The Journal of Negro History has found its way into additional libraries and schools where it is becoming more and more to be regarded as a valuable aid in research. It is now used as such in the accredited colleges and universities of both races in the South and serves for similar purposes in centers of research in the North. A larger number of institutions abroad, moreover, are now subscribing to this publication, requiring, too, a complete file of the magazine in bound form. Briefly stated, then, while this publication has not a popular subscription list, it circulates throughout the civilized world as a library magazine of value for advanced students, investigators, and social workers.
The Director has spent some of his time in field work. Wherever there is a call to encourage a school or a club to do more for the study of Negro life and history, the Director generally responds. In this way the people of Kentucky, especially in Lexington and Louisville, were made acquainted with the purposes of the Association and induced to do something for the preservation of the local records of Negroes who have achieved well. Enterprising citizens of Lexington have organized for this purpose.
At Nashville, the Director availed himself of a similar opportunity to carry the work of the Association to the thinking people of the city, speaking to them for two days in their schools and churches. The interest aroused was most encouraging and resulted in the organization of a local club to co-operate with this national organization. In addition to preserving the records of Negroes in that particular community, this group will engage in the actual study of the neglected aspects of Negro history, using the Branch Library as a center where numerous works on Negro life and history have been provided.
In Baltimore, where the Spring Conference of the Association was held, the citizens showed the same sort of interest in the work and pledged themselves to do more to save local records which are now being rapidly lost. Persons having an intelligent interest in the past of the Negro are now taking steps to organize there a Maryland Historical Society, to record and popularize the achievements of the Negroes of that commonwealth under the leadership of the teachers of history of the public schools and instructors at Morgan College.
Research
For the first time in the history of the Association its researches have taken a definite course. Up to the year just ended, the Association had the benefit of merely what investigations the Director's manifold duties permitted him to conduct, or of what others of their own will worked out in the interest of unearthing the truth. Thanks to the appropriations of the Carnegie Corporation and the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial, however, the Association can now outline a definite program of investigation and systematically carry it out. For the present the staff is engaged in the study of the Free Negro prior to 1861 and Negro Reconstruction History.
With the assistance of a copyist, Mrs. C. B. Overton, the Director has been preparing a report on the Free Negro in the United States. This report will be decidedly statistical, giving the names of the persons of color who were heads of families in 1830, where they were living, how many were in each family, how many slaves each owned, and what relation these free Negroes sustained to the white people. This research covers also the statistics of absentee ownership of slaves by whites. The first volume of the report will be published within the next six months. Using it as a basis, the Director will make further investigation of the Free Negroes to determine their economic status, their social position, the attitude of the southern whites toward this class, and the opinion of the North with respect to them as citizens.
Working in this same field, but developing special aspects of this history, are Mr. George F. Dow and Miss Irene A. Wright. Mr. George F. Dow has been employed to read the 18th century colonial newspapers of New England for facts bearing on the Negro. Up to the present, however, he has been unable to finish this task and does not promise to accomplish much until next fall. Miss Irene A. Wright is now extracting from the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain, some valuable documents showing the part the Negroes played in the early struggle between the British and Spanish in America and especially the records of the Mose Settlement of Negroes in Florida and the achievements of the Negroes in Louisiana. Miss Wright will also copy all accessible documents of Latin-America giving accounts of Negroes in higher spheres of usefulness. The Association is endeavoring to employ an investigator to render the same sort of service in the British Museum and the Public Record Office in London.
During the year the Association has had one worker in Negro Reconstruction History. This was Mr. A. A. Taylor, an alumnus of the University of Michigan, who has recently received the degree of Master of Arts for graduate work done at Harvard University under Professors W. C. Abbott, F. J. Turner, and Edward Channing. Although he has devoted only a part of his time to this research, he has produced one valuable dissertation, The Social Conditions and Treatment of Negroes in South Carolina, 1865-1880. He has also made a scientific study of the social and economic conditions of the Negroes in Virginia for the same period, but has not yet completed this treatise. It is expected that it will be ready for publication within the next twelve months. Mr. Taylor will continue this work as Associate Investigator, permanently employed by the Association to devote all of his time to this effort.
The Association continues its interest in the work of training young men for scientific investigation. As far as possible it will follow its program of educating in the best graduate schools with libraries bearing on Negro Life and History, three young men supported by fellowships of $500 each from the Association and such additional stipends as the schools themselves may grant for their support. These students are assigned to different fields, one to make Anthropometric and Psychological measurements of Negroes, one to study African Anthropology and Archaeology, and one to take up history as it has been influenced by the Negro.