The Truth About Lynching and The Negro in the South: In which the Author Pleads that the South Be Made Safe for the White Race

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Title: The Truth About Lynching and The Negro in the South: In which the Author Pleads that the South Be Made Safe for the White Race
Author: Collins, Winfield H. (Winfield Hazlitt)
Language: English
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THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH ***

THE TRUTH ABOUT
LYNCHING _and_ THE
NEGRO IN THE SOUTH

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR PLEADS THAT THE
SOUTH BE MADE SAFE FOR THE WHITE RACE

WINFIELD H. COLLINS, A.M., PH.D.

AUTHOR OF
_The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States_

[Illustration: Neale Publishing Company colophon]

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
MCMXVIII

THE TRUTH ABOUT LYNCHING
AND
THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH

[Illustration: N]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface

CHAPTER

I The Lynching of Negroes in the South Previous
to the Civil War 9

II Lynching During the Civil War and the Carpet-Bag
Rule 29

III Lynching from the End of Carpet-Bag Rule to
the Present Time 48

IV The Criminality of the Negro 72

V Segregation of the Negro 101

VI Negro Wealth or Poverty,—Which? 123

VII The Future of the Negro 141

PREFACE

In the preparation of these pages an effort has been made to discover
and present the truth in regard to the Negro in the South. The first
three chapters need not be considered an attempt at justification of
lynching nor an effort at palliation of the disorder, but rather as a
setting forth of the facts, conditions, and extenuating circumstances
in such connection. The purpose of the other four chapters is to throw
light upon the mental, moral, and material condition of the Negro.

W. H. C.

Reids Grove, Md.,
January 30, 1918.

The Truth About Lynching
and the Negro in the South

CHAPTER I

THE LYNCHING OF NEGROES IN THE SOUTH PREVIOUS TO THE CIVIL WAR

It is generally supposed that the custom or practice of lynching in
this country had its origin in the method of punishment used by a
Virginian farmer named Lynch, who during the Revolutionary War sought
in this way to maintain order in his community or section,—hence,
Lynch’s Law, and Lynch law, from which comes the word “lynching.”

In the beginning, however, the term seldom, if ever, conveyed the
meaning “to put to death”; nor does it appear that Negroes were lynched
even so often as whites. The methods of punishment in the majority of
cases consisted of riding the victim on a rail, beating or whipping
him, and often of giving him a coat of tar and feathers.

Moreover, it does not appear that lynching in any form was very common
in the early history of the country. Indeed, in 1839 a writer in the
_Southern Literary Messenger_[10:1] began a brief article on the
subject with the following:

“Forty years ago the practice of wreaking private vengeance or
of inflicting summary or illegal punishment for crime actual or
pretended which has been glossed over by the name Lynch law was
hardly known except in sparse, frontier settlements beyond the
reach of courts and legal proceedings.”

Newspapers, periodicals, and other literature of the time show,—as the
years pass,—an interesting change in the meaning of the term Lynch law.
As the practice of lynching increased, the methods of the executors
of this law became more severe, and it grew more often to mean “a
putting to death.” Possibly the change in meaning was partly due to
the fact that lynching came to be a favorite means of punishment for
abolitionists, their Negro dupes, and for both Negroes and whites who
might be found guilty of unusual or shocking crimes.

The change from the mild to the severer meaning of the term was
gradual. From 1830 to 1840 it seldom meant “to put to death”; from
1850 to 1860 it very often had that meaning, and by 1870, or 1875,—this
became the almost exclusive interpretation of “lynching,” even as at
present.

The “New English Dictionary” defines Lynch law as “the practice of
inflicting summary punishment upon an offender, by a self-constituted
court armed with no legal authority; it is now limited to the summary
execution of one charged with some flagrant offense.” So this is
about the sense (unless otherwise indicated) in which I shall use the
expression “Lynch law,” or “lynching,” in these pages.

In seeking a cause for the great increase of lynching, whether in its
milder or severer form, from about 1830, I think one need not hesitate
to give first place to the Anti-Slavery agitation; and the Southampton
Slave Insurrection is also to be considered as contributory.

When, about 1830, the Anti-Slavery agitation began to attract some
attention there were a number of anti-slavery societies in the South.
These, however, soon broke up as those formed in the North became
unreasonable. The net effect of the societies in the North was to
produce distrust and even hatred at the South. It could hardly have
been otherwise, for the Northern anti-slavery propagandists during the
whole period of such agitation seemed to have regard for neither law
nor common sense. Nothing better could have been expected from them,
however, as, for the most part, the abolitionists were poor, misguided
men and women. Instead of adopting persuasive methods and of showing a
fair and conciliatory spirit, they were dictatorial, inflammatory and
menacing. And by whatever of higher law or Divine inspiration they may
have claimed to be actuated, they failed to recognize the fact that
they had to deal with human beings and human institutions.

Again, on whatever lofty plane of morality they professed to stand,
their propaganda did not comprehend even ordinary honesty. Indeed,
it appears as only another illustration,—for history affords so many
instances,—of self-elected good men endeavoring to impose their own
half-blind perception of the way of the Lord, or their own ideas
of what constitutes righteousness on their open-eyed and superior
fellow-men, and exerting themselves to the utmost of their ignorance in
such efforts,—thus, as is usual in such cases, making hell on earth.
Even the Kaiser claims to be the agent of the Lord.

William Lloyd Garrison, the leading exponent of the abolition movement,
called the Constitution of the United States “An Agreement with Death
and a Covenant with Hell.” In the beginning his most earnest supporters
were some pious old women, who doubtless with fair intelligence and
good intentions, like many professed good people, let their emotions
aided by their imagination get the better of their heads. They seemed
to enjoy criticizing the South, with the occasional diversion of
holding prayer-meetings for Negroes.

However, it was a long while (even in the North) before the abolition
movement gained much headway. Garrison himself was treated with
scarcely more consideration in the North than awaited those Apostles
of anti-slavery that should go South, having persuaded themselves that
they were called to preach the “gospel” of abolition in that benighted
section. Indeed, once, in 1835, he hid himself in order to escape
from a mob of some thousands of people,—including many of the leading
citizens of Boston,—that had collected in front of his office. Some
of the crowd found him and soon had a rope around his neck, but he
was rescued by the mayor of the city. About two years later, however,
a noted abolition editor, Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, was killed by a mob in
Illinois.

In 1856 _The Liberator_ made the following remarkable statement in
regard to the treatment of abolitionists in the South:

“A record of the cases of Lynch-Law in the Southern States
reveals the startling fact that within twenty years over three
hundred white persons have been murdered upon the occasion—in
most cases unsupported by legal proof—of carrying among the
slaveholders arguments addressed to their own intellects and
consciences as to the morality and expediency of slavery.”[14:2]

This is evidently a great exaggeration. If it were alleged that over
three hundred had been “lynched,” bearing in mind that during those
years the word, more often than otherwise, meant giving the victim
a coat of tar and feathers, and so on, it would not even then be in
accord with what is indicated by better evidence. Books of travel and
other literature of the time fail to show that any great number of
abolitionists in the South met death by lynching during the period in
question.

Indeed, a booklet, “The New Reign of Terror,” published early in
1860,—and in all probability compiled by Garrison himself,—is
weighty evidence against the truth of this statement. According to
_The Liberator_, the booklet gave “multiplied newspaper accounts of
lynchings, murders, and mob raids of the Black Power of the Slave
States within the past year [1859].” Although this was a time of
intense excitement throughout the South,—a time when a more bitter
feeling was manifested against abolitionists than in any previous
period, a careful examination of the “New Reign of Terror” failed to
reveal more than one case in which an abolitionist was put to death by
lynching.

There is much evidence of a law-abiding spirit in the South (especially
in the eastern part) at the beginning of the Anti-Slavery agitation.
Indeed, even when lynching was resorted to, it seems to have been done
with great reluctance.

Another thing that had some effect on lynching was the Southampton
Slave Insurrection, which occurred in 1831. About sixty white men,
women, and children were murdered in cold blood by Negroes. However,
not more than one of the fifty or more Negroes concerned in it was
lynched. Instead, they were given a fair trial, and disposed of
according to law. The Insurrection may have caused an increase in
the lynching of Negroes by the fact that it begat a kind of fear and
distrust of the blacks everywhere, caused them to be more carefully
looked after, and more severely dealt with when refractory or guilty of
crime.

This was no more than could be expected. In 1835 there were four great
fires in the city of Charleston,—all supposed to have been the work of
slaves. Moreover, up to 1860 there were rumors of insurrections, and
many minor insurrections did take place. The abolitionists, not without
reason, were accused of trying to set the slaves against their masters
and of fostering outbreaks of the bondmen.

Such things could hardly be considered lightly, for in many places the
whites were practically at the mercy of the Negroes. A quotation from
Murray,[16:3] an English traveler, may be interesting as it gives an
example of the situation in many of the Slave States:

“The farms of the two gentlemen whom I visited occupied the
whole of the peninsula formed by the James River; they had each
two overseers: thus (their families being young) the effective
strength of white men on their estates amounted to six: the
Negroes were in number about two hundred and fifty: nor was
there a village or place within many miles from which help
could be summoned.”

Could one reasonably expect that any man so situated would be inclined
to be too ceremonious with any person, black or white, however innocent
or saintlike his looks, who might be caught tampering with the Negroes
and thereby jeopardize the safety of his family and those of his
neighbors as well? When one considers the exasperating circumstances,
the wonder is not that there were so many lynchings but rather that
there were so few, comparatively.

Some interesting lynchings occurred in 1835. They were widely commented
upon at the time. One, the case of a mulatto from Pennsylvania, who was
supposed to have some connection with the abolitionists, was burned
at St. Louis for killing an officer who was trying to arrest him for
some crime he had committed. The judge’s charge to the grand jury in
reference to the matter is worth consideration as it indicates the
attitude toward lynching shown at the time by those in authority:

“He told the jury that a bad and lamentable deed had been
committed in burning a man alive without trial, but that it was
quite another question whether they were to take any notice of
it. If it should prove to be the act of a few, every one of
those few ought undoubtedly to be indicted and punished; but if
it should be proved to be the act of the many, incited by that
electric and metaphysical influence which occasionally carries
on a multitude to do deeds above and beyond the law, it was no
affair for the jury to interfere with.”[18:4]

The same year, 1835, two Negroes were burned near Mobile.[18:5] The
circumstances were these:

Upon the failure of a certain little girl and her brother to return
from school at the proper time a search was made and the body of the
girl at last found. It appeared that she had been violated, then
murdered, and her body hid in order to conceal the crime. Soon after
this, two young ladies of Mobile were seized by two Negroes near the
place where the body of the little girl was found. The young ladies
escaped. At once suspicion pointed to these Negroes as the murderers of
the children. They were arrested, tried by the court, and found guilty.
The gentlemen of Mobile, it is said, then seized the Negroes, took them
to the place of their crime, and burned them. For it was felt that the
law did not furnish adequate means of punishment for such fiendish
criminality.

Another noted instance of lynching took place at Vicksburg in the same
year. This time it was not a Negro but whites that were lynched.

For many years the population of the Mississippi Valley had been
increasing rapidly. The courts of law were so few, weak, or dilatory,
that the better citizens sometimes found it necessary to take the law
into their own hands in order to insure for themselves protection.
Such was the case at Vicksburg. Some gamblers had lately made this
town their home and had established themselves at the low taverns to
which they decoyed the young men of the vicinity. These, after being
plundered and debauched, often cast their lot with the gamblers and
became almost as desperate as their corrupters. After a while all
restraint was thrown off, and the gamblers went about the streets
even in the daytime armed with deadly weapons, and by their insults,
drunkenness, and crimes, made themselves a terror to the inhabitants.

At length the people, having decided to put an end to such conditions,
held a meeting and passed resolutions, giving the gamblers notice
to leave within twenty-four hours. But, instead of doing so, they
garrisoned themselves in a house. This the men of the town surrounded,
and breaking open a door, they were fired upon from within, one of the
most prominent men of the town being killed. This so enraged the people
that they took the house by storm. Five of the gamblers were made
prisoners. Then a procession, headed by the leading men of the town,
led the gamblers to execution, hung them, and buried them together in a
ditch.

Featherstonhaugh, an English traveler, in writing of the Mississippi
gamblers, says:

“In various travels in almost every part of the world, I
never saw such a collection of unblushing, low, degraded
scoundrels.”[20:6]

He also quotes a passage from a justification of the above lynching,
which was drawn up by the people of Vicksburg, and is as follows:

“Society may be compared to the elements, which, although,
‘order is their first law,’ can sometimes be _justified only by
a storm_. Whatever, therefore, _sickly sensibility or mawkish
philanthropy_ may say against the course pursued by us, we
hope that our citizens _will not relax the code of punishment_
which they have enacted against this infamous, unprincipled,
and baleful class of society; and we invite Natchez, Jackson,
Columbus, Warrenton, and all our sister towns throughout the
State, in the name of our insulted laws, of offended virtue,
and of slaughtered innocence, to aid us in exterminating this
deep-rooted vice from our land. The _revolution_ has been
conducted here _by the most respectable_ citizens, heads
of families, _members_ of _all classes and professions_
and pursuits. None have been heard to utter a syllable of
censure against either the act _or the manner in which it was
performed_; and so far as we know, public opinion, both in town
and country, is decidedly in favor of the course pursued. We
have never known the public so unanimous on any subject.”

Only a few days before the Vicksburg affair two white men and seven
Negroes were lynched about forty miles from Vicksburg on the charge
of attempting to organize an insurrection of slaves. Featherstonhaugh
quotes the following account of it from a newspaper:

“Twenty miles from this place [Jackson, in Madison County] a
company of white men and Negroes were detected before they did
any mischief. On _Sunday_ last they hung two steam doctors,
one named Cotton and the other Saunders; also, seven Negroes
without law or gospel, and from respectable authority we learn
that there were _two preachers_ and ten Negroes to be hanged
this day.”

That such lynchings were exceptional in the South before about 1855,
or even before the war, is shown by the fact that these cases were
mentioned by several different travelers and the papers of the time as
well. I examined with more or less care books of travel too numerous to
mention,—scores of them,—for the period between 1830 and 1860. Those
travelers, especially, who visited the South between 1838 and 1854 are
eloquently silent on the subject. I examined _The Liberator_[22:7] for
1839 and 1840, but found mention of only one Negro who was put to death
by a mob. No State was given so I am not sure whether it was in the
North or the South. However, it gave five instances of Negroes legally
executed in the South; one for rape, one for arson, one for firing on
two white men and threatening two others, and two for connection with
an attempt at insurrection. Two more cases may be given: that of a
Negro in New Orleans suspected of rape and murder, and one sentenced in
Kentucky for rape upon two white women.

Again, a search of _The Liberator_ for 1848 and 1849; Niles’
_Register_, July, 1845-January, 1849; _The Vicksburg Sentinel_, and
_The Augusta_ (Va.) _Democrat_, July, 1846-January, 1849, reveal
but two lynchings: One a Negro “hung by a committee of citizens”
at Bentonville, Arkansas; the other, a white man named Yeoman, in
Florida, for robbery. The latter was given both by Niles’ _Register_
and a book of travel. However, one Negro was sentenced to death in the
South for rape, and ten legally executed, the majority for murder.

As one might naturally expect, _The Liberator_ for 1855 and 1856 shows
several lynchings in the South. At least six Negroes were lynched in
the South during these years,—two for rape (one of whom was burned) and
four for murder (one of whom also was burned). Two of these criminals
were lynched in Arkansas by a mob,—after being acquitted by the
court,—led by the sons of their master, whom they had killed. Two white
men were also lynched: one, in Texas, for stealing Negroes, and the
other, in Missouri, for poisoning a spring. Moreover, eighteen Negroes
were legally executed in the South: two for rape, and nearly all the
others for murder. In addition, seven Negroes were mentioned as under
sentence of death.

A quotation from Bancroft clearly shows that the number of lynchings in
the South at this time hardly compares with the number in the West:

“Out of 535 homicides which occurred in California during the
year 1855,” he says, “there were but seven legal executions
and forty-nine informal ones.”[24:8]

One does not need to go far in order to find the causes of the increase
of lynching in the South after 1850, or for the disorder and commotion
both North and South as well.

In 1850 the Fugitive Slave law was passed. The endeavor to enforce
it gave great impetus to the abolition cause in the North; this
reacted on the South. Indeed, many of the same men who were ready to
hang Garrison in 1835, now became his earnest adherents. This great
change in the feeling of the North opened the way for the enthusiastic
reception of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” when, in 1852, it was published in
book form. The author of this book ingeniously made the isolated and
exceptional incidents of slavery appear as the general condition of the
institution; however, as for the chief character of the book, Uncle
Tom, it is very doubtful whether the pure Negro race ever produced such
an individual. Nevertheless, this piece of fiction was read by hundreds
of thousands both in the North and in foreign countries as if it were
“Gospel truth.”

Another thing that added to the excitement and helped the abolitionists
was the Dred Scott Decision, given in 1857. Then, in 1859, came
“Helpers’ Impending Crisis,” a book of great influence. At last, in
1859, as if to “cap the climax,” the whole country was startled by John
Brown’s Raid. After this, the greater part of the South, suddenly,
became an extremely unhealthful place for both abolitionists and
unruly, criminal, or insurrectionary Negroes.

“The New Reign of Terror,” mentioned above, published early in 1860,
not many months after John Brown’s Raid, has the following, which
indicates the then feeling in the South:

“In almost every city, town, and village south of the
border slave-holding States, Vigilance Committees have been
appointed to put to inquisition every Northern man who makes
his appearance in the place, whether as foe or friend. Even
harmless young women, who have gone from Northern boarding
schools to be teachers of Southern children have been waited
upon by respectable and even clerical gentlemen with the polite
hint that the sooner they leave the State the better for their
safety.”

_The Augusta Dispatch_[25:9] warned the South against “strange loafing
white men, and especially the one-horse invalid preachers from the
North,” for it said:

“We would guard well against imposition from transient ‘candles
of the Lord’ lest we suffer them to light the fires of
insurrection, instead of bearing aloft the light of the Gospel.”

Indeed, in many Southern States there were rumors of Negro
insurrections. In Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama plots of Negro
insurrections were discovered in 1860. In Texas, however, the greatest
excitement prevailed. What was supposed to be a State-wide insurrection
was discovered. Dallas and other towns were partly burned before it was
checked.

The excited state of the public mind in some instances may have
suspected plots of insurrection when none existed. However that may be,
wherever and whenever such a plot was discovered, investigation nearly
always pointed to the abolitionists as the instigators. Indeed, even
when Negroes were insubordinate and refractory on a plantation, it was
often found that they had been tampered with by abolitionists.

Occasionally, when such things were proved against an abolitionist
beyond the possibility of a doubt, he would be immediately hanged
to the limb of some convenient tree. Several were so dealt with in
connection with the insurrection in Texas. As a rule, however, when
the proof was not so conclusive, a severe whipping, or a coat of tar
and feathers, would be given him, and then he would be forcefully
admonished to leave the South.

One cannot but reach the conclusion that the anti-slavery agitation was
detrimental to the happiness and welfare of the slaves, and to the free
Negroes as well. Of the latter there were in the slave States (by the
fifties) something like 225,000. The majority of these were indolent,
miserable, and often vicious. Finally some States passed laws giving
them the option of leaving such State or of being sold into slavery.

Nearly everywhere more stringent regulations and laws[27:10] were made
both for slaves and for free Negroes. The slaves were deprived of
many former privileges, the enjoyment of which by the Negroes might
be dangerous for the white people. They were more closely guarded and
much more harshly dealt with when guilty of offenses or crimes. Indeed,
three Negroes in as many States were burned in 1859 for the murder of
their masters,—one of these was burned before 1,500 or 2,000 people.

Nevertheless, it is quite evident that throughout the period from 1830
to 1860 the lynching of Negroes was sporadic,—and usually was resorted
to only for exceptional reasons. Generally the law was allowed to take
its course. However, it is also plain that after 1850 the law was
relied on less and less, while the people more and more assumed the
initiative in such matters as the excitement increased. What was true
as regards the Negro was undoubtedly true also as regards the treatment
of the abolitionists.

FOOTNOTES:

[10:1] Vol. V, p. 218.

[14:2] _The Liberator_, Dec. 19, 1856.

[16:3] Murray, “Travels in North America,” Vol. I, p. 166.

[18:4] Harriett Martineau, “Retrospect of Western Travel,” pp. 30-1.

[18:5] _Ibid._, “Society in America,” Vol. II, pp. 141-2.

[20:6] G. W. Featherstonhaugh, “Excursion through the Slave States,”
pp. 136-9.

[22:7] In using _The Liberator_ one needs to be careful, for the
same instance is often found to be given two or three different
times,—weeks, even months apart.

[24:8] H. H. Bancroft, “Popular Tribunals,” Vol. I, p. 749.

[25:9] Quoted by _Liberator_, Aug. 24, 1860.

[27:10] The attitude toward both slaves and free Negroes varied
in different Southern States; but as a result of the anti-slavery
agitation, as we approach 1860 the more severe it becomes.

CHAPTER II

LYNCHING DURING THE CIVIL WAR AND THE CARPET-BAG RULE

It is said that an Abolitionist Society by a bribe of $3,000 induced
the slave valet of Henry Clay to leave him and go North. The Society
thought that this large sum would be well spent in producing what would
appear to be such a noteworthy example of dissatisfaction with the
condition of slavery. Though the Negro accepted the money and left,
he soon repented and returned to his master. Thereupon Clay gave him
$3,000 (for the Negro had long since spent the bribe), telling him that
when he had returned the sum to those who had tried to corrupt him that
he would be restored to his master’s service. The money was given back
as directed and Clay then took the Negro back as his valet.

Such a case was, no doubt, exceptional. In one way or another, however,
the abolitionists produced more or less dissatisfaction among the
slaves and were almost wholly responsible for the escape to the North
of something like an average of 2,000 a year. The Negroes did not
always find conditions in the North so favorable as they had been led
to suppose. As a consequence it did not infrequently happen that a
“runaway” Negro would become dissatisfied and return of his own free
will to his master in the South.

During the Civil War those slaves who for any reason had become
dissatisfied with their condition embraced the first opportunity to
gather in the wake of the Union army,—mainly, no doubt, to shun work.

While this was true as an exception, the great mass of the slaves
remained quietly at work on the plantations. Thus, instead of creating
antagonism between the two races, the War served rather to foster and
cement a good feeling between them; indeed, throughout its darkest
days they lived harmoniously side by side. Elizabeth Collins, an
Englishwoman, who was in South Carolina the greater part of the War,
says:

“In regard to the slave population of Charleston, I may say
that they appear to be, almost without exception, happy and
contented.”[30:1]

Indeed, an examination of several Southern newspapers and some books
of travel[31:2] revealed but two possible cases of lynching of Negroes
in the South during the War: A Mr. Harris, Uchee, Alabama, was murdered
by six of his Negroes, whereupon:

“The citizens of the county about ninety in number, after
consultation, determined upon the immediate execution of the
murderers.”[31:3]

The other case was in Mississippi: Some Negroes were hung, seemingly,
for trying to get on a steamboat in order to escape from slavery.[31:4]
_The Liberator_[31:5] mentions two instances of Negroes being lynched
in New York in 1863: A negro in jail at Newburg, on suspicion of rape,
was taken out by a mob “who pounded him almost to death and then hung
him on a tree until he was finished.” Two were also lynched in the City
of New York, one of whom, it seems, was roasted alive.

In no place was there any mention of any Negroes being lynched for rape
in the South during the War. Indeed, it is often said that during the
Civil War when the white men were nearly all away from home, leaving
the white women almost at the mercy of the slaves, no Negro was guilty
of a criminal outrage against them.[32:6] It may be true. Viewed in the
light of the sporadic occurrence of the crime under the restraining
influence of slavery before the War, and of its quite frequent
occurrence sometime after, it is both remarkable and suggestive.

It may truly be regarded as evidence not only of the generally fair
treatment that, according to unprejudiced travelers, they were
receiving in slavery, as well as a tribute to their fidelity, but it
also makes it obvious that the Negro and the Southern white man might
have continued in harmony mutually advantageous after the War, had both
been free from outside influences.

Almost immediately after the War, however, the South began to “swarm”
with harebrained preachers and teachers from the North, ostensibly to
elevate the Negro; as a rule, though, they served no better purpose
than to aid in setting the Negro against his former master. For, it
seems, they cared not what became of the white man so they secured the
“salvation” of the Negro, entirely ignoring that saying of Scripture
which is to the effect that those who fail to serve first their own
house or people have denied the faith and are worse than infidels.[33:7]

Such a condition of affairs was promoted by Congress, who, at about
the close of the War established the so-called “Freedmen’s Bureau,”
and shortly after passed the Civil Rights bill, both of which tended
to cause friction between the two races. However, as compared with
that of a few years later, the trouble does not appear to have been
very serious notwithstanding exaggerated accounts which were reported
to Northern papers. In most parts of the South and at most times for
something like two years after the War, there was comparative quiet and
safety.

The crimes of the Negroes during these years were for the most part of
a trifling kind,—petty thievery and robbery. However, it is true they
committed crimes of a very serious nature, also. Notwithstanding, the
law was generally allowed to have its way. Harriett Martineau observes
in one of her books that nothing struck her more than the patience
of the slave-owners of the South with their slaves. Even during the
first years after the War a patient and even indulgent spirit was
often manifested by the leading whites toward the Negroes as to their
shortcomings and sometimes it extended to their serious crimes.

For instance, in 1866, near Rome, Georgia, a whole family consisting
of a man, wife, and two daughters, were murdered, and one of the women,
ravished. The newspaper account ends with:[34:8]

“It was difficult to restrain the people from inflicting
summary punishment upon them.”

For such a crime now, a Negro would likely be burned alive. The same
paper quotes the following from _The Raleigh Progress_:[34:9]

“Charles Wethers, the rascally Negro, who attempted to commit a
rape upon a highly respectable young lady of this county some
weeks ago, was placed in the stocks this morning for the last
time, having completed his sit still in the burning sun for two
hours during each day of this week. He was returned to jail and
will remain in the custody of the sheriff till the workhouse is
ready, in which institution he will labor at five dollars per
month until the fine, $200, and the cost of the trial have been
liquidated by muscle.”

Would it now be possible for any one to take such a tolerant, if not
even good-natured,—view of such an affair?

In order to make a comparison I have selected for study, here, two
three-year periods: First, 1866-7-8, including the year before and year
after the passing of the Reconstruction Act of 1867 for the South;
second, 1873-4-5, when the carpet-bag rule, which resulted from the
Reconstruction policy of Congress, was in full operation. Although
the number of lynchings during the first and second periods are in
striking contrast, even this but faintly indicates the great change
from the comparative tranquillity of the first (as illustrated by
newspapers)[35:10] to the confusion, chaos, and crime of the second.

In 1866, one Negro was lynched in the South for attempted rape,
another was sentenced to death for rape, and one was sentenced to the
penitentiary for a like crime. Also, near Smithfield, Ohio, Negroes
committed outrages on two girls. In Kentucky three white men were
lynched for murder, and three more were put to death by a band of
regulators. No doubt Kentucky was influenced in such matters by the
example of the West.

The following occurred in 1867: one Negro lynched in Missouri by
Germans for the murder of a German; a Negro given sixty lashes in
Delaware for assaulting two white women; three Negroes legally hanged
at Charleston, S. C., for outrage. In the North, two or more Negro
soldiers, deserters, lynched in Kansas for the rape of a white woman;
four white men lynched in Indiana for murder and robbery; thirty men
hanged in three Kansas counties by Vigilantes during the winter and
spring.

For 1868: Two Negroes who confessed to the horrible murder of a white
family in Mississippi were taken from a sheriff by a band of Negroes
and burned;[36:11] one Negro was lynched in Kentucky for rape and
another in Maryland for attempted rape; two Negroes, in jail for
murder, lynched in Mississippi after boasting that the _Loyal League_
would prevent their execution, even if convicted; a man lynched in
Tennessee after he had confessed to the murder of three men at
different times. In North Carolina over thirty Negro desperadoes,
who confessed to several murders and robberies, were captured and
put in jail. Ten Adam’s Express robbers were lynched in Indiana; two
men lynched for murder in Illinois and one for stealing horses in
Colorado.[37:12]

In 1873, however, six Negroes were lynched in the South for rape; three
were legally executed for the same crime; one, condemned to be hung,
and three awaiting trial—in all, thirteen Negroes charged with rape. In
Louisiana, three Negroes were lynched in the presence of 1,000 people
for an atrocious murder; four men were also lynched in Louisiana for
cattle-stealing, and another in the same State for arson. Also, one
white man was lynched in Tennessee by fifteen Negroes. Two Negroes were
legally hanged for murder,—one in Kentucky, the other in Virginia. In
the North: One white man was lynched in Ohio for rape; a Negro and
a white man were lynched in Nebraska for robbery, also a Negro for
murder; two men were lynched in Montana for murder and two in Kansas
for supposed murder.

During the year 1874, eleven Negroes and one white man were lynched
in the South for rape, while two Negroes were legally executed for the
crime. In two instances,—one in Arkansas, the other in Missouri,—both
Negroes and whites took part in lynching Negroes. Three Negroes were
also lynched in the South for murder and two for riot; and four Negroes
in Tennessee for threatening to kill some whites and to sack and burn
a town. In addition, ten white men were lynched, four in Arkansas
and one in Missouri for horse-stealing, the others in the States of
the Southwest for scandalous murders. In the North, two Negroes were
lynched for murder, and two Negroes in Pennsylvania and one white man
in Kansas for rape. In the North, also, seven white men, one Mexican
and one Chinaman were lynched for murder, and one white man for
horse-stealing and another for thievery.

In 1875, the last year of the second period,—nine Negroes were lynched
in the South for rape and four for attempted rape; also, one Negro
guilty of rape, and another who attempted rape, escaped,—in all,
fifteen rape cases.[38:13] One man and two Negroes were lynched for
murder. Also one Negro was legally executed for rape, eleven for
murder, and one case cause not given. In the North, one Negro was
lynched, cause not given, and one Negro guilty of rape, escaped. Three
men, also, were lynched for murder, one for arson, and one in New York
for robbery.

By comparing the two three-year periods it will be found that during
1866-8 there were seven cases of rape or attempted rape by Negroes in
the South. In three instances they were lynched and in four, the law
was allowed to take its course. While for 1873-5, twenty-six Negroes
were lynched for rape, and four for attempted rape. Six Negroes were
legally executed for rape, one was under sentence of death for the
crime, three were awaiting trial and two escaped—in all forty-two
Negroes in the South were charged with rape during the second period.
This was just six times as many as for the first period. Further, ten
times the number of Negroes were lynched for rape in the South during
1873-5 as during 1866-8, or but 43- per cent of those charged with the
crime during the first period as against 73+ per cent for the second.

That this wonderful change was due almost wholly to misgovernment
at Washington, no one can doubt. Surely, History was never obliged
to record a more colossal blunder in statesmanship than that of
Congressional Reconstruction. Nor is it likely that any civilized
people were ever before called upon to endure a system of misrule
and legalized plunder equal to that which such legislation, maybe
unwittingly, paved the way for inaugurating at the South.

The confusion, turmoil, and strife that it created is only too well
known. Not only did it result in a cleavage of the social structure,
setting one part against the other, but it also caused as much or more
financial damage to the South than the War itself. For instance, four
and one-half years of Reconstruction, it is said, cost the State of
Louisiana alone over $106,000,000; while the assessed valuation of
property in New Orleans dropped from $147,000,000 to $88,500,000 during
eight years of carpet-bag rule.

It was made easy for political-fortune hunters from the North, with
little concern for the good of either the whites or the blacks of the
South, to gain position and power through cultivating the friendship
of the ignorant, credulous, newly enfranchised Negroes. This they
assiduously did from the start. At the same time they left nothing
undone which might create and foster among the Negroes a feeling of
ill will against and distrust of the Southern whites. If their former
masters came into power, the Negroes were sometimes told, they would
be reduced to slavery. The Negroes’ love of display was appealed to
by encouraging them to form secret societies, to make public parades,
and hold celebrations which tended to create a race consciousness
and race solidarity. This, of course, was for the purpose of helping
the carpet-baggers in perpetuating their power. If one considers the
conditions, what else could be expected but riots and lynchings?

If the control of the Negroes in slavery times, with all the advantages
to such end embodied in the institution of slavery, had often been one
of anxiety to the South, how fearful must have been the conditions now
that they were not only free from such control but enfranchised and
taught by their new friends to be self-assertive, even if not sometimes
encouraged in acts of violence against the Southern white people? It
does, indeed, seem that a great part of the Negroes almost ran wild—for
they were free, but did not understand how to use their freedom. So,
lazy, worthless, robbing, murdering gangs of them went prowling through
the South. For it is as natural for the Negro to sit in idleness, or
shoot crap, to go on marauding expeditions or connive at insurrections,
as it is for the white man to establish courts, collect libraries, and
found schools.

Can History prove that the Negro, during his thousands of years of
contact with superior races, has ever yet risen to the dignity of
stable and progressive self-government? Even Liberia, with all the
help that has been given her, is gradually sinking to the level of the
surrounding barbarism. And what of San Domingo? Indeed, everywhere the
tendency of the pure Negro is to fall when the white man’s props are
removed.

To return: If there ever was a time when the best elements in a society
were justified in taking the law into their own hands, that time was
during carpet-bag rule. The wonder now is that such a people as those
of the South should have acted with even the moderation that appears.

That some of the carpet-bag governments were absolutely corrupt goes
without saying. “Get all you can in any way you can” seemed to be the
idea. Justice was for sale. In some instances, it is said, the criminal
elements knew that any one could commit crime and escape punishment
for a money consideration. A few examples may be of interest:[42:14]
A man who was accused of outrageously murdering a woman, although
caught and imprisoned, was released, it is said, without even a trial,
for $800. Moreover, a Negro who had been sentenced by a court to the
penitentiary was released and returned home on the same train as the
sheriff who took him there. Indeed, the accusation was made that a
certain carpet-bag governor, in order to help the Republican Party,
connived at the killing of a number of Negroes in such a way that the
blame might fall on the Southern whites. At one place,[43:15] a court
in passing judgment on a convicted Negro rapist merely sent him to the
penitentiary, which so enraged the people of the community that they
took him from jail and hanged him near the place of his crime.

In order that one may the better understand the reason for the
development of the lynching spirit in the South the following
quotations are given:

I. “New Iberia, La., Sept. 13, the Parish of Vermillon for
years has been infested with cattle thieves. The people have
been unable to obtain redress by process of law and last month
they organized a vigilant committee as a last resort. A large
number of thieves and their confederates were given notice to
leave within a specified time but instead of doing so armed
themselves and threatened to destroy the town of Abbeville. The
Vigilantes pressed them and they scattered. It is reported that
three of the band were hung on Friday. . . . All kinds of vague
rumors are afloat concerning the number executed.”[43:16]

II. “The right of a robbed people to revolt against
robbery. . . . In Edgefield, S. C., a few days ago the country
was startled by a resolution adopted at a meeting of the
citizens of the county, which declared that, ‘Parties black or
white who may be caught in the act of firing any house in this
county shall be dealt with in accordance with the precedents of
Lynch law, which is a part of the unwritten law of America.’

“Edgefield people present a statement of facts which while
not justifying resort to Lynch law shows a strong provocation
for it. Just before the November election, the most prominent
_white Radical_ of the county is said to have advised the
Negroes to burn the houses of the whites; and that this
advice was not lost on them seems to be proved by the fact
that thirteen citizens were burned out of their homes by
incendiaries between the 7th and 19th of December. The Radicals
have a large majority and they have used their power without
mercy.

“No security for persons or property, for the Negroes and poor
whites who act with them had a majority on every jury so that
it was impossible to convict one of their number no matter
how plain the evidence. And even if convicted was promptly
pardoned by the infamous executive, Moses. To such an extent
was this carried that Carpenter, the Republican Judge of the
circuit, announced that he would not permit the State to be put
to the expense of trying criminals who were pardoned as soon
as convicted. The citizens assert that Lynch law is the only
remedy for the evils they endure and therefore they proclaim
it. They may be wrong but they are more sinned against than
sinning.”[45:17]

III. “Augusta, Ga., Aug. 23.—Several prominent Negroes
connected with the troubles in the counties below have made
confessions. Jake Moorman, First Lieutenant of a Negro company,
testifies on oath that 19 counties were to be embraced in the
insurrection. All white men and ugly white women were to be
killed. Pretty white women were to be spared and the land and
spoils were to be divided among the Negroes.[45:18] All who
have so far confessed testify to substantially the same as Jake
Moorman.”[45:19]

However, in some States,—for instance, Virginia, Maryland, and
Delaware,—where the Southern whites had control, order was preserved
and comparative quiet prevailed, while the lynching of Negroes was
sporadic, not only during this early period, but even until the
present. Discord and collisions between the two races have been almost
unknown.

It is doubtful if any greater mistake was made in dealing with the
South after the War than in disfranchising the leading Southern whites
and granting the Negro suffrage. The Negro might have been given
the ballot gradually as he proved himself fitted for it without any
detriment. But considering the race as a whole—it may be putting it too
mild—it may be too great a compliment to the Negro,—too disparaging to
the intelligence of the average white boy,—to say that the Negroes,
with some exceptions, at that time were no more fit for the ballot than
seven-year-old boys. Nor was it any more reasonable to expect them
to act the part of men in using it, or in political affairs, than to
expect it from seven-year-old boys. They were, and to a large extent
are yet, a race in its childhood.

President Lincoln, however, seems to have understood better than any
one else of his party what was for the best interest of both races:
That the Negroes, at least, for a while, with proper guarantees and
restrictions, should be in a position of tutelage or apprenticeship
to the whites. Indeed, there is little doubt that he expected the
Southern States to make some such temporary arrangements, for in a
proclamation, December 8, 1863, in reference to the reëstablishment of
State governments by several States of the farther South, he says:

“That any provision which may be adopted by such State
government, in relation to the freed people of such State
which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom,
provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent
as a temporary arrangement with their present condition as a
laboring, landless and homeless class, will not be objected to
by the National Executive.”

But unfortunately for both races in the South, Lincoln was assassinated.

FOOTNOTES:

[30:1] Elizabeth Collins, “Memories of the Southern States,” p. 46.

[31:2] _The Frankfort_ (Ky.) _Commonwealth_, _The Charleston_ (S.
C.) _Mercury_, _The Louisville_ (Ky.) _Democrat_ for 1863 and 1864,
_The Daily News_ (Savannah), for 1862 and one Northern paper, _The
Liberator_ (Boston) for 1863. The books of travel include Elizabeth
Collins’ “Memories of the Southern States.”

[31:3] Savannah _News_, June 9, 1862.

[31:4] _The Liberator_, Feb. 22, 1863.

[31:5] _Ibid._, June 26 and July 24, 1863.

[32:6] Grimke, “Lynching of Negroes,” p. 29.

[33:7] _I Timothy_, V, 8.

[34:8] _Richmond Times_, Oct. 24, 1866.

[34:9] _Ibid._, Sept. 11, 1866.

[35:10] Newspapers examined for first period: _Richmond Times_, 1866;
_Richmond Times_, _Baltimore American_, and the _New Orleans Times_,
1867; and the _Sun_ (Baltimore), _Leader_ (Baltimore) and Atlanta _News
Era_, 1868; second, _Missouri Republican_, _Baltimore American_, 1873;
_Richmond Enquirer_, _Baltimore American_, _St. Louis Republican_,
1874; _Baltimore American_, _St. Louis Republican_, _Richmond
Enquirer_, and _New Orleans Republican_, 1875. I do not claim that I
found every case of lynching in the South for either period, but as
the same case would often be found in two or three different papers, I
believe that I found practically all.

[36:11] This lynching of the two Negroes by Negroes is the only case I
found where Negroes alone did the lynching in cases of crime against
the whites. Several times during the seventies, however, Negroes are
found helping the whites to lynch some Negro guilty of crime. It shows,
I believe, that in some places, at least, the Negroes were yet in
accord with the Southern whites.

[37:12] So far as the North and West are concerned, I simply happened
to find such without any special search. I was searching carefully for
lynchings in the South, etc.

[38:13] In 1875, there was another interesting case in which both
Negroes and whites, about equal in number, lynched a Negro for
attempted rape of a white woman.

[42:14] _St. Louis Republican_, Sept. 14, 1875.

[43:15] _St. Louis Republican_, July 22, 1875.

[43:16] _Missouri Republican_, Sept. 14, 1873.

[45:17] Editorial, _St. Louis Republican_, Jan. 1, 1875.

[45:18] This recalls an account of the Texan Negro insurrection of 1860
as quoted by _The Liberator_ of July 21, 1860: “The old females were
to be slaughtered along with the men, and the young and handsome women
were to be parcelled out among those infamous scoundrels. They had even
gone so far as to designate their choice. . . . The Negroes have been
incited to these infernal proceedings by the abolitionists.”

[45:19] _St. Louis Republican_, Aug. 24, 1875. Accounts of riots in
Mississippi, in which several were killed, were given by the same
paper, Sept. 5, 7, 1875.

CHAPTER III

LYNCHING FROM THE END OF CARPET-BAG RULE TO THE PRESENT TIME

Beginning in 1885, _The Chicago Daily Tribune_[48:1] has kept a record
of lynchings to the present time. Although statistics are to many very
dry reading, nevertheless, to others, who are more impressed by facts
than fancy, they are of the most intense interest. However that may be,
here they appear to be indispensable to any satisfactory consideration
of the subject.

The following statistics which are based upon the records of _The
Chicago Daily Tribune_ are compiled by periods: excepting the
last which is for four years, these periods were taken almost
indiscriminately for two years together, beginning with 1885 and 1886:

LYNCHINGS AND LEGAL EXECUTIONS FOR 1885 AND 1886

In the United States there were 314: 159 whites, 149 Negroes, and 6
Chinamen; 62 in the North, 252 in the South. Of those lynched in the
South, 144 were Negroes; nearly all the whites were lynched in the
Southwest for horse-stealing and murder; the Negroes were lynched for
the following causes: 51, _rape_; 65, murder; 12, incendiarism; 6,
arson; 3, cattle and horse-stealing; 1, self-defense; 1, robbery; 1,
threat of political exposures; 1, assault; 2 cutting levees; 1, cause
not mentioned. There were also 191 legal executions in the country; 72
Negroes in the South, 63 for murder and 9 for rape.

LYNCHINGS AND LEGAL EXECUTIONS FOR THE YEARS 1892 AND 1893

The whole number for the country was 436: 309 Negroes, 110 whites, 5
Mexicans, and 8 Indians. 53 lynchings in the North. 287 Negroes in the
South: 74, rape; 18, attempted rape; 5, alleged rape; 1, attempted
rape—_total, 88 for rape_. 99, murder. Nearly all the remainder for
murderous assault, alleged or complicity in murder, arson, etc. 231
legal executions. 127 of these were Negroes in the South: 118, murder;
6, _rape_; 3, arson. In the North, 9 Negroes were legally executed for
murder.

LYNCHINGS AND LEGAL EXECUTIONS FOR 1901 AND 1902

Lynchings for the country, 231. 29, North; 202, South. 194 Negroes; 35
whites; 2 Indians; 1 Chinaman. 185 Negroes lynched in the South: 40,
rape; 19, attempted rape—_total, 59 for rape_; 63, murder; 7, murderous
assault; 4, complicity in murder; 3, suspected murder; 3, implicated
in murder; 2, sheltering murderers; 1, attempted murder; 6, theft;
5, Negroes’ quarrel of profit sharing; 4, race prejudice; 1, making
threats; 1, lawlessness; 1, mistaken identity; remainder, causes not
given. In the North, 9 Negroes were lynched, 5 for rape and 4 for
murder. There were 262 legal executions, of which 162 were Negroes.
Execution of Negroes in South: 128, murder; 14, _rape_; 4, attempted
rape. In the North, 16 Negroes were executed for murder, nearly all in
Pennsylvania.

LYNCHINGS AND LEGAL EXECUTIONS FOR 1906 AND 1907

For the United States, 132. 3, North; 129, South. Negroes lynched in
the South, 129: 27, rape; 25, attempted rape; 2 rape and murder; 1,
suspected rape—_total, 55 for rape_;[51:2] 32, murder; 13, murderous
assault; 5, race riot; remainder, minor causes. There were also 189
legal executions. Of these 115 were Negroes in the South,—_15 for rape_
and 100 for murder.

LYNCHINGS AND LEGAL EXECUTIONS FOR 1911-1914, INCLUSIVE

During these four years there were 235 lynchings in the United States.
11, North; 224, South. In the North, 5 Negroes and 6 whites were
lynched; in the South, 215 Negroes, 8 whites, and 1 Mexican. The causes
for the lynching of Negroes in the South were as follows: 33, rape; 8,
attempted rape; 2, alleged rape,—_total, 43 for rape_; 117, murder; 14,
murderous assault; 3, complicity in murder; 1, suspicion of murder;
1, alleged murder; 5, arson; 5, race prejudice; 8, insulting white
women; 11, by night riders in Kentucky; 1, refusal to pay note; 1, race
troubles; 1, threat to kill; 1, assault and robbery; 1, horse-stealing;
1, annoying white women; remainder, cause not given. The number of
legal executions in the whole country for the four years, were 381.
Of these 136 were Negroes, 112 in the South, and 24 for murder in the
North. In the South: 93, murder; 10, _rape_; 2, _attempted rape_; 1,
burglary; 4, cause not given.

* * * * *

Now, adverting to the statistics for 1873-5,—not far removed from the
beginning of the Negro-lynching disorder,—it is found that of the
44 Negroes lynched in the South during the three years, 30, or 70-
per cent, were lynched for rape; while but 14, or 30+ per cent, were
lynched for all other causes combined. Thus it is seen that at this
time rape was practically the only cause for the lynching of Negroes in
the South.

Moreover, it is quite evident from the statistics above given,
beginning with 1885, that rape has continued to be, if not the whole
cause for the lynching of Negroes in the South, anyhow almost that,
with other crimes as merely incidental:

The three pairs of years,—1885-6, 1901-2, and 1906-7,—show 165 Negroes
lynched in the South for rape, 160 for murder, and 127 for all
other causes. Here rape takes the lead. Adding to these figures the
statistics for 1892-3, the numbers for the four pairs of year are: 259,
murder; 253, rape; and 227, minor causes. Again, adding for the four
years 1911-14, the result for the twelve years, is: 376, or 39+ per
cent, murder; 296, or 31+ per cent, rape; and 282, or 29+ per cent,
minor causes. This would seem to indicate that rape was not even the
leading cause.

However, according to the statistics for the twelve years under
consideration, 502, or 57+ per cent of the Negroes in the South who
committed murder during these years were legally executed, and but 376,
or 43- per cent were lynched; while for rape, only 60, or 16+ per cent
were legally executed, and 296, or 84- per cent were lynched.[53:3]
The proportion may be stated thus: 57:43::16:84=7+. This shows that a
Negro is more than seven times as liable to be lynched in the South for
rape than even for murder.

Indeed, the belief of the average white man of the South that lynching
is the most effective way of dealing with the Negro for his crime
against white women also seems to be borne out by the statistics: In
1892-3, 88 Negroes were lynched for rape; in 1901-2, 59; while for the
four years 1911-14, only 43. That this great reduction in rape cases
and lynchings was not due to legal executions is shown by the fact that
during the same time but 36 Negroes were legally executed, only 12 of
these being for the four years 1911-14. Thus as a consequence of a
reduction in the crime of rape by Negroes is noted a great reduction in
the lynching of Negroes,—from 287 in 1892-3; 185, 1901-2; 129, 1906-7;
to 91 for 1913-14.

However, during 1915 and 1916, 104 Negroes were lynched in the South as
compared with 91 for 1913 and 1914. The increased number lynched for
rape is very marked: being only 13 for 1913 and 1914, but twice the
number, or 26, for 1915 and 1916. During the former two years, also, 6
Negroes were legally hanged for rape as compared to 12 for the latter.
The proportion remains the same: thus during 1913 and 1914, 19 Negroes
in the South were put to death for rape as compared with 38 for 1915
and 1916.

Although the legal execution of 12 Negroes in the South for rape
during 1915 and 1916 may show a tendency to allow the law to take
its course in such cases, may not the above statistics also indicate
that when for a few years but few lynchings occurred, especially for
the crime of rape, that the effect of such immediate and fearful
punishment—consisting of burning as it sometimes does—gradually fades
from the mind of the Negro inclined to such crime, with a great
increase of rape as a consequence?

Again, in extenuation of lynching, it is important to observe, that, as
a result of most crimes against the body, such as murder, but little,
if any, humiliation attaches. But it is quite different in rape cases.
Not only is there often great physical injury, but also an unutterable
humiliation. Our civilization teaches that one should hold certain
personal rights and considerations even more dear than life itself. To
have in mind such ideas and live up to them measures our reach above
lower peoples. That this feeling or spirit should be encouraged, rather
than risk its check, is not to be questioned. Therefore, the average
Southern white man does not believe that the innocent rape victim of a
Negro should be obliged to endure further humiliation incident upon
her appearance in a court of law.

In this connection, a set of resolutions published by those who lynched
a Negro at Annapolis, Md., in 1875, are interesting. These resolutions,
which set forth the causes of the act, were drawn up before the
lynching took place and show serious consideration. I quote:[56:4]

“Fellow Citizens: In view of the fact that we are about to take
into our hands the sword of justice to do to death one who is
now incarcerated in our county jail, it is meet that we should
give some reason for the purpose we hope to consummate. First,
then: While we can but honor the deep feeling of interest
manifested by those who are the proper guardians of our lives,
our property, and our honor; and while we, as true and loyal
citizens of the State of Maryland, and of Anne Arundel County,
do bend to the supreme majesty of the law and acknowledge
trials by jury as the very arch-stone in the grand edifice of
human rights, still we know the vilest criminal is accorded
the same rights under the law that belong to the petty thief,
nor can this devil incarnate, should he claim his rights, be
denied the privilege of a change of venue, such a circumstance
might probably rob the gallows of its due and foil the aims
of the law. Before God we believe in the existence of a higher
code than that which is dignified by the great seal of a
Commonwealth and that the high and holy time to exercise it is
when the chastity of our women is tarnished by the foul breath
of an imp from hell and the sanctity of our homes invaded by a
demon.

“Secondly, admitting that in the event of a trial by a jury
he shall be hanged—a highly probable result—yet would his
execution be as illegal as though done by a band of wronged
citizens; for must not a juror be a peer, and with a mind free
of bias, and where can a man be found competent to try this
case? Who can be found of his level, and who that has heard
has not already convicted him in his mind? At best, that which
would be done under the semblance of law would be a _more sham_
by force of all the circumstances connected with this horrible
deed, and if under the law the penalty is death, and we know
the deed was committed by him—we claim that there is no moral
difference in the means of destroying him, and we act upon this
conviction.

“Thirdly, we are not willing that the victim shall be dragged
into court to tell over and over again the story of her
terrible wrongs, or that her name shall be entered upon the
records of our criminal jurisprudence for future reference.”

Further comment on this lynching is unnecessary—unless indirectly: the
Negro, child of Africa, but lately removed from the jungle, because of
the necessity of the habitat of his origin, has had developed in him
by nature, possibly, stronger sexual passion than is to be found in
any other race.[58:5] But he is infinitely lacking in the high mental,
moral, and emotional qualities that are especially characteristic of
the Anglo-Saxon, and it is a grievous mistake to attribute such high
qualities to him. When proper restraint is removed from the Negro he
gets beyond bounds. The Anglo-Saxon, indeed, or members of that race,
has a way of meeting extraordinary conditions with extraordinary
means—hence lynching in order to hold in check the Negro in the South.

Indeed, a country occupied by two races so widely apart in origin,
characteristics, and development as the whites and the Negroes of the
Southern States—one race of the highest mental endowments and culture,
the other of the lowest—one having a civilization that reaches back
hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the other in the early dawn of
civilization—might reasonably have two codes of law suited, as nearly
as possible, to each race, respectively.

A mode of punishment that would be out of place as to the white man
may be well suited to the Negro. Small-pox is not to be treated as
chicken-pox. Barbarous criminals require barbarous laws. The innocent
and law-abiding citizens of a State have rights as well as the
criminals—at least, the right to protection from the criminals. But
let some crafty scoundrel finally get in jail, and he will be flooded
with letters of consolation and sympathy from sentimental women and
soft-headed men.[59:6] And let some Negro brute, guilty of rape, suffer
the punishment he so richly deserved at the hands of an outraged
community, and one would think, if he considered the bitter censure
from distant quarters, that the foundations of the government were
being undermined, or that a poor lamb was set upon by a pack of howling
wolves, thirsting for its blood, but not a word of commiseration for
the family, or the victim, of the fiendish Negro’s unbridled bestiality.

Moreover, instead of a Negro’s being over-awed by the solemn
deliberations of a court, rather, as he is the center of interest, he
all but enjoys it. For once in his life he finds himself in a position
of prominence. It would be contrary to the Negro nature if he were
not somewhat elated at being the object of so much attention. Even
were this not the case, he has no such appreciation of his degradation
as the white man feels under similar circumstances. Indeed, it would
sometimes appear as almost a triumphal procession for him from the time
he gets in jail until he reaches the gallows. The two quotations below
may help to justify this idea:

“Joe Clark, colored, . . . was hanged at this place on Friday
forenoon, in the presence of about 3,000 persons, mostly
Negroes. Clark spoke about fifteen minutes, giving a detailed
account of the murder and fully confessing the crime. He
advised all present to live an upright life. . . . After he had
shaken hands with his friends the trap was sprung, and thus the
sentence of the court was duly executed. Clark’s last request
was that the _black cap be kept off, so that all might see how
easy he could meet death_.”[60:7]

The second one is taken from accounts of the execution at Denton, Md.,
of “Wish” Shepperd, colored, for the outrage of a fifteen-year-old
white girl:[60:8]

“He told his spiritual advisers that he had a message for
the public: ‘Tell all the young men to avoid the fate that
awaits me by joining the church and attending its services.’
[Evidently inspired by his preacher advisers] . . . He
slumbered soundly, the guards noticed, and awoke early this
morning apparently indifferent to his doom. . . . With a firm
step he accompanied the officers and his spiritual advisers to
the scaffold which was erected near the Choptank River. Passing
_undismayed_ through the throng which had gathered along
the way from the prison _to the gallows_. _His gaze_ passed
fearlessly around surveying the people.” . . .

Again, in connection with the lynching of Negroes in the South, one
must not lose sight of the conditions that are peculiar to that
section. The greater the number of Negroes in proportion to the whites
in any State or community the easier it is for the Negro to commit
crime and escape. And the Negro criminal does often escape. Seldom
is it found that the Negro will aid in the detection of the Negro
criminal, rather otherwise. Even the hope of escape is a wonderful
encouragement to the criminally inclined.

Now, before the War, as is well known, the South was almost entirely an
agricultural section. It had but few cities and these were small. In
the last thirty or forty years, however, it has been rapidly developing
manufacturing industries. Some of the cities have become great
industrial centers.

Nor is manufacturing confined at all to the large cities. Indeed,
almost every town in some parts has a cotton mill or other
establishment. As illustrations, I may mention Hickory, N. C., and La
Grange, Ga. Hickory, with a population of about 5,000, has two large
cotton mills; the Piedmont Wagon Shops, which employs hundreds of men;
several furniture factories, saw mills, and other industrial interests.
La Grange, a city of about 6,000, has ten cotton mills, one of which is
valued at $1,000,000, and four of the others at $500,000, each. In the
manufacture of cotton alone the South has increased from 316,000 bales
in 1885 to 3,193,000 bales in 1915.

As a consequence the white people have largely been drawn to the
towns and cities: the wealthier own and control the various business
interests while the poorer ones contribute their help or labor.
Few Negroes work in the factories, for the Negro seems to lack the
qualities necessary: namely, punctuality, dependability, and a certain
amount of mental alertness. So, in some parts of the South the whites
are nearly all living in the towns and cities, while the country
districts are filled with Negroes. However, even in such places there
are some whites in the country, and as is evident, in additional danger.

Moreover, the population of several Southern States is nearly half
Negro, while in two,—South Carolina and Mississippi,—it is even more
than half Negro, being 55+ per cent and 56+ per cent, respectively.
Indeed, in 53 counties of the South the Negro population of each
exceeds 75 per cent. In Tensas Parish, La., and Isoquena County, Miss.,
the Negro population is 91.5 per cent and 94.2 per cent, respectively.
That is, in every 1,000 persons one meets in Isoquena County, Miss.,
942 are Negroes and but 58, white. Such conditions should be readily
appreciated. Is it any wonder that the white man thinks it necessary to
strike terror into the soul of the possible or incipient Negro criminal
by any method that may cause him to stand in fear of an immediate and
dreadful death?

Further, the origin of a great part of these Negroes, especially those
of the farther South, is, also, worthy of consideration.

During the operation of the internal slave trade, it was usually the
most undesirable, unruly, and the criminally inclined Negroes of the
border slave States that were sold to the States of the farther South;
nor should it be forgotten that between 1808 and 1860 the farther South
received around 270,000 Negroes from outside the United States.[64:9]
It seems likely that the greater part of these were barbarous Negroes,
directly from Africa. It was these criminal and barbarous Negroes,
along with their children and grand-children, who by the fortune of
war, without home or master, were turned loose on the South.

Thus it is that the white woman is obliged to be constantly
on her guard against the Negro,—otherwise rape cases would be
multiplied.[64:10] An idea of the necessity of this and the hardship of
it may be had from the following quotation:

“In a population about evenly divided in North Carolina was a
family of unpretending intelligent people.

“There was a school house only a mile and a half away, but they
could not let their two daughters go to it. They could not let
them stir away from home unprotected. They had to pay for their
education at home, while at the same time they were being taxed
for the education of the Negro children of the district.

“‘Do you think,’ was asked a leading Negro educator, ‘that
those girls could safely have gone to school?’

“‘It would depend upon the district,’ was the reply. ‘In some
districts the girls could have gone to school safely enough; in
others, no.’

“This I think was a terrible admission.”[65:11]

As the world is to be made safe for democracy, so ought the South to
be made free for white women. Is it not the business of the South to
endeavor to make the South safe for white women by whatever method
appears to be most effective? The women of the South should be just as
free to go when, where, and as they please as women in other sections
of the country and not be, as has been so aptly put by John Temple
Graves, “prisoners to danger and fear”:

“In a land of light and liberty, in an age of enlightenment
and law, the women of the South are prisoners to danger and
fear. While your women may walk from suburb to suburb, and
from township to township, without escort and without alarm,
there is not a woman of the South, wife or daughter, who would
be permitted or who would dare to walk at twilight unguarded
through the resident streets of a populous town, or to ride
the outside highways at midday.

“The terror of the twilight deepens with the darkness, and
in the rural regions every farmer leaves his home with
apprehension in the morning, and thanks God when he comes from
the fields at evening to find all well with the women of his
home.”[66:12]

A few words now as to the minor causes of lynching. In reading the
annual summary of lynchings given by the _Chicago Tribune_, one may
get the impression that Negroes are often lynched for very trifling
things. Investigation, however, is apt to show that back of any such
lynching was something much more serious than what appears on the face.
Many illustrations might be given but one may suffice: thirteen Negroes
lynched in Arkansas, March 26, 1904, cause, race prejudice.[66:13]
The following account of this affair is abbreviated from an Arkansas
paper:[66:14]

“Dewitt (Ark.), March 25.—Five Negroes who had been arrested
as a result of the race troubles at St. Charles, were taken
from the guards by a crowd of men last night and shot to
death. . . . The five victims make nine Negroes that have
been killed within the past week in the vicinity of St.
Charles. . . .

“A few days ago a difficulty occurred over a trivial matter
at St. Charles between a white man by the name of Searcy and
two Negroes by the names of Henry and Walker Griffin. One of
the Negroes threatened to knock Searcy in the head with a
beer bottle. The trouble was stopped for the time being, but
on Monday last the two Negroes met Searcy and his brother in
the store of Woolfords and Marsworthy in St. Charles, and the
difficulty was renewed. One of the Negroes without warning,
struck both of the Searcy boys over the head with a table
leg, rendering them unconscious and fracturing their skulls,
one of them to such an extent that he may die. The Deputy
Sheriff, . . . James Kirkpatrick, attempted to arrest the
Negroes and he, too, was knocked down.

“The Negroes then gathered and defied the officers, declaring
that ‘No white man could arrest them.’ Their demonstrations
aroused the fear of the citizens of St. Charles and they phoned
to this place for a posse to come out and protect the town. P.
A. Douglass, deputy sheriff, went out with five men, Wednesday
morning. Constable L. C. Neely went forward with a posse of
several men to capture the Griffin Negroes. The constable met
three Negroes . . . in the road. He inquired of them if they
knew where the Griffins were and one of them replied that they
did, but ‘would tell no —— white ——’ the Negroes then attempted
to draw their pistols, but the posse fired, killing all three
of them.

“Yesterday sixteen men left this place for the scene of the
trouble. . . . Large crowds in from Roc, Ethel, and Clarenden.
During the day while the Sheriff’s posse was searching for the
Griffin Negroes, they were fired upon by a Negro . . . from
ambush. Three of the posse were hit, but the shot used were
small, and no serious damage resulted. The posse returned the
fire, and a shot . . . felled the Negro to the ground. Several
other shots were fired into him, killing him instantly.

“Five other Negroes . . . who were the Negroes that had defied
the officers, were arrested, and last night a crowd of men took
them away from the guards and shot them to death.” The next
issue of the same paper stated that two more Negroes had been
killed, and the _Daily Arkansas Democrat_, March 29, reported
that the Griffins who were the cause of the original trouble
had been killed, completing the list of _thirteen_.

The above quotation is given merely as an example of a state of
affairs so apt to exist in connection with what usually passes as
trivial causes for lynching. May those at a distance from such
conditions the better understand!

Thus far I have not discussed lynching in the North, nor do I purpose
to do so; but a few words in passing seem pertinent. There is no basis
for the assumption, which some seem innocently to hold, that the people
of the North are inherently good and law-abiding, while those of the
South are inherently wicked and lawless. Indeed, statistics would
seem to indicate the opposite.[69:15] In 1910 over 750 persons to the
100,000 population were committed to prison in New England as against
less than 450 in the South. I take it that the people of the North are
neither better nor worse than those of the South. The same conditions
in either section would produce about the same results. The statistics
of lynching I gathered for the North were merely incidental. However,
for 1901 and 1902, I find that nine Negroes were lynched in the North,
four for murder and five for rape.

Further evidence that the people of the North will engage in lynching
when necessity dictates may be had from the early history of
California. Vigilance committees for the protection of the better
class of citizens against the disorderly and criminal elements, were
organized without warrant of law. In writing of one of these committees
H. H. Bancroft says that it was well represented by men of wealth,
intelligence and industry, and that “the largest element comprised men
from the Northeastern part of the United States.”[70:16]

Of remedies for lynching I have none. Of proposed remedies, I have only
to say that those which seem in any way practicable might result in
unmerited hardship to whites and an increase in rape cases as well. Any
hope of escape or mitigation of punishment that even unintentionally
may be held out to the criminal serves as a wonderful stimulant to
crime. The positive knowledge on the part of those criminally inclined
that punishment will be immediate, sure, and adequate, is the best
deterrent. The Negro is a creature that lives in the present and even
postponement of punishment robs it of much of its force. The law
sanctions personal self-defense. The white man in lynching a Negro does
it as an indirect act of self-defense against the Negro criminal as a
race.

When the abnormally criminal Negro race (partly so, no doubt, because
he is not yet adjusted to his environment) puts himself in harmony
with our civilization, if ever, through assimilating our culture and
making our ideals its own, then may it be hoped that his crimes will be
reduced to normal and lynching will cease, the cause being removed.

FOOTNOTES:

[48:1] Lynchings in the country for the past thirty-two years according to
_The Chicago Daily Tribune_, Dec. 30, 1916:

1885 184
1886 138
1887 122
1888 142
1889 176
1890 127
1891 191
1892 205
1893 200
1894 190
1895 171
1896 131
1897 106
1898 127
1899 107
1900 115
1901 130
1902 96
1903 104
1904 87
1905 60
1906 60
1907 65
1908 100
1909 87
1910 74
1911 71
1912 64
1913 48
1914 54
1915 98
1916 58

[51:2] It seems fair to count rape, alleged rape, attempted rape, and
so on,—all as rape; for it often happens that a Negro commits rape and
escapes entirely. As an example, see account of the lynching of Ed.
Berry (_Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 27, 1915). Berry confessed to twelve cases
of criminal assault, each victim being a white woman.

[53:3] This argument assumes, of course, that all Negroes who murdered
whites in the South were either lynched or legally executed, and that
all Negroes caught who committed rape against white women were likewise
dealt with. It seems to be about as fair in one case as the other to
assume this.

[56:4] _Baltimore American_, June 15, 1875.

[58:5] To make up for the high death rate.

[59:6] Joliet, Ill., Sept. 10 (1917), _Riot in State Prison_.
Rioters numbered about fifty. Had become angered at impositions
of restrictions. “Among the privileges previously enjoyed by the
convicts was an almost unlimited correspondence with sentimental
women.”—_Washington_ (D. C.) _Star_, Sept. 10, 1917.

[60:7] Taken from _Richmond Enquirer_, May 4, 1775.

[60:8] _Baltimore Sun_, August 27-28, 1915.

[64:9] W. H. Collins, “The Domestic Slave Trade,” p. 20.

[64:10] It is unlikely that all rape cases get in the papers. An
intelligent resident of Rapides Parish, La., told the writer that four
cases of rape occurred in that parish once within a month.

[65:11] William Archer, “Through Afro America,” London, 1910, p. 22.

[66:12] Address: John Temple Graves, _New York Times_, Sept. 4, 1903.

[66:13] The Chicago _Daily Tribune_, Dec. 31, 1904.

[66:14] _Arkansas Gazette_ (Little Rock), March 26, 1904. See also
_Daily Arkansas Democrat_, March 29, 1904.

[69:15] Statistical Abstract of the U. S., 1915, p. 55.

[70:16] H. H. Bancroft, “Popular Tribunals,” Vol. II, pp. 666-7.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRIMINALITY OF THE NEGRO

The present criminal status of the Negro,—and his criminal record since
the Civil War as well,—should cause every member of the race in America
to hang his head in shame.

Yet, may it not be that, after all, the Negro is, to a large extent, an
irresponsible creature of circumstances, and that his crimes are upon
the heads of those who unwisely placed him in a position that he was
unable to occupy,—except with injury to all concerned?

Scholars hold that the average citizen of the ancient Athenian
Democracy, the greatest of ancient democracies, was as intelligent
as the average member of the British Parliament, or of the American
Congress. The Negro, however, with all his barbarism and ignorance,
totally unrelated to the white man in origin, character, and race,
directly after his emancipation, was made a full-fledged citizen in the
greatest of modern democracies. The fact is appalling.

Stupidity unsurpassed, unless by the pacifist visionaries of the
present day who seek to usher in the millennium by proclamation,—peace
treaties, world federations, or leagues to enforce peace. Human nature
cannot be changed overnight by edict. When the sun fails to rise
wars will cease. It is to be hoped that enough sanity yet remains in
the American people to save them from such nonsensical vagaries of
sentimental dreamers.

But the Negro, son of a wild and tropical race, content for thousands
of years to roam the jungles of Africa, supplied by bountiful nature
with all his heart’s desire, failing thus to develop any controlling
trait of character, or mental stamina, and although civilizations rose
and fell beside him, it meant nothing to him. And even now in the midst
of American civilization he is moved to action, mainly, by the gusts of
primitive emotion and passion. This is the creature that was expected
to take an equal share in the government of the most enlightened and
progressive people that the world has ever known.

“Who sows to the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” So to-day all
other domestic problems or questions pale before—“What shall be
done about the Negro? The mob acts upon it, conventions of learned
sociologists discuss it. Every superficial thinker has a solution of
the problem,—ready made, but never in good working order. The Negro is
such a problem in our society mainly, no doubt, because he represents
the chief criminal element,—how criminal, let statistics, by way of
comparison, declare:

In the Northern and Western States in 1910, _one_ white person was in
a penal institution for every 982 of the white population, and _one_
Negro for every 123 of the Negro population; while in the South, the
ratio was _one_ to every 2014 for the white, and _one_ Negro to every
308 of the Negro population. Thus in the North Negroes had eight times
their proportion in prison, and in the South six and one-half times.
That Negro crime is on the increase is evidenced by the fact that in
1890 the Negroes had hardly six times their proportion in prison in the
North, and hardly five times their share in the South.

In this connection statistical tables should be helpful and interesting
as well. Table I gives a comparative showing of whites and Negroes in
some State penitentiaries. Instead of giving the number of prisoners on
hand at a certain time, some prison reports give the number received
and discharged during a certain period of time while a few give
both. In Table II is given the number of prisoners received by the
penitentiaries of a few States during a specified time.

TABLE I

Times the
Number of
Negroes to
State Population in 1910 Number in Penitentiary Whites,
--------------------- ---------------------- Year 1910,
White Negro Year White Negro or Thereabouts
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ 1902 201 525 }
Alabama 1,228,833 908,882 { 1910 416 1,976 } 7-
{ 1914 357 2,252 }

{ 1905 291 1,989 }
{ 1910 248 2,300 }
Georgia 1,431,802 1,176,987 { 1914 380 2,692 } 11
{ 1916 412 3,170 }

{ 1901 107 928 }
Mississippi 786,111 1,009,487 { 1913 156 1,552 } 7+
{ 1915 145 1,336 }

{ 1906 354 586 }
Maryland 1,062,639 232,250 { 1910 369 663 } 8-
{ 1915 402 682 }

{ 1910 532 1,236 }
Tennessee 1,711,432 473,088 { 1912 613 1,297 } 8-
{ 1914 651 1,208 }

Arkansas 1,131,026 442,891 { 1906 244 603 } 8-
{ 1912 213 643 }

Texas 3,204,848 690,049 { 1908 1,094 1,987 } 8+
{ 1910 1,119 2,095 }

{ 1904 249 1,143 }
Louisiana 941,086 713,894 { 1910 382 1,663 } 5+
{ 1915 382 1,663 }

Kentucky 2,027,951 261,656 { 1911 603 729 } 9.4
{ 1915 674 726 }

{ 1904 419 52 }
Connecticut 1,098,897 15,174 { 1910 542 63 } 8.4
{ 1914 578 56 }

Kansas 1,634,352 54,030 { 1902 874 299 } 17-
{ 1914 508 269 }

New Jersey 2,445,894 89,760 { 1910 1,049 346 } 9
{ 1915 1,020 329 }

Ohio 4,654,897 111,452 { 1909 1,216 407 } 15-
{ 1911 1,110 417 }

{ 1904 149 5 }
Vermont 354,298 1,621 { 1910 147 8 } 12-
{ 1912 167 13 } 17-
{ 1914 212 13 }

TABLE II[76:1]

Times as
Many
Negroes as
Whites
Convicts Received at Committed
State Population in 1910 the Penitentiary During— in Proportion
-------------------- ---------------------------- to Population
White Negro Year White Negro of Each Race
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ Nov. 1, 1912 }
Arkansas 1,131,026 442,891 { to } 606 776 3.4
{ Oct. 31, 1914 }

{ Sept. 1, 1910 }
Alabama 1,228,832 908,882 { to } 587 2,414 6-
{ Aug. 31, 1914 }

{ July 1, 1908 }
N. Dakota 569,855 617 { to } 217 11 43
{ June 30, 1910 }

{ 1906 513 306 }
{ 1909 560 374 }
Missouri 3,124,932 157,452 { 1910 543 303 } 11+
{ 1912 660 389 }
{ 1914 803 378 }

{ Year Ending }
Maryland 1,062,639 232,250 { Nov. 30, 1910 } 129 199 7+

{ Sept. 1, 1908 }
Texas 3,204,848 690,049 { to } 835 1,251 7
{ Oct. 31, 1910 }

{ 1910 } 202 549 }
Louisiana 941,086 913,874 { 1915 } 257 654 } 4-

{ Year Ending } 402 145 }
{ Oct. 31, 1907 } }
Ohio 4,654,897 111,452 { } 14-
{ Year Ending } }
{ Oct. 31, 1910 } 504 169 }

{ Two Years }
W. Virginia 1,156,817 64,173 { Ending } 519 428 15
{ Sept. 30, 1908 }

For the Southern States considered, Table I shows that the number of
Negro prisoners around 1910, varied according to the State from five
plus times their proportion in Louisiana to eleven times in Georgia.
While in the North, the number varied from eight times in Connecticut
to seventeen minus times in Kansas. Thus showing that the Negro is
everywhere many times more criminal than the white man, and that his
criminality is more pronounced in the North than in the South.

That he is discriminated against by the court,—and otherwise,—is
sometimes given as a reason for the great criminal showing of the
Negro; that for the same kind of crime the Negro gets a much longer
sentence than a white man, etc. This is hardly to be held as against
the North, and that it is true to any appreciable extent in the South
is doubtful, but hard to determine,—absolutely.

As Table I gives the number of prisoners on hand at a certain time
and Table II the number committed to prison during a period of
time,[77:2] other things being equal, it is clear that if the Negro is
discriminated against through the length of sentence imposed on him by
the court, it should be shown by a smaller number being sent to prison
in proportion to the respective population of the two races in any
State than is to be found on hand at a certain time. For instance,
at the Maryland and the Texan penitentiaries, according to the above
tables, in 1910 the numbers of Negroes on hand were, respectively,
eight-minus times and eight-plus times their proportion, while those
committed for the same year were seven-plus and seven, respectively.
This would seem to indicate that in neither Maryland nor Texas was
there but little, if any discrimination against the Negro. But a
comparison of the statistics for Arkansas and Louisiana seems to show
that the Negro is discriminated against in these States. However, upon
further investigation it is found that ninety-one Negroes were sent to
the Louisiana penitentiary in 1911 for murder and manslaughter, and
thirty-two for shooting with intent to kill, as against thirty white
men during the same year for these crimes. Again, in the Arkansas
penitentiary in November, 1912, there were 213 white and 643 Negro
prisoners. Of the whites but 50 had committed homicide, while 218 of
the Negro prisoners were guilty of the crime.

Moreover, one might naturally expect that the whites, on account of
greater influence, would be much more likely to secure pardons. It is
doubtful if the whites are thus favored to any large extent. Between
November 1, 1910, and October 31, 1912, Arkansas granted pardons to 121
whites and 86 Negroes, while during the year ending November 30, 1911,
Kentucky pardoned nine white men and eighteen Negroes. If statistics
were available from all the States it might be rather conclusively
demonstrated that the Negro is discriminated against but little by the
courts.

In this connection it may be well also to note the fact that in Ohio
fourteen-minus times as many as their proportion (according to Table
II) were sent to the penitentiary; in West Virginia fifteen times, and
in North Dakota forty-three times their proportion.

A comparison of the number of whites and Negroes arrested a year in
some of the large cities is given in the following table:

TABLE III

White, Negro,
Population in 1910 Arrests One One
City ------------------ --------------------- Arrest Arrest
White Negro Year White Negro in in
Every Every
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ 1904 6,602 10,954 }
Atlanta 102,861 51,978 { 1909 6,241 11,925 } 16.5 4.5
{ 1915 6,369 10,954 }

{ 1905 21,713 12,323 }
Baltimore 473,387 85,098 { 1909 20,445 11,361 } 23+ 7.5
{ 1915 25,108 15,840 }

Buffalo 421,809 1,906 { 1911 23,983 236 }
{ 1915 30,711 385 } 18- 8+

{ 1907 53,349 4,653 }
Chicago 2,139,057 46,226 { 1909 62,864 4,852 } 34+ 10-
{ 1915 105,119 9,508 }

Charleston, { 1907 1,559 2,631 }
S. C. 27,803 31,069 { 1911 1,734 2,886 } 16+ 11-
{ 1913 2,487 3,185 }

{ 1909 10,887 775 }
Detroit 459,926 5,840 { 1910 13,726 976 } 33.5 6-
{ 1915 19,539 2,121 }

{ 1907 8,324 1,663 }
Omaha 119,580 4,516 { 1910 9,597 2,083 } 12.5 2+
{ 1915 13,091 2,211 }

Philadelphia 1,463,371 85,637 1910 71,825 9,507 20+ 9+

{ 1903 9,529 6,917 }
New Orleans 249,403 89,672 { 1910 15,035 10,052 } 16.7 9-
{ 1913 19,486 11,163 }

{ 1904 20,149 5,375 }
St Louis 645,478 44,541 { 1910 29,746 8,382 } 22- 5+
{ 1913 29,166 8,099 }

Providence, 218,623 5,703 { 1911 11,332 434 } 19.3+ 13+
R. I. { 1912 10,632 470 }

Richmond, { 1904 2,851 3,674 }
Va. 80,879 46,749 { 1907 4,356 5,246 } 22- 8-
{ 1910 3,710 5,893 }

Wilmington, { 1908 3,175 963 }
Del. 78,309 9,162 { 1910 2,933 955 } 26+ 9.6
{ 1911 2,896 979 }

Washington, { 1908 15,985 17,430 }
D. C. 236,128 94,941 { 1910 16,371 17,632 } 14.3 5.3+
{ 1915 17,415 17,716 }

Table III shows that for the cities given, one white person to
twenty-one-plus of the white population was arrested during 1910 or
thereabouts, but _one_ to eight-minus of the Negro. In the cities of
the North one to twenty-three whites were arrested and _one_ to six
Negroes; in the South excluding Wilmington, Del., and Washington, _one_
to twenty whites and _one_ to eight for the Negroes. In Detroit: _one_
for every two plus Negroes were arrested.

In this connection, it would seem that a comparison of the jail
population of a Northern and a Southern State might be of interest.
For this purpose Alabama and Connecticut were selected. In 1910,
Alabama had a white population of 1,228,832 and 908,282 Negroes while
Connecticut had 1,098,897 whites and 15,174 Negroes.[81:3]

In both Alabama and Connecticut the ratio of whites and Negroes sent
to jail during the fiscal year ending September 30, 1914, was about
the same, _one_ white to four Negroes.[81:4] However, in Alabama _one_
white person to 216 of the white population as against _one_ to 54 of
the Negro, while in Connecticut, _one_ white person to 100, and _one_
Negro to 20 was put in jail.

Again, the four counties of Connecticut embracing the large cities of
the State, and having nearly all the Negro population, sent to jail
_one_ white to 92 of the white population, and _one_ Negro to 24 of the
Negro, or nearly four times their proportion.[81:5] But in the other
four counties with an aggregate of 187,058 whites and 1,661 Negroes
the ratio was _one_ to 174 for the whites, and _one_ to 64 for the
Negroes or hardly three times as many.

Now, taking the three counties of Alabama in which the cities of
Montgomery, Mobile, and Birmingham are located, with an aggregate
population of 207,295 whites and 182,211 Negroes, _one_ white person to
90 was sent to jail and _one_ Negro to 21, or nearly four and one-half
times as many.

Moreover, twenty-two counties with no towns of more than 1000
population each, and having a total population of 293,187 whites and
274,533 Negroes _one_ white to 523 was sent to jail and _one_ Negro to
141, or nearly four Negroes to one white.

Also, in fourteen counties with cities of 1000 to 10,000 population,
and a total population of 205,844 whites, and 207,966 Negroes, the
races being almost equal in numbers, _one_ white to 400, and _one_
Negro to 75 were sent to jail, or six times the Negro’s share.

Furthermore, six counties consisting almost wholly of white people,
having a total population of 119,496 whites and 5,670 Negroes,—had in
jail _one_ white to 363 and _one_ Negro to 27, or twelve Negroes to
_one_ white person.

Moreover, eight counties of Alabama, with an aggregate population of
41,323 white and 185,222 Negroes, about four and one-half times as many
Negroes as whites, _one_ white to 689 were sent to jail and _one_ Negro
to 156, or about four and one-half times as many.

In studying the jail statistics of Alabama, whether cities or counties,
it soon becomes evident that the criminality of the Negro increases as
his proportion to the whole population decreases; in other words, the
fewer the Negroes in a given population the more criminal they appear.
An examination of Tables I, II, and III will show that this is not only
true of Alabama, but true, with scarcely an exception, both North and
South. Negro crime seemingly increases in the cities and in the North
and the West. So does the crime of the white man increase, although not
to the same extent.

* * * * *

In general, the denser the population the more likely is friction to
occur, or collisions among its units. But this is not an adequate
explanation for the increase of Negro crime. Nor can it be accounted
for except in small part, by attributing it to the more complex social
environment of the cities and of the North. However, it is not to be
doubted that the unstable character of the Negro is easily influenced
by the temptations incident to city life. More important, no doubt,
is the assumption that where Negroes are few in comparison with the
whites, they are more tempted to commit acts of thievery, robbery, and
burglary. Again, in the cities, officers of the law are on the watch,
consequently more apt to detect and catch a criminal; also, where the
Negroes are few they are likely to be held more strictly to the white
man’s standard of conduct. However, in some parts of the South, a white
man sometimes may be arrested when for the same act a Negro would
hardly be bothered. The idea seems to obtain that for certain things
allowance must be made for the ignorance of the Negro, but no excuse is
made for the white man.

Again, a great deal of the friction between the two races in the South
is caused by the resistance of Negro criminals to officers of the law.
Not only so, but relatives, friends and other Negroes as well often
attempt to shield the Negro criminal in order that he may escape
detection and arrest. This is not exceptional but rather of frequent
occurrence. It is one of the ways in which the black man shows himself
to be an enemy of law and order. He does not seem to realize the
attitude in which he places his race in acting thus. Now, where the
Negroes form a large part or the greater part of the population, it is
much easier for him to aid Negro criminals, and it is often effectively
done. But where there are but few Negroes in the population, it is to
that extent more difficult for the Negro criminal to escape detection
and arrest. These seem to be the main reasons why Negroes appear more
criminal where there are but few in the population.

In addition to statistics, a few newspaper clippings may aid one more
fully to appreciate Negro criminality.[85:7] It is hardly probable that
anywhere in the United States has the Negro, on the whole, had better
advantages than in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, especially is this
true of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. For this reason the following
are the more significant:

RESISTING OFFICERS, ETC.

“John E. Goode, a Negro, blew off the top of his head at
Bedford City this morning in _preference_ to _appearing_ as a
witness against Thomas W. Preston, the Negro murderer of M.
D. Custy, a saloon-keeper. . . . Goode was present when the
murder was committed. A Negro family named Davis, relatives
of Preston, are said to have threatened Goode’s life, if he
testified.”[86:8]

A Negro in Chestertown, Md., being tried on three charges of arson,
attacks the officers of the court:

“Pointing to the Negro, State’s Attorney Vickers intimated that
he had set fire to the beautiful buildings on the grounds of
the Washington College near Chestertown. Suddenly the Negro
made a leap for the States Attorney, but was stopped by Deputy
Sheriff Brown. The enraged Negro turned and struck the deputy
sheriff a stunning blow under the chin. . . . It required seven
men to quiet the Negro.”[86:9]

* * * * *

“John Carter, the Negro who shot Policeman Elizabeth Faber and
Patrolman George W. Popp on October 17 on the Edmondson Avenue
bridge when they attempted to arrest him died in the city jail
at 3.10 o’clock yesterday morning.”[87:10]

* * * * *

“The final decision in the Brownsville incident is closed
finally and the verdict will give entire satisfaction to
everybody except Hon. Joseph Foraker of Ohio; the Negro
soldiers who shot up the Texas town and their _comrades who
concealed_ the guilt of the bloodthirsty marauders.”[87:11]

* * * * *

“Negro soldiers of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry
had planned a riot of bloodshed among the white residents of
Houston (Texas) August 23, two days before the deadly attack
which cost the lives of 15 Houston citizens last month,
according to the report of the Civilian board of inquiry which
reported to the Houston City Council to-night. . . .

“The committee says that the undisputed and convincing
testimony of witnesses proves that the Negro soldiers went
forth to slay the white population indiscriminately: that no
Negro was hurt or molested by them, not one Negro house was
fired into, and that the Negroes were warned beforehand . . .
to stay off the streets.”[87:12]

* * * * *

“The police of the Northwestern district are looking for about
25 Negroes who late Saturday night attempted to break down the
front door of the boarding house conducted by Miss Mary Ashten
at 906 McCulloh street.”[88:13]

* * * * *

“Centerville, Md., Jan. 7. The Rev. J. D. Jackson, colored,
pastor of Bethel-African Methodist Episcopal Church, was
arrested and placed in jail here to-day charged with
housebreaking and burglary.”[88:14]

* * * * *

“Middletown, Del.—The Rev. Aaron Gibbs, a Negro preacher, is
being held in $500 bail for court for alleged theft of 280
pounds of meat from the farm of Daniel Ford, near this place.
The meat was recovered at the home of Gibbs by Chief of Police,
Lee Cochran.” . . .

“Another Negro, Arthur Brewington, wanted for theft of meat and
chickens held the whole Smyrna police force at bay for hours,
until his ammunition gave out. He then retreated escaping from
the force into a deep swamp five miles away.”[88:15]

* * * * *

“Seaford, Del., July 3.—Negroes who live in and around
Bridgeville attempted to take the town last night. . . . About
10 o’clock at night the Negroes began firing among themselves,
and Bridgeville being without police protection, was at the
mercy of their revolvers, which were being fired in rapid
succession. The town seemed to be alive with brawling blacks,
and several fights were started in different parts of the town.
At the railroad station a large crowd collected and fired shots
in every direction. At a colored church another crowd got
together, firing desperately among themselves. The citizens
being utterly helpless stayed in their houses behind locked
doors.”[89:16]

NEGROES AT PICNICS AND ON EXCURSIONS

“Federalsburg, Md., Aug. 14. John Henry Lake, a Hurlock Negro,
was killed and Frank Dickerson wounded, perhaps fatally, at a
celebration by Negroes last night.”[89:17]

* * * * *

“Gettysburg, Pa., Sept. 11.—Clara Brown, of Baltimore, colored,
was shot in a brawl here in the course of an excursion and
picnic. Her condition is critical. Three other persons were
also injured. The picnickers had a gay frolic. It is charged
that fifty of them attacked a policeman, and one of them robbed
Robert King of Hunterstown of $35. There were about 7240
excursionists. Gettysburg has made a protest.”[90:18]

* * * * *

“Roanoke, Va., March 29.—Drunken Negroes took charge of an
excursion train between this city and Winston-Salem last night
and as a consequence Sidney Wood of Winston-Salem is dead at
Martinsville, and two-score other Negroes are more or less
wounded. Knives, razors, and pistols played prominent parts
in the melee. . . . The train was stopped several times by
Negroes pulling the bell cord, and the train was cut in two
several times, leaving a number of coaches behind with a second
section following. . . . The three coaches which were cut off
were filled with white people. . . . When the train reached
Bassetts, in Henry County, every Negro in two coaches was
apparently in a fight. The screams of the terror-stricken women
added to the excitement.”[90:19]

NEGROES AT CAMP MEETING

“Smyrna, Del., Aug. 9.—As has been the case yearly for a dozen
years there was a fatal shooting affray at the Negro camp
meeting at Friendship last night. Howard Hollis, a Negro of
Clayton, Del., was shot in both legs during the fight. . . . It
is not known who shot Hollis as bullets were flying thick and
fast during the melee.”[91:20]

* * * * *

“Federalsburg, Md., Sept. 6.—Officers are scouring lower
Caroline County to-day for four Negroes who last night shot up
a Negro campmeeting at Mount Hope, near this town.”[91:21]

* * * * *

“Deputy Sheriff Bruce C. Dean, yesterday afternoon shot and
killed a Negro named Smith at what is known as Henry’s Cross
Roads [near Cambridge, Md., negro] campmeeting. . . . There has
always been more or less disorder; in fact, it is generally
known that fights, cutting affrays, and a general disregard for
the law exists.”[91:22] The Negro who was killed shot at the
deputy Sheriff when he tried to arrest him.

* * * * *

“Salisbury, Md., Aug. 23.—A riot occurred last night at the
Negro campmeeting, on the west side of the county, and Asbury
Waters, 19 years old, was killed, and Clinton Gosless was shot
through his jaw-bone and his chin carried away by a bullet.

“Just at the height of the services one of the local
preachers, was raising his hands in prayer, a colored woman
slipped into the kneeling crowd and pulled a pistol from her
dress folds and fired a bullet into his heart. Waters pitched
forward and died instantly. . . . Immediately after, Sallie
Milburn whipped a pistol from her pocket and blazed away at
Clinton Gosless, the bullet entering his jaw. Gosless is in a
very serious condition with little hope of his recovery.”

Both these accounts were in the same issue of the _Cambridge_ (Md.)
_Record_, but the camps were in adjoining counties.

Indeed, Negro camp meetings and bush meetings had become so
numerous,—occupied such a large part of the Negroes’ time during
summer, caused so much lawlessness among them; and consequently so much
expense to the whites, that the Maryland Legislature in 1916 passed a
law evidently directed against them, which in part is as follows:

“It shall be unlawful for any person, persons, association or
organization of any kind whatever to hold any camp meeting or
bush meeting within the limits of Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester,
Somerset, Kent, and Worcester Counties without first making
application in writing at least fifteen days prior to the
date of such camp meeting or bush meeting therein. That such
application for a permit as aforesaid, shall be accompanied
by a petition in writing signed by at least twenty-five tax
payers, each of whom shall reside within three miles of the
place where such camp meeting is to be held, and each petition
shall have annexed thereto as a part thereof an affidavit to
the effect that each of the said petitioners are bona fide tax
payers and of their residences within three miles of said place
of such proposed meeting. And whenever the County Commissioners
of any of the respective counties shall have any reasonable
grounds that any lawlessness or disorder will occur, at said
camp meeting or bush meeting, they shall refuse to grant such
permit, and if, after issuing any permit to hold any camp
meeting or bush meeting there shall be lawlessness or disorder
reported to said County Commissioners, it shall be the duty
of said officials to investigate or have investigated by the
Sheriff or other officer of said county, the matter, and upon
proof of said lawlessness or disorder they shall forthwith
revoke said permit and it shall be the duty of the Sheriff,
or other officer of the respective Counties to enforce the
provisions of this act.”

In about the same spirit and for the same purpose, the reduction
of Negro crime, a few years ago, the city of Mobile, Alabama,
passed an ordinance, an account of which is taken from a Baltimore
periodical:[94:23]

“The police department of Mobile, Ala., has established a
curfew law for Negroes. Commencing on the night of July 21, the
law provides that all Negroes must be in bed at their homes by
ten o’clock or be subject to arrest. Any caught wandering at
large after that hour will be locked up. This action is taken
because there is said to be an epidemic of hold-ups perpetrated
by the Negroes. If such a law was enforced in Baltimore it
would decrease the alley fights ninety-five per cent.”

NEGRO IMMORALITY

In connection with Negro criminality it seems pertinent to say
something of Negro immorality. Two of the Negro’s most prominent
characteristics are the utter lack of chastity and complete ignorance
of veracity.

The Negro’s sexual laxity, considered so immoral or even criminal in
the white man’s civilization, may have been all but a virtue in the
habitat of his origin. There nature developed in him intense sexual
passions to offset his high death rate. Then, too, the economic
influences which fostered a family life among other peoples were mostly
lacking in tropical Africa as nature provided abundantly without effort
on the part of man.

Although the regulations adopted by masters for the control of the
Negroes during slavery times may have served as a check upon their
natural sexual propensities, however, since emancipation they have been
under no such restraint and as a consequence they have possibly almost
reverted to what must have been their primitive promiscuity. Huffman
says that in 1894 more than one-fourth of the colored births in the
city of Washington were illegitimate. Many prominent Negroes admit
that above ninety per cent of both sexes are unchaste. A negro may
be a pillar in the church and at the same time the father of a dozen
illegitimate children by as many mothers.

Another Negro failing is lying. One can believe neither layman nor
minister, neither criminal nor saint among them. One may occasionally
find a truthful Negro,—just as he may find a virtuous or an honest one.
Undoubtedly both honest and truthful was the Negro,—an elder in the
church,—who refused to partake of the Lord’s Supper, because, as he
said, the flour the bread was made of had been stolen.

Some benevolently-inclined men and many religious zealots thought
that religion and education was the “Open Sesame” by means of which
the “salvation” of the Negro was to come. So they sent him money to
build churches and to found great schools. Many, however, are now
finding that though the Negro may have religion he has no morality;
and that too often his education makes him unwilling to do what he can
do and wish to do that for which he is unfitted or for which there
is no demand. At present who can tell whether he is going forward or
backward. Some one has said that there is going on side by side in the
Negro people a minimum of progress with a maximum of regress.

However, the Negro takes great pride in his church, and in his way is
intensely religious. The late Booker T. Washington said:

“Of these millions of black people there is only a very small
percentage that does not have formal or informal connection
with some church.”

It is, indeed, likely that more than one-half of the male Negro adults
are actual members of church, while not more than _one_ in four or
five white male adults have such connection. Notwithstanding such a
showing, religion does not seem to have any controlling influence over
the life and character of the Negro.

Nevertheless, the Negro enjoys his religion, for he is an emotional
animal. It is the emotional element in religion that appeals to him
and makes his face to shine. The promise of never-ending pleasure in a
world to come may be but faintly comprehended by him, but the fear of a
far off punishment deters him but little from crime. He is the optimist
of the human race, and lives in the eternal present. He has no sorrows
from the past, and no care except for the immediate future. He keeps
without effort or intention two injunctions of Scripture: “Visit the
sick,” and “have no care for to-morrow.”

He goes to camp meetings or revivals, sings, prays, and shouts until
the small hours of the night. He may think he thus pays the Lord His
due, even though the next day, if he works at all, he sleeps on the
plow-handle, or with half-closed eyes cuts up the tobacco or the cotton.

However, he may be free from the painful necessity to work the next
day, if his wife or mother should have just returned from a white
neighbor with an “apronful,” even if he did not visit some tempting
smoke-house or hen-roost on the way home from his religious revelry.

How can Negro criminality and immorality be lessened? The answer is
not easy, and what follows is merely suggestive. Up to the present,
what little the Negro has accomplished, in most part has been due to
the white blood he has received, or to white direction and sympathy.
The Negro is woefully lacking in initiative and persistence. He would
be greatly benefited by some sort of probationary oversight. If the
Filipinos are not fit for self-government collectively, much less the
Negro individually. A great part of them are no more fit to profit by
their freedom than so many children. Nothing so promotes health of
body and strength of character as regular and persistent industry. To
the Negro should be preached the “gospel of salvation” through work.
Somehow get him to work six days in the week, instead of working two
and loafing four, as many now do. Industrial schools such as Hampton
and Tuskegee meet a great need but they touch but few.

If the States had the power to train or even to enforce habits of
industry and thrift upon the shiftless, idle, and vicious Negroes it
would undoubtedly result in measureless benefit to both white and
black. Liberty should not be made a “fetish.” If the Negro has rights
that should not be abridged, so have the white people rights and
_lives_ that should not be endangered. The law-abiding many have the
right to protection from the criminal few—actual or incipient. With the
adoption of some such scheme the Negro might gradually cease to be a
menace to the white race.

Again, so often the Negro leaders of the Negro race are merely blind
leaders of the blind,—entirely lacking in breadth of view, often
discouraging in their race what they should encourage and encouraging
what they should discourage as the following quotation may indicate:

“‘Make lynching a Federal crime, and stop turning the murderers
over to local authorities who are in sympathy with them,’
demanded Dr. W. T. Vernon, of Memphis, Tenn., before 15,000
Negroes, who were celebrating the twenty-fifth quadrennial
Conference of the African M. E. Church in Convention Hall,
Broad street and Allegheny Avenue, yesterday.”[99:24]

Such talk as this serves to promote Negro crime. If instead of Negro
leaders writing articles for magazines and Negro papers, in sermons in
Negro churches, and in addresses before Negro conventions denouncing
the whites for protecting themselves against Negro crime in their own
way, could realize that it is not so much the black skin as what sort
of man the black skin covers, that counts, would demonstrate to their
black brothers that they themselves are the sinners rather than the
sinned against, that they are the transgressors rather than otherwise,
they might accomplish much toward lessening Negro crime. If such
leaders would use their influence to the utmost to make their race as
law-abiding as the whites, and should bring it about, it is hardly
likely that then they would need to complain that their race is imposed
upon. But if they were, at least, there would be more force in their
complaint. But so long as the Negro race commits its present amount of
crime, the complaint against unfair treatment is more than childish.

FOOTNOTES:

[76:1] Both Tables I and II have reference to penetentiaries, no
account being taken of other penal institutions. The calculations are
based upon the census of 1910 and penitentiary reports of the same
year, or thereabouts, but some prison statistics for other years are
also given.

[77:2] Some State penitentiary reports give the number of prisoners on
hand at a certain time, others simply those committed during a period
of time, while a few reports give both items.

[81:3] My statistics are based on the census of 1910. The Special
Report of the Prison Inspector of Alabama for the year ending September
30, 1914, and the returns of the county jails of Connecticut for
the same period. As the white population of Connecticut increased
about 225,000 during the previous decade, while the Negroes slightly
decreased, I added 70,000 to the white population of 1910 to offset
the increase of whites during the three or four years between 1910 and
1914. But as both races increased in Alabama I use the 1910 census for
that State.

[81:4] In proportion to their respective population, of course.

[81:5] In order to avoid repetition, unless otherwise indicated, when
one white to four Negroes or any such ratio is mentioned, the meaning
is this: I divide the white population of the state by the white
prisoners for the number of white people to each white prisoner, and
divide the Negro population of the State for the number of Negroes to
each Negro prisoner, and then divide the white prisoners by the Negro
to get the ratio of Negro prisoners to the white.

[85:7] I made no effort to find these. I give here only a few of those
taken from _Baltimore Sun_, _Baltimore American_, and refer mainly to
Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. What may be true in these States as
regards Negro criminality, is likely to be found intensified farther
south.

[86:8] _Baltimore Sun_, Jan. 6, 1910.

[86:9] _Baltimore News_, Oct. 20, 1916.

[87:10] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 4, 1915.

[87:11] _Ibid._, April 8, 1910.

[87:12] _Ibid._, Sept. 12, 1917.

[88:13] _Baltimore American_, Feb. 18, 1913.

[88:14] _Baltimore Sun_, Jan. 8, 1917.

[88:15] _Ibid._, Feb. 21, 1917.

[89:16] _Baltimore Weekly Herald_, July 8, 1909.

[89:17] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 15, 1914.

[90:18] _Cambridge_ (Md.) _Record_, Sept. 12, 1913.

[90:19] _Baltimore Sun_, March 30, 1910.

[91:20] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 10, 1915.

[91:21] _Ibid._, Sept. 7, 1915.

[91:22] _Cambridge_ (Md.) _Record_, Aug. 25, 1913.

[94:23] _Methodist Protestant_, July 28, 1909.

[99:24] _Philadelphia Record_, May 8, 1916.

CHAPTER V

SEGREGATION OF THE NEGRO

It is hardly to be questioned that since the Civil War the white man
and the Negro have been drawing farther and farther apart. Religious
teachers, political adventurers, and fortune hunters gave the first
great impetus to the movement. The teachers, however, misguided, may
have been sincere in their efforts to benefit the Negro; but the
carpet-baggers had in mind only personal aggrandizement.

This political separation of the Negroes from the Southern whites was
the entering wedge that split asunder the ties that had bound the two
races together. Otherwise the Negroes might have divided with the
whites between two or more political parties. This would have resulted
greatly to their advantage for each party would have bid for their vote.

Upon the passing of the carpet-bag administrations, however, the
Negroes lost most of their political importance. Since then it has been
further reduced until it is now almost a negligible quantity.

During the Reconstruction period, the attitude of the Negroes served
to alienate their former masters, who undoubtedly would have otherwise
been their best friends. Between most of the Negroes and the poor
whites of the South, there had always existed a feeling of mutual
dislike if not contempt. After the War great numbers of the latter
secured wealth and influence. Their dislike of the Negro, however, has
increased rather than abated.

Thus, the Negroes began to feel the lack of that sympathy,
consideration, and direction from the whites to which they had been
accustomed. Therefore, whether consciously or unconsciously, they
turned to leaders of their own color more readily, and this has
gradually developed a feeling of race solidarity. However, this should
not be an unmixed evil.

Again, in many parts of the South, the industrial development of the
past thirty years has furthered segregation in that section by drawing
the whites to the towns and cities. But Negroes have also turned
to the cities in great numbers notwithstanding the fact that the
industrial enterprises of the cities usually hold out but little if any
inducements to such migration. This has given rise to the agitation
for the segregation of the races in the cities whether voluntary or by
legal enactment. While this is more pronounced in the South it has also
spread to the North and West.

One of the most noteworthy examples of voluntary segregation is to be
found in New York City:

“In one district of New York City a Negro population equal in
numbers to the inhabitants of Dallas, Texas, or Springfield,
Mass., lives, works, and pursues its ideals almost as a
separate entity from the great surrounding metropolis. Here the
Negro merchants ply their trade; Negro professional men follow
their various vocations; their children are educated; the poor,
sick, and the orphan of their race is cared for; churches,
newspapers, and books flourish heedless of those outside this
Negro community who resent its presence in a white city.”[103:1]

Indeed, in many parts of the country the Negroes have separated
themselves from the whites by founding small communities of their own.
In almost any state, villages and towns populated and governed almost
exclusively by Negroes may be found. A few of the more important are:
Buxton, Iowa, 1000 whites and 4000 Negroes; Brooklyn, Illinois, 1600
Negroes; Balor, Oklahoma, 3000; Plateau, Alabama, 1500; Mound Bayou,
Mississippi, 700.[104:2]

In addition, there are almost an unlimited number of what may be termed
Negro settlements scattered over the country. Such is Petersburg, on
a railroad two miles from Hurlock, Maryland, which may serve as an
example. It consists of about twenty-five houses and lots or little
farms, altogether embracing about one hundred acres. These are mostly
owned by the Negroes who live on them. They bought these little tracts
several years ago when the land was considered almost worthless as it
was so sandy and poor. The men till their lots and occasionally work
by the day for some of the surrounding white farmers. In season, the
women and children and some of the men as well go elsewhere to pick
berries. In the late summer all have employment at home for about two
months furnished by a white cannery, near. Altogether it seems to be
a very contented community. Each Negro is his own boss and can work
when it suits him and stop when he pleases. To make such a living as
satisfies him he need work scarcely half of his time. This just suits
Negro inclinations and consequently Petersburg is a little paradise for
the Negro.

However, the segregation of the Negro is not yet universal. In some
towns and cities as well both North and South they are more or less
scattered. In the City of Washington they are found practically
everywhere. In most cities they occupy the most undesirable parts—such
as any low muddy places or narrow alleys. In some small cities of the
South, while there may be a well defined Negro section, nearly every
well-to-do family has a Negro servant family in the back yard. La
Grange, Georgia, is an example.

But in the greater number of towns and cities the Negro section and
the white section have been clearly defined for years. Cambridge,
Maryland,—a city of about 5000 whites and 2000 Negroes,—is of that
sort. All the Negroes live in the Southwest section except two or
three families that live in a kind of alley near the bridge which
connects East Cambridge with the main part of the city. One sees but
few Negroes on any white street, not even on the main business street
except Saturdays when they do their shopping. But on the street just
west of the main business street and parallel with it, the business
street of the Negro section, only a few whites are ever to be seen
but it is always black with Negroes. Here are Negro grocery stores, a
drug store, barber shops, theater, schools, and churches. Very few
mulattoes are in evidence for the Negroes are nearly all of pure blood.
One never hears of any serious trouble between the Negroes and whites
of Cambridge for they live in comparative harmony with one another. At
East New Market in the same county, a railroad separates the white from
the Negro section of the town, while at Vienna, eleven miles distant,
the Negro section is several hundred yards from the white part of the
town.

Although Negroes constitute about one-third of the population of
the Eastern Shore of Maryland, they have not become sufficiently
numerous as farmers as to cause much injury to farm land or to farming
interests, whether by careless and indifferent farming or by making the
country districts undesirable to white people as places of residence.
Most of the Negroes in the country districts are used by the white
farmers as farm hands. Negroes are seldom able to rent the better
grade farms while those owned by them are usually small and poor. As a
consequence most of the land on the Eastern Shore is in a high state of
cultivation and the farmers prosperous and contented.

In most parts of the farther South, however, except Texas and Oklahoma,
and the Piedmont and mountain sections, the whites have allowed the
Negroes to gain such a foothold in the country districts that they are
now the greatest obstacles to agricultural progress. The South is just
beginning to realize the true condition of things.

Indeed, already in North Carolina an agitation has begun for the
segregation of the Negro in the rural districts. If this could be
accomplished in all parts of the South it would be a wonderful boon
to that section. Not only would it to a great extent free the white
women from fear of attack by Negroes but this would serve to attract
to the South thrifty and ambitious farmers from other parts of the
country. A more satisfactory social life could be developed in the
rural districts. Adequate schools and churches could better be
maintained, not only for the white race but for the Negroes as well. As
a consequence both races would be benefited.

With the exception of the establishment in the South of separate
schools for the whites and the Negroes, only in comparatively recent
years has segregation been brought about by law. More than twenty years
ago, however, a few Southern States had laws providing for segregation
in railroad travel and now almost every Southern State has such a
law. In some, Maryland for example, the law also applies to passenger
steamboats. A certain section of the boat is given to the Negroes.
Both races have now become so accustomed to these laws that they are
generally taken as a matter of course.

Lately many Southern cities have passed ordinances extending the
principle of segregation in travel, to street cars. Mobile, Alabama,
however, as early as 1902 had such an ordinance in force. As it was one
of the first, and but slightly different from those in force in other
cities, the main part is quoted here, as follows:

“All persons or corporations, operating street railroads in
the city of Mobile or within its police jurisdiction shall
provide seats for the white people and Negroes when there are
white people and Negroes on the same car by requiring the
conductor or other employe in charge of the car or cars to
assign to passengers to seats in all the cars, or when the car
is divided into two compartments in each compartment, in such
manner as to separate the white people from the Negroes, by
seating the white people in the front seats and the Negroes in
the rear as they enter the car, but in the event such order
of seating might cause inconvenience to those who are already
properly seated, the conductor or other employee, in charge of
the car, may use his discretion in seating passengers, but in
such manner that no white person and Negro must be placed, or
seated, in the same section, or compartment arranged for two
passengers: Provided, That Negro nurses having in charge white
children, or sick or infirm white persons, may be assigned to
seats among the white people.”[109:3]

The conductor is also given the authority of police officer to enforce
the law.

The form of segregation which is receiving most attention in the
South at present, however, is the effort of various cities,—great
and small,—to provide by law, for (as nearly as possible) distinct
residential sections for the two races. This question was first
agitated in Baltimore in 1809. A segregation law was passed but it was
soon pronounced invalid by the courts. In 1911, another such ordinance
was put in force but it, too, was declared void, first by the Criminal
Court of Baltimore, and later by the Maryland Court of Appeals. The
latter Court, however, maintained that the city has the right to pass a
segregation law. I quote the following words of the court:

“This Court is of the opinion that the Mayor and City Council
of Baltimore may, in the exercise of its police power, validly
pass an ordinance for the segregation of the white and colored
races without conflicting with the Constitution of the United
States or of the State of Maryland.”[110:4]

Very soon after this, another ordinance was passed. It has now been
in operation about four years (1917). However, the Maryland Court of
Appeals is holding a case _sub curia_, awaiting a decision of the
United States Supreme Court in a case testing the validity of the
segregation law of Louisville.[110:4a]

In 1912 the Virginia Legislature enacted a law for the purpose, it
seems, of encouraging the cities and towns of that State to segregate
the whites and the Negroes. Richmond, however, had already passed a
segregation ordinance in 1911. It is as follows:

“That it shall be unlawful for any white person to occupy
as a residence or to establish and maintain as a place of
public assembly, any house upon any street or alley between
two adjacent streets in which a greater number of houses are
occupied as residences by colored people than are occupied as
residences by white people.

“That it shall be unlawful for any colored person to occupy
as a residence or to establish and maintain as a place of
public assembly any house upon any street or alley between
two adjacent streets on which a greater number of houses are
occupied as residences by white people than are occupied as
residences by colored people.

“That no person shall construct or locate on any block or
square on which there is at that time no residence any house
or other building intended to be used as a residence without
declaring in his application for a permit to build whether
the house or building so to be constructed is designed to be
occupied by white or colored people, and the Building Inspector
of the city of Richmond shall not issue any permit in such
case unless the applicant complies with the provisions of this
section.

“That nothing in this ordinance shall affect the location of
residences made previous to the approval of this ordinance,
and nothing herein shall be so construed as to prevent the
occupation of residences by white or colored servants or
employes on the square or block on which they are so employed.

“Every person, either by himself or through his agent,
violating, or any agent for another violating any one or
more of the provisions of this ordinance shall be liable to
a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $200, recoverable
before the police justice of the city of Richmond, and, in the
discretion of the police justice, such person may, in addition
thereto, be confined in the city jail not less than 30 nor
more than 90 days.”[112:5]

Some of the principal reasons for the demand for the segregation of
the two races in towns and cities are given in the _Preamble_ to the
Virginia law of 1912 as follows:

“Whereas the preservation of the public morals, public health,
and public order, in the cities and towns of this Commonwealth
is endangered by the residence of white and colored people in
close proximity to one another: therefore, be it enacted by the
General Assembly of Virginia,” etc.

The effect upon public order of the “close proximity” of the two races
may best be shown by the following quotations:

“Having occasion to ride on the Guilford Avenue car last week,
going down town, there were 10 or 12 Negro men in their dirty
working clothes. On one seat there were two of them; the other
8 or 10 had each of them a separate bench. Refined handsomely
dressed women entering the car had to stand or sit beside one
of these dirty Negroes. I am not an enemy to the race. I
believe they should have as good accommodations as we have, but
they should be to themselves.”[113:6]

* * * * *

“I prefer rubbing elbows with them (Negro guano factory
laborers) to riding with the so-called respectable Negroes on
the Preston Street and other cross-town lines. On the Preston
street line in particular conditions have become so unbearable
that the writer, who formerly used this line to reach his place
of business, has been obliged to adopt a more circuitous route,
which takes fully twice as long.

“On this line respectable white people and white women
especially, are subjected to every species of affront and
insult, which they cannot resent without risk of being
drawn into a dispute, in which no decent person cares to be
involved. The Negroes realize this and it emboldens them still
further.”[113:7]

* * * * *

“Residents in the 1300 block, Myrtle Avenue were greatly
excited yesterday by a colored family moving into 1334 during
the morning. The block is occupied by white people and this is
the first intrusion by Negroes.”[113:8]

* * * * *

“Angered because a colored family had moved into house No. 128
Patapsco Avenue, a crowd of about 100 residents of Pimplico
gathered before the dwelling last night and battered it with
sticks and stones until every window pane was smashed, valuable
chandeliers demolished and plaster knocked in great clouds from
the walls.”[114:9]

* * * * *

“About 150 determined white men gathered early yesterday
evening at a house on Mattfeld Avenue near Falls road, and
camped on the grounds until a Negro family of two men and three
women and two children living in the house left. . . . After
the Negroes had found a place the men scattered. . . . No
violence or cruelty was meant toward the Negro family, but that
the neighborhood was determined to show that it was white and
meant to stay white.”[114:10]

Indeed, objections are often made to the location of Negro churches,
schools or Y. M. C. A.’s in or near white neighborhoods. The following
newspaper headings may be sufficient to indicate the situation:

“Relay [Md.] Objects to Negro College,”[114:11] “Mount
Washington Up in Arms Over the Plan to Locate Morgan College
[Negro] There,”[115:12] “Lafayette Square Protests Against
Putting a Colored School On Its Borders.”[115:13]

Nor is this attitude toward the Negro confined to the South. If the
North had as many Negroes in proportion to its population as the South,
the feeling there would be just as acute. The following quotations so
indicate:

“Boston, March 23.—Refusing to associate with Dr. Melissa
Thompson, a Negress of North Carolina, who has been appointed
a physician in the maternity department of the New England
Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, five young white
women doctors sent in their resignation.”[115:14]

* * * * *

“Boston, Sept. 8.—Here where years ago a mob of exclusive Back
Bay residents stormed the old courthouse to free a Negro from
his Southern master, descendants of the Back Bay rescuers
to-day are fighting against serving as election supervisors
with a Negro, whose appointment became known Wednesday.”[115:15]

* * * * *

“Ithaca, N. Y., March 28.—The petition of more than 200 women
in Cornell University against the admission of [Negro] women
into the only dormitory in the University has been forwarded to
President Schurman.”[116:16]

* * * * *

“New York, July 2.—Twenty teachers, about half the staff at
Public School No. 125, in Wooster Street, Manhattan—have
applied for transfers, owing to the assignment by the Board
of Education of William L. Burkley (mulatto) as head of the
school.”[116:17]

* * * * *

“Burlington, Vermont, dislikes the idea of having the Tenth
Cavalry at Fort Ethan Allen. The Tenth happens to be a colored
regiment and the prospect of having 1200 Negro soldiers within
three miles of the city is greatly exciting many of the people
of Burlington.”[116:18]

* * * * *

“Akron, Ohio, August 13.—A serious race riot may take place if
notices posted on the homes of North Side Negroes last night by
members of a citizens’ ‘Vigilance league’ in that section of
the city, who have warned the Negroes that unless they sell
their property and leave that section of the city, they will be
forcibly evicted from their homes, which are also threatened
with destruction.

“Members of the ‘Vigilance league’ declare to-day that the
Negroes are practicing a form of blackmail by buying property
in the fashionable residence district of North Hill, which they
occupy until their white neighbors pay an exorbitant price for
their property to get rid of them.

“They say several instances of this kind have been recorded
recently and feeling against the Negroes reached a high pitch
at a secret meeting held last night. The public have taken
every precaution to guard against a serious outbreak.

“The Negroes have been given one week in which to sell their
property and leave that section of the city by the ‘Vigilance
league.’”[117:19]

* * * * *

“Bellville, Ill., Oct. 7.—Ten of the 13 Negroes who have been
on trial here for a week, charged with the murder of Detective
Samuel Coppedge on the morning of July 2, which precipitated
the East St. Louis, Ill., race riots were convicted to-day
and sentenced to 14 years in the penitentiary. Three were
acquitted.”[117:20]

* * * * *

“York, Pa., Aug. 20.—Dr. George W. Bowles, a Negro physician,
has started a movement here for the segregation of his race.
Bowles believes that Negroes would be better taken care of
if in one part of the town. Now the blacks are housed in
the alleys and few are permitted to rent houses on the main
streets.”[118:21]

A few such Negro leaders as Dr. Bowles, just mentioned, seem to
appreciate the advantages of segregation for the Negro, and for both
races. Others, however, object to segregation because to their minds,
it is a denial of social equality with the white race, or that they are
deprived of the best living conditions. If the Negro had the proper
race pride he would welcome the opportunity to live among his own race.
He would delight in the companionship of those of his kind. Among the
Negroes would develop grades of society as among white people. Indeed,
already in Baltimore Druid Hill Avenue and other streets have become
a sort of aristocratic section for the Negroes. Those who have money
have the opportunity to live among their own race in the best manner
possible.

Other races are so proud of their traditional grandeur or present
attainments as to claim superiority and exclusiveness. But the Negro
has such little race pride that were it possible every Negro man would
have a white wife and every Negro woman a white husband. Many Negro
leaders are so lacking in race esteem as to seize every opportunity to
force themselves into the society of other races. And although they
possess a strong sense of their rights they are usually found unmindful
of attendant obligations.

The great mass of Negroes, however, soon accommodate themselves to
segregation regulations, whether for schools, railways, or for the
residential sections of cities and seem to care but little about the
question of equality. It is only when stirred up by the unwise of their
own race, or by some sentimental, if well-meaning, but shallow-thinking
whites, who have lived far removed from association with Negroes, that
they manifest much interest in such matters.

In association among races, unless there is some strong cementing
influence to counteract it, friction is likely to occur between them in
proportion to racial difference. And so long as racial antipathy shall
exist—and practical minded men see no signs of an end of it in the near
future—regulations for the promotion of harmony should be encouraged by
both whites and blacks.

It would be almost as reasonable to expect an idiot and a genius to
find a common ground of association as to expect it of a white man
and a Negro. For in both races there is a failure to recognize that
consciousness of kind which is the basis of all pleasant association.
Indeed, even the subdivisions of the white race show a strong
preference each for those of his own division. An Italian prefers to
associate with an Italian; a German, with Germans; and a Jew, with Jews.

So, in the last analysis, the most potent reason for the segregation of
the whites and the Negroes is their unlikeness. For they are antipodal
in the extreme: the nadir and zenith of peoples. This dissimilarity
cannot be removed by soap and water, time, charity, education, or
culture. After all these it will yet remain.

Another reason for segregation is the criminality and immorality of the
Negro race. Even if it would benefit a few Negroes or satisfy their
vanity to travel with whites or to live on the same street with them is
little reason why the comfort, property values, health and morals of
the whites should be endangered thereby. The better elements of society
have rights as well as the worst and the majority should receive
consideration as well as the minority. It is in strict accord with
sound ethical principles that laws should aim to level up rather than
to level down.

Again, the susceptibility of the Negro to disease is another
very potent reason for segregation laws. The Negro’s manner of
living since his emancipation—irregular in every way, sometimes
half-starved—together with their immoral habits, have so weakened the
constitutions of a great part of them that they easily become victims
to disease.

According to the _Washington Post_ (March 3, 1917) of 20,000 Negroes
who had lately arrived in Philadelphia from the South 1000 were ill
with pneumonia and tuberculosis, of whom 700 were said to be dying.

The “Negro Year Book” for 1914-15 makes the statement that 450,000
Negroes in the South are seriously ill all the time, and that 600,000
of the present Negro population will die of tuberculosis. When one
recalls that thirty-five years ago tuberculosis among Negroes was
scarcely heard of, he may the better appreciate the full force of the
above statement in regard to tuberculosis among Negroes.

In a letter calling a conference in Baltimore to consider better
housing conditions for the Negro, Mayor Preston said:

“The insanitary housing of many of our colored people and the
congestion within the area in which they reside are developing
breeding for disease. The condition is a serious menace to
the general health of the city. It threatens to become in the
future a matter of such gravity as to challenge the thoughtful
consideration of our entire community. . . .

“The high death rate in Baltimore is occasioned by the
high mortality among the colored people. The death rate
from tuberculosis alone is three and a half colored to one
white.”[122:22]

The Health Department, in a bulletin issued about the same time, showed
that the death-rate per thousand of the Negro population of Baltimore
was 33.96, while that of the white population was but 16.91. What is
true of Baltimore is more or less true elsewhere.

It is needless to consider other reasons for segregation laws, the
three given; viz., to lessen friction, to check criminality and
immorality, and to prevent the spread of disease, are sufficient
warrant for segregation laws of whatever kind.

FOOTNOTES:

[103:1] _The Outlook_, Dec. 23, 1914.

[104:2] “Negro Year Book,” 1914-1915.

[109:3] Code of Mobile, 1907, p. 330.

[110:4] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 6, 1913.

[110:4a] Found void by U. S. Supreme Court, Nov. 5, 1917.

[112:5] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 8, 1913.

[113:6] Letter to _Baltimore Sun_, March 11, 1914.

[113:7] _Ibid._, Aug. 18, 1913.

[113:8] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 22, 1913.

[114:9] _Baltimore American_, Sept. 21, 1911.

[114:10] _Baltimore Sun_, May 19, 1916.

[114:11] _Ibid._, January 13, 1914.

[115:12] _Baltimore Sun_, August 26, 1913.

[115:13] _Ibid._, Aug. 14, 1915.

[115:14] _Ibid._, March 24, 1911.

[115:15] _Baltimore American_, Sept. 9, 1911.

[116:16] _Washington Times_, March, 28, 1911.

[116:17] _Baltimore Sun_, July 3, 1909.

[116:18] _Democrat and News_, Cambridge, Md., Sept. 3, 1909.

[117:19] _Baltimore American_, Aug. 14, 1913.

[117:20] The _Philadelphia Record_, Oct. 8, 1917.

[118:21] _Baltimore Sun_, Aug. 21, 1913.

[122:22] _Baltimore Sun_, Feb. 20, 1917.

CHAPTER VI

NEGRO WEALTH OR POVERTY,—WHICH?

The statement sometimes made that in 1865 the Negro was a landless and
penniless race is far from the truth. Some slaves had property that
they had secured through opportunities given them by their owners. No
doubt free Negroes secured at least a small share of the public domain.
Many slaves upon being given freedom by benevolent masters, were also
given money or property at the same time.

Cases of this sort were frequent during slavery times. Several
such instances are given in the _Staunton_ (Va.) _Democrat_ during
1846-1848. Such cases as the following were not uncommon:

“A Negro man named Lerr; age about 35 years; a slave for life
$700.” “A negro man named Jacob; age about 24; a slave from
life—$600.”[123:1]

These were two items in an inventory of the estate Phillip B. Saddler
returned to the Orphans’ Court of Baltimore in 1860.

Even _The Liberator_ mentions some cases of the kind. For example:

A man in Kentucky _willed_ to his slaves, whom he made free, horses,
wagons, farming implements, and $4,000. Another, also in Kentucky,
freed a Negro family of four, purchased an excellent farm for them,
paying fifty dollars an acre, and in addition gave them a wagon, a
pair of mules and a quantity of provisions. These are given merely as
examples of what was constantly taking place.[124:2]

Indeed, there were many rich free Negroes in the South at the time
of the Civil War. Although there is abundant evidence that the free
Negroes, as a rule, were an indolent, thriftless, and even vicious
class, some of them, no doubt on account of the reënforcement of white
blood in their veins, were industrious and prosperous.

At Charleston, S. C., alone in 1860, there were 355 free Negroes who
paid taxes.[124:3] Of these 226 owned real estate valued at $1,000 or
more, each. Some of them had $10,000 to $40,000 worth of property.
Altogether they had almost $1,000,000 worth.

In Louisiana also, as might be expected, there were many wealthy free
Negroes. Most of these were descended from the French and the Spanish
planters and their Negro slaves. One free Negro family of Louisiana was
said to be the richest Negro family in the United States before the
War, having property valued at several hundred thousand dollars.[125:4]
Frederick Law Olmsted, who traveled through the State about 1855, was
told that some of the free Negroes owned property worth $400,000 or
$500,000, which included some of the best sugar and cotton plantations.
Indeed, all over the country might have been found free Negroes with
more or less property. The greater part of it, no doubt, had been given
them by white masters or white relatives.

In reference to the amount of property held by Negroes at the time of
the Civil War, William H. Thomas, a Negro writer, says:

“We have no trustworthy data by which to measure the wealth
of those residing in the North, though it is known to have
been considerable; but in the South, where separate racial
statistics were kept, the value of property owned by free
Negroes was between $35,000,000 and $40,000,000.”

In 1860, there were in the neighborhood of 250,000 free Negroes in the
South and around 225,000 in the North. Then, if the free Negroes of
the South had nearly $40,000,000 it would seem a fair estimate that in
both sections the free Negroes had at least $60,000,000. Taking this
for granted, as money at six per cent compounded, annually, doubles
every twelve and one-half years, the $60,000,000 at interest until
the present (1917) would have amounted to about $960,000,000. If the
10,000,000 Negroes of the country at present had as large amount of
property in proportion, as the less than 500,000 free Negroes of 1860,
they would be worth more than $1,200,000,000.

However, in 1903, it was estimated by a committee of the American
Economic Association that all the taxable property in the United States
owned by Negroes in 1900 amounted to only $300,000,000. The $60,000,000
at six per cent would have amounted to about $400,000,000 by that time.

In 1913, in an address before the Negro Business League which met
in Philadelphia, Booker T. Washington said that Negroes pay taxes
on $700,000,000 worth of property. Many other students of the Negro
question both black and white have placed about the same estimate upon
Negro holdings. Even if true, the amount would be about $200,000,000
less than the $60,000,000 at interest to the same time.

Now, assuming that Negroes actually owned $700,000,000 worth of
property in 1913, what does it signify? The value of all property in
the United States is now estimated at almost $250,000,000,000. Now,
suppose that it was $210,000,000,000 in 1913, this would be just three
hundred times the estimated value of Negro property at the time. In
other words, 10,000,000 negroes owned one three-hundredth as much as
90,000,000 whites. Thus one white man on an average would have as much
as thirty-two Negroes.

Even were it true that the Negro race began with nothing after the War,
likely thousands of white men who became millionaires had just such a
start. One such white man, especially, is, no doubt, worth as much as
the 10,000,000 Negroes claim to be, even though he has given to charity
almost half as much more.

Indeed, the $700,000,000 in question is but little more than
two-thirds as much as the whites in the United States, according to
the _Chicago Tribune_,[128:5] gave to charity during 1916. Again, the
$700,000,000 lacks nearly $200,000,000 of being equal to the taxable
basis of Baltimore. It would be difficult to secure statistics in
reference to the matter, but there could be little doubt that the first
immigrants to the United States after the Civil War, including the
descendents of such to the number of 10,000,000,—immigrants who came
with practically nothing, no money in the majority of instances and
ignorant,—now are worth many times $700,000,000.

The $700,000,000 may also be considered from another point of view: The
“Negro Year Book,” 1913 credits the Negro with $700,000,000 worth of
property and speaks glowingly about the increase of the previous ten
years. The statement is made that farm land and buildings owned by the
Negro increased from $69,639,426 in 1900 to $273,506,665 in 1910, and
that during the same period the total value of Negro farm property,
including live stock, and implements and machinery increased from
$177,408,688 to $492,898,216.

Now, the Census shows that in 1900 Negroes owned 13,770,801 acres of
land entire and 2,205,297 acres in part. If their share of the land
owned in part were half, then, the Negroes had in possession 14,873,449
acres. In 1910, they owned 15,961,506 acres entire and 3,114,957 acres
in part. Allowing them the same share of that held in part as for 1900,
gives them in 1910, 17,518,984 acres. However, only about two-fifths of
the land owned by Negroes is arable, the larger part being woodland,
swamp, rough and stony land, much of which is almost valueless.

According to the “Negro Year Book,” Negro farm land and buildings
increased in value from $7.98 an acre in 1900 to $17.40 an acre
in 1910.[129:6] If this is true; the value of the Negro lands and
buildings in 1900 was $118,690,124 instead of $69,639,426; and in 1910,
$304,830,032 instead of $273,506,665.

Again, Negroes operated in 1910, 893,370 farms while but 241,221 of
these were owned or partly owned by them. An idea of the value of the
farm stock on these farms, and the Negroes’ lack of thrift as well, may
be had from a statement made before the Negro Conference at Tuskegee
Institute in 1915:

“An investigation has shown that there are 20,000 farms of
Negroes on which there are no cattle of any kind; 27,000 on
which there are no hogs; 200,000 on which no poultry is raised;
140,000 on which no corn is grown; on 750,000 farms of Negroes
no oats are grown; on 550,000 farms no sweet potatoes are
grown, and on 200,000 farms of Negroes there are no gardens of
any sort.”[130:7]

According to the Census, however, on farms operated by Negroes,
farm implements and machinery increased from $18,859,757 in 1900
to $34,178,052 by 1910, while live stock increased in value from
$84,936,215 to $184,896,771. Adding to these amounts for 1910 the
above sum of $304,830,032 for Negro lands and buildings a total of
$523,904,855 is obtained for 1910 instead of $492,898,216, which is the
_Negro Year Book_ estimate.[131:8] So here credit may be given the
Negro for the larger amount.

Again, according to the Census of 1910, Negroes owned around 220,000
homes other than farm homes. No estimate as to their value is given.
Although $400 each is undoubtedly a high valuation they may be
roughly estimated at that. This amounts to $88,000,000. Booker T.
Washington claimed for Negroes just before his death, 43,000 business
interests.[131:9] The observation of the writer is that Negro business
interests average much less than $1000 each. Indeed, great numbers not
more than $100 or $200 each. However, if they average $1000 each they
amount to $43,000,000.

By adding the three items: $523,904,855, the value of Negro farm
property; $88,000,000, Negro-owned homes other than farm homes; and
$43,000,000, the value of the Negro business interests; a grand
total of $654,904,855 is obtained. Thus it would appear that in 1913
Negroes might have had around $700,000,000 worth of property in their
possession.

Naturally the next question that comes to mind is this: How much does
the Negro owe?

Scarcely without exception the white man is his creditor, consequently
what the Negro owes is to be subtracted from the amount of his
possessions.

According to the Census of 1910, something like 65,000 Negro farms and
50,000 Negro-owned homes have mortgages or similar encumbrances against
them. It is unlikely that this is true to any large extent except
as regards the more valuable Negro properties. If the average farm
mortgage is $500 and the average home mortgage $300 both together will
amount to $47,500,000. It is reasonable to suppose also that the 43,000
business interests owe at least $15,000,000.

Again, while more than 150,000 Negro farms and about as many more Negro
homes were reported by the census as free of encumbrance, nevertheless,
it is not unlikely that they owe a large amount of money in notes,
bills, etc. Nor need it be forgotten that often Negro tenants owe their
landlords fully as much as the entire value of such tenant’s personal
property.[133:10] Many Negroes in one way or another owe about as much
as they are worth. This is undoubtedly true of some white men, also,
but the point is, what Negroes owe they owe to white men. A well-to-do
farmer told the writer a few years ago that he held various kinds of
small claims to the amount of more than $4000 against the Negroes of
his community. So, $50,000,000 should not be an excessive estimate for
such Negro liabilities.

By adding these various items; $47,500,000 in mortgages and liens
against Negro farms and homes; $15,000,000 against Negro business
interests; and $50,000,000 against Negro farm owners, home owners,
tenants, etc., gives a grand total of $112,500,000. Subtracting this
from $654,904,855, which was found to be the value of Negro property,
leaves $542,404,855 as the value of Negro property when debts are paid.

Again, in regard to the statement above that Negro farm property
increased in value from $222,485,096 in 1900 to $523,904,855 in 1910
one may need to be reminded that live stock and land about doubled
in money value during this time and that by 1913 they had more than
doubled. This was due mainly to the wonderful increase in the output
of gold mines thus making money cheaper. With this depreciation in the
value of money the Negro, of course, had nothing to do.

Except for this, it is unlikely that the $222,485,096 the valuation
of Negro farm property in 1900 would have increased to more than
$265,000,000 in 1910 instead of $523,904,855. For during the time the
Negro added but 2,645,535 acres which may be valued at $21,000,000. The
remaining $23,000,000 being sufficient to allow for the improvement of
the land, if any, and any actual increase of cattle and farm machinery.
Now, subtracting $265,000,000 from $523,904,855 leaves $258,904,855
which was due to rise in price rather than to effort on the part of the
Negro. Again, subtracting the $258,904,855 from $542,404,855, the value
of all Negro property after their debts were paid, leaves $283,500,000
which, except for the circumstances over which the Negro had no
influence, would have been the actual wealth of the Negro about 1913,
instead of $700,000,000 as claimed.

Of this amount, no doubt, quite a large part was given to individual
Negroes by whites for one reason or another. I have already adverted to
the fact that during slavery times Negroes often received both money
and property from kind-hearted masters, along with their freedom. How
much has been given them since emancipation would be hard to determine.
Only a short while ago, indeed, the _New York Tribune_ mentioned a
white woman who had left her Negro maid $12,000 in cash, and other
valuables in addition.[135:11]

Moreover, it has been estimated, that of the $28,496,946, the value of
plant equipment and endowment of Negro private schools, five-sixths was
contributed by whites and only one-sixth by Negroes.[135:12] During
the years 1912 and 1913 white people gave nearly $2,000,000 towards
Negro education.[135:13] Nor does there appear to be any falling off
in the white man’s gifts to Negro schools. In the early part of the
year 1917, the Rockefeller Foundation appropriated to American schools
and colleges $575,200, of which $197,000, several times their share,
was given to Negro schools.[135:14] In addition, Federal and State
institutions for the higher education of the Negro have an income about
$1,000,000 and property valued at $6,000,000.[135:15] Nor is this all,
no doubt, Southern whites have contributed several times as much to
Negro education by taxation as has been given otherwise.

Again, the amount of money and lands that the Negro secured during
the reconstruction period might be an interesting subject for
investigation. The Negro legislator had the same privilege as the white
one to sell his vote and influence. Nor could there be little doubt
that he failed to use the opportunity. The following story is credited
to Senator Z. B. Vance of North Carolina:[136:16]

A Negro member of the North Carolina legislature was found
chuckling to himself over a pile of money which he was
counting. “What amuses you so?” he was asked. “Well, boss,” he
replied, grinning from ear to ear, “I’s been sold in my life
’leven times, an’ fo’ de Lord, dis is de fust time I eber got
de money.”

During the Reconstruction period taxes became so oppressive that
thousands and thousands of farms and plantations were sold at auction
for taxes. In some places land became almost valueless. It is hardly
to be doubted that many Negroes who got easy money through politics at
this time failed to use some of it in the purchase of land.

Now, what is the reason for the poverty of the Negro? Indeed, from the
foregoing it must appear that poverty is a more appropriate word to use
in such connection than wealth. The answer is not far to seek. It is
the natural result of the Negro character, disposition, and training.
The following letter is suggestive:

“ . . . ‘I have done my work practically the whole summer with
the exception of a few weeks that I had a trifling no account
Negro, and even then I had to do the best portion of it in
order to get them to accomplish anything. When they would wash
and iron, those days I did everything else and they helped a
little with the ironing, for if I didn’t they would never get
through. They [Negroes] are absolutely worthless, and if I
didn’t have small children I wouldn’t let one light within a
mile of me. . . .”[137:17]

A Negro who worked in the strawberry section of Delaware told the
writer a few years ago that although he usually worked in the daytime
he roved about every night. It happened that once, when he had been
carousing as usual on the night before, that he was put to harrowing
strawberries. About three o’clock in the afternoon the overseer came
along and found that he was harrowing up the strawberries from one end
of the row to the other,—he was so sleepy. The overseer simply told him
to put his horse in the stable and go to bed, which he did. As he got
some sleep, when night came he was out again for a great part of the
night; and so on.

As a laborer, the Negro is not so satisfactory as formerly. The
old-time Negro, trained in slavery to work, has about passed away and
his successor is far less efficient and faithful to duty. Lately, large
numbers of Negro laborers have shown a tendency to leave the farms
for work on railroads, in sawmills, and in the cities, large numbers
migrating to the cities of the North. They like to work in crowds and
this often results in making more work for the police.

From the good wages Negro laborers have received for several years,
many of the more far-sighted have saved enough to buy little homes. A
few of the more ambitious may continue to save, but far the greater
part are then perfectly satisfied and settle down to a life of ease
and contentment. By raising a hog or two, a few chickens, some garden
vegetables, and, with a day’s work now and then, they pass their time
in a way suited to their indifferent nature.

A concrete example may be of interest. A pure Negro, about thirty-five
years of age, a few years ago, purchased about half an acre of land
on the bank of a “branch” near a small village in Maryland. For a
few dollars he bought an old discarded house about one hundred and
fifty yards away, and with the aid of neighbors moved it on his lot.
It is doubtful if both the lot, and the house (after being moved and
repaired) cost him more than one hundred dollars.

This Negro has been living in it for years and seems perfectly
contented. His family consists of himself, wife and three daughters
eleven to seventeen years of age. The surrounding country is one of the
best tomato growing sections in the United States and during about six
weeks of the tomato season tomato pickers are in great demand and make
good wages. During this time the Negro man and his family usually work
hard; for they pick by the basket and make in the neighborhood of two
hundred dollars. This is practically their year’s work. The remainder
of the year they do but little. They have a garden, pigs, and chickens.
It would be an easy matter for this family to get ahead in the world;
but they prefer the easy life of comparative idleness,—for this was
their incentive to secure a home.

This is also one of the main reasons, no doubt, for the great increase
in Negro tenant farmers, especially that of share tenants. The latter
class increased about thirty-six per cent between 1900 and 1910. Many
of these seldom work a full day at a time. As they usually put off
cultivating a crop to the last moment, if a wet season happens to
set in, it is soon greatly damaged by a growth of grass. As a tenant
farmer, the Negro realizes that he is more independent, his time is
his own, and that he can usually work when he pleases. A great part
of his time is given to various Negro recreations,—such as visiting,
riding and driving, crap-shooting, preaching, attending revivals, and
camp-meetings.

So the cause of the Negro’s failure to secure a reasonable share
of wealth is not lack of opportunity,—for (at least, in the South)
he has every opportunity that he could wish in order to do so,—but
rather to his racial traits or characteristics,—some of which are:
a happy-go-lucky disposition, indolence, shiftlessness, laziness,
indifference, lack of mental stamina and ambition, and strong criminal
tendencies.

FOOTNOTES:

[123:1] _Baltimore Sun_, Dec. 18, 1909.

[124:2] _Liberator_, Jan. 20, 1854, and Nov. 9, 1860.

[124:3] _Ibid._, May 11, 1860; E. Collins, “Memories of the Southern
States,” p. 44.

[125:4] _Liberator_, March 18, 1859. Also, Olmsted, “Seaboard Slave
States,” pp. 633-640.

[128:5] The _Chicago Tribune_, Dec. 30, 1916, gives a list of gifts to
charity during 1916 as near $1,000,000,000.

[129:6] According to the census, “The average value of farm property
per acre was $27.01 for farms operated by Negroes in 1910 as compared
with $13.08 for 1900, and $47.72 for farms operated by whites in 1910.”
There was no indication whether all land or merely arable land is
meant. About three-fourths of the farms operated by Negroes are rented.
Observation convinces me that farms owned by Negroes are not more than
half so valuable an acre on the average as the land rented by them,
for from necessity they buy the least valuable land. This being true,
Negro lands in 1900 could not have been worth more than $6.00 an acre
and about $13.00 in 1910. However, in making any calculations as to
the value of Negro lands and property, I will take the Negro Year Book
estimate and apply it to all Negro land.

[130:7] Scott and Stowe, “Booker T. Washington,” p. 171.

[131:8] The estimate of $7.98 an acre in 1900, and $17.40 an acre
in 1910, according to the “Negro Year Book” mentioned above, is
undoubtedly too high by at least one-third, but I use it so as to give
them the advantage rather than otherwise. I know a body of 1,300 acres
of land in my own county, Dorchester, Md., consisting of some cleared
land, woodland and brushland, which a real estate man told me could be
bought at five dollars an acre. This is such land as the Negro usually
buys. Only a short distance from the body of land mentioned in this
note land is valued at from twenty-five to one hundred dollars an acre.

[131:9] Among the Negro business interests are 64 banks which are often
mentioned in Negro speeches. It seems, however, that two of them have
failed. The total capital of these banks is said to be $1,500,000.
In striking contrast are the 27,000 white banks with $2,162,900,000
capital. Petersburg, Negro settlement in Md., mentioned above, has two
Negro stores with hardly $100 worth of goods, each.

[133:10] I make no mention of the little personal property often not
taxed many poorer Negroes possess, for the reason that usually such
Negroes owe retail store keepers even more than their little property
would sell for.

[135:11] _New York Tribune_, Jan. 25, 1917.

[135:12] “Negro Education,” Government Printing Office, 1917, Vol. I,
p. 8.

[135:13] U. S. Educational Report, 1914, Vol. I, pp. 612-13.

[135:14] _Baltimore Sun_, Jan. 30, 1917.

[135:15] “Negro Education,” Government Printing Office, 1917, Vol. I,
p. 12.

[136:16] James Ford Rhodes, “History of United States,” Vol. VI, p. 305.

[137:17] Quotation from a letter shown to the writer, which was written
by a woman in Richmond.

CHAPTER VII

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO

Many solutions of the Negro problem have been proposed. Men so gifted
with imagination that they do not find it necessary to consider
either logic or facts, over and again, in a single speech or magazine
article, have solved it to their individual satisfaction. Such proposed
solutions are usually no less preposterous than visionary. With these
I have nothing to do. As elsewhere in this study, so also here, I
consider only what seems to have a firm basis of fact.

However, in passing, I may be pardoned, if I have the temerity to
suggest the following, which, although seemingly fanciful, yet may
have sufficient ground in reason as to merit some consideration:
If about 100,000 square miles of territory on the Gulf of Mexico,
embracing, say, Louisiana east of the Mississippi River, excepting New
Orleans,—the southern part of Mississippi and Alabama, the part of
Florida south of Alabama, and a small part of southwest Georgia, were
set apart as a State or States to which all the Negroes in other parts
of the country be encouraged or obliged to migrate, it might result in
great good to both races.

Something like half the population of this section are Negroes, while
the whites that are here are mostly in the towns and cities. The area
suggested is more than that of New York and Pennsylvania combined.
There would be room for all Negroes in the country for generations
to come. As the Negro states would be members of the Union, with
representatives and senators in Congress, the Negroes would have an
opportunity under the Federal Government to develop a political and
social world of their own removed from the overshadowing presence of
the white man. If the Negro showed himself unable to develop the power
of local self-government under such an arrangement, his case would be
absolutely hopeless. However, there are so many difficulties in the way
and so many objections that might be made that no one need either hope
or fear that any such thing will ever be undertaken.

But somewhat more in keeping with common sense and prevalent ideas
is the proposal that Negroes be encouraged to distribute themselves
equally over the country; thus relieving the South of its burden of
Negro population. If such an equalization of the Negro population
could be carried out, the Negro then being everywhere few in numbers
to the whites, could the better be held to the white man’s standard
of conduct. Not only so, but the Negro would have an opportunity to
absorb the white man’s civilization more quickly, if ever. In addition,
the race question would cease to be sectional, and laws mutually
advantageous to both races could then be passed.

Before going further, even at the risk of digressing,—for it is a
matter of justice to the Negro,—it should be said in favor of the Negro
that even though he is the most alien race among us, no question as to
his patriotism is ever raised. He has fought in all our great wars and
has shown himself patriotic to the core.

A day or two after President Wilson had made his German War address
before Congress, the writer happened by the _Star_ bulletin board in
Washington, and noticed a German talking to a big burly Negro against
war with Germany. He pointed to the bulletin board and told him not
to believe anything he saw there for it was all lies made in London.
The Negro seemed to listen in a half-disgusted sort of way, but as he
started off he was understood to say:

“I wish I was with some colored soldiers in Europe. We would show the
Germans how to fight.”

The Negro has no kindred country to look to, so he is undivided in his
allegiance. This cannot be said of all other races among us,—not of the
Japanese and Chinese who seek admission at our Pacific shores. Like the
Negro they cannot be assimilated by our people. In numbers, however,
they would constitute a much more dangerous element to our welfare and
safety than the Negro. Japan is almost abreast of our civilization
and the western nations are doing their best to train China to be
an antagonist worthy of their steel, should she ever have cause to
cross swords with them. Large numbers of Chinese and Japanese would
not only add to our race problems but would increase our chances for
friction with their home governments. In addition they might constitute
a reverse army of the enemy in our midst in case of war. But no such
danger need be feared from the presence of the Negro.

I have just adverted to the fact that the yellow race and the black
are not easily assimilated with the white race. It may be well that it
is so. To the normal white man amalgamation with these races is almost
unthinkable. Nevertheless, there are a few misguided individuals who
surely have either a mental or a moral twist who persist in joining
together that which nature has put asunder.

A few years ago, a minister sent the following telegram to the
Governor of California:[145:1]

“I have just married a Japanese to an American and have done
more for God and Uncle Sam than the alien land bill will do in
1000 years.”

It is not the ungodly that cause the suffering in the world so much as
the bigoted if well-intentioned fools. Self-elected good people can
usually be counted on to cause a lot of mischief. If those who set
themselves up as leaders and ethical teachers would but first make sure
that they were possessed of at least a fair amount of common sense!

In a recent Methodist Conference at Roanoke, Virginia, the statement
was made that the records of some churches in Massachusetts show that
in the previous year “17 per cent of the marriages were those in which
Negro men married white women or white men married Negro women.”[145:2]
This is the more remarkable when account is taken of the very small
Negro population of that State.

It is even sometimes asserted that the Negro would bring to the white
race some qualities which would tend toward the development of a more
perfect man. But such an idea has no basis in fact. The following
quotation is to the point:

“We have ample experience to go upon in South America, in the
West Indies, in the Southern States themselves. The mulatto
exists and has existed for generations, not in hundreds or
thousands, but in millions; in what respect has he proved
himself the superior of the pure Spaniard, or Portuguese, or
Anglo-Saxon? Does South American history bear testimony to
his political competence? Have his achievements in science,
in literature, in music, been superior to the un-Africanized
peoples? Or waiving the question of superiority, has he ever in
these domains, produced meritorious work in any fair proportion
to his numbers? I do not say that it is impossible to make
out a sort of case for him, by the ransacking of records and
the employment of a very indefinite standard of values. But
I do most emphatically say that no conspicuous or undeniable
advantage has resulted from the blending of bloods, such as
can or ought to counteract the instinctive repugnance of the
South.”[146:3]

It is said that an investigation of 2200 Negro authors showed that
nearly all of them come from the mixed stock.[146:4] How many of
these would take first, second, or even third rank in the literary
world? It is needless to answer. Indeed, Negroes and mulattoes have
been toilers in the United States for generations but who ever heard
of an important labor saving instrument invented by them? The same
abilities or characteristics which would make a white man only locally
important would make a Negro or a mulatto famous. There were thousands
upon thousands of white men intellectually and otherwise superior to
Booker T. Washington who gained but little recognition, but because
he was a negro, or rather mulatto, Washington’s abilities stood out
in striking relief. Mulattoes ought to furnish the leaders of the
Negro race for the best white blood runs in the veins of some of them.
Although mulattoes may furnish the Negro leaders, there can be no doubt
that they also furnish far beyond their share of the vicious and the
criminal elements of the race as well.

It may be pertinent in this connection, however, to observe that in the
South the two races have been gradually drawing apart, amalgamation or
miscegenation is becoming more and more repugnant, the conditions which
favored it do not obtain to anything like the extent as formerly, as
a consequence the mixing between the whites and the blacks is rapidly
lessening. Although the census shows an increase in the number of
mulattoes from decade to decade, the increase is mainly due to the
mixing of mulattoes with pure Negroes.

Some students of the subject, who seemingly are more familiar with the
conditions in the North and the border States than with those of the
farther South, sometimes estimate from one-third to one-half of the
Negroes in the United States to be mulattoes. This, I am confident, is
a mistake. I was reared in a border State, have spent some time in the
North as well as in several Southern States, and have been in many of
the leading cities of the South. My observation leads me to believe
that the Census, in this respect, is more nearly correct than any other
source of information.

The Agents of the Census, in 1910, were instructed to “report as
‘black’ all persons who were evidently full blood Negroes and as
‘mulattoes’ all other persons having some proportion or perceptible
trace of Negro blood.” Accordingly in a population of 9,928,000 Negroes
in the United States there were found to be 2,050,000 mulattoes, 20.9
per cent, or a little more than one-fifth.

By geographic divisions the percentage of mulattoes among the Negroes
was as follows: New England, 33.4 per cent; Middle Atlantic States,
19.6; East North Central, 33.2; West North Central, 28.7; South
Atlantic, 20.8; East South Central, 19.1; West South Central, 20.1;
Mountain, 28.6; and Pacific States, 34.7.

Of the Northern States, Michigan took first place, with 47 per cent of
mulattoes among her Negroes. Maine was next, with 45.9; and Wisconsin
third, with 39.4. Those with the smallest percentage were Wyoming, 13.1
per cent; New Jersey, 15.8; and Pennsylvania, 19.2. The Southern States
having the largest percentage were, Virginia, 33.2 per cent; West
Virginia, 32.5; and Missouri, 28.4 per cent. A large number of States
in the South had a small percentage of mulattoes among their Negroes:
Maryland, 18.6 per cent; Georgia, 17.3; Mississippi, 16.9; Alabama,
16.7; South Carolina, 16.1; Florida, 16.0; Delaware, 11.9; and the
Eastern Shore of Maryland which borders Delaware on two sides, had only
11.1 per cent, or _one_ mulatto to every nine Negroes; thus the Eastern
Shore has the distinction of having fewer mulattoes in proportion to
its Negro population than any other section. It is therefore evident
that in the North the proportion of mulattoes among the Negroes is from
about one-fifth to almost one-half; while in the South the proportion
ranges from above one-eighth to about one-third. In the States where
the bulk of the Negro population is found it is only about one-sixth.
With slight exceptions, it seems to be true that the fewer to the
white population the more mulattoes there are in proportion to the
number of the Negroes.

Indeed, may it not be true that the much larger proportional number of
mulattoes among the Negroes of the North in no small measure accounts
for the greater proportional amount of crime among the Negroes of the
North? So it would appear that the amalgamation or miscegenation of
the whites and the Negroes is not a leveling up but rather a leveling
down process; at best nothing otherwise than building up the Negro
by lowering the white. So no greater nor more fearful calamity could
befall the white race in America than that the Negro should lose
his identity through being absorbed by this great division of the
Anglo-Saxon race.

Again, many optimistic white men have thought that the Negro could be
raised to the white man’s level by means of the training and culture
that comes through the study of books. To these education for the
Negro has been a watchword. To a large extent Southern whites have
been in sympathy with the education of the Negro. Indeed, many years
ago, contrary to what one not familiar with the South might suppose, a
prominent man in North Carolina in seeking a congressional nomination
on a platform hostile to Negro education failed even to carry his
home county. And efforts to restrict the amount appropriated to Negro
schools to the part of the school taxes paid by Negroes have failed.

Since 1870 the South has spent on Negro education around $230,000,000
and is now appropriating for that purpose near $10,000,000, annually.
It is doubtful if the Negro contributes in taxes even half the amount
spent on his public schools. In 1912, according to the Educational
Report of that State, North Carolina spent $436,480.08 for Negro
teachers and Negro school buildings, of which the Negro contributed
in taxes for schools $190,378.81, or a little more than two-fifths.
Texas spends not far from $2,000,000 a year on Negro schools, and
Georgia about $850,000. The District of Columbia, indeed, spends more
per capita on Negro pupils than on whites. However, this is a notable
exception.

There are also more than six hundred private and denominational
schools of secondary and college grade in the United States for the
higher education of the Negro. The property of these is valued at
about $28,500,000.[151:5] From 1865 to 1917 about $65,000,000 has been
contributed to Negro education in the South through various religious
and philanthropic organizations.

But notwithstanding the fact that the illiteracy of the Negro race
had been reduced by 1910 to about thirty-three per cent, there is a
widespread feeling of disappointment in Negro education. Not that it
has made the Negro more criminal as has sometimes been said, however,
this is not yet well determined, but rather that it has failed to make
him a greater producer, or to aid him to adjust himself to economic
conditions. Instead of firing him with the desire to do more and better
work, too often he quits it altogether.

As a teacher or a preacher the Negro has a wide field for his race
needs him and the State and the Church pay him. But as a doctor,
lawyer, or other professional, poverty and pauperism (the condition of
the greater part of the Negro race) militate against them. In addition,
the Negro has not yet sufficient confidence in the professional skill
of those of his own race as to cause him to employ them exclusively.

There is a growing conviction in the South that the first aim of
Negro education should be to fit the Negro for the opportunities of
his social and industrial environment. Also that it should endeavor
to strengthen his will power, in order that he may overcome his
constitutional inertia; and that it should give him a knowledge of
sanitary living, thus preventing disease.

In the South Carolina Public School Report for 1915, the State
Superintendent of Schools has this to say:

“The Negro is here and is here to stay. He cannot remain
ignorant without injury to himself, his white neighbors and to
the Commonwealth. His training should fit him for the work that
is open to him. . . . While industrial education is needed for
both races it is especially desirable for the Negro.

“The money now expended for Negro education is largely wasted.
Can we afford longer to allow this large element in our
population to follow their present practices and remain in
their present condition?”

Such schools as Hampton Institute and Tuskegee have fairly well
demonstrated that industrial education is at least a good thing for
the Negro. In these and other such schools thousands have been given
an inspiration for a higher plane of living. Indeed, it is claimed
that very seldom is any graduate of these two schools convicted of
crime:[153:6] The influence of Tuskegee on the Negro in a material way
may be appreciated by the statement that in 1881 when the school was
opened in Macon County, Alabama, not more than fifty or sixty Negroes
in the county owned land, but in 1910, 503 Negroes in the county owned
61,689 acres, “probably the largest amount of land owned by the Negroes
of any county in the United States.”[154:7]

If a few Negro industrial schools make such a good showing, then why
not multiply the number? Indeed, it is yet too early for either the
Negro or his friends to indulge in too much optimism in regard to the
matter. For while it may be true in general that whatever is done in
behalf of a lower element in a society benefits the whole society, at
the same time, it needs to be borne in mind that to the extent that
it is done to the cost or by the neglect of a more homogeneous and
wholesome element in the society or if it in any way militates against
such element it is a questionable proceeding.

What if the industrial education of the Negro should be found to
conflict with the interests of the white laborer or skilled worker?
Does any one suppose that it is the purpose of the South so to educate
the Negro (or even allow him to be so educated) as to enable him to
take the bread from the white man’s mouth? And does any one suppose
that the laboring white man of the arrogant and aggressive Anglo-Saxon
race will stand tamely by with folded arms while there is danger of its
being done?

This is the central point of the whole situation. But in the South
the contest between these two conflicting interests is not yet, as
the demand for labor skilled or unskilled is too great. The Negro
has had and can have all the work he wants and more for the asking;
indeed, often his labor is anxiously solicited. How long this will
continue no one knows, positively. However, when the population of the
country reaches 150,000,000 or 200,000,000 then labor will likely be
as plentiful here as it is now in Europe. Then, the labor of the Negro
will hardly be solicited, rather otherwise. The white man’s sympathetic
attitude toward the Negroes’ many shortcomings is fast passing. When
the Negro is required to measure up to the white man’s standard and is
found wanting, what remains for him?

Furthermore, the Negro might as well get fully in mind that, although
the white man sometimes may win without merit (yet often fails to win
even though deserving to do so), for the Negro himself, even though
merit may not win, without it he will have absolutely no show. He must
be not only as well adapted to an occupation, or qualified for it, as a
white man but better.

Until lately those especially interested in the welfare of the Negro
might have entertained the hope that he would hold his place in his
customary occupations or even make them in great part his very own.
This would have been a kind of segregation to occupation analogous
to his segregation as regards residence and at least as advantageous
to him. But in hardly more than one occupation is such the case. As
a porter he seems to have the field practically to himself, and as
hod-carrier he is in demand. But as a barber he has fast been losing
ground. The Negro as a waiter takes more pride in his occupation and is
more polite and obliging than the white man of the waiter class but he
is even being displaced in this work. Even as a farm laborer, for which
service he has been trained for generations, he is losing his grip.
“Too slow, unreliable, inefficient” are some of the counts against him.

The idea that prevails outside the South that Negroes do practically
all the work on Southern farms is far from the truth. More than half
of the cotton crop is raised by white labor,—in Texas, three-fourths
or more. Even in sugar and rice fields white labor is getting
common.[156:8] Often, indeed, a farmer will not employ a Negro if he
can get a white man.

Indeed, the Negro farm laborer and the Negro farmer are the greatest
stumbling-blocks in the way of the agricultural development of the
South. Were it possible to remove from the South at least three-fourths
of these and replace them with whites whether native or foreign
there can be no doubt that the production of Southern farms would be
wonderfully increased. It is an injury to the South and to society as
a whole that the Negro has under his control even as much land as at
present. When his “slipshod” farming gives place to more scientific and
businesslike methods there will be more farm products for distribution.

The inefficiency of the Negro as a farmer is strikingly shown by a
study of the conditions in several Mississippi counties:

“Lowdnes County with three Negroes to one white man, having
21,972 blacks and 7121 whites, requires 3.15 acres to make a
bale of cotton, while James County, with three whites to one
negro, having 13,156 whites and 4,670 blacks, requires 1.98
acres to make a bale. The farm lands of Jones county are valued
in the census reports at $2.85 per acre and the farm lands of
Lowdnes County at $9.83 an acre. Yet the poor lands of Jones
County under intelligent cultivation produced nearly twice
as much per acre as the rich lands of Lowdnes County when
cultivated mostly by Negroes . . . in every comparison made
between a white county and a black one the black was the most
fertile, yet the white was nearly twice as productive.”[158:9]

Such a poor showing for the Negro almost persuades one that he deserves
to be supplanted by whites in farm work and in farming, even if he
should not be. At present the South holds out unequaled attractions
in the way of climate, rich soil, and cheap lands, to those of other
sections of the country who may be seeking farm homes. And there can be
little doubt that with the passing of the free public lands the tide of
immigration in the near future will set in that direction, in spite of
the presence of the Negro. Then what will become of the Negro when he
shall have to compete with the thrifty hard-working Poles, Bohemians,
and native Americans from the North and the West? Will he be simply
pushed aside and left to gravitate to a still lower level? Nothing will
save him unless he soon wonderfully changes in habits and disposition.
So the Negro may as well look forward to the time when he will be
supplanted in these occupations to which he thinks himself so well
adapted and in which he thinks himself so well fortified,—those of farm
laborer and farmer.

Finally, may not the unquestioned physical deterioration of the Negro
since his emancipation as shown by his susceptibility to disease
together with his high death rate portend the ultimate practical
extinction of the race in the United States? During slavery times
the Negro was fairly well fed and usually worked according to set
regulations. Evidently such food and training had no little to do with
developing a sound body, and disciplined his mind to some extent as
well.[159:10]

According to De Bow, the mortality of the free Negroes before the War
was a hundred per cent greater than that of the slaves. It even appears
that the death of the Negroes in the South at that time was less than
that of the whites. In Charleston, S. C., the average death-rate from
1822 to 1861 was 25.98 a thousand for whites and 24.05 for Negroes.
About the same was true of some other cities. From 1865 to 1894,
however, the average death-rate at Charleston was 26.77 a thousand for
whites and 43.29 for Negroes.[160:11] No doubt the slight increase of
the death rate among the whites was due to the rapid increase among the
Negroes as the whites necessarily came more or less in contact with the
Negroes.

Indeed, very significant in this connection, is the statement made in
the “Negro Year Book” (1914-15) that an average of 450,000 Negroes
in the South are seriously ill all the time, and that 600,000 of the
present population will die of tuberculosis.

The Census shows that both pneumonia and tuberculosis are diseases
very fatal to Negroes. And strange as it may now seem, in slavery
times Negroes were thought to be practically immune from tuberculosis.
Indeed, it is said that, about 1882-3, there was exhibited at a clinic
in Charleston, S. C., what was supposed to have been the second case of
tuberculosis ever found among Negroes.[160:12] This is very remarkable,
if true.

In each city of the following list of twelve is given the number of
times more deaths that occurred from tuberculosis among Negroes in
1910, according to the Census, than among whites: Providence, 1.82;
Richmond, 2.05; Boston, 2.46; Atlanta, 2.48; New York, 2.64; New
Orleans, 2.70; Memphis, 2.80; Philadelphia 3.00; Baltimore, 3.14;
Washington, 3.34; Charleston, S. C., 3.55. It may be noticed that
more than three and one-half times as many Negroes as whites died of
tuberculosis in Charleston. The comparative statistics for pneumonia
differ not very much from those of tuberculosis.

However, the ratio of death-rate from combined causes is much lower
than this. The average death rate a thousand in eight Northern States
in 1910 was 21.9 for Negroes and 15.1 for whites; while the average for
two Southern States was 23.7 for Negroes and 15.2 for whites. In ten
Northern cities it was 23.64 for Negroes and 15.99 for whites; for the
same number of cities in the South it was 30.60 for Negroes and 17.22
for whites.[161:13] Again, in thirty-three Northern cities the death
rate among Negroes was 25.1 a thousand and 15.7 among whites, while
in twenty-four Southern cities the death-rate was 29.6 for Negroes and
16.9 for whites. For the fifty-seven cities together, 27.8 for Negroes
and 15.9 for whites.[162:14] Thus, it is seen that the death rate among
Negroes is not far from twice as great as among whites, but contrary to
the general impression it is less in the North than in the South.

Moreover, statistics show that the Negro is not increasing in this
country as fast in proportion as is the white man. Indeed, he seems
to be falling behind in his own percentage of increase. Between 1890
and 1900 his increase was 1,345,318 but from 1900 to 1910 it was only
993,769. Again, the percentage of Negroes in the population of the
country decreased from 19.03 per cent in 1810 to 10.69 per cent in
1910, and from 14.13 per cent in 1860 to 10.69 per cent in 1910. In
other words, while the whites increased nearly three and one-half
(3.4) times between 1860 and 1910, the Negro increased only two and
two-tenths (2.2) times.

That this difference between the increase of the two races was not due
to the immigration of whites is shown by the fact that from 1800 to
1840 when there was scarcely any immigration of whites the population
of the country increased more than three and a fifth (3.21) times,
while from 1870 to 1910, an equal number of years, when immigration was
almost at its height, the increase was only a little more than two and
a third (2.38) times. Again, during the fifty years, 1790 to 1840, it
increased four and a third (4.34) times; also, between 1810 and 1860 it
increased in the same ratio (4.34); while for the fifty years from 1860
to 1910 it increased only something more than two and three-fourths
(2.86) times.

Indeed, it is said that “the Southern States, which have received
practically no immigrants since the Civil War, have increased their
population as rapidly as the Northern States; that is, the increase of
population among the Southern whites has been equal to the Northern
increase assisted by immigration.”[163:15]

While these facts may not be sufficient evidence that the Negro will
finally become extinct in this country, nevertheless, it is impossible
for one to escape the conclusion that as the years go by the members
of his race will become fewer and fewer in proportion to the whole
population. As this comes about the Negro will gradually cease to be
such a problem, as at present.

FOOTNOTES:

[145:1] _Baltimore American_, May 23, 1913.

[145:2] _Baltimore Sun_, March 30, 1917.

[146:3] William Archer, in _McClure’s_, July, 1909.

[146:4] C. A. Ellwood, “Sociology and Modern Social Problems,” p. 241.

[151:5] Negro Education (Government Report), Vol. I, p. 8.

[153:6] “Education and Crime,” _South Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1917.

[154:7] Scott and Stowe, “Life of Booker T. Washington,” p. 176.

[156:8] Year Book, Dept. of Agriculture, 1910, p. 193.

[158:9] Quoted by A. H. Stone in “American Race Problem,” pp. 177-8,
from J. C. Hardy, “The South’s Supremacy in Cotton Growing,” p. 9.

[159:10] “There were imported in the British West Indies 4,000,000
Negro slaves and when they were manumitted there were 800,000. Into the
Southern States 400,000 were imported and there were before the war
4,000,000; this decrease in the former and increase in the latter are
strong facts. The climate influence was on the side of the West Indies.
There must have been a very different treatment.”—Charleston (S. C.)
_Mercury_, Nov. 23, 1863. Quoted by it from a London paper, written by
an Englishwoman who had spent a short time in the South.

[160:11] R. W. Woolley, _Pearson’s Magazine_, Feb., 1910, p. 210,
quoting Drs. Seale, Harris and W. C. Woodward.

[160:12] Report of Board of Prison Inspectors of Alabama, Sept.,
1910-1914, p. 45.

[161:13] Northern States: Me., Mass., Mich., N. J., N. Y., O., Pa.,
and R. I.; Southern: Md. and N. C. These were the only Southern States
mentioned in this connection in the census. Northern cities: New Haven,
Boston, Detroit, Atlantic City, Trenton, Cleveland, Springfield,
Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City; Southern: Washington,
Baltimore, Wilmington, N. C., Mobile, Atlanta, Savannah, New Orleans,
Memphis, Charleston, S. C., and Richmond.

[162:14] Department of Commerce Bulletin 129, p. 44.

[163:15] C. A. Ellwood: “Sociology and Modern Social Problems,” p. 212.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The text has been preserved as originally printed.

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