Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York

by Mary White Ovington

In New York, despite their poverty, few Negroes fail to possess some musical instrument—a banjo perhaps, or a guitar, a mandolin or zither, or it may be the highly prized piano. Visiting of an evening in the Phipps model tenement, one hears a variety of gay tinkling sounds. And besides the mechanical instruments there is always the great natural instrument, the human voice. Singing, though not as common in the city as in the country, is still often heard, especially in the summer, and remains musical, though New York's noise and cheap and vulgar entertainments have an unhappy fashion of roughening her children's voices.

Music furnishes a means of livelihood to many Negroes and supplements the income of many others. Boys contribute to the family support by singing cheap songs in saloons or even in houses of prostitution. A boy "nightingale" will earn the needed money for rent while learning, all too quickly, the ways of viciousness. Others, more carefully reared, sing at church or secret society concert, perhaps receiving a little pay. Men form male quartettes that for five or ten dollars furnish a part of an evening's entertainment. There are many Negro musicians and elocutionists who largely support themselves by their share in the receipts from concerts and social gatherings.

We speak of men crossing the line when they intermarry with the whites, but there is another crossing of the line when some Negro by his genius makes the world forget his race. Such a man is the artist, Henry Tanner; and New York has such Negro musicians. Mr. Harry Burleigh, the baritone at St. George's, has won high recognition, not only as an interpreter, but as a composer of music; and one of the richest synagogues of the city has a Negro for its assistant organist. There are five colored orchestras in New York, the one conducted by Mr. Walter A. Craig having toured successfully in New England and many other northern states.

But the colored musician has usually found his opportunity for expression and for a living wage upon the stage. Probably many of the actors noted on the census list are musicians, and many of the musicians, actors; the writer of the topical song having himself sung it in vaudeville or musical comedy. Few New Yorkers appreciate how many of the tunes hummed in the street or ground out on the hand-organ, have originated in Negro brains. "The Right Church but the Wrong Pew," "Teasing," "Nobody," "Under the Bamboo Tree," which Cole and Johnson, the composers, heard the last thing as they left the dock in New York, and the first thing when they arrived in Paris, these are a few of the popular favorites. Handsome incomes have been netted by the shrewder among these composers, and the demand for their songs is continuous.

With a bright song and a jolly dance comes success. Picking up the copy of the New York Age, that lies on my desk, I find jottings of twenty-four colored troupes in vaudeville in the larger cities of the North and West. Three are at Proctor's and three at Keith's. Their economic outlook is not so hilarious as their songs, for transportation is expensive and bookings are uncertain; yet pecuniarily these actors are far better off than their more sober brothers who stick to their elevators or their porters' jobs.

Twenty years ago the Negro performer probably had little anticipation of advancing beyond minstrel work, in which he sang loud, danced hard, and told a funny story. S. H. Dudley, the leading comedian in the "Smart Set" colored company, said in 1909: "When I started in business I had no idea of getting as high as I am now. A minstrel company came to the little town in Texas where I was raised, and at once my ambition fired me to become a musician. So I bought a battered horn and began to toot, to the great annoyance of my neighbors. Then I secured an engagement with a minstrel company whose cornet player had fallen into the hands of the law; and now here I am with one of the best colored shows ever gotten together and a starring tour arranged for next season." The movement from the minstrel show to the musical comedy, from the cheapest form of buffoonery to attractive farce, and even to good comedy, has been accomplished by a number of colored comedians. Williams and Walker may be considered the pioneers in this movement, and the story of their success, as Walker has told it, is a fine example of what the Negro can do along the line of decided natural aptitude. And it is important to notice this, for today, in the education of the race, æsthetic instincts are often suppressed with Puritan vigor, and labor is made ugly and unwelcome.

Bert Williams and George Walker, one a British West Indian, the other a Westerner, met in California where each was hanging around a box manager's office, looking for a job. Hardly more than boys, they secured employment at seven dollars a week. That was in 1889. In 1908 they made each $250 a week, and in later times they have doubled and quadrupled this. Their first stage manager expected them to perform as the blacked-up white minstrels were performing, but the two boys soon saw that the Negro himself was far more entertaining than the buffoon portrayed by the white man. They wanted to show the true Negro, and billing themselves as the "real coons" (their white rivals called themselves "coons") they played in San Francisco with some success. Later they came to New York, and at Koster and Bial's made their first hit.

"Long before our run terminated," Walker said in telling of those early days, "we discovered an important fact: that the hope of the colored performer must be in making a radical departure from the old time 'darky' style of singing and dancing. So we set ourselves the task of thinking along new lines.

"The first move was to hire a flat in Fifty-third Street, furnish it, and throw our doors open to all colored men who possessed theatrical and musical ability and ambition. The Williams and Walker flat soon became the headquarters of all the artistic young men of our race who were stage-struck. We entertained the late Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who wrote lyrics for us. By having these men about us we had the opportunity to study the musical and theatrical ability of the most talented members of our race."

In 1893 the World's Fair was held at Chicago, and on the "Midway" the visitor saw races from all over the world. Here was a Dahomey village, with strange little huts, representative of the African home life. The Dahomeyans themselves were late in arriving, and American Negroes, sometimes with an added coat of black, were employed to represent them. Among them were Williams and Walker, who played their parts until the real Dahomeyans arriving, they became in turn spectators and studied the true African. This contact with the dancing and singing of the primitive people of their own race had an important effect upon their art. Their lyrics recalled African songs, their dancing took on African movements, especially Walker's. Any one who saw Walker in "Abyssinia," the most African and the most artistic of their plays, must have recognized the savage beauty of his dancing when he was masquerading as an African king.