Our perambulation of the Institute was interrupted by the bugle call summoning us to midday dinner in Virginia Hall, a building partly “sung up” by a travelling band of Hampton singers. The beautiful quality of the students’ voices was manifest in the short grace which they sang. We went through not only the dining-hall, but the kitchen, and were much struck by the brilliant cleanliness and neatness of all the arrangements, the rapidity of the service, and the appetizing appearance of the meal. The young men and girls sit together at the same tables, a lively, talkative, but well-mannered company—with enviable appetites, if one may judge by the rapidity with which dishes were sent back to the kitchen to be replenished. I noticed that for the most part, though not strictly, the Indians and the negroes kept to separate tables. None of the white instructors took part in the meal.
Hampton was the only negro college or school I ever visited in which I saw no student who could have passed as white. There was, indeed, one singularly beautiful girl with auburn hair, who might have been taken for a European of peculiarly rich colouring; but she was of Indian, not of negro, blood. There must, I think, have been some reason for the absence of “white negroes” at Hampton; but I had not time to inquire into it. We bade an unwilling farewell to our kind hosts, and departed deeply impressed by the spirit and achievement of this noble institution.
XIV
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
Birmingham, Alabama, is a city not yet forty years old; yet it numbers, with its suburbs, 150,000 inhabitants. It is the Pittsburg of the South, the centre of a great and rapidly growing iron and steel industry. But as yet it has not created anything of a “black country” around it. From the roof of its splendidly equipped and organized High School I saw nothing in its environment but pleasant wooded hills and flourishing “residential” suburbs. The city itself has spacious streets, handsome shops, at least two first-class hotels, a fine Court House, and an excellent streetcar service. There is far less rawness in Birmingham than in many American cities three times its age.
A very remarkable feature of the town is the splendid Union Station now in course of completion. Among the most conspicuous proofs of the prosperity of the South are the spacious and handsome railway stations, which are everywhere replacing the grimy old shanties of the past. In almost all, as though by special word of command, the Spanish Mission style of architecture is adopted, with its two towers crowning either end of the structure. This Union Station at Birmingham was perhaps the finest I saw; but the new station at Atlanta runs it hard; and Charleston, Jacksonville, even little Vicksburg, have all handsome and commodious stations. Each has its separate entrance, waiting-rooms, ticket-office, etc., “for White Passengers” and “for Coloured Passengers.” In some the colour-line is very palpably drawn in the shape of a thick brass rod running across the main hall, or “concourse,” and dividing it into two (unequal) portions. One end of this rod runs into the news-stand, the other into the ticket-office; so that in each of these departments both races can be served by one staff of clerks. Wherever I observed this rod, it was no provisional or movable device, but fixed as the foundations of the building.
Two little traits which I noted in the streets of Birmingham are perhaps worth reproducing. The first was a parcel-van with the legend—
IMPERIAL LAUNDRY
WE WASH FOR WHITE PEOPLE ONLY.
Tho second was a placard inspired by a more catholic spirit. It ran: “Largest glass of beer in the city, for White or Coloured, 5 cents.”