Why Colored People in Philadelphia Are Excluded from the Street Cars

by Benjamin P. Hunt

In Pennsylvania the slaves were never more than a sprinkling compared to the free population, slavery never appeared in these dark colors, and it was early declared to be prospectively abolished. And yet this old, unmistakable characteristic of the slaveholder—defect of moral vision where the black man is concerned, is to this day a distinct feature of our society. We are still unable to see clearly the wickedness of denying him the vote and expelling him from the cars; and the same spirit of outrage and murder, which now shocks us by the terrible energy with which it moves the late slaveholders against the freedmen, is at this moment acting in a small, feeble, mean way within ourselves against our own colored population. The difference is one of degree, not of kind. Thus, eighty-six years after the passage of the act for the gradual emancipation of the slaves of Pennsylvania, life enough remains in the old institution, long since supposed extinct, still to disturb the peace of society.

Our fathers made two great mistakes in this matter. First, the process of extinction was to be gradual, which was as if one, instead of a bullet, should give a dose of slow poison to a mad dog and then let him run; and next, it was not only gradual but incomplete. The chain of the slave was broken but not taken off; and any degree of civil disability under which an emancipated slave is left, is just so much slavery left. It not only restrains his movements both of progress and self-defence, but it keeps alive the spirit of oppression in the "master race" as air keeps alive flame. By a natural law, whatever of the slave is left in one race will, while it lasts, always tempt into exercise and encounter a corresponding amount of the slave master in the other. So long as the law degrades a man, his neighbor will degrade him. Whoever can call to mind a celebration of our day of Independence in Philadelphia five and thirty years ago, may remember that the part of the day's exercises which the boys took upon themselves was to stone and club colored people out of Independence Square, because "niggers had nothing to do with the Fourth of July." The fathers of these boys looked on with placid satisfaction, cheerfully and hopefully remarking to each other, how well their sons were learning to perform the duties of free American citizens. Twenty years later and a change might be seen. Colored people—place and occasion the same—were allowed to carry water about among the crowd, without meeting other insult from the thirsty than words of good-natured contempt. This was an improvement. Those whom we formerly drove forth with blows and curses, we had now learned to utilize. Twelve more years go by, and on the Fourth of July we were enlisting our able bodied colored men to fight for us. But we still were mindful of what was due to ourselves, as belonging to the superior race, and when they came back to us, wounded in our defence, we carefully restricted their wives and sisters to the front platform of the cars, when they visited their husbands and brothers at the hospitals. And now to-day, out of sixteen Philadelphia generals and colonels, most of whom are believed to have seen some service in the field, three vote in favor of permitting these returned colored veterans actually to join in the celebration of our great National Anniversary. This is progress, but it is slow, and the causes of the obstruction to it must be sought in the incomplete emancipation of 1780.

But another cause which gives Philadelphia a bad eminence in respect to the treatment of colored people, is the comparatively large numbers of them which she possesses over other northern cities, with the one exception above noted; and this cause seems simply to connect with and form part of another—the fear of amalgamation. This fear greatly disturbs a large portion of our white population. In discussing the car question, an opponent of admission at once urges that it will be a stepping stone to amalgamation. The suggestion that seven disabled colored soldiers might safely be allowed equal privileges in a military hospital with 160 white soldiers, is put aside with the remark that such a rule would countenance amalgamation. The matron, with downcast eyes and timid horror, intimates this objection to the reception, into the same Orphan Home, of little white and colored children, mostly between the ages of four and ten. All this sounds very illogical. Hitherto, there has been little amalgamation of the two races at the North, and as the colored people never make advances to the Whites, that little cannot be increased until the Whites make advances to them. When is this to begin? Let each one answer this question individually. This matter, in its negative aspect, rests entirely within the control of the white population.

The broad distinction, so often pointed out, between political and social equality, is still by many of our people persistently confounded, and perhaps it may be necessary to state it once more. Political equality everybody has the present or prospective right to demand—social equality nobody; for the barrier which separates the two is made up of private door-steps. Each of these, its owner has absolutely at his own command, and no man has a right to prescribe, even by implication, whom he shall permit, or forbid, to pass it. It is not an open question.

But supposing the relations, so long sustained at the North, between the two races, and which the Blacks do not complain of, when unaccompanied with wrongs, were suddenly to cease; and everywhere, North and South, on both sides, impelled by an irrepressible orgasm, they should rush together. There are, in round numbers, 26,000,000 of white and 4,000,000 of colored people in the United States; and after every Black had found a White, there would remain 22,000,000 of Whites still unmated. These, by necessity, would carry on the pure white population, and they might safely be left, without help, to sustain themselves in the struggle of race, against the 8,000,000 of amalgamationists. But here it is asserted, they will receive aid from a distinct source. According to the theory of Doctors Nott and Cartwright, the mixed race rapidly decays, and after three generations dies out. This theory is accepted by those who fear amalgamation, and is often quoted by them, as an argument against the theory of equal rights. They also hate negroes and would be glad to see their numbers less. But pure-blooded negroes, it is generally conceded, possess great vitality of race and are killed off with difficulty. This difficulty, it seems, can be overcome by amalgamation. By this process, in one generation, all these negroes become mulattoes, and this once accomplished, the whole African race is in a fair way to disappear from the land. These advocates for pure white blood have been defeating their own purpose. Let them reverse their policy and encourage, for a time, the amalgamation they have hitherto opposed, and, with patience, they can have a white man's government yet.

This proposition is less extravagant than are these insane and wicked fears of impending amalgamation;—wicked, because they are made the excuse, by the race that has the entire preventive control of the matter, for maltreating colored people and denying them rights which are accorded, without dispute, to every other man and woman in the country.

But these people will never come to such an end as this; and if it is true that amalgamation, here, leads towards it, then here, to any considerable extent, it will never take place. They were never made the valuable element of our population, which they are, simply to die out. The greater part of the work which has yet been done on a large portion of this continent has been done by them, and apparently they ever will be, as they ever have been, absolutely essential to its full development.

This statement does not imply that the slave trade and slavery were right or necessary. The sin was not in the bringing of Africans to America, but in the manner of bringing them. God has established His own fixed laws to govern the movements of peoples, but He permits men to carry them out according to their will. Had men willed to be just and humane, they could have induced Africans to come to this continent as free emigrants; but they were selfish and wicked, and therefore forced them to come as slaves. Slavery has been, and is, destroying itself everywhere; and in this country, the great system of free labor and equal rights which prevails, without qualification, in some of the Northern States, is now being offered, and in spite of all opposition will soon be applied, to every State, north and south. It is not probable that it will stop there. It is believed that the same system is destined, in time, to be extended into our tropics. The so-called Anglo-Saxon race in England colonizes; in the United States it expands. Mr. Disraeli lately pronounced England more an Asiatic than a European power; and the day may come when we shall be as much a power of South America as we now are of North America. We have a means to facilitate future extension into the tropics in an element of our home population, suited to them, which England never possessed in hers; and after this has been received into our body politic, and is thus enabled to develop its powers, it is not easy to resist the conclusion that its destiny is to carry our civilization into these latitudes. The feeble and imperfect nationalities lying to the south of us are apparently but provisional. They are waiting a better system than their own, and higher powers than they possess, to apply it. The time is likely to come when their ability to furnish the products peculiar to their soil will fall short of the wants of the civilized world without; and should this be the case, it will stimulate us to carry thither our enterprise, and with it our laws and institutions. This has been the process by which they have been carried into California, by Whites alone—gold being the lure; but to places farther south our people of color, from their special climatic fitness for it, must assist in being their vehicle; and the two races must go towards the tropics, if at all, together. The African will never leave this country, but he may, in the legitimate pursuit of his own interests and happiness, assist in its expansion beyond its present limits; and, soon or late, should the practical assertion of our "Monroe Doctrine" make it necessary for us to carry our arms into tropical latitudes, the late war has shown us where to find soldiers. These are speculations, but it would be hard to show that they are without some groundwork of probable reality in the future. Meantime it is well to feel assured that these people are here for the good, and not the evil of both races, and that interest as well as justice demands that every right and privilege which we possess should be freely and at once extended to them. Let us trust God to do His own justice, not fearing that harm will come of it unless we interpose with our injustice; and let us no longer believe that if we do what is right and humane as a people to-day, we shall be punished for it to-morrow; for this is practical atheism.