We got into the car. The young dandy proved to be a doctor’s assistant, a sort of apprentice to the great physician we were about to meet. He had graduated at Fisk, which he called the Negro Athens. He was dressed in a well-cut suit of gray, a rich necktie, and a felt hat which was in excellent taste. His complexion was of the cocoa-brown, highly-polished type, and his large eyes were quiet and reflective, as if unawakened to the joy of life. Politely chatting to us, he guided the beautiful car along some of the most terribly rutty and broken streets.
“We pay equal taxes,” said he, “but because colored people live in these streets the city won’t repair the roads. They are all rich people living in these houses, all Negroes. Several of them own cars.... Now look on the other hand at this street. It’s a white street, all smoothly repaired. What a beautiful surface; see the difference!” Rev. B—— urged this point also. It was a striking example of inequality, and one that makes a strong appeal.
Dr. R—— proved to be a rich practitioner living in a delightful villa with polished floors and a French neatness and charm in the furniture and decorations. The sun blinds were all down, and a pleasant creamy light was diffused upon his books and pictures and silk-upholstered divan. He was very busy, but said he could always spare a few moments from his profession if it were a question of helping his race, and he thought nothing could help the Negroes more than a dispassionate review of their situation by a white man who could bring it not merely before America, but before the world. He had more patients than he could deal with, all Negroes, with the exception of a few Jews. The Jews have no prejudice, and are ready to be attended by a good doctor, whatever the color of his skin, which is a point in any case in favor of the Jews. For a long while the Negroes distrusted their own doctors, and thought that only a white man could possibly have the skill to treat them. But a later generation has discovered that their own folk have an excellent grasp of medicine. My further acquaintance with a considerable number of colored doctors in the South has led me to the conclusion that their temperament suits them admirably. They make good doctors. What is more, they naturally understand the Negro’s body and constitution and nervous system better than the white man, and the pathology of the Negro is very different from that of the white man. The white doctor as yet has not given much separate study to the Negro’s body—though it is certainly very different from ours in many ways. He is inclined perhaps to be a little brutal and offhand with Negro patients—and they certainly are tiresome, with their superstitious fear of ill health and evil eyes, and what not. This impatience has helped the colored practitioner. Negroes, like other people, go where they are best treated, and the medical attendance upon a hundred thousand people could make many doctors rich.
In the old slavery days the Negroes were just a broad base where all were equal. To-day the “race” has lifted up an intelligent and professional class. The working Negro population of Norfolk could lift up its intellectual apex of minister, doctor, and banker, and make them comparatively rich men, and give them all the show of luxury and culture which would have been the lot of white men in similar positions. So the broad base of slavery grows to be a pyramid of freedom.
Dr. R—— was a shrewd, capable, little human mountain. He said, “I think the time has come for the Negro to amass wealth; it’s the only thing that counts in America.” He thought the League of Nations might help the Negro if its representatives ever met at Washington. There would be Frenchmen and Englishmen and Italians, and, being so near to the South, it would be a shame to America if lynchings took place while they were sitting. As it was, the Negro South was a sort of skeleton cupboard which must not be exposed.
From him I learned first that the Negro had not access to the Carnegie libraries in the South. I was surprised. Up at Baltimore, in the North, I was talking to a librarian, and he averred that the Negroes used the public library much more than white people, and that there were so many darkies that Whites did not care to go. But I travel such a very short distance South, and I find no Negro admitted at all.
“Surely that is contrary to the spirit of the Carnegie grants,” said I.
“Yes, for Carnegie was a good friend to the Negro. But so it is,” said Dr. R——. “And I do not think Negroes should agitate about it. It would be better for Negroes to build their own libraries. We shall have to do so. But we don’t want to intrude where we’re not wanted.”
He told me what he considered the most thrilling moment of his life. He was out with a friend at midnight watching the posting of election results, when suddenly a “lewd woman” came out of a house door, screaming and waving her arms. She made right for them, and they were in terror lest she should fall down at their feet or start reviling them. Fortunately, they had the presence of mind not to run away from her, or they might have been lynched by the crowd.