A Social History of the American Negro Part 19

The next summer came another season at school-teaching, and then the term at Rockford. 1862! a great year that in American history, one more famous for the defeat of the Union arms than for their success. But in September came Antietam, and the heart of the North took courage. Then with the new year came the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation.

The girls at Rockford, like the people everywhere, were interested in the tremendous events that were shaking the nation. A new note of seriousness crept into their work. Embroidery was laid aside; instead, socks were knit and bandages prepared. On the night of January 1 a jubilee meeting was held in the town.

To Joanna P. Moore, however, the news of freedom brought a strange undertone of sadness. She could not help thinking of the spiritual and intellectual condition of the millions now emanc.i.p.ated. Strange that she should be possessed by this problem! She had thought of work in China, or India, or even in Africa--but of this, never!

In February a man who had been on Island No. 10 came to the Seminary and told the girls of the distress of the women and children there. Cabins and tents were everywhere. As many as three families, with eight or ten children each, cooked their food in the same pot on the same fire.

Sometimes the women were peevish or quarrelsome; always the children were dirty. "What can a man do to help such a suffering ma.s.s of humanity?" asked the speaker. "Nothing. A woman is needed; n.o.body else will do." For the student listening so intently the cheery schoolrooms with their sweet a.s.sociations faded; the vision of foreign missions also vanished; and in their stead stood only a pitiful black woman with a baby in her arms.

She reached Island No. 10 in November. The outlook was dismal enough.

The Sunday school at Belvidere had pledged four dollars a month toward her support, and this was all the money in sight, though the Government provided transportation and soldiers' rations. That was in 1863, sixty years ago; but every year since then, until 1916, in summer and winter, in suns.h.i.+ne and rain, in the home and the church, with teaching and praying, feeding and clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, Joanna P.

Moore in one way or another ministered to the Negro people of the South.

In April, 1864, her whole colony was removed to Helena, Arkansas. The Home Farm was three miles from Helena. Here was gathered a great crowd of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a company of soldiers in a fort nearby. Thither went the missionary alone, except for her faith in G.o.d. She made an arbor with some rude seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four groups, and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the Bible was read and explained, pet.i.tions were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted, and then the service was over.

Some Quaker workers were her friends in Helena, and in 1868 she went to Lauderdale, Mississippi, to help the Friends in an orphan asylum. Six weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and the parents left to take their child back to their Indiana home to rest. The lone woman was left in charge of the asylum. Cholera broke out. Eleven children died within one week. Still she stood by her post. Often, she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere daylight came were in the grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night after night she prayed to G.o.d in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated.

From time to time the failing health of her mother called her home, and from 1870 to 1873 she once more taught school near Belvidere. The first winter the school was in the country. "You can never have a Sunday school in the winter," they told her. But she did; in spite of the snow, the house was crowded every Sunday, whole families coming in sleighs.

Even at that the real work of the teacher was with the Negroes of the South. In her prayers and public addresses they were always with her, and in 1873 friends in Chicago made it possible for her to return to the work of her choice. In 1877 the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society honored itself by giving to her its first commission.

Nine years she spent in the vicinity of New Orleans. Near Leland University she found a small, one-room house. After buying a bed, a table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping.

Often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark. Most frequently she read the Bible to those who could not read.

Sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. Sometimes she would teach the children to read or to sew. Often she would write letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in the dark days. She wrote hundreds and hundreds of such letters; and once in a while, a very long while, came a response.

Most pitiful of all the objects she found in New Orleans were the old women worn out with years of slavery. They were usually rag-pickers who ate at night the sc.r.a.ps for which they had begged during the day. There was in the city an Old Ladies' Home; but this was not for Negroes.

A house was secured and the women taken in, Joanna Moore and her a.s.sociates moving into the second story. Sometimes, very often, there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was not known who sent them; money or boxes came from Northern friends who had never seen the workers; and the little Negro children in the Sunday schools in the city gave their pennies.

In 1878 the laborer in the Southwest started on a journey of exploration. In Atlanta Dr. Robert at Atlanta Baptist Seminary (now Morehouse College) gave her cheer; so did President Ware at Atlanta University. At Benedict in Columbia she saw Dr. Goodspeed, President Tupper at Shaw in Raleigh, and Dr. Corey in Richmond. In May she appeared at the Baptist anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already behind her.

But each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments. She wanted the Society to establish a training school for women; but to this objection was raised. In Louisiana also it was not without danger that a white woman attended a Negro a.s.sociation in 1877; and there were always sneers and jeers. At length, however, a training school for mothers was opened in Baton Rouge. All went well for two years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the gate. The woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm; but the students had gone.

Sick at heart and worn out with waiting, she at last left Baton Rouge and the state in which so many of her best years had been spent.

"Bible Band" work was started in 1884, and _Hope_ in 1885. The little paper, beginning with a circulation of five hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of twenty thousand copies, and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands of mothers and children in the South. In connection with it all has developed the Fireside School, than which few agencies have been more potent in the salvation and uplift of the humble Negro home.

What wisdom was gathered from the pa.s.sing of fourscore years! On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations of proverbial pith:

The love of G.o.d gave me courage for myself and the rest of mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls. They surely are worth more than anything else in the world.

Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. G.o.d can not use discouraged people.

The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do but by praising G.o.d for what had been done.

So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for the Bible lesson. Do not misunderstand me. I do love music that impresses the meaning of words. But no one climbs to heaven on musical scales.

I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it into your every thought and prayer.

You must love before you can comfort and help.

There is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light that we carry from the Cross.

How shall we measure such a life? Who can weigh love and hope and service, and the joy of answered prayer? "An annual report of what?" she once asked the secretary of her organization. "Report of tears shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken, cheering words, warning words--tender, patient words for the little ones, stern but loving tones for the wayward--songs of hope and songs of sorrow, wounded hearts healed, light and love poured into dark sad homes? Oh, Miss Burdette, you might as well ask me to gather up the raindrops of last year or the petals that fall from the flowers that bloomed. It is true that I can send you a little stagnant water from the cistern, and a few dried flowers; but if you want to know the freshness, the sweetness, the glory, the grandeur, of our G.o.d-given work, then you must come and keep step with us from early morn to night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year."

Until the very last she was on the roll of the active workers of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society. In the fall of 1915 she decided that she must once more see the schools in the South that meant so much to her. In December she came again to her beloved Spelman. While in Atlanta she met with an accident that still further weakened her.

After a few weeks, however, she went on to Jacksonville, and then to Selma. There she pa.s.sed.

When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.... Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW SOUTH

1. _Political Life: Disfranchis.e.m.e.nt_

By 1876 the reconstruction governments had all but pa.s.sed. A few days after his inauguration in 1877 President Hayes sent to Louisiana a commission to investigate the claims of rival governments there. The decision was in favor of the Democrats. On April 9 the President ordered the removal of Federal troops from public buildings in the South; and in Columbia, S.C., within a few days the Democratic administration of Governor Wade Hampton was formally recognized. The new governments at once set about the abrogation of the election laws that had protected the Negro in the exercise of suffrage, and, having by 1877 obtained a majority in the national House of Representatives, the Democrats resorted to the practice of attaching their repeal measures to appropriation bills in the hope of compelling the President to sign them. Men who had been prominently connected with the Confederacy were being returned to Congress in increasing numbers, but in general the Democrats were not able to carry their measures over the President's veto. From the Supreme Court, however, they received practical a.s.sistance, for while this body did not formally grant that the states had full powers over elections, it nevertheless nullified many of the most objectionable sections of the laws. Before the close of the decade, by intimidation, the theft, suppression or exchange of the ballot boxes, the removal of the polls to unknown places, false certifications, and illegal arrests on the day before an election, the Negro vote had been rendered ineffectual in every state of the South.

When Cleveland was elected in 1884 the Negroes of the South naturally felt that the darkest hour of their political fortunes had come. It had, for among many other things this election said that after twenty years of discussion and tumult the Negro question was to be relegated to the rear, and that the country was now to give main attention to other problems. For the Negro the new era was signalized by one of the most effective speeches ever delivered in this or any other country, all the more forceful because the orator was a man of unusual n.o.bility of spirit. In 1886 Henry W. Grady, of Georgia, addressed the New England Club in New York on "The New South." He spoke to practical men and he knew his ground. He asked his hearers to bring their "full faith in American fairness and frankness" to judgment upon what he had to say.

He pictured in brilliant language the Confederate soldier, "ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, who wended his way homeward to find his house in ruins and his farm devastated." He also spoke kindly of the Negro: "Whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges." But Grady also implied that the Negro had received too much attention and sympathy from the North. Said he: "To liberty and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt is as far as law can carry the Negro.

The rest must be left to conscience and common sense." Hence on this occasion and others he asked that the South be left alone in the handling of her grave problem. The North, a little tired of the Negro question, a little uncertain also as to the wisdom of the reconstruction policy that it had forced on the South, and if concerned with this section at all, interested primarily in such investments as it had there, a.s.sented to this request; and in general the South now felt that it might order its political life in its own way.

As yet, however, the Negro was not technically disfranchised, and at any moment a sudden turn of events might call him into prominence. Formal legislation really followed the rise of the Populist party, which about 1890 in many places in the South waged an even contest with the Democrats. It was evident that in such a struggle the Negro might still hold the balance of power, and within the next few years a fusion of the Republicans and the Populists in North Carolina sent a Negro, George H.

White, to Congress. This event finally served only to strengthen the movement for disfranchis.e.m.e.nt which had already begun. In 1890 the const.i.tution of Mississippi was so amended as to exclude from the suffrage any person who had not paid his poll-tax or who was unable to read any section of the const.i.tution, or understand it when read to him, or to give a reasonable interpretation of it. The effect of the administration of this provision was that in 1890 only 8615 Negroes out of 147,000 of voting age became registered. South Carolina amended her const.i.tution with similar effect in 1895. In this state the population was almost three-fifths Negro and two-fifths white. The franchise of the Negro was already in practical abeyance; but the problem now was to devise a means for the perpetuity of a government of white men.

Education was not popular as a test, for by it many white illiterates would be disfranchised and in any case it would only postpone the race issue. For some years the dominant party had been engaged in factional controversies, with the populist wing led by Benjamin R. Tillman prevailing over the conservatives. It was understood, however, that each side would be given half of the members.h.i.+p of the convention, which would exclude all Negro and Republican representation, and that the const.i.tution would go into effect without being submitted to the people.

Said the most important provision: "Any person who shall apply for registration after January 1, 1898, if otherwise qualified, shall be registered; provided that he can both read and write any section of this const.i.tution submitted to him by the registration officer or can show that he owns and has paid all taxes collectible during the previous year on property in this state a.s.sessed at three hundred dollars or more"--clauses which it is hardly necessary to say the registrars regularly interpreted in favor of white men and against the Negro. In 1898 Louisiana pa.s.sed an amendment inventing the so-called "grandfather clause." This excused from the operation of her disfranchising act all descendants of men who had voted before the Civil War, thus admitting to the suffrage all white men who were illiterate and without property.

North Carolina in 1900, Virginia and Alabama in 1901, Georgia in 1907, and Oklahoma in 1910 in one way or another practically disfranchised the Negro, care being taken in every instance to avoid any definite clash with the Fifteenth Amendment. In Maryland there have been several attempts to disfranchise the Negro by const.i.tutional amendments, one in 1905, another in 1909, and still another in 1911, but all have failed.

About the intention of its disfranchising legislation the South, as represented by more than one spokesman, was very frank. Unfortunately the new order called forth a group of leaders--represented by Tillman in South Carolina, Hoke Smith in Georgia, and James K. Vardaman in Mississippi--who made a direct appeal to prejudice and thus capitalized the racial feeling that already had been brought to too high tension.

Naturally all such legislation as that suggested had ultimately to be brought before the highest tribunal in the country. The test came over the following section from the Oklahoma law: "No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election herein unless he shall be able to read and write any section of the Const.i.tution of the State of Oklahoma; but no person who was on January 1, 1866, or at any time prior thereto, ent.i.tled to vote under any form of government, or who at any time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Const.i.tution." This enactment the Supreme Court declared unconst.i.tutional in 1915. The decision exerted no great and immediate effect on political conditions in the South; nevertheless as the official recognition by the nation of the fact that the Negro was not accorded his full political rights, it was destined to have far-reaching effect on the whole political fabric of the section.

When the era of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt began it was in large measure expected by the South that with the practical elimination of the Negro from politics this section would become wider in its outlook and divide on national issues. Such has not proved to be the case. Except for the noteworthy deflection of Tennessee in the presidential election of 1920, and Republican gains in some counties in other states, this section remains just as "solid" as it was forty years ago, largely of course because the Negro, through education and the acquisition of property, is becoming more and more a potential factor in politics. Meanwhile it is to be observed that the Negro is not wholly without a vote, even in the South, and sometimes his power is used with telling effect, as in the city of Atlanta in the spring of 1919, when he decided in the negative the question of a bond issue. In the North moreover--especially in Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York--he has on more than one occasion proved the deciding factor in political affairs. Even when not voting, however, he involuntarily wields tremendous influence on the destinies of the nation, for even though men may be disfranchised, all are nevertheless counted in the allotment of congressmen to Southern states. This anomalous situation means that in actual practice the vote of one white man in the South is four or six or even eight times as strong as that of a man in the North;[1] and it directly accounted for the victory of President Wilson and the Democrats over the Republicans led by Charles E. Hughes in 1916. For remedying it by the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment bills have been frequently presented in Congress, but on these no action has been taken.

[Footnote 1: In 1914 Kansas and Mississippi each elected eight members of the House of Representatives, but Kansas cast 483,683 votes for her members, while Mississippi cast only 37,185 for hers, less than one-twelfth as many.]

2. _Economic Life: Peonage_

Within fifteen years after the close of the war it was clear that the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was a blessing to the poor white man of the South as well as to the Negro. The break-up of the great plantation system was ultimately to prove good for all men whose slender means had given them little chance before the war. At the same time came also the development of cotton-mills throughout the South, in which as early as 1880 not less than 16,000 white people were employed. With the decay of the old system the average acreage of holdings in the South Atlantic states decreased from 352.8 in 1860 to 108.4 in 1900. It was still not easy for an independent Negro to own land on his own account; nevertheless by as early a year as 1874 the Negro farmers had acquired 338,769 acres. After the war the planters first tried the wage system for the Negroes. This was not satisfactory--from the planter's standpoint because the Negro had not yet developed stability as a laborer; from the Negro's standpoint because while the planter might advance rations, he frequently postponed the payment of wages and sometimes did not pay at all. Then land came to be rented; but frequently the rental was from 80 to 100 pounds of lint cotton an acre for land that produced only 200 to 400 pounds. In course of time the share system came to be most widely used. Under this the tenant frequently took his whole family into the cotton-field, and when the crop was gathered and he and the landlord rode together to the nearest town to sell it, he received one-third, one-half, or two-thirds of the money according as he had or had not furnished his own food, implements, and horses or mules. This system might have proved successful if he had not had to pay exorbitant prices for his rations. As it was, if the landlord did not directly furnish foodstuffs he might have an understanding with the keeper of the country store, who frequently charged for a commodity twice what it was worth in the open market. At the close of the summer there was regularly a huge bill waiting for the Negro at the store; this had to be disposed of first, _and he always came out just a few dollars behind_. However, the landlord did not mind such a small matter and in the joy of the harvest might even advance a few dollars; but the understanding was always that the tenant was to remain on the land the next year. Thus were the chains of peonage forged about him.

At the same time there developed a still more vicious system.

Immediately after the war legislation enacted in the South made severe provision with reference to vagrancy. Negroes were arrested on the slightest pretexts and their labor as that of convicts leased to landowners or other business men. When, a few years later, Negroes, dissatisfied with the returns from their labor on the farms, began a movement to the cities, there arose a tendency to make the vagrancy legislation still more harsh, so that at last a man could not stop work without technically committing a crime. Thus in all its hideousness developed the convict lease system.

This inst.i.tution and the accompanying chain-gang were at variance with all the humanitarian impulses of the nineteenth century. Sometimes prisoners were worked in remote parts of a state altogether away from the oversight of responsible officials; if they stayed in a prison the department for women was frequently in plain view and hearing of the male convicts, and the number of cubic feet in a cell was only one-fourth of what a scientific test would have required. Sometimes there was no place for the dressing of the dead except in the presence of the living. The system was worst when the lessee was given the entire charge of the custody and discipline of the convicts, and even of their medical or surgical care. Of real attention there frequently was none, and reports had numerous blank s.p.a.ces to indicate deaths from unknown causes. The st.u.r.diest man could hardly survive such conditions for more than ten years. In Alabama in 1880 only three of the convicts had been in confinement for eight years, and only one for nine. In Texas, from 1875 to 1880, the total number of prisoners discharged was 1651, while the number of deaths and escapes for the same period totalled 1608. In North Carolina the mortality was eight times as great as in Sing Sing.

At last the conscience of the nation began to be heard, and after 1883 there were remedial measures. However, the care of the prisoner still left much to be desired; and as the Negro is greatly in the majority among prisoners in the South, and as he is still sometimes arrested illegally or on flimsy pretexts, the whole matter of judicial and penal procedure becomes one of the first points of consideration in any final settlement of the Negro Problem.[1]