Attitude of the Mixed Blood Toward the Black Negroes
In the cities of the South no inconsiderable communities of mulattoes have long existed, many of them highly prosperous. Even before the war thousands of “free persons of colour” resided in Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans. In places like Charleston they had (and still have to some extent) an exclusive society of their own which looked down on the black Negro with a prejudice equal to that of the white man. The census of 1860 shows a population of 3,441 “free persons of colour” in Charleston alone, of whom 2,554 were mulattoes. In New Orleans in the same year lived 9,084 free Negroes, of whom 7,357 were mulattoes; and they were so far distant in sympathy from the slave population that they even tendered their support to the Confederacy at the beginning of the war.
But with the Emancipation Proclamation the aristocratic “free person of colour” who had formed a sort of third class as between the white above and the black below, lost his unique position: the line was drawn against him. When I went South I expected to find a good deal of aloofness between the mulatto and the black man. It does exist, but really less to-day in the South than in Boston! The very first mulatto, a preacher in Atlanta, with whom I raised the question, surprised me by denying that the mulatto was in any degree potentially superior to the real Negro: that if the black man were given the same advantages and environment as the mulatto, he would do as well, that the prominence of the mulatto is the result of the superior advantages he has long enjoyed, being the house servant in slavery times, with opportunities for education and discipline that the black man never possessed. This was his argument, and to support it he gave me a long list of black Negroes who had achieved success or leadership. I found Booker T. Washington and Professor Du Bois (themselves both mulattoes) arguing along the same lines. In other words, the prejudice of white people has forced all coloured people, light or dark, together, and has awakened in many ostracised men and women who are nearly white a spirit which expresses itself in the passionate defence of everything that is Negro.
And yet, with what pathos! What is this race? The spirit and the ideals are not Negro: for the people are not Negro, even the darkest of them, in the sense that the inhabitants of the jungles of Africa are Negroes. The blackest of black American Negroes is far ahead of his naked cousin in Africa. But neither are they white!
One evening last summer I attended a performance at Philadelphia of a Negro play called the “Shoo-Fly Regiment.” It was written, both words and music, by two clever mulattoes, Cole and Johnson; and it was wholly presented by Negroes. The audience was large, mostly composed of coloured people, and the laughter was unstinted. The point that impressed me was this, that the writers had chosen a distinct Negro subject. The play dealt with two questions of much interest among coloured people: the matter of industrial education, and the Negro soldier. That, it seemed to me, was significant: it was an effort to appeal to the class consciousness of the Negro.
And yet as I sat and watched the play I could not help being impressed with the essential tragedy of the so-called Negro people. The players of the company were of every colour, from the black African type to the mulatto with fair hair and blue eyes. In spite of this valiant effort to emphasise certain racial interests, one who saw the play could not help asking:
“What, after all, is this Negro race? What is the Negro spirit? Is it in this black African or in this white American with the drop of dark blood?”
In a recent address a coloured minister of San Francisco, J. Hugh Kelley, said:
“My father’s father was a Black Hawk Indian, seven feet tall. My father’s mother was an Irishwoman. My mother’s father was an American white man. Her mother was a full-blooded African woman. What am I?”
Pathetic Desire of Negroes to Be Like White Men