Following the Color Line Part 33

_A Negro Newspaper of Agitation_

The _Guardian_ is as violent and bitter in some of its denunciations as the most reactionary white paper in the South. It would have the North take up arms again and punish the South for its position on the Negro question! It breathes the spirit of prejudice. Reading it sometimes, I am reminded of Senator Tillman's speeches. It answers the white publicity given in the South to black crime against white women by long accounts of similar crimes of white men. One of its chief points of conflict is the position of President Roosevelt regarding the Brownsville riot and the discharge of Negro soldiers; the attack on Roosevelt is unceasing, and in this viewpoint, at least, it is supported undoubtedly by no small proportion of the Negroes of the country. Another leading activity is its fight on Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton and his work. Denouncing Was.h.i.+ngton as a "notorious and incorrigible Jim Crowist," it says that he "dares to a.s.sert that the best way to get rights is not to oppose their being taken away, but to get money." Two or three years ago, when Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton went to Boston to address a coloured audience in Zion Church, Mr. Trotter and his friends scattered cayenne pepper on the rostrum and created a disturbance which broke up the meeting. Mr. Trotter went to jail for the offence. From the _Guardian_ of September 2d I cut part of the leading editorial which will show its att.i.tude:

PROPHET OF SLAVERY AND TRAITOR TO RACE

As another mark of the treacherous character of Booker Was.h.i.+ngton in matters concerning the race, come his discordant notes in support of Secretary Taft for President of the United States in spite of the fact that every Negro organisation of any note devoted to the cause of equal rights and justice have condemned President Roosevelt for his unpardonable treatment of the soldiers of the 25th Infantry, U.

S. A., and Secretary Taft for his duplicity, and declared their determination to seek the defeat of either if nominated for the office of President of these United States, or anyone named by them for said office. Booker Was.h.i.+ngton, ever concerned for his own selfish ambitions, indifferent to the cries of the race so long as he wins the approval of white men who do not believe in the Negro, defies the absolutely unanimous call of all factions of the race for Foraker. Leader of the self-seekers, he has persistently, but thank heaven unsuccessfully, sought to entangle the whole race in the meshes of subordination. Knowing the race could only be saved by fighting cowardice, we have just as persistently resisted every attempt he has made to plant his white flag on the domains of equal manhood rights and our efforts have been rewarded by the universal denunciation of his doctrines of submission and his utter elimination as a possible leader of his race.

Generally speaking, the radical party has fought every movement of any sort that tends to draw a colour line.

_Boston Hotel for Coloured People_

One of the enterprises of Boston which interested me deeply was a Negro hotel, the Astor House, which is operated by Negroes for Negro guests. It has 200 rooms, with a telephone in each room, a restaurant, and other accommodations. It struck me that it was a good example of Negro self-help that Negroes should be proud of. But upon mentioning it to a coloured man I met I found that he was violently opposed to it.

"Why hotels for coloured men?" he asked. "I believe in hotels for men. The coloured man must not draw the line himself if he doesn't want the white man to do it. He must demand and insist constantly upon his rights as an American citizen."

I found in Boston and in other Northern cities many Negroes who took this position. A white woman, who sought to establish a help and rescue mission for coloured girls similar to those conducted for the Jews, Italians, and other nationalities in other cities, was violently opposed, on the ground that it set up a precedent for discrimination. In the same way separate settlement work (though there is a separate settlement for Jews in Boston) and the proposed separate Y. M. C. A. have met with strong protests.

Everything that tends to set the Negro off as a Negro, whether the white man does it or the Negro does it, is bitterly opposed by this party of coloured people.

They fought the Jamestown Exposition because it had a Negro Building, which they called the "Jim Crow Annex," and they fought the National Christian Endeavour Convention because the leaders could not a.s.sure Negro delegates exactly equal facilities in the hotels and restaurants. Of course the denunciation of the white South is continuous and bitter. It is noteworthy, however, that even the leaders of the movement not only recognise and conduct separate newspapers and ask Negroes to support them, but that they urge Negroes to stand together politically.

_Boston Negroes Seen by a New York Negro Newspaper_

But the large proportion of coloured newspapers in the country, the strongest and ablest of which is perhaps the New York _Age_, are supporters of Was.h.i.+ngton and his ideals. The Boston correspondent of the _Age_ said recently:

It is unfortunate in Boston that we have a hall which we can get free of charge: we refer to Faneuil Hall. They work Faneuil Hall for all it is worth. Scarcely a month ever pa.s.ses by that does not see a crowd of Afro-Americans in Faneuil Hall throwing up their hats, yelling and going into hysterics over some subject usually relating to somebody a thousand miles away, never in relation to conditions right at home. The better element of Negroes and the majority of our white friends in this city have become disgusted over the policy that is being pursued and has been pursued for several months in Boston.

Your correspondent can give you no better evidence of the disgust than to state that a few days ago there was one of these hysterical meetings held in Faneuil Hall and our people yelled and cried and agitated for two hours and more. The next day not one of the leading papers, such as the _Herald_ and the _Transcript_, had a single line concerning this meeting. A few years ago had a meeting been held in Faneuil Hall under the leaders.h.i.+p of safe and conservative Afro-Americans, both of these newspapers and papers of similar character would have devoted from two to three columns to a discussion of it. Now, in Boston, they let such meetings completely alone.

If there ever was a place where the Negro seems to have more freedom than he seems to know what to do with, it is in this city.

In spite of the agitation against drawing the colour line by the radical party, however, the separation is still going on. And it is not merely the demand of the white man that the Negro step aside by himself, for the Negro himself is drawing the colour line, and drawing it with as much enthusiasm as the white man. A genuine race-spirit or race-consciousness is developing. Negroes are meeting prejudice with self-development.

It is a significant thing to find that many Negroes who a few years ago called themselves "Afro-Americans," or "Coloured Americans," and who winced at the name Negro, now use Negro as the race name with pride. While in Indianapolis I went to a Negro church to hear a speech by W. T. Vernon, one of the leading coloured men of the country, who was appointed Register of the United States Treasury by President Roosevelt. On the walls of the church hung the pictures of coloured men who had accomplished something for their race, and the essence of the speaker's address was an appeal to racial pride and the demand that the race stand up for itself, encourage Negro business and patronise Negro industry. All of which, surely, is significant.

_How Negroes Themselves Draw the Colour Line_

The pressure for separation among the Negroes themselves is growing rapidly stronger. Where there are mixed schools in the North there is often pressure by Negroes for separate schools. The Philadelphia _Courant_, a Negro newspaper, in objecting to this new feeling, says:

Public sentiment, so far as the white people are concerned, does not object to the mixed school system in vogue in our city half as much as the Afro-American people seem to be doing themselves. We find them the chief objectors.

One reason why the South to-day has a better development of Negro enterprise, one reason why Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton believes that the South is a better place for the Negro than the North, and advises him to remain there, is this more advanced racial spirit. Prejudice there, being sharper, has forced the Negro back upon his own resources.

Dr. Frissell of Hampton is always talking to his students of the "advantages of disadvantages."

I was much struck with the remark of a Negro business man I met in Indianapolis:

"The trouble here is," he said, "that there is not enough prejudice against us."

"How is that?" I inquired.

"Well, you see we are still clinging too much to the skirts of the white man. When you hate us more it will drive us together and make us support coloured enterprises."

When in Chicago I heard of an interesting ill.u.s.tration of this idea. With the increasing number of Negro students prejudice has increased in the Chicago medical schools, until recently some of them have, by agreement, been closed to coloured graduate students. Concerning this condition, the Chicago _Conservator_, a Negro newspaper, says: "The cause of this extraordinary announcement is that the Southern students object to the presence of Negroes in the cla.s.ses. Now it is up to the Negro doctors of the country to meet this insult by establis.h.i.+ng a post-graduate school of their own. They can do it if they have the manhood, self-respect, and push. Let Doctors Hall, Williams, Boyd and others get busy."

To this the New York _Age_ adds:

"Yes; let us have a school of that sort of our own."

And this is no idle suggestion. Few people have any conception of the growing progress of Negroes in the medical profession. In August, 1907, the Coloured National Medical a.s.sociation held its ninth annual session at Baltimore. Over three hundred delegates and members were in attendance from thirty different states. Graduates were there not only from Harvard, Yale, and other white colleges, but from coloured medical schools like Meharry and Howard University. Negro hospitals have been opened and are well supported in several cities.

_National Negro Business League_

All over the country the Negro is organised in business leagues and these leagues have formed a National Business League which met last August in Topeka, Kansas. I can do no better in interpreting the spirit of this work, which is indeed the practical spirit of the Southern party, than in quoting briefly from the address of Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, who is the president of the league:

Despite much talk, the Negro is not discouraged, but is going forward. The race owns to-day an acreage equal to the combined acreage of Holland and Belgium. The Negro owns more land, more houses, more stores, more banks, than has ever been true in his history. We are learning that no race can occupy a soil unless it gets as much out of it as any other race gets out of it. Soil, suns.h.i.+ne, rain, and the laws of trade have no regard for race or colour. We are learning that we must be builders if we would succeed.

As we learn this lesson we shall find help at the South and at the North. We must not be content to be tolerated in communities, we must make ourselves needed. The law that governs the universe knows no race or colour. The force of nature will respond as readily to the hand of the Chinaman, the Italian, or the Negro as to any other race.

Man may discriminate, but nature and the laws that control the affairs of men will not and cannot. Nature does not hide her wealth from a black hand.

All along the line one finds this spirit of hopeful progress. A vivid picture of conditions, showing frankly both the weakness and strength of the Negro, is given by a coloured correspondent of the Indianapolis _Freeman_. He begins by telling of the organisation at Carbondale, Ill., of a joint stock company composed of thirty-nine coloured men to operate a dry goods store. The correspondent writes:

The question is, "Will the coloured people support this enterprise with their patronage?" It is a general cry all over the country that coloured people pa.s.s by the doors of our merchants and trade with any other concerns--Jews, Dagoes, Polacks, and what not. This is a very unfortunate fact which stands before us as a living shame. The very people who preach "race union, race support, race enterprise," are often the first to pa.s.s our own mercantile establishments by. The only places where coloured men can prosper in business are where our people are driven out of other people's places of business and actually forced to patronise our own. A certain cigar manufacturer in St. Louis, a first-cla.s.s business man, putting out the very best cla.s.ses of cigars, said, a few days ago, that some of the hardest work he ever did was to get a few of our own dealers to handle his goods. If but one-third of the stores and stands that sell cigars and tobacco in St. Louis alone would buy their goods of him he could in a few more years employ one or two dozen more men and women in his factory. A dry goods company in the same city is suffering from the same trouble. Our people will condescend to look in, but more often their purchases are made at a neighbouring Jew store. There are also in that neighbourhood several first-cla.s.s, up-to-date, clean and tasty-looking coloured restaurants: but twice as many Negroes take their meals at the cheap-John, filthy, fourth-cla.s.s chop counters run by other people near by. But, after all, my people are doing better in these matters than they did some time past. It was a most pleasant surprise to learn, the other day, that the coloured undertakers in St. Louis do every dollar's worth of business for our people in that line. This information was given by a reliable white undertaker and substantiated by the coloured undertakers. The white man was asked what he thought of it. He said he thought it was a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of the loyalty of the Negro to his own people and that they should be commended for it. And then there are two sides to every question. It is too often true that our people run their business on a low order--noisy, uncleanly, questionable, dive-like concerns--therefore do not deserve the patronage of decent people.

Too many of our men do not know anything about business. They don't believe in investing their money in advertising their business in good first-cla.s.s periodicals. We must not expect everybody to know where we are or what we have to sell unless we advertise. Many of our nickels would find their way to the cash drawer of a coloured man if we just knew where to find the store, restaurant or hotel.

_Remarkable Development of Negroes_

It is not short of astonis.h.i.+ng, indeed, to discover how far the Negro has been able to develop in the forty-odd years since slavery a distinct race spirit and position. It is pretty well known that he has been going into business, that he is acquiring much land, that he has many professional men, that he wors.h.i.+ps in his own churches and has many schools which he conducts--but in other lines of activity he is also getting a foothold.

Just as an ill.u.s.tration: I was surprised at finding so many Negro theatres in the country--theatres not only owned or operated by Negroes, but presenting plays written and acted by Negroes. I saw a fine new Negro theatre in New Orleans; I visited a smaller coloured theatre in Jackson, Miss., and in Chicago the Pekin Theatre is an enterprise wholly conducted by Negroes. Williams and Walker, Negro comedians, have long amused large audiences, both white and coloured. Their latest production, "Bandanna Land," written and produced wholly by Negroes, is not only funny, but clean.

Many other ill.u.s.trations could be given to show how the Negro is developing in one way or another--but especially along racial lines. The extensive organisation of Negro lodges of Elks and Masons and other secret orders, many of them with clubhouses, might be mentioned. Attention might be called to the almost innumerable insurance societies and companies maintained by Negroes, the largest of which, the True Reformers, of Richmond, has over 50,000 members, and to the growth of Negro newspapers and magazines (there are now over two hundred in the country), but enough has been said, perhaps, to make the point that there has been a real development of a Negro spirit and self-consciousness. Of course these signal successes loom large among the ten million of the country and yet they show the possibilities: there is this hopeful side of Negro conditions in this country as well as the dark and evil aspects of which we hear all too much.

Out of this ferment of racial self-consciousness and readjustment has grown, as I have shown, the two great Negro parties. Between them and within them lie the destinies of the race in this country, and to no small extent also the destiny of the dominant white race. It is, therefore, of the highest importance for white men to understand the real tendencies of thought and organisation among these ten million Americans. For here is vigour and ability, and whatever may be the white man's att.i.tude toward the Negro, the contempt of mere ignorance of what the Negro is doing is not only short-sighted but positively foolish. Only by a complete understanding can the white man who has a.s.sumed the entire responsibility of government in this country meet the crises, like that of the Atlanta riot, which are constantly arising between the races.

CHAPTER XI

THE NEGRO IN POLITICS

The discussion of the Negro in politics will of necessity deal chiefly with conditions in the South; for it is there, and there only, that the Negro is, at the present time, a great political problem. Negroes in the North are indeed beginning to play a conscious part in politics; but they are only one element among many. They take their place with the "Irish vote," the "German vote," the "Polish vote," the "labour vote," each of which must be courted or placated by the politicians. I have looked into Negro political conditions in several cities, notably Indianapolis and Philadelphia, and I cannot see that they are in any marked way different from the condition of any other cla.s.s of our population which through ignorance, or fear, or ambition, votes more or less _en ma.s.se_. Many Negroes do not vote at all; some are as conscientious and incorruptible as any white citizen; but a large proportion, ignorant and short-sighted, are disfranchised by the use of money in one form or another at every election. One of the broadest observers in Indianapolis said to me:

"The Negro voters are no worse and no better than our foreign voting population."