It is like a vast sluggish mass of uncooled lava over a large section of the country, burying some portions and affecting the whole. It is apparently harmless, but beneath its surface smoulder fires which may at any time burst forth unexpectedly and spread desolation all around. It is this mass, increasing from beneath, not from above, which constitutes the Negro question.
In the discussion that takes place in the periodical press and in conventions relating to the progress of the colored race, a great deal is made of the advance of the race since the abolition of slavery. It is asserted that the race has accumulated many hundreds of millions of dollars. Just how much, it is difficult to say. Authorities differ widely. The last Negro member of Congress,[28] in a speech delivered in the House of Representatives on January 29, 1901, undertook to give the advance of his race in the thirty-two preceding years. “Since that time,” he says, “we have reduced the illiteracy of the race at least 45 per cent. We have written and published nearly 500 books. We have nearly 300 newspapers, three of which are dailies. We have now in practice over 2,000 lawyers and a corresponding number of doctors. We have accumulated over $12,000,000 worth of school property and about $40,000,000 of church property. We have about 140,000 farms and homes valued at in the neighborhood of $750,000,000, and personal property valued at about $170,000,000.... We have 32,000 teachers in the schools of the country. We have built, with the aid of our friends, about 20,000 churches, and support 7 colleges, 17 academies, 50 high schools, 5 law schools, 5 medical schools, and 25 theological seminaries. We have over 600,000 acres of land in the South alone.”
It might be assumed that, as he was glorifying his race, this is the outside estimate of what they have accomplished, had not other colored leaders and teachers since that time asserted that these figures are far too low. To the writer these estimates would appear grossly exaggerated. Certainly the educational achievement of which they boast cannot justly be attributed, in the main, to the Negro race. The white race furnished 95 per cent. of the money for the schools, and a yet larger proportion for the colleges.
It is stated that “before the war the South had a free Negro population in excess of a quarter of a million souls,” and, according to an estimate which has been made by one of the distinguished members of the race, the value of property owned by free Negroes was between $35,000,000 and $40,000,000.[29] Although the exact amount must be based somewhat on conjecture, it is certain that there were a considerable number of free Negroes in the country at that time who owned considerable property. Some of those in the South were land-owners and slave-owners, while of the 226,216 who lived outside of the slave States, a fair proportion were well-to-do. According to the report of a Commission appointed by Mr. Lincoln in 1863 to “examine and report upon the condition of the newly emancipated Freedmen of the United States,” the Commission ascertained that the free colored people of Louisiana in the year 1860 paid taxes on an assessment of thirteen millions.[30] To this sum must be added the amount that was accumulated during the Reconstruction period, by other means than those of honest thrift. The residue marks the advance of the Negro race in material progress.
Unhappily for those who claim that the Negro race has shown extraordinary thrift since its emancipation thirty-eight years ago, the records, when examined, fail to bear out the contention.
On the 29th of June, 1903, Mr. Charles A. Gardiner, of the New York bar, delivered a notable address at Albany, before the Convocation of the University of the State of New York, on a “Constitutional and Educational Solution of the Negro Problem,” in which he presented some remarkable statements relating to the condition of the Negroes. He showed that, in 1890, the real and personal property of the fifteen old slave States was $13,380,517,311, of which the blacks owned only 3.3 per cent., an average of $64.20 per capita. The six Atlantic and Gulf States had $3,215,127,929, of which the blacks owned only 3.5 per cent., an average of $28.60 each. The writer has tried to obtain the later statistics, but has not been successful in securing complete statistics, owing to the fact that the United States Census Bureau has not yet completed its calculations touching this subject, and because many of the States do not keep separately the records of the property owned by the whites and Negroes. He has, however, secured from the records of the States of Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, where the records are kept separately, the statistics showing the actual and relative amount of property owned by the Negroes for the year 1902:
ASSESSED VALUE OF ALL PROPERTY OWNED BY NEGROES.
| Population. | Assessed Value. | |
| Arkansas | 366,856 | $11,263,400[31] |
| Georgia | 1,034,813 | 15,188,069 |
| North Carolina | 624,468 | 9,765,986 |
| Virginia | 660,722 | 17,580,390 |
| Total | 2,686,859 | $53,797,845 |
It is possible that the States of Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia may be considered quite representative of the entire South. The Negroes are believed to be as well off in these States as in any others. The four States contain 2,686,859 Negroes, which is 30.39 per cent. of the entire Negro population of the whole United States, and the statistics show that this 30.39 per cent. of the entire Negro population own now, in real and personal property listed for taxation, only $53,797,845, which is but $20.02 per capita. The assessed value of property in the Southern States may be stated to be generally, at least, three-quarters of the actual value.
In the interesting and valuable statistics as to “The Negro Farmer,” compiled by Prof. W. E. B. Du Bois, of Atlanta University, we find a great many interesting facts: