The Ultimate Criminal

by Archibald Henry Grimké

In that year the two irreconcilable governments grappled in a final struggle at the polls for mastery and possession of that section. When the smoke of battle cleared over South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the Southern forces of re-action were in complete possession of those states, and the solid South had become an accomplished fact. Nothing stood now between the blacks and their ancient enemy. They were again at the mercy of the old master class, who returned promptly to the execution of their interrupted program of inequality and injustice. As the whites could not now reestablish constitutionally their old slave system, or directly their new serf system they proceeded to do the next best thing, that is to construct a caste system based on race and color. Such a system, once firmly established, would fix the status of the blacks as a permanently inferior caste, and to that extent would render nugatory the three great amendments to the constitution. For members of an inferior caste would by the force of circumstances, law, or no law, be deprived of certain rights civil and political enjoyed by members of the superior caste. Citizenship of the one caste would not mean the same thing as citizenship of the other. The lower caste could not possibly possess the same rights—constitution or no constitution—which the upper caste possessed. Inequality became thus the chief corner stone of the new Southern edifice. Under this society there grew up two moral standards and two legal standards for the government of the races. For example what under such a system is bad for a black man to do to a member of the white race might not be regarded as bad at all if done by a white man to a member of the black race. The cruel and iniquitous sex relations of the races in the South has grown out of this caste system. Under it we have the double moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that section with a vengeance. A white man cannot with impunity seduce another white man’s daughter or wife in the South. But were he to seduce a colored man’s daughter or wife the case would be wholly different. No bastardy process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white sister under like circumstances, and no maintenance could she possibly obtain for her child from the white man who wronged her. Intermarriage between the races has been made illegal by every Southern state and by some Northern states also. Such a law makes colored women the safe quarry of white men, and nowhere in the South do law or public opinion impose upon them any deterrent punishment, moral or legal, for their crime, but quite the opposite. For such men do not lose standing in Southern society or the church or the state in consequence of their sin. In all this sexual inequality and iniquity the South has eyes but sees not and ears but hears not what is taking place everywhere in its midst.

On the other hand what happens to the black man who ventures to look upon a white woman with love or carnal desire, or who is even suspected of doing so? Ask Judge Lynch, ask the blind and murderous sex fury of white men, the red male rage of Southern mobs. Nevertheless black men cannot be made to see the difference between the lust of black men and the lust of white men, or to acknowledge the justice of such a distinction. Hold the blacks responsible by all means for the crimes they commit, but hold the whites responsible also for creating social and legal conditions which lead directly to the growth of crime among both races. Race and color not efficiency and character are the basis of the Southern caste system, and such a system produces unavoidably ill-will, oppressions, and resentments between the races which lead directly or indirectly to the commission of crime. For all those who are black, regardless of what nature and education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of social and political inferiority, and all those who are white, regardless of what nature and education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of social and political superiority, and for no other or better reason than that those of the first class are black, and those of the second class are white. Civilization finds it well nigh impossible to advance under such iron bound conditions and against such a fatal obstruction to progress, while civic righteousness must certainly share the same fate. Such social injustice is as sure to provoke crime as stagnant water is to produce disease. Yet, in spite of this iniquitous caste system the leaven of democracy, of equality has found lodgment in the black man’s mind, and he craves the chance to become all that the white man has become and to do all that the white man does by virtue of his American freedom and citizenship. Nothing less than this is going to satisfy the blacks, the Southern caste system and appearances in spots among the blacks themselves, to the contrary notwithstanding.

But there is yet another aspect of the same subject, which tends to produce the same result. I refer to the Southern policy of civil and political repression and oppression of its colored population in order to keep them within their caste of inferiority and subordination to the whites. Discontent under such oppressive conditions is sure to arise among the colored people, and this because of their growth and of the existence of the hard and fast lines within which this growth must go on. For this kind of discontent the South has no vent such as free institutions provide. Its caste system sits upon this safety valve of democracy. Much of the crime committed by oppressed peoples is in the nature of fullness of life seeking greater freedom, of pent up energies seeking an outlet, and much of the crime committed by oppressors is in the nature of attempts, perilous always, to sit upon this safety valve of popular governments, which is intended to relieve dangerous pressure within the steam-chest of human expansion and progress. But the South is determined to keep the Negro down however great may be his effort to rise. He is to be kept down by brute force if he cannot be kept down in any other way, below the social and industrial and political level of the lowest and most worthless of the whites, because he is black and because they are white.

This is the meaning of the Southern movement for segregating the races, of its jim-crow car laws and waiting-rooms. This is the meaning of the Negro’s exclusion from dining-cars and from restaurants along the line of Southern railroads. He pays the same fare as the white passenger but he is given inferior accommodations and in many instances these accommodations are monstrously unequal and inferior. He is black and therefore the same law which protects the white passenger against bad accommodations does not apply to him. He is at the mercy of railroads, which may treat him as badly as they choose, and there is none to say them nay. Why? Because all these iniquitous distinctions and discriminations serve to teach colored men and women, however intelligent and wealthy and respectable, that their intelligence and wealth and respectability do not entitle them to equal treatment with the most vicious and worthless of the whites. At the moral retchings and manly revolt of the victim against this unequal treatment the South either sneers or else grows angry, because it affects to see in them the Negro’s ambition for social equality, his secret desire to leave his class and to enter that of the whites and to marry white women. And so down on the safety valve which free institutions provide, and regardless of the steam pressure within, the South has planted its brutal might with reckless and insolent disregard of consequences.

Everywhere the treatment of the Negro is the same, and everywhere the purpose of the South is plain. What with its contract labor laws and emigration laws and vagrancy laws and convict-lease and plantation-lease and credit systems the South is working mightily, night and day, to reduce the Negro laborer to wage slavery, to fix him in an industrial position where he shall have no rights which the white employer class is bound to respect. Negro labor toils and produces without adequate reward or protection against the rapacity of Southern employers. What it gets as its share bears no comparison with what the employer gets as his share. The employer gets wealth while the Negro gets a bare subsistence. I am speaking of course broadly, for there are many Negroes who get more than a bare subsistence out of the products of their labor, and that in spite of bad and unequal laws and conditions. But the great mass of Negro agricultural labor is exploited and plundered by the white employer class, and kept poor, because being poor they are esteemed less capable of giving the South trouble. It is the only labor class in the South that is deprived of the right to vote, and so is rendered powerless to influence legislation and administration and the courts in its favor. If the poverty of Negro labor renders it as a class less capable of giving the employer class trouble this poverty is at the same time a crime breeder and a huge crime breeder into the bargain.

Take this case which has just been decided favorably for the colored laborer by the United States Supreme Court, as a fair example of what Southern law and administration are doing to reduce the Negro to a condition of helpless industrial slavery:

An Alabama case, involving charges of peonage in connection with the operation of a convict labor law, now is before the Supreme Court, where its disposition may have an important bearing on similar statutes in other Southern States. The government contends that the Alabama statute permits peonage in violation of the Federal Constitution.

The test case is that of a colored man named E. W. Fields, who was convicted in Monroe County of larceny. Upon his failure to pay his fine, J. A. Reynolds, a plantation owner, became surety for him, and, as permitted by the Alabama law, contracted to work out his indebtedness during nine months at the rate of $6 a month and keep. The government charges that Reynolds later had Fields arrested for failing to complete the contract. As a result of the arrest, Fields, in court, entered into contract to work fourteen months for G. W. Broughton, another plantation owner.

Both Reynolds and Broughton were indicted by the Federal government, but the Federal district court for southern Alabama held that peonage had not been committed.

I want to ask your attention in passing to a few points about this case. First the Negro laborer is convicted on a charge of larceny. This charge might have been trumped up by some white person who wanted the Negro’s service. I do not know. I would not take the word of a Southern Court on this point. At any rate the Negro laborer is convicted and a fine is imposed upon him, which he is unable to pay. Now comes the opportunity of the white employer, who happens to be conveniently in Court, to come to the rescue of the poor Negro. He pays the fine and the Negro contracts to pay him back by giving him nine months of his labor. The Negro thereupon enters upon the performance of this contract, but fails for some reason, not stated, to finish it. How long he worked does not appear either, but this much does. He is haled into Court a second time and a second time a fine is imposed upon him. And again an employer, who is opportunely present at the second trial, pays the fine. The Negro now binds himself to the service of this second man for fourteen months, which, to use a slang expression, is surely “going some.” At this stage of the game, however, the United States Government stepped into the case, otherwise a third charge might have been preferred in due time, and again the term of involuntary service lengthened, and so on ad infinitum until death released the victim. This is a well-known Southern method for multiplying Negro criminals to meet the demands of Southern employers of cheap labor. It is a danger to which every colored man is exposed in the South, because Southern Courts are as a rule administered in the interest of the employer class wherever the Negro is concerned. There have been a few notable instances of Southern Judges who have refused to lend their Courts to this iniquitous business, like Judge Emory Speer, of Georgia, and the late Judge Jones, of Alabama, but such examples are like angels’ visits—few and far between in that land of race repression and oppression.