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

by Mary White Ovington

"Three months," the listener at court hears given as sentence to a respectable-looking colored servant girl who has begged to be allowed to return to her place which she has held for five years. "I never was up for drinking before," she pleads; "I have learnt my lesson; please give me a chance; I will not do this again."

"What should you two be fighting for?" another judge, another morning, says to two very battered women, one white and one colored, who come before him in court. And talking kindly to both, but with greater seriousness to the Irish offender, his own countrywoman, he sends them away with a reprimand.

How much of this unequal treatment comes from color prejudice or caprice or temperament, the Negro is unable to decide, but he soon learns one curious fact: while his black skin marks him as inheriting Republican politics, it is the Democratic magistrate, the Tammany henchman whose name is a byword to the righteous, who is the more lenient when he has committed a trifling offence.

"Didn't I play craps with the nigger boys when I was a kid?" one of these well-known politicians says, "and am I going back on the poor fellows now?" Of course, the Negro is assured such men only want his vote, but he believes real sympathy actuates the Tammany leader, who is too busy to bother whether the man before him is black or white. The reformer, on the other hand, big with dignity, at times makes him vastly uncomfortable as he lectures upon the Negro problem from the eminence of the superior race.

But whether Republican or Democrat, the Negro learns that it is well to have a friend at court; that helplessness is the worst of all disabilities, worse than darkness of skin or poverty. So he soon becomes acquainted with his local politician, and if his friend is in trouble, or his wife or son is locked up, pounds vigorously at the politician's door. It may be midnight, but the man of power will dress, and together they will turn from the dark tenement hall into the lighted street and on to the police-station or magistrate's court to seek release for the offender. That too often the gravity of the offence weighs little in the securing of lenient treatment is part of the muddle of New York justice. The Negro finds that he has taken the most direct way to secure relief.

As far as we have followed, we have found the municipality of New York generally ready to treat her black citizens with the same justice or injustice with which she treats her whites. Exceptions occur, but she does not often draw the color line. Perhaps, in this connection, it might be well to stop a moment and see what return the black man makes, whether by his vote he helps secure to the city honest and efficient government.

Walking through a Negro quarter on election day, the most careful search fails to reveal any such far-sighted altruism. With a great majority of colored voters the choice of a municipal candidate is based on the argument of a two-dollar bill or the promise of a job, combined with the sentiment, decreasing every year, for the Republican Party—the party that once helped the colored man and, he hopes, may help him again. The public standing of the mayoralty candidate, his ability to choose wise heads of departments, the building of new subways, the ownership of public utilities, these are unimportant issues. The matter of immediate moment is what this vote is going to mean to the black voter himself.

Such a selfish and unpatriotic attitude, not unknown perhaps to white voters, leads some of our writers and reformers to doubt the value of universal manhood suffrage. Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells us that the Negro and the poor white in New York, through their venality, are practically without a vote. "While the South is disfranchising by legislation," he says, "the North is doing it by cash." "What else is the meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss and machine system in other cities?"[6] New York's noted ethical culture teacher argues against agitation for woman's suffrage on the ground that so many of those who now have the vote do not know how to use it. But looking closely at these unaltruistic citizens, we see that after all they are putting the ballot to its primary use, the protection of their own interests. The Negro in New York has one vital need, steady, decent work. He dickers and plays with politics to get as much of this as he can. It is very insufficient relief for an intolerable situation, but it is partial relief. In another city, Atlanta for instance, he might find education the most important civic gift for which to strive. Atlanta is a fortunate city to choose for an example of the power of the suffrage, for since the Negro's loss of the vote in Georgia, educational funds have been turned chiefly to white schools, and 5,000 colored children are without opportunities for public education. 1885 saw the last school building erected for Negroes, the result of a bargain between the colored voters and the prohibitionists.[7] Should a colored teacher in New York be refused her certificate, a colored consumptive be denied a place in the city's hospital, a colored child meet with a rebuff in the city park, the colored citizen would find his vote an important means of redress. Then, too, while there are so many men to buy, it is important to have a vote to sell, lest the other citizens secure the morning's bargains. Venality in high and low places will not disappear until we are dominated by the ideal of social, not individual advancement. Before that time, it is well for the weak that they are able, at least in the political field, to bargain with the strong.

The importance to the Negro of the vote is quickly appreciated when we consider New York's attitude unofficially expressed. With the franchise behind him the colored man can secure for himself and his children the municipality's advantages of education, health, amusement, philanthropy. He is here a citizen, a contributor to the city treasury, if not directly as a taxpayer, as a worker and renter. But as a private individual, seeking to use the utilities managed by other private individuals, he continually encounters race discrimination. Private doors are closed, and were the state not so wealthy and generous, disabilities still graver than at present would follow.