In the third and last volume, covering the period since 1865, the author treats the white family in the new South, miscegenation, the Negro family since emancipation, the new basis of American life, the revolution in the woman's world, the woman in the modern American family, the career of the child, the passing of patriarchism and familiarism, the precarious hour, the trend as to marriage, race sterility and race suicide, divorce, the attitude of the church, the family, and the social revolution. The author finds that during the past half century the American family possesses unity, due to the fact that the period itself is marked by intrinsic oneness as the expression of an economic epoch, the transition to urban industrialism. If any exception to this statement be made it would insist on a subdivision with the line falling within the decade of the eighties when the country was passing beyond the direct influences of the war and modern industrialism was well under way.
Taking up the Negro family since the Civil War, the author shows how difficult it was to uproot the immorality implanted by slavery but notes the steady progress of the mores of the freedmen despite their poverty. Colored women continued the prey of white men and it was difficult to raise a higher standard. There appeared few cases of the miscegenation of the white women with black men but here and there it would recur. "Stephen Powers, who passed through the South shortly after the War, tells of applying for lodging at a lordly mansion in South Carolina and being repelled by the mistress. At the next house he learned the cause of her irritation—her only daughter had just given birth to a Negro babe. After making diligent inquiry he failed to find another such instance in high life, but in South Carolina districts where the black population was densest and the poor whites most degraded 'these unnatural unions were more frequent than anywhere else' (III, 29). In every case, however, he says it was a woman of the lowest class, generally a sand-hiller, who, deprived of her support by the war, took up with a likely 'nigger' in order to save her children from famine." "He found six such marriages in South Carolina," says Calhoun, "but never more than one in any other State." The author has not exhausted this phase of the family, for the reviewer might add that he knew of four cases of concubinage of white women and black men in Buckingham County, Virginia, during the eighties.
On the whole progress toward the elimination of miscegenation by interracial respect and good will to furnish a barrier is seen as in the cases of Oberlin and Berea, where coeducation of the races did not lead to intermarriage. The author refers to the efforts of some States outside of the South attempting to check miscegenation by statute, but shows the folly of such legislation in proving that in general where intermarriage of the races is still permitted very little occurs. Referring to the statutes of the States prohibiting marriage between the whites and the blacks (III, 38), he says: "The necessity for such legislation calls in question the supposed antipathy between the races, unless the intention is merely to guard against the aberrancy of atypical individuals." "The laws," says he, "are of dubious justice and clearly work hardships in certain cases."
The work on the whole is interesting and valuable although the author sometimes goes astray in paying too much attention to biased writers like W. H. Thomas and H. W. Odum who have taken it upon themselves to vilify and slander the Negro race.
NOTES
To facilitate the study of Negro history in clubs and schools, Dr. C. G. Woodson has prepared an illustrated text-book entitled The Negro in our History. It has been sent to the publishers and is expected from the press the first of the year. The book has a topical arrangement but the matter is so organized as to show the evolution of the Negro in America from the introduction of slavery in 1619 to the present day. The topics are: The Negro in Africa, The Enslavement of the Negro, Slavery in its Mild Form, The Negro and the Rights of Man, The Reaction, Economic Slavery, The Free Negro, Abolition, Colonization, Slavery and the Constitution, The Negro in the Civil War, The Reconstruction, Finding a way of Escape, Achievements in Freedom, The Negro in the World War, and The Negro and Social Justice.
The aim of the author is to meet the long felt need of a book of fundamental facts with references and suggestions for more intensive study. While it is adapted for use in the senior high school and freshman college classes, it will serve as a guide for persons prosecuting the study more seriously.
Just as soon as this book has come from the press the Association will send to all Negro schools of secondary and college grade a field agent to interest them in the effort to inculcate in the mind of the youth of African blood an appreciation of what their race has thought and felt and done. The cooperation of all persons taking seriously the effort to publish the records of the Negro that the race may not become a negligible factor in the thought of the world, is earnestly solicited. Any suggestions as to how this work may be more successfully prosecuted and as to extending it into inviting fields, will be appreciated.