IV—Social.
When a group has been reduced to serfdom, political and economic, its social status become fixed by that fact. And so we find that in “the home of the free and the land of the brave” Negroes must not ride in the same cars in a train as white people. On street-cars, certain sections are set apart for them. They may not eat in public places where white people eat nor drink at the same bar. They may not go to the same church (although they are foolish enough to worship the same god) as white people; they may not die in the same hospital nor be buried in the same grave-yard. So far as we know, the segregation ends here.
But why is segregation necessary? Because white Americans are afraid that their inherent superiority may not, after all, be so very evident either to the Negro or to other people. They, therefore, find it necessary to enact it into law. So we had the first Ghetto legislation in an American nation last year, in Baltimore. Hard on the heels of this followed legislative proposals along the same line in Richmond Va., Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Mo., and Birmingham, Ala. In Memphis, Tenn., Negroes pay taxes for public parks which they are not allowed to enter. A year ago they petitioned for a Negro park and were about to get it when 500 white citizens protested against it. That settled it with the park.
But discrimination goes even further and declares that Negroes shall not possess even their lives if any white persons should want them. And so we have the institution called the lynching-bee. The professional southerner seems to love a lie dearly and continues to assert that Negroes are lynched for rape committed upon white women. Why not? It is perfectly American. If you want to kill a dog, call it mad; if you want to silence a man, call him an Anarchist, and if you want to kill a black man, call him a rapist. But let us see what the facts actually are.
In the two decades from 1884 to 1904 there were 2,875 lynchings in the United States. Of these 87 per cent, or 2,499 occurred in the South. The national total was grouped as follows:
| 1. | For alleged and attempted criminal assault, i. e., rape | 564 |
| 2. | For assault and murder and for complicity | 138 |
| 3. | For murder | 1,277 |
| 4. | For theft, burglary and robbery | 326 |
| 5. | For arson | 106 |
| 6. | For race-prejudice (?) | 94 |
| 7. | For unknown reasons | 134 |
| 8. | For simple assault | 18 |
| 9. | For insulting whites | 18 |
| 10. | For making threats | 16 |
The causes for the remainder were: slander, miscegenation, informing, drunkenness, fraud, voodooism, violation of contract, resisting arrest, elopement, train wrecking, poisoning stock, refusing to give evidence, testifying against whites, political animosity, disobedience of quarantine regulations, passing counterfeit money, introducing smallpox, concealing criminals, cutting levees, kidnapping, gambling, riots, seduction, incest, and forcing a child to steal.
Yes, there are courts in the South; but not for black people—not when the mob chooses to relieve civilization of the onus of law and order. At Honeapath, S. C, a Negro was lynched in November 1911, charged, of course, with “the usual crime.” The charge had not been proven, or investigated; but the man was lynched. The howling mob which did him to death was composed of “prominent citizens” who had made up automobile parties to ride to the affair. Among those present was the dis-honorable Joshua Ashley, a member of the state legislature. He and his friends cut off the man’s fingers as souvenirs and were proud of their work. Why shouldn’t they? You see, it helps to keep “niggers” in their place. And then, besides, isn’t this a white man’s country? Gov. Blease of South Carolina was also proud of the event and said that instead of stopping the horrible work of the mob he would have resigned his office to lead it. In Okemeah, Oklahoma, last June, a band of white beasts raped a Negro woman and then lynched her and her fourteen-year-old son Nothing has been done to them. And it is not that the facts are unknown. At Durant, Okla., and elsewhere, the savages have posed around their victim to have their pictures taken. One man, from Alabama sent to the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a post-card (by mail) bearing a photograph of such a group. “This is the way we treat them down here,” he writes, and, after promising to put Mr. Holmes’ name on his mailing list declares that they will have one, at least, each month.
In Washington, Ga., Charles S. Holinshead, a wealthy white planter, raped the wife of T.B. Walker, a decent, respectable Negro. As his wife returned to him dishevelled and bleeding from the outrage perpetrated on her, Walker went to Holinshead’s store and shot him dead. For this he was tried and condemned and, while the judge was pronouncing sentence, Holinshead’s brother shot Walker in the court-room. They held his head up while the judge finished the sentence, Then he was taken out and lynched—not executed Nothing was done to the other Holinshead.
The New York Evening Post, on October 23rd said in an editorial that “there has hardly been a single authenticated case in a decade of the Negroes rising against the whites, despite the growing feeling, among them that there should be some retaliation since no tribunal will punish lynchers or enforce the law.” I am glad that the Post noticed this. I had begun to notice it myself. When President Roosevelt discussed lynching some years ago, he severely reprobated the Negro for their tendency to shield their “criminals” and ordered them to go out and help hunt them down. So was insult added to injury.
But, putting my own opinion aside, here are the facts as I have seen them. In the face of these facts, the phrase, “the white man’s burden,” sounds like a horrid mockery.