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Title: The Future of the American Negro
Author: Booker T. Washington
Release Date: September 2, 2008 [EBook #26507]
Language: English
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THE FUTURE OF
THE AMERICAN NEGRO
Booker T. Washington
Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
1900
_Copyright, 1899,
By Small, Maynard & Company_
(_Incorporated_)
_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
_First Edition (2,000 copies), November, 1899_
_Second Edition (2,000 copies), February, 1900_
_Press of
George H. Ellis, Boston, U.S.A._
[Illustration: Booker T. Washington.]
PREFACE.
_In giving this volume to the public, I deem it fair to say that I
have yielded to the oft-repeated requests that I put in some more
definite and permanent form the ideas regarding the Negro and his
future which I have expressed many times on the public platform and
through the public press and magazines._
_I make grateful acknowledgment to the "Atlantic Monthly" and
"Appleton's Popular Science Monthly" for their kindness in granting
permission for the use of some part of articles which I have at
various times contributed to their columns._
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
TUSKEGEE NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE,
TUSKEGEE, ALA., October 1, 1899.
CONTENTS.
Chapter I. Page 3
First appearance of Negroes in America--Rapid
increase--Conditions during Civil War--During the reconstruction.
Chapter II. Page 16
Responsibility of the whole country for the Negro--Progress in
the past--Same methods of education do not fit all cases--Proved
in the case of the Southern Negro--Illustrations--Lack of
money--Comparison between outlay for schools North and
South--Duty of North to South.
Chapter III. Page 42
Decadence of Southern plantation--Demoralization of Negroes
natural--No home life before the war--Too much classical
education at the start--Lack of practical training--
Illustrations--The well-trained slaves now dead--Former
plantations as industrial schools--The decayed plantation built
up by a former slave--Misunderstanding of industrial education.
Chapter IV. Page 67
The Negroes' proper use of education--Hayti, Santo Domingo, and
Liberia as illustrations of the lack of practical training--
Present necessity for union of all forces to further
the cause of industrial education--Industrial education not
opposed to the higher education--Results of practical training so
far--Little or no prejudice against capable Negroes in business
in the South--The Negro at first shunned labor as degrading--
Hampton and Tuskegee aim to remove this feeling--The South
does not oppose industrial education for the Negroes--
Address to Tuskegee students setting forth the necessity
of steadfastness of purpose.
Chapter V. Page 106
The author's early life--At Hampton--The inception of the
Tuskegee School in 1881--Its growth--Scope--Size at
present--Expenses--Purposes--Methods--Building of the
chapel--Work of the graduates--Similar schools beginning
throughout the South--Tuskegee Negro Conference--The Workers'
Conference--Tuskegee as a trainer of teachers.
Chapter VI. Page 127
The Negro race in politics--Its patriotic zeal in 1776--In
1814--In the Civil War--In the Spanish War--Politics attempted
too soon after freedom--Poor leaders--Two parties in the South,
the blacks' and the whites'--Not necessarily opposed in
interests--The Negro should give up no rights--The same tests for
the restriction of the franchise should be applied alike to both
blacks and whites--This is not the case--Education and the
franchise--The whites must help the blacks to pure votes--Rioting
and lynching only to be stopped by mutual confidence.
Chapter VII. Page 157
Difficulty of fusion--Africa impossible as a refuge because
already completely claimed by other nations--Comparison of Negro
race with white--Physical condition of the Negro--Present lack of
ability to organize--Weaknesses--Ability to work--Trustworthiness
Desire to rise--Obstructions put in the way of Negroes'
advancement--Results of oppression--Necessity for encouragement
and self-respect--Comparison of Negroes' position and that
of the Jews--Lynching--Non-interference of the North--
Increase of lynching--Statistics of numbers, races, places,
causes of violence--Uselessness of lynching in preventing
crime--Fairness in carrying out the laws--Increase of crime among
the Negroes--Reason for it--Responsibility of both races.
Chapter VIII. Page 200
Population--Emigration to the North--Morality North and
South--Dangers: 1. incendiary advice; 2. mob violence; 3.
discouragement; 4. newspaper exaggeration; 5. lack of education;
6. bad legislation--Negroes must identify with best interests of
the South--Unwise missionary work--Wise missionary work--
Opportunity for industrial education--The good standing of
business-educated Negroes in the South--Religion and
morality--Justice and appreciation coming for the Negro
race as it proves itself worthy.
CHAPTER I.
In this volume I shall not attempt to give the origin and history of
the Negro race either in Africa or in America. My attempt is to deal
only with conditions that now exist and bear a relation to the Negro
in America and that are likely to exist in the future. In discussing
the Negro, it is always to be borne in mind that, unlike all the other
inhabitants of America, he came here without his own consent; in fact,
was compelled to leave his own country and become a part of another
through physical force. It should also be borne in mind, in our
efforts to change and improve the present condition of the Negro, that
we are dealing with a race which had little necessity to labour in its
native country. After being brought to America, the Negroes were
forced to labour for about 250 years under circumstances which were
calculated not to inspire them with love and respect for labour. This
constitutes a part of the reason why I insist that it is necessary to
emphasise the matter of industrial education as a means of giving the
black man the foundation of a civilisation upon which he will grow and
prosper. When I speak of industrial education, however, I wish it
always understood that I mean, as did General Armstrong, the founder
of the Hampton Institute, for thorough academic and religious training
to go side by side with industrial training. Mere training of the hand
without the culture of brain and heart would mean little.
The first slaves were brought into this country by the Dutch in 1619,
and were landed at Jamestown, Virginia. The first cargo consisted of
twenty. The census taken in 1890 shows that these twenty slaves had
increased to 7,638,360. About 6,353,341 of this number were residing
in the Southern States, and 1,283,029 were scattered throughout the
Northern and Western States. I think I am pretty safe in predicting
that the census to be taken in 1900 will show that there are not far
from ten millions of people of African descent in the United States.
The great majority of these, of course, reside in the Southern States.
The problem is how to make these millions of Negroes self-supporting,
intelligent, economical and valuable citizens, as well as how to bring
about proper relations between them and the white citizens among whom
they live. This is the question upon which I shall try to throw some
light in the chapters which follow.
When the Negroes were first brought to America, they were owned by
white people in all sections of this country, as is well known,--in
the New England, the Middle, and in the Southern States. It was soon
found, however, that slave labour was not remunerative in the Northern
States, and for that reason by far the greater proportion of the
slaves were held in the Southern States, where their labour in raising
cotton, rice, and sugar-cane was more productive. The growth of the
slave population in America was constant and rapid. Beginning, as I
have stated, with fourteen, in 1619, the number increased at such a
rate that the total number of Negroes in America in 1800 was
1,001,463. This number increased by 1860 to 3,950,000. A few people
predicted that freedom would result disastrously to the Negro, as far
as numerical increase was concerned; but so far the census figures
have failed to bear out this prediction. On the other hand, the census
of 1890 shows that the Negro population had increased from 3,950,000
in 1860 to 7,638,260 twenty-five years after the war. It is my opinion
that the rate of increase in the future will be still greater than it
has been from the close of the war of the Rebellion up to the present
time, for the reason that the very sudden changes which took place in
the life of the Negro, because of having his freedom, plunged him into
many excesses that were detrimental to his physical well-being. Of
course, freedom found him unprepared in clothing, in shelter and in
knowledge of how to care for his body. During slavery the slave mother
had little control of her own children, and did not therefore have the
practice and experience of rearing children in a suitable manner. Now
that the Negro is being taught in thousands of schools how to take
care of his body, and in thousands of homes mothers are learning how
to control their children, I believe that the rate of increase, as I
have stated, will be still greater than it has been in the past. In
too many cases the Negro had the idea that freedom meant merely
license to do as he pleased, to work or not to work; but this
erroneous idea is more and more disappearing, by reason of the
education in the right direction which the Negro is constantly
receiving.
During the four years that the Civil War lasted, the greater
proportion of the Negroes remained in the South, and worked faithfully
for the support of their masters' families, who, as a general rule,
were away in the war. The self-control which the Negro exhibited
during the war marks, it seems to me, one of the most important
chapters in the history of the race. Notwithstanding he knew that his
master was away from home, fighting a battle which, if successful,
would result in his continued enslavement, yet he worked faithfully
for the support of the master's family. If the Negro had yielded to
the temptation and suggestion to use the torch or dagger in an attempt
to destroy his master's property and family, the result would have
been that the war would have been ended quickly; for the master would
have returned from the battlefield to protect and defend his property
and family. But the Negro to the last was faithful to the trust that
had been thrust upon him, and during the four years of war in which
the male members of the family were absent from their homes there is
not a single instance recorded where he in any way attempted to
outrage the family of the master or in any way to injure his property.
Not only is this true, but all through the years of preparation for
the war and during the war itself the Negro showed himself to be an
uncompromising friend to the Union. In fact, of all the charges
brought against him, there is scarcely a single instance where one has
been charged with being a traitor to his country. This has been true
whether he has been in a state of slavery or in a state of freedom.
From 1865 to 1876 constituted what perhaps may be termed the days of
Reconstruction. This was the period when the Southern States which had
withdrawn from the Union were making an effort to reinstate themselves
and to establish a permanent system of State government. At the close
of the war both the Southern white man and the Negro found themselves
in the midst of poverty. The ex-master returned from the war to find
his slave property gone, his farms and other industries in a state of
collapse, and the whole industrial or economic system upon which he
had depended for years entirely disorganised. As we review calmly and
dispassionately the period of reconstruction, we must use a great deal
of sympathy and generosity. The weak point, to my mind, in the
reconstruction era was that no strong force was brought to bear in
the direction of preparing the Negro to become an intelligent,
reliable citizen and voter. The main effort seems to have been in the
direction of controlling his vote for the time being, regardless of
future interests. I hardly believe that any race of people with
similar preparation and similar surroundings would have acted more
wisely or very differently from the way the Negro acted during the
period of reconstruction.
Without experience, without preparation, and in most cases without
ordinary intelligence, he was encouraged to leave the field and shop
and enter politics. That under such circumstances he should have made
mistakes is very natural. I do not believe that the Negro was so much
at fault for entering so largely into politics, and for the mistakes
that were made in too many cases, as were the unscrupulous white
leaders who got the Negro's confidence and controlled his vote to
further their own ends, regardless, in many cases, of the permanent
welfare of the Negro. I have always considered it unfortunate that the
Southern white man did not make more of an effort during the period of
reconstruction to get the confidence and sympathy of the Negro, and
thus have been able to keep him in close touch and sympathy in
politics. It was also unfortunate that the Negro was so completely
alienated from the Southern white man in all political matters. I
think it would have been better for all concerned if, immediately
after the close of the war, an educational and property qualification
for the exercise of the franchise had been prescribed that would have
applied fairly and squarely to both races, and, also, if, in educating
the Negro, greater stress had been put upon training him along the
lines of industry for which his services were in the greatest demand
in the South. In a word, too much stress was placed upon the mere
matter of voting and holding political office rather than upon the
preparation for the highest citizenship. In saying what I have, I do
not mean to convey the impression that the whole period of
reconstruction was barren of fruitful results. While it is not a very
encouraging chapter in the history of our country, I believe that this
period did serve to point out many weak points in our effort to
elevate the Negro, and that we are now taking advantage of the
mistakes that were made. The period of reconstruction served at least
to show the world that with proper preparation and with a sufficient
foundation the Negro possesses the elements out of which men of the
highest character and usefulness can be developed. I might name
several characters who were brought before the world by reason of the
reconstruction period. I give one as an example of others: Hon.
Blanche K. Bruce, who had been a slave, but who held many honourable
positions in the State of Mississippi, including an election to the
United States Senate, where he served a full term; later he was twice
appointed Register of the United States Treasury. In all these
positions Mr. Bruce gave the greatest satisfaction, and not a single
whisper of dishonesty or incompetency has ever been heard against him.
During the period of his public life he was brought into active and
daily contact with Northern and Southern white people, all of whom
speak of him in the highest measure of respect and confidence.
What the Negro wants and what the country wants to do is to take
advantage of all the lessons that were taught during the days of
reconstruction, and apply these lessons bravely, honestly, in laying
the foundation upon which the Negro can stand in the future and make
himself a useful, honourable, and desirable citizen, whether he has
his residence in the North, the South, or the West.
CHAPTER II.
In order that the reader may understand me and why I lay so much
stress upon the importance of pushing the doctrine of industrial
education for the Negro, it is necessary, first of all, to review the
condition of affairs at the present time in the Southern States. For
years I have had something of an opportunity to study the Negro at
first-hand; and I feel that I know him pretty well,--him and his
needs, his failures and his successes, his desires and the likelihood
of their fulfilment. I have studied him and his relations with his
white neighbours, and striven to find how these relations may be made
more conducive to the general peace and welfare both of the South and
of the country at large.
In the Southern part of the United States there are twenty-two
millions of people who are bound to the fifty millions of the North by
ties which neither can tear asunder if they would. The most
intelligent in a New York community has his intelligence darkened by
the ignorance of a fellow-citizen in the Mississippi bottoms. The most
wealthy in New York City would be more wealthy but for the poverty of
a fellow-being in the Carolina rice swamps. The most moral and
religious men in Massachusetts have their religion and morality
modified by the degradation of the man in the South whose religion is
a mere matter of form or of emotionalism. The vote of the man in Maine
that is cast for the highest and purest form of government is largely
neutralised by the vote of the man in Louisiana whose ballot is stolen
or cast in ignorance. Therefore, when the South is ignorant, the North
is ignorant; when the South is poor, the North is poor; when the South
commits crime, the nation commits crime. For the citizens of the North
there is no escape; they must help raise the character of the
civilisation in the South, or theirs will be lowered. No member of the
white race in any part of the country can harm the weakest or meanest
member of the black race without the proudest and bluest blood of the
nation being degraded.
It seems to me that there never was a time in the history of the
country when those interested in education should the more earnestly
consider to what extent the mere acquiring of the ability to read and
write, the mere acquisition of a knowledge of literature and science,
makes men producers, lovers of labour, independent, honest, unselfish,
and, above all, good. Call education by what name you please, if it
fails to bring about these results among the masses, it falls short of
its highest end. The science, the art, the literature, that fails to
reach down and bring the humblest up to the enjoyment of the fullest
blessings of our government, is weak, no matter how costly the
buildings or apparatus used or how modern the methods of instruction
employed. The study of arithmetic that does not result in making men
conscientious in receiving and counting the ballots of their
fellow-men is faulty. The study of art that does not result in making
the strong less willing to oppress the weak means little. How I wish
that from the most cultured and highly endowed university in the great
North to the humblest log cabin school-house in Alabama, we could
burn, as it were, into the hearts and heads of all that usefulness,
that service to our brother, is the supreme end of education. Putting
the thought more directly as it applies to conditions in the South,
can you make the intelligence of the North affect the South in the
same ratio that the ignorance of the South affects the North? Let us
take a not improbable case: A great national case is to be decided,
one that involves peace or war, the honour or dishonour of our
nation,--yea, the very existence of the government. The North and West
are divided. There are five million votes to be cast in the South;
and, of this number, one-half are ignorant. Not only are one-half the
voters ignorant; but, because of the ignorant votes they cast,
corruption and dishonesty in a dozen forms have crept into the
exercise of the political franchise to such an extent that the
conscience of the intelligent class is seared in its attempts to
defeat the will of the ignorant voters. Here, then, you have on the
one hand an ignorant vote, on the other an intelligent vote minus a
conscience. The time may not be far off when to this kind of jury we
shall have to look for the votes which shall decide in a large measure
the destiny of our democratic institutions.
When a great national calamity stares us in the face, we are, I fear,
too much given to depending on a short "campaign of education" to do
on the hustings what should have been accomplished in the school.
With this idea in view, let us examine with more care the condition of
civilisation in the South, and the work to be done there before all
classes will be fit for the high duties of citizenship. In reference
to the Negro race, I am confronted with some embarrassment at the
outset, because of the various and conflicting opinions as to what is
to be its final place in our economic and political life.
Within the last thirty years--and, I might add, within the last three
months,--it has been proven by eminent authority that the Negro is
increasing in numbers so fast that it is only a question of a few
years before he will far outnumber the white race in the South, and it
has also been proven that the Negro is fast dying out, and it is only
a question of a few years before he will have completely disappeared.
It has also been proven that education helps the Negro and that
education hurts him, that he is fast leaving the South and taking up
his residence in the North and West, and that his tendency is to drift
toward the low lands of the Mississippi bottoms. It has been proven
that education unfits the Negro for work and that education makes him
more valuable as a labourer, that he is our greatest criminal and that
he is our most law-abiding citizen. In the midst of these conflicting
opinions, it is hard to hit upon the truth.
But, also, in the midst of this confusion, there are a few things of
which I am certain,--things which furnish a basis for thought and
action. I know that whether the Negroes are increasing or decreasing,
whether they are growing better or worse, whether they are valuable
or valueless, that a few years ago some fourteen of them were brought
into this country, and that now those fourteen are nearly ten
millions. I know that, whether in slavery or freedom, they have always
been loyal to the Stars and Stripes, that no school-house has been
opened for them that has not been filled, that the 2,000,000 ballots
that they have the right to cast are as potent for weal or woe as an
equal number cast by the wisest and most influential men in America. I
know that wherever Negro life touches the life of the nation it helps
or it hinders, that wherever the life of the white race touches the
black it makes it stronger or weaker. Further, I know that almost
every other race that has tried to look the white man in the face has
disappeared. I know, despite all the conflicting opinions, and with a
full knowledge of all the Negroes' weaknesses, that only a few
centuries ago they went into slavery in this country pagans, that
they came out Christians; they went into slavery as so much property,
they came out American citizens; they went into slavery without a
language, they came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue; they
went into slavery with the chains clanking about their wrists, they
came out with the American ballot in their hands.
I submit it to the candid and sober judgment of all men, if a race
that is capable of such a test, such a transformation, is not worth
saving and making a part, in reality as well as in name, of our
democratic government. That the Negro may be fitted for the fullest
enjoyment of the privileges and responsibilities of our citizenship,
it is important that the nation be honest and candid with him, whether
honesty and candour for the time being pleases or displeases him. It
is with an ignorant race as it is with a child: it craves at first
the superficial, the ornamental signs of progress rather than the
reality. The ignorant race is tempted to jump, at one bound, to the
position that it has required years of hard struggle for others to
reach.
It seems to me that, as a general thing, the temptation in the past in
educational and missionary work has been to do for the new people that
which was done a thousand years ago, or that which is being done for a
people a thousand miles away, without making a careful study of the
needs and conditions of the people whom it is designed to help. The
temptation is to run all people through a certain educational mould,
regardless of the condition of the subject or the end to be
accomplished. This has been the case too often in the South in the
past, I am sure. Men have tried to use, with these simple people just
freed from slavery and with no past, no inherited traditions of
learning, the same methods of education which they have used in New
England, with all its inherited traditions and desires. The Negro is
behind the white man because he has not had the same chance, and not
from any inherent difference in his nature and desires. What the race
accomplishes in these first fifty years of freedom will at the end of
these years, in a large measure, constitute its past. It is, indeed, a
responsibility that rests upon this nation,--the foundation laying for
a people of its past, present, and future at one and the same time.
One of the weakest points in connection with the present development
of the race is that so many get the idea that the mere filling of the
head with a knowledge of mathematics, the sciences, and literature,
means success in life. Let it be understood, in every corner of the
South, among the Negro youth at least, that knowledge will benefit
little except as it is harnessed, except as its power is pointed in a
direction that will bear upon the present needs and condition of the
race. There is in the heads of the Negro youth of the South enough
general and floating knowledge of chemistry, of botany, of zoölogy, of
geology, of mechanics, of electricity, of mathematics, to reconstruct
and develop a large part of the agricultural, mechanical, and domestic
life of the race. But how much of it is brought to a focus along lines
of practical work? In cities of the South like Atlanta, how many
coloured mechanical engineers are there? or how many machinists? how
many civil engineers? how many architects? how many house decorators?
In the whole State of Georgia, where eighty per cent. of the coloured
people depend upon agriculture, how many men are there who are well
grounded in the principles and practices of scientific farming? or
dairy work? or fruit culture? or floriculture?
For example, not very long ago I had a conversation with a young
coloured man who is a graduate of one of the prominent universities of
this country. The father of this man is comparatively ignorant, but by
hard work and the exercise of common sense he has become the owner of
two thousand acres of land. He owns more than a score of horses, cows,
and mules and swine in large numbers, and is considered a prosperous
farmer. In college the son of this farmer has studied chemistry,
botany, zoölogy, surveying, and political economy. In my conversation
I asked this young man how many acres his father cultivated in cotton
and how many in corn. With a far-off gaze up into the heavens he
answered that he did not know. When I asked him the classification of
the soils on his father's farm, he did not know. He did not know how
many horses or cows his father owned nor of what breeds they were, and
seemed surprised that he should be asked such questions. It never
seemed to have entered his mind that on his father's farm was the
place to make his chemistry, his mathematics, and his literature
penetrate and reflect itself in every acre of land, every bushel of
corn, every cow, and every pig.
Let me give other examples of this mistaken sort of education. When a
mere boy, I saw a young coloured man, who had spent several years in
school, sitting in a common cabin in the South, studying a French
grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness, the want of system and
thrift, that existed about the cabin, notwithstanding his knowledge of
French and other academic studies.
Again, not long ago I saw a coloured minister preparing his Sunday
sermon just as the New England minister prepares his sermon. But this
coloured minister was in a broken-down, leaky, rented log cabin, with
weeds in the yard, surrounded by evidences of poverty, filth, and
want of thrift. This minister had spent some time in school studying
theology. How much better it would have been to have had this minister
taught the dignity of labour, taught theoretical and practical farming
in connection with his theology, so that he could have added to his
meagre salary, and set an example for his people in the matter of
living in a decent house, and having a knowledge of correct farming!
In a word, this minister should have been taught that his condition,
and that of his people, was not that of a New England community; and
he should have been so trained as to meet the actual needs and
conditions of the coloured people in this community, so that a
foundation might be laid that would, in the future, make a community
like New England communities.
Since the Civil War, no one object has been more misunderstood than
that of the object and value of industrial education for the Negro.
To begin with, it must be borne in mind that the condition that
existed in the South immediately after the war, and that now exists,
is a peculiar one, without a parallel in history. This being true, it
seems to me that the wise and honest thing to do is to make a study of
the actual condition and environment of the Negro, and do that which
is best for him, regardless of whether the same thing has been done
for another race in exactly the same way. There are those among the
white race and those among the black race who assert, with a good deal
of earnestness, that there is no difference between the white man and
the black man in this country. This sounds very pleasant and tickles
the fancy; but, when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to it, it
must be acknowledged that there is a difference,--not an inherent one,
not a racial one, but a difference growing out of unequal
opportunities in the past.
If I may be permitted to criticise the educational work that has been
done in the South, I would say that the weak point has been in the
failure to recognise this difference.
Negro education, immediately after the war in most cases, was begun
too nearly at the point where New England education had ended. Let me
illustrate. One of the saddest sights I ever saw was the placing of a
three hundred dollar rosewood piano in a country school in the South
that was located in the midst of the "Black Belt." Am I arguing
against the teaching of instrumental music to the Negroes in that
community? Not at all; only I should have deferred those music lessons
about twenty-five years. There are numbers of such pianos in thousands
of New England homes. But behind the piano in the New England home
there are one hundred years of toil, sacrifice, and economy; there is
the small manufacturing industry, started several years ago by hand
power, now grown into a great business; there is ownership in land, a
comfortable home, free from debt, and a bank account. In this "Black
Belt" community where this piano went, four-fifths of the people owned
no land, many lived in rented one-room cabins, many were in debt for
food supplies, many mortgaged their crops for the food on which to
live, and not one had a bank account. In this case, how much wiser it
would have been to have taught the girls in this community sewing,
intelligent and economical cooking, housekeeping, something of
dairying and horticulture? The boys should have been taught something
of farming in connection with their common-school education, instead
of awakening in them a desire for a musical instrument which resulted
in their parents going into debt for a third-rate piano or organ
before a home was purchased. Industrial lessons would have awakened,
in this community, a desire for homes, and would have given the people
the ability to free themselves from industrial slavery to the extent
that most of them would have soon purchased homes. After the home and
the necessaries of life were supplied could come the piano. One piano
lesson in a home of one's own is worth twenty in a rented log cabin.
All that I have just written, and the various examples illustrating
it, show the present helpless condition of my people in the
South,--how fearfully they lack the primary training for good living
and good citizenship, how much they stand in need of a solid
foundation on which to build their future success. I believe, as I
have many times said in my various addresses in the North and in the
South, that the main reason for the existence of this curious state
of affairs is the lack of practical training in the ways of life.
There is, too, a great lack of money with which to carry on the
educational work in the South. I was in a county in a Southern State
not long ago where there are some thirty thousand coloured people and
about seven thousand whites. In this county not a single public school
for Negroes had been open that year longer than three months, not a
single coloured teacher had been paid more than $15 per month for his
teaching. Not one of these schools was taught in a building that was
worthy of the name of school-house. In this county the State or public
authorities do not own a single dollar's worth of school
property,--not a school-house, a blackboard, or a piece of crayon.
Each coloured child had had spent on him that year for his education
about fifty cents, while each child in New York or Massachusetts had
had spent on him that year for education not far from $20. And yet
each citizen of this county is expected to share the burdens and
privileges of our democratic form of government just as intelligently
and conscientiously as the citizens of New York or Boston. A vote in
this county means as much to the nation as a vote in the city of
Boston. Crime in this county is as truly an arrow aimed at the heart
of the government as a crime committed in the streets of Boston.
A single school-house built this year in a town near Boston to shelter
about three hundred pupils cost more for building alone than is spent
yearly for the education, including buildings, apparatus, teachers,
for the whole coloured school population of Alabama. The Commissioner
of Education for the State of Georgia not long ago reported to the
State legislature that in that State there were two hundred thousand
children that had entered no school the year past and one hundred
thousand more who were at school but a few days, making practically
three hundred thousand children between six and eighteen years of age
that are growing up in ignorance in one Southern State alone. The same
report stated that outside of the cities and towns, while the average
number of school-houses in a county was sixty, all of these sixty
school-houses were worth in lump less than $2,000, and the report
further added that many of the school-houses in Georgia were not fit
for horse stables. I am glad to say, however, that vast improvement
over this condition is being made in Georgia under the inspired
leadership of State Commissioner Glenn, and in Alabama under the no
less zealous leadership of Commissioner Abercrombie.
These illustrations, so far as they concern the Gulf States, are not
exceptional cases; nor are they overdrawn.
Until there is industrial independence, it is hardly possible to have
good living and a pure ballot in the country districts. In these
States it is safe to say that not more than one black man in twenty
owns the land he cultivates. Where so large a proportion of a people
are dependent, live in other people's houses, eat other people's food,
and wear clothes they have not paid for, it is pretty hard to expect
them to live fairly and vote honestly.
I have thus far referred mainly to the Negro race. But there is
another side. The longer I live and the more I study the question, the
more I am convinced that it is not so much a problem as to what the
white man will do with the Negro as what the Negro will do with the
white man and his civilisation. In considering this side of the
subject, I thank God that I have grown to the point where I can
sympathise with a white man as much as I can sympathise with a black
man. I have grown to the point where I can sympathise with a Southern
white man as much as I can sympathise with a Northern white man.
As bearing upon the future of our civilisation, I ask of the North
what of their white brethren in the South,--those who have suffered
and are still suffering the consequences of American slavery, for
which both North and South were responsible? Those of the great and
prosperous North still owe to their less fortunate brethren of the
Caucasian race in the South, not less than to themselves, a serious
and uncompleted duty. What was the task the North asked the South to
perform? Returning to their destitute homes after years of war to face
blasted hopes, devastation, a shattered industrial system, they asked
them to add to their own burdens that of preparing in education,
politics, and economics, in a few short years, for citizenship, four
millions of former slaves. That the South, staggering under the
burden, made blunders, and that in a measure there has been
disappointment, no one need be surprised. The educators, the
statesmen, the philanthropists, have imperfectly comprehended their
duty toward the millions of poor whites in the South who were buffeted
for two hundred years between slavery and freedom, between
civilisation and degradation, who were disregarded by both master and
slave. It needs no prophet to tell the character of our future
civilisation when the poor white boy in the country districts of the
South receives one dollar's worth of education and the boy of the same
class in the North twenty dollars' worth, when one never enters a
reading-room or library and the other has reading-rooms and libraries
in every ward and town, when one hears lectures and sermons once in
two months and the other can hear a lecture or a sermon every day in
the year.
The time has come, it seems to me, when in this matter we should rise
above party or race or sectionalism into the region of duty of man to
man, of citizen to citizen, of Christian to Christian; and if the
Negro, who has been oppressed and denied his rights in a Christian
land, can help the whites of the North and South to rise, can be the
inspiration of their rising, into this atmosphere of generous
Christian brotherhood and self-forgetfulness, he will see in it a
recompense for all that he has suffered in the past.
CHAPTER III.
In the heart of the Black Belt of the South in _ante-bellum_ days
there was a large estate, with palatial mansion, surrounded by a
beautiful grove, in which grew flowers and shrubbery of every
description. Magnificent specimens of animal life grazed in the
fields, and in grain and all manner of plant growth this estate was a
model. In a word, it was the highest type of the product of slave
labor.
Then came the long years of war, then freedom, then the trying years
of reconstruction. The master returned from the war to find the
faithful slaves who had been the bulwark of this household in
possession of their freedom. Then there began that social and
industrial revolution in the South which it is hard for any who was
not really a part of it to appreciate or understand. Gradually, day by
day, this ex-master began to realise, with a feeling almost
indescribable, to what an extent he and his family had grown to be
dependent upon the activity and faithfulness of his slaves; began to
appreciate to what an extent slavery had sapped his sinews of strength
and independence, how his dependence upon slave labour had deprived
him and his offspring of the benefit of technical and industrial
training, and, worst of all, had unconsciously led him to see in
labour drudgery and degradation instead of beauty, dignity, and
civilising power. At first there was a halt in this man's life. He
cursed the North and he cursed the Negro. Then there was despair,
almost utter hopelessness, over his weak and childlike condition. The
temptation was to forget all in drink, and to this temptation there
was a gradual yielding. With the loss of physical vigour came the loss
of mental grasp and pride in surroundings. There was the falling off
of a piece of plaster from the walls of the house which was not
replaced, then another and still another. Gradually, the window-panes
began to disappear, then the door-knobs. Touches of paint and
whitewash, which once helped to give life, were no more to be seen.
The hinges disappeared from the gate, then a board from the fence,
then others in quick succession. Weeds and unmown grass covered the
once well-kept lawn. Sometimes there were servants for domestic
duties, and sometimes there were none. In the absence of servants the
unsatisfactory condition of the food told that it was being prepared
by hands unschooled to such duties. As the years passed by, debts
accumulated in every direction. The education of the children was
neglected. Lower and lower sank the industrial, financial, and
spiritual condition of the household. For the first time the awful
truth of Scripture, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap," seemed to dawn upon him with a reality that it is hard for
mortal to appreciate. Within a few months the whole mistake of slavery
seemed to have concentrated itself upon this household. And this was
one of many.
We have seen how the ending of slavery and the beginning of freedom
produced not only a shock, but a stand-still, and in many cases a
collapse, that lasted several years in the life of many white men. If
the sudden change thus affected the white man, should this not teach
us that we should have more sympathy than has been shown in many cases
with the Negro in connection with his new and changed life? That they
made many mistakes, plunged into excesses, undertook responsibilities
for which they were not fitted, in many cases took liberty to mean
license, is not to be wondered at. It is my opinion that the next
forty years are going to show by many per cent. a higher degree of
progress in the life of the Negro along all lines than has been shown
during the first thirty years of his life. Certainly, the first thirty
years of the Negro's life was one of experiment; and consequently,
under such conditions, he was not able to settle down to real,
earnest, hard common sense efforts to better his condition. While this
was true in a great many cases, on the other hand a large proportion
of the race, even from the first, saw what was needed for their new
life, and began to settle down to lead an industrious, frugal
existence, and to educate their children and in every way prepare
themselves for the responsibilities of American citizenship.
The wonder is that the Negro has made as few mistakes as he has, when
we consider all the surrounding circumstances. Columns of figures have
been gleaned from the census reports within the last quarter of a
century to show the great amount of crime committed by the Negro in
excess of that committed by other races. No one will deny the fact
that the proportion of crime by the present generation of Negroes is
seriously large, but I believe that any other race with the Negro's
history and present environment would have shown about the same
criminal record.
Another consideration which we must always bear in mind in considering
the Negro is that he had practically no home life in slavery; that is,
the mother and father did not have the responsibility, and
consequently the experience, of training their own children. The
matter of child training was left to the master and mistress.
Consequently, it has only been within the last thirty years that the
Negro parents have had the actual responsibility and experience of
training their own children. That they have made some mistakes in
thus training them is not to be wondered at. Many families scattered
over all parts of the United States have not yet been able to bring
themselves together. When the Negro parents shall have had thirty or
forty additional years in which to found homes and get experience in
the training of their children, I believe that we will find that the
amount of crime will be considerably less than it is now shown to be.
In too large a measure the Negro race began its development at the
wrong end, simply because neither white nor black understood the case;
and no wonder, for there had never been such a case in the history of
the world.
To show where this primary mistake has led in its evil results, I wish
to produce some examples showing plainly how prone we have been to
make our education formal, superficial, instead of making it meet the
needs of conditions.
In order to emphasise the matter more fully, I repeat, at least eighty
per cent. of the coloured people in the South are found in the rural
districts, and they are dependent on agriculture in some form for
their support. Notwithstanding that we have practically a whole race
dependent upon agriculture, and notwithstanding that thirty years have
passed since our freedom, aside from what has been done at Hampton and
Tuskegee and one or two other institutions, but very little has been
attempted by State or philanthropy in the way of educating the race in
this one industry upon which its very existence depends. Boys have
been taken from the farms and educated in law, theology, Hebrew and
Greek,--educated in everything else except the very subject that they
should know most about. I question whether among all the educated
coloured people in the United States you can find six, if we except
those from the institutions named, who have received anything like a
thorough training in agriculture. It would have seemed that, since
self-support, industrial independence, is the first condition for
lifting up any race, that education in theoretical and practical
agriculture, horticulture, dairying, and stock-raising, should have
occupied the first place in our system.
Some time ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our
training at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was
almost impossible to find in the whole country an educated coloured
man who could teach the making of clothing. We could find them by the
score who could teach astronomy, theology, grammar, or Latin, but
almost none who could instruct in the making of clothing, something
that has to be used by every one of us every day in the year. How
often has my heart been made to sink as I have gone through the South
and into the homes of people, and found women who could converse
intelligently on Grecian history, who had studied geometry, could
analyse the most complex sentences, and yet could not analyse the
poorly cooked and still more poorly served corn bread and fat meat
that they and their families were eating three times a day! It is
little trouble to find girls who can locate Pekin or the Desert of
Sahara on an artificial globe, but seldom can you find one who can
locate on an actual dinner table the proper place for the carving
knife and fork or the meat and vegetables.
A short time ago, in one of the Southern cities, a coloured man died
who had received training as a skilled mechanic during the days of
slavery. Later by his skill and industry he built up a great business
as a house contractor and builder. In this same city there are 35,000
coloured people, among them young men who have been well educated in
the languages and in literature; but not a single one could be found
who had been so trained in mechanical and architectural drawing that
he could carry on the business which this ex-slave had built up, and
so it was soon scattered to the wind. Aside from the work done in the
institutions that I have mentioned, you can find almost no coloured
men who have been trained in the principles of architecture,
notwithstanding the fact that a vast majority of our race are without
homes. Here, then, are the three prime conditions for growth, for
civilisation,--food, clothing, shelter; and yet we have been the
slaves of forms and customs to such an extent that we have failed in a
large measure to look matters squarely in the face and meet actual
needs.
It may well be asked by one who has not carefully considered the
matter: "What has become of all those skilled farm-hands that used to
be on the old plantations? Where are those wonderful cooks we hear
about, where those exquisitely trained house servants, those cabinet
makers, and the jacks-of-all-trades that were the pride of the South?"
This is easily answered,--they are mostly dead. The survivors are too
old to work. "But did they not train their children?" is the natural
question. Alas! the answer is "no." Their skill was so commonplace to
them, and to their former masters, that neither thought of it as being
a hard-earned or desirable accomplishment: it was natural, like
breathing. Their children would have it as a matter of course. What
their children needed was education. So they went out into the world,
the ambitious ones, and got education, and forgot the necessity of the
ordinary training to live.
God for two hundred and fifty years, in my opinion, prepared the way
for the redemption of the Negro through industrial development.
First, he made the Southern white man do business with the Negro for
two hundred and fifty years in a way that no one else has done
business with him. If a Southern white man wanted a house or a bridge
built, he consulted a Negro mechanic about the plan and about the
actual building of the house or bridge. If he wanted a suit of clothes
or a pair of shoes made, it was to the Negro tailor or shoemaker that
he talked. Secondly, every large slave plantation in the South was, in
a limited sense, an industrial school. On these plantations there were
scores of young coloured men and women who were constantly being
trained, not alone as common farmers, but as carpenters, blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, plasterers, brick masons, engineers, bridge-builders,
cooks, dressmakers, housekeepers, etc. I would be the last to
apologise for the curse of slavery; but I am simply stating facts.
This training was crude and was given for selfish purposes, and did
not answer the highest ends, because there was the absence of brain
training in connection with that of the hand. Nevertheless, this
business contact with the Southern white man, and the industrial
training received on these plantations, put the Negro at the close of
the war into possession of all the common and skilled labour in the
South. For nearly twenty years after the war, except in one or two
cases, the value of the industrial training given by the Negroes'
former masters on the plantations and elsewhere was overlooked. Negro
men and women were educated in literature, mathematics, and the
sciences, with no thought of what had taken place on these plantations
for two and a half centuries. After twenty years, those who were
trained as mechanics, etc., during slavery began to disappear by
death; and gradually we awoke to the fact that we had no one to take
their places. We had scores of young men learned in Greek, but few in
carpentry or mechanical or architectural drawing. We had trained many
in Latin, but almost none as engineers, bridge-builders, and
machinists. Numbers were taken from the farm and educated, but were
educated in everything else except agriculture. Hence they had no
sympathy with farm life, and did not return to it.
This last that I have been saying is practically a repetition of what
I have said in the preceding paragraph; but, to emphasise it,--and
this point is one of the most important I wish to impress on the
reader,--it is well to repeat, to say the same thing twice. Oh, if
only more who had the shaping of the education of the Negro could
have, thirty years ago, realised, and made others realise, where the
forgetting of the years of manual training and the sudden acquiring
of education were going to lead the Negro race, what a saving it would
have been! How much less my race would have had to answer for, as well
as the white!
But it is too late to cry over what might have been. It is time to
make up, as soon as possible, for this mistake,--time for both races
to acknowledge it, and go forth on the course that, it seems to me,
all must now see to be the right one,--industrial education.
As an example of what a well-trained and educated Negro may now do,
and how ready to acknowledge him a Southern white man may be, let me
return once more to the plantation I spoke of in the first part of
this chapter. As the years went by, the night seemed to grow darker,
so that all seemed hopeless and lost. At this point relief and
strength came from an unexpected source. This Southern white man's
idea of Negro education had been that it merely meant a parrot-like
absorption of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, with a special tendency to
imitate the weaker elements of the white man's character; that it
meant merely the high hat, kid gloves, a showy walking cane, patent
leather shoes, and all the rest of it. To this ex-master it seemed
impossible that the education of the Negro could produce any other
results. And so, last of all, did he expect help or encouragement from
an educated black man; but it was just from this source that help
came. Soon after the process of decay began in this white man's
estate, the education of a certain black man began, and began on a
logical, sensible basis. It was an education that would fit him to see
and appreciate the physical and moral conditions that existed in his
own family and neighbourhood, and, in the present generation, would
fit him to apply himself to their relief. By chance this educated
Negro strayed into the employ of this white man. His employer soon
learned that this Negro not only had a knowledge of science,
mathematics, and literature in his head, but in his hands as well.
This black man applied his knowledge of agricultural chemistry to the
redemption of the soil; and soon the washes and gulleys began to
disappear, and the waste places began to bloom. New and improved
machinery in a few months began to rob labour of its toil and
drudgery. The animals were given systematic and kindly attention.
Fences were repaired and rebuilt. Whitewash and paint were made to do
duty. Everywhere order slowly began to replace confusion; hope,
despair; and profits, losses. As he observed, day by day, new life and
strength being imparted to every department of his property, this
white son of the South began revising his own creed regarding the
wisdom of educating Negroes.
Hitherto his creed regarding the value of an educated Negro had been
rather a plain and simple one, and read: "The only end that could be
accomplished by educating a black man was to enable him to talk
properly to a mule; and the Negro's education did great injustice to
the mule, since the language tended to confuse him and make him
balky."
We need not continue the story, except to add that to-day the grasp of
the hand of this ex-slaveholder, and the listening to his hearty words
of gratitude and commendation for the education of the Negro, are
enough to compensate those who have given and those who have worked
and sacrificed for the elevation of my people through all of these
years. If we are patient, wise, unselfish, and courageous, such
examples will multiply as the years go by.
Before closing this chapter,--which, I think, has clearly shown that
there is at present a very distinct lack of industrial training in
the South among the Negroes,--I wish to say a few words in regard to
certain objections, or rather misunderstandings, which have from time
to time arisen in regard to the matter.
Many have had the thought that industrial training was meant to make
the Negro work, much as he worked during the days of slavery. This is
far from my idea of it. If this training has any value for the Negro,
as it has for the white man, it consists in teaching the Negro how
rather not to work, but how to make the forces of nature--air, water,
horse-power, steam, and electric power--work for him, how to lift
labour up out of toil and drudgery into that which is dignified and
beautiful. The Negro in the South works, and he works hard; but his
lack of skill, coupled with ignorance, causes him too often to do his
work in the most costly and shiftless manner, and this has kept him
near the bottom of the ladder in the business world. I repeat that
industrial education teaches the Negro how not to drudge in his work.
Let him who doubts this contrast the Negro in the South toiling
through a field of oats with an old-fashioned reaper with the white
man on a modern farm in the West, sitting upon a modern "harvester,"
behind two spirited horses, with an umbrella over him, using a machine
that cuts and binds the oats at the same time,--doing four times as
much work as the black man with one half the labour. Let us give the
black man so much skill and brains that he can cut oats like the white
man, then he can compete with him. The Negro works in cotton, and has
no trouble so long as his labour is confined to the lower forms of
work,--the planting, the picking, and the ginning; but, when the Negro
attempts to follow the bale of cotton up through the higher stages,
through the mill where it is made into the finer fabrics, where the
larger profit appears, he is told that he is not wanted.
The Negro can work in wood and iron; and no one objects so long as he
confines his work to the felling of trees and sawing of boards, to the
digging of iron ore and making of pig iron. But, when the Negro
attempts to follow this tree into the factory where it is made into
desks and chairs and railway coaches, or when he attempts to follow
the pig iron into the factory where it is made into knife-blades and
watch-springs, the Negro's trouble begins. And what is the objection?
Simply that the Negro lacks the skill, coupled with brains, necessary
to compete with the white man, or that, when white men refuse to work
with coloured men, enough skilled and educated coloured men cannot be
found able to superintend and man every part of any one large
industry; and hence, for these reasons, they are constantly being
barred out. The Negro must become, in a larger measure, an intelligent
producer as well as a consumer. There should be a more vital and
practical connection between the Negro's educated brain and his
opportunity of earning his daily living.
A very weak argument often used against pushing industrial training
for the Negro is that the Southern white man favours it, and,
therefore, it is not best for the Negro. Although I was born a slave,
I am thankful that I am able so far to rid myself of prejudice as to
be able to accept a good thing, whether it comes from a black man or a
white man, a Southern man or a Northern man. Industrial education will
not only help the Negro directly in the matter of industrial
development, but also in bringing about more satisfactory relations
between him and the Southern white man. For the sake of the Negro and
the Southern white man there are many things in the relation of the
two races that must soon be changed. We cannot depend wholly upon
abuse or condemnation of the Southern white man to bring about these
changes. Each race must be educated to see matters in a broad, high,
generous, Christian spirit: we must bring the two races together, not
estrange them. The Negro must live for all time by the side of the
Southern white man. The man is unwise who does not cultivate in every
manly way the friendship and good will of his next-door neighbour,
whether he be black or white. I repeat that industrial training will
help cement the friendship of the two races. The history of the world
proves that trade, commerce, is the forerunner of peace and
civilisation as between races and nations. The Jew, who was once in
about the same position that the Negro is to-day, has now recognition,
because he has entwined himself about America in a business and
industrial sense. Say or think what we will, it is the tangible or
visible element that is going to tell largely during the next twenty
years in the solution of the race problem.
CHAPTER IV.
One of the main problems as regards the education of the Negro is how
to have him use his education to the best advantage after he has
secured it. In saying this, I do not want to be understood as implying
that the problem of simple ignorance among the masses has been settled
in the South; for this is far from true. The amount of ignorance still
prevailing among the Negroes, especially in the rural districts, is
very large and serious. But I repeat, we must go farther if we would
secure the best results and most gratifying returns in public good for
the money spent than merely to put academic education in the Negro's
head with the idea that this will settle everything.
In his present condition it is important, in seeking after what he
terms the ideal, that the Negro should not neglect to prepare himself
to take advantage of the opportunities that are right about his door.
If he lets these opportunities slip, I fear they will never be his
again. In saying this, I mean always that the Negro should have the
most thorough mental and religious training; for without it no race
can succeed. Because of his past history and environment and present
condition it is important that he be carefully guided for years to
come in the proper use of his education. Much valuable time has been
lost and money spent in vain, because too many have not been educated
with the idea of fitting them to do well the things which they could
get to do. Because of the lack of proper direction of the Negro's
education, some good friends of his, North and South, have not taken
that interest in it that they otherwise would have taken. In too many
cases where merely literary education alone has been given the Negro
youth, it has resulted in an exaggerated estimate of his importance
in the world, and an increase of wants which his education has not
fitted him to supply.
But, in discussing this subject, one is often met with the question,
Should not the Negro be encouraged to prepare himself for any station
in life that any other race fills? I would say, Yes; but the surest
way for the Negro to reach the highest positions is to prepare himself
to fill well at the present time the basic occupations. This will give
him a foundation upon which to stand while securing what is called the
more exalted positions. The Negro has the right to study law; but
success will come to the race sooner if it produces intelligent,
thrifty farmers, mechanics, and housekeepers to support the lawyers.
The want of proper direction of the use of the Negro's education
results in tempting too many to live mainly by their wits, without
producing anything that is of real value to the world. Let me quote
examples of this.
Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia, although among the richest
countries in natural resources in the world, are discouraging examples
of what must happen to any people who lack industrial or technical
training. It is said that in Liberia there are no wagons,
wheelbarrows, or public roads, showing very plainly that there is a
painful absence of public spirit and thrift. What is true of Liberia
is also true in a measure of the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo.
The people have not yet learned the lesson of turning their education
toward the cultivation of the soil and the making of the simplest
implements for agricultural and other forms of labour.
Much would have been done toward laying a sound foundation for general
prosperity if some attention had been spent in this direction. General
education itself has no bearing on the subject at issue, because,
while there is no well-established public school system in either of
these countries, yet large numbers of men of both Hayti and Santo
Domingo have been educated in France for generations. This is
especially true of Hayti. The education has been altogether in the
direction of _belles lettres_, however, and practically little in the
direction of industrial and scientific education.
It is a matter of common knowledge that Hayti has to send abroad even
to secure engineers for her men-of-war, for plans for her bridges and
other work requiring technical knowledge and skill. I should very much
regret to see any such condition obtain in any large measure as
regards the coloured people in the South, and yet this will be our
fate if industrial education is much longer neglected. We have spent
much time in the South in educating men and women in letters alone,
too, and must now turn our attention more than ever toward educating
them so as to supply their wants and needs. It is more lamentable to
see educated people unable to support themselves than to see
uneducated people in the same condition. Ambition all along this line
must be stimulated.
If educated men and women of the race will see and acknowledge the
necessity of practical industrial training and go to work with a zeal
and determination, their example will be followed by others, who are
now without ambition of any kind.
The race cannot hope to come into its own until the young coloured men
and women make up their minds to assist in the general development
along these lines. The elder men and women trained in the hard school
of slavery, and who so long possessed all of the labour, skilled and
unskilled, of the South, are dying out; their places must be filled by
their children, or we shall lose our hold upon these occupations.
Leaders in these occupations are needed now more than ever.
It is not enough that the idea be inculcated that coloured people
should get book learning; along with it they should be taught that
book education and industrial development must go hand in hand. No
race which fails to do this can ever hope to succeed. Phillips Brooks
gave expression to the sentiment: "One generation gathers the
material, and the next generation builds the palaces." As I understand
it, he wished to inculcate the idea that one generation lays the
foundation for succeeding generations. The rough affairs of life very
largely fall to the earlier generation, while the next one has the
privilege of dealing with the higher and more æsthetic things of life.
This is true of all generations, of all peoples; and, unless the
foundation is deeply laid, it is impossible for the succeeding one to
have a career in any way approaching success. As regards the coloured
men of the South, as regards the coloured men of the United States,
this is the generation which, in a large measure, must gather the
material with which to lay the foundation for future success.
Some time ago it was my misfortune to see a Negro sixty-five years old
living in poverty and filth. I was disgusted, and said to him, "If you
are worthy of your freedom, you would surely have changed your
condition during the thirty years of freedom which you have enjoyed."
He answered: "I do want to change. I want to do something for my wife
and children; but I do not know how,--I do not know what to do." I
looked into his lean and haggard face, and realised more deeply than
ever before the absolute need of captains of industry among the great
masses of the coloured people.
It is possible for a race or an individual to have mental development
and yet be so handicapped by custom, prejudice, and lack of employment
as to dwarf and discourage the whole life. This is the condition that
prevails among the race in many of the large cities of the North; and
it is to prevent this same condition in the South that I plead with
all the earnestness of my heart. Mental development alone will not
give us what we want, but mental development tied to hand and heart
training will be the salvation of the Negro.
In many respects the next twenty years are going to be the most
serious in the history of the race. Within this period it will be
largely decided whether the Negro will be able to retain the hold
which he now has upon the industries of the South or whether his place
will be filled by white people from a distance. The only way he can
prevent the industrial occupations slipping from him in all parts of
the South, as they have already in certain parts, is for all
educators, ministers, and friends of the race to unite in pushing
forward in a whole-souled manner the industrial or business
development of the Negro, whether in school or out of school. Four
times as many young men and women of the race should be receiving
industrial training. Just now the Negro is in a position to feel and
appreciate the need of this in a way that no one else can. No one can
fully appreciate what I am saying who has not walked the streets of a
Northern city day after day seeking employment, only to find every
door closed against him on account of his colour, except in menial
service. It is to prevent the same thing taking place in the South
that I plead. We may argue that mental development will take care of
all this. Mental development is a good thing. Gold is also a good
thing, but gold is worthless without an opportunity to make itself
touch the world of trade. Education increases greatly an individual's
wants. It is cruel in many cases to increase the wants of the black
youth by mental development alone without, at the same time,
increasing his ability to supply these increased wants in occupations
in which he can find employment.
The place made vacant by the death of the old coloured man who was
trained as a carpenter during slavery, and who since the war had been
the leading contractor and builder in the Southern town, had to be
filled. No young coloured carpenter capable of filling his place could
be found. The result was that his place was filled by a white mechanic
from the North, or from Europe, or from elsewhere. What is true of
carpentry and house-building in this case is true, in a degree, in
every skilled occupation; and it is becoming true of common labour. I
do not mean to say that all of the skilled labour has been taken out
of the Negro's hands; but I do mean to say that in no part of the
South is he so strong in the matter of skilled labour as he was twenty
years ago, except possibly in the country districts and the smaller
towns. In the more northern of the Southern cities, such as Richmond
and Baltimore, the change is most apparent; and it is being felt in
every Southern city. Wherever the Negro has lost ground industrially
in the South, it is not because there is prejudice against him as a
skilled labourer on the part of the native Southern white man; the
Southern white man generally prefers to do business with the Negro
mechanic rather than with a white one, because he is accustomed to do
business with the Negro in this respect. There is almost no prejudice
against the Negro in the South in matters of business, so far as the
native whites are concerned; and here is the entering wedge for the
solution of the race problem. But too often, where the white mechanic
or factory operative from the North gets a hold, the trades-union soon
follows, and the Negro is crowded to the wall.
But what is the remedy for this condition? First, it is most important
that the Negro and his white friends honestly face the facts as they
are; otherwise the time will not be very far distant when the Negro of
the South will be crowded to the ragged edge of industrial life as he
is in the North. There is still time to repair the damage and to
reclaim what we have lost.
I stated in the beginning that industrial education for the Negro has
been misunderstood. This has been chiefly because some have gotten the
idea that industrial development was opposed to the Negro's higher
mental development. This has little or nothing to do with the subject
under discussion; we should no longer permit such an idea to aid in
depriving the Negro of the legacy in the form of skilled labour that
was purchased by his forefathers at the price of two hundred and fifty
years of slavery. I would say to the black boy what I would say to the
white boy, Get all the mental development that your time and
pocket-book will allow of,--the more, the better; but the time has
come when a larger proportion--not all, for we need professional men
and women--of the educated coloured men and women should give
themselves to industrial or business life. The professional class will
be helped in so far as the rank and file have an industrial
foundation, so that they can pay for professional service. Whether
they receive the training of the hand while pursuing their academic
training or after their academic training is finished, or whether they
will get their literary training in an industrial school or college,
are questions which each individual must decide for himself. No
matter how or where educated, the educated men and women must come to
the rescue of the race in the effort to get and hold its industrial
footing. I would not have the standard of mental development lowered
one whit; for, with the Negro, as with all races, mental strength is
the basis of all progress. But I would have a large measure of this
mental strength reach the Negroes' actual needs through the medium of
the hand. Just now the need is not so much for the common carpenters,
brick masons, farmers, and laundry women as for industrial leaders
who, in addition to their practical knowledge, can draw plans, make
estimates, take contracts; those who understand the latest methods of
truck-gardening and the science underlying practical agriculture;
those who understand machinery to the extent that they can operate
steam and electric laundries, so that our women can hold on to the
laundry work in the South, that is so fast drifting into the hands of
others in the large cities and towns.
Having tried to show in previous chapters to what a condition the lack
of practical training has brought matters in the South, and by the
examples in this chapter where this state of things may go if allowed
to run its course, I wish now to show what practical training, even in
its infancy among us, has already accomplished.
I noticed, when I first went to Tuskegee to start the Tuskegee Normal
and Industrial Institute, that some of the white people about there
rather looked doubtfully at me; and I thought I could get their
influence by telling them how much algebra and history and science and
all those things I had in my head, but they treated me about the same
as they did before. They didn't seem to care about the algebra,
history, and science that were in my head only. Those people never
even began to have confidence in me until we commenced to build a
large three-story brick building, and then another and another, until
now we have forty buildings which have been erected largely by the
labour of our students; and to-day we have the respect and confidence
of all the white people in that section.
There is an unmistakable influence that comes over a white man when he
sees a black man living in a two-story brick house that has been paid
for. I need not stop to explain. It is the tangible evidence of
prosperity. You know Thomas doubted the Saviour after he had risen
from the dead; and the Lord said to Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger,
and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my
side." The tangible evidence convinced Thomas.
We began, soon after going to Tuskegee, the manufacture of bricks. We
also started a wheelwright establishment and the manufacture of good
wagons and buggies; and the white people came to our institution for
that kind of work. We also put in a printing plant, and did job
printing for the white people as well as for the blacks.
By having something that these people wanted, we came into contact
with them, and our interest became interlinked with their interest,
until to-day we have no warmer friends anywhere in the country than we
have among the white people of Tuskegee. We have found by experience
that the best way to get on well with people is to have something that
they want, and that is why we emphasise this Christian Industrial
Education.
Not long ago I heard a conversation among three white men something
like this. Two of them were berating the Negro, saying the Negro was
shiftless and lazy, and all that sort of thing. The third man
listened to their remarks for some time in silence, and then he said:
"I don't know what your experience has been; but there is a 'nigger'
down our way who owns a good house and lot with about fifty acres of
ground. His house is well furnished, and he has got some splendid
horses and cattle. He is intelligent and has a bank account. I don't
know how the 'niggers' are in your community, but Tobe Jones is a
gentleman. Once, when I was hard up, I went to Tobe Jones and borrowed
fifty dollars; and he hasn't asked me for it yet. I don't know what
kind of 'niggers' you have down your way, but Tobe Jones is a
gentleman."
Now what we want to do is to multiply and place in every community
these Tobe Joneses; and, just in so far as we can place them
throughout the South this race question will disappear.
Suppose there was a black man who had business for the railroads to
the amount of ten thousand dollars a year. Do you suppose that, when
that black man takes his family aboard the train, they are going to
put him into a Jim Crow car and run the risk of losing that ten
thousand dollars a year? No, they will put on a Pullman palace car for
him.
Some time ago a certain coloured man was passing through the streets
of one of the little Southern towns, and he chanced to meet two white
men on the street. It happened that this coloured man owns two or
three houses and lots, has a good education and a comfortable bank
account. One of the white men turned to the other, and said: "By Gosh!
It is all I can do to keep from calling that 'nigger' Mister." That's
the point we want to get to.
Nothing else so soon brings about right relations between the two
races in the South as the commercial progress of the Negro. Friction
between the races will pass away as the black man, by reason of his
skill, intelligence, and character, can produce something that the
white man wants or respects in the commercial world. This is another
reason why at Tuskegee we push industrial training. We find that as
every year we put into a Southern community coloured men who can start
a brickyard, a saw-mill, a tin-shop, or a printing-office,--men who
produce something that makes the white man partly dependent upon the
Negro instead of all the dependence being on the other side,--a change
for the better takes place in the relations of the races. It is
through the dairy farm, the truck-garden, the trades, the commercial
life, largely, that the Negro is to find his way to respect and
confidence.
What is the permanent value of the Hampton and Tuskegee system of
training to the South, in a broader sense? In connection with this, it
is well to bear in mind that slavery unconsciously taught the white
man that labour with the hands was something fit for the Negro only,
and something for the white man to come into contact with just as
little as possible. It is true that there was a large class of poor
white people who laboured with the hands, but they did it because they
were not able to secure Negroes to work for them; and these poor
whites were constantly trying to imitate the slaveholding class in
escaping labour, as they, too, regarded it as anything but elevating.
But the Negro, in turn, looked down upon the poor whites with a
certain contempt because they had to work. The Negro, it is to be
borne in mind, worked under constant protest, because he felt that his
labour was being unjustly requited; and he spent almost as much effort
in planning how to escape work as in learning how to work. Labour with
him was a badge of degradation. The white man was held up before him
as the highest type of civilisation, but the Negro noted that this
highest type of civilisation himself did little labour with the hand.
Hence he argued that, the less work he did, the more nearly he would
be like the white man. Then, in addition to these influences, the
slave system discouraged labour-saving machinery. To use labour-saving
machinery, intelligence was required; and intelligence and slavery
were not on friendly terms. Hence the Negro always associated labour
with toil, drudgery, something to be escaped. When the Negro first
became free, his idea of education was that it was something that
would soon put him in the same position as regards work that his
recent master had occupied. Out of these conditions grew the habit of
putting off till to-morrow and the day after the duty that should be
done promptly to-day. The leaky house was not repaired while the sun
shone, for then the rain did not come through. While the rain was
falling, no one cared to expose himself to stop the rain. The plough,
on the same principle, was left where the last furrow was run, to rot
and rust in the field during the winter. There was no need to repair
the wooden chimney that was exposed to the fire, because water could
be thrown on it when it was on fire. There was no need to trouble
about the payment of a debt to-day, because it could be paid as well
next week or next year. Besides these conditions, the whole South at
the close of the war was without proper food, clothing, and
shelter,--was in need of habits of thrift and economy and of something
laid up for a rainy day.
To me it seemed perfectly plain that here was a condition of things
that could not be met by the ordinary process of education. At
Tuskegee we became convinced that the thing to do was to make a
careful, systematic study of the condition and needs of the South,
especially the Black Belt, and to bend our efforts in the direction of
meeting these needs, whether we were following a well-beaten track or
were hewing out a new path to meet conditions probably without a
parallel in the world. After eighteen years of experience and
observation, what is the result? Gradually, but surely, we find that
all through the South the disposition to look upon labour as a
disgrace is on the wane; and the parents who themselves sought to
escape work are so anxious to give their children training in
intelligent labour that every institution which gives training in the
handicrafts is crowded, and many (among them Tuskegee) have to refuse
admission to hundreds of applicants. The influence of Hampton and
Tuskegee is shown again by the fact that almost every little school
at the remotest cross-road is anxious to be known as an industrial
school, or, as some of the coloured people call it, an "industrous"
school.
The social lines that were once sharply drawn between those who
laboured with the hands and those who did not are disappearing. Those
who formerly sought to escape labour, now when they see that brains
and skill rob labour of the toil and drudgery once associated with it,
instead of trying to avoid it, are willing to pay to be taught how to
engage in it. The South is beginning to see labour raised up,
dignified and beautified, and in this sees its salvation. In
proportion as the love of labour grows, the large idle class, which
has long been one of the curses of the South, disappears. As people
become absorbed in their own affairs, they have less time to attend to
everybody's else business.
The South is still an undeveloped and unsettled country, and for the
next half-century and more the greater part of the energy of the
masses will be needed to develop its material resources. Any force
that brings the rank and file of the people to have a greater love of
industry is therefore especially valuable. This result industrial
education is surely bringing about. It stimulates production and
increases trade,--trade between the races; and in this new and
engrossing relation both forget the past. The white man respects the
vote of a coloured man who does ten thousand dollars' worth of
business; and, the more business the coloured man has, the more
careful he is how he votes.
Immediately after the war there was a large class of Southern people
who feared that the opening of the free schools to the freedmen and
the poor whites--the education of the head alone--would result merely
in increasing the class who sought to escape labour, and that the
South would soon be overrun by the idle and vicious. But, as the
results of industrial combined with academic training begin to show
themselves in hundreds of communities that have been lifted up, these
former prejudices against education are being removed. Many of those
who a few years ago opposed Negro education are now among its warmest
advocates.
This industrial training, emphasising, as it does, the idea of
economic production, is gradually bringing the South to the point
where it is feeding itself. After the war, what profit the South made
out of the cotton crop it spent outside of the South to purchase food
supplies,--meat, bread, canned vegetables, and the like,--but the
improved methods of agriculture are fast changing this custom. With
the newer methods of labour, which teach promptness and system and
emphasise the worth of the beautiful, the moral value of the
well-painted house, the fence with every paling and nail in its place,
is bringing to bear upon the South an influence that is making it a
new country in industry, education, and religion.
It seems to me I cannot do better than to close this chapter on the
needs of the Southern Negro than by quoting from a talk given to the
students at Tuskegee:--
"I want to be a little more specific in showing you what you have
to do and how you must do it.
"One trouble with us is--and the same is true of any young
people, no matter of what race or condition--we have too many
stepping-stones. We step all the time, from one thing to another.
You find a young man who is learning to make bricks; and, if you
ask him what he intends to do after learning the trade, in too
many cases he will answer, 'Oh, I am simply working at this
trade as a stepping-stone to something higher.' You see a young
man working at the brick-mason's trade, and he will be apt to say
the same thing. And young women learning to be milliners and
dressmakers will tell you the same. All are stepping to something
higher. And so we always go on, stepping somewhere, never getting
hold of anything thoroughly. Now we must stop this stepping
business, having so many stepping-stones. Instead, we have got to
take hold of these important industries, and stick to them until
we master them thoroughly. There is no nation so thorough in
their education as the Germans. Why? Simply because the German
takes hold of a thing, and sticks to it until he masters it. Into
it he puts brains and thought from morning to night. He reads all
the best books and journals bearing on that particular study, and
he feels that nobody else knows so much about it as he does.
"Take any of the industries I have mentioned, that of
brick-making, for example. Any one working at that trade should
determine to learn all there is to be known about making bricks;
read all the papers and journals bearing upon the trade; learn
not only to make common hand-bricks, but pressed bricks,
fire-bricks,--in short, the finest and best bricks there are to
be made. And, when you have learned all you can by reading and
talking with other people, you should travel from one city to
another, and learn how the best bricks are made. And then, when
you go into business for yourself, you will make a reputation for
being the best brick-maker in the community; and in this way you
will put yourself on your feet, and become a helpful and useful
citizen. When a young man does this, goes out into one of these
Southern cities and makes a reputation for himself, that person
wins a reputation that is going to give him a standing and
position. And, when the children of that successful brick-maker
come along, they will be able to take a higher position in life.
The grandchildren will be able to take a still higher position.
And it will be traced back to that grandfather who, by his great
success as a brick-maker, laid a foundation that was of the right
kind.
"What I have said about these two trades can be applied with
equal force to the trades followed by women. Take the matter of
millinery. There is no good reason why there should not be, in
each principal city in the South, at least three or four
competent coloured women in charge of millinery establishments.
But what is the trouble?
"Instead of making the most of our opportunities in this
industry, the temptation, in too many cases, is to be
music-teachers, teachers of elocution, or something else that
few of the race at present have any money to pay for, or the
opportunity to earn money to pay for, simply because there is no
foundation. But, when more coloured people succeed in the more
fundamental occupations, they will then be able to make better
provision for their children in what are termed the higher walks
of life.
"And, now, what I have said about these important industries is
especially true of the important industry of agriculture. We are
living in a country where, if we are going to succeed at all, we
are going to do so largely by what we raise out of the soil. The
people in those backward countries I have told you about have
failed to give attention to the cultivation of the soil, to the
invention and use of improved agricultural implements and
machinery. Without this no people can succeed. No race which
fails to put brains into agriculture can succeed; and, if you
want to realize the truth of this statement, go with me into the
back districts of some of our Southern States, and you will find
many people in poverty, and yet they are surrounded by a rich
country.
"A race, like an individual, has got to have a reputation. Such a
reputation goes a long way toward helping a race or an
individual; and, when we have succeeded in getting such a
reputation, we shall find that a great many of the discouraging
features of our life will melt away.
"Reputation is what people think we are, and a great deal depends
on that. When a race gets a reputation along certain lines, a
great many things which now seem complex, difficult to attain,
and are most discouraging, will disappear.
"When you say that an engine is a Corliss engine, people
understand that that engine is a perfect piece of mechanical
work,--perfect as far as human skill and ingenuity can make it
perfect. You say a car is a Pullman car. That is all; but what
does it mean? It means that the builder of that car got a
reputation at the outset for thorough, perfect work, for turning
out everything in first-class shape. And so with a race. You
cannot keep back very long a race that has the reputation for
doing perfect work in everything that it undertakes. And then we
have got to get a reputation for economy. Nobody cares to
associate with an individual in business or otherwise who has a
reputation for being a trifling spendthrift, who spends his money
for things that he can very easily get along without, who spends
his money for clothing, gewgaws, superficialities, and other
things, when he has not got the necessaries of life. We want to
give the race a reputation for being frugal and saving in
everything. Then we want to get a reputation for being
industrious. Now, remember these three things: Get a reputation
for being skilled. It will not do for a few here and there to
have it: the race must have the reputation. Get a reputation for
being so skilful, so industrious, that you will not leave a job
until it is as nearly perfect as any one can make it. And then we
want to make a reputation for the race for being honest,--honest
at all times and under all circumstances. A few individuals here
and there have it, a few communities have it; but the race as a
mass must get it.
"You recall that story of Abraham Lincoln, how, when he was
postmaster at a small village, he had left on his hands $1.50
which the government did not call for. Carefully wrapping up this
money in a handkerchief, he kept it for ten years. Finally, one
day, the government agent called for this amount; and it was
promptly handed over to him by Abraham Lincoln, who told him
that during all those ten years he had never touched a cent of
that money. He made it a principle of his life never to use other
people's money. That trait of his character helped him along to
the Presidency. The race wants to get a reputation for being
strictly honest in all its dealings and transactions,--honest in
handling money, honest in all its dealings with its fellow-men.
"And then we want to get a reputation for being thoughtful. This
I want to emphasise more than anything else. We want to get a
reputation for doing things without being told to do them every
time. If you have work to do, think about it so constantly,
investigate and read about it so thoroughly, that you will always
be finding ways and means of improving that work. The average
person going to work becomes a regular machine, never giving the
matter of improving the methods of his work a thought. He is
never at his work before the appointed time, and is sure to stop
the minute the hour is up. The world is looking for the person
who is thoughtful, who will say at the close of work hours: 'Is
there not something else I can do for you? Can I not stay a
little later, and help you?'
"Moreover, it is with a race as it is with an individual: it must
respect itself if it would win the respect of others. There must
be a certain amount of unity about a race, there must be a great
amount of pride about a race, there must be a great deal of faith
on the part of a race in itself. An individual cannot succeed
unless he has about him a certain amount of pride,--enough pride
to make him aspire to the highest and best things in life. An
individual cannot succeed unless that individual has a great
amount of faith in himself.
"A person who goes at an undertaking with the feeling that he
cannot succeed is likely to fail. On the other hand, the
individual who goes at an undertaking, feeling that he can
succeed, is the individual who in nine cases out of ten does
succeed. But, whenever you find an individual that is ashamed of
his race, trying to get away from his race, apologising for being
a member of his race, then you find a weak individual. Where you
find a race that is ashamed of itself, that is apologising for
itself, there you will find a weak, vacillating race. Let us no
longer have to apologise for our race in these or other matters.
Let us think seriously and work seriously: then, as a race, we
shall be thought of seriously, and, therefore, seriously
respected."
CHAPTER V.
In this chapter I wish to show how, at Tuskegee, we are trying to work
out the plan of industrial training, and trust I shall be pardoned the
seeming egotism if I preface the sketch with a few words, by way of
example, as to the expansion of my own life and how I came to
undertake the work at Tuskegee.
My earliest recollection is of a small one-room log hut on a slave
plantation in Virginia. After the close of the war, while working in
the coal mines of West Virginia for the support of my mother, I heard,
in some accidental way, of the Hampton Institute. When I learned that
it was an institution where a black boy could study, could have a
chance to work for his board, and at the same time be taught how to
work and to realise the dignity of labor, I resolved to go there.
Bidding my mother good-by, I started out one morning to find my way
to Hampton, although I was almost penniless and had no definite idea
as to where Hampton was. By walking, begging rides, and paying for a
portion of the journey on the steam-cars, I finally succeeded in
reaching the city of Richmond; Virginia. I was without money or
friends. I slept on a sidewalk; and by working on a vessel the next
day I earned money enough to continue my way to the institute, where I
arrived with a capital of fifty cents. At Hampton I found the
opportunity--in the way of buildings, teachers, and industries
provided by the generous--to get training in the classroom and by
practical touch with industrial life,--to learn thrift, economy, and
push. I was surrounded by an atmosphere of business, Christian
influence, and spirit of self-help, that seemed to have awakened every
faculty in me, and caused me for the first time to realise what it
meant to be a man instead of a piece of property.
While there, I resolved, when I had finished the course of training, I
would go into the Far South, into the Black Belt of the South, and
give my life to providing the same kind of opportunity for
self-reliance, self-awakening, that I had found provided for me at
Hampton.
My work began at Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881, in a small shanty church,
with one teacher and thirty students, without a dollar's worth of
property. The spirit of work and of industrial thrift, with aid from
the State and generosity from the North, have enabled us to develop an
institution which now has about one thousand students, gathered from
twenty-three States, and eighty-eight instructors. Counting students,
instructors, and their families, we have a resident population upon
the school grounds of about twelve hundred persons.
The institution owns two thousand three hundred acres of land, seven
hundred of which are cultivated by student labor. There are six
hundred head of live-stock, including horses, mules, cows, hogs, and
sheep. There are over forty vehicles that have been made, and are now
used, by the school. Training is given in twenty-six industries. There
is work in wood, in iron, in leather, in tin; and all forms of
domestic economy are engaged in. Students are taught mechanical and
architectural drawing, receive training as agriculturists, dairymen,
masons, carpenters, contractors, builders, as machinists,
electricians, printers, dressmakers, and milliners, and in other
directions.
The value of the property is $300,000. There are forty-two buildings,
counting large and small, all of which, with the exception of four,
have been erected by the labour of the students.
Since this work started, there has been collected and spent for its
founding and support $800,000. The annual expense is now not far from
$75,000. In a humble, simple manner the effort has been to place a
great object-lesson in the heart of the South for the elevation of the
coloured people, where there should be, in a high sense, that union of
head, heart, and hand which has been the foundation of the greatness
of all races since the world began.
What is the object of all this outlay? It must be first borne in mind
that we have in the South a peculiar and unprecedented state of
things. The cardinal needs among the eight million coloured people in
the South, most of whom are to be found on the plantations, may be
stated as food, clothing, shelter, education, proper habits, and a
settlement of race relations. These millions of coloured people of the
South cannot be reached directly by any missionary agent; but they can
be reached by sending out among them strong, selected young men and
women, with the proper training of head, hand, and heart, who will
live among them and show them how to lift themselves up.
The problem that the Tuskegee Institute keeps before itself constantly
is how to prepare these leaders. From the outset, in connection with
religious and academic training, it has emphasised industrial, or
hand, training as a means of finding the way out of present
conditions. First, we have found the industrial teaching useful in
giving the student a chance to work out a portion of his expenses
while in school. Second, the school furnishes labour that has an
economic value and at the same time gives the student a chance to
acquire knowledge and skill while performing the labour. Most of all,
we find the industrial system valuable in teaching economy, thrift,
and the dignity of labour and in giving moral backbone to students.
The fact that a student goes into the world conscious of his power to
build a house or a wagon or to make a set of harness gives him a
certain confidence and moral independence that he would not possess
without such training.
A more detailed example of our methods at Tuskegee may be of interest.
For example, we cultivate by student labour seven hundred acres of
land. The object is not only to cultivate the land in a way to make it
pay our boarding department, but at the same time to teach the
students, in addition to the practical work, something of the
chemistry of the soil, the best methods of drainage, dairying,
cultivation of fruit, the care of live-stock and tools, and scores of
other lessons needed by people whose main dependence is on
agriculture.
Friends some time ago provided means for the erection of a large new
chapel at Tuskegee. Our students made the bricks for this chapel. A
large part of the timber was sawed by the students at our saw-mill,
the plans were drawn by our teacher of architectural and mechanical
drawing, and students did the brick-masonry, the plastering, the
painting, the carpentry work, the tinning, the slating, and made most
of the furniture. Practically, the whole chapel was built and
furnished by student labour. Now the school has this building for
permanent use, and the students have a knowledge of the trades
employed in its construction.
While the young men do the kinds of work I have mentioned, young women
to a large extent make, mend, and laundry the clothing of the young
men. They also receive instruction in dairying, horticulture, and
other valuable industries.
One of the objections sometimes urged against industrial education for
the Negro is that it aims merely to teach him to work on the same
plan that he worked on when in slavery. This is far from being the
object at Tuskegee. At the head of each of the twenty-six industrial
divisions we have an intelligent and competent instructor, just as we
have in our history classes, so that the student is taught not only
practical brick-masonry, for example, but also the underlying
principles of that industry, the mathematics and the mechanical and
architectural drawing. Or he is taught how to become master of the
forces of nature, so that, instead of cultivating corn in the old way,
he can use a corn cultivator that lays off the furrows, drops the corn
into them, and covers it; and in this way he can do more work than
three men by the old process of corn planting, while at the same time
much of the toil is eliminated and labour is dignified. In a word, the
constant aim is to show the student how to put brains into every
process of labour, how to bring his knowledge of mathematics and the
sciences in farming, carpentry, forging, foundry work, how to dispense
as soon as possible with the old form of _ante-bellum_ labour. In the
erection of the chapel referred to, instead of letting the money which
was given to us go into outside hands, we made it accomplish three
objects: first, it provided the chapel; second, it gave the students a
chance to get a practical knowledge of the trades connected with the
building; and, third, it enabled them to earn something toward the
payment of their board while receiving academic and industrial
training.
Having been fortified at Tuskegee by education of mind, skill of hand,
Christian character, ideas of thrift, economy, and push, and a spirit
of independence, the student is sent out to become a centre of
influence and light in showing the masses of our people in the Black
Belt of the South how to lift themselves up. Can this be done? I give
but one or two examples. Ten years ago a young coloured man came to
the institute from one of the large plantation districts. He studied
in the class-room a portion of the time, and received practical and
theoretical training on the farm the remainder of the time. Having
finished his course at Tuskegee, he returned to his plantation home,
which was in a county where the coloured people outnumbered the whites
six to one, as is true of many of the counties in the Black Belt of
the South. He found the Negroes in debt. Ever since the war they had
been mortgaging their crops for the food on which to live while the
crops were growing. The majority of them were living from
hand-to-mouth on rented land, in small one-room log cabins, and
attempting to pay a rate of interest on their advances that ranged
from fifteen to forty per cent. per annum. The school had been taught
in a wreck of a log cabin, with no apparatus, and had never been in
session longer than three months out of twelve. He found the people,
as many as eight or ten persons, of all ages and conditions and of
both sexes, huddled together and living in one-room cabins year after
year, and with a minister whose only aim was to work upon the
emotions. One can imagine something of the moral and religious state
of the community.
But the remedy! In spite of the evil the Negro got the habit of work
from slavery. The rank and file of the race, especially those on the
Southern plantations, work hard; but the trouble is that what they
earn gets away from them in high rents, crop mortgages, whiskey,
snuff, cheap jewelry, and the like. The young man just referred to had
been trained at Tuskegee, as most of our graduates are, to meet just
this condition of things. He took the three months' public school as
a nucleus for his work. Then he organized the older people into a
club, or conference, that held meetings every week. In these meetings
he taught the people, in a plain, simple manner, how to save their
money, how to farm in a better way, how to sacrifice,--to live on
bread and potatoes, if necessary, till they could get out of debt, and
begin the buying of lands.
Soon a large proportion of the people were in a condition to make
contracts for the buying of homes (land is very cheap in the South)
and to live without mortgaging their crops. Not only this; under the
guidance and leadership of this teacher, the first year that he was
among them they learned how and built, by contributions in money and
labour, a neat, comfortable school-house that replaced the wreck of a
log cabin formerly used. The following year the weekly meetings were
continued, and two months were added to the original three months of
school. The next year two more months were added. The improvement has
gone on until these people have every year an eight months' school.
I wish my readers could have the chance that I have had of going into
this community. I wish they could look into the faces of the people,
and see them beaming with hope and delight. I wish they could see the
two or three room cottages that have taken the place of the usual
one-room cabin, see the well-cultivated farms and the religious life
of the people that now means something more than the name. The teacher
has a good cottage and well-kept farm that serve as models. In a word,
a complete revolution has been wrought in the industrial, educational,
and religious life of this whole community by reason of the fact that
they have had this leader, this guide and object-lesson, to show them
how to take the money and effort that had hitherto been scattered to
the wind in mortgages and high rents, in whiskey and gewgaws, and how
to concentrate it in the direction of their own uplifting. One
community on its feet presents an object-lesson for the adjoining
communities, and soon improvements show themselves in other places.
Another student, who received academic and industrial training at
Tuskegee, established himself, three years ago, as a blacksmith and
wheelwright in a community; and, in addition to the influence of his
successful business enterprise, he is fast making the same kind of
changes in the life of the people about him that I have just
recounted. It would be easy for me to fill many pages describing the
influence of the Tuskegee graduates in every part of the South. We
keep it constantly in the minds of our students and graduates that
the industrial or material condition of the masses of our people must
be improved, as well as the intellectual, before there can be any
permanent change in their moral and religious life. We find it a
pretty hard thing to make a good Christian of a hungry man. No matter
how much our people "get happy" and "shout" in church, if they go home
at night from church hungry, they are tempted to find something to eat
before morning. This is a principle of human nature, and is not
confined alone to the Negro. The Negro has within him immense power
for self-uplifting, but for years it will be necessary to guide him
and stimulate his energies.
The recognition of this power led us to organise, five years ago, what
is known as the Tuskegee Negro Conference,--a gathering that
meets every February, and is composed of about eight hundred
representatives, coloured men and women, from all sections of the
Black Belt. They come in ox-carts, mule-carts, buggies, on muleback
and horseback, on foot, by railroad. Some travel all night in order to
be present. The matters considered at the conference are those that
the coloured people have it in their own power to control,--such as
the evils of the mortgage system, the one-room cabin, buying on
credit, the importance of owning a home and of putting money in the
bank, how to build school-houses and prolong the school term, and to
improve their moral and religious condition. As a single example of
the results, one delegate reported that since the conference was
started, seven years ago, eleven people in his neighbourhood had
bought homes, fourteen had gotten out of debt, and a number had
stopped mortgaging their crops. Moreover, a school-house had been
built by the people themselves, and the school term had been extended
from three to six months; and, with a look of triumph, he exclaimed,
"We's done libin' in de ashes."
Besides this Negro Conference for the masses of the people, we now
have a gathering at the same time known as the Tuskegee Workers'
Conference, composed of the officers and instructors of the leading
coloured schools in the South. After listening to the story of the
conditions and needs from the people themselves, the Workers'
Conference finds much food for thought and discussion. Let me repeat,
from its beginning, this institution has kept in mind the giving of
thorough mental and religious training, along with such industrial
training as would enable the student to appreciate the dignity of
labour and become self-supporting and valuable as a producing factor,
keeping in mind the occupations open in the South to the average man
of the race.
This institution has now reached the point where it can begin to judge
of the value of its work as seen in its graduates. Some years ago we
noted the fact, for example, that there was quite a movement in many
parts of the South to organise and start dairies. Soon after this, we
opened a dairy school where a number of young men could receive
training in the best and most scientific methods of dairying. At
present we have calls, mainly from Southern white men, for twice as
many dairymen as we are able to supply. The reports indicate that our
young men are giving the highest satisfaction, and are fast changing
and improving the dairy product in the communities where they labour.
I have used the dairy industry simply as an example. What I have said
of this industry is true in a larger or less degree of the others.
I cannot but believe, and my daily observation and experience confirm
me in it, that, as we continue placing men and women of intelligence,
religion, modesty, conscience, and skill in every community in the
South, who will prove by actual results their value to the community,
this will constitute the solution for many of the present political
and sociological difficulties. It is with this larger and more
comprehensive view of improving present conditions and laying the
foundation wisely that the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is
training men and women as teachers and industrial leaders.
Over four hundred students have finished the course of training at
this institution, and are now scattered throughout the South, doing
good work. A recent investigation shows that about 3,000 students who
have taken only a partial course are doing commendable work. One young
man, who was able to remain in school but two years, has been teaching
in one community for ten years. During this time he has built a new
school-house, extended the school term from three to seven months,
and has bought a nice farm upon which he has erected a neat cottage.
The example of this young man has inspired many of the coloured people
in this community to follow his example in some degree; and this is
one of many such examples.
Wherever our graduates and ex-students go, they teach by precept and
example the necessary lesson of thrift, economy, and property-getting,
and friendship between the races.
CHAPTER VI.
It has become apparent that the effort to put the rank and file of the
coloured people into a position to exercise the right of franchise has
not been the success that was expected in those portions of our
country where the Negro is found in large numbers. Either the Negro
was not prepared for any such wholesale exercise of the ballot as our
recent amendments to the Constitution contemplated or the American
people were not prepared to assist and encourage him to use the
ballot. In either case the result has been the same.
On an important occasion in the life of the Master, when it fell to
him to pronounce judgment on two courses of action, these memorable
words fell from his lips: "And Mary hath chosen the better part." This
was the supreme test in the case of an individual. It is the highest
test in the case of a race or a nation. Let us apply this test to the
American Negro.
In the life of our Republic, when he has had the opportunity to
choose, has it been the better or worse part? When in the childhood of
this nation the Negro was asked to submit to slavery or choose death
and extinction, as did the aborigines, he chose the better part, that
which perpetuated the race.
When, in 1776, the Negro was asked to decide between British
oppression and American independence, we find him choosing the better
part; and Crispus Attucks, a Negro, was the first to shed his blood on
State Street, Boston, that the white American might enjoy liberty
forever, though his race remained in slavery. When, in 1814, at New
Orleans, the test of patriotism came again, we find the Negro choosing
the better part, General Andrew Jackson himself testifying that no
heart was more loyal and no arm was more strong and useful in defence
of righteousness.
When the long and memorable struggle came between union and
separation, when he knew that victory meant freedom, and defeat his
continued enslavement, although enlisting by the thousands, as
opportunity presented itself, to fight in honourable combat for the
cause of the Union and liberty, yet, when the suggestion and the
temptation came to burn the home and massacre wife and children during
the absence of the master in battle, and thus insure his liberty, we
find him choosing the better part, and for four long years protecting
and supporting the helpless, defenceless ones intrusted to his care.
When, during our war with Spain, the safety and honour of the Republic
were threatened by a foreign foe, when the wail and anguish of the
oppressed from a distant isle reached our ears, we find the Negro
forgetting his own wrongs, forgetting the laws and customs that
discriminate against him in his own country, and again choosing the
better part. And, if any one would know how he acquitted himself in
the field at Santiago, let him apply for answer to Shafter and
Roosevelt and Wheeler. Let them tell how the Negro faced death and
laid down his life in defence of honour and humanity. When the full
story of the heroic conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American War
has been heard from the lips of Northern soldier and Southern soldier,
from ex-abolitionist and ex-master, then shall the country decide
whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not
be given the highest opportunity to live for its country.
In the midst of all the complaints of suffering in the camp and field
during the Spanish-American War, suffering from fever and hunger,
where is the official or citizen that has heard a word of complaint
from the lips of a black soldier? The only request that came from the
Negro soldier was that he might be permitted to replace the white
soldier when heat and malaria began to decimate the ranks of the white
regiments, and to occupy at the same time the post of greater danger.
But, when all this is said, it remains true that the efforts on the
part of his friends and the part of himself to share actively in the
control of State and local government in America have not been a
success in all sections. What are the causes of this partial failure,
and what lessons has it taught that we may use in regard to the future
treatment of the Negro in America?
In my mind there is no doubt but that we made a mistake at the
beginning of our freedom of putting the emphasis on the wrong end.
Politics and the holding of office were too largely emphasised,
almost to the exclusion of every other interest.
I believe the past and present teach but one lesson,--to the Negro's
friends and to the Negro himself,--that there is but one way out, that
there is but one hope of solution; and that is for the Negro in every
part of America to resolve from henceforth that he will throw aside
every non-essential and cling only to essential,--that his pillar of
fire by night and pillar of cloud by day shall be property, economy,
education, and Christian character. To us just now these are the
wheat, all else the chaff. The individual or race that owns the
property, pays the taxes, possesses the intelligence and substantial
character, is the one which is going to exercise the greatest control
in government, whether he lives in the North or whether he lives in
the South.
I have often been asked the cause of and the cure for the riots that
have taken place recently in North Carolina and South Carolina.[1] I
am not at all sure that what I shall say will answer these questions
in a satisfactory way, nor shall I attempt to narrow my expressions to
a mere recital of what has taken place in these two States. I prefer
to discuss the problem in a broader manner.
[1] November, 1898.
In the first place, in politics I am a Republican, but have always
refrained from activity in party politics, and expect to pursue this
policy in the future. So in this connection I shall refrain, as I
always have done, from entering upon any discussion of mere party
politics. What I shall say of politics will bear upon the race problem
and the civilisation of the South in the larger sense. In no case
would I permit my political relations to stand in the way of my
speaking and acting in the manner that I believe would be for the
permanent interest of my race and the whole South.
In 1873 the Negro in the South had reached the point of greatest
activity and influence in public life, so far as the mere holding of
elective office was concerned. From that date those who have kept up
with the history of the South have noticed that the Negro has steadily
lost in the number of elective offices held. In saying this, I do not
mean that the Negro has gone backward in the real and more fundamental
things of life. On the contrary, he has gone forward faster than has
been true of any other race in history, under anything like similar
circumstances.
If we can answer the question as to why the Negro has lost ground in
the matter of holding elective office in the South, perhaps we shall
find that our reply will prove to be our answer also as to the cause
of the recent riots in North Carolina and South Carolina. Before
beginning a discussion of the question I have asked, I wish to say
that this change in the political influence of the Negro has continued
from year to year, notwithstanding the fact that for a long time he
was protected, politically, by force of federal arms and the most
rigid federal laws, and still more effectively, perhaps, by the voice
and influence in the halls of legislation of such advocates of the
rights of the Negro race as Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin
F. Butler, James M. Ashley, Oliver P. Morton, Carl Schurz, and Roscoe
Conkling, and on the stump and through the public press by those great
and powerful Negroes, Frederick Douglass, John M. Langston, Blanche K.
Bruce, John R. Lynch, P. B. S. Pinchback, Robert Browne Elliot, T.
Thomas Fortune, and many others; but the Negro has continued for
twenty years to have fewer representatives in the State and national
legislatures. The reduction has continued until now it is at the point
where, with few exceptions, he is without representatives in the
law-making bodies of the State and of the nation.
Now let us find, if we can, a cause for this. The Negro is fond of
saying that his present condition is due to the fact that the State
and federal courts have not sustained the laws passed for the
protection of the rights of his people; but I think we shall have to
go deeper than this, because I believe that all agree that court
decisions, as a rule, represent the public opinion of the community or
nation creating and sustaining the court.
At the beginning of his freedom it was unfortunate that those of the
white race who won the political confidence of the Negro were not,
with few exceptions, men of such high character as would lead them to
assist him in laying a firm foundation for his development. Their
main purpose appears to have been, for selfish ends in too many
instances, merely to control his vote. The history of the
reconstruction era will show that this was unfortunate for all the
parties in interest.
It would have been better, from any point of view, if the native
Southern white man had taken the Negro, at the beginning of his
freedom, into his political confidence, and exercised an influence and
control over him before his political affections were alienated.
The average Southern white man has an idea to-day that, if the Negro
were permitted to get any political power, all the mistakes of the
reconstruction period would be repeated. He forgets or ignores the
fact that thirty years of acquiring education and property and
character have produced a higher type of black man than existed thirty
years ago.
But, to be more specific, for all practical purposes, there are two
political parties in the South,--a black man's party and a white man's
party. In saying this, I do not mean that all white men are Democrats;
for there are some white men in the South of the highest character who
are Republicans, and there are a few Negroes in the South of the
highest character who are Democrats. It is the general understanding
that all white men are Democrats or the equivalent, and that all black
men are Republicans. So long as the colour line is the dividing line
in politics, so long will there be trouble.
The white man feels that he owns most of the property, furnishes the
Negro most of his employment, thinks he pays most of the taxes, and
has had years of experience in government. There is no mistaking the
fact that the feeling which has heretofore governed the Negro--that,
to be manly and stand by his race, he must oppose the Southern white
man with his vote--has had much to do with intensifying the opposition
of the Southern white man to him.
The Southern white man says that it is unreasonable for the Negro to
come to him, in a large measure, for his clothes, board, shelter, and
education, and for his politics to go to men a thousand miles away. He
very properly argues that, when the Negro votes, he should try to
consult the interests of his employer, just as the Pennsylvania
employee tries to vote for the interests of his employer. Further,
that much of the education which has been given the Negro has been
defective, in not preparing him to love labour and to earn his living
at some special industry, and has, in too many cases, resulted in
tempting him to live by his wits as a political creature or by
trusting to his "influence" as a political time-server.
Then, there is no mistaking the fact, that much opposition to the
Negro in politics is due to the circumstance that the Southern white
man has not become accustomed to seeing the Negro exercise political
power either as a voter or as an office-holder. Again, we want to bear
it in mind that the South has not yet reached the point where there is
that strict regard for the enforcement of the law against either black
or white men that there is in many of our Northern and Western States.
This laxity in the enforcement of the laws in general, and especially
of criminal laws, makes such outbreaks as those in North Carolina and
South Carolina of easy occurrence.
Then there is one other consideration which must not be overlooked. It
is the common opinion of almost every black man and almost every white
man that nearly everybody who has had anything to do with the making
of laws bearing upon the protection of the Negro's vote has proceeded
on the theory that all the black men for all time will vote the
Republican ticket and that all the white men in the South will vote
the Democratic ticket. In a word, all seem to have taken it for
granted that the two races are always going to oppose each other in
their voting.
In all the foregoing statements I have not attempted to define my own
views or position, but simply to describe conditions as I have
observed them, that might throw light upon the cause of our political
troubles. As to my own position, I do not favour the Negro's giving up
anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed to him by
the Constitution of the United States. It is not best for him to
relinquish any of his rights; nor would his doing so be best for the
Southern white man. Every law placed in the Constitution of the
United States was placed there to encourage and stimulate the highest
citizenship. If the Negro is not stimulated and encouraged by just
State and national laws to become the highest type of citizen, the
result will be worse for the Southern white man than for the Negro.
Take the State of South Carolina, for example, where nearly two-thirds
of the population are Negroes. Unless these Negroes are encouraged by
just election laws to become tax-payers and intelligent producers, the
white people of South Carolina will have an eternal millstone about
their necks.
In an open letter to the State Constitutional Convention of Louisiana,
I wrote:
"I am no politician. On the other hand, I have always advised my
race to give attention to acquiring property, intelligence, and
character, as the necessary bases of good citizenship, rather
than to mere political agitation. But the question upon which I
write is out of the region of ordinary politics. It affects the
civilisation of two races, not for to-day alone, but for a very
long time to come.
"Since the war, no State has had such an opportunity to settle,
for all time, the race question, so far as it concerns politics,
as is now given to Louisiana. Will your convention set an example
to the world in this respect? Will Louisiana take such high and
just grounds in respect to the Negro that no one can doubt that
the South is as good a friend to him as he possesses elsewhere?
In all this, gentlemen of the convention, I am not pleading for
the Negro alone, but for the morals, the higher life, of the
white man as well.
"The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation
of the South that restrictions be put upon the ballot. I know
that you have two serious problems before you; ignorant and
corrupt government, on the one hand; and, on the other, a way to
restrict the ballot so that control will be in the hands of the
intelligent, without regard to race. With the sincerest sympathy
with you in your efforts to find a good way out of the
difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make
a law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an
ignorant white man to vote, and withhold the opportunity or
temptation from an ignorant coloured man, without injuring both
men. No State can make a law that can thus be executed without
dwarfing, for all time, the morals of the white man in the South.
Any law controlling the ballot that is not absolutely just and
fair to both races will work more permanent injury to the whites
than to the blacks.
"The Negro does not object to an educational and property test,
but let the law be so clear that no one clothed with State
authority will be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by
putting one interpretation upon it for the white man and another
for the black man. Study the history of the South, and you will
find that, where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter
of voting, there you will find to-day the lowest moral condition
of both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly
with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an easy step to act
dishonestly with the white man's ballot, to the carrying of
concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the
murder of a white man, and then to lynching. I entreat you not to
pass a law that will prove an eternal millstone about the necks
of your children. No man can have respect for the government and
officers of the law when he knows, deep down in his heart, that
the exercise of the franchise is tainted with fraud.
"The road that the South has been compelled to travel during the
last thirty years has been strewn with thorns and thistles. It
has been as one groping through the long darkness into the light.
The time is not far distant when the world will begin to
appreciate the real character of the burden that was imposed upon
the South in giving the franchise to four millions of ignorant
and impoverished ex-slaves. No people was ever before given such
a problem to solve. History has blazed no path through the
wilderness that could be followed. For thirty years we have
wandered in the wilderness. We are now beginning to get out. But
there is only one road out; and all makeshifts, expedients,
profit and loss calculations, but lead into swamps, quicksands,
quagmires, and jungles. There is a highway that will lead both
races out into the pure, beautiful sunshine, where there will be
nothing to hide and nothing to explain, where both races can
grow strong and true and useful in every fibre of their being. I
believe that your convention will find this highway, that it will
enact a fundamental law that will be absolutely just and fair to
white and black alike.
"I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the
ballot-box against the ignorant you will open the school-house.
More than one-half of the population of your State are Negroes.
No State can long prosper when a large part of its citizenship is
in ignorance and poverty, and has no interest in the government.
I beg of you that you do not treat us as an alien people. We are
not aliens. You know us. You know that we have cleared your
forests, tilled your fields, nursed your children, and protected
your families. There is an attachment between us that few
understand. While I do not presume to be able to advise you, yet
it is in my heart to say that, if your convention would do
something that would prevent for all time strained relations
between the two races, and would permanently settle the matter of
political relations in one Southern State at least, let the very
best educational opportunities be provided for both races; and
add to this an election law that shall be incapable of unjust
discrimination, at the same time providing that, in proportion as
the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they will
be given the right of citizenship. Any other course will take
from one-half your citizens interest in the State, and hope and
ambition to become intelligent producers and tax-payers, and
useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the white
citizens of Louisiana to a body of death.
"The Negroes are not unmindful of the fact that the poverty of
the State prevents it from doing all that it desires for public
education; yet I believe that you will agree with me that
ignorance is more costly to the State than education, that it
will cost Louisiana more not to educate the Negroes than it will
to educate them. In connection with a generous provision for
public schools, I believe that nothing will so help my own people
in your State as provision at some institution for the highest
academic and normal training, in connection with thorough
training in agriculture, mechanics, and domestic economy.
First-class training in agriculture, horticulture, dairying,
stock-raising, the mechanical arts, and domestic economy, would
make us intelligent producers, and not only help us to contribute
our honest share as tax-payers, but would result in retaining
much money in the State that now goes outside for that which can
be as well produced at home. An institution which will give this
training of the hand, along with the highest mental culture,
would soon convince our people that their salvation is largely
in the ownership of property and in industrial and business
development, rather than in mere political agitation.
"The highest test of the civilisation of any race is in its
willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. A
race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up.
Surely, no people ever had a greater chance to exhibit the
highest Christian fortitude and magnanimity than is now presented
to the people of Louisiana. It requires little wisdom or
statesmanship to repress, to crush out, to retard the hopes and
aspirations of a people; but the highest and most profound
statesmanship is shown in guiding and stimulating a people, so
that every fibre in the body and soul shall be made to contribute
in the highest degree to the usefulness and ability of the State.
It is along this line that I pray God the thoughts and
activities of your convention may be guided."
As to such outbreaks as have recently occurred in North Carolina and
South Carolina, the remedy will not be reached by the Southern white
man merely depriving the Negro of his rights and privileges. This
method is but superficial, irritating, and must, in the nature of
things, be short-lived. The statesman, to cure an evil, resorts to
enlightenment, to stimulation; the politician, to repression. I have
just remarked that I favour the giving up of nothing that is
guaranteed to us by the Constitution of the United States, or that is
fundamental to our citizenship. While I hold to these views as
strongly as any one, I differ with some as to the method of securing
the permanent and peaceful enjoyment of all the privileges guaranteed
to us by our fundamental law.
In finding a remedy, we must recognise the world-wide fact that the
Negro must be led to see and feel that he must make every effort
possible, in every way possible, to secure the friendship, the
confidence, the co-operation of his white neighbour in the South. To
do this, it is not necessary for the Negro to become a truckler or a
trimmer. The Southern white man has no respect for a Negro who does
not act from principle. In some way the Southern white man must be led
to see that it is to his interest to turn his attention more and more
to the making of laws that will, in the truest sense, elevate the
Negro. At the present moment, in many cases, when one attempts to get
the Negro to co-operate with the Southern white man, he asks the
question, "Can the people who force me to ride in a Jim Crow car, and
pay first-class fare, be my best friends?" In answering such
questions, the Southern white man, as well as the Negro, has a duty to
perform. In the exercise of his political rights I should advise the
Negro to be temperate and modest, and more and more to do his own
thinking.
I believe the permanent cure for our present evils will come through a
property and educational test for voting that shall apply honestly and
fairly to both races. This will cut off the large mass of ignorant
voters of both races that is now proving so demoralising a factor in
the politics of the Southern States.
But, most of all, it will come through industrial development of the
Negro. Industrial education makes an intelligent producer of the
Negro, who becomes of immediate value to the community rather than
one who yields to the temptation to live merely by politics or
other parasitical employments. It will make him soon become a
property-holder; and, when a citizen becomes a holder of property, he
becomes a conservative and thoughtful voter. He will more carefully
consider the measures and individuals to be voted for. In proportion
as he increases his property interests, he becomes important as a
tax-payer.
There is little trouble between the Negro and the white man in matters
of education; and, when it comes to his business development, the
black man has implicit faith in the advice of the Southern white man.
When he gets into trouble in the courts, which requires a bond to be
given, in nine cases out of ten, he goes to a Southern white man for
advice and assistance. Every one who has lived in the South knows
that, in many of the church troubles among the coloured people, the
ministers and other church officers apply to the nearest white
minister for assistance and instruction. When by reason of mutual
concession we reach the point where we shall consult the Southern
white man about our politics as we now consult him about our
business, legal, and religious matters, there will be a change for the
better in the situation.
The object-lesson of a thousand Negroes in every county in the South
who own neat and comfortable homes, possessing skill, industry, and
thrift, with money in the bank, and are large tax-payers co-operating
with the white men in the South in every manly way for the development
of their own communities and counties, will go a long way, in a few
years, toward changing the present status of the Negro as a citizen,
as well as the attitude of the whites toward the blacks.
As the Negro grows in industrial and business directions, he will
divide in his politics on economic issues, just as the white man in
other parts of the country now divides his vote. As the South grows in
business prosperity it will divide its vote on economic issues, just
as other sections of the country divide their vote. When we can enact
laws that result in honestly cutting off the large ignorant and
non-tax-paying vote, and when we can bring both races to the point
where they will co-operate with each other in politics, as they do now
in matters of business, religion, and education, the problem will be
in a large measure solved, and political outbreaks will cease.
CHAPTER VII.
One of the great questions which Christian education must face in the
South is the proper adjustment of the new relations of the two races.
It is a question which must be faced calmly, quietly, dispassionately;
and the time has now come to rise above party, above race, above
colour, above sectionalism, into the region of duty of man to man, of
American to American, of Christian to Christian.
I remember not long ago, when about five hundred coloured people
sailed from the port of Savannah bound for Liberia, that the news was
flashed all over the country, "The Negro has made up his mind to
return to his own country," and that, "in this was the solution of the
race problem in the South." But these short-sighted people forgot the
fact that before breakfast that morning about five hundred more Negro
children were born in the South alone.
And then, once in a while, somebody is so bold as to predict that the
Negro will be absorbed by the white race. Let us look at this phase of
the question for a moment. It is a fact that, if a person is known to
have one per cent. of African blood in his veins, he ceases to be a
white man. The ninety-nine per cent. of Caucasian blood does not weigh
by the side of the one per cent. of African blood. The white blood
counts for nothing. The person is a Negro every time. So it will be a
very difficult task for the white man to absorb the Negro.
Somebody else conceived the idea of colonising the coloured people, of
getting territory where nobody lived, putting the coloured people
there, and letting them be a nation all by themselves. There are two
objections to that. First, you would have to build one wall to keep
the coloured people in, and another wall to keep the white people
out. If you were to build ten walls around Africa to-day you could not
keep the white people out, especially as long as there was a hope of
finding gold there.
I have always had the highest respect for those of our race who, in
trying to find a solution for our Southern problem, advised a return
of the race to Africa, and because of my respect for those who have
thus advised, especially Bishop Henry M. Turner, I have tried to make
a careful and unbiassed study of the question, during a recent sojourn
in Europe, to see what opportunities presented themselves in Africa
for self-development and self-government.
I am free to say that I see no way out of the Negro's present
condition in the South by returning to Africa. Aside from other
insurmountable obstacles, there is no place in Africa for him to go
where his condition would be improved. All Europe--especially England,
France, and Germany--has been running a mad race for the last twenty
years, to see which could gobble up the greater part of Africa; and
there is practically nothing left. Old King Cetewayo put it pretty
well when he said, "First come missionary, then come rum, then come
traders, then come army"; and Cecil Rhodes has expressed the
prevailing sentiment more recently in these words, "I would rather
have land than 'niggers.'" And Cecil Rhodes is directly responsible
for the killing of thousands of black natives in South Africa, that he
might secure their land.
In a talk with Henry M. Stanley, the explorer, he told me that he knew
no place in Africa where the Negroes of the United States might go to
advantage; but I want to be more specific. Let us see how Africa has
been divided, and then decide whether there is a place left for us.
On the Mediterranean coast of Africa, Morocco is an independent State,
Algeria is a French possession, Tunis is a French protectorate,
Tripoli is a province of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt is a province of
Turkey. On the Atlantic coast, Sahara is a French protectorate, Adrar
is claimed by Spain, Senegambia is a French trading settlement, Gambia
is a British crown colony, Sierra Leone is a British crown colony.
Liberia is a republic of freed Negroes, Gold Coast and Ashanti are
British colonies and British protectorates, Togoland is a German
protectorate, Dahomey is a kingdom subject to French influence, Slave
Coast is a British colony and British protectorate, Niger Coast is a
British protectorate, the Cameroons are trading settlements protected
by Germany, French Congo is a French protectorate, Congo Free State is
an international African Association, Angola and Benguela are
Portuguese protectorates, and the inland countries are controlled as
follows: The Niger States, Masina, etc., are under French protection;
Land Gandu is under British protection, administered by the Royal
Haussan Niger Company.
South Africa is controlled as follows: Damara and Namaqua Land are
German protectorates, Cape Colony is a British colony, Basutoland is a
Crown colony, Bechuanaland is a British protectorate, Natal is a
British colony, Zululand is a British protectorate, Orange Free State
is independent, the South African Republic is independent, and the
Zambesi is administered by the British South African Company. Lourence
Marques is a Portuguese possession.
East Africa has also been disposed of in the following manner:
Mozambique is a Portuguese possession, British Central Africa is a
British protectorate, German East Africa is in the German sphere of
influence, Zanzibar is a sultanate under British protection, British
East Africa is a British protectorate, Somaliland is under British and
Italian protection, Abyssinia is independent. East Soudan (including
Nubia, Kordofan, Darfur, and Wadai) is in the British sphere of
influence. It will be noted that, when one of these European countries
cannot get direct control over any section of Africa, it at once gives
it out to the world that the country wanted is in the "sphere of its
influence,"--a very convenient term. If we are to go to Africa, and be
under the control of another government, I think we should prefer to
take our chances in the "sphere of influence" of the United States.
All this shows pretty conclusively that a return to Africa for the
Negro is out of the question, even provided that a majority of the
Negroes wished to go back, which they do not. The adjustment of the
relations of the two races must take place here; and it is taking
place slowly, but surely. As the Negro is educated to make homes and
to respect himself, the white man will in turn respect him.
It has been urged that the Negro has inherent in him certain traits of
character that will prevent his ever reaching the standard of
civilisation set by the whites, and taking his place among them as an
equal. It may be some time before the Negro race as a whole can stand
comparison with the white in all respects,--it would be most
remarkable, considering the past, if it were not so; but the idea that
his objectionable traits and weaknesses are fundamental, I think, is a
mistake. For, although there are elements of weakness about the Negro
race, there are also many evidences of strength.
It is an encouraging sign, however, when an individual grows to the
point where he can hold himself up for personal analysis and study. It
is equally encouraging for a race to be able to study itself,--to
measure its weakness and strength. It is not helpful to a race to be
continually praised and have its weakness overlooked, neither is it
the most helpful thing to have its faults alone continually dwelt
upon. What is needed is downright, straightforward honesty in both
directions; and this is not always to be obtained.
There is little question that one of the Negroes' weak points is
physical. Especially is this true regarding those who live in the
large cities, North and South. But in almost every case this physical
weakness can be traced to ignorant violation of the laws of health or
to vicious habits. The Negro, who during slavery lived on the large
plantations in the South, surrounded by restraints, at the close of
the war came to the cities, and in many cases found the freedom and
temptations of the city too much for him. The transition was too
sudden.
When we consider what it meant to have four millions of people slaves
to-day and freemen to-morrow, the wonder is that the race has not
suffered more physically than it has. I do not believe that statistics
can be so marshalled as to prove that the Negro as a race is
physically or numerically on the decline. On the other hand, the Negro
as a race is increasing in numbers by a larger percentage than is true
of the French nation. While the death-rate is large in the cities, the
birth-rate is also large; and it is to be borne in mind that
eighty-five per cent. of these people in the Gulf States are in the
country districts and smaller towns, and there the increase is along
healthy and normal lines. As the Negro becomes educated, the high
death-rate in the cities will disappear. For proof of this, I have
only to mention that a few years ago no coloured man could get
insurance in the large first-class insurance companies. Now there are
few of these companies which do not seek the insurance of educated
coloured men. In the North and South the physical intoxication that
was the result of sudden freedom is giving way to an encouraging,
sobering process; and, as this continues, the high death-rate will
disappear even, in the large cities.
Another element of weakness which shows itself in the present stage of
the civilisation of the Negro is his lack of ability to form a purpose
and stick to it through a series of years, if need be,--years that
involve discouragement as well as encouragement,--till the end shall
be reached. Of course there are brilliant exceptions to this rule; but
there is no question that here is an element of weakness, and the
same, I think, would be true of any race with the Negro's history.
Few of the resolutions which are made in conventions, etc., are
remembered and put into practice six months after the warmth and
enthusiasm of the debating hall have disappeared. This, I know, is an
element of the white man's weakness, but it is the Negro I am
discussing, not the white man. Individually, the Negro is strong.
Collectively, he is weak. This is not to be wondered at. The ability
to succeed in organised bodies is one of the highest points in
civilisation. There are scores of coloured men who can succeed in any
line of business as individuals, or will discuss any subject in a most
intelligent manner, yet who, when they attempt to act in an organised
body, are utter failures.
But the weakness of the Negro which is most frequently held up to the
public gaze is that of his moral character. No one who wants to be
honest and at the same time benefit the race will deny that here is
where the strengthening is to be done. It has become universally
accepted that the family is the foundation, the bulwark, of any race.
It should be remembered, sorrowfully withal, that it was the constant
tendency of slavery to destroy the family life. All through two
hundred and fifty years of slavery, one of the chief objects was to
increase the number of slaves; and to this end almost all thought of
morality was lost sight of, so that the Negro has had only about
thirty years in which to develop a family life; while the Anglo-Saxon
rate, with which he is constantly being compared, has had thousands of
years of training in home life. The Negro felt all through the years
of bondage that he was being forcibly and unjustly deprived of the
fruits of his labour. Hence he felt that anything he could get from
the white man in return for this labour justly belonged to him. Since
this was true, we must be patient in trying to teach him a different
code of morals.
From the nature of things, all through slavery it was life in the
future world that was emphasised in religious teaching rather than
life in this world. In his religious meetings in _ante-bellum_ days
the Negro was prevented from discussing many points of practical
religion which related to this world; and the white minister, who was
his spiritual guide, found it more convenient to talk about heaven
than earth, so very naturally that to-day in his religious meeting it
is the Negro's feelings which are worked upon mostly, and it is
description of the glories of heaven that occupy most of the time of
his sermon.
Having touched upon some of the weak points of the Negro, what are
his strong characteristics? The Negro in America is different from
most people for whom missionary effort is made, in that he works. He
is not ashamed or afraid of work. When hard, constant work is
required, ask any Southern white man, and he will tell you that in
this the Negro has no superior. He is not given to strikes or to
lockouts. He not only works himself, but he is unwilling to prevent
other people from working.
Of the forty buildings of various kinds and sizes on the grounds of
the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, in Alabama, as I have
stated before, almost all of them are the results of the labour
performed by the students while securing their academic education. One
day the student is in his history class. The next day the same
student, equally happy, with his trowel and in overalls, is working on
a brick wall.
While at present the Negro may lack that tenacious mental grasp which
enables one to pursue a scientific or mathematical investigation
through a series of years, he has that delicate, mental feeling which
enables him to succeed in oratory, music, etc.
While I have spoken of the Negro's moral weakness, I hope it will be
kept in mind that in his original state his is an honest race. It was
slavery that corrupted him in this respect. But in morals he also has
his strong points.
Few have ever found the Negro guilty of betraying a trust. There are
almost no instances in which the Negro betrayed either a Federal or a
Confederate soldier who confided in him. There are few instances where
the Negro has been entrusted with valuables when he has not been
faithful. This country has never had a more loyal citizen. He has
never proven himself a rebel. Should the Southern States, which so
long held him in slavery, be invaded by a foreign foe, the Negro would
be among the first to come to the rescue.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing in connection with the lifting up
of the Negro in this country is the fact that he knows that he is down
and wants to get up, he knows that he is ignorant and wants to get
light. He fills every school-house and every church which is opened
for him. He is willing to follow leaders, when he is once convinced
that the leaders have his best interest at heart.
Under the constant influence of the Christian education which began
thirty-five years ago, his religion is every year becoming less
emotional and more rational and practical, though I, for one, hope
that he will always retain in a large degree the emotional element in
religion.
During the two hundred and fifty years that the Negro spent in
slavery he had little cause or incentive to accumulate money or
property. Thirty-five years ago this was something which he had to
begin to learn. While the great bulk of the race is still without
money and property, yet the signs of thrift are evident on every hand.
Especially is this noticeable in the large number of neat little homes
which are owned by these people on the outer edges of the towns and
cities in the South.
I wish to give an example of the sort of thing the Negro has to
contend with, however, in his efforts to lift himself up.
Not long ago a mother, a black mother, who lived in one of our
Northern States, had heard it whispered around in her community for
years that the Negro was lazy, shiftless, and would not work. So, when
her only boy grew to sufficient size, at considerable expense and
great self-sacrifice, she had her boy thoroughly taught the
machinist's trade. A job was secured in a neighbouring shop. With
dinner bucket in hand and spurred on by the prayers of the now
happy-hearted mother, the boy entered the shop to begin his first
day's work. What happened? Every one of the twenty white men threw
down his tools, and deliberately walked out, swearing that he would
not give a black man an opportunity to earn an honest living. Another
shop was tried with the same result, and still another, the result
ever the same. To-day this once promising, ambitious black man is a
wreck,--a confirmed drunkard,--with no hope, no ambition. I ask, Who
blasted the life of this young man? On whose hands does his lifeblood
rest? The present system of education, or rather want of education, is
responsible.
Public schools and colleges should turn out men who will throw open
the doors of industry, so that all men, everywhere, regardless of
colour, shall have the same opportunity to earn a dollar that they now
have to spend it. I know of a good many kinds of cowardice and
prejudice, but I know none equal to this. I know not which is the
worst,--the slaveholder who perforce compelled his slave to work
without compensation or the man who, by force and strikes, compels his
neighbour to refrain from working for compensation.
The Negro will be on a different footing in this country when it
becomes common to associate the possession of wealth with a black
skin. It is not within the province of human nature that the man who
is intelligent and virtuous, and owns and cultivates the best farm in
his county, is the largest tax-payer, shall very long be denied proper
respect and consideration. Those who would help the Negro most
effectually during the next fifty years can do so by assisting in his
development along scientific and industrial lines in connection with
the broadest mental and religious culture.
From the results of the war with Spain let us learn this, that God has
been teaching the Spanish nation a terrible lesson. What is it? Simply
this, that no nation can disregard the interest of any portion of its
members without that nation becoming weak and corrupt. The penalty may
be long delayed. God has been teaching Spain that for every one of her
subjects that she has left in ignorance, poverty, and crime the price
must be paid; and, if it has not been paid with the very heart of the
nation, it must be paid with the proudest and bluest blood of her sons
and with treasure that is beyond computation. From this spectacle I
pray God that America will learn a lesson in respect to the ten
million Negroes in this country.
The Negroes in the United States are, in most of the elements of
civilisation, weak. Providence has placed them here not without a
purpose. One object, in my opinion, is that the stronger race may
imbibe a lesson from the weaker in patience, forbearance, and
childlike yet supreme trust in the God of the Universe. This race has
been placed here that the white man might have a great opportunity of
lifting himself by lifting it up.
Out from the Negro colleges and industrial schools in the South there
are going forth each year thousands of young men and women into dark
and secluded corners, into lonely log school-houses, amidst poverty
and ignorance; and though, when they go forth, no drums beat, no
banners fly, no friends cheer, yet they are fighting the battles of
this country just as truly and bravely as those who go forth to do
battle against a foreign enemy.
If they are encouraged and properly supported in their work of
educating the masses in the industries, in economy, and in morals, as
well as mentally, they will, before many years, get the race upon such
an intellectual, industrial, and financial footing that it will be
able to enjoy without much trouble all the rights inherent in American
citizenship.
Now, if we wish to bring the race to a point where it should be, where
it will be strong, and grow and prosper, we have got to, in every way
possible, encourage it. We can do this in no better way than by
cultivating that amount of faith in the race which will make us
patronise its own enterprises wherever those enterprises are worth
patronising. I do not believe much in the advice that is often given
that we should patronise the enterprises of our race without regard to
the worth of those enterprises. I believe that the best way to bring
the race to the point where it will compare with other races is to
let it understand that, whenever it enters into any line of business,
it will be patronised just in proportion as it makes that business as
successful, as useful, as is true of any business enterprise conducted
by any other race. The race that would grow strong and powerful must
have the element of hero-worship in it that will, in the largest
degree, make it honour its great men, the men who have succeeded in
that race. I think we should be ashamed of the coloured man or woman
who would not venerate the name of Frederick Douglass. No race that
would not look upon such a man with honour and respect and pride could
ever hope to enjoy the respect of any other race. I speak of this, not
that I want my people to regard themselves in a narrow, bigoted sense,
because there is nothing so hurtful to an individual or to a race as
to get into the habit of feeling that there is no good except in its
own race, but because I wish that it may have reasonable pride in all
that is honourable in its history. Whenever you hear a coloured man
say that he hates the people of the other race, there, in most
instances, you will find a weak, narrow-minded coloured man. And,
whenever you find a white man who expresses the same sentiment toward
the people of other races, there, too, in almost every case, you will
find a narrow-minded, prejudiced white man.
That person is the broadest, strongest, and most useful who sees
something to love and admire in all races, no matter what their
colour.
If the Negro race wishes to grow strong, it must learn to respect
itself, not to be ashamed. It must learn that it will only grow in
proportion as its members have confidence in it, in proportion as they
believe that it is a coming race.
We have reached a period when educated Negroes should give more
attention to the history of their race; should devote more time to
finding out the true history of the race, and in collecting in some
museum the relics that mark its progress. It is true of all races of
culture and refinement and civilisation that they have gathered in
some place the relics which mark the progress of their civilisation,
which show how they lived from period to period. We should have so
much pride that we would spend more time in looking into the history
of the race, more effort and money in perpetuating in some durable
form its achievements, so that from year to year, instead of looking
back with regret, we can point to our children the rough path through
which we grew strong and great.
We have a very bright and striking example in the history of the Jews
in this and other countries. There is, perhaps, no race that has
suffered so much, not so much in America as in some of the countries
in Europe. But these people have clung together. They have had a
certain amount of unity, pride, and love of race; and, as the years go
on, they will be more and more influential in this country,--a country
where they were once despised, and looked upon with scorn and
derision. It is largely because the Jewish race has had faith in
itself. Unless the Negro learns more and more to imitate the Jew in
these matters, to have faith in himself, he cannot expect to have any
high degree of success.
I wish to speak upon another subject which largely concerns the
welfare of both races, especially in the South,--lynching. It is an
unpleasant subject; but I feel that I should be omitting some part of
my duty to both races did I not say something on the subject.
For a number of years the South has appealed to the North and to
federal authorities, through the public press, from the public
platform, and most eloquently through the late Henry W. Grady, to
leave the whole matter of the rights and protection of the Negro to
the South, declaring that it would see to it that the Negro would be
made secure in his citizenship. During the last half-dozen years the
whole country, from the President down, has been inclined more than
ever to pursue this policy, leaving the whole matter of the destiny of
the Negro to the Negro himself and to the Southern white people, among
whom the great bulk of Negroes live.
By the present policy of non-interference on the part of the North and
the federal government the South is given a sacred trust. How will she
execute this trust? The world is waiting and watching to see. The
question must be answered largely by the protection it gives to the
life of the Negro and the provisions that are made for his development
in the organic laws of the State. I fear that but few people in the
South realise to what an extent the habit of lynching, or the taking
of life without due process of law, has taken hold of us, and is
hurting us, not only in the eyes of the world, but in our own moral
and material growth.
Lynching was instituted some years ago with the idea of punishing and
checking criminal assaults upon women. Let us examine the facts, and
see where it has already led us and is likely further to carry us, if
we do not rid ourselves of the evil. Many good people in the South,
and also out of the South, have gotten the idea that lynching is
resorted to for one crime only. I have the facts from an authoritative
source. During last year one hundred and twenty-seven persons were
lynched in the United States. Of this number, one hundred and
eighteen were executed in the South and nine in the North and West. Of
the total number lynched, one hundred and two were Negroes,
twenty-three were whites, and two Indians. Now, let every one
interested in the South, his country, and the cause of humanity, note
this fact,--that only twenty-four of the entire number were charged in
any way with the crime of rape; that is, twenty-four out of one
hundred and twenty-seven cases of lynching. Sixty-one of the remaining
cases were for murder, thirteen for being suspected of murder, six for
theft, etc. During one week last spring, when I kept a careful record,
thirteen Negroes were lynched in three of our Southern States; and not
one was even charged with rape. All of these thirteen were accused of
murder or house-burning; but in neither case were the men allowed to
go before a court, so that their innocence or guilt might be proven.
When we get to the point where four-fifths of the people lynched in
our country in one year are for some crime other than rape, we can no
longer plead and explain that we lynch for one crime alone.
Let us take another year, that of 1892, for example, when 241 persons
were lynched in the whole United States. Of this number 36 were
lynched in Northern and Western States, and 205 in our Southern
States; 160 were Negroes, 5 of these being women. The facts show that,
out of the 241 lynched, only 57 were even charged with rape or
attempted rape, leaving in this year alone 184 persons who were
lynched for other causes than that of rape.
If it were necessary, I could produce figures for other years. Within
a period of six years about 900 persons have been lynched in our
Southern States. This is but a few hundred short of the total number
of soldiers who lost their lives in Cuba during the Spanish-American
War. If we would realise still more fully how far this unfortunate
evil is leading us on, note the classes of crime during a few months
for which the local papers and the Associated Press say that lynching
has been inflicted. They include "murder," "rioting," "incendiarism,"
"robbery," "larceny," "self-defence," "insulting women," "alleged
stock-poisoning," "malpractice," "alleged barn-burning," "suspected
robbery," "race prejudice," "attempted murder," "horse-stealing,"
"mistaken identity," etc.
The evil has so grown that we are now at the point where not only
blacks are lynched in the South, but white men as well. Not only this,
but within the last six years at least a half-dozen coloured women
have been lynched. And there are a few cases where Negroes have
lynched members of their own race. What is to be the end of all this?
Furthermore, every lynching drives hundreds of Negroes out of the
farming districts of the South, where they make the best living and
where their services are of greatest value to the country, into the
already over-crowded cities.
I know that some argue that the crime of lynching Negroes is not
confined to the South. This is true; and no one can excuse such a
crime as the shooting of innocent black men in Illinois, who were
guilty of nothing, except seeking labour. But my words just now are to
the South, where my home is and a part of which I am. Let other
sections act as they will; I want to see our beautiful Southland free
from this terrible evil of lynching. Lynching does not stop crime. In
the vicinity in the South where a coloured man was alleged recently to
have committed the most terrible crime ever charged against a member
of my race, but a few weeks previously five coloured men had been
lynched for supposed incendiarism. If lynching was a cure for crime,
surely the lynching of those five would have prevented another Negro
from committing a most heinous crime a few weeks later.
We might as well face the facts bravely and wisely. Since the
beginning of the world crime has been committed in all civilised and
uncivilised countries, and a certain percentage of it will always be
committed both in the North and in the South; but I believe that the
crime of rape can be stopped. In proportion to the numbers and
intelligence of the population of the South, there exists little more
crime than in several other sections of the country; but, because of
the lynching evil, we are constantly advertising ourselves to the
world as a lawless people. We cannot disregard the teachings of the
civilised world for eighteen hundred years, that the only way to
punish crime is by law. When we leave this anchorage chaos begins.
I am not pleading for the Negro alone. Lynching injures, hardens, and
blunts the moral sensibilities of the young and tender manhood of the
South. Never shall I forget the remark by a little nine-year-old white
boy, with blue eyes and flaxen hair. The little fellow said to his
mother, after he had returned from a lynching: "I have seen a man
hanged; now I wish I could see one burned." Rather than hear such a
remark from one of my little boys, I would prefer to see him in his
grave. This is not all. Every community guilty of lynching says in so
many words to the governor, to the legislature, to the sheriff, to the
jury, and to the judge: "We have no faith in you and no respect for
you. We have no respect for the law which we helped to make."
In the South, at the present time, there is less excuse for not
permitting the law to take its course where a Negro is to be tried
than anywhere else in the world; for, almost without exception, the
governors, the sheriffs, the judges, the juries, and the lawyers are
all white men, and they can be trusted, as a rule, to do their duty.
Otherwise, it is needless to tax the people to support these officers.
If our present laws are not sufficient properly to punish crime, let
the laws be changed; but that the punishment may be by lawfully
constituted authorities is the plea I make. The history of the world
proves that where the law is most strictly enforced there is the least
crime: where people take the administration of the law into their own
hands there is the most crime.
But there is still another side. The white man in the South has not
only a serious duty and responsibility, but the Negro has a duty and
responsibility in this matter. In speaking of my own people, I want
to be equally frank; but I speak with the greatest kindness. There is
too much crime among them. The figures for a given period show that in
the United States thirty per cent. of the crime committed is by
Negroes, while we constitute only about twelve per cent. of the entire
population. This proportion holds good not only in the South, but also
in Northern States and cities.
No race that is so largely ignorant and so recently out of slavery
could, perhaps, show a better record, but we must face these plain
facts. He is most kind to the Negro who tells him of his faults as
well as of his virtues. A large percentage of the crime among us grows
out of the idleness of our young men and women. It is for this reason
that I have tried to insist upon some industry being taught in
connection with their course of literary training. It is vitally
important now that every parent, every teacher and minister of the
gospel, should teach with unusual emphasis morality and obedience to
the law. At the fireside, in the school-room, in the Sunday-school,
from the pulpit, and in the Negro press, there should be such a
sentiment created regarding the committing of crime against women that
no such crime could be charged against any member of the race. Let it
be understood, for all time, that no one guilty of rape can find
sympathy or shelter with us, and that none will be more active than we
in bringing to justice, through the proper authorities, those guilty
of crime. Let the criminal and vicious element of the race have, at
all times, our most severe condemnation. Let a strict line be drawn
between the virtuous and the criminal. I condemn, with all the
indignation of my soul, any beast in human form guilty of assaulting a
woman. I am sure I voice the sentiment of the thoughtful of my race
in this condemnation.
We should not, as a race, become discouraged. We are making progress.
No race has ever gotten upon its feet without discouragements and
struggles.
I should be a great hypocrite and a coward if I did not add that which
my daily experience has taught me to be true; namely, that the Negro
has among many of the Southern whites as good friends as he has
anywhere in the world. These friends have not forsaken us. They will
not do so. Neither will our friends in the North. If we make ourselves
intelligent, industrious, economical, and virtuous, of value to the
community in which we live, we can and will work out our salvation
right here in the South. In every community, by means of organised
effort, we should seek, in a manly and honourable way, the confidence,
the co-operation, the sympathy, of the best white people in the South
and in our respective communities. With the best white people and the
best black people standing together, in favour of law and order and
justice, I believe that the safety and happiness of both races will be
made secure.
We are one in this country. The question of the highest citizenship
and the complete education of all concerns nearly ten millions of my
people and sixty millions of the white race. When one race is strong,
the other is strong; when one is weak, the other is weak. There is no
power that can separate our destiny. Unjust laws and customs which
exist in many places injure the white man and inconvenience the Negro.
No race can wrong another race, simply because it has the power to do
so, without being permanently injured in its own morals. The Negro can
endure the temporary inconvenience, but the injury to the white man is
permanent. It is for the white man to save himself from this
degradation that I plead. If a white man steals a Negro's ballot, it
is the white man who is permanently injured. Physical death comes to
the one Negro lynched in a county; but death of the morals--death of
the soul--comes to those responsible for the lynching.
Those who fought and died on the battlefield for the freedom of the
slaves performed their duty heroically and well, but a duty remains to
those left. The mere fiat of law cannot make an ignorant voter an
intelligent voter, cannot make a dependent man an independent man,
cannot make one citizen respect another. These results will come to
the Negro, as to all races, by beginning at the bottom and gradually
working up to the highest possibilities of his nature.
In the economy of God there is but one standard by which an individual
can succeed: there is but one for a race. This country expects that
every race shall measure itself by the American standard. During the
next half-century, and more, the Negro must continue passing through
the severe American crucible. He is to be tested in his patience, his
forbearance, his perseverance, his power to endure wrong,--to
withstand temptations, to economise, to acquire and use skill,--his
ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the
superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be
great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant
of all. This,--this is the passport to all that is best in the life of
our Republic; and the Negro must possess it or be barred out.
In working out his own destiny, while the main burden of activity must
be with the Negro, he will need in the years to come, as he has needed
in the past, the help, the encouragement, the guidance, that the
strong can give the weak. Thus helped, those of both races in the
South will soon throw off the shackles of racial and sectional
prejudice, and rise above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and
selfishness into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be
the highest ambition to serve man, our brother, regardless of race or
previous condition.
CHAPTER VIII.
Before ending this volume, I have deemed it wise and fitting to sum up
in the following chapter all that I have attempted to say in the
previous chapters, and to speak at the same time a little more
definitely about the Negro's future and his relation to the white
race.
All attempts to settle the question of the Negro in the South by his
removal from this country have so far failed, and I think that they
are likely to fail. The next census will probably show that we have
about ten millions of Negroes in the United States. About eight
millions of these are in the Southern States. We have almost a nation
within a nation. The Negro population within the United States lacks
but two millions of being as large as the whole population of Mexico.
It is nearly twice as large as the population of the Dominion of
Canada. It is equal to the combined population of Switzerland,
Greece, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Uruguay, Santo Domingo, Paraguay,
and Costa Rica. When we consider, in connection with these facts, that
the race has doubled itself since its freedom, and is still
increasing, it hardly seems possible for any one to consider seriously
any scheme of emigration from America as a method of solution of our
vexed race problem. At most, even if the government were to provide
the means, but a few hundred thousand could be transported each year.
The yearly increase in population would more than overbalance the
number transplanted. Even if it did not, the time required to get rid
of the Negro by this method would perhaps be fifty or seventy-five
years. The idea is chimerical.
Some have advised that the Negro leave the South and take up his
residence in the Northern States. I question whether this would leave
him any better off than he is in the South, when all things are
considered. It has been my privilege to study the condition of our
people in nearly every part of America; and I say, without hesitation,
that, with some exceptional cases, the Negro is at his best in the
Southern States. While he enjoys certain privileges in the North that
he does not have in the South, when it comes to the matter of securing
property, enjoying business opportunities and employment, the South
presents a far better opportunity than the North. Few coloured men
from the South are as yet able to stand up against the severe and
increasing competition that exists in the North, to say nothing of the
unfriendly influence of labour organisations, which in some way
prevents black men in the North, as a rule, from securing employment
in skilled labour occupations.
Another point of great danger for the coloured man who goes North is
in the matter of morals, owing to the numerous temptations by which
he finds himself surrounded. He has more ways in which he can spend
money than in the South, but fewer avenues of employment are open to
him. The fact that at the North the Negro is confined to almost one
line of employment often tends to discourage and demoralise the
strongest who go from the South, and to make them an easy prey to
temptation. A few years ago I made an examination into the condition
of a settlement of Negroes who left the South and went to Kansas about
twenty years ago, when there was a good deal of excitement in the
South concerning emigration to the West. This settlement, I found, was
much below the standard of that of a similar number of our people in
the South. The only conclusion, therefore, it seems to me, which any
one can reach, is that the Negroes, as a mass, are to remain in the
Southern States. As a race, they do not want to leave the South, and
the Southern white people do not want them to leave. We must therefore
find some basis of settlement that will be constitutional, just,
manly, that will be fair to both races in the South and to the whole
country. This cannot be done in a day, a year, or any short period of
time. We can, it seems to me, with the present light, decide upon a
reasonably safe method of solving the problem, and turn our strength
and effort in that direction. In doing this, I would not have the
Negro deprived of any privilege guaranteed to him by the Constitution
of the United States. It is not best for the Negro that he relinquish
any of his constitutional rights. It is not best for the Southern
white man that he should.
In order that we may, without loss of time or effort, concentrate our
forces in a wise direction, I suggest what seems to me and many others
the wisest policy to be pursued. I have reached these conclusions by
reason of my own observations and experience, after eighteen years of
direct contact with the leading and influential coloured and white men
in most parts of our country. But I wish first to mention some
elements of danger in the present situation, which all who desire the
permanent welfare of both races in the South should carefully
consider.
_First._--There is danger that a certain class of impatient extremists
among the Negroes, who have little knowledge of the actual conditions
in the South, may do the entire race injury by attempting to advise
their brethren in the South to resort to armed resistance or the use
of the torch, in order to secure justice. All intelligent and
well-considered discussion of any important question or condemnation
of any wrong, both in the North and the South, from the public
platform and through the press, is to be commended and encouraged;
but ill-considered, incendiary utterances from black men in the North
will tend to add to the burdens of our people in the South rather than
relieve them.
_Second._--Another danger in the South, which should be guarded
against, is that the whole white South, including the wide,
conservative, law-abiding element, may find itself represented before
the bar of public opinion by the mob, or lawless element, which gives
expression to its feelings and tendency in a manner that advertises
the South throughout the world. Too often those who have no sympathy
with such disregard of law are either silent or fail to speak in a
sufficiently emphatic manner to offset, in any large degree, the
unfortunate reputation which the lawless have too often made for many
portions of the South.
_Third._--No race or people ever got upon its feet without severe and
constant struggle, often in the face of the greatest discouragement.
While passing through the present trying period of its history, there
is danger that a large and valuable element of the Negro race may
become discouraged in the effort to better its condition. Every
possible influence should be exerted to prevent this.
_Fourth._--There is a possibility that harm may be done to the South
and to the Negro by exaggerated newspaper articles which are written
near the scene or in the midst of specially aggravating occurrences.
Often these reports are written by newspaper men, who give the
impression that there is a race conflict throughout the South, and
that all Southern white people are opposed to the Negro's progress,
overlooking the fact that, while in some sections there is trouble, in
most parts of the South there is, nevertheless, a very large measure
of peace, good will, and mutual helpfulness. In this same relation
much can be done to retard the progress of the Negro by a certain
class of Southern white people, who, in the midst of excitement, speak
or write in a manner that gives the impression that all Negroes are
lawless, untrustworthy, and shiftless. As an example, a Southern
writer said not long ago, in a communication to the New York
_Independent_: "Even in small towns the husband cannot venture to
leave his wife alone for an hour at night. At no time, in no place, is
the white woman safe from insults and assaults of these creatures."
These statements, I presume, represented the feelings and the
conditions that existed at the time they were written in one community
or county in the South. But thousands of Southern white men and women
would be ready to testify that this is not the condition throughout
the South, nor throughout any one State.
_Fifth._--Under the next head I would mention that, owing to the lack
of school opportunities for the Negro in the rural districts of the
South, there is danger that ignorance and idleness may increase to the
extent of giving the Negro race a reputation for crime, and that
immorality may eat its way into the moral fibre of the race, so as to
retard its progress for many years. In judging the Negro in this
regard, we must not be too harsh. We must remember that it has only
been within the last thirty-four years that the black father and
mother have had the responsibility, and consequently the experience,
of training their own children. That they have not reached perfection
in one generation, with the obstacles that the parents have been
compelled to overcome, is not to be wondered at.
_Sixth._--As a final source of danger to be guarded against, I would
mention my fear that some of the white people of the South may be led
to feel that the way to settle the race problem is to repress the
aspirations of the Negro by legislation of a kind that confers certain
legal or political privileges upon an ignorant and poor white man and
withholds the same privileges from a black man in the same condition.
Such legislation injures and retards the progress of both races. It is
an injustice to the poor white man, because it takes from him
incentive to secure education and property as prerequisites for
voting. He feels that, because he is a white man, regardless of his
possessions, a way will be found for him to vote. I would label all
such measures, "Laws to keep the poor white man in ignorance and
poverty."
As the Talladega _News Reporter_, a Democratic newspaper of Alabama,
recently said: "But it is a weak cry when the white man asks odds on
intelligence over the Negro. When nature has already so handicapped
the African in the race for knowledge, the cry of the boasted
Anglo-Saxon for still further odds seems babyish. What wonder that the
world looks on in surprise, if not disgust. It cannot help but say, if
our contention be true that the Negro is an inferior race, that the
odds ought to be on the other side, if any are to be given. And why
not? No, the thing to do--the only thing that will stand the test of
time--is to do right, exactly right, let come what will. And that
right thing, as it seems to me, is to place a fair educational
qualification before every citizen,--one that is self-testing, and not
dependent on the wishes of weak men, letting all who pass the test
stand in the proud ranks of American voters, whose votes shall be
counted as cast, and whose sovereign will shall be maintained as law
by all the powers that be. Nothing short of this will do. Every
exemption, on whatsoever ground, is an outrage that can only rob some
legitimate voter of his rights."
Such laws as have been made--as an example, in Mississippi--with the
"understanding" clause hold out a temptation for the election officer
to perjure and degrade himself by too often deciding that the ignorant
white man does understand the Constitution when it is read to him and
that the ignorant black man does not. By such a law the State not only
commits a wrong against its black citizens; it injures the morals of
its white citizens by conferring such a power upon any white man who
may happen to be a judge of elections.
Such laws are hurtful, again, because they keep alive in the heart of
the black man the feeling that the white man means to oppress him. The
only safe way out is to set a high standard as a test of citizenship,
and require blacks and whites alike to come up to it. When this is
done, both will have a higher respect for the election laws and those
who make them. I do not believe that, with his centuries of advantage
over the Negro in the opportunity to acquire property and education as
prerequisites for voting, the average white man in the South desires
that any special law be passed to give him advantage over the Negro,
who has had only a little more than thirty years in which to prepare
himself for citizenship. In this relation another point of danger is
that the Negro has been made to feel that it is his duty to oppose
continually the Southern white man in politics, even in matters where
no principle is involved, and that he is only loyal to his own race
and acting in a manly way when he is opposing him. Such a policy has
proved most hurtful to both races. Where it is a matter of principle,
where a question of right or wrong is involved, I would advise the
Negro to stand by principle at all hazards. A Southern white man has
no respect for or confidence in a Negro who acts merely for policy's
sake; but there are many cases--and the number is growing--where the
Negro has nothing to gain and much to lose by opposing the Southern
white man in many matters that relate to government.
Under these six heads I believe I have stated some of the main points
which all high-minded white men and black men, North and South, will
agree need our most earnest and thoughtful consideration, if we would
hasten, and not hinder, the progress of our country.
As to the policy that should be pursued in a larger sense,--on this
subject I claim to possess no superior wisdom or unusual insight. I
may be wrong; I may be in some degree right.
In the future, more than in the past, we want to impress upon the
Negro the importance of identifying himself more closely with the
interests of the South,--the importance of making himself part of the
South and at home in it. Heretofore, for reasons which were natural
and for which no one is especially to blame, the coloured people have
been too much like a foreign nation residing in the midst of another
nation. If William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and George L.
Stearns were alive to-day, I feel sure that each one of them would
advise the Negroes to identify their interests as far as possible with
those of the Southern white man, always with the understanding that
this should be done where no question of right and wrong is involved.
In no other way, it seems to me, can we get a foundation for peace and
progress. He who advises against this policy will advise the Negro to
do that which no people in history who have succeeded have done. The
white man, North or South, who advises the Negro against it advises
him to do that which he himself has not done. The bed-rock upon which
every individual rests his chances of success in life is securing the
friendship, the confidence, the respect, of his next-door neighbour of
the little community in which he lives. Almost the whole problem of
the Negro in the South rests itself upon the fact as to whether the
Negro can make himself of such indispensable service to his neighbour
and the community that no one can fill his place better in the body
politic. There is at present no other safe course for the black man to
pursue. If the Negro in the South has a friend in his white neighbour
and a still larger number of friends in his community, he has a
protection and a guarantee of his rights that will be more potent and
more lasting than any our Federal Congress or any outside power can
confer.
In a recent editorial the London _Times_, in discussing affairs in the
Transvaal, South Africa, where Englishmen have been denied certain
privileges by the Boers, says: "England is too sagacious not to
prefer a gradual reform from within, even should it be less rapid than
most of us might wish, to the most sweeping redress of grievances
imposed from without. Our object is to obtain fair play for the
outlanders, but the best way to do it is to enable them to help
themselves." This policy, I think, is equally safe when applied to
conditions in the South. The foreigner who comes to America, as soon
as possible, identifies himself in business, education, politics, and
sympathy with the community in which he settles. As I have said, we
have a conspicuous example of this in the case of the Jews. Also, the
Negro in Cuba has practically settled the race question there, because
he has made himself a part of Cuba in thought and action.
What I have tried to indicate cannot be accomplished by any sudden
revolution of methods, but it does seem that the tendency more and
more should be in this direction. If a practical example is wanted in
the direction that I favour, I will mention one. The North sends
thousands of dollars into the South each year, for the education of
the Negro. The teachers in most of the academic schools of the South
are supported by the North, or Northern men and women of the highest
Christian culture and most unselfish devotion. The Negro owes them a
debt of gratitude which can never be paid. The various missionary
societies in the North have done a work which, in a large degree, has
been the salvation of the South; and the result will appear in future
generations more than in this. We have now reached the point in the
South where, I believe, great good could be accomplished by changing
the attitude of the white people toward the Negro and of the Negro
toward the whites, if a few white teachers of high character would
take an active interest in the work of these high schools. Can this
be done? Yes. The medical school connected with Shaw University at
Raleigh, North Carolina, has from the first had as instructors and
professors, almost exclusively, Southern white doctors, who reside in
Raleigh; and they have given the highest satisfaction. This gives the
people of Raleigh the feeling that this is their school, and not
something located in, but not a part of, the South. In Augusta,
Georgia, the Payne Institute, one of the best colleges for our people,
is officered and taught almost wholly by Southern white men and women.
The Presbyterian Theological School at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has all
Southern white men as instructors. Some time ago, at the Calhoun
School in Alabama, one of the leading white men in the county was
given an important position in the school. Since then the feeling of
the white people in the county has greatly changed toward the school.
We must admit the stern fact that at present the Negro, through no
choice of his own, is living among another race which is far ahead of
him in education, property, experience, and favourable condition;
further, that the Negro's present condition makes him dependent upon
the white people for most of the things necessary to sustain life, as
well as for his common school education. In all history, those who
have possessed the property and intelligence have exercised the
greatest control in government, regardless of colour, race, or
geographical location. This being the case, how can the black man in
the South improve his present condition? And does the Southern white
man want him to improve it?
The Negro in the South has it within his power, if he properly
utilises the forces at hand, to make of himself such a valuable factor
in the life of the South that he will not have to seek privileges,
they will be freely conferred upon him. To bring this about, the Negro
must begin at the bottom and lay a sure foundation, and not be lured
by any temptation into trying to rise on a false foundation. While the
Negro is laying this foundation he will need help, sympathy, and
simple justice. Progress by any other method will be but temporary and
superficial, and the latter end of it will be worse than the
beginning. American slavery was a great curse to both races, and I
would be the last to apologise for it; but, in the presence of God, I
believe that slavery laid the foundation for the solution of the
problem that is now before us in the South. During slavery the Negro
was taught every trade, every industry, that constitutes the
foundation for making a living. Now, if on this foundation--laid in
rather a crude way, it is true, but a foundation, nevertheless--we can
gradually build and improve, the future for us is bright. Let me be
more specific. Agriculture is, or has been, the basic industry of
nearly every race or nation that has succeeded. The Negro got a
knowledge of this during slavery. Hence, in a large measure, he is in
possession of this industry in the South to-day. The Negro can buy
land in the South, as a rule, wherever the white man can buy it, and
at very low prices. Now, since the bulk of our people already have a
foundation in agriculture, they are at their best when living in the
country, engaged in agricultural pursuits. Plainly, then, the best
thing, the logical thing, is to turn the larger part of our strength
in a direction that will make the Negro among the most skilled
agricultural people in the world. The man who has learned to do
something better than any one else, has learned to do a common thing
in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that
no adverse circumstances can take from him. The Negro who can make
himself so conspicuous as a successful farmer, a large tax-payer, a
wise helper of his fellow-men, as to be placed in a position of trust
and honour, whether the position be political or otherwise, by natural
selection, is a hundred-fold more secure in that position than one
placed there by mere outside force or pressure. I know a Negro, Hon.
Isaiah T. Montgomery, in Mississippi, who is mayor of a town. It is
true that this town, at present, is composed almost wholly of Negroes.
Mr. Montgomery is mayor of this town because his genius, thrift, and
foresight have created the town; and he is held and supported in his
office by a charter, granted by the State of Mississippi, and by the
vote and public sentiment of the community in which he lives.
Let us help the Negro by every means possible to acquire such an
education in farming, dairying, stock-raising, horticulture, etc., as
will enable him to become a model in these respects and place him near
the top in these industries, and the race problem would in a large
part be settled, or at least stripped of many of its most perplexing
elements. This policy would also tend to keep the Negro in the country
and smaller towns, where he succeeds best, and stop the influx into
the large cities, where he does not succeed so well. The race, like
the individual, that produces something of superior worth that has a
common human interest, makes a permanent place for itself, and is
bound to be recognised.
At a county fair in the South not long ago I saw a Negro awarded the
first prize by a jury of white men, over white competitors, for the
production of the best specimen of Indian corn. Every white man at
this fair seemed to be pleased and proud of the achievement of this
Negro, because it was apparent that he had done something that would
add to the wealth and comfort of the people of both races in that
county. At the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama we
have a department devoted to training men in the science of
agriculture; but what we are doing is small when compared with what
should be done at Tuskegee and at other educational centres. In a
material sense the South is still an undeveloped country. While race
prejudice is strongly exhibited in many directions, in the matter of
business, of commercial and industrial development, there is very
little obstacle in the Negro's way. A Negro who produces or has for
sale something that the community wants finds customers among white
people as well as black people. A Negro can borrow money at the bank
with equal security as readily as a white man can. A bank in
Birmingham, Alabama, that has now existed ten years, is officered and
controlled wholly by Negroes. This bank has white borrowers and white
depositors. A graduate of the Tuskegee Institute keeps a
well-appointed grocery store in Tuskegee, and he tells me that he
sells about as many goods to the one race as to the other. What I have
said of the opening that awaits the Negro in the direction of
agriculture is almost equally true of mechanics, manufacturing, and
all the domestic arts. The field is before him and right about him.
Will he occupy it? Will he "cast down his bucket where he is"? Will
his friends North and South encourage him and prepare him to occupy
it? Every city in the South, for example, would give support to a
first-class architect or house-builder or contractor of our race. The
architect and contractor would not only receive support, but, through
his example, numbers of young coloured men would learn such trades as
carpentry, brick-masonry, plastering, painting, etc., and the race
would be put into a position to hold on to many of the industries
which it is now in danger of losing, because in too many cases brains,
skill, and dignity are not imparted to the common occupations of life
that are about his very door. Any individual or race that does not fit
itself to occupy in the best manner the field or service that is right
about it will sooner or later be asked to move on, and let some one
else occupy it.
But it is asked, Would you confine the Negro to agriculture,
mechanics, and domestic arts, etc.? Not at all; but along the lines
that I have mentioned is where the stress should be laid just now and
for many years to come. We will need and must have many teachers and
ministers, some doctors and lawyers and statesmen; but these
professional men will have a constituency or a foundation from which
to draw support just in proportion as the race prospers along the
economic lines that I have mentioned. During the first fifty or one
hundred years of the life of any people are not the economic
occupations always given the greater attention? This is not only the
historic, but, I think, the common-sense view. If this generation will
lay the material foundation, it will be the quickest and surest way
for the succeeding generation to succeed in the cultivation of the
fine arts, and to surround itself even with some of the luxuries of
life, if desired. What the race now most needs, in my opinion, is a
whole army of men and women well trained to lead and at the same time
infuse themselves into agriculture, mechanics, domestic employment,
and business. As to the mental training that these educated leaders
should be equipped with, I should say, Give them all the mental
training and culture that the circumstances of individuals will
allow,--the more, the better. No race can permanently succeed until
its mind is awakened and strengthened by the ripest thought. But I
would constantly have it kept in the thoughts of those who are
educated in books that a large proportion of those who are educated
should be so trained in hand that they can bring this mental strength
and knowledge to bear upon the physical conditions in the South which
I have tried to emphasise.
Frederick Douglass, of sainted memory, once, in addressing his race,
used these words: "We are to prove that we can better our own
condition. One way to do this is to accumulate property. This may
sound to you like a new gospel. You have been accustomed to hear
that money is the root of all evil, etc. On the other hand,
property--money, if you please--will purchase for us the only
condition by which any people can rise to the dignity of genuine
manhood; for without property there can be no leisure, without leisure
there can be no thought, without thought there can be no invention,
without invention there can be no progress."
The Negro should be taught that material development is not an end,
but simply a means to an end. As Professor W. E. B. DuBois puts it,
"The idea should not be simply to make men carpenters, but to make
carpenters men." The Negro has a highly religious temperament; but
what he needs more and more is to be convinced of the importance of
weaving his religion and morality into the practical affairs of daily
life. Equally as much does he need to be taught to put so much
intelligence into his labour that he will see dignity and beauty in
the occupation, and love it for its own sake. The Negro needs to be
taught that more of the religion that manifests itself in his
happiness in the prayer-meeting should be made practical in the
performance of his daily task. The man who owns a home and is in the
possession of the elements by which he is sure of making a daily
living has a great aid to a moral and religious life. What bearing
will all this have upon the Negro's place in the South as a citizen
and in the enjoyment of the privileges which our government confers?
To state in detail just what place the black man will occupy in the
South as a citizen, when he has developed in the direction named, is
beyond the wisdom of any one. Much will depend upon the sense of
justice which can be kept alive in the breast of the American people.
Almost as much will depend upon the good sense of the Negro himself.
That question, I confess, does not give me the most concern just now.
The important and pressing question is, Will the Negro with his own
help and that of his friends take advantage of the opportunities that
now surround him? When he has done this, I believe that, speaking of
his future in general terms, he will be treated with justice, will be
given the protection of the law, and will be given the recognition in
a large measure which his usefulness and ability warrant. If, fifty
years ago, any one had predicted that the Negro would have received
the recognition and honour which individuals have already received, he
would have been laughed at as an idle dreamer. Time, patience, and
constant achievement are great factors in the rise of a race.
I do not believe that the world ever takes a race seriously, in its
desire to enter into the control of the government of a nation in any
large degree, until a large number of individuals, members of that
race, have demonstrated, beyond question, their ability to control
and develop individual business enterprises. When a number of Negroes
rise to the point where they own and operate the most successful
farms, are among the largest tax-payers in their county, are moral and
intelligent, I do not believe that in many portions of the South such
men need long be denied the right of saying by their votes how they
prefer their property to be taxed and in choosing those who are to
make and administer the laws.
In a certain town in the South, recently, I was on the street in
company with the most prominent Negro in the town. While we were
together, the mayor of the town sought out the black man, and said,
"Next week we are going to vote on the question of issuing bonds to
secure water-works for this town; you must be sure to vote on the day
of election." The mayor did not suggest whether he must vote "yes" or
"no"; he knew from the very fact that this Negro man owned nearly a
block of the most valuable property in the town that he would cast a
safe, wise vote on this important proposition. This white man knew
that, because of this Negro's property interests in the city, he would
cast his vote in the way he thought would benefit every white and
black citizen in the town, and not be controlled by influences a
thousand miles away. But a short time ago I read letters from nearly
every prominent white man in Birmingham, Alabama, asking that the Rev.
W. R. Pettiford, a Negro, be appointed to a certain important federal
office. What is the explanation of this? Mr. Pettiford for nine years
has been the president of the Negro bank in Birmingham to which I have
alluded. During these nine years these white citizens have had the
opportunity of seeing that Mr. Pettiford could manage successfully a
private business, and that he had proven himself a conservative,
thoughtful citizen; and they were willing to trust him in a public
office. Such individual examples will have to be multiplied until they
become the rule rather than the exception. While we are multiplying
these examples, the Negro must keep a strong and courageous heart. He
cannot improve his condition by any short-cut course or by artificial
methods. Above all, he must not be deluded into the temptation of
believing that his condition can be permanently improved by a mere
battledore and shuttlecock of words or by any process of mere mental
gymnastics or oratory alone. What is desired, along with a logical
defence of his cause, are deeds, results,--multiplied results,--in the
direction of building himself up, so as to leave no doubt in the minds
of any one of his ability to succeed.
An important question often asked is, Does the white man in the South
want the Negro to improve his present condition? I say, "Yes." From
the Montgomery (Alabama) _Daily Advertiser_ I clip the following in
reference to the closing of a coloured school in a town in Alabama:--
"EUFAULA, May 25, 1899.
"The closing exercises of the city coloured public school were
held at St. Luke's A. M. E. Church last night, and were witnessed
by a large gathering, including many white. The recitations by
the pupils were excellent, and the music was also an interesting
feature. Rev. R. T. Pollard delivered the address, which was
quite an able one; and the certificates were presented by
Professor T. L. McCoy, white, of the Sanford Street School. The
success of the exercises reflects great credit on Professor S. M.
Murphy, the principal, who enjoys a deservedly good reputation as
a capable and efficient educator."
I quote this report, not because it is the exception, but because such
marks of interest in the education of the Negro on the part of the
Southern white people can be seen almost every day in the local
papers. Why should white people, by their presence, words, and many
other things, encourage the black man to get education, if they do not
desire him to improve his condition?
The Payne Institute in Augusta, Georgia, an excellent institution, to
which I have already referred, is supported almost wholly by the
Southern white Methodist church. The Southern white Presbyterians
support a theological school at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for Negroes. For
a number of years the Southern white Baptists have contributed toward
Negro education. Other denominations have done the same. If these
people do not want the Negro educated to a high standard, there is no
reason why they should act the hypocrite in these matters.
As barbarous as some of the lynchings in the South have been,
Southern white men here and there, as well as newspapers, have spoken
out strongly against lynching. I quote from the address of the Rev.
Mr. Vance, of Nashville, Tennessee, delivered before the National
Sunday School Union in Atlanta, not long since, as an example:--
"And yet, as I stand here to-night, a Southerner speaking for my
section, and addressing an audience from all sections, there is
one foul blot upon the fair fame of the South, at the bare
mention of which the heart turns sick and the cheek is crimsoned
with shame. I want to lift my voice to-night in loud and long and
indignant protest against the awful horror of mob violence, which
the other day reached the climax of its madness and infamy in a
deed as black and brutal and barbarous as can be found in the
annals of human crime.
"I have a right to speak on the subject, and I propose to be
heard. The time has come for every lover of the South to set the
might of an angered and resolute manhood against the shame and
peril of the lynch demon. These people, whose fiendish glee
taunts their victim as his flesh crackles in the flames, do not
represent the South. I have not a syllable of apology for the
sickening crime they meant to avenge. But it is high time we were
learning that lawlessness is no remedy for crime. For one, I dare
to believe that the people of my section are able to cope with
crime, however treacherous and defiant, through their courts of
justice; and I plead for the masterful sway of a righteous and
exalted public sentiment that shall class lynch law in the
category with crime."
It is a notable and praiseworthy fact that no Negro educated in any of
our larger institutions of learning in the South has been charged with
any of the recent crimes connected with assaults upon females.
If we go on making progress in the directions that I have tried to
indicate, more and more the South will be drawn to one course. As I
have already said, it is not for the best interests of the white race
of the South that the Negro be deprived of any privilege guaranteed
him by the Constitution of the United States. This would put upon the
South a burden under which no government could stand and prosper.
Every article in our federal Constitution was placed there with a view
of stimulating and encouraging the highest type of citizenship. To
permanently tax the Negro without giving him the right to vote as fast
as he qualifies himself in education and property for voting would
work the alienation of the affections of the Negro from the States in
which he lives, and would be the reversal of the fundamental
principles of government for which our States have stood. In other
ways than this the injury would be as great to the white man as to the
Negro. Taxation without the hope of becoming a voter would take away
from one-third the citizens of the Gulf States their interest in
government and their stimulant to become tax-payers or to secure
education, and thus be able and willing to bear their share of the
cost of education and government, which now weighs so heavily upon the
white tax-payers of the South. The more the Negro is stimulated and
encouraged, the sooner will he be able to bear a larger share of the
burdens of the South. We have recently had before us an example, in
the case of Spain, of a government that left a large portion of its
citizens in ignorance, and neglected their highest interests.
As I have said elsewhere, there is no escape through law of man or God
from the inevitable:--
"The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with opprest;
And, close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to fate abreast."
"Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the
load upward or they will pull against you the load downward. We
shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of
the South or one-third its intelligence and progress. We shall
contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of
the South or we shall prove a veritable body of death,
stagnating, depressing, retarding, every effort to advance the
body politic."
My own feeling is that the South will gradually reach the point where
it will see the wisdom and the justice of enacting an educational or
property qualification, or both, for voting, that shall be made to
apply honestly to both races. The industrial development of the Negro
in connection with education and Christian character will help to
hasten this end. When this is done, we shall have a foundation, in my
opinion, upon which to build a government that is honest and that will
be in a high degree satisfactory to both races.
I do not suffer myself to take too optimistic a view of the conditions
in the South. The problem is a large and serious one, and will require
the patient help, sympathy, and advice of our most patriotic citizens,
North and South, for years to come. But I believe that, if the
principles which I have tried to indicate are followed, a solution of
the question will come. So long as the Negro is permitted to get
education, acquire property, and secure employment, and is treated
with respect in the business or commercial world,--as is now true in
the greater part of the South,--I shall have the greatest faith in his
working out his own destiny in our Southern States. The education and
preparing for citizenship of nearly eight millions of people is a
tremendous task, and every lover of humanity should count it a
privilege to help in the solution of a great problem for which our
whole country is responsible.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Future of the American Negro, by
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