A Social History of the American Negro / Being a History of the Negro Problem in the United States. Including A History and Study of the Republic of Liberia

by Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Unfortunately Lee's method of approach was not to prevail. Passion and prejudice and demagoguery were to have their day, and conservative and broadly patriotic men were to be made to follow leaders whom they could not possibly approve. Sixty years afterwards we still suffer from the KuKlux solution of the problem.

2. [Meeting the Problem]

The story of reconstruction has been many times told, and it is not our intention to tell that story again. We must content ourselves by touching upon some of the salient points in the discussion.

Even before the close of the war the National Government had undertaken to handle officially the thousands of Negroes who had crowded to the Federal lines and not less than a million of whom were in the spring of 1865 dependent upon the National Government for support. The Bureau of Refugee Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, created in connection with the War Department by an act of March 3, 1865, was to remain in existence throughout the war and for one year thereafter. Its powers were enlarged July 16, 1866, and its chief work did not end until January 1, 1869, its educational work continuing for a year and a half longer. The Freedmen's Bureau was to have "the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen." Of special importance was the provision in the creating act that gave the freedmen to understand that each male refugee was to be given forty acres with the guarantee of possession for three years. Throughout the existence of the Bureau its chief commissioner was General O.O. Howard. While the principal officers were undoubtedly men of noble purpose, many of the minor officials were just as undoubtedly corrupt and self-seeking. In the winter of 1865-6 one-third of its aid was given to the white people of the South. For Negro pupils the Bureau established altogether 4,239 schools, and these had 9,307 teachers and 247,333 students. Its real achievement has been thus ably summed up: "The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South.... For some fifteen million dollars, beside the sum spent before 1865, and the dole of benevolent societies, this bureau set going a system of free labor, established a beginning of peasant proprietorship, secured the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law, and founded the free common school in the South. On the other hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods, which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land."[¹⁹⁸] To this tale of its shortcomings must be added also the management of the Freedmen's Bank, which "was morally and practically part of the Freedmen's Bureau, although it had no legal connection with it." This institution made a really remarkable start in the development of thrift among the Negroes, and its failure, involving the loss of the first savings of hundreds of ex-slaves, was as disastrous in its moral as in its immediate financial consequences.

When the Freedmen's Bureau came to an end, it turned its educational interests and some money over to the religious and benevolent societies which had coöperated with it, especially to the American Missionary Association. This society had been organized before the Civil War on an interdenominational and strong anti-slavery basis; but with the withdrawal of general interest the body passed in 1881 into the hands of the Congregational Church. Other prominent agencies were the American Baptist Home Mission Society (also the American Baptist Publication Society), the Freedmen's Aid Society (representing the Northern Methodists), and the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Actual work was begun by the American Missionary Association. In 1861 Lewis Tappan, treasurer of the organization, wrote to General Butler to ask just what aid could be given. The result of the correspondence was that on September 3 of this year Rev. L.C. Lockwood reached Hampton and on September 17 opened the first day school among the freedmen. This school was taught by Mrs. Mary S. Peake, a woman of the race who had had the advantage of a free mother, and whose devotion to the work was such that she soon died. However, she had helped to lay the foundations of Hampton Institute. Soon there was a school at Norfolk, there were two at Newport News, and by January schools at Hilton Head and Beaufort, S.C. Then came the Emancipation Proclamation, throwing wide open the door of the great need. Rev. John Eaton, army chaplain from Ohio, afterwards United States Commissioner of Education, was placed in charge of the instruction of the Negroes, and in one way or another by the close of the war probably as many as one million in the South had learned to read and write. The 83 missionaries and teachers of the Association in 1863 increased to 250 in 1864. At the first day session of the school in Norfolk after the Proclamation there were 350 scholars, with 300 others in the evening. On the third day there were 550 in the day school and 500 others in the evening. The school had to be divided, a part going to another church; the assistants increased in number, and soon the day attendance was 1,200. For such schools the houses on abandoned plantations were used, and even public buildings were called into commission. Afterwards arose the higher institutions, Atlanta, Berea, Fisk, Talladega, Straight, with numerous secondary schools. Similarly the Baptists founded the colleges which, with some changes of name, have become Virginia Union, Hartshorn, Shaw, Benedict, Morehouse, Spelman, Jackson, and Bishop, with numerous affiliated institutions. The Methodists began to operate Clark (in South Atlanta), Claflin, Rust, Wiley, and others; and the Presbyterians, having already founded Lincoln in 1854, now founded Biddle and several seminaries for young women; while the United Presbyterians founded Knoxville. In course of time the distinctively Negro denominations—the A.M.E., the A.M.E.Z., and the C.M.E. (which last represented a withdrawal from the Southern Methodists in 1870)—also helped in the work, and thus, in addition to Wilberforce in Ohio, arose such institutions as Morris Brown University, Livingstone College, and Lane College. In 1867, moreover, the Federal Government crowned its work for the education of the Negro by the establishment at Washington of Howard University.

As these institutions have grown they have naturally developed some differences or special emphasis. Hampton and Atlanta University are now independent; and Berea has had a peculiar history, legislation in Kentucky in 1903 restricting the privileges of the institution to white students. Hampton, in the hands of General Armstrong, placed emphasis on the idea of industrial and practical education which has since become world-famous. In 1871 the Fisk Jubilee Singers began their memorable progress through America and Europe, meeting at first with scorn and sneers, but before long touching the heart of the world with their strange music. Their later success was as remarkable as their mission was unique. Meanwhile Spelman Seminary, in the record of her graduates who have gone as missionaries to Africa, has also developed a glorious tradition.

To those heroic men and women who represented this idea of education at its best, too much credit can not be given. Cravath at Fisk, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, and Packard and Giles at Spelman, are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving. These people had no enviable task. They were ostracized and persecuted, and some of their co-workers even killed. It is true that their idea of education founded on the New England college was not very elastic; but their theory was that the young men and women whom they taught, before they were Negroes, were human beings. They had the key to the eternal verities, and time will more and more justify their position.

To the Freedmen's Bureau the South objected because of the political activity of some of its officials. To the schools founded by missionary endeavor it objected primarily on the score of social equality. To both the provisional Southern governments of 1865 replied with the so-called Black Codes. The theory of these remarkable ordinances—most harsh in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana—was that even if the Negro was nominally free he was by no means able to take care of himself and needed the tutelage and oversight of the white man. Hence developed what was to be known as a system of "apprenticeship." South Carolina in her act of December 21, 1865, said, "A child, over the age of two years, born of a colored parent, may be bound by the father if he be living in the district, or in case of his death or absence from the district, by the mother, as an apprentice to any respectable white or colored person who is competent to make a contract; a male until he shall attain the age of twenty-one years, and a female until she shall attain the age of eighteen.... Males of the age of twelve years, and females of the age of ten years, shall sign the indenture of apprenticeship, and be bound thereby.... The master shall receive to his own use the profits of the labor of his apprentice." To this Mississippi added: "If any apprentice shall leave the employment of his or her master or mistress, said master or mistress may pursue and recapture said apprentice, and bring him or her before any justice of peace of the county, whose duty it shall be to remand said apprentice to the service of his or her master or mistress; and in the event of a refusal on the part of said apprentice so to return, then said justice shall commit said apprentice to the jail of said county," etc., etc. In general by such legislation the Negro was given the right to sue and be sued, to testify in court concerning Negroes, and to have marriage and the responsibility for children recognized. On the other hand, he could not serve on juries, could not serve in the militia, and could not vote or hold office. He was virtually forbidden to assemble, and his freedom of movement was restricted. Within recent years the Black Codes have been more than once defended as an honest effort to meet a difficult situation, but the old slavery attitude peered through them and gave the impression that those who framed them did not yet know that the old order had passed away.

Meanwhile the South was in a state of panic, and the provisional governor of Mississippi asked of President Johnson permission to organize the local militia. The request was granted and the patrols immediately began to show their hostility to Northern people and the freedmen. In the spring of 1866 there was a serious race riot in Memphis. On July 30, while some Negroes were marching to a political convention in New Orleans, they became engaged in brawls with the white spectators. Shots were exchanged; the police, assisted by the spectators, undertook to arrest the Negroes; the Negroes took refuge in the convention hall; and their pursuers stormed the building and shot down without mercy the Negroes and their white supporters. Altogether not less than forty were killed and not less than one hundred wounded; but not more than a dozen men were killed on the side of the police and the white citizens. General Sheridan, who was in command at New Orleans, characterized the affair as "an absolute massacre ... a murder which the mayor and police of the city perpetrated without the shadow of a necessity."

In the face of such events and tendencies, and influenced to some extent by a careful and illuminating but much criticized report of Carl Schurz, Congress, led by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, proceeded to pass legislation designed to protect the freedmen and to guarantee to the country the fruits of the war. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution formally abolishing slavery was passed December 18, 1865. In the following March Congress passed over the President's veto the first Civil Rights Bill, guaranteeing to the freedmen all the ordinary rights of citizenship, and it was about the same time that it enlarged the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau. The Fourteenth Amendment (July 28, 1868) denied to the states the power to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; and the Fifteenth Amendment (March 30, 1870) sought to protect the Negro by giving to him the right of suffrage instead of military protection. In 1875 was passed the second Civil Rights act, designed to give Negroes equality of treatment in theaters, railway cars, hotels, etc.; but this the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883.