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THE CRISIS
A RECORD OF THE DARKER RACES
| Volume One | JANUARY, 1911 | Number Three |
Edited by W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, with the co-operation of Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W. S. Braithwaite and M. D. Maclean.
CONTENTS |  | ||
| Along the Color Line | [5] | ||
| Opinion | [9] | ||
| A Winter Pilgrimage | [15] | ||
| Editorial | [16] | ||
| Cartoon | [18] | ||
| By JOHN HENRY ADAMS | |||
| Editorial | [20] | ||
| Social Control | [22] | ||
| By JANE ADDAMS | |||
| The Teacher: Poem | [23] | ||
| By LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL | |||
| Employment of Colored Women in Chicago | [24] | ||
| The Burden | [26] | ||
| Talks About Women | [27] | ||
| By Mrs. J. E. MILHOLLAND | |||
| What to Read | [28] | ||
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THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for the ADVANCEMENT of COLORED PEOPLE
OBJECT.—The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is an organization composed of men and women of all races and classes who believe that the present widespread increase of prejudice against colored races and particularly the denial of rights and opportunities to ten million Americans of Negro descent is not only unjust and a menace to our free institutions, but also is a direct hindrance to World Peace and the realization of Human Brotherhood.
METHODS.—The encouragement of education and efforts for social uplift; the dissemination of literature; the holding of mass meetings; the maintenance of a lecture bureau; the encouragement of vigilance committees; the investigation of complaints; the maintenance of a Bureau of Information; the publication of The Crisis; the collection of facts and publication of the truth.
ORGANIZATION.—All interested persons are urged to join our organization—associate membership costs $1, and contributing and sustaining members pay from $2 to $25 a year.
FUNDS.—We need $10,000 a year for running expenses of this work and particularly urge the necessity of gifts to help on our objects.
OFFICERS.—The officers of the organization are:
National President—Mr. Moorfield Storey, Boston, Mass.
Chairman of the Executive Committee—Mr. Wm. English Walling, New York.
Treasurer—Mr. John E. Milholland, New York.
Disbursing Treasurer—Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, New York.
Director of Publicity and Research—Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, New York.
Executive Secretary—Miss Frances Blascoer, New York.
COMMITTEE.—Our work is carried on under the auspices of the following General Committee, in addition to the officers named:
[[1]]Miss Gertrude Barnum, New York.
[[1]]Rev. W. H. Brooks, New York.
Prof. John Dewey, New York.
Miss Maud R. Ingersoll, New York.
Mrs. Florence Kelley, New York.
[[1]]Mr. Paul Kennaday, New York.
[[1]]Mrs. F. R. Keyser, New York.
Dr. Chas. Leng, New York.
Mr. Jacob W. Mack, New York.
[[1]]Mrs. M. D. MacLean, New York.
Rev. Horace G. Miller, New York.
Mrs. Max Morgenthau, Jr., New York.
Mr. James F. Morton, Jr., New York.
Mr. Henry Moskowitz, New York.
Miss Leonora O’Reilly, New York.
[[1]]Rev. A. Clayton Powell, New York.
[[1]]Mr. Charles Edward Russell, New York.
Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, New York.
Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, New York.
[[1]]Rev. Joseph Silverman, New York.
Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, New York.
Mrs. Henry Villard, New York.
Miss Lillian D. Wald, New York.
[[1]]Bishop Alexander Walters, New York.
Dr. Stephen S. Wise, New York.
Rev. Jas. E. Haynes, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y.
[[1]]Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Miss M. R. Lyons, Brooklyn, N. Y.
[[1]]Miss M. W. Ovington, Brooklyn, N. Y.
[[1]]Dr. O. M. Waller, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mrs. M. H. Talbert, Buffalo, N. Y.
Hon. Thos. M. Osborne, Auburn, N. Y.
[[1]]Mr. W. L. Bulkley, Ridgewood, N. J.
Mr. George W. Crawford, New Haven, Conn.
Miss Maria Baldwin, Boston, Mass.
Mr. Francis J. Garrison, Boston, Mass.
Mr. Archibald H. Grimke, Boston, Mass.
[[1]]Mr. Albert E. Pillsbury, Boston, Mass.
Mr. Wm. Munroe Trotter, Boston, Mass.
Dr. Horace Bumstead, Brookline, Mass.
Miss Elizabeth C. Carter, New Bedford, Mass.
Prest. Chas. T. Thwing, Cleveland, O.
Mr. Chas. W. Chesnutt, Cleveland, O.
Prest H. C. King, Oberlin, O.
Prest. W. S. Scarborough, Wilberforce, O.
[[1]]Miss Jane Addams, Chicago, Ill.
[[1]]Mrs. Ida B. Wells Barnett, Chicago, Ill.
[[1]]Dr. C. E. Bentley, Chicago, Ill.
Miss Sopbronisba Breckenridge, Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Clarence Darrow, Chicago, Ill.
[[1]]Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley, Chicago, Ill.
[[1]]Dr. N. F. Mossell, Philadelphia, Pa.
[[1]]Dr. Wm. A. Sinclair, Philadelphia, Pa.
Miss Susan Wharton, Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. R. R. Wright, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. W. Justin Carter, Harrisburg, Pa.
Rev. Harvey Johnson, D.D., Baltimore, Md.
Hon. Wm. S. Bennett, Washington, D. C.
Mr. L. M. Hershaw, Washington, D. C.
Prof. Kelly Miller, Washington, D. C.
Prof. L. B. Moore, Washington, D. C.
Justice W. P. Stafford, Washington, D. C.
[[1]]Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Washington, D. C.
[[1]]Rev. J. Milton Waldron, Washington, D. C.
Prest. John Hope, Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Leslie P. Hill, Manassas, Va.
[1]. Executive Committee.
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Along the Color Line
POLITICAL.
Objections to the proposed appointment of William R. Lewis, a Negro attorney of Boston, as an assistant attorney-general are being presented to Attorney-General Wickersham. President Taft’s intention to appoint Lewis was learned semi-officially at the White House several weeks ago. Booker T. Washington has called upon Mr. Wickersham to urge his approval of the appointment, and Speaker Cannon has opposed it.
President Taft said in his message: “I renew my recommendation that the claims of the depositors in the Freedman’s Bank be recognized and paid by the passage of the pending bill on that subject. I also renew my recommendation that steps be taken looking to the holding of a Negro exposition in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the issuing by Mr. Lincoln of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
There is only one feature of the apportionment matter which is apt to precipitate trouble, and that is the proposal to reduce the representation of the Southern States which have deprived a part of their population of the right of suffrage. Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and other Commonwealths below the Mason and Dixon line have imposed restrictions upon the Negroes which make it impossible for them to vote at any election.—Denver Times.
THE COURTS.
In Richmond, Va., Judge Goff, in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, decided that no deed conveying real estate could legally preclude the subsequent conveyance of any part of that real estate to persons of African descent. He held that any provision or clause providing that real estate shall not be acquired by Negroes is invalid and void, and that no such provision can be put into a deed. The case was argued for the Negroes by George J. Hooper and William L. Royall. A. O. Boschen argued for the other side. The decision of Judge Goff will be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. It is attracting wide attention and much comment among members of the local bar. The case was that of the People’s Pleasure Park vs. Worsham.
Having been defeated in the Supreme Court of New York, and that defeat having been affirmed by the Appellate Division, the colored Order of Elks has filed an appeal to the Court of Appeals and has filed a bond of the National Surety Company to cover the payment of any costs that may be awarded against it. The colored order was enjoined from using the name or the emblem of the white Order of Elks.
The verdict of $1,000 awarded George W. Griffin, a Pullman car porter, against Daniel L. Brady, brother of “Diamond Jim” Brady, was affirmed by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Griffin was arrested by Brady on a charge of theft, and after proving his innocence sued his accuser.
Joseph Atwater, an Oklahoma Negro, filed in the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington his appeal from the decision of the Oklahoma courts which had refused to enjoin election officials in Oklahoma City from denying him the right to vote on Nov. 8th. The petition for injunction was based on the claim that the “grandfather clause” placed in the Oklahoma constitution by amendment was invalid, because it would deny the right to vote to a large number of Negroes in the State entirely on account of color or previous condition of servitude.
SOCIAL UPLIFT.
In New Orleans during the past year several drug stores have been opened, a Business League organized, the Pythian Temple finished, five churches erected and 400 teachers have attended summer normal schools.
Dr. Cyrus Townsend Brady, by a startling paper read before the Ministers’ Alliance at a meeting at the Y. M. C. A., awakened the ministers into a realization of the Negro problem, and for the first time in the history of Kansas City a movement was organized by the ministers to investigate and endeavor to better the condition of the blacks.
The highest average that has been made on the punching machine in the Census Office was attained by Miss Eva B. Price, a colored girl, during the last two weeks in October. The work on these machines is done on the piece basis, and during this period Miss Price earned $88. The highest up to this time that had been paid any clerk on this work during any two weeks was $85. There are about 500 clerks working on the punching machines, and it is considered very high for a clerk to punch as many as 3,000 cards in one day. Miss Price’s highest mark for one day was 4,200 cards. She accomplished this unusual average during the regular seven-hour day, and has never worked on extra time.
In Philadelphia prominent churchmen of several denominations participated in a conference on the American Negro question, held in the Central Young Men’s Christian Association, 1421 Arch Street. Bishop Mackay-Smith presided, and the speakers included such leaders in denominational affairs as the Rev. Dr. Frank P. Parkin, district superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church; the Rev. Dr. A. J. Rowland, secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society; the Rev. Dr. Edwin Heyl Delk, of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church; the Rev. Edwin F. Randolph, of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church; B. F. Lee, Jr., of the Armstrong Association, and James S. Stemons.
With the exception of the Bishop, these ministers and laymen are associated in the Association for Equalizing Industrial Opportunities, the purpose of which is to secure fair play for the Negro wage earner in the industrial world.
In Cincinnati the last of the $2,000 needed to start an institution for colored women similar to the Y. W. C. A. has been received by Miss Elma C. Leach, of the Elizabeth Gamble Deaconess Association, and the work will be prosecuted at once. The home will be opened on West Sixth Street, near Mound. Temporary quarters will there be provided for colored girls coming into the city for work and for girls who are found to be living in undesirable environments. A nursery will be established and theoretical nursing taught. Lectures will also be given.
In a report the State Inspector of Asylums of Kentucky says that the buildings in which the Negro patients at the Eastern Kentucky Asylum are confined are a disgrace to the State. One is a cottage with basement and one story above. This building, he states, is in a very dangerous condition, likely to collapse at any time. It is simply held up with props put under it from time to time, and should a heavy wind strike it, it probably would collapse. In this building there are forty-two colored female patients. In the other colored ward building, which has a basement and two stories, the conditions are equally as bad. Both male and female patients are confined in this building, but are kept separate and distinct. The female capacity is thirty-two—there are forty-one patients; the male capacity is seventy—there are eighty-eight patients. So crowded is the building that a great number are compelled to sleep in the basement, which is very dark and damp and in rainy weather water collects therein. The inspector states that neither the Board of Control nor the officers of this institution are to blame, for they are doing everything in their power to avert a disaster.
COLORED COLLEGES.
Howard University at Washington, D. C., has this year 1,350 students. The college students number 347, of whom 167 are freshmen. Requirements have been raised both for admission to the college and medical school. The faculties include 110 professors, instructors and officers. The endowment amounts to $281,000. The medical school has received $55,000 in cash for tuition fees during the last two years. A new Carnegie library and hall of applied science have recently been added to the plant, and also a steam-heating plant.
Lincoln University, Chester County, Pa., has 136 students in the college and 50 in the theological seminary; all of these are taught by twelve professors and three instructors. The grounds and buildings are worth $250,000, and the endowment is a little over $600,000. Lately an electric plant has been added, and a new pipe organ.
Virginia Union University has 35 students in the college and 30 in the theological department, 120 in the academy and 40 in the grades. There are sixteen instructors. A special attempt is being made to get a new dormitory.
Wilberforce University has issued a statement which says:
“Though our existence was threatened in the past by poverty, war and fire, yet we have passed from a school with 52 acres of land, one building, a few small cottages, a primary department of instruction, two teachers and a handful of students, to three large united schools in operation to-day, aside from the military department. These are the college, the theological, and the normal and industrial schools, instructing in the following courses of study: Classical, scientific, academic, theological, music, English preparatory, military, art, business, sewing, carpentry, printing, cooking, shoemaking, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, brickmaking and bricklaying, plumbing, tailoring, and applied mechanics and millinery. It has 350 acres of the best land in Ohio. It has now ten brick buildings, including four large halls, a $60,000 trades building, and a library costing $18,000, the gift of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The value of the entire plant, with equipment, is quite $350,000. There are 32 teachers and an average of 400 students, and we could have over one thousand if we had accommodations for them.”
Mr. W. A. Joiner, formerly of Howard University, is superintendent of the State Department at Wilberforce.
Atlanta University has 400 students enrolled. Fifty of these are in the college course, with 30 teachers and officers. There are 653 normal and college graduates. The plant consists of seven brick buildings, including a library worth about $300,000; the endowment is $75,000, and a special effort is being made to raise $60,000 this year.
Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., has over 500 students enrolled, and applicants have been turned away. There are preparatory, normal and college departments, and classes in theology, medicine and law. Attention is also given to music and industries. The Leonard medical building has been enlarged and a hospital is being built; shower baths have been put into the gymnasium and other buildings enlarged. President Meserve is just completing his seventeenth year of service.
The Georgia State Industrial College is near Savannah, Ga. It has 86 acres and 468 students. The school curriculum includes literary and industrial work. Each student has to take a trade along with his other studies. The school depends entirely upon income from the Landscript and Morrill funds. Among its outside activities are farmers’ conferences and an annual State fair.
EDUCATION.
In South Carolina Governor-elect Cole L. Bleaze is opposed to the division of the educational fund of the State of South Carolina between schools for the Negroes and the white children. It became known lately that the future Governor is convinced that it would be good for the State if the educational fund is divided so that taxes paid by whites for educational purposes go for the education of white children, and that those paid by blacks be used for the education of Negroes.
“I am firmly convinced, after the most careful thought and study,” said Colonel Bleaze to-day, “that the Almighty created the Negro to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water. I also believe that the greatest mistake the white race has ever made was in attempting to educate the free Negro.”
The first report of the Louisiana Department of Education for the year ending July 1, 1910, shows that the total amount spent for the maintenance of the public schools by the State was $4,936,300.64. Of this amount colored teachers received in salaries $202,251.13, while white teachers received $2,404,062.54. There are 5,001 white teachers employed and 1,285 colored teachers. White male teachers received an average monthly salary of $75.29, and white female teachers received an average monthly salary of $50.80. The average monthly salary of colored male teachers was only $34.25, and of colored female teachers $28.67. The average length of session of colored elementary schools is 4.6 months. The average lengths of session of white elementary and high schools is 8.23 months. There are 9,771 whites enrolled in the high schools. No figures are given for colored students enrolled in high schools. There are 54,637 colored children attending elementary schools, and 128,022 white children; 75.9 per cent. of white educable children are enrolled, and only 45.3 per cent. of the colored children. The average monthly cost of each child based on average attendance, white $2.90, colored $1.21.
The colored people of Plateau have the credit of being the leading Negro settlement in Mobile County, Alabama, in respect to raising money to help educate their children. The patrons of the school have raised over $180 for their school this year, $144 of this money being raised Thanksgiving Day. They are buying a beautiful site for a high school at a cost of $900. Over $600 of this money has been raised, and they are struggling to finish it this present school term.
That a systematic and organized crusade on idleness among members of the colored race is to be continued was indicated at the meeting of the Texas Negro Law and Order League at Houston, Texas. In a forceful address calling the attention of the members of the league to many vital questions affecting the welfare of the race President John M. Atkins stated that the time was ripe for sending literature over the country urging all Negro parents to look to the moral training of their boys.
For the purpose of urging every colored resident of New Orleans to contribute $1 per annum to be used in educating Negro children, a poll tax association among the colored people has been formed. A meeting was held Wednesday night and a citywide campaign with this object in view was planned. Circulars will be printed, stating the reasons for the movement, and the leaders of every Negro organization in the city will be asked to prevail upon his respective membership to see that they pay their poll tax.
Strong addresses were delivered before the Mississippi Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church by Professor D. C. Potts, president of the Mississippi Industrial College, and Dr. F. M. Williams of the North Mississippi Conference. Professor Potts gave a detailed report of the work done at the institution and declared that the enrollment at this time of the year far exceeds that of any previous year. He stated that the property was conservatively valued at $150,000 and congratulated the Negroes of Mississippi upon giving so much for the education of their own children.
THE CHURCH.
There are now five Negro priests in the Catholic Church in the United States; three are in the Order of St. Joseph, one is a member of the Holy Ghost order, and the fifth is attached to Archbishop Ireland’s diocese in St. Paul, Minn.
On Sunday afternoon, October 30, the societies of the Holy Name of the Roman Catholic Church made a big demonstration in Washington, D. C. One feature of it was the parade, with several thousand in line, including delegations from Baltimore and other nearby places. There were many colored men in line, but there was no semblance of “jim crowing.” Each marched with his own parish members of whatever color. There was a full share of colored mounted marshals and two of the six bands were colored, but the colored bands were not leading colored contingents.
This was in striking contrast to the action of the local committee of the World’s Sunday School Congress here last May, which barred the few colored delegates from the parade altogether, while in other places they were segregated as far as possible.
Two thousand Negro Baptists have been meeting in Little Rock, Ark.
The M. E. Conference at Nacogdoches, Texas, opened by singing “And are we yet alive!”
ECONOMIC.
During the last few days Negroes, generally known as “freedmen” from the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, have paid over $50,000 to the commissioner to the five tribes of Indians at Muskogee for land. The “freedmen” were allowed to select enough land to bring their allotments up to forty acres, paying for it the appraised value of the land. This appraisement was made by the government several years ago, and is about one-fourth of the actual cash value of the land now. The Negroes were given this preferential right to buy by a special act of Congress and their right expired December 1, which caused the rush.
A colored church in Atlanta has opened a labor exchange.
A number of Omaha colored men have incorporated the International Railroad Safety Pipe Coupling Company. It will manufacture the Harris coupling for cars. This aims at enabling coupling of steam air brake and emergency pipes without compelling a man to go under the cars and risk being crushed. The appliance is made to go under the Janney coupler. A. H. Harris of Denver is the inventor, and an Omaha foundry is making the castings for railways to try out.
Attorney-General Foy of the Province of Ontario, Canada, has included the name of Delos R. Davis in a new list of king’s counsels for that province. Mr. Davis is a colored barrister before the Amherstburg bar of long standing, and will do honor to his new title of “K. C.”
It required 55,000 enumerators to take the census; of these 1,605 were Negroes, and 1,295 of these Negroes were in the Southern States. Secretary Nagel said, a few days ago, that he had not heard a single complaint against them. Ten years ago there were no Negroes at all taking census in South Carolina, but this year 131 colored were employed.
ART.
The playing of Miss Helen Hagan at the concert of the Second Company, Governor’s Foot Guard Band, has been the subject of much enthusiastic comment during the past week. Many of the best musicians of New Haven were present, and their opinions constitute for Miss Hagan a “judgment of her peers.” Miss Hagan is a “prize student” of the Yale department of music and has been heard several times in concert work accompanied by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Her playing has always brought down the house. On the occasion of the Foot Guard concert she appeared twice upon the program in solos by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and MacDowell, and responded to vehement demands for encores with compositions by Grieg and Mosznowski.
Although Miss Hagan is not yet twenty years of age and was graduated from the New Haven High School only last June, she has gone a long way up on the road toward being a successful concert artist.—New Haven Register.
William E. Scott has returned to Indianapolis from Paris, where he went nearly two years ago to continue his art work. He was born and reared in Indianapolis. He began his art studies under Otto Stark, while a student at the Manual Training High School. After graduating he became assistant teacher of art in the high school, which position he held a year and a half. He entered the Chicago Art Institute in 1904, won some cash scholarships and became proficient as a mural artist. During his last year’s attendance at the institute he did the mural decorations for five of the public school buildings of Chicago. For a short time after graduating from the institute he was engaged in special work in illustration, after which he went to Paris and studied under P. Marcel Beareneau and later under H. O. Tanner. He exhibited three paintings last August in a Paris salon, and traveled over England, Holland and Belgium before returning here.
Both of the persons mentioned above are colored.
OPINION
THE APPEAL TO EUROPE.
On October 26 a statement and appeal was sent to Europe signed by thirty-two Negro Americans. The appeal was not sent out by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, nor did the association stand sponsor for it. It was sent solely on the authority of the men who signed it. These men include two editors, one dentist, seven lawyers, two ministers, two bishops, three physicians, one teacher, two presidents of educational institutions, one member of a Legislature and others.
This appeal, after stating that its signers do not agree with Mr. Washington’s picture of conditions here, states the following grievances:
“Our people were emancipated in a whirl of passion, and then left naked to the mercies of their enraged and impoverished ex-masters. As our sole means of defense we were given the ballot, and we used it so as to secure the real fruits of the war. Without it we would have returned to slavery; with it we struggled toward freedom. No sooner, however, had we rid ourselves of nearly two-thirds of our illiteracy and accumulated $600,000,000 worth of property in a generation, than this ballot, which had become increasingly necessary to the defense of our civil and property rights, was taken from us by force and fraud.
“To-day in eight States where the bulk of the Negroes live, black men of property and university training can be, and usually are, by law denied the ballot, while the most ignorant white man votes. This attempt to put the personal and property rights of the best of the blacks at the absolute political mercy of the worst of the whites is spreading each day.
“Along with this has gone a systematic attempt to curtail the education of the black race. Under a widely advertised system of ‘universal’ education, not one black boy in three to-day has in the United States a chance to learn to read and write. The proportion of school funds due to black children are often spent on whites, and the burden on private charity to support education, which is a public duty, has become almost intolerable.
“In every walk of life we meet discrimination, based solely on race and color, but continually and persistently misrepresented to the world as the natural difference due to condition.
“We are, for instance, usually forced to live in the worst quarters, and our consequent death rate is noted as a race trait, and reason for further discrimination. When we seek to buy property in better quarters we are sometimes in danger of mob violence or, as now in Baltimore, of actual legislation to prevent.
“We are forced to take lower wages for equal work, and our standard of living is then criticised. Fully half the labor unions refuse us admittance, and then claim that as ‘scabs’ we lower the price of labor.
“A persistent caste proscription seeks to force us and confine us to menial occupations where the conditions of work are worst.
“Our women in the South are without protection in law and custom, and are then derided as lewd. A widespread system of deliberate public insult is customary, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to secure decent accommodation in hotels, railway trains, restaurants and theatres, and even in the Christian church we are in most cases given to understand that we are unwelcome unless segregated.
“Worse than all this is the wilful miscarriage of justice in the courts. Not only have 2,500 black men been lynched publicly by mobs in the last twenty-five years, without semblance or pretense of trial, but regularly every day throughout the South the machinery of the courts is used, not to prevent crime and correct the wayward among the Negroes, but to wreak public dislike and vengeance and to raise public funds. This dealing in crime as a means of public revenue is a system well-nigh universal in the South, and while its glaring brutality through private lease has been checked, the underlying principle is still unchanged.
“Everywhere in the United States the old democratic doctrine of recognizing fitness wherever it occurs is losing ground before a reactionary policy of denying preferment in political or industrial life to competent men if they have a trace of Negro blood, and of using the weapons of public insult and humiliation to keep such men down. It is to-day a universal demand in the South that on all occasions social courtesies shall be denied any person of known Negro descent, even to the extent of refusing to apply the titles of ‘Mr.,’ ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss.’
“Against this dominant tendency, strong and brave Americans, white and black, are fighting, but they need, and need sadly, the moral support of England and of Europe in this crusade for the recognition of manhood, despite adventitious differences of race, and it is like a blow in the face to have one who himself suffers daily insult and humiliation in America give the impression that all is well. It is one thing to be optimistic, self-forgetful and forgiving, but it is quite a different thing, consciously or unconsciously, to misrepresent the truth.”
This appeal has provoked widespread comment all over the world. The Vienna (Austria) Die Zeit, in publishing the document, says:
“During the sojourn in Vienna of Booker T. Washington, the distinguished apostle of the Negro, there appeared in Die Zeit a report from his pen in which he defended the white race of North America against the charge of systematic race prejudice and pictured the condition of the Negro race as on the whole very favorable. This report created great excitement in America and a deep disagreement among the intelligent leaders of the American Negroes. Booker T. Washington was warmly attacked in many American papers by both white and black speakers, and finally the American Negro leaders drew up an outspoken protest against Washington’s declarations.”
The Kölnische Volk Zeitung, Germany, speaks of an article which was “widely printed in Austria and Germany,” in which Mr. Washington “expressed himself in very optimistic words concerning his race in America and the undoubted solution of the problem,” and then reprints a part of the appeal.
In the United States the comment has taken wide range. From the South comes some bitterness when, for instance, the Raleigh News and Courier says:
“It is hard to tell which is the worst enemy of the Negro race—the brute who invites lynching by the basest of crimes, or the social-equality-hunting fellow like Du Bois, who slanders his country. Fortunately for the peaceable and industrious Negroes in the South, the world does not judge them either by Du Bois or the animal, and helps them and is in sympathy with their efforts to better their condition.”
The Richmond Leader adds:
“Efforts on the part of the Negro to give practical expression to the dream of equality may, indeed, cause temporary trouble and discomfort to the whites, but ultimately and necessarily they could not fail to provoke stern repression, and, if necessary, cruel punishment to the blacks. Fortunately, the great bulk of the Negro population in the South realizes this, and, having—at least for the time—accepted it as inevitable, they adjust themselves to the subordinate place to which their race consigns them, and in which the very existence of the superior race makes it absolutely necessary to keep them. There is little friction, therefore, between them and the white people among whom they live.”
The Chattanooga Times regards the document as “treasonable incendiarism,” and many papers denounce it as a demand for “social equality.” The New Orleans Times-Democrat says:
“To the average American the most striking feature is this ‘appeal,’ aside from its attack upon Booker Washington, is its confession, virtually in so many words, that the theory of racial social equality is losing ground ‘everywhere in the United States.’ Thoughtful students of the American race problem long ago noted the steady spread of race instinct, or prejudice, into sections other than the South; but it was hardly to be expected that the blatant Negro agitators would confess that their strident demands for race equality have not only completely failed, but have helped to turn the scale against them. Such progress as the Negro has made is recorded not by aid of these aspirants for social equality, but in spite of them.”
The Jersey City Journal says Negroes can vote in the North, they are educated in the North, they are only partially restricted in residence, they usually get equal pay for equal work, and the “objection to having colored people in residence sections is natural.”
The Chicago Tribune “can understand and sympathize” with the signers of the protest, but points out that the positions occupied by the signers themselves show the progress of the Negro.
The New York World says:
“Undeniably, the black population of the United States has just grievances. So also has the white population in the United States. Race prejudice is here as it is in Europe, and blacks are not the only sufferers. There is brutal tyranny in industry, but the blacks are not the only victims. There are social limitations that are cruel and inexcusable, but the blacks are not the only ones against whom the gates are shut.
“This is a world in which true men give and take. It is a world in which all must make allowances. It is a world in which, after all, men are judged not so much by race or nationality or possessions as by personal merit. Otherwise, how could a Booker Washington, born a Virginia slave, have ‘stood before kings’ and associated for the greater part of his life with the earth’s greatest and best?
“We do not condemn the American men of color who have made this protest. We simply remonstrate with them. They are asking more than a white man’s chance, and in the circumstances that is inadmissible.”
The Boston Globe, however, thinks that “these and other complaints are backed by educated Negroes, who demand that the old world shall know their wrongs. They deny that Dr. Washington is giving the right impression of the situation in this country. It would seem to the average person that admittedly there is much truth in the catalog of wrongs the association recites.”
The Brooklyn Times, too, acknowledges that “the lot of the colored American is a hard one at best, but there is nothing to be gained by complaining over conditions and prejudices that cannot be altered or eradicated in the lifetime of a single generation. There are obstacles in the path of the Afro-American, even the most intelligent and aspiring, of which the meanest white man can hardly form an adequate conception; the only thing the Negro can do is to make the best of hard conditions and do his utmost by his individual achievements to make the handicap of his color forgotten.
“It is not surprising, however, that to many ambitious colored citizens patience sometimes ceases to seem a virtue.”
It adds that the appeal “is a mild statement of existing conditions. The lot of the colored American is indeed a hard one. But it is improving. The area of sweet reasonableness is being gradually extended. Old prejudices, and especially racial prejudices, die hard, as the history of the dispersed Hebrew nation tells on every page of the annals of 2,000 years. But prejudice is not eternal, and every colored American who does the utmost of his duty in the place he fills does his part in bringing about the day when ungenerous and unjust discrimination will disappear, and when
Man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be, for a’ that.”
Finally, the Buffalo Express says emphatically:
“The memorial recites the long and familiar list of Negro wrongs—the political disfranchisement, the denial of education in some States, the discriminations in public places, the forcing into menial occupations, the hostility of trades unions, the attempts to confine Negroes to certain quarters of towns, the insults to Negro women, etc. It need not be gone over here. Readers of the Express are familiar with the shameful record. The fact that this is an appeal to the people of Europe against the people of the United States will arouse fresh antagonism to the Negro in some quarters, but, on the whole, it will do good. For shame’s sake, if not for that of justice, it may arouse us to do our duty. The opinion of the civilized world must have some effect on the most calloused American official conscience. And it is our governing class, our men and women of light and leading, that need to be aroused on this question.”
THE GHETTO.
The Baltimore attempt to segregate colored people has called forth widespread comment. A letter in the New York Sun thus portrays conditions:
“The Negro invasion in Baltimore is principally in a north and northwesterly direction, comprising the most beautiful, most exclusive and most valuable residential sections. About the year 1885 steadily but insidiously the Negro began to invade white residential sections. In Pennsylvania Avenue, beginning at Franklin Street in the downtown district and running north about twenty-six blocks to the intersection of North Avenue and Druid Hill Avenue, beginning at Paca Street in the downtown district and running north about twenty blocks to the intersection of North Avenue, as well as all blocks lying between Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues and containing substantially built three-story houses, are now in the exclusive possession of the Negroes. They are now beginning to invade McCulloh Street, Madison Avenue, Eutaw Place and Linden Avenue, which run parallel with Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues.”
Some papers see in this indubitable evidence of the rise of colored people.
As the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel puts it:
“This is one of the most hopeful situations regarding the Negro which has been painted. It is enough to send shivers down the backs of the people who believe that ‘Cursed by Canaan’ is to hold good for all time. But it is an immense reassurance to those who are looking for the uplift of the black race. It seems, from this picture, that they must be getting rich rapidly. They are obtaining possession of fine residential property. They want to live in fine houses, the same as white folks with money. Doubtless, too, the same as white folks, they want to have the good things which money will buy.
“Judged by any test other than color, they seem to be very desirable citizens.”
Other papers, like the Bridgeport Telegram, scent danger:
“If they are deprived of the right to build homes where they please which is accorded to the most degraded white man who lands upon these shores provided people will sell land to him, and robbed of the right to become skilled workmen, their situation will be a much graver one than that from which the Civil War delivered them.”
Dr. Henry Moskowitz, in the New York Evening Post, points to the Russian analogy and the Boston Globe also insists on the failure of the Ghetto idea:
“Segregation has never been a very successful solution of the race problem, as may be seen in the experience of European cities with ghettos and in Russia’s attempt to keep Jews confined within certain pales. The Baltimore city council, however, by a piece of special pleading in its report, tries to justify the ordinance by saying that its ‘underlying purpose is the maintenance of peace and good order and the avoidance of friction and irritation between the two races.’ The ordinance ‘aims to prevent the whites from becoming a disturbing element to the blacks and likewise to prevent the Negroes from becoming a disturbing element to the whites.’ Ahem!”
The New York Journal calls the experiment dangerous:
“It is true that the establishment of homes of colored people in neighborhoods hitherto unfrequented by them causes antagonism and may produce trouble and disturb real estate values. But it is also true that it is dangerous, unjust and unworthy of this century to revive the obsolete ghetto system, denying to certain human beings the right to live where they please and where they can.
“We suppose that a white man who owns a house has a legal right to sell it to a Negro if he pleases. And we suppose that the highest court in the country will sustain the right of a colored man to live in his own home, subject to the tax laws and regulations of his neighborhood.
“Probably the plan to compel a hundred thousand colored people in Baltimore to live all together in one neighborhood could not legally be enforced.”
On the legal side of the matter Charles J. Bonaparte, formerly United States Attorney-General, says to a Baltimore Sun reporter:
“I have always understood, however, that it was a lawful use of private property to sell or rent one’s house for a proper purpose to an orderly person of whatever race or color, without regard to the wishes or the complexion of those who live next door, and, if this be true, then the well-known Radecke case, in Forty-ninth Maryland, to say nothing of other authorities, would seem to show clearly that if our always wise Mayor and City Council should undertake to interfere in such a matter, they could, and would, be politely advised to mind their own business.”
The Brooklyn Eagle, the Nyack (N. Y.) Star and the Dover (N. H.) Democrat call attention to the Lee Sing case (43 Federal Reports, 359), which voided an ordinance restricting the residence of a Chinaman.
The New York Sun says on the “property values” issue:
“The Baltimore ordinance cannot be supported on the ground that it is intended to protect one race against the indignities invariably experienced whenever it is compelled to force its presence upon another race in the pursuit of education, business and pleasure or in the exercise of political rights. Its frank purpose is to protect the property interests of the stronger race. In the opinion of the City Council of Baltimore real estate values in certain avenues have depreciated 30 to 50 per cent. owing to the presence of Negro residents, but if the sapient council were to study the recent census showing of Baltimore it would no doubt find that other causes have been at work in bringing about the depreciation. In any event, the proposed ordinance involves a principle which the courts are not likely to accept.”
The Manchester (N. H.) Union says:
“It would seem as if the Negroes themselves would tire of making purchases which immediately sink in value from a third to one-half, and it is somewhat peculiar that in Philadelphia and Washington there has been no tendency to anything of the kind, either as to encroachment upon the territory of the whites or a depreciation of the property occupied by the Negroes.”
The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph sees a chance for the Negro to make money through such segregation and to be proud of their Ghettos, but the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a colored paper, says:
“It is almost certain that wherever there is a Negro quarter there will be little or no city improvement. Notwithstanding Negroes pay the same rate of taxes, the streets on which they live are seldom paved, poorly lighted, and any public improvements that might be made are always last in coming to them. Thousands of Negroes make an effort not to buy within the white district but so near that district that they may be able to get some of the city improvements. There is also a measure of protection as well as a measure of convenience when Negroes live on the better streets.
“The Negro has a just protest against the sort of treatment he is forced to endure notwithstanding he is a taxpayer. It may be alleged that he is not a heavy taxpayer, and this we grant, but there are sections of cities sparsely settled which are improved at the behest of speculators while Negro residents are compelled to live in discomfiture and inconvenience because of the lack of improvement.”
Dr. Hughes of Baltimore, speaking for colored citizens, said:
“It means the stopping of self-respecting, law-abiding colored citizens in their efforts to secure homes and plant themselves in communities as taxpayers.
“Rental values will advance since there will be no outlet for an already congested population: they must stay where they are, and in order to do so pay any price which an unscrupulous money grabber may demand. With the high cost of foodstuffs and the low scale of wages for unskilled labor the passage of the West ordinance points to the creation of a pauper element in our city rather than a thrifty, law-abiding colored citizenship, and the pauper element of any city or community makes the more prosperous pay in one way or another for their support.
“In your ordinance you involve the bread of my people. Recently I stood in Pierce Street and overheard this conversation: A colored woman was asked, ‘Did you get the place?’ ‘Yes, I got it and started to work, when the lady asked me where I lived, and when I told her she said she could not have any one in her house who came from that street. She said there was too much disease there.’ It remained for that woman to move. With the West ordinance in force, where could she go? We have already a crowded colored population. For her to move out meant for some one else to move in. It affects not only the employed, but the employer, and the only way out is for the man who hires a servant to go to the additional expense of renting or buying a house for his servants in more healthy quarters, which will aggravate the already troublesome help problem.”
The Philadelphia Ledger adds helplessly:
“How the Negro is going to be helped to rise under these circumstances is one of the inscrutable problems of our time and generation. His own unaided efforts are blocked everywhere by caste restrictions and discriminations.”
The New York Globe says:
“The Negro has been told to smile and look pleasant as his political rights have been taken from him. The argument has been that if he did not make a fuss over voting the race prejudice of his white fellow citizen would abate—that he would be given a freer chance to work, to acquire property, to become of material weight in the community. But, North as well as South, doors of industry are being shut against the Negro. The economic tragedy of the educated Negro who aspires to good things is pitiful. He finds either that personal effort and merit do not count, or that they do not count much. In many places it is against the Negro who is not willing to stay down in the mire that antipathy blazes the most brightly. He is the ‘biggotty nigger’.”
Finally the Boston Herald pauses to remark:
“We purchased more than we knew with that first cargo of slaves sold by the Dutch captain to the Virginia planters now almost three hundred years ago.”
GOMPERS.
It seems pretty certain that Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, was to some extent misquoted on the Negro problem. The official version given by Mr. Charles Stetzle is as follows:
“The race problem came up in the convention, but not altogether by the choice of the delegates. President Gompers had given an address on the depressed races, remarking that it could not be expected that the Negro, for instance, could have as high an ideal for himself as the Caucasian. A morning newspaper came out next morning and in big headlines said that Gompers had ‘read the Negro out of the trades union,’ when, as a matter of fact, Gompers meant exactly the opposite. He took occasion to correct the erroneous impression which had been made upon the public. At any rate, he spoke of it at least three different times in public addresses.”
The incident has caused much comment, most of it based on the supposition that union labor is officially drawing the color line. The Chicago Post says:
“The American Federation of Labor has always declared that ‘the working people must unite and organize, irrespective of creed, color, sex, nationality or politics.’ For many years the Federation denied membership to all unions which drew the color line—a stand which kept out, for example, the International Association of Machinists until it eliminated the word ‘white’ from its constitution. Even when the A. F. of L. relented sufficiently to admit several of the railroad brotherhoods which were closed to Negroes, Mr. Gompers was always very robust in his assertion that organized labor welcomed the Negro worker. When the Industrial Commission of 1900 quizzed Mr. Gompers on the race issue, it drew from him some very touching stories of Negro loyalty to the trade union movement. He talked pretty much like an abolitionist up to a few years ago.”
The Chicago Daily News says:
“Mr. Gompers was represented in the original report of his address to have dealt with Negroes and Asiatics as if the problems presented by the two were similar. Everybody should know that they are not.
“The Negroes are native-born American citizens. They know no other land. It is their sincere desire, according to the measure of their abilities, to share in the life of the American people. They are making progress in education and industry. Under these conditions, to deny to Negroes the right to join labor unions when they meet the standards required of white applicants for membership would be clearly un-American.”
The comments of two other papers are characteristic. The Charleston (S. C.) News and Courier is complacent:
“There is no use to palaver about and invent reasons. Everybody who knows anything at all knows that racial antipathy is a real thing, even though intangible. Why beat about the bush and deny it? Aside from the ignorance of the Negro, his many weaknesses, his fatal physiological structure, his extraction prevents his recognition as a social equal, be he in South Africa, America or anywhere else. On that ground his elimination from white unions is a necessity. Concomitant reasons need not be given. They follow in natural sequence.”
The New York Evening Post says, however: