It is the fashion to speak of the "old-time negro" and the "new negro." The types are easily recognizable. One is quiet, unobtrusive, more or less industrious. He "knows his place"—which may mean anything from servility to self-respecting acceptance of his lot in life. The other resents more or less openly the discrimination against his race, and this resentment may range from impertinence to sullenness and even to dreams of social equality imposed by force. Some have a smattering of education while others, who have been subjected to little training or discipline, are indolent and shiftless. The thoughtless, however, are likely to include in this classification the industrious, intelligent negro who orders his conduct along the same lines as the white man.
This last type, it is true, is sometimes regarded with suspicion. Many men and women in the South fear the progress of the negro. They do not realize that the South cannot really make satisfactory progress while any great proportion of the population is relatively inefficient. Some fear the negro's demand to be treated as a man. On the other hand, many negroes demand to be treated as men, while ignoring or perhaps not realizing the fact that, to be treated as a man, one must play a man's part. As Booker Washington put the matter, many are more interested in getting recognition than in getting something to recognize. Many are much more interested in their rights than in their duties. To be sure the negro is not alone in this, for the same attitude is to be found in immigrants coming from the socially and politically backward states of Europe. The ordinary negro, however, apparently does not think much of such problems of the future, though no white man is likely to know precisely what he does think. He goes about his business or his pleasure seemingly at peace with the world, though perhaps he sings somewhat less than he once did. He attends his church and the meetings of his lodge or lodges, and works more or less regularly. Probably the great majority of negroes more nearly realize their ambitions than do the whites. They do not aspire to high position, and discrimination does not burn them quite as deeply as the sometimes too sympathetic white man who tries to put himself in their place may think.
There are, however, some individuals to whom the ordinary conditions of any negro's life appear particularly bitter. With mental ability, education, and æsthetic appreciation often comparable to those of the whites, and with more than normal sensitiveness, they find the color line an intolerable insult, since it separates them from what they value most. They rage at the barrier which shuts them out from the society which they feel themselves qualified to enter, and they are always on the alert to discern injuries. These injuries need not be positive, for neglect is quite as strong a grievance.
These individuals all spell negro with a capital and declare that they are proud of their race. They parade its achievements—and these are not small when enumerated all at once—but they avoid intimate association with the great mass of negroes. They are not at all democratic, and in a negro state they would assume the privileges of an aristocracy as a matter of right. It would seem that their demand for full political and social rights for all negroes has for its basis not so much the welfare of the race as a whole, as the possibility of obtaining for themselves special privileges and positions of leadership. They are not satisfied merely with full legal rights. In those States where there is no legal discrimination in public places, their denunciation of social prejudice is bitter. They are not content to take their chances with other groups but sometimes are illogical enough to demand social equality enforced by law, though by this phrase they mean association with the whites merely for themselves; they do not wish other negroes less developed than themselves to associate with them.
In any city where there is any considerable number of this class, there is a section of negro society in which social lines are drawn as strictly as in the most aristocratic white community. To prove that the negroes are not emotional, these aristocrats among them are likely to insist upon rigid formality in their church services and upon meticulous correctness in all the details of social gatherings. Since many of these individuals have a very large admixture of white blood, occasionally one crosses the barrier and "goes white." Removal to a new town or city gives the opportunity to cut loose from all previous associations and to start a new life. The transition is extremely difficult, of course, and requires much care and discretion, but it has been made. The greater part of them nevertheless remain negroes in the eyes of the law, however much they strive to separate themselves in thought and action from the rest of their kind. It is this small class of "intellectuals" who were Booker T. Washington's bitterest enemies. His theory that the negro should first devote himself to obtaining economic independence and should leave the adjustment of social relations to the future was denounced as treason to the race. Washington's opportunism was even more obnoxious to them than is the superior attitude of the whites. They denounced him as a trimmer, a time-server, and a traitor, and on occasion they hissed him from the platform. From their safe refuges in Northern cities, some negro orators and editors have gone so far as to advocate the employment of the knife and the torch to avenge real or fancied wrongs, but these counsels have done little harm for they have not been read by those to whom they were addressed. Perhaps, indeed, they may not have been meant entirely seriously, for the negro, like other emotional peoples, sometimes plays with words without realizing their full import.
On the whole there is surprisingly little friction between the blacks and the whites. One may live a long time in many parts of the South without realizing that the most important problem of the United States lies all about him. Then an explosion comes, and he realizes that much of the South is on the edge of a volcano. For a time the white South attempted to divest itself of responsibility for the negro. He had turned against those who had been his friends and had followed after strange gods; therefore let him go his way alone. This attitude never was universal nor was it consistently maintained, for there is hardly one of the older negroes who does not have a white man to whom he goes for advice or help in time of trouble—a sort of patron, in fact. Many a negro has been saved from the chain gang or the penitentiary because of such friendly interest, and many have been positively helped thereby toward good citizenship. Nevertheless there has been a tendency on the part of the whites to remain passive, to wait until the negro asked for help.
Undoubtedly there is now developing in the South a growing sense of responsibility for the welfare of the negro. The negro quarters of the towns, so long neglected, are receiving more attention from the street cleaners; better sidewalks are being built; and the streets are better lighted. The sanitary officers are more attentive. The landowner is building better cabins for his tenants and is encouraging them to plant gardens and to raise poultry and pigs. The labor contractor is providing better quarters, though conditions in many lumber and construction camps are still deplorable. Observant lawyers and judges say that they see an increasing number of cases in which juries evidently decide points of doubt in favor of negro defendants, even where white men are concerned. Socially minded citizens are forcing improvement of the disgraceful conditions which have often prevailed on chain gangs and in prisons. Nor is this all. More white men and women are teaching negroes than ever before. The oldest university in the United States points proudly to the number of Sunday schools for negroes conducted by its students, and it is not alone in this high endeavor. Many Southern colleges and universities are studying the negro problem from all sides and are trying to help in its solution. The visiting nurses in the towns spend a large proportion of their time among the negroes, striving to teach hygiene and sanitation. White men frequently lecture before negro schools. Since the beginning of the Great War negro women have been encouraged to aid in Red Cross work. Negroes have been appointed members of city or county committees of defense and have worked with the whites in many branches of patriotic endeavor. Negroes have subscribed liberally in proportion to their means for Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps and have given liberally to war work.
The growth of a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the negro upon the part of the more thoughtful and more conscientious portion of the white population has reduced racial friction in many communities. White women are evincing more interest in the morals of black women than was usual fifteen or twenty years ago. Ostracism is more likely to visit a white man who crosses the line. There is no means of knowing the actual amount of illicit intercourse, but the most competent observers believe it to be decreasing. Though the percentage of mulattoes has increased since 1890, according to the census, the figures are confessedly inaccurate, and the increase can be easily accounted for by the marriage of mulattoes with negroes, and the consequent diffusion of white blood. An aspiring negro is likely to seek a mulatto wife, and their children will be classed as mulattoes by the enumerators.
Except for the demagogues, whose abuse of the negro is their stock in trade, the most bitter denunciations come from those nearest to him in economic status. The town loafers, the cotton mill operatives, the small farmers, particularly the tenant farmers, are those who most frequently clash with both the impertinent and the self-respecting negro. In their eyes self-respect may not be differentiated from insolence. If a negro is not servile, they are likely to class him as impertinent or worse. The political success of Blease of South Carolina, Vardaman of Mississippi, and the late Jeff. Davis of Arkansas is largely due to their appeal to these types of whites. The negro on the other hand may resent the assumption of superiority on the part of men perhaps less efficient than himself. Obviously friction may arise under such conditions.
The mobs which have so often stained the reputation of the South by defiance of the law and by horrible cruelty as well do not represent the best elements of the South. The statement so often made that the most substantial citizens of a community compose lynching parties may have been partially true once, but it is not true today. These mobs are chiefly made up from the lowest third of the white community. Perhaps the persistence of the belief has prevented the wiser part of the population from stamping out such lawlessness; perhaps some lingering feeling of mistaken loyalty to the white race restrains them from strong action; perhaps the individualism of the Southerner has interfered with general acceptance of the idea of the inexorable majesty of the law which must be vindicated at any cost. Yet, in spite of all these undercurrents of feeling, sheriffs and private citizens do on occasion brave the fury of enraged mobs to rescue or to protect. Attempts to prosecute participants in such mobs usually fail in the South as elsewhere, but occasionally a jury convicts.