CHAPTER XVII
Passing from the report of the Negro riot in Chicago, of 1919 to the Negro Year Book for the same date, we find therein the assertion, that the aggregate wealth of the 10,300,000 Negroes in the United States, at that date, was estimated at $1,100,000,000.
Whatever the wealth or progress of the Negroes in the United States is asserted to be, at any time, it is customary to allude to it, as that much in excess of nothing at the time of Emancipation. The Negro writers in particular are prone to claim this. This has been, in some degree, shown in this study to be incorrect; but it may be well to go a little further into the matter.
In the year 1860 the 4,441,800 colored persons in the United States consisted of 488,070 free persons of color and 3,953,730 Negro and mulatto slaves. The 488,070 free persons of color were about evenly divided between the Northern and the Southern States. They possessed property. What was the probable value of their holdings?
The Census of 1860 shows, that in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, there were 3,237 free persons of color and that 357 of them returned property for taxation, on which they paid $12,015.60 in taxes, mainly upon real estate, probably about seven-eighths of the whole. But they also paid taxes on income and business, as well as head taxes on the slaves they owned and upon their horses, carriages and dogs. With the generally accepted average value for slaves and a safe valuation for horse-flesh, as the value of the real estate is disclosed, we can calculate that the aggregate wealth of the free persons of color in Charleston, S. C., in 1860 must have been about $888,650. Unless there was some particular advantage, materially, in a residence, by free persons of color, in that State and city most identified with “the peculiar institution,” the per capita established can be extended to the whole population of this class in the United States, at that date; which would have accordingly amounted to about $133,989,231.
Of course there may have been greater wealth among the free persons of color in Charleston than in the rest of the State of South Carolina; but for the same reason there would have been still greater wealth in New Orleans and the greater cities of the North, where real estate was necessarily of greater value with a greater growth.
As the free persons of color had more than quadrupled in the six decades ending in 1860, what reason is there to think that, inured to the responsibilities of freedom, their rate of increase, after the emancipation of the mass of slaves, should have materially lessened?
With the Negro slaves emancipated in mass it would be different; and therefore it is not at all unlikely, that of the $1,100,000,000 owned in 1919 by the entire Negro population of the United States, something like $535,957,124 should be credited to the descendants of the free persons of color, best equipped at the outset to reap their share of the wealth the War between the States brought to the North and West, rather than to the greater number of the emancipated remaining in the impoverished South and suffering with the whites the evils of Congressional Reconstruction. That it took the South until 1890 to regain in material wealth what they had lost between 1861 and 1876, while in the same period the advance in material gain in the North and West was the envy of the world, but clinches the argument.
Selfishness is, however, not infrequently the accompaniment of increasing prosperity and, therefore, it should not surprise any thoughtful individual to note, that the cultured DuBois and not a few of his white acclaimers look somewhat askance at the steady movement of the Southern Negroes out of the South and into the North and West.
This is not the attitude, however, of that Negro whose name heads the report of the committee on the Chicago riot.
Robert S. Abbott comes nearer the Biblical description of the owner of the vineyard. He wishes to share with the laborers of his race the fields he has garnered so successfully with his weekly paper, the “Chicago Defender” and therefore whatever may be his extravagances of expression, he seems to be the most unselfish leader the Negroes have.
In thus turning to the weekly rather than attempting the more ambitious daily, the Negroes show a clear-sightedness to their credit.
“Negro papers are published weekly because they cannot compete with the daily papers in providing any part of the public with news from day to day.”[401]
This is a very simple statement, but it contains a great amount of wisdom.
For that part of humanity which lacks wealth the weekly paper is a great protector. The news passes thro’ a filterer. It gives the honest editor and publisher an opportunity to scrutinize that which the fierce competition for the daily item of news may hardly permit.
The call for copy is not infrequently a call of distress. To fill a void may bring about a hasty selection of cartoon plate, by no means hastily prepared; but possibly for just such a contingency. These so selected, not seldom undo the effect of an editorial, while much masquerading as news, but in reality propaganda, may be hastily slapped into the forms around two o’clock in the morning. The Negroes, therefore, in clinging to weeklies “are wiser in their generation than the children of light.”
Happily for humanity, sentimentality destroyed slavery of the Negroes in the United States; but the result was an intense stimulation of economic slavery of whites and blacks, by the simple process of letting in from Europe masses of whites, many of whom were below the standards of numbers of American Negroes. That having been checked, the Negro laborer in every line must now measure himself against the Slav and the Latin. In physical power he is superior to the Latin; but the Latin makes up for it in greater pertinacity and orderliness of method. While the statement will probably be received with derision, the training of the slave by the Southern slave-holder and the working of the Negro by the Southerner is not at the driving pace at which the North and West move, and under that spur the Northern Negro becomes a more efficient tool. But North or South the mass has been helped more than hindered by that which a cultivated young Negro addressing one of the leading educational institutions of the United States thus described:
“The savage and the child, to rise to higher things must feel the power of a stronger hand. This is the special blessing of the American Negro and has in forty years set him centuries ahead of his Haytien brother, who has been self governing for one hundred years.”[402]
Even if he has since recanted, this was the view of William Pickens in 1903, when awarded the Ten Eyck Prize at Yale University. But if the Negro is affected by the presence of the white to the Negro’s betterment, it is only fair and just to quote a Southern opinion with regard to the reverse.
Only two years later than the award to Pickens at Yale University, a Southern scholar published “The Coming Crisis”; which despite the fact that it is written in flawless English, exhibits a symmetry of composition which is altogether admirable, and advances views held today by a vast number, not a few of whom have achieved some reputation in the discussion of them less intelligently than Mr. Pinckney in 1905, his book, nevertheless, at that date, fell absolutely flat. What Mr. Pinckney discerned before the World War others can now also see. His view of the Negro problem was not in accord with the view of the author of this study. He would have been surprised to hear that it could have been thought to be in accord with that of Abraham Lincoln, to a great degree, altho’ with some differences. But in Pinckney’s discussion the Negro is merely incidental to the subject which is to him so inspiring as to be visualized in a passage worth pondering:
“It seems probable that the history of the United States is calculated to furnish more complete and more striking illustration of the working of political principles than was ever furnished to the world before. It is an experiment on so grand a scale and interests so gigantic are at stake that enthusiasm itself is overwhelmed in the contemplation. It was too much to hope for, that such an experiment should be successful from the start. Not so lightly might the latest and greatest blessing to mankind, the gift of rational liberty, be wrested from reluctant nature. Not without thorns and blood and agony might such a crown be won. Were the reward to be more easily obtained, possibly those who won it would have proved unworthy to enjoy it. Let those remember this that fear for the fate of the Republic. So will their hearts be filled afresh with courage. So from within will well up new healing streams of hope, balm of hurt minds, refreshing, comfortable. To fall from grace is to learn the pathway of salvation and, like the prodigal son, to become a partaker of joys before unknown.”[403]
Nowhere can be found a more delicate satire, than the chapter in his book which is entitled “Salary and Sentiment—Reason and Revenue.” There is also very clear and convincing reasoning. But it is in regard to what Mr. Pinckney has to say of the presence of the Negroes in the South that reference now is had.
In opposition to the view of Wade Hampton, M. C. Butler and Carlyle McKinley, according to Mr. Pinckney:
“The States themselves must control the Negro question, or the American system is at an end. Effort on the part of the Federal Government to control or even to tamper with this matter must at all times result, as it has hitherto invariably resulted, in riot and anarchy. Thus, as far as the South is concerned, the very highest sanctions possible are by natural law attached to strict observance of the true constitutional construction. To travel the constitutional path is safety and happiness; to wander from it is instant anarchy. ... The purpose is to protect all local affairs against intrusion from without, but among those affairs first and foremost has always stood the Negro Question, in which there can be no hesitation, choice or possibility of alternative. Thus the smaller matter of the presence of the Negro is included in the larger class of matters which comprise the whole range of local interests.... The Negro is thus the (wholly unconscious) means of illustrating the necessity for constitutional self government. His presence effectually prevents the South from departing for an instant from the Constitutional pathway. Cuffy must be remembered if the Republic is to be saved.”[404]
This is in agreement with the view, that the Southern States are Democratic, because the presence of the Negro, now freed, forces them to be so.
There may be truth in that; but it may be, that they are and have been Democratic in spite of the Negro.
The publication of the List of Tax-Payers in Charleston, “The Hot-Bed of Secession”, in 1860 was an illustration of the thorough-going democracy of the place and the people, at that time. It was an open display of the strength and weakness of each and every governmental burden bearer, and of the burdens imposed. What could be more democratic than that? There was a tax of 1.4 per cent on real estate; a tax of 1.4 per cent on stocks of goods. There was no tax on bonds and no tax on stock, because, without interest or dividends, the scrip is mere paper. But there was a tax on interest and dividends of 2.5 per cent; the same on gross income; commissions; annuities and gross receipts of all commercial agencies. On premiums of insurance there was a tax of 1.25 per cent. On capital in shipping, as it should have been, the tax was light, only .75 per cent; for shipping is the very life of a seaport. But it was also gainful, so it was taxed for some of its gain. The foolish idea of absolute exemption was avoided. Luxuries were taxed fairly, in the additional head taxes. The carriage drawn by two horses was taxed a third more than the carriage drawn by one. Sulkeys were taxed lower than one horse carriages and horses and mules lower still. Slaves were taxed, but the head tax of $3 per slave, when it is realized that some sold for $1200 apiece was indefensibly light compared to the tax on horse-flesh and property of that kind. One per cent on a Negro to ten per cent on a mule by the average value and lessening with the increase of value of either was an immense incentive to slave-holding. With apparently this one exception, in the absence of that procrustean bed, the uniform rate, upon which all property which cannot be concealed is now stretched, the wealthy paid according to their wealth, the poor according to their poverty; but all, who had anything, contributed to the general welfare, and bore a fair share of the general burden.
That is the real reason why they fought so long and well. For instance on $385,000 of real estate, 28 slaves, 1 carriage and 2 horses, Otis Mills and Otis Mills & Co. paid a tax of $5,524. On $281,000 of real estate, 14 slaves, a carriage and 2 horses, William Aiken paid a tax of $4,027.40. On $101,500 of real estate, $2,724.16, interest on bonds, 3 slaves and $45,000 of shipping, the estate of James Adger paid a tax of $1,835.60. On $15,000 of real estate, $1,982 interest on bonds, $14,642 commissions, 14 slaves, 1 carriage, 3 horses and 2 dogs, Wm. C. Bee and Wm. C. Bee & Co. paid a tax of $732.60. On a stock of goods $16,000, commissions $9,000, Jeffords & Co. paid a tax of $449. On $8,000 shipping, $4,600 income and 3 slaves E. Lafitte & Co. paid a tax of $184. On a stock of goods of $1,000, Samuel P. Lawrence paid a tax of $14. On 1 slave Mrs. M. S. H. Godber paid a tax of $3. On $200 of real estate Dr. Charles M. Hitchcock paid a tax of $1.80. On a stock of goods valued at $100, C. H. Brunson paid a tax of $1.40. The tax imposed on the manufacture of gas light was lighter than that imposed on shipping; but it was gainful and on a capital of $755,700 the Company paid a tax $3,778.50.[405]
That the condition of the Southern States was incalculably improved by the abolition of slavery is the firm belief of the author of this study. But that from the tax legislation that followed, the morals of all have suffered tremendously, is the belief of many, with which he agrees.
The presence of the Negroes in the masses in which they still remained in the South after emancipation retarded even the remarkable recovery that the South has made. In this year of 1925, the first in a century in which the white population of South Carolina has exceeded in numbers the colored, it is apparent that the small industries of country life are becoming distinctly more gainful. Why? With lessening mass the Negro is feeling the effect of environment. He is less of a pilferer. And with less friction and consequent material gain, wider opens the door to literature and art.
That there is an immense educational power in art has again and again been demonstrated by artists who have had a purpose deeper than—“Art for art’s sake.”
As an illustration, one cannot fail to note that while the educated Negroes of the North could not possibly take at the hands of a Negro Union soldier, who had fought for the freedom of the race and gone thro’ the days of Congressional Reconstruction without a stain, as a distinct Legislative leader, a faithful description of the great mass of Negroes in the South, they acclaimed the French Negro author of “Batouala,” whose realistic novel of the Negro in Africa while criticising severely their white French rulers, damns the Negroes, even more so. The book is not only interesting, it is instructive to those who need the instruction; and the increasing numbers of educated Negroes at the North needed just such a book, in order to show them what they were rescued from in Africa.
Rene Maran says:
“My book is not a polemic. It comes by chance when its hour strikes. The Negro Question is of the present. Who made it that? Why the Americans.”
Describing French Colonial Africa, he quotes, the Senegalese, Diagne:
“—the best settlers have been not the professional colonials, but the European troops from the trenches.”[406]
This is in the preface.
The book opens with the awakening of the hero “Batouala” in the hut in which he sleeps with his eighth and favorite wife, Yassiguindjia. It recalls another awakening in another realistic piece of literature, “Old Bram” in “The Black Border.” The only difference is between the awakening of a wolf and the awakening of an old watch dog, “the friend of man,” a tamed wolf. The story revolves around the politics and desires of Batouala, Bissibingui and Yassiguindjia. Batouala is a wolf who cares for the pack; Bissibingui, a young wolf, as fierce, who cares but for himself and his desires. Yassiguindjia can only be described by one of the items with which she was purchased.
In “The Black Border” it is true we are in South Carolina, along the coast; but, as has been eloquently stated by a Scotch South Carolinian, in that region “there is Africa in every breath we draw.” With artistic power Maran pictures the sounds of the African dawn.
“Daylight broke. Although heavy with sleep still, Batouala—Batouala, the Mokoundji, chief of so many villages—was quite conscious of these sounds. He yawned, shivered and stretched himself. Should he go to sleep again? Should he get up? God! Why get up? He did not even wish to know why....
“Now merely to get up—didn’t that require an enormous effort? In itself a perfectly simple decision, so it seemed. As a matter of fact it was hard; for getting up and working were one and the same thing, at least to the whites.... Life is short. Work is for those who will never understand life. Doing nothing does not degrade a man. In the eyes of one who sees things truly, it differs from laziness. As for him, Batouala, until it was proved to the contrary, he would believe that to do nothing was simply to profit by everything that surrounds us. To live from day to day without thought of yesterday or care for the morrow, without looking ahead—that was perfect.”[407]
What a perfect picture of the Negro without “the power of a stronger hand,” which William Pickens saw so clearly the need of in 1903. And the philosophy of it! Moved to visit Africa in 1924, Dr. DuBois makes a discovery:
“I began to notice it as I entered Southern France. I formulated it in Portugal. I knew it as a great truth one Sunday in Liberia. And the great truth was this: Efficiency and happiness do not go together in modern culture.... And laziness; divine, eternal languor is right and good and true.”[408]
The Doctor praises the “manners” of the Africans.
“Their manners were better than those of Park Lane or Park Avenue, Rittenhouse Square or the North Shore.... The primitive black man is courteous and dignified.... Wherefore shall we all take to the Big Bush? No I prefer New York.”[409]
As to the great truth, happiness depends upon what is in the soul of the man, not upon his surroundings.
But Batouala while he disliked work could exert himself to hunt or fight. His grievance was that which has moved men more than any other thro’ all the ages. He and his people were too heavily taxed. He gathered the people together and harangued them.
“A drunken crowd pressed up behind the group of which Batouala was the centre. They reviled the whites. Batouala was right, a thousand times right. Of old before the coming of the whites, they had lived happily. They had worked a little for themselves, they had eaten and drunk and slept. From time to time they had had bloody palavers and had plucked the livers from the dead to eat their courage and incorporate it in themselves. Such had been the happy days of old, before the coming of the whites.”[410]
Then follows a description of the great dance.
“Bissibingui was the handsomest of all. The strongest too. His muscles stood out. His eyes glowed like the brush on fire.... What had gone before was nothing. All the preceding noises and outcries, the confused dancing had only been a preparation for what was to come—the dance of love, scarcely ever danced but on this evening, when they were permitted to indulge in debauchery and crime.... Couples formed.... It was the immense joy of brutes loosed from all control.... A couple dancing fell to the ground.
Suddenly his fingers twitching about a knife in his hand, Batouala, the Mokoundji rushed upon this couple. He was foaming. His fist was raised for the blow. More nimble than monkeys, Bissibingui and Yassiguindjia leapt out of his reach. He pursued them. Ah, these children of a dog had the impudence to desire each other before his very eyes. He’d have the skin of that strumpet. As for Bissibingui ... Ah, wouldn’t the women make fun of him then. Yassiguindjia! The idea! Hadn’t he bought her with seven waist cloths, a box of salt, three copper collars, a bitch, four pots, six hens, twenty she goats, forty big baskets of millet, and a girl slave! Ah, he’d make Yassiguindjia take the test poison.”[411]
But the arrival of the commandant saves the guilty couple. Batouala, however, still plots the life of Bissibingui, who is plotting the robbery of his own people, as one of the commandant’s soldiery. In the great hunt Batouala hurls a javelin at his rival, misses him and is himself struck down by an infuriated passing panther. So the dark patriot falls and the black scalawag wins. It is an impressive picture of African life, the men, the women and the conjugality.
Turn we now to the coast of South Carolina, where in “The Black Border,” the scene is laid, for “Jim Moultrie’s Divorce,” the deepest in discernment of all the life like sketches of that moving book.
Jim, too, was a great hunter, an unwearied pursuer. No animal. But a black man. A believer in divorce, as almost all Negroes in America are, even in South Carolina, where the law refuses it.
At the end of a cold blustering day in February, after pushing his clumsy dug-out canoe into every creek and lead of the Jehossee marshes, to flush ducks for the white sportsman who had hired him, at sun set he is turning home. How the picture appeals to us of the coast.
“Far up the river, like low hung stars, twinkled the watch fires of a great timber raft outward bound for the estuary of the North Edisto. From a distant plantation came the sweet lu-la-lu of a happy Negro freed from work. The raft borne upon the bosom of the strong ebb tide, neared rapidly, and around its fires, built on earth covered platforms, the negro raftsmen talked and laughed as they cooked their supper and the flames lighted the face and magnified the figure of the black steersman who stood by the great sweep oar, with which at the stern of the raft, he guided its course down stream.
For an hour Jim had silently bucked the tide, impelling the boat under the powerful strokes of his paddle, alternately left and right.
‘What are you thinking of Jim?’
‘Study ’bout ’ooman, suh.’ (A short silence).
‘Ooman shishuh cuntrady t’ing, dem nebbuh know w’en dem well off. You kin feed dem, you kin pit clo’es puntop dem back, you kin pit shoo ’puntop dem feet, you kin pit hat ’puntop dem head, you kin pit money een dem han’, en’ still yet oonah nebbuh know de ’ooman, nebbuh know w’en dem min’ gwine sattify. Dem fuhrebbuh duh lookout fuh trubble. Ef dem ent meet trubble duh paat’, dem gwine hunt fuhr’um duh ’ood. I dunkyuh how soeb’uh fudduh de trubble dey, dem gwine fin ’um. Ef dem cyan’ see ’e track fuh trail ’um, dem gwine pit dem nose een de du’t en’ try fuh smell ’um, but dem gwine fin’um. I duh study ’pun dat wife I nyuse fuh hab, name Mary. Look how him done, w’en him hab no cajun! You yeddy ’bout me trubble, enty suh? Lemme tell you. One Sat’d’y night I gone home frum de ribbuh. I tek two duck’, bakin, flour en’ sugar en’ tea, den I pit fibe dolluh’ een Mary’ lap. Enty you know, suh, dat is big money fuh t’row een nigguh’ lap? W’en I binnuh boy en’ you t’row uh ’ooman fifty cent, ’e t’ink ’e rich, but I bin all dat week wid one cump’ny uh dese yuh rich Nyankee buckruh’ dat Mr. FitzSimmon hab yuh fuh shoot, en’ dem buckruh’ t’row me fibe dolluh bill same lukkuh dem bin dime’! W’en I t’row de money in de ’ooman’ lap, en pit de todduh t’ing wuh I fetch ’pun de flo’, Mary nebbuh crack ’e teet’. I ax ’um ’smattuh mek ’um stan ’so? ’E mek ansuh, ’nutt’n’. Nex’ day de ’ooman keep on same fashi’n. ’E nebbuh crack ’e bre’t. I quizzit ’um ’gen. I ax ’um ’smattuh ’long ’um. Him say, ‘nutt’n’. Den I say ‘berry well den.’ Monday mawnin’ I tek me gun, I call me dog en’ den I talk to de ’ooman. I say, ‘Mary, I gwine duh ribbuh, en’ I gwine come back Sat’d’y two week’. I dunnoh ’smattuh mek you stan’so, but I know suh de debble dey een you. No ’ooman ’puntop dis ribbuh hab mo’ den you, no ’ooman get so much, but I yent able fuh lib dis way ’long no ’ooman wuh ti ’up ’e mout’, en w’en I cum back las’ Sat’d’y two week’ I gwine’ tarry gate you one mo’ time, en’ I gwine ax you ’smattuh mek you stan’ so, en if oonah still een de same min ’ez now, den me nuh you paa’t.”[412]
The obstinate silence of the woman is related and the parting in silence. Then follows the attempt of the woman to appease him, her jealousy gone. His refusal. His resentment that she should have believed an idle lie. His determination that it was too late. And then the last two lines, which hold so much.
“Have you another wife Jim?”
“I had dat gal you see wid me dis mawnin’ een Mr. Fitz-Simmun’ yaa’d. Him ent wut’!”[413]
Jim Moultrie’s conceptions as to conjugality might be improved upon; but they are certainly cycles ahead of Batouala’s. It is in the sketches this book contains and in the altogether admirable “Duel in Cummings” that we find the Southern coast country Negro as he is, most observant, not lacking in a homely philosophy, and, as Thomas, the Ohio Negro, noted (altho’ utterly lacking it himself) a creature of infinite humor. Whence does he derive it? He seems to lose it to some extent as he moves out of the coast region. But he becomes more efficient. He has benefited immensely by his sojourn in America. He ought to take more interest in his race elsewhere than the cultivated members seem to. It is good for the Negroes of the United States that numbers should continue to move into the Northern and Western States. It is providing a most interesting experiment. The urban Negro dwellers of the great cities of the North and West are furnishing a most interesting illustration of that mysterious power which leads humanity to its betterment. By the Census of 1920, in the great city of New York there were 152,467 Negroes. By the estimates of the Department of Commerce for July, 1923, this had been increased to 183,248.[414] Unless the migratory movement has slowed down as that estimate is for July 1, 1923, the Negro population of New York, today must be 194,445, with that of Philadelphia at 163,248 and Chicago at 148,326. There is no urban Negro population of these figures anywhere in the Southern States. The nearest would be New Orleans where the Negro population may be 107,530. But in addition in the great cities which stretch along and thro’ the rich and populous territory between New York and Chicago up to the borders of Canada the Negro population is steadily increasing. Detroit at the very door of Canada holds a Negro population greater than that of any Southern city except New Orleans; for Baltimore is practically a Northern city now.
While the urban Negro population of the Southern States appears to be increasing it is scarcely increasing at the rate at which it is increasing in the great section of the North above described and as has been shown in not a few States of the South the Negro population as a whole is decreasing slightly; while the white population is increasing actively. But the civilization of the Southern whites has been handicapped by the weight of the Negro population which it has carried for a century and more. It should not bear any more than its fair proportion of that load and in the natural movement of the Negroes from the South up to the north central portion of the Union and to some extent into Canada, by the amalgamation of Negroes and mulattoes, a brown people affected by the civilization of these sections, differing in some degrees from the darker Negroes who will more slowly develop in the Southern States, will show in their progress what the North and West can do to improve them. With ever lessening numbers in the South, they will the better respond to their environment, which will be the better for such lessening. The result will be the advance of all to a better condition and a higher plane of thought.