“It shall be unlawful for any person, persons, association or organization of any kind whatever to hold any camp meeting or bush meeting within the limits of Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester, Somerset,
Kent, and Worcester Counties without first making application in writing at least fifteen days prior to the date of such camp meeting or bush meeting therein. That such application for a permit as aforesaid, shall be accompanied by a petition in writing signed by at least twenty-five tax payers, each of whom shall reside within three miles of the place where such camp meeting is to be held, and each petition shall have annexed thereto as a part thereof an affidavit to the effect that each of the said petitioners are bona fide tax payers and of their residences within three miles of said place of such proposed meeting. And whenever the County Commissioners of any of the respective counties shall have any reasonable grounds that any lawlessness or disorder will occur, at said camp meeting or bush meeting, they shall refuse to grant such permit, and if, after issuing any permit to hold any camp meeting or bush meeting there shall be lawlessness or disorder reported to said County Commissioners, it shall be the duty of said officials to investigate or have investigated by the Sheriff or other officer of said county, the matter, and upon proof of said lawlessness or disorder they shall forthwith revoke said permit and it shall be the duty of the Sheriff, or other officer of the respective Counties to enforce the provisions of this act.”
In about the same spirit and for the same purpose, the reduction of Negro crime, a few years ago, the city of Mobile, Alabama, passed an ordinance, an account of which is taken from a Baltimore periodical:[94:23]
“The police department of Mobile, Ala., has established a curfew law for Negroes. Commencing on the night of July 21, the law provides that all Negroes must be in bed at their homes by ten o’clock or be subject to arrest. Any caught wandering at large after that hour will be locked up. This action is taken because there is said to be an epidemic of hold-ups perpetrated by the Negroes. If such a law was enforced in Baltimore it would decrease the alley fights ninety-five per cent.”
NEGRO IMMORALITY
In connection with Negro criminality it seems pertinent to say something of Negro immorality. Two of the Negro’s most prominent characteristics are the utter lack of chastity and complete ignorance of veracity.
The Negro’s sexual laxity, considered so immoral or even criminal in the white man’s civilization, may have been all but a virtue in the
habitat of his origin. There nature developed in him intense sexual passions to offset his high death rate. Then, too, the economic influences which fostered a family life among other peoples were mostly lacking in tropical Africa as nature provided abundantly without effort on the part of man.
Although the regulations adopted by masters for the control of the Negroes during slavery times may have served as a check upon their natural sexual propensities, however, since emancipation they have been under no such restraint and as a consequence they have possibly almost reverted to what must have been their primitive promiscuity. Huffman says that in 1894 more than one-fourth of the colored births in the city of Washington were illegitimate. Many prominent Negroes admit that above ninety per cent of both sexes are unchaste. A negro may be a pillar in the church and at the same time the father of a dozen illegitimate children by as many mothers.
Another Negro failing is lying. One can believe neither layman nor minister, neither criminal nor saint among them. One may occasionally find a truthful Negro,—just as he may find a virtuous or an honest one. Undoubtedly both honest and truthful was the Negro,—an elder in the church,—who refused to partake of the Lord’s Supper,