On the Sea

In the month of June, 1861, the Union schooner, “S. J. Waring” was captured by the Confederate privateer, “Jeff Davis”. All the crew of the schooner, with the exception of a Colored man, William Tillman and two white men, were taken from the ship and replaced by Rebel sailors. At an opportune moment Tillman killed the Rebel captain and mate, drove all the other Rebels at the point of a gun below deck and took full charge of the ship. After ploughing through a terrific storm, during which time the Rebel sailors were brought up and forced to help man the wave-tossed ship, the Colored sailor safely guided the recaptured “S. J. Waring” into the harbor of New York. For that nervy and patriotic act he received from the Federal Government prize money amounting to six thousand dollars.

It was through the cool-headedness, gamesness and shrewd planning of Robert Small, a man of color, that the Confederate gunboat, “The Planter” was stolen out of Charleston Harbor, running the gauntlet of the Rebel’s watchful forts and barking cannons and safely delivered into the hands of a Northern squadron. In payment for this naval strategy Robert Small was made captain of the gunboat he captured and during his service continued to show marked fearlessness as a fighting sailor and unusual executive ability as a commanding officer.

When the Civil War was finally ended by General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army compelling General Robert E. Lee of the Rebel Army to surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865, the Colored soldiers and sailors laid aside their warfare weapons with proud and thankful feelings that they had been given such great chances to help fight for and secure their own freedom.

ON THE PLANTATIONS
Broad-Mindedness

From African jungles to American shores,
Negroes were brought to do all the chores;
Though bought and sold without due blame,
They now forgive this country’s shame.
—Harrison.

THE slaves who went into the battles of the Civil War came up to all the standards of loyalty and bravery that had been set for them as fighting soldiers. But it was left to the millions of Colored men who staid on the plantations during the war to come up to and go far beyond the standards of moral self-control and human just treatment set by their owners. The Colored men who were in the war were really enjoying a temporary freedom while they were fighting for a permanent freedom. But it was quite different with the shackled men who staid on the plantations during the war. They were then slaves not only one way but in three ways. First, they were still slaves to their owners as they were yet under their control; secondly, they were slaves to themselves inasmuch as they were their own bosses and overseers to plant, cultivate and reap the crops in the absence of the white men; thirdly and most important of all, they were slaves to the trust and honor under which they had been left with the care and protection of the white women and children on the plantations. And no records in history have been found to show where those thousands of white wives, daughters, mothers and sisters made complaints to their returned husbands, sons, fathers and brothers about having forced upon them insulting and raping attentions from those millions of slave men under whose whole care those white women had been freely left and safely kept during the Civil War.

If those Colored men had wanted to copy the spiteful, revengeful and immoral actions of most of their white owners, they could easily have mistreated or destroyed all of those helpless white women and children in revenge for the two hundred and forty-four years of unspeakable crimes committed against their Colored womanhood by the Southern white slave owners and overseers. Or the slaves could have run away, joined the Union Army in a mass and left alone those destitute white women and children to starve on the untilled plantations. But those men of the Negro race, not then three hundred years from the underbrush of Africa, had under their dark skins too much inborn manhood and brotherhood qualities to stoop down to such beastily acts. They naturally grasped that grand and big opportunity to show to the Southern white people and the rest of the watchful world (that helplessly looked on in silence but with pitiful and admiring glances) that they had in their characters and dispositions and knew when and how to use them, the sterling principles of open-fairness, loyal friendliness, tender feelings, human considerations, moral self-control and Christlike mercy.

It is undeniably true that as early as 1860 there were in the United States over five hundred eighty-eight thousand Mulattoes. (Ref. Work’s Negro Year Book, page 432, 1918-1919 edition). Among that large number many thousands were beautiful and innocent girls who were either retained as their white owners’ immoral mistresses on Southern plantations or sold hither and thither from the Potomac River to the Gulf of Mexico to be forced into shameful and degraded lives a thousand-fold more friendless, unhappy and unprotected than Longfellow’s wandering Evangeline.

As the Civil War did not begin until 1861, it is readily seen that those one half million and more Mulattoes were not the results of slave men forcing immoral attentions upon the white women and girls left under their personal cares during the four years of the Civil War. But those half-Colored, half white people were the undeniable results of the brutal rapings of white plantation owners and overseers upon their helpless and unprotected black slave women for over two hundred years. So is it strange that fair and pure minded white people throughout the world, knowing and seeing all around them today the increased results of those first beastily actions by immoral members of their own race, listen without interest but with shame and impatience whenever, through sheer politeness, they are compelled to remain as audiences before certain classes of Southern men who for centuries (including today) have been talking through mouth and press about keeping their Southern white blood untainted and unstained? Colored boys and girls, therefore, should not become down-hearted and discouraged when they read in newspapers or hear from platforms such Southern white men writing or making such “Jekel-Hyde” talks; because close-observing, sound-reasoning and fair-judging white people in the South, in the North and throughout the world fully understand the whole situation and do not in the least take such Southern false utterances seriously. In fact they usually cannot keep from laughing at the funny side of the whole thing and say among themselves, “How absurd.”

No one but God knows the number of deceived Southern white married women who during slavery days secretly worried themselves sick, slowly pined away and silently died of broken hearts in their richly furnished colonial mansions, because of the ever haunting, taunting and stinging knowledge that their unfaithful, disloyal and immoral husbands as well as being the fathers of their white wives’ children were also the fathers of their slave mistresses’ Mulatto offsprings. So is it surprising that clean-living, clean-thinking and justice-loving white people always exchange knowing winks with their friends and hurriedly put handkerchiefs up to their mouths in order to hide disgusted features and weary yawns whenever they find themselves in places where they have to listen to certain classes of Southern white men who for centuries (including today) have been boasting from platform and press about their unsurpassed and unexcelled fidelity and chivalry to their Southern white womanhood? Instead of losing their ambitions and hopes when hearing and reading such blaspheming words against their race and progress, Colored boys and girls should take on new hope and redouble their efforts in striving to become even more devout Christians, higher learned students, better skilled industrial workers and fuller law-abiding citizens. In reference to the inferiority of their colors, Colored youths should remember that the prettiest thing in the world (the rainbow) is Colored, and yet, no one is able to resist the fascinations of its archful beauty or forget the consolations of its floodless promise, just because Nature with splashing rain drops and flashing sun rays oft ribbons the sky with rainbow hues.

No one but God knows the number of black slave women who moaned their heart strings loose and died of broken spirits either in their one-roomed log cabins or out in fence-cornered fields, because of the ever torturing knowledge that the virtues and womanhoods of themselves and the chaste maidenhoods of their immatured and innocent daughters had been repeatedly and forcibly taken or sold by their white owners and overseers. Yet, not one of those white rapists was lynched, tortured and burned at the stake by Negroes, not even at the close of the Civil War when there were thousands of ex-slave holders living in some Southern districts where the Colored people outnumbered the white people five to one. And surely, after gallantly fighting through the thickest and hottest battles of the war, it was not fear nor cowardice that held those Colored men from avenging the unprintable immoral wrongs forcibly done for over two hundred years to their unprotected and helpless Colored women. But, it was the living up to and the carrying out of a certain high civic principle of their African tribal laws that they had inherited and which prevented the ex-slaves from striking such a revengeful blow upon the Southern whites. For among savage tribes in Africa the universal punishment for raping was certain death; different tribes having different methods of dealing out that penalty. But that punishment was never dealt out by a mob. Those tribes so respected and obeyed the laws under which they lived and were governed that as savage as they appeared to be, they always had enough self-control over their tempers and passions to leave the captures, trials, convictions and executions of such offenders to be carried out by their chiefs and their assistants who had been put in their offices for such purposes. And since America had made laws and appointed officers who should have caught, tried, convicted and punished those Southern white men who raped enough black women to cause the birth of over a half million Mulattoes, the ex-slave men felt that even if those laws had not been enforced by people who had been selected to do so, it was not their rights to take the laws into their own hands by forming themselves into lynching mobs. They felt that just as raping of either black or white women is a most damnable crime; so is lynching either by black or white mobs a most hellish sin. In making comparisons between the ancient laws of Nippur and the modern laws of the United States, relative to slaves, the world-famed journalist, Arthur Brisbane, in the June 22, 1920 issue of the New York American, under the title, “Today”, wrote in part as follows:

“Five thousand years ago some laws were better than those of our day.

“For instance, in those ancient laws, if a slave woman had a child, the father being her owner, the mother and the child were set free. In magnificent America, in Lincoln’s day, thousands of slave children, with slave owners for fathers, were sold in the public markets.”

Now, not for one moment do intelligent and law-abiding Colored citizens uphold or make excuses for the brutish crimes committed by the degenerate members (and there are many) of their own race. For they fully realize that it means a faster and higher progress of all their people to have Colored criminals punished to the fullest extent of the law, after they have been given the same fair trials, convictions and sentences that are handed out to the thousands of white criminals who commit the same kind of crimes. And just as Colored degenerates are disgusting and shameful to up-right living white people, so are white degenerates disgusting and shameful to up-right living Colored people. Thus the broad-minded and law-abiding Colored and white citizens now mutually know that it is for the greater advancement of both races and a closer brotherhood combining of all Americans for them to see to it, as far as possible, that all criminals be rightly protected when arrested, given fair trials, safely guarded after sentenced and fully punished in a confinement where they cannot further morally lower themselves nor longer dilute the purity of human society.

And in thus far carrying out their Christian duties for the elevation of humanity, good Colored and white people are contented in knowing that for those criminals of both races who are shrewd enough to escape the detection and punishment of earthly laws, there is a Heavenly law that never fails to punish them at the proper time. And even while on their death beds those evil doers are twisting and turning in mental and bodily sufferings, they will not on account of their torturing pains be able to truthfully and peacefully chant such consoling lines that are found in Tennyson’s poem “Crossing The Bar”, nor will their names be written in that “Book of Gold” where it is said Abou Ben Adhem had his name inscribed above all of those who loved the Lord, because he (Abou Ben Adhem) loved all his fellowmen.

FOLK-LORE SONGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO
Different Emotions

Prayer

From lips of slaves with age bent low,
Wet prayers burst forth in deepest flow
To God above that some new light
Would slaves unborn save from such plight.

Work

Down they went the great long rows
Swinging scythes and chopping hoes
In time with cheerful labor songs
To ease the work and sting of thongs.

Song

“Camp Meetin” times were when their songs
Rang loose full pathos of slave wrongs,
And pent-up hearts with anguish fills
Were drained as springs on sloping hills.

Play

When work was done and nights were theirs,
They oft did have most jolly fairs
Quilting rags or shucking corn
With laughter, dance and fiddles worn.
—Harrison.

“THE only American music”. This is the terse, sincere and high comment made quite a number of years ago by Edward Everett Hale, author of “A Man Without a Country”, in relation to the rightful recognition and value of the American Negro melodies sung on the Southern plantations during slavery. Since then, well-read, well-bred and music loving people of both races have come to fully recognize, acknowledge and appreciate the truthfulness of the above compliment.

For many years after their freedom great number of ex-slaves harbored bitter dislikes toward these songs because they so clearly and painfully reminded them of their past ill-treatment and sufferings during slave days. Most of their children caught this feeling direct from their parents or indirectly through their own vivid imaginations formed from what they had heard about slavery. But quick and deep understanding people of both races soon found in these crude tuneful words something far more interesting and touching than mere memories of slavery sins and sufferings—they saw and felt in such weird and original chants the most beautiful and truest life pictures of the true soul that it is possible for human being to paint with colorful and verbal expressions of tear moistened sorrows and smile dried joys. Thus music lovers and masters began at once to value this music as among the most precious finds to be added to their treasuries of folk-lore songs.

World recognized Negro music transposers and composers are today taking these rough, crude and half-savage chants and, without destroying their originalities of construction or pureness of quality, lifting them from the lowest depths of ignorant fun-making burlesquers to the highest level of intelligent and serious-minded music admirers. And throughout the musical world today celebrated chorus leaders, conductors, etc., of both races in giving even operatic recitals indicate by their programs rendered that they consider no first-class recital complete unless one or more of its numbers are expressions of Negro folk-lore music as Burleigh, Dett, Diton, Work and others have so classically elevated them. These broad-minded and just manifestations are gradually causing the general public to become more interested in, give more serious thought to, and show more appreciation of the true dignity and value of these melodies. They are also rapidly educating the American Colored people as a mass not to hate and cast aside but to love and preserve this music as a race pride heritage so costly purchased and handed down by their fore-parents and as one of the most valuable and rare features of American history.

Among the foremost composers, singers and lecturers in the Negro race who are giving tremendous aid and are largely responsible for the development of the above favorable sentiments are Cleveland G. Allen, New York, N. Y., Harry Burleigh, New York, N. Y., R. Nathaniel Dett, Hampton, Va., Carl Ditson, Phila., Pa., E. Azalia Hackley, Detroit, Mich., Kathleen P. Howard, Birmingham, Ala., J. Wesley Jones, Chicago, Ill., Jennie C. Lee, Tuskegee, Ala., Nellie M. Mundy, New York, N. Y., Jas. A. Mundy, Chicago, Ill., F. J. and J. W. Work.

THROUGH RECONSTRUCTION DAYS
Frederick Douglass

Oft in the past has his life been told,
And others again should it oft unfold
To learn of the greatness he did reap,
As orator, editor, statesman deep.

The following lines of marginal flight
Show a Negro’s rise from depth to height:
Fred Douglas unknown in slavery shame
Elevated his name to the Hall of Fame.
—Harrison.

IN taking a swift but careful glance back to that historical and red-letter year of 1863, it will be noted that there was born at that time into these United States a form of whole liberty that had been fathered and nourished by the world-beloved Abraham Lincoln. Before the above date this country had existed under only a one-sided liberty that had been won from the English for the white Americans by the illustrious George Washington. But it was left for Abraham Lincoln to win for the United States a two-sided liberty by cutting the chains of slavery from the wrists and ankles of the black Americans and also refreeing the white Americans by unchaining from their souls the slave-holding temptations they had become too weak-minded to resist and too selfish to give up of their own accord.

As soon as the Colored people had passed out from the sufferings of slavery, they were at once compelled as free, but ignorant, homeless and penniless, people to begin their upward struggles and progress through a reign of terror. This reign of terror was caused by the brutal treatment and murdering of thousands of innocent Colored people and the destruction of their properties by an uneducated, uncivilized and unchristianized element of Southern white people who were known as “Night Riders”, “Ku Klux Klan”, etc., of whom the best minded white people even in the South were ashamed.

But the sturdy and hopeful Colored people came through that awful ordeal as they had come through slavery, with increasing determination and greater efforts to push forward and upward to the best and highest things in life. However, it was only their unfaltering trust in God that gave them enough hopeful vision in the future; it was only their gratitude to and appreciation of their Northern and Southern white aiding friends that retained them enough patience and faith in mankind; it was only their keenness to see the funny side of life’s happenings that enabled them to laugh and keep cheerful; it was only their ability and willingness to do any and all kinds of hard work that enabled them to sleep through the whole nights with peaceful minds; and it was only their great big healthy (everlasting-non-fasting) appetites that gave them enough vitality, stamina, physical strength and energy-plus to pass through those years of body sufferings and spirit crushings and safely reach their present stages of upward progress and onward success.

Thus the Negro race has proven that just as a red-blooded, self-confident, self-reliant and resourceful individual cannot rest with a peaceful and happy mind as long as staying in the easygoing, smoothly-worn and narrow “rut” of a least-resistance, non-progressive position, but fearlessly steps out with a determined mind, hopeful heart and unbounded enthusiasm to face and overcome the ups-and-down of this rough-and-ready world that finally yields up to that individual his or her well-earned and genuine success; so will a race of people of similar qualities and aspirations be restless until it wades and crawls out of a miry and stagnant pool of ignorance and poverty and enters a channel of freshly flowing active thoughts where it can freely swim abreast in fair competition with other races in order to reach those distant ports of Christian service, citizenship usefulness, financial independence, self culture and human helpfulness.

While the Negro race in the United States succeeded in swimming into that channel in 1861, it has never been allowed, like other races therein, to use either a rapid-lunging and noisy over-head double-arm stroke or a swift-gliding and noiseless under-water crawl-stroke; but, has been compelled to paddle along using a one-arm bull-frog stroke, having one leg and arm tied together with strings of race discriminations, the entire racing course clogged with floating debris of public decayed sentiments and a plaited cord of race jealousy-envy-spite tied to the big toe of the free leg that has been roughly and constantly yanked back throughout the swim. With all that prejudiced and unsportsmanlike handicap, the American Colored people have increased their ownership of homes from twelve thousand in 1866 to six hundred thousand in 1919; they owned in 1910 over two hundred thousand farms that with other real estate holdings comprised twenty-one million acres of land; in 1866 they ran a little over two thousand business enterprises and in 1919 they had increased that number to fifty thousand business concerns doing a volume of business amounting to about one billion two hundred million dollars; in 1919 there were annually being spent for their education fifteen million dollars; starting out in 1866 with seven hundred churches they kept on building and buying Houses of God until in 1919 they owned forty-three thousand such buildings valued at more than eighty-four million dollars; and while the American Colored people in 1866 were worth twenty million dollars, they continued to earn and save money until in 1919 they had accumulated a wealth of one billion one hundred million dollars. (above figures extracted from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pgs. 1-2-345.)

There are located in over 25 States throughout the Union nearly a hundred towns and villages that are inhabited and governed wholly by Colored people. The largest of these settlements is described below.