[42]. In Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 49 (published in 1904, when as yet prohibition seemed scarcely within the range of practical politics), I find the following remarkable prophecy: “The fountain-head of crime among the negroes of Atlanta is the open saloon. There is no doubt but that the removal of strong drink from the city would decrease crime by half.”

XVII
THE NEGRO HOME AND THE NEGRO CHURCH

Wherever I went in the South, one invariable experience awaited me, of which I scarcely know how to write. A buggy was ordered out, and I was trotted round to visit six or eight negro “homes.” I came to regard it as an established ritual, and learned to use the responses expected of me.

It would be base and stupid were I to laugh at these simple people who, in all good faith, and with a touching pride, which one felt to be more racial than personal, displayed to me their household gods. As a rule, indeed, I felt much more inclined to weep than to laugh. And yet, in one aspect, the parade was irresistibly ludicrous. It was as though one were led from window to window in Tottenham Court Road and asked to read, in the dining-room, drawing-room, and bedroom “suites,” the capacity of the British people for culture and civilization.

The point, of course, was to show what progress the coloured race had made, in wealth, education, and refinement, during the forty years which had elapsed since their emancipation. Statistics on this point, as we have seen, are apt to be a little deceptive. It is generally assumed that, after the Civil War, the race as a whole started in absolute pauperism. But this is not the fact. There were at that time many free negroes, and not a few who possessed a good deal of property.[[43]] Thus the well-to-do, “home”-owning class of negroes is not entirely a creation of the past forty years. In Charleston, for instance, there were a good many negro slave-holders before the war; and I was told (though for this I should not like to vouch) that negro property-owners are now fewer in that city than they had once been, many of the younger generation having dissipated the savings of their elders. I may add that by far the most homelike of the homes I visited belonged to a professional man who could not truly be said to have risen from slavery.

Nevertheless, the evidence of thrift and material prosperity among a considerable class of negroes is undeniable and very striking. As I was driven from home to home, other homes and institutions were pointed out to me, with details as to the number of dollars they represented, until my head swam, and I began to wonder whether I were not back among the Vanderbilts and Goulds in Fifth Avenue. For when you get well up among the tens of thousands, my power of grasping and comparing numbers very soon fails me.

“The greater part of this street here to the left belongs to the richest man in our community. He pays taxes on half a million dollars.” “There are three or four homes in this street belonging to coloured people worth from 25,000 to 75,000 dollars.” “That is an infirmary for negroes donated by a carpenter who couldn’t read or write. It cost 50,000 dollars. It is supported by various coloured clubs, with contributions from the county and the city.” Such was the unvaried strain as the buggy rattled along.

But one thing I noticed with interest—my coloured cicerones were just as ready to point with pride to the fine residences and institutions of white men as to the homes of their own people. Whatever their grounds of complaint against the other race, they were, so far as they were suffered to be, loyal citizens of their State.

To one negro Crœsus I was personally introduced, and an interesting type he was. |A Coloured Carnegie.| An old man—well on in the sixties, I should say. He had no negro traits that I could discover, and his complexion was the very lightest yellow. His shrewd, many-wrinkled, crab-apple face would have been remarked in Europe as distinctly American, but he would scarcely have been suspected of black blood. In one respect he was ostentatiously millionairish, for every tooth in his head was of gold. Moreover, he wore in his shirt front a splendid diamond pin, which contrasted oddly with his otherwise plain and even rustic attire.

He is a banker, a general trader, an owner of real estate—and a liberal benefactor to his own people. He has established in the negro quarter of the city where he lives a sort of garden and recreation-ground for his race, which is all the more appreciated, as negroes, even when not formally excluded from the public parks, are made very unwelcome in them. In the recreation ground is a plain but well-designed and commodious wooden theatre, where companies of negro actors frequently appear. I am told there is a remarkable development of negro theatrical art in several quarters, but was not fortunate enough to come across any specimens of it.