Why Colored People in Philadelphia Are Excluded from the Street Cars

by Benjamin P. Hunt

And first, it is found that even colored women, when ejected from the cars with insult and violence, seldom meet with sympathy from the casual white passengers, of either sex, who are present, while the conductor often finds active partisans among them. But one white passenger has ever volunteered testimony in any case; and for want of this, generally the only proof possible, several cases have been dropped.

Events early last year, such as the voting in the cars, the petition of the men working at the Navy Yard for continued exclusion of colored people on the Second and Third Street Line, the "fillibustering" of several hundred women, employed by the Government on army clothing, to defeat the Fifth and Sixth Street experiment of admission, and other acts of violence, show clearly that the classes represented by these men and women are bitterly opposed to admission.

Of our seven daily newspapers, two—the Press and Bulletin—have spoken out manfully and repeatedly in reproof of these outrages and in defence of the rights of the colored people. The others, it is believed, while admitting communications on both sides, have been editorially silent on the subject. In their local items, however, they have generally given a version of these disturbances unfavorable to the ejected colored people, under the heading of "riotous conduct of negroes," or some similar caption.

Grand juries, from the way in which their members are brought together, may be supposed fairly to represent the average public sentiment on this question, and their uniform action has been shown. Colored children have never been admitted to our general public schools, and the Associated Friends of the Freedmen in this city, who have lately adopted, as one of their cardinal rules, the admission of children of both colors, indiscriminately, to their schools in the South, consider that any effort to introduce the same rule here would be vain.

Only three members—Generals Owen, Tyndale, and Collis—of the Military Committee of Arrangements of sixteen, for the late celebration of the Fourth of July in this city, favored inviting colored troops to join in it; and the officers of the "California" Regiment (71st P. V.) gave notice, that if such troops did parade, their regiment must decline to do so, and would forward its colors to Harrisburg by express.

On the 30th of June last there were, distributed through sixteen counties of the State, and supported by State appropriations amounting in all to $525,000, twenty-nine School-Homes, three being in this city, containing 1837 orphans of white soldiers; and, according to the estimate of the Superintendent, by the 1st of December next, the number is expected to reach 3000. But, after careful inquiry, it does not appear that an orphan child of any one of the 1488 colored soldiers who lost their lives in the service, out of the 8681 belonging, according to official records, to Pennsylvania, and enlisted at Camp Wm. Penn, has yet found its way into any of these schools, or been provided for in any manner out of the above fund. You examine the Act, and find nothing there to exclude them from these privileges; you ask explanation of the school matrons, and are told that they never before heard the thing mentioned; and in reading the two annual reports of the Superintendent, Mr. Thomas H. Burrows, you find not a word implying knowledge of the fact that there was a single colored soldier enlisted in the State. Now on the 6th of July, 1863, at National Hall, the Hon. Wm. D. Kelley, a member of the late Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, in presence of his colleagues and a large concourse of people, white and colored, asked, addressing his colored auditors: "Will you not spring to arms, and march to the higher destiny which awaits your race?" Then turning to his colleagues and their white friends, he asked: "Will you not see that their orphans are secured such educational opportunities as a great and humane commonwealth should provide for the orphans of patriots?" Both these appeals were answered by loud shouts of assent. And the men of color did "spring to arms," and marched—not exactly "to the higher destiny which awaits their race," for that seems to be rather a long march. They, however, kept their pledge; the country admits that. But, Men of the late Supervisory Committee, and the thousands whom you represented, how have you kept yours?

Again: at the corner of Sixteenth and Filbert Streets, in this city, there is a most comfortable Home for Disabled Soldiers. The State, thus far, has appropriated $5000 a year and the rent of the building to its support; the balance of its fund, $115,000, is chiefly the proceeds of a fair held last October at the Academy of Music for the benefit of disabled soldiers without regard to color. Colored disabled soldiers are of course admitted to this institution, as well as white, and both receive the same kind of fare. But the 160 white inmates eat, sleep, amuse themselves, and attend the four schools of different grades, under hired teachers, in well-aired and well-lighted rooms, distributed through the high main building, separate things, for them, being kept separate. The seven colored disabled soldiers (enlisted at Camp William Penn) are quartered in a frame appendage to this establishment, built on the pavement of the back yard, to which their privileges are mainly restricted; and here they receive gratuitous lessons from their benevolent volunteer teacher, Miss Biddle. There is still room in this Home for one hundred more white soldiers, but there are present accommodations for no more who are colored. An applicant, formerly of the 1st U. S. C. T., wounded in the hand, lately requested to be allowed quarters there for a day or two, until he could get work, and was told that the colored ward was full. Another colored soldier, his regiment not known, but who had lost an arm in the service, was also lately turned away for the same reason. To the inquiry whether it is absolutely necessary to make the distinction above noted, the prompt answer is, "Yes; for otherwise the white soldiers would make a row." But according to all testimony received, the white soldiers most cheerfully accorded the post of danger, during the late war, to the enlisted Blacks; and that the latter as cheerfully accepted and bravely maintained this post, many battle-fields—Fort Wagner, Port Hudson and Petersburg among the rest—testify. And it would seem that this fact might be used as an unanswerable reason for establishing equality of privilege in quarters where these soldiers meet in time of peace. The quarters being free of expense to all, those who might dislike the conditions could be made free to leave them. But it is found that this suggestion, when made, cannot be entertained for a moment.

Now let us look at the question in its political aspect. And attention may be called first to the fact that several members of the late House Passenger Railway Committee,—the gentlemen who, in their quality of legislative abortionists, prevented the anti-exclusion bill from seeing the light,—were returned to the Legislature at the last Fall election, by a full party vote, although this transaction had been fully made known through the newspapers. This shows clearly that, by their course in regard to the rights of the colored people, they had not forfeited the confidence of our so-called radicals. One of these gentlemen, the same who reiterated the assertion that "there was no such bill in the hands of the Committee," is reputed to be one of the most respectable and useful members of the Philadelphia delegation. He is an especial favorite of the Union League, of which he has become a member since his services on the above Committee were rendered, and he was lately the recipient of a complimentary gift, with appropriate ceremonials, in one of its rooms, as a token of his legislative merit. This incident is mentioned only because it serves to show what manner of spirit the League is of, in regard to this question of admission; and one is constrained to believe that this spirit partakes largely of indifference, tinged with contempt, and therefore of inert opposition. And if anything were wanting to confirm this impression, it is to be found in the fact that the League declines to permit the rare distributing powers of its Publication Committee to be used in spreading over the State documents which distinctly advocate negro suffrage.

Next, it will be remembered how, last Fall, all classes of Republicans, from the most conservative to, with few exceptions, the most radical, united in expressions of the sincerest regret that the late Mayor Henry positively declined again to be their candidate. Now it is the general belief of those who have all along taken an interest in this matter, that, with the assistance of the Mayor, our colored people could have gained full admission to the cars more than eighteen months ago, just as similar admission was obtained for the colored people of New York, through the energetic course adopted in their favor by Police Commissioner Ecton. There was then a sort of factitious public feeling still running in favor of colored folks; war-made abolitionism had not all melted away; peace had not come, and we might need more of them to fight for us; these facts had their effect on the public mind, and were reflected on the Board of Presidents; the Fifth and Sixth Street Company tried the experiment of admission for a month; their whole line was beginning to waver, when just then the Mayor stepped to their side with his powerful official influence and aid, and turned the scale in their favor. In their battle with the car-invading negroes, he was their needle-gun. And yet, with a full knowledge of these facts, no one doubts that the Republicans, last October, would gladly have re-elected Mr. Henry as their Mayor, and that by a larger majority than he ever before received. And it must be admitted that the late Mayor is a most respectable man. By almost universal consent, he was as brave and incorruptible in office as he has always been pure in morals and unaffected in piety in private life. Possibly, here and there an extremist might be found to object, that, thus openly to set up, as he did, his own prejudices and those of his family, in the place of law, justice and humanity, as his rule of official conduct, to the manifest injury of twenty-seven thousands of innocent people, was a most shameless abuse of power and perversion of authority. But this objection, with the word shameless, cannot be admitted except "with a difference." A young child, rolling upon the carpet and freely exposing its little person, no one calls shameless; it is simply unconscious. Just so was the late Mayor Henry. Many great and good men have done gross wrongs unconsciously. Paul, when he was "haling men and women," very much as our policemen were permitted to do last year, and with purposes not dissimilar, since both were actuated by the spirit of persecution, "verily thought" that he "ought to do" these things; though it is true, at that time, Paul did not pretend to be a Christian. We may, however, rest assured that when by such an inverted arrangement of the moral forces as is described above, only negroes are brought within the official vice and made to feel sharp pressure, neither the late Mayor, nor the great majority of his friends and supporters, see the matter in any discreditable light. And it may as well be confessed, once for all, that to treat a man's sentiments in respect to negroes as of any importance, in making up your estimate of his character; or to announce, as your own motive, in whatever you may do for colored people, the simple desire to do them good, because it is just, irrespective of any object beyond, such as to save white recruits, to weaken an enemy, or to gain possible future votes,—is to bring upon yourself the contempt, secret or open, strong or mild, of nine-tenths of the people you meet.

When Mr. Charles Gibbons, in his stirring address to the Union League, shortly after the murder of Mr. Lincoln, described this murder and other crimes of the South as "representative acts of slavery," and logically referred to the wrongs done to the colored people in this city in the same connection, the conclusion of his address was pronounced "anti-climax." "After electrifying his audience," it was said, "he flatted right down to the small matter of the cars and colored people." Now while anything relating to the final position in this country of four millions of its people, a question which has already caused one war, and which may cause another, is contemptuously termed "small" by highly intelligent and influential men, we have much to learn and much to suffer before this question can be settled.