In 1896 also an authentic young poet who had wrestled with poverty and doubt at last gained a hearing. After completing the course at a high school in Dayton, Paul Laurence Dunbar ran an elevator for four dollars a week, and then he peddled from door to door two little volumes of verse that had been privately printed. William Dean Howells at length gave him a helping hand, and Dodd, Mead & Co. published Lyrics of Lowly Life. Dunbar wrote both in classic English and in the dialect that voiced the humor and the pathos of the life of those for whom he spoke. What was not at the time especially observed was that in numerous poems he suggested the discontent with the age in which he lived and thus struck what later years were to prove an important keynote. After he had waited and struggled so long, his success was so great that it became a vogue, and imitators sprang up everywhere. He touched the heart of his people and the race loved him.
By 1896 also word began to come of a Negro American painter, Henry O. Tanner, who was winning laurels in Paris. At the same time a beautiful singer, Mme. Sissieretta Jones, on the concert stage was giving new proof of the possibilities of the Negro as an artist in song. In the previous decade Mme. Marie Selika, a cultured vocalist of the first rank, had delighted audiences in both America and Europe, and in 1887 had appeared Flora Batson, a ballad singer whose work at its best was of the sort that sends an audience into the wildest enthusiasm. In 1894, moreover, Harry T. Burleigh, competing against sixty candidates, became baritone soloist at St. Georges's Episcopal Church, New York, and just a few years later he was to be employed also at Temple Emanu-El, the Fifth Avenue Jewish synagogue. From abroad also came word of a brilliant musician, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who by his "Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast" in 1898 leaped into the rank of the foremost living English composers. On the more popular stage appeared light musical comedy, intermediate between the old Negro minstrelsy and a genuine Negro drama, the representative companies becoming within the next few years those of Cole and Johnson, and Williams and Walker.
Especially outstanding in the course of the decade, however, was the work of the Negro soldier in the Spanish-American War. There were at the time four regiments of colored regulars in the Army of the United States, the Twenty-fourth Infantry, the Twenty-fifth Infantry, the Ninth Cavalry, and the Tenth Cavalry. When the war broke out President McKinley sent to Congress a message recommending the enlistment of more regiments of Negroes. Congress failed to act; nevertheless colored troops enlisted in the volunteer service in Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The Eighth Illinois was officered throughout by Negroes, J.R. Marshall commanding; and Major Charles E. Young, a West Point graduate, was in charge of the Ohio battalion. The very first regiment ordered to the front when the war broke out was the Twenty-fourth Infantry; and Negro troops were conspicuous in the fighting around Santiago. They figured in a brilliant charge at Las Quasimas on June 24, and in an attack on July 1 upon a garrison at El Caney (a position of importance for securing possession of a line of hills along the San Juan River, a mile and a half from Santiago) the First Volunteer Cavalry (Colonel Roosevelt's "Rough Riders") was practically saved from annihilation by the gallant work of the men of the Tenth Cavalry. Fully as patriotic, though in another way, was a deed of the Twenty-fourth Infantry. Learning that General Miles desired a regiment for the cleaning of a yellow fever hospital and the nursing of some victims of the disease, the Twenty-fourth volunteered its services and by one day's work so cleared away the rubbish and cleaned the camp that the number of cases was greatly reduced. Said the Review of Reviews in editorial comment:[215] "One of the most gratifying incidents of the Spanish War has been the enthusiasm that the colored regiments of the regular army have aroused throughout the whole country. Their fighting at Santiago was magnificent. The Negro soldiers showed excellent discipline, the highest qualities of personal bravery, very superior physical endurance, unfailing good temper, and the most generous disposition toward all comrades in arms, whether white or black. Roosevelt's Rough Riders have come back singing the praises of the colored troops. There is not a dissenting voice in the chorus of praise.... Men who can fight for their country as did these colored troops ought to have their full share of gratitude and honor."
4. [Mob Violence; Election Troubles; The Atlanta Massacre]
After two or three years of comparative quiet—but only comparative quiet—mob violence burst forth about the turn of the century with redoubled intensity. In a large way this was simply a result of the campaigns for disfranchisement that in some of the Southern states were just now getting under way; but charges of assault and questions of labor also played a part. In some places people who were innocent of any charge whatever were attacked, and so many were killed that sometimes it seemed that the law had broken down altogether. Not the least interesting development of these troublous years was that in some cases as never before Negroes began to fight with their backs to the wall, and thus at the very close of the century—at the end of a bitter decade and the beginning of one still more bitter—a new factor entered into the problem, one that was destined more and more to demand consideration.
On one Sunday toward the close of October, 1898, the country recorded two race wars, one lynching, two murders, one of which was expected to lead to a lynching, with a total of ten Negroes killed and four wounded and four white men killed and seven wounded. The most serious outbreak was in the state of Mississippi, and it is worthy of note that in not one single case was there any question of rape.
November was made red by election troubles in both North and South Carolina. In the latter state, at Phoenix, in Greenwood County, on November 8 and for some days thereafter, the Tolberts, a well-known family of white Republicans, were attacked by mobs and barely escaped alive. R.R. Tolbert was a candidate for Congress and also chairman of the Republican state committee. John R. Tolbert, his father, collector of the port of Charleston, had come home to vote and was at one of the polling-places in the county. Thomas Tolbert at Phoenix was taking the affidavits of the Negroes who were not permitted to vote for his brother in order that later there might be ground on which to contest the election. While thus engaged he was attacked by Etheridge, the Democratic manager of another precinct. The Negroes came to Tolbert's defense, and in the fight that followed Etheridge was killed and Tolbert wounded. John Tolbert, coming up, was filled with buckshot, and a younger member of the family was also hurt. The Negroes were at length overpowered and the Tolberts forced to flee. All told it appears that two white men and about twelve Negroes lost their lives in connection with the trouble, six of the latter being lynched on account of the death of Etheridge.
In North Carolina in 1894 the Republicans by combining with the Populists had secured control of the state legislature. In 1896 the Democrats were again outvoted, Governor Russell being elected by a plurality of 9000. A considerable number of local offices was in the hands of Negroes, who had the backing of the Governor, the legislature, and the Supreme Court as well. Before the November elections in 1898 the Democrats in Wilmington announced their determination to prevent Negroes from holding office in the city. Especially had they been made angry by an editorial in a local Negro paper, the Record, in which, under date August 18, the editor, Alex. L. Manly, starting with a reference to a speaker from Georgia, who at the Agricultural Society meeting at Tybee had advocated lynching as an extreme measure, said that she "lost sight of the basic principle of the religion of Christ in her plea for one class of people as against another," and continued: "The papers are filled with reports of rapes of white women, and the subsequent lynching of the alleged rapists. The editors pour forth volleys of aspersions against all Negroes because of the few who may be guilty. If the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn the commission of crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negroes themselves, and together the whites and blacks would root the evil out of both races.... Our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman's infatuation or the man's boldness brings attention to them and the man is lynched for rape." In reply to this the speaker quoted in a signed statement said: "When the Negro Manly attributed the crime of rape to intimacy between Negro men and white women of the South, the slanderer should be made to fear a lyncher's rope rather than occupy a place in New York newspapers"—a method of argument that was unfortunately all too common in the South. As election day approached the Democrats sought generally to intimidate the Negroes, the streets and roads being patrolled by men wearing red shirts. Election day, however, passed without any disturbance; but on the next day there was a mass meeting of white citizens, at which there were adopted resolutions to employ white labor instead of Negro, to banish the editor of the Record, and to send away from the city the printing-press in the office of that paper; and a committee of twenty-five was appointed to see that these resolutions were carried into effect within twenty-four hours. In the course of the terrible day that followed the printing office was destroyed, several white Republicans were driven from the city, and nine Negroes were killed at once, though no one could say with accuracy just how many more lost their lives or were seriously wounded before the trouble was over.
Charles W. Chesnutt, in The Marrow of Tradition, has given a faithful portrayal of these disgraceful events, the Wellington of the story being Wilmington. Perhaps the best commentary on those who thus sought power was afforded by their apologist, a Presbyterian minister and editor, A.J. McKelway, who on this occasion and others wrote articles in the Independent and the Outlook justifying the proceedings. Said he: "It is difficult to speak of the Red Shirts without a smile. They victimized the Negroes with a huge practical joke.... A dozen men would meet at a crossroad, on horseback, clad in red shirts or calico, flannel or silk, according to the taste of the owner and the enthusiasm of his womankind. They would gallop through the country, and the Negro would quietly make up his mind that his interest in political affairs was not a large one, anyhow. It would be wise not to vote, and wiser not to register to prevent being dragooned into voting on election day." It thus appears that the forcible seizure of the political rights of people, the killing and wounding of many, and the compelling of scores to leave their homes amount in the end to not more than a "practical joke."
One part of the new program was the most intense opposition to Federal Negro appointees anywhere in the South. On the morning of February 22, 1898, Frazer B. Baker, the colored postmaster at Lake City, S.C., awoke to find his house in flames. Attempting to escape, he and his baby boy were shot and killed and their bodies consumed in the burning house. His wife and the other children were wounded but escaped. The Postmaster-General was quite disposed to see that justice was done in this case; but the men charged with the crime gave the most trivial alibis, and on Saturday, April 22, 1899, the jury in the United States Circuit Court at Charleston reported its failure to agree on a verdict. Three years later the whole problem was presented strongly to President Roosevelt. When Mrs. Minne Cox, who was serving efficiently as postmistress at Indianola, Miss., was forced to resign because of threats, he closed the office; and when there was protest against the appointment of Dr. William D. Crum as collector of the port of Charleston, he said, "I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I can not consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong." These memorable words, coming in a day of compromise and expediency in high places, greatly cheered the heart of the race. Just the year before, the importance of the incident of Booker T. Washington's taking lunch with President Roosevelt was rather unnecessarily magnified by the South into all sorts of discussion of social equality.