Part 1

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August 15, 1922 Supplementary to the Brick News

A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA

And Several Addresses to the Negro Farmers’ Congress of North Carolina

BRICK SCHOOL IN RETROSPECT

By Principal T. S. INBORDEN Joseph Keasby Brick Agricultural, Industrial and Normal School Bricks, North Carolina

President of the North Carolina Negro Farmers Congress President of the North Carolina Negro Historical Association Twenty-seven years Principal of Brick School

MITCHELL PRINTING CO., RALEIGH

INTRODUCTORY

APRIL 22, 1922.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

You will be interested to know that I am again back from my five months trip to the North and Northwest. While away I covered, according to the railroad time tables, about twelve thousand miles. This took me through most of the Northern States and the New England States and in the Western States.

I left Chicago the 21st of January and visited and stopped at the following places: St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota; Aberdeen in South Dakota; Marmarth in North Dakota; Miles City, Three Forks, Butte and Gerson Hot Springs in Montana; crossing Idaho into Spokane, Washington. We crossed the Continental Divide a few miles east of Butte in four or five feet of snow in an elevation of six thousand feet above sea level. This train was pulled by powerful electrical engines for six hundred miles over the most picturesque mountains in the world. We crossed the tributaries of the great Missouri River more than a score of times, and scaled many mountains, from the highest elevations and glided down into Seattle, Washington, into an elevation of fifteen feet on Puget Sound. Trees were budding and many flowers were already in bloom. After a few days we went to Tacoma in Washington and Portland in Oregon. Then we were off to Sacramento, San Francisco in California. The course took us from the beginning of the Sacramento River in the Siskiyou and Shasta Mountains to its mouth at San Francisco Bay or to the Straits of Carquinez, landing us at Port Costa for Richmond, Berkley and Oakland in Alameda County. At the fine Oakland pier we disembarked from the train and took the ferry boat four miles to San Francisco, passing the Government Island to the left looking right into the setting sun through the Golden Gate.

A few days here in this beautiful setting and we were off for Los Angeles, five hundred miles to the south still. Fresno, Bakersfield, Tehachapi, across the snow-clad Sierra Madre ten thousand feet elevation and in sight of Mount Whitney four thousand feet higher. Down a mountain incline for fifty or more miles to Mojave Desert into Death Valley and to San Fernando and Burbank and Los Angeles. Then to the Orange Show at San Bernardino, passing on our way Pomona, San Gabriel, Claremont and Garrett & Co.’s grape vineyards, one of the homes of the Virginia Dare Extracts. Mr. Garrett is an Enfield man. We could spend only a few days at Los Angeles, then we were off the Coast Route to San Francisco again. Santa Barbara, Ventura, Guadaloupe, San Luis Obispo, Delmonte, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Santa Clara, Red Wood Cities are familiar names. It took three steam engines to pull the train over the mountains coming north. A few days later we were off again for Sacramento, and Salt Lake City in Utah, and Glenwood Hot Springs in Colorado. Passing Florence we came into sight of Pike’s Peak more than a hundred miles east of us, and passing the water-swept city of Pueblo and Colorado Springs into Denver the mile high city. A few days spent here and I was off again for Phillipsburg and Des Moines and to Chicago, coming through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois. I spent a few days in Chicago, was held up on my arrival from the station to my stopping place in Chicago, but was not robbed. My outcry for “Police and help!” thwarted their plans. Then I was off to Washington City and home on the 22nd of March. At the station I was overwhelmed by the students, teachers and friends in the community who had come to welcome me home with school yells and band music.

I traveled two thousand miles in California alone. I gave twenty-eight addresses, attended eight recitals, fourteen lectures, four theaters where persons of color were the stars, three ministers’ meetings, one annual conference, the meeting of the American Missionary Association, the annual meeting of the Connecticut Congregational Association, visited ten colleges and schools, nine state capitals, seventeen city, state and municipal and school museums, twenty public markets. In addition I talked with Japanese and Chinese farmers, fruit growers, cattle men, sheep men, miners, negro ranchmen. I met them on the trains, on the farms, in the hotels and restaurants, on the boats, on the streets, in the stores, markets, and everywhere. I came back with a few pounds less in weight, but with a vision that money could not buy.

I am very truly, T. S. INBORDEN.

JUST A MINUTE

I am here for only a couple of days. It is a long ways from Bricks, North Carolina, to Seattle, Washington. I still have two thousand miles before me before I turn my face eastward. One gets an idea of this great big country only by traveling over it, as I have done for the past three months. He can get it no other way. Such a trip ought to condition every young man graduating from an Eastern college.

Here we go from Bricks in the eastern part of North Carolina to Washington City. The Atlantic Coast Line train takes us through the most historic setting of the Coastal Plains of that eastern section into the foothills of the Old Dominion, through the Civil War battlegrounds of national fame, up the historic Potomac, passing Richmond, Fredericksburg, the rustic triangular monument to the great general who in his unfortunate retreat met death at the hands of his own men, into Alexandria, the most historic and conservative town of the pre-war days. Alexandria, the other end of the old pike leading from the “far west” through Winchester Town seventy-five or more miles away. This old pike was put in history by Sheridan’s ride, twenty miles away from Winchester Town.

Well, we cannot stop in Washington City. It needs nothing that I can say. From Washington we went up into Old Virginia. Taking the Southern train we went through the Virginia Valley and the Shenandoah Valley. The trip took us right through the heart of the battle-fought country of Manassas, Bull Run, over “Goose Creek,” “Painter Skin,” “Jeffries”—creeks that are well known to all Virginians. We went right into the heart of the Old Blue Ridge, and looking down on Harper’s Ferry, Winchester, Middleburg, Leesburg, Upperville, Berryville, the Shenandoah River, on to Washington itself, sixty miles away. Here are five counties: Fauquier, Loudon, Warren, Clark, Jefferson and others in the distance, covering an area of more than ten thousand square miles of the finest country in the world, all to be seen from one level space without moving ten feet on this historic old mountain. Corn, wheat, cattle, and sheep, fill her valleys. There is no part of these valleys and mountains that cannot, and that do not, grow the finest apples and peaches that are grown in the world. (I am saying this in Seattle, Washington.)

I went back to Washington from this fine country, and from Washington to Jersey City. From there I went over to New York and Brooklyn, and out on Long Island Sound. From New York I went to Springfield, Mass. From Springfield I went to the great meeting of the American Missionary Association, which was held at New London, Connecticut. From there I went back to New Haven for Armistice Day and to see Marshal Foch receive his degree from Yale, and the great football game where there were eighty thousand people. I went back to New York again, where I put in two very profitable weeks studying racial and living conditions.

From New York City I went to Rochester and put in several days speaking here and there to small groups of people. From there I went to Batavia for only a few hours, and then to the city of Buffalo. From Buffalo to Cleveland and Oberlin, Ohio, and in two weeks on to Detroit, Mich. A few days spent in Detroit, and I was on my way to Ann Arbor, Jackson and Kalamazoo, Mich. I reached Chicago a few days before the Christmas holidays. After the Christmas vacation I visited the high schools of Gary, Indiana, and put in another week attending the Mid-Winter Conference of Congregational Workers of the United States. Only three other colored men were in attendance at this conference. They were Dr. Alfred Lawless, of New Orleans; Dr. Kingsley, of Cleveland; Dr. C. W. Burton, of Chicago.

We learned in this great Mid-Winter Conference that there are other problems besides the Negro problem. Indeed, he was scarcely discussed at all.

Immediately after the Conference I turned my face westward. It did not seem safe that I should go alone to buy my ticket and to have my money put into travelers cheques before leaving, so our good friend, Mr. J. E. Wade, of the police force, offered his services and accompanied me to the bank and ticket office. Mr. Wade was formerly from Elerby, N. C. He and his nephew from Richmond County are giving fine services on the police force of Chicago. I was told that they have about a hundred colored men on the police force. All of these men are giving excellent service. I was surprised and glad to see in many of the largest business houses in Chicago our colored men and women doing business over the counters. I saw them in the shipping houses and in the ticket offices. In the city postoffice of Chicago I was told by one of the “checkers” that out of about eight thousand or more employees that nearly two thousand were colored. I was escorted through every department of the great postoffice and saw the men handling the nine hundred tons of mail that go through the office every day. Many of the men I knew personally, and some were relatives. Most of the men were experts at their job. A very large number of them are graduates from our best colleges. All of them were fine looking, well groomed men. They were not the least in appearance when compared with the other racial groups.

From Chicago I took the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul train to St. Paul. The glacial swept areas of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota abounds with natural resources aside from the farm products. This is a community of wheat, corn and flour mills. It is the home of the world’s best packing houses. Minnesota is the synonym for “Gold Medal”; it also says the last word on poultry feed and products. I was shown through a sanitary packing-house where nearly or quite a thousand people were given employment. Coffee, tea, spices and sugar and other commodities are shipped in daily by the train loads and made into new products, repacked and shipped out daily to all parts of the world. The amount of all sorts of candy, cakes, etc., handled was a revelation. Machinery has taken care of every operation in this great establishment, except the absolute thought of man. To the uninitiated it might seem to think also. The world’s best brand of cheese comes from these parts also. I was surprised to learn that one little community east of St. Paul, in Wisconsin, called Rio, shipped two years ago more than two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars worth of the finest grades of tobacco.

Some of the soldier boys will be interested to know that some of the buildings, probably most of them, at Camp Douglass were still intact as we sped by them through the cliffs and dells.

From St. Paul we turned our face westward for a two thousand mile jaunt on one of the best equipped and finest trains that ever rolled the iron. Not a minute late on its own account, up hill, down grade, across deep canyons, under the mountains, over the top of the mountains, spanning valleys, across the river beds and lowlands, with the same speed, whether in eight feet of snow on the Cascade Mountains or whether there is no snow, and on to the Pacific Coast. Pulled by the most powerful electric engines in the world, she leaps onward by the touch of her engineer like a thing of life and thought.

Our first stop was in Aberdeen, in South Dakota. It was night on our arrival, and I left the train to spend the night for the rest, so that I might have the day to see—yes, just to see. I had been to Aberdeen in 1909 and knew what to expect. The porter advised me not to go out without wrapping up well, as it was about twenty degrees below zero. I went to the first place where the sign read “hotel.” I was comfortably located, and after I had gotten a lunch thought I would find the school where I once spoke, but before I had gone very far I decided that my room was the best place for a stranger in that sort of weather. My face could not have been colder if it had been buried for twenty minutes between two blocks of ice. This particular community is noted for its fine quality of white potatoes. They are grown in great quantities, and they are the last word in potato growing. There are none any better anywhere else in the world for flavor and texture.

In a country so cold and bleak one would not expect to find much vegetation. Quick maturing crops of wheat and corn are grown. Hogs, cattle and sheep abound. For hundreds of miles in every direction there is absolutely nothing but a barren track of land which affords great quantities of the finest hay, which grows naturally. Every mile looks for the world just like the one from which you have just come. There is nothing to break the monotony of the landscape except the monotony of another one. The porter or conductor comes in and says, “Twin Brooks,” “Stone Falls,” “Odessa,” etc., and you look out when the snow does not blind the view and you see nothing but a few houses, a wheat elevator, or a lot of sleds drawn by two or four horses; not a tree except perhaps a few planted by the government agents. As you reach the North Dakota line not a tree to mark even the site of the little towns that may be more pretentious.

At Marmarth we come into Montana at an elevation of 2700 feet, having put behind us nine hundred and ninety-five miles since leaving Chicago. We have already passed Wakpala, an Indian Reservation, and school. These are easily in sight. We have also left the Missouri River and the Little Missouri River behind. We come into Musselshell Division, and soon cross the Yellowstone River. Miles City is our station for the night. It is nearly twelve hundred miles out of Chicago with 2300 feet elevation. Several smaller tributaries to the Yellowstone River are passed. Small shrubbery and a few trees in the river courses are a great relief to the landscape. But before we reach the “City” to which we are destined for the night we come into “Bad Lands.” Here nature went into contortions and left an awful frown upon her face. I asked the white porter, a very fine fellow (a Lutheran by faith), what was the matter with the country. He said “This is Bad Lands.”

Miles City was not a bad looking city. It had all the modern improvements. For several hundred miles we followed the valleys of the Musselshell River and the Yellowstone River, crossing and recrossing the rivers and valleys, sometimes over a high mountain and then almost precipitously down and under another mountain, only to rejoin the river again through another tortuous valley. We reached the Rocky Mountains Division at Harlowton, Montana, thirteen hundred miles west of Chicago at an elevation of 4,000 feet. If you have any heart trouble you will know that something outside in the physical world has happened before you get here. On we go over the “Summitt of Big Belts” literally up, up, up, around this curve, across that ravine, up by this tall hill, finally on the top, and you look back for five, ten, fifteen or twenty miles and you see the ribbon of track you have spun out. You see the thousands of waste acres of snow and the cattle hugging the hills for protection against the winter’s cold. They are inured to it. Ours would die the first night out. The reader would get sleepy before he had spent one hour out there. That is the way you freeze to death; you just get sleepy. We pass Ringling, the Montana Canyon, and again miles further Montana Canyon, with rocks projecting hundreds of feet above you, still we speed along and cross the great Missouri River seven hundred miles above where we crossed a few days ago. Near Eustis we cross the Jefferson, Madison, Gallitin rivers forming the Missouri River. Bull Mountains have been left three hundred miles behind and still we speed along. Our horse neither tires nor pants. They feed him “white coal” generated at great substations from fifty to a hundred miles apart. Generated by mountain streams in their mad rush to the great bosom of waters.

At dark I wanted to stop at some small mining town for the night so as not to miss any scenery. The conductor advised against this because of the condition of the people and their accommodation for strangers. I listened, and stopped at his advice at Three Forks, almost fifteen hundred miles out from Chicago, and still 4,000 feet elevation. This was in a valley of farming land of more than three hundred thousand acres of the best farming land in Montana. The great valley was very beautiful, with the mountains ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and a hundred miles away in every direction, silhouetted above the clouds, and dotted with its own shadows. As the sun came up from the east and spread its majesty over the snow-clad peaks every one was made a diamond of beauty. But we were not to stay at Three Forks over Sunday. We are traveling on trains 15 and 17. If we leave 15 over night we take 17 the next morning, and so we had 15 or 17 every day. At 8:50 we departed in very cold weather—ten degrees below zero, they said. It was only three hours ride from Butte, Montana. I did not want to pass the highest point reached on the whole trip in the dark. I wanted to have my eyes open and see when I went over the real top. Well I did. It was 10:53 by my watch—1,505 miles out from Chicago, 6,322 feet elevation.

The writer of the “Ex-Colored Man” said when he was in Paris with his landlord he was very fond of music, etc., and so one night he went to one of the finest theaters in the city. Soon after he had taken his seat a very aristocratic looking gentleman came in whom he had at one time seen at his mother’s house in the state of Georgia. He was very small at the time he saw him in Georgia, and he was sure it was the same gentleman. He had with him his beautiful wife and a more beautiful daughter. To his amazement they sat almost adjoining him in the theater so close that he might have touched them. They did not know him. He knew that it was his own father, and this beautiful girl just finishing high school was his own sister, flesh and blood. He wanted to speak, but conventionality and tradition had closed his mouth, and to save tragedy he arose and left in silence.

I have looked forward all my life for just such an opportunity to see this great country, as I have now had, and as I am having, because I still have 5,000 miles ahead. Most of my younger life was spent in trying to get an education. Most of my grown life has been spent in missionary service on small salary, and with a family of children to educate and prepare for a larger life than I had the opportunity of having. This opportunity now comes to me through the officials and friends of the American Missionary Association under whose auspices I have worked for thirty-two years. It comes as an appreciation on their part for my long service. I may not have done everything they wanted me to do, but I have tried to follow the dictates of an honest conviction.

When I passed over the great _Continental Divide_ I remembered my dream of forty years. I knew no one and had no one to talk to about it. I looked into space and thanked the Lord of all of us that I had cast my lot where the rewards had been faithful and abundant. I felt like crying out in paroxisms of joy.

We are still “a-going.” We reached Butte, Montana, at noon Sunday, January 29th. It was very cold, but I found a good hotel near the station, so that I did not have to be in the cold very long. I was advised and was quick in deciding that I would in an hour take the trip to Gerson Hot Springs, eighteen miles away. Several miles from the place I saw what seemed to be smokestacks with steam pouring out each one. I found on arrival that these were just openings in the roof, forming vents for the steam from the hot water as it comes from the mountains at a temperature of 195 degrees. The water has wonderful healing properties. I did not take the bath because of the extreme temperature outside. The hot springs are very numerous in these parts of the country. All the rivers were frozen several feet deep but here and there where the streams pass very close to the mountain gorges one can see the temperature of the water change by the warmer currents coming right out of the hills.

Butte is the largest mining center in the world. One hill is the richest hill in all the world—is worth more than all of Wall Street, New York. The bar-iron, copper, silver, gold, and other by-products probably go down to the center of the earth. I went 2,200 feet down, and I was then 800 feet from the bottom of it. I was donned in a real miner’s outfit, including a miner’s acetelyne lamp. Our descending cage was about four feet square, and held four men. It was built to bring up twenty tons of ore about every minute of the day. State laws define how fast human beings shall be brought up or taken down. The installation that operates this mine cost more than a million dollars. It is the finest electrical outfit I ever saw. The house in which the machinery is located that operates the pulleys, under air pressure, is more than a hundred feet square. When the signals are given, twenty-eight feet down, one man brings the load to the tenth of an inch exactness to any level in the pit or on top of the ground, a hundred feet high if necessary. Thousands of wheels, belts, pulleys, pistons, etc., move in every part of this building to the touch of one man. If he makes a single mistake it may cost one life or a thousand in the mine. It may cost a mint of money in destruction. Efficiency, absolute efficiency is the only thing that counts.

Five very large pumps about twelve feet square each bring up the surplus water from below. They are located many feet below the surface of the ground, and it is never cold down there. The water is charged with copper, and this disintegrates any other metals, so that the pipes must be lined with wood and brass. This water is run through long troughs over old tin cans and iron waste, where the copper is deposited and afterwards taken off. I did not have time to get all the details of the process. Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, I was told, owned most of the stock of this particular mine.

In the morning of the same day I visited one of the best schools in this country. It was a city high school. Everything taught in this school leads to mining. That is the big job there. The youths are prepared to do the things they will have to do when they leave school. Boys ten to fifteen years old are experts already in the machine shop.