CHAPTER III

THE NEGRO

Although the negro races of Africa extend across the continent and from the Sudan to Cape Colony, yet the races which yielded the largest supply of slaves for America were confined to a narrow stretch of the Atlantic coast near the equator. For nearly two thousand miles from Cape Verde the coast of Africa runs southeast and easterly, and then for another thousand miles it runs to the south, forming the Gulf of Guinea, and from a belt of land along this coast practically all the negro immigrants to America have come. Here several large rivers, the Senegal, the Gambia, the Niger, and the Congo--furnished harbors for slave ships and routes for slave traders from the interior. Two circumstances, the climate and the luxuriant vegetation, render this region hostile to continuous exertion. The torrid heat and the excessive humidity weaken the will and exterminate those who are too strenuous; but this same heat and humidity, with the fertile soil, produce unparalleled crops of bananas, yams, and grains. Thus nature conspires to produce a race indolent, improvident, and contented. Seventy-five per cent of the deaths are said to be executions for supposed witchcraft, which has killed more men and women than the slave trade. Formerly cannibalism prevailed, but it has now been largely stamped out by European governments. The native governments are tribal, and the chiefs sustain themselves by their physical prowess and the help of priests and medicine men. Property is mainly in women and slaves, and inheritance is through the female, except among the nobility of Dahomey, where primogeniture rules. Written laws and records are unknown. The people are unstable, indifferent to suffering, and "easily aroused to ferocity by the sight of blood or under great fear." They exhibit aversion to silence and solitude, love of rhythm, excitability, and lack of reserve. All travellers speak of their impulsiveness, strong sexual passion, and lack of will power.[11]

Such, in brief, were the land and the people that furnished one-sixth of our total population and two-fifths of our Southern population. In shifting such a people from the torrid climate of equatorial Africa to the temperate regions of America, and from an environment of savagery to one of civilization, changes more momentous than those of any other migration have occurred. First, it was only the strongest physical specimens who survived the horrible tests of the slave catcher and the slave ship. Slavery, too, as a system, could use to best advantage those who were docile and hardy, and not those who were independent and feeble. Just as in the many thousand years of man's domestication of animals, the breechy cow and the balky horse have been almost eliminated by artificial selection, so slavery tended to transform the savage by eliminating those who were self-willed, ambitious, and possessed of individual initiative. Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized--the negro has been only domesticated. Democratic civilization offers an outlet for those who are morally and intellectually vigorous enough to break away from the stolid mass of their fellows; domestication dreads and suppresses them as dangerous rebels. The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery. And then, by the cataclysm of a war in which it took no part, this race, after many thousand years of savagery and two centuries of slavery, was suddenly let loose into the liberty of citizenship and the electoral suffrage. The world never before had seen such a triumph of dogmatism and partizanship. It was dogmatism, because a theory of abstract equality and inalienable rights of man took the place of education and the slow evolution of moral character. It was partisanship, because a political party, taking advantage of its triumph in civil war, sought to perpetuate itself through the votes of its helpless beneficiaries. No wonder that this fateful alliance of doctrinaires and partizans brought fateful results, and that, after a generation of anarchy and race hatred, the more fundamental task of education has only just begun.

True, there was a secondary object in view in granting the freedmen suffrage. The thirteenth amendment, adopted in 1865, legalized and extended the proclamation of emancipation, which had been a war measure. But this was followed by servile and penal laws in all the Southern states that looked like peonage in place of slavery.[12] Congress then submitted the fourteenth amendment, which was adopted in 1867, creating a new grade of citizenship--citizenship of the nation--and prohibiting any state from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law" and from denying to any person "the equal protection of the laws." But this was not enough. The next step was the fifteenth amendment adopted in 1869, prohibiting any state from denying the suffrage to citizens of the United States "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Thus equality before the law was to be protected by equality in making the law. This object was a worthy one, and it added the appearance of logical necessity to the theories of doctrinaires and the schemes of partisans. But it failed because based on a wrong theory of the ballot. Suffrage means self-government. Self-government means intelligence, self-control, and capacity for cooperation. If these are lacking, the ballot only makes way for the "boss," the corruptionist, or the oligarchy. The suffrage must be earned, not merely conferred, if it is to be an instrument of self-protection.

But it is the peculiar fate of race problems that they carry contestants to bitter extremes and afford no field for constructive compromise. Could the nation have adopted Lincoln's project of a hundred years, or even thirty years, of gradual emancipation, it might have avoided both the evils of war and the fallacies of self-government. But the spirit of race aggrandisement that precipitated the one rendered the other inevitable. With the negro suddenly made free by conquest, each fatal step in reconstruction was forced by the one that preceded. The North, the South, and the negro were placed in an impossible situation, and a nation which dreaded negro suffrage in 1868[13] adopted it in 1869.

For eight years the government of the Southern states was in the hands of the negroes. The result of turning the states over to ignorant and untried voters was an enormous increase of debt without corresponding public improvements or public enterprises. Even the negro governments themselves began to repudiate these debts and they were almost wholly repudiated by the whites after returning to power.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the methods by which the white voters regained and kept control of the states. Admittedly it was through intimidation, murder, ballot-box "stuffing," and false counting. The negro vote has almost disappeared, and in more recent years that which was accomplished through violence is perpetuated through law. Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia have adopted so-called "educational" tests with such adroit exceptions that white illiterates may vote, but negroes, whether literate or illiterate, may be excluded from voting. As stated by a prominent white Virginian, "the negro can vote if he has $300, or if he is a veteran of the Federal or Confederate armies, or if he is a profound constitutional lawyer." The fifteenth amendment, by decisions of the United States Supreme Court, has been rendered inoperative, and the fourteenth amendment, without helping the negro, for whom it was designed,[14] has raised up government by private corporations which never had been thought of as needing an amendment. With these decisions it may be taken for granted that the negro will not again in the near future enjoy the privilege of a free ballot.

This is a situation in which the North is as deeply interested as the South. The South, during the period of slavery, through the privilege of counting three-fifths of the slaves, enjoyed a predominance in Congress and in presidential elections beyond its proportion of white voters. The South now enjoys a greater privilege because it counts all the negroes. The fourteenth amendment expressly provides for a situation like this. It says:--

"When the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for president and vice-president of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state."

Whether it will be possible under our form of government to carry out this provision of the fourteenth amendment may be doubted, but that it is fast becoming a question of live interest is certain. The educational test is a rational test, but it is rational only when the state makes an honest and diligent effort to equip every man to pass the test. The former slave states spend $2.21 per child for educating the negroes, and $4.92 per child for educating the whites.[15] The great lesson already learned is that we must "begin over again" the preparation of the negro for citizenship. This time the work will begin at the bottom by educating the negro for the ballot, instead of beginning at the top by giving him the ballot before he knows what it should do for him. What shall be the nature of this education?

=Education and Self-help.=--We have argued that democracy must be based upon intelligence, manliness, and cooperation. How can these qualities be produced in a race just emerged from slavery?

Intelligence is more than books and letters--it is knowledge of the forces of nature and ingenuity enough to use them for human service. The negro is generally acknowledged to be lacking in "the mechanical idea." In Africa he hardly knows the simplest mechanical principles. In America the brightest of the negroes were trained during slavery by their masters in the handicrafts, such as carpentry, shoemaking, spinning, weaving, blacksmithing, tailoring, and so on. A plantation became a self-supporting unit under the oversight and discipline of the whites. But the work of the negro artisans was careless and inefficient. The negro blacksmith fastened shoes to the plantation mule, but the horses were taken to the white blacksmith in town. Since emancipation the young generation has not learned the mechanical trades to the same extent as the slave generations. Moreover, as machinery supplants tools and factories supplant handicrafts, the negro is left still farther behind. "White men," says a negro speaker,[16] "are bringing science and art into menial occupations and lifting them beyond our reach. In my boyhood the walls and ceilings were whitewashed each spring by colored men; now this is done by a white man managing a steam carpet-cleaning works. Then the laundry work was done by negroes; now they are with difficulty able to manage the new labor-saving machinery." Even in the non-mechanical occupations the negro is losing where he once had a monopoly. In Chicago "there is now scarcely a negro barber in the business district. Nearly all the janitor work in the large buildings has been taken away from them by the Swedes. White men and women as waiters have supplanted colored men in nearly all the first-class hotels and restaurants. Practically all of the shoe polishing is now done by Greeks."[17]

Individual negroes have made great progress, but what we need to know is whether the masses of the negroes have advanced. The investigators of Atlanta University, in summarizing the reports of three hundred and forty-four employers of negroes, conclude: "There are a large number of negro mechanics all over the land, but especially in the South. Some of these are progressive, efficient workmen. More are careless, slovenly, and ill-trained. There are signs of lethargy among these artisans, and work is slipping from them in some places; in others they are awakening and seizing the opportunities of the new industrial South."[18]

The prejudice of white workmen has undoubtedly played a part in excluding the negro from mechanical trades, but the testimony of large employers, who have no race prejudice where profits can be made, also shows that low-priced negro labor often costs more than high-priced white labor. The iron and steel mills of Alabama have no advantage in labor cost over mills of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The foundation of intelligence for the modern workingman is his understanding of mechanics. Not until he learns through manual and technical training to handle the forces of nature can the workingman rise to positions of responsibility and independence. This is as important in agricultural labor, to which the negro is largely restricted, as in manufactures. Intelligence in mechanics leads to intelligence in economics and politics, and the higher wages of mechanical intelligence furnish the resources by which the workman can demand and secure his political and economic rights.

The second requisite of democracy is independence and manliness. These are moral qualities based on will power and steadfastness in pursuit of a worthy object. But these qualities are not produced merely by exhortation and religious revivals. They have a more prosaic and secular foundation. History shows that no class or nation has risen to independence without first accumulating property. However much we disparage the qualities of greed and selfishness which the rush for wealth has made obnoxious, we must acknowledge that the solid basis of the virtues is thrift. The improvidence of the negro is notorious. His neglect of his horse, his mule, his machinery, his eagerness to spend his earnings on finery, his reckless purchase of watermelons, chickens, and garden stuff, when he might easily grow them on his own patch of ground,--these and many other incidents of improvidence explain the constant dependence of the negro upon his employer and his creditor. There are, of course, notable exceptions where negroes have accumulated property through diligent attention and careful oversight.[19] These are all the more notable when it is remembered that the education of the negro has directed his energies to the honors of the learned professions rather than to the commonplace virtues of ownership, and that one great practical experiment in thrift--the Freedman's Bank--went down through dishonesty and incapacity. With the more recent development of the remarkable institutions of Hampton and Tuskegee and their emphasis on manual training and property accumulation, it is to be expected that these basic qualities of intelligence and independence will receive practical and direct encouragement.

Cooperation is the third and capital equipment for attaining the rights of citizenship. There are two forms of cooperation--a lower and a higher. The lower is that of the chief or the boss who marshals his ignorant followers through fear or spoils. The higher is that of self-government where those who join together do so through their own intelligence and mutual confidence. In the lower form there are personal jealousies and factional contests which prevent united action under elected leaders. Negro bosses and foremen are more despotic than white bosses. The Colored Farmers' Alliance depended upon a white man for leadership. The white "carpet-baggers" organized the negro vote in the reconstruction period. The negro was in this low stage of cooperation because he was jealous or distrustful of his fellow-negro and could rally together only under the banner of a leader whom he could not depose. With the growth of intelligence and moral character there comes a deepening sense of the need of organization as well as leaders of their own race whom they can trust. The most hopeful indication of progress for the negroes is the large number of voluntary religious, beneficial, and insurance societies whose membership is limited to those of their own color.[20]

Liberty has always come through organization. The free cities of Europe were simply the guilds of peasants and merchants who organized to protect themselves against the feudal lords and bishops. Latterly they gained a voice in parliaments as the "third estate" and established our modern representative democracy. The modern trade unions have become a power far in excess of their numbers through the capacity of the workman to organize. With the modest beginnings of self-organization among negroes the way is opening for their more effective participation in the higher opportunities of our civilization.

The negro trade unionist has not as yet shown the organizing capacity of other races. Only among the mine workers, the longshoremen, and bricklayers are they to be found in considerable numbers, although the carpenters have negro organizers. But in most of these cases the negro is being organized by the white man not so much for his own protection as for the protection of the white workman. If the negro is brought to the position of refusing to work for lower wages than the white man he has taken the most difficult step in organization; for the labor union requires, more than any other economic or business association in modern life, reliance upon the steadfastness of one's fellows. Unfortunately, when the negro demands the same wages as white men, his industrial inferiority leads the employer to take white men in his place, and here again we see how fundamental is manual and technical intelligence as a basis for other progress.[21]

It must not be inferred because we have emphasized these qualities of intelligence--manliness and cooperation as preparatory to political rights--that the negro race should be deprived of the suffrage until such time as its members acquire these qualities. Many individuals have already acquired them. To exclude such individuals from the suffrage is to shut the door of hope to all. An honest educational test honestly enforced on both whites and blacks is the simplest rough-and-ready method for measuring the progress of individuals in these qualities of citizenship. There is no problem before the American people more vital to democratic institutions than that of keeping the suffrage open to the negro and at the same time preparing the negro to profit by the suffrage.

Neither should the negro be excluded from the higher education. Leadership is just as necessary in a democracy as in a tribe. Self-government is not suppression of leaders but cooperation with them. The true leader is one who knows his followers because he has suffered with them, but who can point the way out and inspire them with confidence. He feels what they feel, but can state what they cannot express. He is their spokesman, defender, and organizer. Not a social class nor a struggling race can reach equality with other classes and races until its leaders can meet theirs on equal terms. It cannot depend on others, but must raise up leaders from its own ranks. This is the problem of higher education--not that scholastic education that ends in itself, but that broad education that equips for higher usefulness. If those individuals who are competent to become lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, organizers, guides, innovators, experimenters, are prevented from getting the right education, then there is little hope for progress among the race as a whole, in the intelligence, manliness, and cooperation needed for self-government.

=Growth of Negro Population.=--After the census of 1880 it was confidently asserted that the negro population was increasing more rapidly than the white population. But these assertions, since the census of 1890, have disappeared. It then became apparent that the supposed increase from 1870 to 1880 was based on a defective count in 1870, the first census after emancipation. In reality the negro element, including mulattoes, during the one hundred and ten years of census taking, has steadily declined in proportion to the white element. Although negroes in absolute numbers have increased from 757,000 in 1790 to 4,442,000 in 1860, and 8,834,000 in 1900, yet in 1790 they were one-fifth of the total population; in 1860 they were one-seventh and in 1900 only one-ninth.

It is naturally suggested that this relative decrease in negro population has been owing to the large immigration of whites, but the inference is unwarranted. In the Southern states the foreign element has increased less rapidly than the native white element, yet it is in the Southern states that the negro is most clearly falling behind. In the twenty years from 1880 to 1900 the whites in eighteen Southern states without the aid of foreign immigration increased 57 per cent and the negroes only 33 per cent.[22] In only six Southern states, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, have the negroes, during the past ten years, increased more rapidly than the whites, and in only three of these states, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, was the relative increase significant. In but two states, South Carolina and Mississippi, does the negro element predominate, and in another state, Louisiana, a majority were negroes in 1890, but a majority were whites in 1900. "At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Southern negroes were increasing much faster than the Southern whites. At the end of it they were increasing only about three-fifths as fast."[23]

This redistribution of negroes is an interesting and significant fact regarding the race and has a bearing on its future. Two movements are taking place, first to the fertile bottom lands of the Southern states, second to the cities, both North and South. Mr. Carl Kelsey has shown this movement to the lowlands in an interesting way.[24] He has prepared a geological map of Alabama, which with Mississippi has received the largest accession of negroes, and has shown the density of negro population according to the character of the soil. In this map it appears that the prairie and valley regions contain a proportion of 50 per cent to 90 per cent negroes, while the sand hill and pine levels contain only 10 per cent to 50 per cent, and the piedmont or foothill region less than 10 per cent. A similar segregation is found in other Southern states, especially the alluvial districts of Mississippi and Arkansas. In these fertile sections toward which the negroes gravitate, the crops are enormous, and Mr. Kelsey points out a curious misconception in the census summary, wherein the inference is drawn that negroes are better farmers than whites because they raise larger crops. "No wonder the negroes' crops are larger," when the whites farm the hill country and the negroes till the delta, which "will raise twice as much cotton per acre as the hills." Furthermore the negro, whether tenant or owner, is under the close supervision of a white landlord or creditor, who in self-protection keeps control of him, whereas the white farmer is left to succeed or fail without expert guidance.

The migration of negroes to the cities is extremely significant. In ten Southern states the proportion of the colored population was almost exactly the same in 1890 as it had been in 1860,--namely, 36 per cent,--yet in sixteen cities of those states, as shown by Mr. Hoffman,[25] the colored proportion increased from 19 per cent in 1860 to 29 per cent in 1890. This relative increase, however, did not continue after 1890, for, according to the census of 1900, the proportion of negroes in those cities was still 29 per cent. During the past decade the negroes have increased relatively faster in Northern cities. The white population of Chicago increased threefold from 1880 to 1900, and the colored population fivefold. The white population of Philadelphia during the same period increased 50 per cent and the colored population 100 per cent. In the thirty-eight largest cities of the country the negro population in ten years increased 38 per cent and the white population, including foreign immigration, increased 33 per cent. In thirty Northern and border cities during the past census decade the negroes gained 167,000, and in twenty Southern cities they gained 80,000.[26]

The Southern whites also are moving from the South, and in larger proportions than the negroes, though the movement of both is small. In 1900, 7 per cent of the whites of Southern birth lived in the North and West and only 4.3 per cent of the negroes of Southern birth. But the negroes who go North go to the cities, and the whites to the country. Three-fifths (58 per cent) of these northbound negroes moved to the larger cities and only one-fourth (26 per cent) of the northbound whites.[27]

The accompanying map, derived from the census of 1900,[28] shows clearly both of these movements of negro population. The shaded areas indicate the counties where negroes formed a larger proportion of the population in 1900 than they did twenty years earlier, in 1880. Here can be seen the movement to the low and fertile lands of the South and the cities of the North and South. There are but two areas in California and Colorado, not included on the map, where the population of negroes has increased, and one of these contains the city of Los Angeles.

Were the negroes in the cities to scatter through all the sections, the predominating numbers of the white element might have an elevating influence, but, instead, the negroes congregate in the poorer wards, where both poverty and vice prevail. Hoffman has shown that two-thirds of the negroes in Chicago live in three wards, which contain all the houses of ill-fame in that part of the city. The same is true of Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati.[29] In these sections negro prostitution has become an established institution, catering to the Italian and other lower grades of immigrants, and supporting in idleness many negro men as solicitors.

We have seen that the negro population has not kept pace with the native white population. The reason is found in the smaller excess of births over deaths. Statistics of births are almost entirely lacking in the United States. Statistics of deaths are complete for only portions of Northern states and a few Southern cities, containing, in 1900, in all, 27,500,000 whites and 1,180,000 negroes. Of this number, 20,500,000 whites and 1,100,000 negroes lived in cities, so that the showing which the census is able to give is mainly for cities North and South and for rural sections only in the North.[30] It appears that for every 1000 colored persons living in these cities the deaths in 1900 were 31.1, while for every 1000 white persons the deaths were only 17.9. That is to say, the colored death-rate was 73 per cent greater than the white death-rate.

In the rural districts there was much less difference. The colored death-rate was 19.1 and the white death-rate 15.3, a colored excess of 25 per cent.

=Morals and Environment.=--In explaining the excessive colored mortality there are two classes of opinions. One explains it by social conditions, the other by race traits. The one points to environment, the other to moral character. The one is socialistic, the other individualistic. These different views exist among colored people themselves, and one of the encouraging signs is the scientific and candid interest in the subject taken by them under the leadership of Atlanta University. A colored physician who takes the first view states his case forcibly:[31]--

"Is it any wonder that we die faster than our white brother when he gets the first and best attention, while we are neglected on all sides? They have the best wards and treatment at the hospital, while we must take it second hand or not at all; they have all the homes for the poor and friendless, we have none; they have a home for fallen women, we have none; they have the public libraries where they can get and read books on hygiene and other subjects pertaining to health, we have no such privileges; they have the gymnasiums where they can go and develop themselves physically, we have not; they have all the parks where they and their children can go in the hot summer days and breathe the pure, cool air, but for fear we might catch a breath of that air and live, they put up large signs, which read thus, 'For white people only'; they live in the best homes, while we live in humble ones; they live in the cleanest and healthiest parts of the city, while we live in the sickliest and filthiest parts of the city; the streets on which they live are cleaned once and twice a day, the streets on which we live are not cleaned once a month, and some not at all; besides, they have plenty of money with which they can get any physician they wish, any medicine they need, and travel for their health when necessary; all of these blessings we are deprived of. Now, my friends, in the face of all these disadvantages, do you not think we are doing well to stay here as long as we do?"

Another colored writer, less eloquent, but not less accurate, in summarizing the statistics collected under the guidance of Atlanta University concludes:[32]--

"Overcrowding in tenements and houses occupied by colored people does not exist to any great extent, and is less than was supposed.

"In comparison with white women, an excess of colored women support their families, or contribute to the family support, by occupation which takes them much of their time from home, to the neglect of their children.

"Environment and the sanitary condition of houses are not chiefly responsible for the excessive mortality among colored people.

"Ignorance and disregard of the laws of health are responsible for a large proportion of this excessive mortality."

It is pointed out by these colored students and by many others that the excessive mortality of colored people is owing to pulmonary consumption, scrofula, and syphilis, all of which are constitutional; and to infant mortality due also to constitutional and congenital disease. The census of 1900 reports for a portion of the Northern states that for every 1000 white children under five years of age there were 49.7 deaths in one year, and for every 1000 colored children under five years there were 118.5 deaths, an excess of negro infant mortality of 137 per cent.[33] The census also reports that negro deaths in cities owing to consumption are proportionately 2.8 times as many as white deaths,[34] deaths owing to pneumonia are 89 per cent greater,[35] while deaths owing to contagious causes, such as measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria,[36] are but slightly greater or actually less than the white deaths in proportion to population. In the city of Charleston, where mortality statistics of negroes were compiled before the war, it has been shown that from 1822 to 1848 the colored death-rate from consumption was a trifle less than the white, but since 1865 the white mortality from that cause has decreased 38 per cent, while the negro mortality has increased 70 per cent.[37] The death-rates from consumption in Charleston in 1900 were 189.8 for 100,000 whites and 647.7 for 100,000 negroes, an excess of 241 per cent. The lowest negro death-rate reported from consumption in cities is 378.5 for Memphis, but in that city the white death-rate from the same cause is 169.9, a negro excess of 123 per cent.[38]

At a conference held at Atlanta University, Professor Harris, of Fisk University, concluded:[39]--

"I have now covered the ground to which our excessive death-rate is mainly due; namely, pulmonary diseases, especially consumption and pneumonia, scrofula, venereal diseases, and infant mortality. If we eliminate these diseases, our excessive death-rate will be a thing of the past.... While I do not depreciate sanitary regulations and a knowledge of hygienic laws, I am convinced that a _sine qua non_ of a change for the better in the negro's physical condition is a higher social morality.... From the health reports of all our large Southern cities we learn that a considerable amount of our infant mortality is due to inanition, infantile debility, and infantile marasmus. Now what is the case in regard to these diseases? The fact is that they are not diseases at all, but merely the names of symptoms due to enfeebled constitutions and congenital diseases, inherited from parents suffering from the effects of sexual immorality and debauchery.... It is true that much of the moral laxity which exists among us to-day arose out of slavery.... But to explain it is not to excuse it. It is no longer our misfortune as it was before the war; it is our sin, the wages of which is our excessive number of deaths.... The presence of tubercular and scrofulous diseases, consumption, syphilis, and leprosy, has caused the weaker nations of the earth to succumb before the rising tide of Christian civilization.... The history of nations teaches us that neither war, nor famine, nor pestilence, exterminates them so completely as do sexual vices."