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Title: The crisis: A record of the darker races, Vol. I, No. 3, January 1911
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "The crisis: A record of the darker races, Vol. I, No. 3, January 1911" ***
DARKER RACES, VOL. I, NO. 3, JANUARY 1911 ***
THE CRISIS
A RECORD OF THE DARKER RACES
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Volume One JANUARY, 1911 Number Three
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Edited by W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, with the co-operation of Oswald
Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller,
W. S. Braithwaite and M. D. Maclean.
╔══════════════════════════════════╦══════════════════════════════════╗
║ ║ ║
║CONTENTS ║ [Illustration: Man] ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Along the Color Line 5║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Opinion 9║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║A Winter Pilgrimage 15║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Editorial 16║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Cartoon 18║ „ ║
║ By JOHN HENRY ADAMS ║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Editorial 20║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Social Control 22║ „ ║
║ By JANE ADDAMS ║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║The Teacher: Poem 23║ „ ║
║ By LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL ║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Employment of Colored Women in ║ „ ║
║ Chicago 24║ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║The Burden 26║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║Talks About Women 27║ „ ║
║ By Mrs. J. E. MILHOLLAND ║ „ ║
║ ║ „ ║
║What to Read 28║ „ ║
╚══════════════════════════════════╩══════════════════════════════════╝
PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
AT TWENTY VESEY STREET NEW YORK CITY
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The most up-to-date and thoroughly equipped conservatory in the city.
Conducted under the supervision of
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=Courses in Art=
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Portrait Painting and Photo Enlarging in Crayon, Water Color, Pastel and
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TERMS REASONABLE
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for the ADVANCEMENT of COLORED PEOPLE
OBJECT.—The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
is an organization composed of men and women of all races and classes
who believe that the present widespread increase of prejudice against
colored races and particularly the denial of rights and opportunities to
ten million Americans of Negro descent is not only unjust and a menace
to our free institutions, but also is a direct hindrance to World Peace
and the realization of Human Brotherhood.
METHODS.—The encouragement of education and efforts for social uplift;
the dissemination of literature; the holding of mass meetings; the
maintenance of a lecture bureau; the encouragement of vigilance
committees; the investigation of complaints; the maintenance of a Bureau
of Information; the publication of The Crisis; the collection of facts
and publication of the truth.
ORGANIZATION.—All interested persons are urged to join our
organization—associate membership costs $1, and contributing and
sustaining members pay from $2 to $25 a year.
FUNDS.—We need $10,000 a year for running expenses of this work and
particularly urge the necessity of gifts to help on our objects.
OFFICERS.—The officers of the organization are:
National President—Mr. Moorfield Storey, Boston, Mass.
Chairman of the Executive Committee—Mr. Wm. English Walling, New York.
Treasurer—Mr. John E. Milholland, New York.
Disbursing Treasurer—Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, New York.
Director of Publicity and Research—Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, New York.
Executive Secretary—Miss Frances Blascoer, New York.
COMMITTEE.—Our work is carried on under the auspices of the following
General Committee, in addition to the officers named:
[1]Miss Gertrude Barnum, New York.
[1]Rev. W. H. Brooks, New York.
Prof. John Dewey, New York.
Miss Maud R. Ingersoll, New York.
Mrs. Florence Kelley, New York.
[1]Mr. Paul Kennaday, New York.
[1]Mrs. F. R. Keyser, New York.
Dr. Chas. Leng, New York.
Mr. Jacob W. Mack, New York.
[1]Mrs. M. D. MacLean, New York.
Rev. Horace G. Miller, New York.
Mrs. Max Morgenthau, Jr., New York.
Mr. James F. Morton, Jr., New York.
Mr. Henry Moskowitz, New York.
Miss Leonora O’Reilly, New York.
[1]Rev. A. Clayton Powell, New York.
[1]Mr. Charles Edward Russell, New York.
Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, New York.
Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, New York.
[1]Rev. Joseph Silverman, New York.
Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, New York.
Mrs. Henry Villard, New York.
Miss Lillian D. Wald, New York.
[1]Bishop Alexander Walters, New York.
Dr. Stephen S. Wise, New York.
Rev. Jas. E. Haynes, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y.
[1]Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Miss M. R. Lyons, Brooklyn, N. Y.
[1]Miss M. W. Ovington, Brooklyn, N. Y.
[1]Dr. O. M. Waller, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mrs. M. H. Talbert, Buffalo, N. Y.
Hon. Thos. M. Osborne, Auburn, N. Y.
[1]Mr. W. L. Bulkley, Ridgewood, N. J.
Mr. George W. Crawford, New Haven, Conn.
Miss Maria Baldwin, Boston, Mass.
Mr. Francis J. Garrison, Boston, Mass.
Mr. Archibald H. Grimke, Boston, Mass.
[1]Mr. Albert E. Pillsbury, Boston, Mass.
Mr. Wm. Munroe Trotter, Boston, Mass.
Dr. Horace Bumstead, Brookline, Mass.
Miss Elizabeth C. Carter, New Bedford, Mass.
Prest. Chas. T. Thwing, Cleveland, O.
Mr. Chas. W. Chesnutt, Cleveland, O.
Prest H. C. King, Oberlin, O.
Prest. W. S. Scarborough, Wilberforce, O.
[1]Miss Jane Addams, Chicago, Ill.
[1]Mrs. Ida B. Wells Barnett, Chicago, Ill.
[1]Dr. C. E. Bentley, Chicago, Ill.
Miss Sopbronisba Breckenridge, Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Clarence Darrow, Chicago, Ill.
[1]Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley, Chicago, Ill.
[1]Dr. N. F. Mossell, Philadelphia, Pa.
[1]Dr. Wm. A. Sinclair, Philadelphia, Pa.
Miss Susan Wharton, Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. R. R. Wright, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. W. Justin Carter, Harrisburg, Pa.
Rev. Harvey Johnson, D.D., Baltimore, Md.
Hon. Wm. S. Bennett, Washington, D. C.
Mr. L. M. Hershaw, Washington, D. C.
Prof. Kelly Miller, Washington, D. C.
Prof. L. B. Moore, Washington, D. C.
Justice W. P. Stafford, Washington, D. C.
[1]Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Washington, D. C.
[1]Rev. J. Milton Waldron, Washington, D. C.
Prest. John Hope, Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Leslie P. Hill, Manassas, Va.
Footnote 1:
Executive Committee.
OFFICES:
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Along the Color Line
POLITICAL.
Objections to the proposed appointment of William R. Lewis, a Negro
attorney of Boston, as an assistant attorney-general are being presented
to Attorney-General Wickersham. President Taft’s intention to appoint
Lewis was learned semi-officially at the White House several weeks ago.
Booker T. Washington has called upon Mr. Wickersham to urge his approval
of the appointment, and Speaker Cannon has opposed it.
* * * * *
President Taft said in his message: “I renew my recommendation that the
claims of the depositors in the Freedman’s Bank be recognized and paid
by the passage of the pending bill on that subject. I also renew my
recommendation that steps be taken looking to the holding of a Negro
exposition in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the issuing by
Mr. Lincoln of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
* * * * *
There is only one feature of the apportionment matter which is apt to
precipitate trouble, and that is the proposal to reduce the
representation of the Southern States which have deprived a part of
their population of the right of suffrage. Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina and other Commonwealths below the Mason and
Dixon line have imposed restrictions upon the Negroes which make it
impossible for them to vote at any election.—Denver Times.
THE COURTS.
In Richmond, Va., Judge Goff, in the United States Circuit Court of
Appeals, decided that no deed conveying real estate could legally
preclude the subsequent conveyance of any part of that real estate to
persons of African descent. He held that any provision or clause
providing that real estate shall not be acquired by Negroes is invalid
and void, and that no such provision can be put into a deed. The case
was argued for the Negroes by George J. Hooper and William L. Royall. A.
O. Boschen argued for the other side. The decision of Judge Goff will be
appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. It is attracting
wide attention and much comment among members of the local bar. The case
was that of the People’s Pleasure Park vs. Worsham.
* * * * *
Having been defeated in the Supreme Court of New York, and that defeat
having been affirmed by the Appellate Division, the colored Order of
Elks has filed an appeal to the Court of Appeals and has filed a bond of
the National Surety Company to cover the payment of any costs that may
be awarded against it. The colored order was enjoined from using the
name or the emblem of the white Order of Elks.
* * * * *
The verdict of $1,000 awarded George W. Griffin, a Pullman car porter,
against Daniel L. Brady, brother of “Diamond Jim” Brady, was affirmed by
the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Griffin was arrested by
Brady on a charge of theft, and after proving his innocence sued his
accuser.
* * * * *
Joseph Atwater, an Oklahoma Negro, filed in the Supreme Court of the
United States at Washington his appeal from the decision of the Oklahoma
courts which had refused to enjoin election officials in Oklahoma City
from denying him the right to vote on Nov. 8th. The petition for
injunction was based on the claim that the “grandfather clause” placed
in the Oklahoma constitution by amendment was invalid, because it would
deny the right to vote to a large number of Negroes in the State
entirely on account of color or previous condition of servitude.
SOCIAL UPLIFT.
In New Orleans during the past year several drug stores have been
opened, a Business League organized, the Pythian Temple finished, five
churches erected and 400 teachers have attended summer normal schools.
* * * * *
Dr. Cyrus Townsend Brady, by a startling paper read before the
Ministers’ Alliance at a meeting at the Y. M. C. A., awakened the
ministers into a realization of the Negro problem, and for the first
time in the history of Kansas City a movement was organized by the
ministers to investigate and endeavor to better the condition of the
blacks.
* * * * *
The highest average that has been made on the punching machine in the
Census Office was attained by Miss Eva B. Price, a colored girl, during
the last two weeks in October. The work on these machines is done on the
piece basis, and during this period Miss Price earned $88. The highest
up to this time that had been paid any clerk on this work during any two
weeks was $85. There are about 500 clerks working on the punching
machines, and it is considered very high for a clerk to punch as many as
3,000 cards in one day. Miss Price’s highest mark for one day was 4,200
cards. She accomplished this unusual average during the regular
seven-hour day, and has never worked on extra time.
* * * * *
In Philadelphia prominent churchmen of several denominations
participated in a conference on the American Negro question, held in the
Central Young Men’s Christian Association, 1421 Arch Street. Bishop
Mackay-Smith presided, and the speakers included such leaders in
denominational affairs as the Rev. Dr. Frank P. Parkin, district
superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church; the Rev. Dr. A. J.
Rowland, secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society; the Rev.
Dr. Edwin Heyl Delk, of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church; the Rev. Edwin F.
Randolph, of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church; B. F. Lee, Jr., of the
Armstrong Association, and James S. Stemons.
With the exception of the Bishop, these ministers and laymen are
associated in the Association for Equalizing Industrial Opportunities,
the purpose of which is to secure fair play for the Negro wage earner in
the industrial world.
* * * * *
In Cincinnati the last of the $2,000 needed to start an institution for
colored women similar to the Y. W. C. A. has been received by Miss Elma
C. Leach, of the Elizabeth Gamble Deaconess Association, and the work
will be prosecuted at once. The home will be opened on West Sixth
Street, near Mound. Temporary quarters will there be provided for
colored girls coming into the city for work and for girls who are found
to be living in undesirable environments. A nursery will be established
and theoretical nursing taught. Lectures will also be given.
* * * * *
In a report the State Inspector of Asylums of Kentucky says that the
buildings in which the Negro patients at the Eastern Kentucky Asylum are
confined are a disgrace to the State. One is a cottage with basement and
one story above. This building, he states, is in a very dangerous
condition, likely to collapse at any time. It is simply held up with
props put under it from time to time, and should a heavy wind strike it,
it probably would collapse. In this building there are forty-two colored
female patients. In the other colored ward building, which has a
basement and two stories, the conditions are equally as bad. Both male
and female patients are confined in this building, but are kept separate
and distinct. The female capacity is thirty-two—there are forty-one
patients; the male capacity is seventy—there are eighty-eight patients.
So crowded is the building that a great number are compelled to sleep in
the basement, which is very dark and damp and in rainy weather water
collects therein. The inspector states that neither the Board of Control
nor the officers of this institution are to blame, for they are doing
everything in their power to avert a disaster.
COLORED COLLEGES.
Howard University at Washington, D. C., has this year 1,350 students.
The college students number 347, of whom 167 are freshmen. Requirements
have been raised both for admission to the college and medical school.
The faculties include 110 professors, instructors and officers. The
endowment amounts to $281,000. The medical school has received $55,000
in cash for tuition fees during the last two years. A new Carnegie
library and hall of applied science have recently been added to the
plant, and also a steam-heating plant.
* * * * *
Lincoln University, Chester County, Pa., has 136 students in the college
and 50 in the theological seminary; all of these are taught by twelve
professors and three instructors. The grounds and buildings are worth
$250,000, and the endowment is a little over $600,000. Lately an
electric plant has been added, and a new pipe organ.
* * * * *
Virginia Union University has 35 students in the college and 30 in the
theological department, 120 in the academy and 40 in the grades. There
are sixteen instructors. A special attempt is being made to get a new
dormitory.
* * * * *
Wilberforce University has issued a statement which says:
“Though our existence was threatened in the past by poverty, war and
fire, yet we have passed from a school with 52 acres of land, one
building, a few small cottages, a primary department of instruction, two
teachers and a handful of students, to three large united schools in
operation to-day, aside from the military department. These are the
college, the theological, and the normal and industrial schools,
instructing in the following courses of study: Classical, scientific,
academic, theological, music, English preparatory, military, art,
business, sewing, carpentry, printing, cooking, shoemaking,
blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, brickmaking and bricklaying, plumbing,
tailoring, and applied mechanics and millinery. It has 350 acres of the
best land in Ohio. It has now ten brick buildings, including four large
halls, a $60,000 trades building, and a library costing $18,000, the
gift of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The value of the entire plant, with
equipment, is quite $350,000. There are 32 teachers and an average of
400 students, and we could have over one thousand if we had
accommodations for them.”
* * * * *
Mr. W. A. Joiner, formerly of Howard University, is superintendent of
the State Department at Wilberforce.
* * * * *
Atlanta University has 400 students enrolled. Fifty of these are in the
college course, with 30 teachers and officers. There are 653 normal and
college graduates. The plant consists of seven brick buildings,
including a library worth about $300,000; the endowment is $75,000, and
a special effort is being made to raise $60,000 this year.
* * * * *
Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., has over 500 students enrolled, and
applicants have been turned away. There are preparatory, normal and
college departments, and classes in theology, medicine and law.
Attention is also given to music and industries. The Leonard medical
building has been enlarged and a hospital is being built; shower baths
have been put into the gymnasium and other buildings enlarged. President
Meserve is just completing his seventeenth year of service.
* * * * *
The Georgia State Industrial College is near Savannah, Ga. It has 86
acres and 468 students. The school curriculum includes literary and
industrial work. Each student has to take a trade along with his other
studies. The school depends entirely upon income from the Landscript and
Morrill funds. Among its outside activities are farmers’ conferences and
an annual State fair.
EDUCATION.
In South Carolina Governor-elect Cole L. Bleaze is opposed to the
division of the educational fund of the State of South Carolina between
schools for the Negroes and the white children. It became known lately
that the future Governor is convinced that it would be good for the
State if the educational fund is divided so that taxes paid by whites
for educational purposes go for the education of white children, and
that those paid by blacks be used for the education of Negroes.
“I am firmly convinced, after the most careful thought and study,” said
Colonel Bleaze to-day, “that the Almighty created the Negro to be a
hewer of wood and drawer of water. I also believe that the greatest
mistake the white race has ever made was in attempting to educate the
free Negro.”
* * * * *
The first report of the Louisiana Department of Education for the year
ending July 1, 1910, shows that the total amount spent for the
maintenance of the public schools by the State was $4,936,300.64. Of
this amount colored teachers received in salaries $202,251.13, while
white teachers received $2,404,062.54. There are 5,001 white teachers
employed and 1,285 colored teachers. White male teachers received an
average monthly salary of $75.29, and white female teachers received an
average monthly salary of $50.80. The average monthly salary of colored
male teachers was only $34.25, and of colored female teachers $28.67.
The average length of session of colored elementary schools is 4.6
months. The average lengths of session of white elementary and high
schools is 8.23 months. There are 9,771 whites enrolled in the high
schools. No figures are given for colored students enrolled in high
schools. There are 54,637 colored children attending elementary schools,
and 128,022 white children; 75.9 per cent. of white educable children
are enrolled, and only 45.3 per cent. of the colored children. The
average monthly cost of each child based on average attendance, white
$2.90, colored $1.21.
* * * * *
The colored people of Plateau have the credit of being the leading Negro
settlement in Mobile County, Alabama, in respect to raising money to
help educate their children. The patrons of the school have raised over
$180 for their school this year, $144 of this money being raised
Thanksgiving Day. They are buying a beautiful site for a high school at
a cost of $900. Over $600 of this money has been raised, and they are
struggling to finish it this present school term.
* * * * *
That a systematic and organized crusade on idleness among members of the
colored race is to be continued was indicated at the meeting of the
Texas Negro Law and Order League at Houston, Texas. In a forceful
address calling the attention of the members of the league to many vital
questions affecting the welfare of the race President John M. Atkins
stated that the time was ripe for sending literature over the country
urging all Negro parents to look to the moral training of their boys.
* * * * *
For the purpose of urging every colored resident of New Orleans to
contribute $1 per annum to be used in educating Negro children, a poll
tax association among the colored people has been formed. A meeting was
held Wednesday night and a citywide campaign with this object in view
was planned. Circulars will be printed, stating the reasons for the
movement, and the leaders of every Negro organization in the city will
be asked to prevail upon his respective membership to see that they pay
their poll tax.
* * * * *
Strong addresses were delivered before the Mississippi Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church by Professor D. C. Potts, president of the
Mississippi Industrial College, and Dr. F. M. Williams of the North
Mississippi Conference. Professor Potts gave a detailed report of the
work done at the institution and declared that the enrollment at this
time of the year far exceeds that of any previous year. He stated that
the property was conservatively valued at $150,000 and congratulated the
Negroes of Mississippi upon giving so much for the education of their
own children.
THE CHURCH.
There are now five Negro priests in the Catholic Church in the United
States; three are in the Order of St. Joseph, one is a member of the
Holy Ghost order, and the fifth is attached to Archbishop Ireland’s
diocese in St. Paul, Minn.
* * * * *
On Sunday afternoon, October 30, the societies of the Holy Name of the
Roman Catholic Church made a big demonstration in Washington, D. C. One
feature of it was the parade, with several thousand in line, including
delegations from Baltimore and other nearby places. There were many
colored men in line, but there was no semblance of “jim crowing.” Each
marched with his own parish members of whatever color. There was a full
share of colored mounted marshals and two of the six bands were colored,
but the colored bands were not leading colored contingents.
This was in striking contrast to the action of the local committee of
the World’s Sunday School Congress here last May, which barred the few
colored delegates from the parade altogether, while in other places they
were segregated as far as possible.
* * * * *
Two thousand Negro Baptists have been meeting in Little Rock, Ark.
* * * * *
The M. E. Conference at Nacogdoches, Texas, opened by singing “And are
we yet alive!”
ECONOMIC.
During the last few days Negroes, generally known as “freedmen” from the
Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, have paid over $50,000 to the
commissioner to the five tribes of Indians at Muskogee for land. The
“freedmen” were allowed to select enough land to bring their allotments
up to forty acres, paying for it the appraised value of the land. This
appraisement was made by the government several years ago, and is about
one-fourth of the actual cash value of the land now. The Negroes were
given this preferential right to buy by a special act of Congress and
their right expired December 1, which caused the rush.
* * * * *
A colored church in Atlanta has opened a labor exchange.
* * * * *
A number of Omaha colored men have incorporated the International
Railroad Safety Pipe Coupling Company. It will manufacture the Harris
coupling for cars. This aims at enabling coupling of steam air brake and
emergency pipes without compelling a man to go under the cars and risk
being crushed. The appliance is made to go under the Janney coupler. A.
H. Harris of Denver is the inventor, and an Omaha foundry is making the
castings for railways to try out.
* * * * *
Attorney-General Foy of the Province of Ontario, Canada, has included
the name of Delos R. Davis in a new list of king’s counsels for that
province. Mr. Davis is a colored barrister before the Amherstburg bar of
long standing, and will do honor to his new title of “K. C.”
* * * * *
It required 55,000 enumerators to take the census; of these 1,605 were
Negroes, and 1,295 of these Negroes were in the Southern States.
Secretary Nagel said, a few days ago, that he had not heard a single
complaint against them. Ten years ago there were no Negroes at all
taking census in South Carolina, but this year 131 colored were
employed.
ART.
The playing of Miss Helen Hagan at the concert of the Second Company,
Governor’s Foot Guard Band, has been the subject of much enthusiastic
comment during the past week. Many of the best musicians of New Haven
were present, and their opinions constitute for Miss Hagan a “judgment
of her peers.” Miss Hagan is a “prize student” of the Yale department of
music and has been heard several times in concert work accompanied by
the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Her playing has always brought down
the house. On the occasion of the Foot Guard concert she appeared twice
upon the program in solos by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and
MacDowell, and responded to vehement demands for encores with
compositions by Grieg and Mosznowski.
Although Miss Hagan is not yet twenty years of age and was graduated
from the New Haven High School only last June, she has gone a long way
up on the road toward being a successful concert artist.—New Haven
Register.
* * * * *
William E. Scott has returned to Indianapolis from Paris, where he went
nearly two years ago to continue his art work. He was born and reared in
Indianapolis. He began his art studies under Otto Stark, while a student
at the Manual Training High School. After graduating he became assistant
teacher of art in the high school, which position he held a year and a
half. He entered the Chicago Art Institute in 1904, won some cash
scholarships and became proficient as a mural artist. During his last
year’s attendance at the institute he did the mural decorations for five
of the public school buildings of Chicago. For a short time after
graduating from the institute he was engaged in special work in
illustration, after which he went to Paris and studied under P. Marcel
Beareneau and later under H. O. Tanner. He exhibited three paintings
last August in a Paris salon, and traveled over England, Holland and
Belgium before returning here.
Both of the persons mentioned above are colored.
OPINION
THE APPEAL TO EUROPE.
On October 26 a statement and appeal was sent to Europe signed by
thirty-two Negro Americans. The appeal was not sent out by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, nor did the
association stand sponsor for it. It was sent solely on the authority of
the men who signed it. These men include two editors, one dentist, seven
lawyers, two ministers, two bishops, three physicians, one teacher, two
presidents of educational institutions, one member of a Legislature and
others.
This appeal, after stating that its signers do not agree with Mr.
Washington’s picture of conditions here, states the following
grievances:
“Our people were emancipated in a whirl of passion, and then left naked
to the mercies of their enraged and impoverished ex-masters. As our sole
means of defense we were given the ballot, and we used it so as to
secure the real fruits of the war. Without it we would have returned to
slavery; with it we struggled toward freedom. No sooner, however, had we
rid ourselves of nearly two-thirds of our illiteracy and accumulated
$600,000,000 worth of property in a generation, than this ballot, which
had become increasingly necessary to the defense of our civil and
property rights, was taken from us by force and fraud.
“To-day in eight States where the bulk of the Negroes live, black men of
property and university training can be, and usually are, by law denied
the ballot, while the most ignorant white man votes. This attempt to put
the personal and property rights of the best of the blacks at the
absolute political mercy of the worst of the whites is spreading each
day.
“Along with this has gone a systematic attempt to curtail the education
of the black race. Under a widely advertised system of ‘universal’
education, not one black boy in three to-day has in the United States a
chance to learn to read and write. The proportion of school funds due to
black children are often spent on whites, and the burden on private
charity to support education, which is a public duty, has become almost
intolerable.
“In every walk of life we meet discrimination, based solely on race and
color, but continually and persistently misrepresented to the world as
the natural difference due to condition.
“We are, for instance, usually forced to live in the worst quarters, and
our consequent death rate is noted as a race trait, and reason for
further discrimination. When we seek to buy property in better quarters
we are sometimes in danger of mob violence or, as now in Baltimore, of
actual legislation to prevent.
“We are forced to take lower wages for equal work, and our standard of
living is then criticised. Fully half the labor unions refuse us
admittance, and then claim that as ‘scabs’ we lower the price of labor.
“A persistent caste proscription seeks to force us and confine us to
menial occupations where the conditions of work are worst.
“Our women in the South are without protection in law and custom, and
are then derided as lewd. A widespread system of deliberate public
insult is customary, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to
secure decent accommodation in hotels, railway trains, restaurants and
theatres, and even in the Christian church we are in most cases given to
understand that we are unwelcome unless segregated.
“Worse than all this is the wilful miscarriage of justice in the courts.
Not only have 2,500 black men been lynched publicly by mobs in the last
twenty-five years, without semblance or pretense of trial, but regularly
every day throughout the South the machinery of the courts is used, not
to prevent crime and correct the wayward among the Negroes, but to wreak
public dislike and vengeance and to raise public funds. This dealing in
crime as a means of public revenue is a system well-nigh universal in
the South, and while its glaring brutality through private lease has
been checked, the underlying principle is still unchanged.
“Everywhere in the United States the old democratic doctrine of
recognizing fitness wherever it occurs is losing ground before a
reactionary policy of denying preferment in political or industrial life
to competent men if they have a trace of Negro blood, and of using the
weapons of public insult and humiliation to keep such men down. It is
to-day a universal demand in the South that on all occasions social
courtesies shall be denied any person of known Negro descent, even to
the extent of refusing to apply the titles of ‘Mr.,’ ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss.’
“Against this dominant tendency, strong and brave Americans, white and
black, are fighting, but they need, and need sadly, the moral support of
England and of Europe in this crusade for the recognition of manhood,
despite adventitious differences of race, and it is like a blow in the
face to have one who himself suffers daily insult and humiliation in
America give the impression that all is well. It is one thing to be
optimistic, self-forgetful and forgiving, but it is quite a different
thing, consciously or unconsciously, to misrepresent the truth.”
This appeal has provoked widespread comment all over the world. The
Vienna (Austria) Die Zeit, in publishing the document, says:
“During the sojourn in Vienna of Booker T. Washington, the distinguished
apostle of the Negro, there appeared in Die Zeit a report from his pen
in which he defended the white race of North America against the charge
of systematic race prejudice and pictured the condition of the Negro
race as on the whole very favorable. This report created great
excitement in America and a deep disagreement among the intelligent
leaders of the American Negroes. Booker T. Washington was warmly
attacked in many American papers by both white and black speakers, and
finally the American Negro leaders drew up an outspoken protest against
Washington’s declarations.”
The Kölnische Volk Zeitung, Germany, speaks of an article which was
“widely printed in Austria and Germany,” in which Mr. Washington
“expressed himself in very optimistic words concerning his race in
America and the undoubted solution of the problem,” and then reprints a
part of the appeal.
In the United States the comment has taken wide range. From the South
comes some bitterness when, for instance, the Raleigh News and Courier
says:
“It is hard to tell which is the worst enemy of the Negro race—the
brute who invites lynching by the basest of crimes, or the
social-equality-hunting fellow like Du Bois, who slanders his country.
Fortunately for the peaceable and industrious Negroes in the South,
the world does not judge them either by Du Bois or the animal, and
helps them and is in sympathy with their efforts to better their
condition.”
The Richmond Leader adds:
“Efforts on the part of the Negro to give practical expression to the
dream of equality may, indeed, cause temporary trouble and discomfort to
the whites, but ultimately and necessarily they could not fail to
provoke stern repression, and, if necessary, cruel punishment to the
blacks. Fortunately, the great bulk of the Negro population in the South
realizes this, and, having—at least for the time—accepted it as
inevitable, they adjust themselves to the subordinate place to which
their race consigns them, and in which the very existence of the
superior race makes it absolutely necessary to keep them. There is
little friction, therefore, between them and the white people among whom
they live.”
The Chattanooga Times regards the document as “treasonable
incendiarism,” and many papers denounce it as a demand for “social
equality.” The New Orleans Times-Democrat says:
“To the average American the most striking feature is this ‘appeal,’
aside from its attack upon Booker Washington, is its confession,
virtually in so many words, that the theory of racial social equality is
losing ground ‘everywhere in the United States.’ Thoughtful students of
the American race problem long ago noted the steady spread of race
instinct, or prejudice, into sections other than the South; but it was
hardly to be expected that the blatant Negro agitators would confess
that their strident demands for race equality have not only completely
failed, but have helped to turn the scale against them. Such progress as
the Negro has made is recorded not by aid of these aspirants for social
equality, but in spite of them.”
The Jersey City Journal says Negroes can vote in the North, they are
educated in the North, they are only partially restricted in residence,
they usually get equal pay for equal work, and the “objection to having
colored people in residence sections is natural.”
The Chicago Tribune “can understand and sympathize” with the signers of
the protest, but points out that the positions occupied by the signers
themselves show the progress of the Negro.
The New York World says:
“Undeniably, the black population of the United States has just
grievances. So also has the white population in the United States. Race
prejudice is here as it is in Europe, and blacks are not the only
sufferers. There is brutal tyranny in industry, but the blacks are not
the only victims. There are social limitations that are cruel and
inexcusable, but the blacks are not the only ones against whom the gates
are shut.
“This is a world in which true men give and take. It is a world in which
all must make allowances. It is a world in which, after all, men are
judged not so much by race or nationality or possessions as by personal
merit. Otherwise, how could a Booker Washington, born a Virginia slave,
have ‘stood before kings’ and associated for the greater part of his
life with the earth’s greatest and best?
“We do not condemn the American men of color who have made this protest.
We simply remonstrate with them. They are asking more than a white man’s
chance, and in the circumstances that is inadmissible.”
The Boston Globe, however, thinks that “these and other complaints are
backed by educated Negroes, who demand that the old world shall know
their wrongs. They deny that Dr. Washington is giving the right
impression of the situation in this country. It would seem to the
average person that admittedly there is much truth in the catalog of
wrongs the association recites.”
The Brooklyn Times, too, acknowledges that “the lot of the colored
American is a hard one at best, but there is nothing to be gained by
complaining over conditions and prejudices that cannot be altered or
eradicated in the lifetime of a single generation. There are obstacles
in the path of the Afro-American, even the most intelligent and
aspiring, of which the meanest white man can hardly form an adequate
conception; the only thing the Negro can do is to make the best of hard
conditions and do his utmost by his individual achievements to make the
handicap of his color forgotten.
“It is not surprising, however, that to many ambitious colored citizens
patience sometimes ceases to seem a virtue.”
It adds that the appeal “is a mild statement of existing conditions. The
lot of the colored American is indeed a hard one. But it is improving.
The area of sweet reasonableness is being gradually extended. Old
prejudices, and especially racial prejudices, die hard, as the history
of the dispersed Hebrew nation tells on every page of the annals of
2,000 years. But prejudice is not eternal, and every colored American
who does the utmost of his duty in the place he fills does his part in
bringing about the day when ungenerous and unjust discrimination will
disappear, and when
Man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be, for a’ that.”
Finally, the Buffalo Express says emphatically:
“The memorial recites the long and familiar list of Negro wrongs—the
political disfranchisement, the denial of education in some States, the
discriminations in public places, the forcing into menial occupations,
the hostility of trades unions, the attempts to confine Negroes to
certain quarters of towns, the insults to Negro women, etc. It need not
be gone over here. Readers of the Express are familiar with the shameful
record. The fact that this is an appeal to the people of Europe against
the people of the United States will arouse fresh antagonism to the
Negro in some quarters, but, on the whole, it will do good. For shame’s
sake, if not for that of justice, it may arouse us to do our duty. The
opinion of the civilized world must have some effect on the most
calloused American official conscience. And it is our governing class,
our men and women of light and leading, that need to be aroused on this
question.”
THE GHETTO.
The Baltimore attempt to segregate colored people has called forth
widespread comment. A letter in the New York Sun thus portrays
conditions:
“The Negro invasion in Baltimore is principally in a north and
northwesterly direction, comprising the most beautiful, most exclusive
and most valuable residential sections. About the year 1885 steadily but
insidiously the Negro began to invade white residential sections. In
Pennsylvania Avenue, beginning at Franklin Street in the downtown
district and running north about twenty-six blocks to the intersection
of North Avenue and Druid Hill Avenue, beginning at Paca Street in the
downtown district and running north about twenty blocks to the
intersection of North Avenue, as well as all blocks lying between
Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues and containing substantially built
three-story houses, are now in the exclusive possession of the Negroes.
They are now beginning to invade McCulloh Street, Madison Avenue, Eutaw
Place and Linden Avenue, which run parallel with Pennsylvania and Druid
Hill Avenues.”
Some papers see in this indubitable evidence of the rise of colored
people.
As the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel puts it:
“This is one of the most hopeful situations regarding the Negro which
has been painted. It is enough to send shivers down the backs of the
people who believe that ‘Cursed by Canaan’ is to hold good for all time.
But it is an immense reassurance to those who are looking for the uplift
of the black race. It seems, from this picture, that they must be
getting rich rapidly. They are obtaining possession of fine residential
property. They want to live in fine houses, the same as white folks with
money. Doubtless, too, the same as white folks, they want to have the
good things which money will buy.
“Judged by any test other than color, they seem to be very desirable
citizens.”
Other papers, like the Bridgeport Telegram, scent danger:
“If they are deprived of the right to build homes where they please
which is accorded to the most degraded white man who lands upon these
shores provided people will sell land to him, and robbed of the right to
become skilled workmen, their situation will be a much graver one than
that from which the Civil War delivered them.”
Dr. Henry Moskowitz, in the New York Evening Post, points to the Russian
analogy and the Boston Globe also insists on the failure of the Ghetto
idea:
“Segregation has never been a very successful solution of the race
problem, as may be seen in the experience of European cities with
ghettos and in Russia’s attempt to keep Jews confined within certain
pales. The Baltimore city council, however, by a piece of special
pleading in its report, tries to justify the ordinance by saying that
its ‘underlying purpose is the maintenance of peace and good order and
the avoidance of friction and irritation between the two races.’ The
ordinance ‘aims to prevent the whites from becoming a disturbing element
to the blacks and likewise to prevent the Negroes from becoming a
disturbing element to the whites.’ Ahem!”
The New York Journal calls the experiment dangerous:
“It is true that the establishment of homes of colored people in
neighborhoods hitherto unfrequented by them causes antagonism and may
produce trouble and disturb real estate values. But it is also true that
it is dangerous, unjust and unworthy of this century to revive the
obsolete ghetto system, denying to certain human beings the right to
live where they please and where they can.
“We suppose that a white man who owns a house has a legal right to sell
it to a Negro if he pleases. And we suppose that the highest court in
the country will sustain the right of a colored man to live in his own
home, subject to the tax laws and regulations of his neighborhood.
“Probably the plan to compel a hundred thousand colored people in
Baltimore to live all together in one neighborhood could not legally be
enforced.”
On the legal side of the matter Charles J. Bonaparte, formerly United
States Attorney-General, says to a Baltimore Sun reporter:
“I have always understood, however, that it was a lawful use of private
property to sell or rent one’s house for a proper purpose to an orderly
person of whatever race or color, without regard to the wishes or the
complexion of those who live next door, and, if this be true, then the
well-known Radecke case, in Forty-ninth Maryland, to say nothing of
other authorities, would seem to show clearly that if our always wise
Mayor and City Council should undertake to interfere in such a matter,
they could, and would, be politely advised to mind their own business.”
The Brooklyn Eagle, the Nyack (N. Y.) Star and the Dover (N. H.)
Democrat call attention to the Lee Sing case (43 Federal Reports, 359),
which voided an ordinance restricting the residence of a Chinaman.
The New York Sun says on the “property values” issue:
“The Baltimore ordinance cannot be supported on the ground that it is
intended to protect one race against the indignities invariably
experienced whenever it is compelled to force its presence upon another
race in the pursuit of education, business and pleasure or in the
exercise of political rights. Its frank purpose is to protect the
property interests of the stronger race. In the opinion of the City
Council of Baltimore real estate values in certain avenues have
depreciated 30 to 50 per cent. owing to the presence of Negro residents,
but if the sapient council were to study the recent census showing of
Baltimore it would no doubt find that other causes have been at work in
bringing about the depreciation. In any event, the proposed ordinance
involves a principle which the courts are not likely to accept.”
The Manchester (N. H.) Union says:
“It would seem as if the Negroes themselves would tire of making
purchases which immediately sink in value from a third to one-half, and
it is somewhat peculiar that in Philadelphia and Washington there has
been no tendency to anything of the kind, either as to encroachment upon
the territory of the whites or a depreciation of the property occupied
by the Negroes.”
The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph sees a chance for the Negro to make money
through such segregation and to be proud of their Ghettos, but the
Southwestern Christian Advocate, a colored paper, says:
“It is almost certain that wherever there is a Negro quarter there will
be little or no city improvement. Notwithstanding Negroes pay the same
rate of taxes, the streets on which they live are seldom paved, poorly
lighted, and any public improvements that might be made are always last
in coming to them. Thousands of Negroes make an effort not to buy within
the white district but so near that district that they may be able to
get some of the city improvements. There is also a measure of protection
as well as a measure of convenience when Negroes live on the better
streets.
“The Negro has a just protest against the sort of treatment he is forced
to endure notwithstanding he is a taxpayer. It may be alleged that he is
not a heavy taxpayer, and this we grant, but there are sections of
cities sparsely settled which are improved at the behest of speculators
while Negro residents are compelled to live in discomfiture and
inconvenience because of the lack of improvement.”
Dr. Hughes of Baltimore, speaking for colored citizens, said:
“It means the stopping of self-respecting, law-abiding colored citizens
in their efforts to secure homes and plant themselves in communities as
taxpayers.
“Rental values will advance since there will be no outlet for an already
congested population: they must stay where they are, and in order to do
so pay any price which an unscrupulous money grabber may demand. With
the high cost of foodstuffs and the low scale of wages for unskilled
labor the passage of the West ordinance points to the creation of a
pauper element in our city rather than a thrifty, law-abiding colored
citizenship, and the pauper element of any city or community makes the
more prosperous pay in one way or another for their support.
“In your ordinance you involve the bread of my people. Recently I stood
in Pierce Street and overheard this conversation: A colored woman was
asked, ‘Did you get the place?’ ‘Yes, I got it and started to work, when
the lady asked me where I lived, and when I told her she said she could
not have any one in her house who came from that street. She said there
was too much disease there.’ It remained for that woman to move. With
the West ordinance in force, where could she go? We have already a
crowded colored population. For her to move out meant for some one else
to move in. It affects not only the employed, but the employer, and the
only way out is for the man who hires a servant to go to the additional
expense of renting or buying a house for his servants in more healthy
quarters, which will aggravate the already troublesome help problem.”
The Philadelphia Ledger adds helplessly:
“How the Negro is going to be helped to rise under these circumstances
is one of the inscrutable problems of our time and generation. His own
unaided efforts are blocked everywhere by caste restrictions and
discriminations.”
The New York Globe says:
“The Negro has been told to smile and look pleasant as his political
rights have been taken from him. The argument has been that if he did
not make a fuss over voting the race prejudice of his white fellow
citizen would abate—that he would be given a freer chance to work, to
acquire property, to become of material weight in the community. But,
North as well as South, doors of industry are being shut against the
Negro. The economic tragedy of the educated Negro who aspires to good
things is pitiful. He finds either that personal effort and merit do not
count, or that they do not count much. In many places it is against the
Negro who is not willing to stay down in the mire that antipathy blazes
the most brightly. He is the ‘biggotty nigger’.”
Finally the Boston Herald pauses to remark:
“We purchased more than we knew with that first cargo of slaves sold by
the Dutch captain to the Virginia planters now almost three hundred
years ago.”
GOMPERS.
It seems pretty certain that Samuel Gompers, president of the American
Federation of Labor, was to some extent misquoted on the Negro problem.
The official version given by Mr. Charles Stetzle is as follows:
“The race problem came up in the convention, but not altogether by the
choice of the delegates. President Gompers had given an address on the
depressed races, remarking that it could not be expected that the Negro,
for instance, could have as high an ideal for himself as the Caucasian.
A morning newspaper came out next morning and in big headlines said that
Gompers had ‘read the Negro out of the trades union,’ when, as a matter
of fact, Gompers meant exactly the opposite. He took occasion to correct
the erroneous impression which had been made upon the public. At any
rate, he spoke of it at least three different times in public
addresses.”
The incident has caused much comment, most of it based on the
supposition that union labor is officially drawing the color line. The
Chicago Post says:
“The American Federation of Labor has always declared that ‘the working
people must unite and organize, irrespective of creed, color, sex,
nationality or politics.’ For many years the Federation denied
membership to all unions which drew the color line—a stand which kept
out, for example, the International Association of Machinists until it
eliminated the word ‘white’ from its constitution. Even when the A. F.
of L. relented sufficiently to admit several of the railroad
brotherhoods which were closed to Negroes, Mr. Gompers was always very
robust in his assertion that organized labor welcomed the Negro worker.
When the Industrial Commission of 1900 quizzed Mr. Gompers on the race
issue, it drew from him some very touching stories of Negro loyalty to
the trade union movement. He talked pretty much like an abolitionist up
to a few years ago.”
The Chicago Daily News says:
“Mr. Gompers was represented in the original report of his address to
have dealt with Negroes and Asiatics as if the problems presented by the
two were similar. Everybody should know that they are not.
“The Negroes are native-born American citizens. They know no other land.
It is their sincere desire, according to the measure of their abilities,
to share in the life of the American people. They are making progress in
education and industry. Under these conditions, to deny to Negroes the
right to join labor unions when they meet the standards required of
white applicants for membership would be clearly un-American.”
The comments of two other papers are characteristic. The Charleston (S.
C.) News and Courier is complacent:
“There is no use to palaver about and invent reasons. Everybody who
knows anything at all knows that racial antipathy is a real thing, even
though intangible. Why beat about the bush and deny it? Aside from the
ignorance of the Negro, his many weaknesses, his fatal physiological
structure, his extraction prevents his recognition as a social equal, be
he in South Africa, America or anywhere else. On that ground his
elimination from white unions is a necessity. Concomitant reasons need
not be given. They follow in natural sequence.”
The New York Evening Post says, however:
“But even should a reactionary policy of rigid exclusion prevail, it
cannot keep the Negro down industrially; it will doubtless handicap him
in many sections, but the only people who can keep the Negroes in an
inferior economic and social position are the Negroes themselves. A race
that has risen so rapidly against such wonderful odds is to be held back
by no organization of workingmen, however powerful.”
“COLORED.”
The case of the child with one-sixteenth Negro blood whom the District
of Columbia courts call a “Negro” has brought some comment. The Detroit
News says:
“Eventually the courts must draw the line. The dark races when
intimately associated with the white in overpowering numbers gradually
bleach out. At the fourth remove the descendants are often blond in
type. As the court seems to take no account of the actual color of the
individual in applying the classification ‘colored,’ it must be assumed
that definition must depend upon simple mathematics.”
The Taunton Gazette adds:
“By the same reasoning a man with one-sixteenth Chinese blood is a
Chinaman and one-sixteenth of the blood of any race relegates him to
that race. As a matter of fact, that question of one-sixteenth is not
likely to arise in any case save where it is desired to make out a
person a Negro, and that is where the nub of the whole matter rests.
“It is probable that there are thousands of persons in this country with
one-sixteenth Negro blood in them who do not know it themselves nor does
any one else, for family records are not always carefully kept along
these lines.”
VOTING.
The Boston Transcript has this letter from Dr. Horace Bumstead:
“Dr. Doremus Scudder of Hawaii told the American Missionary Association
in Tremont Temple that the American Negro of the future will thank his
Southern white brother for depriving him of the ballot until he should
have proved his fitness for it—and that he would thank him
notwithstanding the manner in which his ballot had been taken away. Let
us see just what this means.
“It means that the Negro will hereafter be grateful for a
disfranchisement practically based on color rather than unfitness—which
its promoters have boldly avowed was intended to disfranchise every
Negro if possible and not one white man if it could be avoided, and
which they accomplished through ‘grandfather’ and ‘understanding’
clauses artfully devised to deprive the Negro of his constitutional
guarantees for a square deal as regards suffrage qualifications.
“It means that the Negro will hereafter be grateful for a
disfranchisement which is seriously restricting his economic freedom and
opportunity, the protection of his life and property, his right to
travel in equal comfort for an equal fare, the education of his
children, and the guarding of the virtue of his wife and daughters.
“This conclusion Dr. Scudder naively states he has arrived at after
seven years’ residence, not in the South, but in Hawaii, and because the
liquor dealers there have bought up the votes of the natives. In other
words, when white men have so little control over their baser element
that they cannot keep them from offering bribes, the proper course, in
Dr. Scudder’s opinion, seems to be to take the ballot from all colored
men because some of them have accepted bribes, rather than to
disfranchise the few white men who have offered them.
“When American Negroes become grateful for a disfranchisement
accomplished in such ways, and on such grounds, and with such detriment
to their own welfare, they will have proved themselves unworthy of
American citizenship. And that time will never come. They are willing to
play the political game with their white brothers on equal terms, but
not with loaded dice and marked cards.”
NEGRO SOLDIERS.
The Boston Herald reports General Burt’s views on Negro soldiers as
follows:
“That in the five qualifications that go to make up a good soldier,
drilling, marksmanship, marching, discipline and fighting, the Negro
soldiers of the United States army are paramount, was the contention of
Brigadier-General Andrew S. Burt, retired, ex-commander of the
Brownsville Black Battalion, in his address last night on ‘The Negro
Soldier in Ancient and Modern Warfare,’ at a meeting of colored people
in St. Paul’s Baptist Church, under the auspices of the Boston Literary
Association.
“He cited two instances in the Spanish-American War when the colored
troops showed their true value as soldiers. The first instance being the
rescue of the Rough Riders by the Tenth Colored Cavalry, the second the
heroism of the Twenty-fourth Colored Infantry in volunteering as nurses
during the yellow fever epidemic.
“In speaking of army discipline he referred the audience to his sworn
testimony before the Senate committee on the Brownsville ‘shoot-up,’ and
challenged the comparison of any records of any class of good citizens
to equal that of the Twenty-fifth colored regiment.
“Speaking of the Negro soldier generally, he said: ‘I can find nowhere
in the histories of the Revolutionary, the Indian, the Spanish-American
or the war in the Philippines, a single instance where a Negro regiment
showed the white feather or refused to charge the enemy when called to
do so.’”
IN SOUTH AFRICA.
The A. P. O., of Cape Town, South Africa, a colored periodical, brings
word of the appointment of Mr. Hull, a colored man, to the South African
cabinet. It will be remembered that the South African Constitution
requires cabinet members to be “persons of European descent.” Apparently
men of mixed descent are not excluded. A. P. O. says:
“The decision of General Botha not to relinquish the premiership, and of
Mr. Hull to accept a seat, and so retain the post of Treasurer-General,
keep the Botha Ministry practically intact. We predicted that the Prime
Minister would get over his defeat and cling to his office with its
£4,000 a year.
“It is now safe to say that we are already on the road toward a Native
Parliament, which, according to Dr. Broon, is only one hundred years
off; for not only have many of the present M.L.A.’s an infusion of
native blood in their veins, as is evidenced by their features, but the
very Cabinet contains colored men. After all, we are moving pretty fast
toward the realization of a native Government.”
The prophecy of Professor Broon, to which A. P. O. refers, is thus
described in the Tsalo Ea Becoana:
“Prof. R. Broon, lecturing recently in Johannesburg on ‘South Africa 100
Years Hence,’ made some curious and interesting statements. He said he
had gone into the question and was thoroughly convinced that the black
man, if the present policy was continued, was going to rule South Africa
in 100 years. He did not include the colored people in his meaning, but
he referred to the Kafir or Bantu race. There were some 1,200,000 white
people in South Africa, while there were 7,200,000 Kafirs. One of the
principal factors that was welding the natives together was religion.
More and more black labor was being employed in the Cape Colony, and in
a short time the native would have a large number of trades in his
hands. Intermarriage between natives and whites was taking place in Cape
Colony. The segregation policy seemed to be the most practical way of
saving South Africa for the whites.”
[Illustration: Books]
A WINTER PILGRIMAGE
The race problem is not one problem. It differs not only in time, but in
place. Therefore I always go to different groups of colored people in
this land with much of interest and curiosity, knowing that each will
present its peculiar phase of relationship between the white and colored
group.
I have just come back from such a journey, and its scenes and lessons
are filling my thought.
There was Toledo, with its colored group a little pushed aside and half
forgotten in the onward rush of the growing city till the group gripped
itself and awoke and said: “We are a part of Toledo—you may not forget
us.” So now slowly comes the push forward and upward.
In Cleveland it is far different—it is not so much a matter of gaining
civic recognition as men and women—that battle was fought by worthy men
long years ago. It is the deeper problem of holding the ground gained;
of not letting theatres and restaurants and hotels inaugurate a new
discrimination which had once disappeared. This is a difficult battle of
the new economic rise of the Negro; when few Negroes applied or had
money to apply it was easy to say theoretically, “Live where you will,
go where you please.” But when a group of black folk growing in power
put a $75,000 church on your corner—that is a phase of the race problem
that hadn’t struck you before.
Between these cities of past and present lies the mystic city of the
future, with its great cloud walls.
In Oberlin there are nearly two thousand young folk at study and at
play. Working and playing beside them are a hundred colored boys and
girls, and they all walk on sacred ground, on ground long since
consecrated to racial equality and hatred of caste and slavery. Yet
among these venerable ideals obtrudes the Present and it, with all its
odd corners, must be builded into the future city.
The present holds not only the problem of the treatment of ten million
black folk elsewhere, but of the hundred colored boys and girls right
there in Oberlin. It presents a tremendous moral dilemma to frank young
souls. When these children came from anti-slavery homes they found it
easy and natural to treat black men as men. But coming now from a world
that thinks God made a big mistake in ever creating black folk—coming
from such social teaching, they hesitate. Once in a while a black
student (or rather a yellow one) may be elected a society, but usually
no desert in character or scholarship avails.
Yet this fact brings no mental peace or moral satisfaction. The spirit
of democracy is strong, the influence of the faculty is righteous, and I
came from five hours’ earnest conference with these young folk with a
sense of seeing a mighty battle for righteousness, and a belief that
somehow, sometime, justice would prevail.
But after all it was the men I met that meant most. Could I introduce
them? Let me see. There was the young lawyer who burned to awaken a
sleeping city to its duties and rights; there was the brown physician
who is one of the leading surgeons in the city, and his knife finds no
color line. Then the girl who ran a political campaign last month had a
father who was director in a white bank and one of the solid business
men of the town. In their parlor gathered a brown father, a yellow
mother, the white pastor and the white girl chum—but why should we
catalog the colors of their skins and not those of their clothes? In
Oberlin the chief book store is “colored,” and the chief paperhanger and
the chief building contractor. Elsewhere I sat with the man who had just
been elected a member of a leading white city club and heard how the
second highest mechanic in the Peerless motor factory wore “the shadowed
livery of the sun.”
Therefore, all is well? Therefore, all is not well. Here are a climbing
people. The hardiest and most talented and the pushing are literally
forcing a way. But against them and against the ordinary black man the
bonds of medievalism are drawn and ghettos and sumptuary laws are
encompassed in the color line.
W. E. B. D.
EDITORIAL
ENVY.
It is unfortunate that in the recent newspaper discussion of an Appeal
to Europe sent out not by this Association but by a number of colored
men of influence and standing, reference was constantly made to the
lowest personal motives and seldom to the arguments presented.
It is true that with all peoples, and especially with a race in the
throes of birth-pain, personal likes and jealousies play a wretchedly
large part. But it does not follow that they explain all the struggle
and difference of opinion. It is true that the rise of a man like Mr.
Booker T. Washington to a place of commanding influence has made him an
object of envy to many narrow souls. But it does not follow that the
thousands of intelligent people who differ with Mr. Washington are all
actuated by such motives, or are unable to distinguish great and vital
principles apart from personal feeling.
When, therefore, such differences of opinion arise, as it is natural and
healthy that they should arise, it is both wrong and unjust to assume
the motive to be necessarily low. Particularly is this true when
adequate causes of deep and compelling importance are openly and
honestly given as the cause of this difference.
Are such causes sufficient to sustain the complainers? That is a matter
of argument, not of innuendo or abuse. No man and no cause are above the
careful scrutiny and criticism of honest men, and certainly to-day there
is in the United States a very large field for argument as to the proper
attitude of colored leaders toward the race problem.
THE TRUTH.
To the honest seeker for light the puzzling thing about the Southern
situation is the absolutely contradictory statements that are often made
concerning conditions. For instance, the New York Evening Post is taken
to task by the Norfolk (Va.) Landmark for assuming that Southern colored
men are largely disfranchised. The Virginia paper says “No Negro in
Virginia can be kept from voting, provided he measures up to the same
requirements for the exercising of that right that the white man must.
The laws of the State will protect him in the right should election
officials deny it him. That Negroes in this State may freely qualify to
vote is fully attested by the fact that thousands of them do vote.”
Again, the New Orleans Picayune declares with regard to the complaint of
disfranchisement, “The arrant and absolute falsity of the specification
in regard to the ballot is seen in the fact that every legal bar to the
exercise of the ballot applies to whites and Negroes alike. Every
elector (voter) must either be able to read and write or, in case of
illiteracy, he must pay taxes on ordinary assessable property of the
minimum value of $300. These laws are strictly in accordance with the
requirements of the Constitution of the United States, and have been so
pronounced by the courts.”
Just so in earlier days before legal disfranchisement, paper after paper
and orator after orator declared that the Negro could and did vote
without let or hindrance.
Despite this, every intelligent person in the United States knows that
these statements are false. The Southern testimony to this is itself
open and convincing. Not only have we Mr. Tillman’s frank and
picturesque testimony on the past, but to-day the Richmond (Va.) Leader
says that all is well in Virginia “since we disfranchised the Negro”;
Congressman Underwood of Alabama says the Alabama Negro “does not count
for anything politically” in that State; a prominent judge on the
Mississippi bench says “The Negroes in Mississippi do not vote and
should not,” and it is a matter of plain official record in Louisiana
that of over 150,000 Negro males 21 years of age and over (of whom
nearly 70,000 could read and write) there were in 1908 only 1,743
registered as voters, and these were disfranchised by the “White
Primary” system. In the face of these facts, does it pay deliberately to
misrepresent the truth?
OPPORTUNITY.
A friend of our Association writes: “While I heartily approve of the
colored people being given an opportunity to improve their condition, I
feel that after doing what I can to help them to earn a living
honorably, they must depend on their own resources to advance
themselves.” This is the attitude of many excellent friends of humanity,
but it assumes that if a man is fairly equipped for earning a living
to-day he will have the opportunity to do so, and that the paths before
him will be open so as to make the rise of the deserving possible.
It is precisely because the opportunity to earn a living, even for those
equipped to do so, is not given to-day to thousands of colored people in
the United States, that the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People exists. It is wrong and wasteful to do for people what
they can and ought to do for themselves, but when the doors of
opportunity are so shut in their faces so as to discourage and keep back
the hard-working and deserving, then action is called for.
To-day Negroes may work freely as menials at low wages; they may work
freely as farm laborers under conditions of semi-slavery; higher than
that they meet unusual difficulties—the difficulty of saving capital
from low wages to farm or go into business; the difficulty of securing
admission to the trades even when competent; the difficulty of securing
protection under the law and of rearing a family in decency; the
difficulty of educating their children; the difficulty of protecting
their rights by the ballot. To be sure, if they are unusually gifted and
pushing they may push higher at the risk of insult and bitter
opposition. Thus the fact remains that the mass of the willing, eager
workers of the race are held back and forced down by a deep and growing
race prejudice, and these, pressing down on the lower strata, encourage
in them laziness and vagrancy and crime. The National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People is an organization for giving the
colored race a reasonable opportunity to help itself.
SCHOOLS.
The philanthropist of a city like New York is bewildered and often
exasperated by the demands and begging of colored schools in the South.
To some extent this is inevitable, and is due to the fact that the
United States is undertaking to give elementary education to a race of
ten million people very largely by private philanthropy instead of
making this a State and even a national charge, and leaving to voluntary
effort the college work and work of social uplift.
But beyond this the philanthropic world is to some extent itself to
blame because of the encouragement it gives to unknown and unvouched-for
enterprises and to unwise and unjustifiable attempts to duplicate
existing foundations.
The representative of a great fund once called on the writer and
expressed great sorrow that an alleged school in the South to which one
of the most prominent New York philanthropists had given $5,000 was
found on investigation to be no school at all. This was unfortunate, but
there are hundreds of good and deserving schools starving for help which
this philanthropist did not give to because their representatives did
not appear so glib or plausible. It is not the smoothest talker who
necessarily is doing the best work.
[Illustration:
_THE NATIONAL PASTIME._
_Seventy-five per cent. of the Negroes lynched have not even been
accused of rape._
]
Again, indiscriminate and ill-advised giving encourages such things as
are happening in Atlanta. Atlanta needs public elementary schools, but
it does not need more private schools. The existing schools are equipped
for excellent work in industries, agriculture, college training and some
professional work. With adequate help and endowment they could do
splendid work.
Because, however, one man deservedly lost his job at one of these great
schools, he is attempting to found a new school in Atlanta and
unnecessarily duplicate this work. Soon he will appear in New York
asking funds, and without investigation or thought many will give. When
they find their efforts wasted the deserving schools will suffer.
There is crying need of an impartial, thoroughly reliable directory of
educational and philanthropic effort among Negroes, a central
information bureau on broad lines, with maps and figures at command
which could furnish unbiased facts. The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People is ready to undertake such a work
immediately on a small scale, and to expand it whenever it can get the
necessary support.
THE OLD STORY.
There is without doubt a large criminal and semi-criminal class among
colored people. This is but another way of saying that the social uplift
of a group of freedmen is a serious task. But it is also true, and
painfully true, that the crime imputed carelessly and recklessly against
colored people gives an impression of far greater criminality than the
facts warrant.
Take, for instance, a typical case: A little innocent schoolgirl is
brutally murdered in New Jersey. A Negro vagabond is arrested.
Immediately the news is heralded from East to West, from North to South,
in Europe and Asia, of the crime of this black murderer. Immediately a
frenzied, hysterical mob gathers and attempts to lynch the poor wretch.
He is spirited away and the public is almost sorry that he has escaped
summary justice. Without counsel or friends, the man is shut up in
prison and tortured to make him confess. “They did pretty near
everything to me except kill me,” whispered the wretched man to the
first friend he saw.
Finally, after the whole black race in America had suffered aspersion
for several weeks, sense begins to dawn in Jersey. After all, what proof
was there against this man? He was lazy, he had been in jail for alleged
theft from gypsies, he was good natured, and he drank whiskey. That was
all. Yet he stayed in jail under no charge and under universal censure.
The coroner’s jury found no evidence to indict him. Still he lay in
jail. Finally the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People stepped in and said, “What are you holding this man for?” The
Public Prosecutor got red in the face and vociferated. Then he went
downtown, and when the _habeas corpus_ proceedings came and the judge
asked again: “Why are you holding this man?” the prosecutor said
chirpily, “For violating election laws,” and brought a mass of
testimony. Then the judge discharged the prisoner from the murder charge
and congratulated the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People—but the man is still in jail.
Such justice is outrageous and such methods disgraceful. Black folk are
willing to shoulder their own sins, but the difference between a
vagabond and a murderer is too tremendous to be lightly ignored.
“SOCIAL EQUALITY.”
At last we have a definition of the very elusive phrase “Social
Equality” as applied to the Negro problem. In stating their grievances
colored people have recently specified these points:
1. Disfranchisement, even of educated Negroes.
2. Curtailment of common school training.
3. Confinement to “Ghettos.”
4. Discrimination in wages.
5. Confinement to menial employment.
6. Systematic insult of their women.
7. Lynching and miscarriage of justice.
8. Refusal to recognize fitness “in political or industrial life.”
9. Personal discourtesy.
Southern papers in Charlotte, Richmond, New Orleans and Nashville have
with singular unanimity hastened to call this complaint an unequivocal
demand for “social equality,” and as such absolutely inadmissible. We
are glad to have a frank definition, because we have always suspected
this smooth phrase. We recommend on this showing that hereafter colored
men who hasten to disavow any desire for “social equality” should
carefully read the above list of disabilities which social inequality
would seem to prescribe.
ASHAMED.
Any colored man who complains of the treatment he receives in America is
apt to be faced sooner or later by the statement that he is ashamed of
his race.
The statement usually strikes him as a most astounding piece of
illogical reasoning, to which a hot reply is appropriate.
And yet notice the curious logic of the persons who say such things.
They argue:
White men alone are men. This Negro wants to be a man. _Ergo_ he wants
to be a white man.
Their attention is drawn to the efforts of colored people to be treated
decently. This minor premise therefore attracts them. But the major
premise—the question as to treating black men like white men—never
enters their heads, nor can they conceive it entering the black man’s
head. If he wants to be a man he must want to be white, and therefore it
is with peculiar complacency that a Tennessee paper says of a dark
champion of Negro equality: “He bitterly resents his Negro blood.”
Not so, O Blind Man. He bitterly resents your treatment of Negro blood.
The prouder he is, or has a right to be, of the blood of his black
fathers, the more doggedly he resists the attempt to load men of that
blood with ignominy and chains. It is race pride that fights for
freedom; it is the man ashamed of his blood who weakly submits and
smiles.
JESUS CHRIST IN BALTIMORE.
It seems that it is not only Property that is screaming with fright at
the Black Spectre in Baltimore, but Religion also. Two churches founded
in the name of Him who “put down the mighty from their seats and exalted
them of low degree” are compelled to move. Their palatial edifices
filled with marble memorials and Tiffany windows are quite useless for
the purposes of their religion since black folk settled next door.
Incontinently they have dropped their Bibles and gathered up their
priestly robes and fled, after selling their property to colored people
for $125,000 in good, cold cash.
Where are they going? Uptown. Up to the wealthy and exclusive and
socially select. There they will establish their little gods again, and
learned prelates with sonorous voices will ask the echoing pews: “How
can the Church reach the working man?”
Why not ask the working man? Why not ask black people, and yellow
people, and poor people, and all the people from whom such congregations
flee in holy terror? The church that does not run from the lowly finds
the lowly at its doors, and there are some such churches in the land,
but we fear that their number in Baltimore is not as great as should be.
“EXCEPT SERVANTS.”
The noticeable reservation in all attempts, North and South, to separate
black folk and white is the saving phrase, “Except servants.”
Are not servants colored? Is the objection, then, to colored people or
to colored people who are not servants? In other words, is this race
prejudice inborn antipathy or a social and economic caste?
SOCIAL CONTROL
By JANE ADDAMS, of Hull House
I always find it very difficult to write upon the great race problem
which we have in America. I think, on the whole, that the most
satisfactory books on the subject are written by people outside of
America. This is certainly true of two books, “White Capital and Black
Labor,” by the Governor of Jamaica, and William Archer’s book entitled
“Afro-America.” Although the latter is inconclusive, it at least gives
one the impression that the man who has written it has seen clearly into
the situation, and that, I suppose, is what it is very difficult for any
American to do.
One thing, however, is clear to all of us, that not only in the South,
but everywhere in America, a strong race antagonism is asserting itself,
which has various modes of lawless and insolent expression. The
contemptuous attitude of the so-called superior race toward the inferior
results in a social segregation of each race, and puts the one race
group thus segregated quite outside the influences of social control
represented by the other. Those inherited resources of the race embodied
in custom and kindly intercourse which make much more for social
restraint than does legal enactment itself are thus made operative only
upon the group which has inherited them, and the newer group which needs
them most is practically left without. Thus in every large city we have
a colony of colored people who have not been brought under social
control, and a majority of the white people in the same community are
tacitly endeavoring to keep from them those restraints which can be
communicated only through social intercourse. One could easily
illustrate this lack of inherited control by comparing the experiences
of a group of colored girls with those of a group representing the
daughters of Italian immigrants, or of any other South European peoples.
The Italian girls very much enjoy the novelty of factory work, the
opportunity to earn money and to dress as Americans do, but this new
freedom of theirs is carefully guarded. Their mothers seldom give them
permission to go to a party in the evening, and never without
chaperonage. Their fathers consider it a point of honor that their
daughters shall not be alone on the streets after dark. The daughter of
the humblest Italian receives this care because her parents are but
carrying out social traditions. A group of colored girls, on the other
hand, are quite without this protection. If they yield more easily to
the temptations of a city than any other girls, who shall say how far
the lack of social restraint is responsible for their downfall? The
Italian parents represent the social traditions which have been worked
out during centuries of civilization, and which often become a deterrent
to progress through the very bigotry with which they cling to them;
nevertheless, it is largely through these customs and manners that new
groups are assimilated into civilization.
Added to this is the fact that a decent colored family, if it is also
poor, often finds it difficult to rent a house save one that is
undesirable, because situated near a red-light district, and the family
in the community least equipped with social tradition is forced to
expose its daughters to the most flagrantly immoral conditions the
community permits. This is but one of the many examples of the harmful
effects of race segregation which might be instanced.
Another result of race antagonism is the readiness to irritation which
in time characterizes the intercourse of the two races. We stupidly
force one race to demand as a right from the other those things which
should be accorded as a courtesy, and every meeting between
representatives of the two races is easily characterized by insolence
and arrogance. To the friction of city life, and the complications of
modern intercourse, is added this primitive race animosity which should
long since have been outgrown. When the white people in a city are
tacitly leagued against the colored people within its borders, the
result is sure to be disastrous, but there are still graver dangers in
permitting the primitive instinct to survive and to become
self-assertive. When race antagonism manifests itself through lynching,
it defiantly insists that it is superior to all those laws which have
been gradually evolved during thousands of years, and which form at once
the record and the instrument of civilization. The fact that this race
antagonism enables the men acting under its impulsion to justify
themselves in their lawlessness constitutes the great danger of the
situation. The men claim that they are executing a primitive retribution
which precedes all law, and in this belief they put themselves in a
position where they cannot be reasoned with, although this dangerous
manifestation must constantly be reckoned with as a deterrent to
progress and a menace to orderly living. Moreover, this race antagonism
is very close to the one thing in human relations which is uglier than
itself, namely, sex antagonism, and in every defense made in its behalf
an appeal to the latter antagonism is closely interwoven. Many men in
every community justify violence when it is committed under the
impulsion of these two antagonisms, and others carelessly assert that
great laws of human intercourse, first and foremost founded upon justice
and right relations between man and man, should thus be disregarded and
destroyed.
If the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will
soberly take up every flagrant case of lawbreaking, and if it allow no
withdrawal of constitutional rights to pass unchallenged, it will
perform a most useful service to America and for the advancement of all
its citizens. Many other opportunities may be open in time to such an
association, but is not this its first and most obvious obligation?
[Illustration: Books]
THE TEACHER.
BY LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL.
Lord, who am I to teach the way
To little children day by day,
So prone myself to go astray?
I teach them _Knowledge_, but I know
How faint they flicker, and how low
The candles of my knowledge glow.
I teach them _Power_ to will and do,
But only now to learn anew
My own great weakness through and through.
I teach them _Love_ for all mankind
And all God’s creatures; but I find
My love comes lagging still behind.
Lord, if their guide I still must be,
O let the little children see
The teacher leaning hard on thee!
Employment of Colored Women in Chicago
From a Study Made by the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
In considering the field of employment for colored women, the
professional women must be discussed separately. They admit fewer
difficulties and put a brave face on the matter, but in any case their
present position was gained only after a long struggle. The education is
the less difficult part. The great effort is to get the work after
having prepared themselves for it. The Negro woman, like her white
sister, is constantly forced to choose between a lower wage or no work.
The pity is that her own people do not know the colored girl needs their
help nor realize how much they could do for her.
Two of the musicians found the struggle too hard and were compelled to
leave Chicago. One girl of twenty-three, a graduate of the Chicago
Conservatory of Music, is playing in a low concert hall in one of the
worst sections of the city, from 8 in the evening till 4 in the morning.
Her wages are $18 a week, and with this she supports a father and mother
and younger sister.
There are from fifteen to twenty colored teachers in the public schools
of Chicago. This information was obtained from the office of the
superintendent, where it was said no record was kept of the number of
colored teachers. When they are given such a place they are always
warned that they are likely to have difficulty. As a rule they are in
schools where the majority of the children are Negroes. They are all in
the grades, but they say that their opportunities for promotion are
equal to those of white women. Indeed, they say that there are two
places where they are not discriminated against because of their color.
One is in the public schools, the other is under the Civil Service
Commission.
However, the professional women do not have the greatest difficulty. The
real barriers are met by the women who have had only an average
education—girls who have finished high school, or perhaps only the
eighth grade. These girls, if they were white, would find employment at
clerical and office work in Chicago’s department stores, mail order
houses and wholesale stores. But these positions are absolutely closed
to the Negro girl. She has no choice but housework.
When the object of the inquiry was explained to one woman she said:
“Why, no one wants a Negro to work for him. I’ll show you—look in the
newspaper.” And she produced a paper with its columns of advertisements
for help wanted. “See, not one person in this whole city has asked for a
Negro to work for him.”
A great many of the colored women find what they call “day work” most
satisfactory. This means from eight to nine hours a day at some kind of
housework, cleaning, washing, ironing or dusting. This the Negro women
prefer to regular positions as maids, because it allows them to go at
night to their families. The majority of the women who do this work
receive $1.50, with 10 cents extra for carfare. There was a higher grade
of day work for which the pay was $2 a day besides the carfare. This
included the packing of trunks, washing of fine linen and lace curtains,
and even some mending.
The records of the South Side Free Employment Agency showed that the
wages of colored women were uniformly lower than those of white women.
Of course, there is no way of judging of ability by records, but where
the white cooks received $8 per week the Negro cooks were paid $7, and
where the white maids received $6, sometimes, but not as frequently as
in the case of the cooks, the Negro maid received less. One dollar and a
half was paid for “day work.” At the colored employment agency which is
run in connection with the Frederic Douglas Centre they have many more
requests for maids than they have girls to fill the places. Good places
with high wages are sometimes offered, but the girls are more and more
demanding “day work” and refusing to work by the week. At the South Side
Free Employment Agency during the months of January, February and March
of this year forty-two positions for colored women were found.[2] These
forty-two positions were filled by thirty-six women, some of them coming
back to the office two or three times during the three months. The
superintendent said it was difficult to find places for the colored
women who applied, and they probably succeeded in placing only about 25
per cent. of them. In the opinion of those finding the work for the
girls in this office, the reason for the difficulties they encounter are
the fact that they do not remain long in one place and have a general
reputation for dishonesty. The fundamental cause of the discrimination
by employers against them is racial prejudice either in the employer
himself or in his customers.
Footnote 2:
454 white women in the same time.
One girl who has only a trace of colored blood was able to secure a
position as salesgirl in a store. After she had been there a long time
she asked for an increase in wages, such as had been allowed the white
girls, but the request was refused and she was told that she ought to be
thankful that they kept her at all.
In many cases, especially when the women were living alone, the
earnings, plus the income from the lodgers, barely covered the rent.
When they work by the day they rarely work more than four days a week.
Sometimes the amount they gave as their weekly wage fell short of even
paying the rent, but more often the rent was covered and a very small
margin left to live on.
Such treatment has discouraged the Negro woman. She has accepted the
conditions and seldom makes any real effort to get into other sorts of
work. The twelfth question on the schedule, “What attempts have you made
to secure other kinds of work in Chicago or elsewhere?” was usually
answered by a question: “What’s the use of trying to get work when you
know you can’t get it?”
The colored women are like white women in the same grade of life. They
do not realize the need of careful training, and they do not appreciate
the advantages of specialization in their work. But the Negro woman is
especially handicapped, for she not only lacks training but must
overcome the prejudice against her color. Of the 270 women interviewed,
43 per cent. were doing some form of housework for wages, yet all
evidence of conscious training was entirely lacking. This need must be
brought home to them before they can expect any real advancement.
A peculiar problem presents itself in connection with the housework.
Practically this is the only occupation open to Negro women, and it is
also the only occupation where one is not expected to go home at night.
This the Negroes insist on doing. They are accused of having no family
feeling, yet the fact remains that they will accept a lower wage and
live under far less advantageous conditions for the sake of being free
at night. That is why the “day work” is so popular. Rather than live in
some other person’s home and get good wages for continued service, the
colored woman prefers to live in this way. She will have a tiny room, go
out as many days a week as she can get places, and pay for her room and
part of her board out of her earnings, which sometimes amount to only $3
or $4.50 per week.
Occasionally laundry, sewing or hair work is done in their homes, but
the day work is almost universally preferred.
Many of the Negroes are so nearly white that they can be mistaken for
white girls, in which case they are able to secure very good positions
and keep them as long as their color is not known.
One girl worked for a fellowship at the Art Institute. Her work was good
and the place was promised her. In making out the papers she said Negro,
when asked her nationality, to the great astonishment of the man in
charge. He said he would have to look into the matter, but the girl did
not get the fellowship.
A young man, son of a colored minister in the city, had a position in a
business man’s office, kept the books, collected rents, etc. He had a
peculiar name, and one of the tenants remembered it in connection with
the boy’s father, who had all the physical characteristics of the Negro.
The tenant made inquiries and reported the matter to the landlord,
threatening to leave the building if he had to pay rent to a Negro. The
boy was discharged.
A colored girl, who was very light colored, said that more than once she
secured a place and the colored people themselves had told the employer
he had a “Negro” working for him. The woman with whom she was living
said: “It’s true every time. The Negroes are their own worst enemies.”
To summarize, the isolation which is forced upon the Negro, both in his
social and his business life, constitutes one of the principal
difficulties which he encounters. As far as the colored woman is
concerned, as we have shown, the principal occupations which are open to
her are domestic service and school teaching. This leaves a large number
of women whose education has given them ambitions beyond housework, who
are not fitted to compete with northern teachers and yet cannot obtain
clerical work because they are Negroes. Certain fields in which there is
apparently an opportunity for the colored women are little tried. For
example, sewing is profitable and there is little feeling against the
employment of Negro seamstresses, and yet few follow the dressmaking
profession.
Without doubt one fundamental reason for the difficulties the colored
woman meets in seeking employment is her lack of industrial training.
The white woman suffers from this also, but the colored woman doubly so.
The most hopeful sign is the growing conviction on the part of the
leading Negro women of the city that there is need of co-operation
between them and the uneducated and unskilled, and that they are trying
to find some practical means to give to these women the much-needed
training for industrial life.
[Illustration: Books]
THE BURDEN
_If blood be the price of liberty,
If blood be the price of liberty,
If blood be the price of liberty,
Lord God, we have paid in full._
COLORED MEN LYNCHED WITHOUT TRIAL.
1885 78
1886 71
1887 80
1888 95
1889 95
1890 90
1891 121
1892 155
1893 154
1894 134
1895 112
1896 80
1897 122
1898 102
1899 84
1900 107
1901 107
1902 86
1903 86
1904 83
1905[3] 60
1906[3] 60
1907[3] 60
1908[3] 80
1909 73
1910[4] 50
—————
Total 2,425
Footnote 3:
Estimated.
Footnote 4:
Estimated to date.
* * * * *
The policy usually carried out consistently in the South of refusing the
colored woman the courtesies accorded the white woman leads to some
unfortunate results. One of the courtesies refused is the title of
“Mrs.” or “Miss.” Thus a Kentucky newspaper, in its recent educational
news, notes “the resignation of Mrs. Mattie Spring Barr as a substitute
teacher and the unanimous election of Miss Ella Williams,” while a few
paragraphs below it says that “Principal Russell of the Russell Negro
School asked that Lizzie Brooks be promoted to the position of regular
teacher and that Annie B. Jones be made a substitute.” Here we have two
groups of women doing similar important work for the community, yet the
group with Negro blood is denied the formality of address that every
other section of the country gives to the teacher in a public school.
* * * * *
How much the South loses by this policy is shown by a Northerner’s
experience in the office of one of the philanthropic societies. Two
probation officers, volunteers, were going out to their work. The
secretary of the society addressed the first, a white woman, as Mrs.
Brown: the second, a little middle-aged black woman, he called Mary.
When they had left the Northerner questioned the difference in address.
“I couldn’t call a nigger Mrs. or Miss.,” the secretary expostulated.
“It would be impossible.” “But here in your own city,” the Northerner
answered, “I happen to know a number of educated colored girls, some of
them college graduates, who have a desire for social service. Under you
they might learn the best methods of charitable work, but they would not
care to be called ‘Annie’ or ‘Jane’ by a young white man. Can you afford
to lose such helpers as these?”
He had but one answer. “It would never do for me to say Mrs. or Miss to
a nigger. It would be impossible.”
* * * * *
Throughout the country there are a number of colored postal clerks.
These men, with others in the service, belong to the Mutual Benefit
Association. At a recent meeting in Chicago the delegates to this Mutual
Benefit Association voted in the future to admit only clerks of the
Caucasian race. According to one of the colored clerks, the meeting that
passed this vote was “packed,” colored members receiving no notice to
elect delegates to it.
* * * * *
The black servant is more acceptable to some people than the educated
colored man. As an instance of this is Mr. U. of Washington, a highly
cultivated Negro of some means. As owner of a cottage and a few acres of
land in a small Virginia town, he good-naturedly allowed an old black
woman to live rent-free upon his place. On her death he went down to
claim the property, but found the woman’s daughter had put in a counter
claim. The case went to court, and in his plea before the jury the
woman’s lawyer said: “Are you going to take property away from this
black mammy’s daughter to give it to a smart nigger from Washington?”
And despite Mr. U.’s former yearly payment of taxes, despite the deed
which he himself held, he lost his suit.
* * * * *
In Wilcox County Ala., there are 10,758 Negro children and 2,000 white
children of school age, making a total population of 12,758. The per
capita allowance for each child in the State this year is $2.56.
According to the recent apportionment of the school fund on this basis,
Wilcox County receives $32,660.48. Of this amount the 10,758 Negro
children have been allowed one-fifth, or $6,532.09, about 60 cents each,
while the 2,000 white children receive the remaining four-fifths, or
$26,128.39, about $13 each. Further investigation shows that only 1,000
of the 10,758 Negro children are in school, leaving 6,758 with
absolutely no provision for obtaining even a common school education.
TALKS ABOUT WOMEN
NUMBER TWO By Mrs. JOHN E. MILHOLLAND
A most interesting and instructive morning was given at the Berkeley
Lyceum on Wednesday, December 7, under the auspices of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The weather was
bitterly cold, and although the great fall of snow during the night had
made getting about a not only troublesome but dangerous experience, the
little theatre was well filled with many well-known women in sympathy
with the cause and interested in all sorts of activities for progress.
The chairman, Mr. John Haynes Holmes, introduced Madame Hackley, who
gave the musical part of the program, and did it well with her customary
finish and appreciation.
Madam Hackley was trained in Paris, and gave several French selections
with great skill.
Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, the speaker, was most enthusiastically
received, and made, as usual, a most effective and touching speech, to
which her audience listened with not only interest but surprise, as many
present had never dreamed of the struggles of these women in their
efforts for educational advancement.
Without doubt Mrs. Terrell is one of the best orators we have to-day.
She has much dignity, with a very easy and fluent mode of speaking. She
is direct, and when, as on this occasion, she is talking for the women
of her race, her enthusiasm and sincerity carry conviction to her
listeners. When she had finished Mrs. Terrell was warmly congratulated,
and the enthusiastic daughter of the great orator, Robert Ingersoll,
Mrs. Walston R. Brown, declared that “Mrs. Terrell must tell her story
again to a larger and fuller audience.” In her remarks Mrs. Terrell told
of the obstacles which confront colored women and girls in their efforts
to better their conditions. Often having to battle against this great
evil of race prejudice which yet lingers in our land and which so often
stands in the way of progress for these women, not only, said Mrs.
Terrell, must she struggle with the handicap of color, but only too
often she gets no sympathy from the white woman, who should be at least
willing to give a helping hand to these colored friends who, like
herself, are more or less looking forward to perfect freedom and all
which that means for womanhood. The speaker thought that right here was
a big field for the American woman’s activities, and hoped for the
co-operation of her white friends.
Mrs. Stanton Blatch, who was in the audience, made a short but forceful
speech for the cause of women, and thought “the vote” would help along
quicker than anything else all reforms of this or any other nature. The
secretary of the Trades Woman’s League also spoke, and declared that she
would do her part toward opening the doors of her association to all
women, whether white or colored.
After a most delightful rendering of several Negro melodies, Mrs.
Hackley told how she so much hoped to establish a school of music for
her people. No one hearing her direct, simple and earnest story doubted
for a moment her ultimate success in this worthy effort, and she most
certainly will have the co-operation of every musical member of her
audience.
The chairman made a few remarks with his usual dignity and precision,
and the first musical morning was voted a real success. Those having
boxes were Mrs. Villard, Mrs. E. W. Harkness, Mrs. Paul M. Warburg, Mrs.
O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. Robert Ingersoll, whose daughter, Miss Maud,
acted as one of the ushers; Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, Mrs. Frederick
Nathan, Mrs. Frances R. Keyser, Mrs. Charles W. Anderson, together with
many other well-known women, white and colored.
The arrangements were in charge of Miss Frances Blascoer, executive
secretary of the Association.
[Illustration: Books]
The annual report of British East Africa for the year 1908–09, which was
issued a few months ago, states that the period was not marked by any
salient events, but the Protectorate had made steady progress in spite
of weather conditions somewhat unfavorable to agriculture. There had
been little or no friction with native tribes. Labor difficulties still
exist, but show a tendency to diminish. European overseers of the native
railway laborers have proved far more satisfactory than the Indians
formerly employed.
The report says of slavery:
“The ordinance for the abolition of the legal status of slavery has
worked well and without friction during the year. Altogether 3,593 cases
have been settled by the District Courts, and compensation to the amount
of £7,053 has been awarded.”
WHAT TO READ
PERIODICALS.
Plea for the Conservation of Another Great National Resource. F. P.
Chisholm. Education, November.
Dip of the Tar Brush. M. A. H. New England Magazine, October.
Special Plea of a Southerner. E. Harlan. New England Magazine,
October.
Prince Henry of Portugal and the African Crusade of the Fifteenth
Century. C. R. Beasley. American Historical Review, October.
Excavation of Cyrene. F. W. Kelsey. Nation, October 27.
Diary of Gideon Welles. Atlanta, December.
Cuban Experiences. Frederick Funston. Scribner’s, December.
A Hero’s Conscience. G. Bradford, Jr. Atlanta, December.
BOOKS.
Wilson, Lady S. D. A.—South African Memories. Longmans.
Shotwell, W. G.—Life of Charles Sumner. Crowell. 733 pp.
Steffens. Alexander H., Recollections of. Doubleday, Page & Co. 572
pp.
Newton, J. H.—Lincoln and Herndon. Torch Press. 367 pp.
Sylvester, H. M.—Indian Wars of New England. Clark. 3 vols.
Haring, C. H.—The Buccaneers of the West Indies in the 17th Century.
Dutton. 298 pp.
Hagood, Johnson.—Memoirs of the War of Secession. State Co. 498 pp.
Deutsch, G.—History of the Jews. Bloch. 122 pp.
Shoemaker. M. M.—Islam Lands. Putnams. 251 pp.
Withers, P.—Egypt of Yesterday and To-day. Stokes. 293 pp.
Addams, Jane.—Twenty Years at Hull House. Macmillan, 462 pp.
Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol, IX: Labor
Movement. Clark. 378 pp.
THE LADY OF THE SLAVE STATES.
Mrs. George Haven Putnam, in a very charming essay in the Contemporary
Review for December, discusses “The Lady of the Slave States.” She deals
gently enough with her subject; she says that the slave-owner’s wife
like everybody else with slavery was blighted by its curse, but she
demolished very effectually the myth of the gracious fascinating woman
of culture who ruled family and estate by the charm of her personality.
The ante-bellum Southern lady never had much to say for herself and was
in short not “the Gothic saint in her niche” that tradition pictures,
but a kindly little creature surrounded by “Orientalism” and little
better off, so far as opportunities for development went, than any lady
of the harem.
Mrs. Putnam quotes Miss Martineau, who traveled extensively through the
slave States, to show how the system limited the white women and made
them “the greatest slaves on the plantation.” Patience was the supreme
virtue of the ante-bellum lady—they made the best of a bad state of
affairs. Logic she had little or none, and her up-bringing tended to
make her a delightful girl but a middle-aged woman of only moderate
attractions. And while she was often very kind to her slaves her
sensibilities seemed in some measure blunted by perpetual sight of
suffering and injustice.
When the war ended the ex-mistresses of slaves showed how good was the
material that had been buried under the “Orientalism” of the plantation.
RACE PREJUDICE IN THE ORIENT.
Race Prejudice: An address by Melville E. Stone to the Quill Club, New
York City.
The best review of this remarkable little pamphlet will be a few
extracts from its pages:
What is to be the outcome? What does all this mean for the future of the
world? Let us view the problem from the political, the commercial and
the moral aspects. How long will the 6,000 soldiers we have in the
Philippines be able to keep our flag afloat among 8,000,000 of natives?
How long will the 75,000 English soldiers in India be able to maintain
British sovereignty over 300,000,000 of Asians? Believe me, these are
not idle questions. They are up to us for an answer, whether we will or
no, and upon our ability to make answer will depend the future of what
we are pleased to call our Western civilization. I would not be an
alarmist, and yet I would have you feel that Macauley’s suggestion of
the New Zealander on a broken arch of London Bridge, sketching the ruins
of St. Paul, has come to be more than an extravagant figure of speech.
And I am convinced that there is real danger awaiting us unless we mend
our ways. It is not the Asian who needs educating; it is the European. I
am not worrying half so much about the heathen in his blindness as I am
about the Christian in his blindness. Asia is awake and preparing for
the coming struggle. And we are doing very much to force the issue and
to prepare her for the contest. For a century we have been sending at
enormous cost our missionaries to all parts of the hemisphere to
civilize. There may be doubt as to the amount of proselyting we have
been able to accomplish; there can be no possible doubt of the work we
have done to strengthen the Asian people politically and commercially.
We shall never meet the problems growing out of our relation with the
Far East unless we absolutely and once for all put away race prejudice.
I believe the European snob in Asia is distinctly the enemy of the
civilized West. And his coadjutor in this country is a fitting criminal
yoke-fellow. Let me give you some illustrations of what I mean—cases
which came under my personal observation. From Bombay to Yokohama there
is not a social club at any port or treaty point where a native,
whatever his culture or refinement, will be admitted. At the Bengal Club
at Calcutta last year a member in perfectly good standing innocently
invited an Eurasian gentleman—that is, one who is half native and half
European—to dine with him. It became known that the invitation had been
extended, and a storm of opposition broke among the members. The matter
was finally adjusted by setting aside the ladies’ department of the
club, and there the offending member and his unfortunate guest dined
alone. The next day the member was called before the board of governors
and notified that another like breach of the rules would result in his
expulsion. The beating of native servants and workmen in India is a
daily and hourly occurrence. It formerly was so at Hong Kong and
Shanghai, but Mr. Sprague, the representative of the Standard Oil
Company at Shanghai, told me that since the Russo-Japanese war the
natives would not stand it, and that all beating of them by Europeans in
that city had ceased.
The son of a maharaja goes to England, is educated at Oxford or
Cambridge, is lionized in the West End of London—mayhap he is honored
with an invitation to Windsor. When he goes back home he may enter no
white man’s club; if he be fortunate enough to be invited to a white
man’s function, no white woman will dance or associate with him; and if
by any luck he should marry a European, he, his wife and his children
become outcasts. Although native troops, like the Sikhs, have shown
undying loyalty to the British flag and on frequent occasions have
exhibited courage in the highest degree, no one of them ever has or ever
can achieve the Victoria Cross.
Socially they are all saying to us: “Stop cheating us, stop swindling
us, stop your treating us as your inferiors who are to be beaten and
robbed.” Japan is crying out, “Treat us fairly and we will go more than
half-way. Leave to us the question whether Japanese laborers shall go to
America to annoy you, and we will stop them. But do not say that you
will admit the lazaroni of Hungary and Italy and Russia, simply because
they are white, and shut us out because we are yellow.”
The Sinhalese, natives of Ceylon, while I was in Colombo, addressed a
remarkable communication to the Governor-General. They said a hundred
years ago there was established in the United States a new theory of
government—that there should be no taxation without representation.
“Now,” they said, “we ask a share in the government of the island. We
pay taxes. You may fix a property qualification and say that no one
having less than a thousand pounds sterling shall share in the
government. We shall not object. You may also fix an educational
qualification. You may say that no one but a college graduate shall take
part in the government. We will not object. In short, you may fix any
qualification except a racial qualification. That would not be fair.”
“And what answer have you to make?” I asked Mr. Crosby Rolles, editor of
The Times of Ceylon. “To meet their request,” he replied, “would mean to
turn over the government of Ceylon to them at once, because there are
6,000 of them and only 5,000 English men, women and children. We must
stop educating them.”
What do you think of that for a remedy? Personally. I do not think it
will work, any more than I think any rule of arbitrary repression can
endure. I cannot bring myself to sympathize altogether with the views
expressed by Mr. Roosevelt in his recent Guildhall speech. I take refuge
in what seems to me the larger experience and riper judgment of Lord
Curzon of Kedleston, who in July, 1904, was also given the freedom of
the City of London in Guildhall, and on that occasion used these words:
“Depend upon it, you will never rule the East except through the heart,
and the moment imagination has gone out of your Asiatic policy your
empire will dwindle and decay.
“In smug complacency you may close your doors which look toward Asia,
while you open wide those which look toward Europe; you may refuse the
Oriental admission to your schools, while you accord the privilege to
any child of a European; you may pile import duties mountain high, and
raise our standards of living to any pitch of extravagance; you may
build warships without limit, and you may continue to treat the Asian as
legitimate prey. But I am confident that it will not avail.
“As a soldier, whether at Omdurman, in the Sudan, or on 203–Metre Hill,
at Port Arthur, the man of color has shown himself a right good fighting
man; in commerce he has, by his industry, perseverance, ingenuity and
frugality, given us pause; and before the eternal throne his temporal
and his spiritual welfare are worth as much as yours and mine.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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=Educational Directory=
Howard University
WILBUR P. THIRKIELD, President
Washington, D. C.
The College of Arts and Sciences—Kelly Miller, A.M., Dean.
The Teachers’ College—Lewis B. Moore, A.M., Ph.D., Dean.
The Academy—George J. Cummings, A.M., Dean.
The Commercial College—George W. Cook, A.M., Dean.
School of Manual Arts and Applied Sciences—
PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS
The School of Theology—Isaac Clark, D.D., Dean.
The School of Medicine: Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical
Colleges—Edward O. Balloch, M.D., Dean.
The School of Law—Benjamin F. Leighton, LL.D., Dean.
For catalogue and special information address Dean of Department.
Atlanta University
Is beautifully located in the City of Atlanta, Ga. The courses of study
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For further information address
=President EDWARD T. WARE=
ATLANTA, GA.
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Address
W. S. SCARBOROUGH, President.
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This institution of learning, established in 1865, has industrial
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Address THE PRESIDENT
Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C.
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thirteen acres on one of the highest points of land in the city. Five
buildings, one just completed at a cost of $40,000. Societies, debating
clubs and athletics.
For further information address
=JOHN HOPE, A.M.=
President
The Georgia State Industrial College
Good for a Trade, Normal, Industrial and Collegiate Education.
Write for Catalogue to
R. R. WRIGHT, A.B., L.L.D., President.
=Legal Directory=
_Real Estate and Probate Matters a Specialty_
ROBERT B. BARCUS
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW
NOTARY PUBLIC
Office: Room 502, Eberly Block Columbus, O.
B. S. SMITH
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
Offices: Suite 610, Sykes Block
Minneapolis, Minn.
GEORGE W. MITCHELL
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
908 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, Pa.
J. DOUGLAS WETMORE
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW
5 Beekman Street (Temple Court)
New York City
Tel. 6222 Cortlandt Cable Address, Judowet
FREDERICK L. McGHEE
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW
Union Block, Fourth and Cedar Streets
St. Paul, Minn.
_General Practice_ _Notary Public_
WILLIAM R. MORRIS
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW
1020 Metropolitan Life Building
Minneapolis, Minn.
ADVERTISING RATES
One page, each insertion $15.00
Half page, each insertion 8.00
Quarter page, each insertion 4.00
One inch, one column, each insertion 1.00
Half inch, one column, each insertion .50
Discounts for insertions of one advertisement for three months or more.
The Curse of Race Prejudice
JAMES F. MORTON, JR., A.M., _Author and Publisher_
Forceful, rational, comprehensive. An arsenal of facts and unanswerable
arguments. Invaluable for propaganda. Read the chapter on “The Bugbear
of Social Equality,” which is a veritable eye-opener. Thousands already
sold. Agents wanted everywhere.
PRICE 25 CENTS
Address the Author at 244 West 143d Street,
New York, N. Y.
Mme. BECK’S School of Dressmaking
_Designing, Cutting, Fitting, Embroidering and Ladies’ Tailoring Taught
by the Improved French System_
_Separate Courses in Any of the Branches, and Diplomas Awarded the
Successful Graduates_
_Day and Evening Classes_
238 WEST 53d STREET NEW YORK CITY
The Firm for the Negro Farmers and Shippers to Deal With
_Try Us Before Shipping Elsewhere._
FRUITS AND VEGETABLES OYSTERS AND GAME POULTRY AND EGGS
COTTMAN & COTTMAN
WHOLESALE COMMISSION MERCHANTS. 107 Pine Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Reference: The People’s Savings Bank Bell ’Phone Connection: Lombard
4035
NYANZA DRUG CO.
(Incorporated.)
35 W. 135th ST., NEW YORK CITY
=CAPITAL STOCK, $15,000=
Shares $5.00
Write for information. The best paying investment ever offered our
people.
NYANZA PHARMACY
is the only colored Drug Store in New York City, and the purpose of the
Corporation is to establish chains of stores, carrying Drugs and
everything incidental to the Drug business. It is really the
indisputable duty of every self-respecting member of the race to give it
his support.
AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE
$100,000 STOCK ISSUE
TO BUILD AN
Auditorium in Greater New York
CONTAINING
Reception, Concert and Banquet Halls, Modern Offices and Lodge Rooms
This proposition is bound to succeed, because it is giving the people
what they want.
We are offering
=10,000 Shares at $10 Each, Par Value=
Stock sold in blocks to suit the investor on easy terms.
The capital already in hand and the rapid increase of business means the
realisation of the Auditorium. This enterprise assures each investor
Safety of Capital and Growth of Income. Call or write for further
particulars.
I. L. MOORMAN, Mgr., 83 W. 134th St.
[Illustration: Man]
SOLOMON GARRETT
Tonsorial Artist
782 Fulton Street, near Adelphi Street
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
_All Kinds of Workmanship_
_Cigars and Tobacco for Sale_
_Daily and Weekly Papers and Magazines_
_Brooklyn Agents for THE CRISIS_
How to Elevate the Moral and Civic Tone of the Negro Community
Negroes—good, bad and indifferent—as long as they have lived in
tenements, have had to live shamefully intermingled. Formerly they were
forced to live in ramshackle tenements that had been abandoned by the
whites, at exorbitant rents for wretched accommodations. But now, thanks
to the thrift and enterprise of certain progressive Negro real estate
agents, they may live in houses having the same conveniences and
accommodations as the whites. While, happily, the physical surroundings
of the Negro tenant have been radically altered, unhappily his moral
surroundings remain unchanged. How, then, can we improve his moral
surroundings? Co-operation is a _sine qua non_ in the solution of this
problem. Tenants MUST co-operate with their agents and agents MUST
co-operate with one another in ameliorating the moral and civic
condition of Negro communities. We can’t lean on the landlord. He is an
indifferent third party. He cares not, so to speak, whether his house is
tenanted with respectable or disrespectable tenants, so long as it is
full and he gets his rents. If he’s at all concerned about the
disrespectable or respectable tenants in his house, it’s only to the
extent that he’s afraid the former may be the cause of some or all of
the latter moving, thus leaving him with some vacancies.
The present moral conditions of Negro tenantry are indeed bad. The
individual efforts of certain Negro agents toward bettering the
conditions have been praiseworthy, to say the least, but as far as
making any progress toward the desired goal is concerned, such efforts
must needs be and practically have been of little or no avail. What is
the desirable goal is too obvious to command explanation. But how to
reach that goal is the matter under consideration. In the first place,
we repeat that the united efforts of tenants and agents are the
desideratum.
Let the agent compel a prospective tenant to furnish references
satisfying fair and reasonable requirements as imposed by, agreed upon
and accepted _in toto_ by all agents. The respectable tenant will be
glad to do it. Any tenant not furnishing such references should be
“jim-crowed,” as it were, from decent neighborhoods.
This matter of bettering the moral and civic condition of Negro
communities is a case of a wheel within a wheel. As has been emphasized
before, the agent can do absolutely nothing without co-operation.
Ministers wielding great influence over large congregations can lend a
powerfully helping hand, if they will. We must all pull together. We
cannot work resultfully in factions. It is unquestionably within our
power to do it, if all others do their respective parts and the colored
real estate agent does his.
Desirable Apartments for Desirable Tenants Also Homes for Sale on Easy
Terms
Philip A. Payton, Jr., Company
New York’s Pioneer Negro Real Estate Agents
BROKERS====APPRAISERS
TELEPHONES
917–918 HARLEM 67 West 134th St., New York City
[Illustration: HENRY PHIPPS’ MODEL TENEMENTS FOR COLORED FAMILIES]
Do You Want a Position?
Best Places
Best Families
The New York and New Jersey Industrial Exchange, through its Employment
Agency Department, furnishes more Colored Help to the leading families
in the city and in the suburban towns than any other medium in New York.
It is located in the acknowledged best section of the city, being in the
Henry Phipps’ Model Tenements for Colored Families. No other Exchange is
so well patronized by the foremost families, many of whom have never
employed Colored Help before.
Our demand for competent Southern Help exceeds the supply many times
over. Call and register. No charge. Bring your references. We can place
you in a good position. If inconvenient to pay our required office fee,
you are at liberty to take advantage of our Credit System. This new
feature has proven extremely beneficial to many worthy persons seeking
employment.
N. Y. & N. J. Industrial Exchange
237–239 West 63d Street
Telephones 5016–4546 Columbus
Cosmopolitan Automobile School
[Illustration: Automobile School]
The aim of the School will be to give its students a sufficient
knowledge of the theory and practice of Automobile and Automobiling to
enable them to meet the emergencies that constantly arise to make those
who complete the course competent to run machines, take them apart and
assemble them properly, and to make such repairs as may be necessary and
possible on the road.
TUITION—Six weeks’ course, including Shop and Road Work, $25:
installments if you wish, payable $5 on enrollment and $20 by the
completion of the fourth week.
SHOP WORK—Consists of naming all the parts of the automobile, taking the
engine and the rest of the automobile apart and putting them together
again properly, and making such repairs as may be necessary and
possible.
ROAD WORK—When the shop work is complete the student takes up the
operating and handling of cars on the road until he is competent.
If there is any special information which you desire respecting the
course or opportunities in the automobile business we shall be glad to
bear from you.
COSMOPOLITAN AUTO CO. of New York
Telephone 803 Columbus School: Hotel Maceo, 213 West 53d St. LEE A.
POLLARD, Mgr.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Re-indexed footnotes using numbers.
4. A reprint edition provided by Arno Press, A Publishing and Library
Service of the New York Times, New York, 1969.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
6. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
*** End of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "The crisis: A record of the darker races, Vol. I, No. 3, January 1911" ***