is perhaps the more significant for that reason, what
ever may be said of its propriety. In this and other
cases the judges must have perceived that if the ques
tion is forced upon the court, the result will be either
to sustain a patent and colossal political fraud, or to
overturn the suffrage systems of states by judicial de
cree. Rightly or wrongly, they shrink from this alterna
tive. I think that the Alabama case must be taken as a
final refusal to pass upon the general validity of the
disfranchising constitutions if the question can possibly
be avoided.
But this is not the whole of the Alabama case. The
court concludes with a pregnant declaration that relief
from such a political wrong, done by a state or its peo
ple, must be given by them, "or by the legislative and
political department of the government of the United
States." That there is a complete political remedy must
have been apparent to the court, and it cannot be with
out significance that the court points directly to the polit
ical remedy, in turning away from the subject.
While the judicial remedy for disfranchisement has
thus far proved delusive, there is complete power in
Congress and the Executive to enforce political equality
*Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 475.
189
among the citizens of the United States if disposed to
enforce it, and this not merely under the Fourteenth but
under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment itself,
which declares, as in the other war Amendments, that
"the Congress shall have power to enforce this Article
by appropriate legislation."
This clause of the Amendment is of the same force and
significance as the prohibitive clause. Plainly the Consti
tution has not left its enforcement to the courts. Congress
has express power to "enforce" its provisions, by "appro
priate" legislation. This must be held a plenary and effec
tive power, adequate to the complete enforcement of the
prohibition of the first section. What is "appropriate"
legislation for this purpose? I have suggested one ex
ample of it. We have some further light upon this ques
tion. In the Civil Rights cases, and others, the court
has held that the similar section of the Fourteenth
Amendment does not authorize Congress to substitute
for unconstitutional laws of a state a new code, of its
own making, but only to enact "corrective legislation,
that is, such as may be necessary and proper for counter
acting such laws as the states may adopt or enforce,
which, by the Amendment, they are prohibited from
making or enforcing, or such acts and proceedings as
the states may commit or take, which, by the Amend
ment, they are prohibited from committing or taking."
Granting that Congress may not directly enact that the
Negro shall be allowed to vote in any state, under this
power as thus expounded it may at least declare void,
for all federal purposes, any provisions of a state law or
constitution which it finds to be in violation of the Amend
ment. The power is a legislative power, to be exercised by
legislation. A legislative body proceeds upon facts found
or ascertained by itself, to its own satisfaction. It needs
no other authority for its action, and if it acts within its
constitutional authority, the facts upon which it proceeds
190
cannot be questioned or its action disturbed. All this
must be taken as known and intended in conferring the
power. An Act of Congress declaring a law or system
of laws, so far as it affects the federal government, to
be void for violation of the Amendment, is not con
structive but is strictly corrective legislation. It would
at once furnish sufficient ground for the House of Rep
resentatives to purge itself of members who have no right
to be there. It would be the plain duty of the House,
notwithstanding it is subject to no control in dealing
with its membership, to exclude members elected under
a suffrage system found and declared by Congress to be
void for violation of the federal Constitution. It would
equally be the duty of the two Houses to refuse to count
the votes of presidential electors chosen under such a
system. This proceeding would compel reformation of
the suffrage system of the disfranchising states, under
the alternative of possible loss of their whole represen
tation in the lower House of Congress and in the electoral
body. Probably it has never been expected that the
courage of Congress would rise to this level unless un
der the stress of some future political exigency, when
it might again be found that there is "politics" in the
Negro. But there is always politics in the white man,
and this is a white man s issue, to be pressed upon the
government by white men. Here is a plain remedy, in
the hands of Congress. If applied, it cannot justly be
complained of. If not applied, every voter in thirty-
six states has a right to complain. It goes directly to
the end which the Fifteenth Amendment was intended to
secure. It does not by any means exhaust the political
remedies under this Amendment, but it is enough to sug
gest the possibilities of the enforcement clause, and to
show how formidable a weapon is here placed in the
hands of Congress to restore political equality among the
citizens of the United States.
191
Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the repre
sentation clause, is more familiar, but even this has not
been fully explored. It declares that if the right to vote
is denied "or in any way abridged," except for rebellion
r>r other crime, the basis of representation "shall be re
duced" in the same proportion. The penalty is not lim
ited to direct denial of the suffrage. The clause "or in
any way abridged" is no less significant and effective
than the other. Not merely "denied," not merely
"abridged," but for further and complete assurance, "in
any way abridged," is the law. No secret, covert or
sinister scheme, however cunningly contrived, by which
abridgement may be effected without direct denial, shall
prevail. Nothing could meet the "grandfather" device, or
the "understanding" device, more directly than this. It
seems as though the framers of the Amendment, with
prophetic foresight, had anticipated what now has actu
ally been done, and fitted the Amendment to the facts.
Adroitly as the disfranchising constitutions have avoid
ed direct denial of the suffrage to the Negro, it can
avail them nothing. Neither court nor Congress could
hesitate in finding that the suffrage is abridged to the
Negro in the administration of the system, if not directly
denied by its terms, and this is violation of the Amend
ment.
Under this clause there is a complete remedy for dis-
franchisement in the hands of the House of Representa
tives by itself. It is not prescribed that Congress may
reduce the representation of a disfranchising state.
Upon denial or abridgement of the suffrage, its represen
tation "shall be reduced." It is judicially declared and
settled that the War Amendments are intended to be,
and are, of automatic action and self-executing, so far
as they can be without the aid of legislation. A plain
and conceded purpose of this section is to correct the
inequality of the old Constitution by excluding from the
192
basis of representation any part of the population which
is not represented in the electorate ; in short, to forbid
and prevent any representation of any state not based
upon a voting population, the states having the choice
to confer the suffrage and have the representation or
withhold the suffrage and lose it.
Read in its full meaning, the Amendment prescribes
that if a state withholds the suffrage from any class of
citizens of the United States its Representation shall
thereby stand as reduced, ipso facto, in the same propor
tion. A proportionate part of its right to representation
ceases to exist, contemporaneously with denial or abridg
ment of the suffrage, and from that moment it has no con
stitutional right to send any representatives to Congress,
or choose any presidential electors, except such number as
may stand upon the reduced basis. Upon finding of the
fact of denial or abridgment of the suffrage, the propor
tionate reduction of representation follows as a necessary
consequence. The House of Representatives may find
this fact, and deal with representation accordingly, with
out any concurrent action of the Senate or the Executive.
Every representative sent from a disfranchising state
since the disfranchising process began, in excess of this
reduced number, has been sent without authority, and has
occupied his seat without right or title. The House of
Representatives would have been legally warranted, at
any time since Mississippi disfranchised the Negro in 1891,
in refusing to admit any delegation from a disfranchis
ing state. When such a delegation appears, it is known
that its number exceeds the number which the state has
a constitutional right to send, and as they all stand upon
the same ground and are alike subject to, the same in
firmity, the House cannot distinguish between them and
is not called upon to admit either or any of them. It is
for any state to make the title of each of its represen
tatives good, by sending only such number as the Con-
193
stitution authorizes. A suffrage system in violation of
tljfe federal Constitution is, so far as it affects the fed
eral government, void as an entirety, and no represen
tative claiming to be elected under such a system can
show a constitutional title to a seat in Congress.
It has heretofore been assumed that reduction of rep
resentation under the Fourteenth Amendment can be ef
fected only by an Act of Congress in the form of which
Congressman Bennet s bill is the latest example, declar
ing the number of representatives which each disfranchis
ing state is entitled to elect, and requiring the state to re
construct its districts accordingly or to elect at large the
proper number and no more. While this method of
procedure is preferable, especially as it conclusively set
tles the title of the state to presidential electors no less
than to representatives, it is not legally necessary. The
House of Representatives has power enough in its own
hands.
If these remedies for disfranchisement appear extreme,
it is only because the people of the country at large, in
their indifference to the fate of the Negro, have over
looked the crime against their own political rights. They
are directly within the terms and intent of the Consti
tution, they are essential to the supremacy of the federal
power, they are demanded in order to restore political
equality among all the states and all citizens of the Uni
ted States, and it is the plain duty of the government to
apply them. If the power is doubted, as the Supreme
Court once said in a similar case, "it is only because
the Congress, through long habit and long years of for
bearance has, in deference and respect to the states,
refrained from the exercise of these powers, that they
are now doubted." Action of Congress in this direc
tion, or even a near prospect of it, would bring the
disfranchising states to a realizing sense of the danger
involved in their open defiance of the organic law. The
194
men who shaped the War Amendments, and the people
who wrote them into the federal charter, could not have
conceived that there should ever be any hesitation to
enforce them under such conditions as now confront us.
The application of this remedy will at least restore
political equality among the states and among the white
citizens of the United States, and it will not stop here.
It will accomplish what the Fourteenth Amendment was
designed to accomplish, by establishing impartial suf
frage and equality of political rights among all citizens
of the United States without distinction based upon race
or color. No state will willingly pay the price of re
duced representation for the luxury of depriving all Ne
groes of the ballot. So long as ten states are allowed,
without interference or remonstrance, to enjoy this priv
ilege and at the same time to retain and exercise all the
political power of which the disfranchised Negroes are
despoiled, they can hardly be expected to surrender it.
So long as we remain dumb and subservient, we cannot
hold them alone responsible for the consequences.
Here is a plain question, which ought to be put to the
country and answered by the country. Are the people
of thirty-six states willing to be defrauded of their own
political rights in order that ten states may disfranchise
the Negro? Have we so fallen from the estate of our
fathers that, while they vigorously remonstrated against
lawful representation of three-fifths of the Negroes,
sanctioned by the Constitution, we will submit to un
lawful representation of all the Negroes in defiance of
the Constitution? This question, once fairly presented,
cannot be put aside until it is settled, and it will not be
settled until the political rights of every citizen of the
United States are recognized and enforced.
The effective nullification of the Fifteenth Amend
ment is now followed by a concerted movement to pre
pare the public mind for its formal abrogation. If
such a movement can succeed, it will not stop with
the Fifteenth Amendment, but the representation clause
of the Fourteenth will be the next object of attack.
With both of these clauses of the Constitution out of
the way, they will have the Negro where they want to
put him, and they will have us where they want to put
us. The president takes notice of this in his inaugural
address, where he declares that the Fifteenth Amendment
will never be repealed, and that it ought to be "observed."
It ought to be enforced. Until enforced it is virtually
repealed. It is a part of his official duty to see that it
is enforced. Will he do it? He owes the people of me
United States an answer to this question. The people
owe it to themselves to see that it is answered, and there
is but one possible answer.
It is not the part of -patriotism or of statesmanship
to trifle with this subject. If the organization and con
trol of the House of Representatives should turn upon
the thirty-odd votes now unlawfully retained by the
white South, the subject would be precipitated into poli
tics in a day, not as a question of principle, or for the
assertion of any principle, but upon the lowest level, as
a means of perpetuating the power of the dom
inant party. If a presidential election should turn
upon the thirty-odd electoral votes now under the
same unlawful control, there would be a struggle for
possession of the government to which tne contest of
1876 was but a passing breeze. Out of this issue, if
forced upon us under such conditions, a storm may
arise which will shake the federal structure to its foun
dations. It is a plain duty to press the subject upon the
attention of the country until public sentiment compels
the government to act. If deaf to the disfranchised
Negro it will hear the disfranchised white man, and the
act which takes care of the white man will take care of
the Negro.
196
Afternoon Session, June 1
Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, Chairman
THE NEED OF ORGANIZATION
Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard
of
New York
I beg to report on behalf of your committee on organi
zation that it has seemed from the very inception of this
movement desirable that some permanent body should
grow out of this gathering. Hence your committee has
found no difficulty in deciding that these conferences at
least should become annual events. When music teach
ers, dancing masters, commercial travellers, secret
orders galore, and associations of college graduates find
it worth their while to meet annually; when the an
nual arbitration meetings and conferences on the status
of the North American Indian at Mohonk have so clear
ly demonstrated their value, it seems perfectly obvious
that those men and women who believe that the welfare
of the republic is bound up with fair play towards the
Negro, with giving him exact justice and exact equality
before the law, should come together once every twelve
months for encouragement, for information, for inspi
ration. Your committee recommends, therefore, that
there be appointed by the Chair a committee of not more
than thirty persons who shall be charged with the duty
of calling the conference together in 1910 and with
forming a permanent organization which shall have still
further and vastly more important duties. Your com-
197
mittee bespeaks your approval of its plan to bring about
the establishment of a permanent, incorporated national
committee, to forward the interests of the Negro and to
combat race prejudice in the United States. In explan
ation of this proposal, I beg leave to say a few words.
"The timidity of our public opinion is our disease, or,
shall I say the publicness of opinion, the absence of pri
vate opinion," Emerson once declared. No one who is
to-day interested in the progress upwards of the colored
race, the maintenance intact of all its rights and privi
leges, can dispute the evident application, of these words
to latter-day conditions. There is getting to be an ab
sence of private opinion on questions concerning col
ored men and women in certain circles of the North,
which in itself makes clear the undertakit.-g of a system
atic effort to place the facts in regard to our colored cit
izens before the American nation. In the absence of an
enlightened individual opinion, it is easy enough for the
multitude to accept for truisms certain allegations in re
gard to colored people which float up to us from the
South or have their origin in equally prejudiced quar
ters in the North. For race prejudice knows no geo
graphical distinctions ; it is hemmed in no more by Mason
and Dixon s line than was slavery successfully curtailed
by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It was always to be
found in the North in slavery days was not Prudence
Crandall s school for colored children burned in Con
necticut in 1834? precisely as it is to be found in Prus
sia, Russia, and Austria to-day, though along other lines
than those in which it manifests itself in our own coun
try. Of late, with us, there is every evidence that a
systematic effort is being made to win over to the exact
view of the South the bulk of northern opinion. Sena
tor Tillman of South Carolina did us the very great ser
vice the other day of setting forth in the frankest of
language the southern programme at the dinner of the
198
South Carolina society, in this city. "At the same time/
he said, "I want to speak of the great change that has
come over the North in the last few years. One reason
for this is- that the old abolitionists are dying out, and
we only find the agitator in some old soldier, who is
drawing a pension he never earned, and who never saw
a Confederate soldier, but who has of late years become
a great warrior. Fifteen years after the North tried to
pass a force bill to let Negroes vote, the President of
the United States declares that he will not appoint an
officer to the government service who is obnoxious to us.
"They say we must enforce the laws impartially, and
we say we will not. We have nullified the Fourteenth
Amendment, and in every southern state the Negro is
disfranchised. We hear much about the grandfather
clause in our voting qualification. The reason we put
that in is to give the poor white men who cannot read
a chance to vote and to disfranchise the Negro.
"The Negro to-day is a Republican asset. He holds
the balance of power in Philadelphia, and in Ohio, In
diana, and Illinois. And so long as the Republicans con
tinue to use him as a political asset it is our duty to be
true to the civilization of our fathers and to educate the
North, as we have been doing during the last ten years."
Now, if there were no other reason than this speech
of Senator Tillman for calling this conference, that
would be enough. It affords in itself plenty of reason
for beginning a scientifically planned and aggressive
movement on behalf of the Negro s rights even if there
were no such words in our language as justice, equality,
fair pl~y, and national good faith.
The enlightened traveller who comes to this country
from Europe, whether it be Dr. Earth from Germany,
or H. G. Wells or Sir Harry Johnston from England, to
study our social and racial conditions, is usually appalled
at the prejudice against the Negro he encounters. The
199
though ful foreigner soon asks what self-defence organ
izations the colored people and their white sympathizers
have formed. Where, he asks, is your national steer
ing committee, like those that have constituted themselves
in Europe to watch over and guard the interests of the
Jewish race? He learns that there is none. "What," he
says, "have you no group of national leaders, like those
which have for decades fought the battles of the Irish
people in and out of Parliament?" Again the answer
must be no. "Surely," he gasps, "there is some militant
committee, like that of the Prussian Poles, which has thus
far successfully defeated the efforts of the Prussian gov
ernment to make its Polish subjects abandon their lan
guage, their customs, yes, even their lands?" Again the
reply must be in the negative. Our puzzled foreign
friend may next ask about the educational status of the
Negroes. He learns that Congress grants no federal aid
of any consequence, and that it does not interfere with
the laws of any state in regard to public education. So
he asks : "Of course, there is some national organization
which deals solely with Negro education?" To this the
only reply that can be given is that there are several
funds which contribute more or less mostly less to
colored schools, but the problem has never been ap
proached in a thoroughgoing, systematic, or scientific
way; that in the main the schools specially founded to
aid the colored people rely upon haphazard contributions
from a generous public. As a result, they are without
proper guidance or supervision, and there flourish side
by side with effective institutions ineffective ones, and
even some which exist solely for the salaries they pay to
teachers.
When our foreigner has finished wondering at this
state of affairs his next question is for the name of that
militant organization which battles incessantly for the
civil and political rights of the Negro. Here his infor-
200
mant is not quite as much at loss, for there exists, among
other useful societies, the Constitution League that has
so manfully fought the battle of the shamefully ill-treated
Brownsville soldiers and is seeking to obtain from the
Supreme Court of the United States decisions which
shall fortify the Negro in his right. There is the ad
mirable Niagara movement ; but even this and the similar
organizations have not yet established a legal aid bureau.
One of the best and most useful philanthropies in New
York City is the Legal Aid Society, which gives free legal
advice and aid to the poor. If this work has demon
strated its usefulness in a city, would it not be a thou
sandfold more useful when applied to a race? More than
that, the inhabitants of the teeming East and West Sides
of New York do not begin to need legal protection as do
the Negroes of the South, and at times those of the
North. We do not hear of any blind member of our
local foreign population being tied up and flogged with
a rawhide whip to make him confess ; we have not yet
heard of any man s being lynched in Essex Street because
someone accused him of a heinous crime. We have never
heard of New Yorkers being run out of town, their
lives endangered, their families abused, their property
destroyed, merely because they. happened to be considered
too prosperous, too well-to-do, to suit their neighbors of
another race. But it is not necessary to enumerate the
thousand and one crimes against colored people, nor to
remind this assembly that a Negro in the South is never
tried by his peers, but always by a jury that consists of
men whose consciousness of their superiority would
rouse them to bitter anger if any one remarked that
they were but the equals of the prisoner at the bar. Nev
er has a race needed more a strong central legal bureau
able to employ the ablest counsel to prosecute men who
kill and call it law ; ever ready to insist upon the punish
ment of guilty officials, and to cure the lynching evil by
201
prosecuting lax authorities and bringing civil suits for
damages against the local or county authorities.
Realizing to the full the justice of the criticisms of
the foreigners who come to us, your committee, whose
interest in the colored race is nothing new, but is based
upon experience and study of years therefore believes
that the time has come for a committee or a board or a
limited society which shall do for the colored people what
the Zionist committees do for the Jews ; what the Prus
sian Polish Committee has done for the Poles, and the
Irish committees for their wronged people. This board
should have a national charter and be regularly incor
porated so as to be perpetual and to be able to seek and
to receive large amounts of money by donations or be
quests. If there ever was a case where millions should
be given it is this one ; and your committee believes that
if such a board should be well established and well-man
ned it would have no difficulty in raising, in time, large
sums. The colored people would contribute just as soon
as convinced, first, of the sincerity and unselfishness of
the enterprise ; second, of its absolute independence of
any of the factions within the race ; third, that it was on
a scientific and an efficient basis, and fourth, that it was
wedded to no particular form of education, but to all
forms of education. Mr. Richard R. Wright, jr., esti
mates that the Negroes of the United States have paid
in direct property and poll taxes for schools no less than
$45,000,000 during the last forty years, besides $15,-
000,000 through their churches. It is not leaving the
realm of the credible, therefore, to believe that they
could be got to contribute large sums to the endowment
of the national board proposed.
It would be difficult in the time allotted to me to enu
merate all the beneficent possibilities of such a board,
but there could be no more important duty for it than
to spread the truth about the colored people. Every
202
lynching should be investigated by a competent commit
tee; every injustice to the Negro should spread through
out the press ; the marvellous achievements of the
colored people set forth in their true colors, and above
all a campaign of education of the white people carried
on. One of the foremost leaders of the new movement
for education in the South stated privately the other day
that if he had a million dollars he would devote it to
the education of the educated white people of the South,
and it is a most encouraging fact that in this undertak
ing he would have the aid of a growing number of white
people, who have seen the light men like former Con
gressman Fleming of Georgia, Prof. John Spencer Bas-
sett, President Denny of Washington and L!ee Univer
sity, the Rev. Quincy Ewing of Louisiana, and many
others whose writings should go into every household of
the South. The publicity bureau of this board should
then comprise a research section to carry on the work of
the kind so admirably done under Dr. Du Bois s direc
tion, at Atlanta University, and in co-operation there
with a press section in charge of an accomplished news
paper man.
The political and civil rights bureau of our national
board would naturally be its most important undertak
ing, for it would bend its energies to bringing about the en
forcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,
to obtaining court decisions upon the disfranchising laws
and other discriminatory legislation. For this purpose
it should have at its disposal sufficient money to employ
the highest legal talent obtainable and to pay the heavy
cost of carrying up to the Supreme Court case after case
until that shifting and evasive body is compelled to de
cide whether there shall be two degrees of citizenship in
this country, whether there shall be separate laws for one
class of human beings and others for different human
beings ; whether special privilege in its most obnoxious
203
form shall have legal sanction, and whether the Con
stitution of the United States shall be permanently vio
lated. A non-partisan body like our proposed board
could often do this with greater effectiveness than any
organization of voters as such, for it would in no wise
enter the political field for the purpose of electing this
or that candidate, but confine itself battling for princi
ples, for civic rights, for an untarnished Constitution.
The education bureau of our board would find a broad
field in uplifting the standards of Negro schools and col
leges, in improving their business methods, devising less
wasteful plans of raising funds, and, if sufficiently equip
ped, in making donations to worthy institutions of all
classes. Our proposed industrial bureau should deal with
the colored man in relation to labor; it might take over
in this city the functions of that excellent body which
seeks to create additional industrial opportunities for
colored workers, and could found and aid similar socie
ties in other industrial centres. It could concern itself
with the whole question of housing and of land owning,
both urban and rural, and could, if it were deemed ad
visable, make large purchases of land for re-sales to col
ored people. In the possession of land lie enormous
strength and defensive power. The Poles in Prussia, ow
ing to their enormous land holdings, have successfully
defied every effort of the government they hate to Prus
sianize them until that tyrannical government has found
itself compelled, as a last resort, to deprive them by
force of their land holdings. There is surely a lesson in
this that we cannot too rapidly acquire land for colored
farmers and workers in all sections of our country. The
question of emigration, of moving large bodies of col
ored people from one section to another, is another one
with which a national board might well concern itself,
for therein, too, lies a weapon of great usefulness in the
compelling of justice.
204
To mention only one more function of our proposed
board, it should be equipped to aid the individual colored
man of merit, as well as a meritorious community, by
giving him the best education possible and then placing
him where he can be of the greatest service to his peo
ple. We see too many colored physicians in the cities
and too few in the rural districts ; there are too many
Negroes capable of earning $5,000 a year at $2,000 jobs.
Where a splendid intellect is discovered, we want to set
it tasks that will make it worth one hundred cents on the
dollar to both races of this country, and not confine it to
duties which a $1,200 man can perform just as well.
In other words, in this era of organized publicity and
of combinations of capital and brains in every field of
human endeavor your committee believes that the white
friends of the Negro and the Negro himself should fall
in line with the times and use the very best tools for his
defence and his advancement. Never was it truer that
there is strength in union ; never was it plainer that the
emergency demanded the most efficient means of appeal
ing to the conscience and the hearts of the American
people. At heart the great masses are sound on every
question if one can but get the facts before them. What
would have seemed more hopeless than an attempt to
stir the national conscience at the time of the founding
of the "Liberator"? Is not to-day every great crusade,
whether on behalf of child labor, the conservation of
our national resources, or the warfare on tuberculosis,
conducted on precisely these lines suggested with a pub
licity bureau and a national committee? If our plan
seems a counsel of perfection, let us in truth hitch our
wagon to a star and devote our lives, if necessary, to its
realization. Some of us are willing to give freely of our
strength and our time to it, because we are convinced
that its infinite possibilities of usefulness to our coun
try will be limited only by its finances, and that alliance
205
with such a board would mean patriotic service of the
highest degree to all our people, white or black or yellow.
With this feeling we ask the adoption of our resolution
and your support for our great project. We are happy
to add that two of the most useful of the political organ
izations fighting for the Negroes rights are ready to co
operate with or coalesce with our proposed board, which
ever seems best. They are ready to join us in creating
a body which shall bring home to the heart of every man
whom it can reach the existence of gross injustice and
oppression in this land of the free and home of the
brave and shall never let the nation forget that il has a
vital, pressing race-problem on its hands until that prob
lem is settled in consonance with the principles of an
exact justice.
206
EFFECT ON POOR WHITES OF DIS
CRIMINATION AGAINST NEGROES
Hon. Joseph C. Manning
of
Alabama
Growing out of the attitude of the controling element
in the South towards the Negro, as a consequence of the
ingenious exploitation of the race problem there is no con
stitutional or free government in any immediate south
ern state. There is not a state in the group of the far
southern states that is not dominated by a brutal political
minority of the whites, without mention of the suppres
sion of all blacks.
This political savagery is clamped together by intrigue
and cunning. It holds sway through written and un
written processes made possible by as artful a system
of strategy as could find crafty conveyance in forms of
state constitutional law. These compacts, these state
oligarchies, are absolutely without any political moral
cohesive force to hold them together. It is necessary,
therefore, to make secure their domination that this
regime should not only beat down and oppress all blacks,
but should extend this system of exploitation until it sub
merges the liberties of a majority of whites.
The next census will no doubt show that there are
300,000 whites of voting age in Alabama. It will show
the number of Negroes of over 21 years of age,
males, to be about 200,000. As a result of the opera
tions, of the swing of the Bourbon axe, as an outcome of
207
the machinations of the oligarchy, the election year of
1910 will disclose the fact that the whole number of
whites in Alabama out of the voting who do not and
who can not vote, by reason of the workings and ag
gressions of our peculiar southern political institutions
will equal the entire number of male blacks of voting
age.
This condition is ingeniously explained away by the
degenerate statesmanship of the South and is now very
readily accepted by the duped political leadership of the
North as wholly necessary to uphold white supremacy;
whereas these regimes have swept away and submerged
the political rights of whites just as brutally as they have
pressed this iron heel of political despotism on all blacks.
Those most responsible for this situation are of the
same flesh, the same families, the same sentiments as
what is known in our southern history as the slave own
ing political and social aristocracy. This regime domin
ating Alabama now is simply the progeny of the old slave-
owning oligarchy. The attitude of these men to the Negro
is no unknown thing to the nation, but the astounding
way in which this aggression has been permitted to march
forward in its brutal political despotism is not compre
hended, in all its various and vicious aspects.
These men who, by reason of their being born and
bred into antipathy to the Negro, do not hesitate to with
hold from him the political rights which the American
Constitution says that he is entitled to are not so pure
in heart and so unselfish and lofty in ideal as to be worthy
to have committed to their exclusive keeping either the
hopes and future of all blacks or the absolute, ring-
riveted, intrigue-entrenched control of this vast majority
of politically helpless whites.
It is not strange, it is only what might be expected to
follow as a result of our southern political leadership,
that we have a vast illiterate and impoverished white pop-
208
illation. It will be remembered that some southern repre
sentatives in Congress did not warm up to the Blair bill
for national aid to education. The inference they caused
to be drawn by their constituents was that it was be
cause of the Negro, but there is now a well founded opin
ion these leaders of this oligarchy felt themselves a
bit more secure in political power without an educated,
thinking, independent white constituency. These men
have felt capable of subduing the blacks, but the problem
with them, that with which they have had to deal in these
recent years, is the suppression of the revolting masses
of the whites.
That these men are masters of the situation the exist
ing conditions thoroughly demonstrate. It is to-day as
impossible for the opposition majority of whites, without
including the blacks, to overthrow this political despot
ism of the minority in the state of Alabama as was it im
possible for the Negro in that state to free himself from
the manacles and chains of chattel slavery in 1860. This
cruel and unjust system, interwoven to-day as it was
before the civil war in all social and political affairs, is
bolstered up by an intolerance that has to many the
fierceness of the very jaws of hell and constitutes a social
and political barbarity as heartlessly disregardful of
whites who oppose it as were the old slave holders heart
less to freedom s cry for enslaved blacks.
That treacherous cry of "let the South alone" is as
ungodly, as infamous to-day as was that anti-abolition
and copperhead sentiment of the North detestable in
1860. Any man, whoever he may be, however exalted
may be his station, who palliates, excuses, or knowingly
and willingly acquiesces in the aggressions of this sys
tem which now insidiously seeks extension of its in
fluence and power into the free states of the North, is,
whether he so wills it or not, aiding and abetting a
clique in these states of the South, who are at this hour
209
as much in revolt against the letter and the spirit of the
amendments to the American Constitution as they were
out of the Union when they trained the guns of their
Confederacy at the flag of this Republic.
210 V
THE NEGRO AND THE NATION
Dr. William A. Sinclair
of
Philadelphia
That the nation should remain apathetic, supine, limp ;
seemingly dazed in the presence of this frenzied, dashing,
over-weening, over-bearing, over-reaching, imperialistic
southern leadership, is not a new thing under the sun.
It was even so in the days of slavery. The nation tem
porized and procrastinated with slavery until the monster
all but stung it to death. Is the lesson so soon forgotten ?
Has the tremendous cost ceased even to be a dream ?
I may assert that the nation is, even now, in the midst
of the gravest complications. Already southern leader
ship has inaugurated a condition of semi-slavery in the
southern states. The situation is growing alarmingly
worse. He that runs may read. And this explosive
situation is being tempered with high sounding phrases
about the fraternal relations between the sections, the
obliteration of all sectional lines, the accord and concord
between the North and South. I say, solemnly and de
liberately, that all this talk and palaver is the merest
twaddle. It is without foundation in reason or in fact.
There can be no real obliteration of section lines, no
genuine spirit of fraternity, no bona fide concord between
the sections, so long as southern leadership draws its in
spiration and takes its cue from the brutal traditions of
slavery, and disregards the dictates of humanity and
211
justice, and tramples under foot the laws of God and
the laws of the republic in dealing with their fellow man,
thus putting "the South once more in a position pro-
vokingly offensive to the moral sense and the enlightened
spirit of the world outside."
Among those of responsibility and great prestige who
have made deliverances on this question, I may refer
to President Taft. Mr. Taft has repeatedly gone out of
his way, both by words and by deeds to placate the
South. The people of the North trust him, not because
they believe that he is always wise in these matters, but
because they believe that he is always honest.
Mr. Taft, while he was a candidate for the presiden
tial nomination, cast his tent in the South and camped
there. After he received the nomination, he again
camped in the South. And after his triumphant elec
tion he went back to the South to camp again. And it
is only fair to say that no people can be more hospit
able than southerners ; and it may be added that none
know better how to use hospitality to advance their
plans and purposes. In the history of our republic,
northern public men have repeatedly been wrecked on
the shoals of southern hospitality. Mr. Taft had the
opportunity and did study conditions at first hand.
What are his conclusions?
In that portion of his inaugural address, his first
state paper, in which he refers to southern conditions
and the Negro people, he exposes, unwittingly to be
sure, the hollow pretense and naked sham of all the
prattle about the obliteration of section lines.
Mr. Taft refers to the South as a distinct section ; he
refers to the southern people as a distinct people ; he
laments the deplorable and menacing conditions existing
in the South; and he makes a plaintive appeal for just
laws, for due respect for the Constitution of the United
States, for humane treatment of the Negro people and
212
for recognition of their citizenship. To quote his words,
he says : "I look forward with hope to increasing the
already good feeling between the South and the other
sections of the country. I look forward to an increase
in the tolerance of political views of all kinds and their
advocacy throughout the South. . to an in
creased feeling on the part of all the people of the
South that this government is their government and
that its officers in their states are their officers.
The Fifteenth Amendment has not been generally ob
served in the past, it ought to be observed. . . It
never will be repealed, and it never ought to be repealed.
The Negroes are now Americans and this is their only
country and their only flag. They have shown them
selves anxious to live for it and die for it."
After this deliverance, Mr. Taft bent his knees to the
Baal of southern race hate and race prejudice by de
claring that he would not, or may not, appoint colored
men to Federal offices if the white of the community
should protest against it. This is a burlesque on Repub
lican institutions. White men and colored men voted
for the nomination of Mr. Taft; white men and colored
men supported his candidacy and voted for his election.
And white men and colored men other things being
equal should share in the immunities and privileges un
der the government. The peace, prosperity and safety of
this Republic demand that it shall be governed by law
and justice, and not by race hate and race prejudice.
Equal right for all the people is the only safety of all
the people.
213
Address of
Rev. C. E. Stowe
I regret that it was known that I was in the room, but
of course the interest is not in me or in my own per
sonality, but in that of my mother, and that is the way I
receive your tribute. I stand here simply to speak for
her. Now with those self-effacing remarks, which are
equally sincere, I wish to say that I am very glad to
stand here as speaking for her and for her wonderful
great love for all God s creatures. For I want to tell
you from conviction, from observation, that the great
power of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward
Beecher was not an intellectual power, but a marvellous
power of loving. There have been men of greater ge
nius than Henry Ward Beecher in many ways, but he
was wonderful in his power of love and that was also
the case with my own mother.
The writing of Uncle Tom s Cabin was the most re
markable thing in the world. Mrs. Stowe came to Bos
ton in 1850, and stayed with her brother Edward at the
Park Street church. I was only a baby at the time, and
she had six little children with her. My Uncle Edward s
wife said to my mother, "If I could write as you do,
I would write something to make people feel w r hat a
curse, what an awful thing American slavery is." My
sister, who was living at that time, told me she remem
bered it very well, although she was only a little girl
thirteen years of age. She told me she remembered
looking up into my mother s face, and she heard my
2F4
mother say "Isabella, I will if God gives me strength/
My father was a helpless invalid at that time. His
health broke down in Cincinnati in the Lane Theological
Seminary, he was not able to be of any assistance to them
in the seminary, and this little woman had to use her
right hand to earn money to move her family to Bruns
wick, Maine, where Professor Stowe had accepted a
professorship. She had a little baby at the time (I am
the result) and she wrote a letter afterwards to my
Uncle Edward s wife, Isabella, "I can t write anything
on that subject or anything else while I have to sleep
with the baby ; but I will write it some time, God helping
me." I will say that I rather reluctantly confess that I
was a hindrance rather than a help to the book.
One afternoon as she was sitting in a little church in
Brunswick she had no conception whatever of how to
develop any book she was sitting in that little church
in Brunswick, and she said as she sat there, suddenly
without anything to indicate that such a psychological
phenomena was passing through her mind, she saw the
whole scene of the death of Uncle Tom pass before her
like a series of pictures. It seemed like the unrolling of
a panorama. She saw that terrible scene where Legre
threatens Uncle Tom. She saw him standing before
Legree ; she saw the whole thing, picture after picture.
She broke into uncontrollable sobbing, and what came
to her with that series of pictures was "Inasmuch as ye
did it unto the least of one of these, ye did it unto me."
She saw Christ; and a voice said to her "Cry." She
went home her husband was away and she wrote out
what had passed before her in this vision. Her husband
being away, she gathered her little children around her,
three little girls and two Ijttle boys of course I was
the infant, utterly unconscious of what was passing.
She began to read. The children all burst into sobbing,
and the little boy said, "Mamma, I can t hear it, slavery
215
is the most accursed thing on the face of this earth."
Friends, what happened in that family, happened all
over the country. I will not take advantage of the priv
ilege given me to speak of it, but you must know how
near it is in my heart. I am glad to say that I recognize
thoroughly your appreciation of my mother, and for my
mother I receive it. She is not able to stand here before
you, so I simply stand here for her.
216
Address of
Rev. E. W. Moore
of
Philadelphia
The right of every American citizen to select his
own society and invite whom he will to his parlor and
table should be sacredly respected. A man s house is his
castle, and he has the right to admit, or refuse admis
sion, as he pleases. This right belongs to the humblest
and the highest. The exercise of it by any of our citi
zens toward any body or class who may presume to in
trude, should cause no complaint, for each and all may
exercise the same right toward whom he will.
When he quits his home and goes upon the public
street, enters a public car, or public house, he has no
exclusive right of occupancy. He is only a part of the
great public, and while he has the right to walk, ride
and be accommodated with food and shelter in a public
conveyance or hotel, he has no exclusive right to say
that another citizen, tall or short, black or white, shall
not be accorded the same civil treatment.
The argument against equality at hotels is very im
properly put upon the ground that the exercise of such
rights is social equality but this ground is unreasonable.
It is hard to say what socia? equality is, but it is certain
that going into the same street car, hotel, or steamboat
cabin does not make any man society for another, any
more than flying in the air makes all birds of one feather.
217
The distinction between the two sorts of equality is
broad and plain to the understanding of the most limited,
and yet, blinded by prejudice, men never cease to con
found one with the other, and allow themselves to in
fringe the civil rights of their fellow-men as if those
rights were, in some way, in violation of their social
rights.
That this denial of rights to us is based on our race
only as race is a badge of condition, is manifest in the
fact that no matter how decently dressed or well-behaved
a colored man may be, he is denied civil treatment in the
ways thus pointed out, unless he comes as servant. His
race, not his character, determines the place he shall
hold and the kind of treatment he shall receive. That
this is due to a prejudice that has no rational principle
under it is seen in the fact that the presence of colored
persons in hotels and railroad cars is only offensive when
they are there as guests and passengers. As servants
they are welcome, but as equal citizens they are not.
It is also seen in the fact that nowhere else on the
globe, except in the United States are colored people
subjected to insult and outrage on account of race. The
colored traveller in Europe does not meet with it, and
we denounce it here as a disgrace to American civiliza
tion and American religion and as violation of the spirit
and letter of the Constitution of the United States.
From those courts which have solemnly sworn to sup
port the Constitution and that yet treat this provision of
it with contempt we appeal to the people, and call upon
our friends to remember our civil rights at the ballot
box. On the point of the two equalities we are deter
mined to be understood.
We leave the social equality where it should be left,
with each individual man and woman. No law can regu
late or control it. It is a matter in which governments
have nothing whatever to do. Each may choose his own
218
friends and associates without interference or dictation
of any.
Terrible as have been the outrages committed upon
us in respect to our civil rights, more shocking and scan
dalous still have been the outrages committed upon our
political rights which began by means of bull-dozing,
ku-kluking, fraudulent counts, tissue ballots and like de
vices, until in many of the southern states they have
set aside the Constitution of the United States. This
has been done in face of the Republican party and un
der successive Republican administrations, So far as
we are concerned, there is no government or Constitu
tion of the United States.
To my mind, this is no question of party. It is a
question of law and government. It is a question wheth
er the government or the mob shall rule the land ;
whether the promises solemnly made to us in the Consti
tution be manfully kept or flagrantly broken.
219
Address of
Charles Edward Russell
Do I raise myself in any way by depressing my fel
low man? Believe me, the idea contained in that sug
gestion is the heart and soul and substance of all there
is in this race problem. There is no race problem, abso
lutely no race problem. The only problem is the prob
lem of snobbery. The only thing that is involved in
the position of the colored man in the South or in the
North either, is a pure question of caste. That is all.
Believe me, you are not discriminated against because
your skins are dark, the color of your skin makes abso
lutely no difference. It is not involved in the matter at
all. "
Let me show you : A little while ago I was at the
dinner table of a rich man of New York, eminent in
society, and one of the guests was a man whose skin
was much darker than the skins of most of you. He
sat at that dinner table, the honored and petted guest,
with more attention was paid to him than to anything
else. His skin was dark, but the color of his skin had
nothing to do with it. It is not because your skins are
darker than ours, but because you are closer to nature,
and the substance of caste and the substance of snobbery
has been from the beginning that hatred of the man that
works with his hands. It is not merely the idea of labor,
but the idea of the lowest form of labor, which is slav
ery ; it is the taint of slavery about you that makes you
hateful to the snobbish man and nothing else. Low
220
labor has always been detestable to the snobbish organ
ization, and the most detestable of all labor, is the un
paid labor, the labor that is stolen. It is because you
represent the unthinking man, that you are discriminated
against.
I would like to issue a word of warning to two classes
of my white fellow citizens, as to just exactly what this
thing means that they have done to you. They have
nullified two articles of the Constitution in order to get
at you. I would like to tell two classes of my white
fellow men what that means. First to the white work
ing man : They have nullified that part of the Con
stitution that guarantees the franchise, irrespective of
color. That has been done at the, demand of a dominant
class. Under conceivable conditions it would be just
exactly as feasible, just as easy, to deprive the white
working man of the franchise, as it has been to deprive
the colored man. The next warning is that if they can
nullify the Constitution with regard to franchise, they
can nullify it with regard to anything else. Look out !
Look out ! Under conceivable circumstances it will be
just exactly as easy to nullify that clause of the Consti
tution which guarantees property against confiscation
without due process of law just as easy. Because, as a
matter of fact, if there is any part of the constitution
that is not valid, there is no part of it that is valid. If
there is one thing in that Constitution that cannot be
enforced, there is nothing in it that can be enforced.
RESOLUTIONS
The Conference, after considerable discussion, then
adopted the following resolutions :
"We denounce the ever-growing oppression of our
10,000,000 colored fellow citizens as the greatest
menace that threatens the country. Often plundered
of their just share of the public funds, robbed of
nearly all part in the government, segregated by
common carriers,* some murdered with impunity,
and all treated with open contempt by officials, they
are held in some States in practical slavery to the
white community. The systematic persecution of
law-abiding citizens and their disfranchisement on
account of their race alone is a crime that will
ultimately drag down to an infamous end any nation
that allows it to be practised, and it bears most
heavily on those poor white farmers and laborers
whose economic position is most similar to that of
the persecuted race."
"The nearest hope lies in the immediate and pa
tiently continued enlightenment of the people who
have been inveigled into a campaign of oppression.
The spoils of persecution should not go to enrich any
class or classes of the population. Indeed persecu
tion of organized workers, peonage, enslavement of
prisoners, and even disfranchisement already threaten
large bodies of whites in many Southern States."
*The insertion of the phrase "segregated by common carriers"
was moved as an amendment by Mr. William M. Trotter.
222
"We agree fully with the prevailing opinion that
the transformation of the unskilled colored laborers
in industry and agriculture into skilled workers is
of vital importance* to that race and to the nation,
but we demand for the Negroes, as for all others,
a free and complete education, whether by city,
State, or nation, a grammar school and industrial
training for all, and technical, professional, and
academic education for the most gifted."
"But the public schools assigned to the Negro of
whatever kind or grade will never receive a fair and
equal treatment until he is given equal treatment in
the Legislature and before the law. Nor will the
practically educated Negro, no matter how valuable
to the community he may prove, be given a fair
return for his labor or encouraged to put forth his
best efforts or given the chance to develop that
efficiency that comes only outside the school until he
is respected in his legal rights as a man and a
citizen."
"We regard with grave concern the attempt mani
fest South and North to deny to black men the
right to work and to enforce this demand by vio
lence and bloodshed. Such a question is too funda
mental and clear even to be submitted to arbitration.
The late strike in Georgia is not simply a demand
that Negroes be displaced, but that proven and
efficient men be made to surrender their long fol
lowed means of livelihood to white competitors."
"As first and immediate steps toward remedying
*The phrase originally read "of great importance to that race."
Mr. Ransome moved as an amendment that it be altered to "of
first importance." Bishop Walters moved as an amendment
to the amendment that the words should read "of vital import
ance." This amendment was carried. Mr. Ransome s amend
ment was then unanimously carried.
223
these national wrongs, so full of peril for the whites
as well as the blacks of all sections, we demand* of
Congress and the Executive :
(i.) That the Constitution be strictly enforced
and the civil rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth
Amendment be secured impartially to all.
(2.) That there be equal educational opportunities
for all and in all the States, and that public school
expenditure be the same for the Negro and white
child.
(3.) That in accordance with the Fifteenth
Amendment the right of the Negro to the ballot on
the same terms as other citizens be recognized in
every part of the country."
The committee on permanent organization in its re
port proposed a resolution providing for "the incorpora
tion of a national committee to be known as a Commit
tee for the Advancement of the Negro Race, to aid their
progress and make their citizenship a reality, with all
the rights and privileges pertaining thereto." It pre
sented also a resolution calling for a committee of forty
charged with the organization of a national committee
with power to call the convention in 1910.
The resolution proposed by Mr. Trotter was referred
to the committee on resolutions and was reported back
and adopted in the following form:
"We deplore any recognition of, or concession to,
prejudice or color by the federal government in any
officer or branch thereof, as well as the presidential
declaration on the appointment of colored men to
office in the South, contradicting as it does the Presi
dent s just and admirable utterance against the pro-
*The words "we demanded" were inserted on the motion of
Mr. Greener. This amendment was unanimously carried.
224
posed disfranchisement of the colored voters of
Maryland.
Mr. Trotter proposed a resolution demanding that
lynching be made a federal crime. The resolution was
referred to the committee on resolutions which reported
that it held the question of lynching to be covered in the
main resolution by the words "murdered with impunity.
Mr. Trotter s resolution was lost by a vote of fifty-three
to twenty-one.
The following Committee of Forty was then named :
William English Walling, chairman, New York ;
Rev. W. H. Brooks, New York; Prof. John Dewey,
New York; Paul Kennedy, New York; Jacob W.
Mack, New York ; Mrs. Mary MacLean, New York ;
Dr. Henry Moskowitz, New York; John E. Mil-
holland, New York ; Miss Leonora O Reilly, New York ;
Charles Edward Russell, New York; Prof. Edwin R. A.
Seligman, New York ; Oswald G. Villard, New York ;
Miss Lillian D. Wald, New York; Bishop Alexander
\Valters, New York ; Dr. Stephen S. Wise, New York ;
Miss Mary W. Ovington, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Dr. O. M.
Waller, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Rev. J. H. Holmes, Yonkers,
N. Y.; Prof. W. L. Bulkley, Ridgefield Park, N. J. ;
Miss Maria Baldwin, Boston, Mass. ; Archibald H.
Grimke, Boston, Mass. ; Albert E. Pillsbury, Boston,
Mass. ; Moorfield Storey, Boston, Mass. ; Pres. Chas.
P. Thwing, Cleveland, O. ; Pres. W. S. Scarborough.
Wilberforce, O. ; Miss Jane Addams, Chicago, 111. ; Mrs.
Ida Wells Barnett, Chicago, III; Dr. C. E. Bentley,
Chicago, 111. ; Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley, Chicago,
III; Dr. William Sinclair, Philadelphia, Pa.; Miss
Susan Wharton, Philadelphia, Pa.; R. R. Wright,
Jr., Philadelphia, Pa. ; L. M. Hershaw, Washington, D.
C. ; Judge Wendell P. Stafford, Washington, D. C. ; Mrs.
^Mary Church Terrell, Washington, D. C. ; Rev. J. Mil
ton Waldron, Washington, D. C. ; Prof. W. E. B.
DuBois, Atlanta, Ga. ; Leslie Pinckney Hill, Manassas,
Va.
225
LETTER FROM MR. WILLIAM LLOYD
GARRISON, BOSTON
I regret my inability to be present at the Conference and
record my protest against the rising tide of race prejudice
and caste. Every step in that direction needs to be un
flinchingly met, regardless of the eminent respectability
that now lends countenance to this resurgent spirit of
slavery. As in former days, the most insidious betrayal
of freedom comes from its professed friends.
The Vardamans and Tillmans are harmless in compar
ison. Their brutal avowal of a purpose to reduce the
Negro to a state of permanent vassalage, through evasion
or defiance of the Constitution and law, repels humane
souls and makes lor justice. It is men of so-called light
and leading, solicitous regarding social problems, arro
gating to themselves the character of friendly advisers
of the colored people, yet viewing the question from the
summit of race pride and birth, who are most to be
feared.
From these come easy acquiescence in the abrogation
of the Fifteenth Amendment, the approval of separate
schools based on complexion, and an affected horror of
racial intermarriage for fear of white deterioration-
while contemplating without disturbance the unabated
illicit connections so flagrantly in evidence. The creed
leads to servitude, in another form, of the people liber
ated by Lincoln s proclamation ; compassing by force or
fraud the end for which the Southern Confederacy fought
and failed. Now, as then, democracy is in the balance
The issue will determine whether self-government can
survive in a land where material interests long over-
226
shadow the principles and enthusiasms of liberty. It is
the fair-weather soothsayers who drug the public con
science and weaken resistance to privilege.
I trust that the Conference will utter no uncertain
sound on any point affecting the vital subject. No part
of it is too delicate for plain speech. The republican
experiment is at stake, every tolerated wrong to the
Xegro reacting with double force upon white citizens
guilty of faithlessness to their brothers. The rampant
antipathy to the Oriental races is part and parcel of the
domestic question. Safety lies in an absolute refusal to
differentiate the rights of human beings. Each has
equal claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
no outworn formula, in spite of the fashion of the mighty
to deride it.
I put political rights before educational. Universities
have no difficulty in rearing despots, and the wicked laws
of all nations are the handiwork of men taught in the
schools. Let ignorance, blunder, and bad laws result.
Under impartial self-gpvernment the blunderers reap the
punishment and learn wisdom and self-restraint. No
college compares with this primary school of civilization
in educating a people. Learning never yet guaranteed
rights ; rights universally secured are the sure guaranty
of learning. Let the unanimous voice of the Conference
be lifted for justice and opportunity to all races, colors,
and sexes without distinction, in face of the casuistry all
abounding in this darkened day.
Yours, for a united humanity,
WM. LLOYD GARRISON.
227
LETTER FROM MR. BRAND WHITLOCK
MAYOR OF TOLEDO, OHIO
No one who loves the ideals of America and believes
fundamentally in democracy, in the equality and brother
hood of men, as I do, can regard the present temper of a
large portion of our people toward the Negro with any
emotion other than sadness.
The problem which this condition presents is profound
and difficult, and the solution will demand our best
thought and most enlightened sympathies. The nation
went through a dreadful war to give the Negro political
freedom, and yet even that has not been accomplished,
except in a formal, legal sense; and even in that depart
ment there are so many proposals and even achievements
in retrogression, that to-day the Negro is ostracized and
by many proscribed and hated. The question is no
longer what we once considered it, namely, a sectional
one ; it has become a national one. The Negro is treated
as contemptuously and used as hardly in the North as
in the South. There is even arising among us a kind of
snobbery, the most detestable that can be imagined
namely, an affected dislike of the Negro, considered as
an evidence of superiority and aristocracy.
The problem is not only social or political; it has its
economic side, and more mysterious and baffling than
any of these, its psychological and ethnic side. It must
be studied in all these various phases. Many profound
and learned articles have been written by the eminent
and the learned, in which it is insisted that we study the
Negro. But it seems to me that we need quite as much
to study ourselves. The white race has been two cen
turies in creating this problem, and according to the law
228
of moral action and reaction, the law of moral equiva
lents and balances, we cannot in forty-five years solve a
problem which we were two hundred years in creating.
I do not think the problem is insoluble; I do not think
any problem is insoluble, and I think we shall solve this
problem only as we recognize and believe devoutly in the
ideals and principles of America, which, if they mean
anything at all, mean that all men without distinction, are
to be free and equal, at least, in opportunity. That is
what America is for, and the true American spirit can
not exist until America is for all men on equal terms,
no matter who or what they are, or who or what they
were, or where they came from, or what they believe,
or what their race or color. We can solve this problem,
we can solve any problem in politics and economics prop
erly only by adhering to these fundamental principles of
our America, only by keeping in mind that truth so well
expressed by Mr. Howells :
"The first thing you have to learn here below is that
in essentials you are just like everyone else, and that
you are different from others only in what is not so
much worth while. If you have anything in common
with your fellow-creatures, it is something that God gave
you ; if you have anything that seems quite your own,
it is from your silly self, and is a sort of perversion of
what came to you from the Creator who made you out
of himself, and had nothing else to make any one out
of. There is not really any difference between you and
your fellow-creatures ; but only a seeming difference that
flatters and cheats you with a sense of your strangeness
and makes you think you are a remarkable fellow."
229
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