When, however, a bad lynching takes place the local white population soon hears of the National Association. It sends its representatives down from New York to investigate the facts. In such cases facts are the last things the white community wish brought to light, and then the National Association is discovered and roundly abused. Its representatives are sometimes white, which makes them more dangerous from a Southern point of view. Attempts are made to “railroad” them—run them out of town.
The case of Mr. Shillady, in Texas, must be mentioned here. He is the white secretary of this militant association, and has done very valuable work for his country by investigating and authenticating the details of mob murders. Texas has a bad record for lynching, rioting, and lawlessness. The Texan people, however, would not have him, and he was actually thrashed publicly by a judge and a constable. It was done in front of the Driscoll Hotel, Austin, where Shillady was staying. Having been assaulted in this way, he was put on a Northern train and told to leave it at his peril. The judge remains still judge, the constable remains still a constable—if he be not now a sergeant or inspector. When we sing “Down Texas Way” that is what it means.
The local meeting this Sunday afternoon was of a quarrelsome character. A well-known and devoted Negro leader had been accused in a New Orleans Negro paper of “selling out the colored folk” at St. Louis. There had been great enthusiasm in the forming of what is called the “American Legion,” a national club of all who had served or worn an American uniform in the Great War. Negro membership of the Legion was apparently being barred in the South, and some wrong-headed Negro journalist had accused an old Creole Negro of attending the St. Louis inaugural gathering of the Legion and agreeing that Negro soldiers and sailors should be excluded.
A violent personal quarrel banged from man to man. As I was asked to speak, I told them I thought they could ill afford to quarrel among themselves. Nevertheless, I had noticed a marked disposition to quarrel among the educated Negroes. Loyalty to one another was not one of their characteristics. No people could do much who did not prize unity more than discord. While so many were against them all, how absurd to spend an afternoon quarreling with one another!
This was warmly applauded, though no doubt one might as well sit in Canute’s chair and “bid the main flood bate its usual height,” as bid them cease to quarrel. They brought the fighting instinct out of Africa, and still longed to wield the battle-axe.
Besides the Pythian Temple Block, New Orleans has also a sort of South Street, a cheap line of shops with “swell toggery” for Negroes. Negro suit-pressing establishments, barbers, and the like, pawnshops, and what not. This is South Rampart, and on it is the People’s Drug Store, a hive of Negro life. Up above the store Mrs. Camille Cohen-Bell operates an insurance company, and her father, W. L. Cohen, runs for what it is worth in opinion (it cannot count much in votes), the Negro Republican party.
During a fortnight in New Orleans I visited frequently this pleasant company of Negro Creoles, the well-educated Mrs. Bell, who loved to speak French, and her ebullient father. The place was haunted by undertakers. It appeared that when a Negro was insured in the company he was allotted to an undertaker in case of death. Undertakers therefore became very anxious when clients moved out of their parish. If any one fell sick away from home, and there was the likelihood of his dying and being buried by a stranger, the fret of the local buriers was comical.
I met here a very advanced Negro lady who gave out very positive views on morality. The presence of a white man was perhaps a challenge to her mind. Some white woman called Jean Gordon had been making a missionary address to the Negroes on moral purity and proper behavior at a large Baptist church. I did not hear Jean Gordon, but her black protagonist was so forceful I asked her to write a statement of what she thought. This was her answer to Jean Gordon:
“ ... Jean Gordon states that every young colored girl knows no white man may marry her under the law, and if she brings into the world an illegitimate child she is not fit to be a mother. All very true. Now, I daresay that every young colored girl is aware of this fact, but, judging from the way the white men run after these colored girls, either they (the white men) are in ignorance of the law, or it is their object flagrantly to disobey it. There is one thing I wish all white men and women to bear in mind, when they refer to illicit relations of white men and black women, and vice versa—it is this: the laws of this Southland are made by white men, and no sooner have they made these laws than they get busy finding ways to break them and evading punishment for so doing. It is a well-known fact that no Negro woman seeks the attentions of a white man—rather is the shoe on the other foot, and Negro women have a very hard time making Whites keep in their places. However, the attraction is not confined to the men of the white race, for good-looking colored men have as hard a time as the good-looking colored women. So, it seems to me that if Jean Gordon should address an audience of white men and women, and plead with them to teach their boys, husbands, brothers, and fathers the necessity of respecting the laws, and the women of all races, then colored young women would have no trouble keeping their virtue and their morals. All honor is due to the Negro women, for no one knows better than Jean Gordon herself the terrible pressure brought against them by white men who seek to force their attentions on them. The wonder of it is that so many of them are able to hold out against such odds, but God is in His heaven and does not sleep. So, I say, let the white women get busy and teach morality and respect to their own, and we shall see how that will work out. As for illegitimate children, the bearing of these is not confined to women of the Negro race by any means. The white infant asylums will give ample proof of this. We know full well that a white man may not marry a colored girl in the South, but we wonder just why it is he does not marry the white girl whom he seduces? I am able to give a partial reason—THE FORCE OF HABIT! The white man has grown so accustomed to seducing Negro women and getting by with it, that the virtue of his own women has come to mean nothing to him.