[4]. Estimated to date.
The policy usually carried out consistently in the South of refusing the colored woman the courtesies accorded the white woman leads to some unfortunate results. One of the courtesies refused is the title of “Mrs.” or “Miss.” Thus a Kentucky newspaper, in its recent educational news, notes “the resignation of Mrs. Mattie Spring Barr as a substitute teacher and the unanimous election of Miss Ella Williams,” while a few paragraphs below it says that “Principal Russell of the Russell Negro School asked that Lizzie Brooks be promoted to the position of regular teacher and that Annie B. Jones be made a substitute.” Here we have two groups of women doing similar important work for the community, yet the group with Negro blood is denied the formality of address that every other section of the country gives to the teacher in a public school.
How much the South loses by this policy is shown by a Northerner’s experience in the office of one of the philanthropic societies. Two probation officers, volunteers, were going out to their work. The secretary of the society addressed the first, a white woman, as Mrs. Brown: the second, a little middle-aged black woman, he called Mary. When they had left the Northerner questioned the difference in address. “I couldn’t call a nigger Mrs. or Miss.,” the secretary expostulated. “It would be impossible.” “But here in your own city,” the Northerner answered, “I happen to know a number of educated colored girls, some of them college graduates, who have a desire for social service. Under you they might learn the best methods of charitable work, but they would not care to be called ‘Annie’ or ‘Jane’ by a young white man. Can you afford to lose such helpers as these?”
He had but one answer. “It would never do for me to say Mrs. or Miss to a nigger. It would be impossible.”
Throughout the country there are a number of colored postal clerks. These men, with others in the service, belong to the Mutual Benefit Association. At a recent meeting in Chicago the delegates to this Mutual Benefit Association voted in the future to admit only clerks of the Caucasian race. According to one of the colored clerks, the meeting that passed this vote was “packed,” colored members receiving no notice to elect delegates to it.
The black servant is more acceptable to some people than the educated colored man. As an instance of this is Mr. U. of Washington, a highly cultivated Negro of some means. As owner of a cottage and a few acres of land in a small Virginia town, he good-naturedly allowed an old black woman to live rent-free upon his place. On her death he went down to claim the property, but found the woman’s daughter had put in a counter claim. The case went to court, and in his plea before the jury the woman’s lawyer said: “Are you going to take property away from this black mammy’s daughter to give it to a smart nigger from Washington?” And despite Mr. U.’s former yearly payment of taxes, despite the deed which he himself held, he lost his suit.