Part 6

The woman all in black was a famous mover of souls, and her sermon was evidently the most looked-for religious excitement of the morning. She was a plain woman with a powerful will, a great voice, and a rare knowledge of the Bible. She preached from the text, “Saul hid himself among the stuff.” First she told the story in a quiet voice and then began to make the application. It was no use hiding from God, for He would find you out.

So rousing were her simple words, and such was the atmosphere she was begetting in the midst of her congregation, that I had to do everything in my power to avoid breaking down under the influence and sobbing like a child.

I went over in my mind the drama of “Macbeth,” and reconstructed “Richard the Third,” and called to memory the speeches I had listened to at the Bar dinner the night before, and what I had been doing during the past week and month. But all the while I registered also in my brain the whole of what the black priestess was saying.

Next to me a feminine voice kept crying out: “_Help her, Lord, help her!_” and I back-pedalled for all I was worth. Presently the preacher was lifted out of the ordinary, everyday voice into a barbaric chant, which rose and fell and acclaimed and declaimed in rhythmical grandeur and music. I dared not look at the woman at my side. But she now lisped out, “She’s all right now, Lord; she’s all right now,” and I thought of the relief of the Welsh when their preachers get into the strain they call the _hwyl_.

I then very cautiously peered round at the woman. What was my astonishment to see a girl of eighteen with a face like a huge, dusky melon. Her jaws were perfectly relaxed, her eyes half shut, and her upper lip, which was raised, exposed her smiling teeth and a layer of sweet chewing gum.

Meanwhile the Reverend Norah up above was urging us all to come out from behind the stuff. We were always hiding behind our business, behind our families, behind our bodies.

“They are hiding behind their bodies, O Lord!

“Yes, O Lord, they say that they are sick, that they are ill,

“That they cannot do this and they cannot do that because they are feeble in health.

“O come out from behind the stuff!

“You saw Saul hide behind the baggage, O Lord.

“Our Negro brothers and sisters are hiding there to-day.

“Hiding behind their wealth——

“Hiding behind their charity——

“Hiding behind their houses and their clothes and their cars,

“Yes, and their wives and their husbands,

“And other peoples’ opinions.

“But You see them, O Lord,

“You see them, and You’ll bring them out——”

“I’m hiding there right enough,” broke out from the congregation, and “Lord, save us!” “Lord, help us!”

The whole mass of black humanity swayed under the power of the emotion which the woman had kindled. They were about to stand in frenzy and give the great gospel shout of repentance, when something happened; the woman’s strength gave way, and she slipped out of the chant back into her ordinary voice. At once the spell was broken.

The tiniest tots in the congregation then came out carrying little jam jars which they bore to each individual for his collection, and we sang a rolling and clamorous hymn, and all went home.

One note further in the sermon, and there would have been a great scene of conversion at the close of the service, and everyone would have decided to come out from behind his stuff, as the preacher recommended. But it’s better for one’s religion not to be converted every Sunday.

Many white people would no doubt be so greatly amused by a sermon of this kind that they would find difficulty in containing their laughter. One laugh from a white stranger might have proved calamitous, and would certainly have evoked hostility. On the other hand, there are Whites who love psycho-physical religious emotionalism. Such a type is the poet who wrote—

We mourned all our terrible sins away, And we all found Jesus at the break of the day. Blessed Jesus!

I never met a Negro who thought it humorous unless it were a member of one sect telling of the “goings-on” in another. Each different race or people seems to have its different characteristic religious expression. When one has seen the exaltation of Copt and Arab in religion, when one has heard the great choric voice of Russia at church, and the splendid, purposeful faith of Teutonic hymns, one knows that a calm singing of “Praise to the Holiest in the Height!” is not the only mode of praise. There are fifty thousand ways of praising God, and every single one of them is right.

So there is no call to chide the Negro for his excess. His ways are part of the natural and Divine history of Man, and it is infinitely worth while to consider them with an open and charitable mind. The hysteria, the frenzy, of some meetings I have observed is not in the white man. There is no use being appalled by it. It is the third part which finishes the man downward, as St. John says in the desert.

“And after these emotional excitements they commit so many murders,” said a Southern woman to me.

“If so, one must be upon one’s guard in the presence of a converted man,” said I.

* * * * *

The foundation of the Negro’s great religious seriousness is to be found in the Negro hymn or “spiritual.” These spirituals were before there were Negro churches, before Christianity was actually allowed to the slaves. That is why they are more often called plantation melodies. They were sung in the twilight of the old plantations, and gave voice to a great human sorrow and a great human need. They show that the Negro has obtained access to the spiritual deeps, that he has a soul as we have—a fact so often denied—and that he is capable of penetrating the sublime. I listened very often to these songs. In several places they were sung to honor a white visitor. I heard them rendered by the Hampton Singers and lectured upon by Harry T. Burleigh, to whose efforts in research the preservation of several are due. There is no question of the excellence of them. They make a great appeal to all people who have music in their souls.

It is, however, a musical effect, not an intellectual one. The words have often little relevance to anything profound, and at best are childish. There is generally a keynote which murmurs through the whole of the song, the function of the basso-profundo who provides a river of harmony like life itself, and the tenors and baritones and the shriller voices move on this flowing base like ships. On the rivers the slaves loved to sing as they rowed their masters, using most aptly the beat of the oars and the swish of the water, while the man who stood at the helm and steered was usually the deep bass. One of the most unforgettable melodies is “O, Listen to the Lambs!” The tenors seem to imitate flocks of innumerable sheep and lambs all crying to one another, while the basso-profundo is the irrelevance of “I want to go to Heaven when I die,” continually repeated in subterranean mumbling and whispers——

O listen to the la-ambs All a-cry ... in’. All a-cry ... in’. An’ I wan’ to go to Hebn w’en I die!

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Go Down, Moses,” “Didn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” “The Walls of Jericho,” and many others are assuredly famous.

These and many other phenomena give indications of a distinctive Negro point of view, and of an incipient broad-based popular culture. A sympathetic study will always give evidence that can be set against the point of view that the Negro is nothing, or an animal, or a scamp at best, or a shame to the species. I was sitting in the gardens at Baltimore in the shade of a giant plane tree one day when out came a mixed class of Negro boys and girls and a young eager colored master of about twenty-five. The girls were luxuriant “flappers” of every hue of polished ebony; the boys were spindle-legged and spry and bullet-headed. They all examined plants and trees and caterpillars and flowers under the informing tutelage of the master. They were as noisy and vivacious as a flock of birds that has suddenly lighted on a plain. They minded no outsider. But a tall white man passed them, and I saw on his face a look of unutterable contempt.

“Learning botany” said he to me in a stage whisper. “They’ll know as much about it to-morrow morning as pigs.”

IV

IN TENNESSEE

The South, they tell me, never alters. It is said to be the least characteristic and most uninteresting part of the United States. “You will not care for it,” I was told. “It has not changed in fifty years.” It is certainly little visited. It does not exemplify the hustle and efficiency of the North. And then you cannot lecture down there. It is not a literary domain. The consequence is that in Great Britain many people confound the “Southern States” with the Republics of South America. I was asked in letters why I had gone South. It was thought there must be less interest there. But that is a mistake. The South is as vital as the West and the East. On the whole it is more picturesque. It is not so diversified, but the vast areas of cotton on the one hand and of sugar and corn and rice on the other, and the forests, present well-marked features and give the South a handsome natural aspect. It is true that the Southern point of view as regards the Negro does not change very much, and that all vote one way, but it does not follow that the Southern point of view as regards the whole future of the United States has not been modified and will not change. The South has been very poor and is becoming rich, will perhaps become very rich and prosperous. It was almost deprived of political power, and now it has, in an extraordinary way, regained political power. It is well known that the opinion of a poor and ruined man changes when Fortune makes up to him for the past. So also with the South.

Then, in considering a people as a whole, one is bound to reckon character. Thus, in Great Britain, what important factors are the ruggedness of Yorkshire and Lancashire, the caution of the Scots, the authority-loving of the southern counties, the enthusiasm and imaginativeness of the Celts. And in America one has to reckon, not only with the Puritan fervor of New England, but with the determination and turbulence and group instinct of the more cavalier spirit of the South. Though heat makes the Southern women languid and the Southern men fiery and quick of temper, it does not seem to make them weaker. On the whole, the Southerner seems to have a stronger will than the Northerner, and despite the exuberance of North and West, and a flood of contrary ideas and sentiments, the Southerner remains, as it were, eternally incapable of being suppressed. As long as America speaks, the South will always speak. Therefore, the South is very significant in American life.

After Virginia I went by rail to the neighboring State of Tennessee. I came into Knoxville one Friday night. The sight of it in the moonlight was impressive—the broad railway bridge, the clock tower with luminous face, the main street flocking with a Tennessee crowd, all shops fully ablaze with light; bunting and wreaths hung from house to house—for it was the week of the Fair. A Salvation Army meeting bellowed forth musical offerings and hallelujahs “thro’ the flag-filled air.” Everywhere electric signs were twinkling. Laughter and talk walked arm in arm along the broad main way. “It’s a fine city, this Knoxville of yours,” I ventured to remark to a stranger. “No, not a fine city,” said he, “a fine people, but not a fine city, a wretched city; it needs pulling down and rebuilding, but fine people, the finest people in the world.” This rare self-consciousness and belief in self, this group feeling, I believe, one would look in vain for in the North.

“Sober Knoxville” is one of the most responsible of Southern cities. Tennessee as a whole is quiet and steady. Lynching is infrequent. It was therefore considered very extraordinary that a race riot should break out in the city. The race riots in Chicago and Washington in 1919 were no doubt worse, but none caused more perplexity than that which broke out at Knoxville on August 30th of that year.

Deplorable and terrible as were those Negro _pogroms_ of the year after the war, I think they were due to special conditions. They were the expression of the frustrated ferocity that would otherwise have gone into the war. Demobilization excitements had much to do with them—the parades of Negro regiments, the idleness of white troops and of the demobilized unemployed. When the complete transition to peace conditions had been achieved, the danger of these outbreaks was averted. The year 1920 remains freer from race riots. That is not to say that they may not break out again, and on a larger scale. In any time of social upheaval and revolution they become possible. Those that have occurred show an ugly animus against the Negro still latent in the common people of the cities.

As explained to me, the outbreak at Knoxville seemed comparatively simple in origin. Mr. Maures Mayes, a Negro, murdered Mrs. Lindsay, a white woman. He was arrested and sent to a jail in another city. A mob formed to enter Knoxville prison and lynch the Negro. But a committee opened parley with the governor, and was allowed to satisfy itself that the prisoner was not there. Apparently, however, there was a considerable amount of whisky stored in the prison. The whisky attracted the mob also. A general assault was commenced, the place was stormed, and all prisoners were released. Troops sent to disperse the mob joined it, and a second purpose then appeared—to take revenge on the colored population. Someone started a rumor and it spread like wildfire, that thousands of Negroes were marching on the business part of the city and that two soldiers had been killed. The colored folk were taken by surprise—there was a great deal of looting and destruction and personal robbery, and a number of Negroes were killed, while many were injured. It was the first race riot that had ever taken place in Knoxville, and all reputable people were sorry for it. I was told it all sprang from the crime of one Negro. But one might just as well say it all sprang from a desire to have the whisky in the prison—O Knoxville, O sobriety!

Because in general the Negroes are well treated in Knoxville, this lapse has been discounted, and they are surprisingly free from bitterness. I called at the Carnegie Library for colored people, a quiet little building—not much by comparison with the really grand public library of the city, but still a provision, and as such to be noted, in comparison with so many other cities where the Negroes not only have not access to the general public libraries, but have no separate provision made for them. The Knoxville library for colored people was, I believe, opened by the mayor some years ago, and the city felt proud of what it had done. It is unfortunately very inadequate, but it is in the charge of a capable colored lady who will perhaps help to “agitate” a bigger and better one. The Negroes are very grateful in any case for what they have.

I called on several representative Negroes. They were much more friendly to the whites than those I found in Virginia. “We get on very well here,” was a common remark. I visited the colored lawyer H——, established in Knoxville some eight years. He was in deshabille and was sweeping out his office with a hard brush and shovel. He turned out to be very lawyer-like in conversation. I asked him a whole series of questions, to which he answered “Yes” or “No,” without volunteering any information or enlarging in any way. He called the race riot a “circumstance.” He said he had won cases even in the Supreme Court, and was respected by the Bench for his grim determination. After saying that, he went to the window and spat violently into the street below and then returned.

I praised his probable skill in handling juries, and he was mollified.

“I am practiced to read men’s faces,” said he. “I pick out the man who is likely to cause trouble and address myself exclusively to him. Judges here are absolutely devoid of color prejudice.”

A seeming half-wit had just been sentenced to death at the city of Danville for accosting a white girl. The trial was of the briefest, and the Negro’s transit to the electric chair was made the most rapid possible—so as to avoid a lynching. The lawyer thought that the sentence was harsh—but as long as lynching was so prevalent, legal punishment had to be severe.

“Did you ever hear of a white man being convicted for assaulting a Negro?” I asked.

“No,” said he, constrainedly, “not unless it were an offense against a child.”

He did not think Negroes showed much enterprise in Knoxville—there were no banks, no large businesses, no drug stores, though there were four colored lawyers and sixteen doctors.

After Lawyer H—— I visited Mr. D——, a successful colored dentist, with well-groomed head and manicured hands. He was clad in a white hospital coat which was spotless, and by the appurtenances of his cabinet he seemed to be abreast of scientific progress as far as dentistry was concerned. He had a good practice, not only among the Blacks, but with the white country population. He said the old settlers had no prejudice against a colored dentist, though the younger, newer men and women were different. While I was talking a colored girl came in to have Mr. D—— fill a hollow tooth. He said the colored folk had suffered greatly with their teeth in the past, but were taking more care of them now. He loved putting gold crowns on teeth, and most smart Negro young men felt a little gold in the mouth was very _chic_—just the thing. It is certainly a characteristic of the modern Negro. Mr. D—— watched the race riot from his office window, and was much alarmed at the time. But, like Lawyer H——, he felt that there was good feeling in the city. He thought it an accident. The soldiers had been inflamed against the Negroes.

In lack of Negro enterprise what a contrast Knoxville was to places like Norfolk, Virginia! I was soon to realize that the further South I went the more stagnant would Negro life show itself—until I reached the point when there would be little scope for investigation. The traveler going South from Washington is let gradually downward into a sort of pit of degradation. Chattanooga is lower than Knoxville, Birmingham lower than Chattanooga, rural Georgia and Alabama lower than all of these. This I think ought to be realized lest the glamour of Negro progress in Virginia and the North give a false impression of the whole.

At Knoxville it was Fair time. The time when I was in the South was one of fairs and carnivals. As the Russian goes on pilgrimage when the harvest has been gathered in, so the American goes to the Fair in the fall. There is in the South a vast network of the moving caravans of showmen, and a huge show business quite novel to an Englishman. I arrived in many towns at the time of their Fair, and had the greatest difficulty in obtaining shelter for the night, so crowded were they. The people from the country round rolled in to the Fair in their cars and choked every thoroughfare.

One blemish on the large State Fair is that, except as servants, no Negroes are to be seen. There is a great gathering of white people, but no Blacks. It is therefore more polite, more well dressed, more conventional, and there is less of color and life than would fairly have obtained had all been welcome. What is a Fair if it be not an outing for the poor! It is reduced to this in the South, that the Whites have their Fairs and the Negroes have theirs separately.

I accompanied an Appalachian sportsman. He told me he shot a big, black bear the day the Armistice was signed. Sure as the first of November came round he was out with gun and haversack and Negro boys hunting the bear. He hunted for the love of hunting, though bear’s flesh could be sold at a dollar a pound and was worth it, every cent. He thought Tennessee did “mighty well” in the war, and they gave the boys a fine reception when they came back. They’d had a drop of whisky in them in the riot, but a few niggers less wasn’t much matter. He pointed out to me signs of Knoxville prosperity—houses that cost ten to twenty thousand dollars to build—picturesque and wooden, but very costly from a European point of view. No cotton was grown in this district, and next to no tobacco. Many people did not even know what a stalk of cotton was like.

The Knoxville Fair was a wondrous exposition of Southern hogs (each hog docketed with personal weight and what it gains per day), bulls and chickens and pigeons and rabbits and owls and what not, and there was a hall of automobiles festooned in flags. Caged lions and tigers flanked the auditorium of the free vaudeville entertainment. Negro boys flogged bony, grunting camels round the grounds. The pop-corn stands vied with the ice-cream counters stacked with cones. There was an astonishing uproar from the various revolving “golden dreams” and of the jibbing metal horses; and outside all manner of peep shows, men who had sold their voices talked till they foamed at the lips or went hoarse—of the freaks and wonders within. Thus the two-headed child, the girl who does not die though her half-naked body is transfixed with darts; the “whole dam family” (apes dressed up as human beings); the cigarette fiend, a thin, yellow strip of humanity who is slowly but surely smoking himself to death; Bluey, the missing link between monkey and man; the fire swallower from the South Sea Islands; Zarelda, the girl with a million eyes (dotted all over her body), who has baffled all scientists; the garden of Allah and the garden of lovely girls; Leach, the human picture gallery, with the world’s masterpieces tattooed all over his body; Dagmar, the living head without a body....

And the owner of the show, and of the bought voice which must not stop advertising it to the passer by, stands at one side in shirt sleeves, and rolls his quid and spits, and seems to meditate on dollars and cents, ever and anon signaling to the man with the voice not to let the crowd get away without coming in. It was pathetic to come upon the freaks, later, on the road; see Zarelda, demurely clad in black, gripping a suitcase, and realize that she had “dates” all over the South, and showed her million eyes to-day in Knoxville, then in Macon, then in Savannah, then Jacksonville and Mobile and New Orleans and a score of other places, sometimes for a day, sometimes for three days or a week—not in any sense a music-hall artiste, but a sort of gypsy by life and by profession. How tired the freaks must get, knocking about from State to State and listening to the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.