EMORY UNIVERSITY
LIGHT AHEAD FOR THE NEGRO
LIGHT AHEAD
FOR THE NEGRO
BY
E. A JOHNSON
AUTHOR OF
The School History of the Negro Race
Colored Soldiers in the Spanish American War
The Negro Almanac
THE GRAFTON PRESS
NEW YORK
Copyright 1904 by
E. A. JOHNSON.
PREFACE
THE author dedicates this work to the thou¬
sands of sympathetic and well wishing
friends of the Negro race. He is trying
to show how the Negro problem can be solved in
peace and good will rather than by brutality.
His idea is that the Golden Rule furnishes the
only solution.
He believes that at the bottom of southern
society there is a vein of sympathy and helpful¬
ness for the Negro and that this feeling should be
cultivated and nourished that it may grow stronger
and finally supplant harsher sentiments.
There are two factions striving for the mastery
of the south to-day, one seeking political power on
the idea that Negro manhood is to be crushed and
serfdom established, and the other willing that the
Negro should have a freeman's chance and work
out his destiny as best he can with the powers
God has given him. This faction is ready to give
its sympathy and help, and it is the efforts of this
v
vi
Preface
class that the author desires to endorse and en¬
courage.
The story weaved into the work is subordinate
to the discussion of facts, and not paramount; it
is intended to be mild, thus putting it in keeping
with the character of the heroine whose deeds it
portrays; and should the day ever come when
America can arise to the height of adopting and
following her sentiments, it will then indeed be
the " Sweet land of liberty," for the black as well
as the white man.
E. A. Johnson.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LOST AIRSHIP—UNCONSCIOUSNESS, . 1
II. TO EARTH AGAIN—ONE HUNDRED YEARS
LATER, ......... 6
III. AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY WITH IRENE, . 13
IV. NOW AND THEN, 21
Y. A VISIT TO PUBLIC BUILDINGS, ... 99
VI. A RIDE WITH IRENE, 107
VII. DR. NEWELL AND WORK OF THE YOUNG LA¬
DIES' GUILD, Ill
VIII. WITH IRENE AGAIN, 116
IX. THE PRIZE ESSAY, 120
X. SAD NEWS FOR IRENE, 131
Light Ahead for the Negro
CHAPTER I
the lost airship unconsciousness
FROM my youth up I had been impressed
with the idea of working among the Ne¬
groes of the Southern states. My father
was an abolitionist before the war and afterward
an ardent supporter of missionary efforts in the
South, and his children naturally imbibed his
spirit of readiness and willingness at all times to
assist the cause of the freedmen.
I concluded in the early years of my young
manhood that I could render the Negroes no
greater service than by spending my life in their
midst, helping to fit them for the new citizenship
that had developed as a result of the war. My
mind was made up throughout my college course
at Yale ; and, while I did not disclose my purpose,
I resolved to go South as soon as I was through
college and commence my chosen life-work. In
keeping with this design, I kept posted on every
a 1
Light Ahead for the Negro
phase of the so-called " Negro problem " ; I made
it my constant study. When I had finished col¬
lege I made application to the Union Missionary
Association for a position as teacher in one of their
Negro schools in a town in Georgia, and after the
usual preliminaries I received my certificate of
appointment.
It was June, 1906, the year that dirigible air¬
ships first came into actual use, after the innumer¬
able efforts of scores of inventors to solve final
problems, which for a long time seemed insur¬
mountable. Up to this time the automobile—
now relegated to commercial uses, or, like the
bicycle, to the poorer classes—had been the favored
toy of the rich, and it was thought that the now
common one hundred and one hundred and fifty
horse-power machines were something wonderful
and that their speed—a snail's pace, compared
with the airship—was terrific. It will be remem¬
bered that inside of a few months after the first
really successful airships appeared a wealthy man
in society could hardly have hoped to retain his
standing in the community without owning one,
or at least proving that he had placed an order for
one with a fashionable foreign manufacturer, so
great was the craze for them, and so widespread
The Lost Airship—Unconsciousness 3
was the industry—thanks to the misfortune of the
poor devil who solved the problem and neglected
to protect his rights thoroughly. Through this
fatal blunder on his part, their manufacture and
their use became world-wide, almost at once, in
spite of countless legal attempts to limit the pro¬
duction, in order to keep up the cost.
A wealthy friend of mine had a ship of the
finest Parisian make, the American machines still
being unfashionable, in which we had often made
trips together and which he ran himself. As
I was ready to go to my field of labor, he invited
me to go with him to spend from Saturday to Sun¬
day in the City of Mexico, which I had never seen,
and I accepted.
We started, as usual, from the new aerial pier at
the foot of West Fifty-ninth Street, New York
City, then one of the wonders of the world, about
one o'clock, in the midst of a cloud of machines
bound for country places in different parts of the
United States and we were peacefully seated after
dinner, enjoying the always exhilarating sen¬
sation of being suspended in space without sup¬
port—for my friend had drawn the covering from
the floor of clear glass in the car, which was com¬
ing into use in some of the new machines—when
4 Light Ahead for the Negro
there was a terrific report. The motor had ex¬
ploded !
We looked at each other in horror. This indeed
was what made air-travelling far-and-away the
most exciting of sports. Human beings had not
yet come to regard with indifference accidents
which occurred in mid-air.
My friend picked his way through a tangled
mass of machinery to the instruments. We were
rising rapidly and the apparatus for opening the
valve of the balloon was broken. Without say¬
ing a word, he started to climb up the tangle of
wire ropes to the valve itself; a very dangerous
proceeding, because many of the roj>es were
loosened from their fastenings. We suddenly en¬
countered a current of air that changed our course
directly east. (We had been steering south and
had gone about six hundred miles.) It drew us
up higher and higher. I glanced through the floor
but the earth was almost indistinguishable, and
was disappearing rapidly. There was absolutely
nothing that I could do. I looked up again at my
friend, who was clambering up rather clumsily,
I remember thinking at the moment. The tangle
of ropes and wires looked like a great grape vine.
Just then the big ship gave a lurch. He slipped
The Lost Airship—Unconsciousness 5
and pitched forward, holding on by one hand.
Involuntarily, I closed my eyes for a moment.
When I opened them again, he was gone !
My feelings were indescribable. I commenced
to lose consciousness, owing to the altitude and
the ship was ascending more rapidly every mo¬
ment.
Finally I became as one dead.
CHAPTER II
TO EARTH AGAIN ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER
ONE day an archaic-looking flying machine,
a curiosity, settled from aerial heights on
to the lawn of one Dr. Newell, of Phoenix,
Georgia.
When found I was unconscious and even after
I had revived I could tell nothing of my where¬
abouts, as to whither I was going, or whence I had
come ; I was simply there, " a stranger in a strange
land," without being able to account for any¬
thing.
I noticed however that the people were not those
I had formerly left or that I expected to see.
I was bewildered—my brain was in a whirl—I
lapsed again into a trance-like state.
When I regained my full consciousness I found
myself comfortably ensconced in a bed in an airy
room apparently in the home of some well-to-do
person. The furniture and decorations in the
6
One Hundred Years Later 7
room were of a fashion I had never seen before,
and the odd-looking books in the bookcase near
the bed were written by authors whose names I
did not know. I seemed to have awakened from
a dream, a dream that had gone from me, but that
had changed my life.
Looking around in the room, I found that I was
the only occupant. I resolved to get up and test
the matter. I might still be dreaming. I arose,
dressed myself—my suit case lay on a table, just
as I had packed it—and hurriedly went downstairs,
wondering if I were a somnambulist and thinking
I had better be careful lest I fall and injure my¬
self. I heard voices and attempted to speak and
found my voice unlike any of those I heard in the
house. I was just passing out of the front door,
intending to walk around on the large veranda
that extended on both sides of the house, when I
came face to face with a very attractive young
lady who I subsequently learned was the niece of
my host and an expert trained nurse. She had
taken charge of me ever since my unexpected
arrival on her uncle's lawn.
She explained that she had been nursing me
and seemed very much mortified that I should
have come to consciousness at a moment when
8
Light Ahead for the Negro
she was not present, and have gotten out of the
room and downstairs before she knew it. I could
see chagrin in her countenance and to reassure
her I said, "You needn't worry about your bird's
leaving the cage, he shall not fly away, for in the
first place he is quite unable to, and in the sec¬
ond place why should he flee from congenial com¬
pany ? "
"I am glad you are growing better," she said,
" and I am sure we are all very much interested
in your speedy recovery, Mr.— What shall I call
you ? " she said hesitatingly.
I attempted to tell her my name, but I could
get no further than, " My name is—" I did not
know my own name !
She saw my embarrassment and said, " 0, never
mind the name, I '11 let you be my anonymous
friend. Tell me where you got that very old fly¬
ing machine ? "
Of course I knew, but I could not tell her. My
memory on this point had failed me also. She
then remarked further that papers found in my
pocket indicated that a Mr. Gilbert Twitchell had
been appointed to a position as teacher in a Mis¬
sionary School in the town of Ebenezer, Georgia,
in the year 1906, and inquired if these " old
One Hundred Years Later 9
papers" would help me in locating my friends.
She left me for a moment and returned with sev¬
eral papers, a diary and a large envelope contain¬
ing a certificate of appointment to said school.
She stated that inquiry had already been made
and that " old records " showed that a person by
the name of Twitchell had been appointed in 1906,
according to the reading of the certificate, and
that while en route to his prospective field of labor
in an air-ship he was supposed to have come to an
untimely death, as nothing had been seen or heard
of him since. Further than that the official rec¬
ords did not go.
" Now, we should be very glad to have you tell
us how you came by that certificate," she sug¬
gested.
I was aghast. I was afraid to talk to her or to
look about me. And the more fully I came to
myself the more I felt that I did not dare to ask a
question. The shock of one answer might kill me.
I summoned all my strength, and spoke hur¬
riedly, more to prevent her speaking again than
to say anything.
" Perhaps I can tell you something later on,"
I said hoarsely. " I find my memory quite cloudy,
in fact, I seem to be dreaming."
10
Light Ahead for the Negro
She saw my misery and suggested that I go
into " the room used to cure nervousness" and
that I remain as long as possible. I passed stu¬
pidly through the door she held open for me and
had hardly sat down before I felt soothed. The
only color visible was violet,—walls, ceiling, furni¬
ture, carpet, all violet of different shades. An
artificial light of the same color filled the room.
And the air !—What was there in it ?
A desk was at the other end of the large apart¬
ment. As my eyes roved about the strange look¬
ing place I saw on it an ordinary calendar pad,
the only thing in the room that closely resembled
objects I had seen before. The moment that I
realized what it was I felt as though I was about
to have a nervous chill. I dared not look at it,
even from that distance. But the delicious air,
the strength-giving light revived me in spite of
myself. For full five minutes I sat there, staring,
before starting over to look at it; for though I
knew -not who I was, and though I had passed
through only two rooms of the house, and had
met only one person, I had divined the truth a
thousand times.
As I slowly neared it I saw the day of the
month, the twenty-fourth. Nearer and nearer I
One Hundred Years Later 11
came, finally closing my eyes as the date of the
year in the corner became almost legible—just as
I had done in the car of the air-ship, that awful
moment. I moved a little nearer. I could read it
now! I opened my eyes and glanced, then
wildly tore the pads apart, to see if they were all
alike—and fell to the floor once more.
It was the year two thousand and six, just one
hundred years from the date of my appointment
to the position of a teacher in the South !
In a short time I regained complete conscious¬
ness, and under the influence of that wonderful
room became almost myself again. I learned that
I had not really been left alone but had been ob¬
served, through a device for that purpose, by both
the doctor and his niece, and on her return I re¬
lated my whole story to her as far as I could then
remember it.
The strangest and most unaccountable part
was that though I had been away from the earth
about one hundred years, yet, here I was back
again still a young man, showing no traces of age
and I had lived a hundred years. This was after¬
ward accounted for by the theory that at certain
aerial heights the atmosphere is of such a char-
12
Light Ahead for the Negro
acter that no physical changes take place in bodies
permitted to enter it.
The physical wants of my body seemed to have
been suspended, and animation arrested until the
zone of atmosphere immediately surrounding the
earth was reached again, when gradually life and
consciousness returned.
I have no recollection of anything that tran¬
spired after I lost consciousness and the most I
can say of it all is that the experience was that of
one going to sleep at one end of his journey and
waking up at his destination.
CHAPTER III
AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY WITH IRENE
THE next time I met my nurse was by
chance. I saw her at the public library
near Dr. Newell's house, where I often went
to sit and think the first few days after my re¬
birth into the world. She had left the Newell
residence on the night of the day she had put me
in the violet room, being called to some special
duty elsewhere. I approached her with a kindly
salutation which she reciprocated in a manner indi¬
cating that she was pleased to meet me. In the
meantime I had found out her name—Irene Davis
—and had also found out that an elective course in
a training school for scientific nursing was accord¬
ing to the custom of the times, which regarded
such a course as indispensable to the education
of a liberally trained young woman.
Our conversation drifted along as to my per¬
sonal comforts until I told her that I had heard
13
14
Light Ahead for the Negro
that I was to be called upon to deliver a written
account of my recollections of the past, especially
in reference to the Negro question.
" I suppose Dr. Newell is at the bottom of that,"
she remarked, " he is so intensely interested in
the Negro question that he would be the first one
to make the suggestion. I really believe that he
refused to allow you to be taken to the City Hos¬
pital when you were found on his lawn because
he almost divined that you might have a message
from another age for him on that subject. The
city authorities yielded to his wishes and assigned
me to assist in caring for you at his residence, in¬
stead of at, the hospital.
" I found very little to do, however, but would
like to recall to you the beneficial effects of the
violet room, which I see had the desired results.
It always does, and many people who can afford
it, especially physicians, are now installing these
rooms in their houses for the benefit of neurotic
patients, on whom the violet rays of electricity,
coupled with neurium, a newly discovered chemical
preparation, similar to radium, has a most remark¬
able effect."
I remarked that I had taken no medicine and
really felt better than ever in either of my lives.
At the Public Library with Irene 15
"Well," said she, laughing, "I trust you may be
able to recall all about the past and give a most
excellent account of it in your paper for the
Bureau of Public Utility—and don't fail to send me
a copy !"
" Are you at all interested in the question," I
asked.
" All Southerners are interested in that question.
I am a teacher in a Sunday School for Negro
children and a member of a Young Ladies Guild
which was organized expressly for reaching
Negro children that may need help. We visit
the families and talk with the parents, impress
on them ideas of economy, direct them in caring
for the sick, and instruct them in the most
scientific methods of sanitation. I am really fond
of these people and the happiest moments of my
life are spent with them—they are of a differ¬
ent temperament from us, so mild and good na-
tured,—so complacent and happy in their religious
worship and their music is simply enchanting !—
Don't you like to hear them sing, Mr. Twitch-
ell ?"
I remarked that I was very fond of their sing¬
ing, and that I had been delighted with a visit I
had recently made to the Dvorak Conservatory,
16 Light Ahead for the Negro
where the Negro's musical talent seemed to have
been miraculously developed.
I further remarked, to myself, " How congenial
in tastes and sympathy we seem to be, and how
beautiful you are ! " She moved me strangely as
she stood there with her black hair, rosy cheeks,
large good-natured black eyes, her Venus-like
poise of neck and shoulders, and a mouth neither
large nor small but full of expression, and show¬
ing a wealth of pearls when she laughed—and all
this coupled with such noble aspirations, and
such deep womanly sympathy.
I said to her, " Miss Davis, I am certainly glad
to learn that our sentiments on the Negro question
coincide so thoroughly and if any encouragement
were needed, I should certainly feel like offering
it, as a stimulus in your efforts."
"All humanity needs encouragement," she re¬
plied, " and I am human; and so are these people
around us who are of a different race. They
need encouragement and in my humble way I
hope to be of some service to them. Their
chances have not been as favorable as ours, but
they have been faithful and true with the talents
they have."
" So I understand you are assisting in this work
At the Public Library with Irene 17
more from a sense of duty than as a diversion? "
I observed.
"Yes, that is true," she said, "but nevertheless
I really get considerable recreation in it. I find
these people worthy of assistance and competent
to fill many places that they otherwise could not
but for the help of our Guild."
" So you have found that success does not al¬
ways come to the worthy," I suggested, " if those
who are worthy have no outside influence ? I can
remember people who worked hard all their lives
for promotion and who not only did not get it,
but often witnessed others less skilled and deserv¬
ing than themselves pushed forward ahead of them.
This was especially true of the Negro race in my
time. The Negroes were told that Negro ability
would sell for as much in the market as white, but
while this was encouraging in some respects and
true in many cases, it could by no means be laid
down as a rule."
" I agree with you," she said, " in part; for the
feeling no doubt prevails among some people that
the lines of cleavage should move us naturally to
do more for our own than for a different race, and
that spirit occasionally crops out, but the spirit
of helpfulness to Negroes has now become so
B
18
Light Ahead for the Negro
popular that it permeates all classes and there is
practically no opposition to them."
"You are a long way removed from the South
of the past," said I, " where to have done such
work as you are engaged in would have disgraced
you, and have branded you for social ostracism."
She replied that there was no criticism at all for
engaging in such work but only for doing more
for one race than another.
" You Georgians had degenerated in my day,"
I remarked. " The Southern colonies under such
men as Oglethorpe seemed to have higher ideals
than had their descendants of later times. Ogle¬
thorpe was opposed to slavery and refused to al¬
low it in the Colony of Georgia while he was
governor; he was also a friend to the Indians and
to Whitfield in his benevolent schemes, but the
Georgian of my day was a different character al¬
together from the Oglethorpe type. He justified
slavery and burned Negroes at the stake, and the
' Cracker class' were a long ways removed from
the Oglethorpe type of citizenship, both in ap¬
pearance and intelligence. I notice, too, Miss
Davis, that you never use the words ' colored peo¬
ple ' but say ' Negro,' instead."
" That is because these people themselves pre-
At the Public Library with Irene 19
fer to be called Negroes. They are proud of the
term Negro and feel that you are compromising
if you refer to them as ' colored people.'"
" That is quite a change, too," said I, " from the
past; for in my time the race did not like the term
Negro so well because it sounded so much like 4 nig¬
ger,' which was a term of derision. I notice that
this term also has become obsolete with you—an¬
other sign of progress. In fact, I fear that the
ideas I had in 1906, when I started on my trip to
work as a missionary among the Negroes, would
be laughed at now, so far have you progressed
beyond me. Indeed, I am quite confused at times
in trying to conform to my new conditions."
At this juncture she suggested that she had al¬
most broken an engagement by chatting with me
so long, and would have to hurry off to meet it.
In taking her departure she remarked that per¬
haps it was worth while to break an engagement
to talk with one who had had so unusual an expe¬
rience. " I may be quite an unusual character,"
said I, " but probably too ancient to be of interest
to so modern a person as yourself."
She did not reply to this, but left with a smile
and a roguish twinkle in her eye.
I found on inquiry at the library that Negroes
20 Light Ahead for the Negro
in the South were now allowed the use of the
books, and that they were encouraged to read by
various prizes, offered especially for those who
could give the best written analyses of certain
books which were suggested by the library com¬
mittee.
CHAPTER IV
NOW AND THEN
1HAD scarcely recovered my equilibrium and
become able to give an account of myself be¬
fore I was formally called on by the " Chief
of the Bureau of Public Utility" of the country
to make a statement about the Negro problem in
my time, Dr. Newell having informed him that I
was interested in that subject.
Here follows the substance of what I wrote as
I read it over to Dr. Newell before sending it:
" Many changes considered well nigh impossible
one hundred years ago have taken place in al¬
most all phases of the so-called Negro problem.
One of the most noticeable instances to me is
the absence of slurs at individual Negroes and
at the race as a whole in your newspapers. Such
headlines as <r Another Coon Caught,' ' The Burly
Black Brute Foiled,' ' A Ham Colored Nigger in
the Hen House ' and ' This Coon Wants to be
21
22 Light Ahead for the Negro
Called Mister,' are, to me, conspicuous by their
absence. In the old days, in referring to a Negro
who had made a speech of some merit he was
called t Professor,' but in making a reference to
him as being connected with politics the same per¬
son was dubbed 4 Jim ' or i Tom.' Fights between
three white men and two Negroes were published,
under glaring headlines, as ' Race Riots.' The
usual custom of dealing out the vices of the Ne¬
gro race as a morning sensation in the daily papers
evidently fell into ' innocuous desuetude,' and the
daily papers having dropped the custom, the week¬
lies, which were merely echoes of the dailies, also
left off the habit, so that now neither the city
people nor farmers have their prejudices daily and
weekly inflamed by exaggerated portrayals of the
Negroes' shortcomings.
" The character of no individual and in fact of
no race can long endure in America when under
the persistent fire of its newspapers. Newspapers
mould public opinion. Your organization for the
dissemination of news has it in its power to either
kill or make alive in this respect. Our organiza¬
tion, called the News Distributing Bureau, was
formerly in the hands of people whose policy de¬
signedly necessitated the portrayal of the Negro
Now and Then
23
in his worst light before the people, in order that
certain schemes against the race might be fostered,
and seemed to take special delight in publishing
every mean act of every bad Negro, and leaving
unrecorded the thousands of credible acts of the
good ones.
" Like Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, this
wholesale assassination of Negro character in the
newspapers was strictly a political ' war measure,'
intended for political use only. Its design was to
prejudice the race in the eyes of the world and
thus enable the white supremacy advocates, North
and South, to perfect the political annihilation of
the Negro. The Negro farmer knew little about
what was going on; he was making corn and cot¬
ton, and to tell him in public assemblies would be
considered i incendiary,' and £ stirring up strife be¬
tween the races,' and the individual who might be
thus charged would certainly have to leave c be¬
tween two suns,' as the phrase was. However,
the general desire among leading Negroes was for
peace at any sacrifice, and they studiously labored
to that end. The South ought to have thanked
the Negro preachers and the Negro school teach¬
ers for the reign of peace in that section, because
it was due almost wholly to their efforts.
24
Light Ahead for the Negro
" Then, too, the public schools, which were at
that period the boast of the South, in support of
her contention of friendliness to the Negro, served
the purpose of quieting many a Negro who might
otherwise have been disposed to ' talk too much.' *
Be it remembered that at this time it was consid¬
ered virtually a social crime to employ a Negro as a
clerk in a store or elsewhere. This feeling ex¬
tended from Delaware to Texas, and the thousands
of Negroes who were coming out of the various
public schools, and the institutions for higher
training established by Northern philanthropists,
had practically no calling open to them, as edu¬
cated men and women, save that of teaching.
The door of hope was shut in their face and they
were censured for not doing better under such im¬
possible handicaps. It was like closing the stable
door and whipping the horse for not going in ! A
few entered the professions of law, pharmacy and
medicine, some engaged in business, but no great
number for the following reasons :
" First—In the professions the white profes¬
sional man was by habit and custom very gener-
* The white supremacy people accomplished this by employing
them as teachers. If they continued to talk too much, they lost
their jobs.
Now and Then
25
ally employed by the colored people, while the
colored professional man, by the conventional
laws of society, was rarely or never employed by
white people.
" Second—The natural disposition of the col¬
ored people to patronize white merchants and pro¬
fessional men in preference to their own was a
factor to be reckoned with in looking for the
causas rerum—a kind of one-sided arrangement
whereby the whites got the Negroes' money but
the Negroes could not get theirs—in the profes¬
sions. In many of the small lines of business,
however, the Negro was patronized by the
whites.
" So that—with the News Bureau making
capital every morning of the corruption in the
race; with the efforts of Southern ministers who
had taken charge of Northern pulpits, to strew
seeds of poison by proclaiming, on the commission
of every offense by a Negro, 'We told you that
the Negro was not worth the freedom you gave
him,' 'We told you he wasn't fit for citizenship
and that the money you have spent for his educa¬
tion is worse than wasted ;' with the constant
assertions that his only place is < behind a mule,'
that education made him a greater criminal, that
26
Light Ahead for the Negro
c the Southern people are his best friends' because
' we overlook his follies' and e treat him kindly
if he will stay in his place;' with the money
interests clamoring for the South 'to be let
alone' with the Negro question, for fear of un¬
settling business and causing a slump in Southern
securities; with the claims that, to keep the rail¬
roads earning dividends, to keep the cotton mar¬
ket active, the Negro must be handled according
to the serfdom or shotgun plan, and that the best
task master so far found was the Southern white
man, who had proven himself wonderfully adept in
getting good crops from Negro labor—with these
and many other excuses, the question of raising
the Negro in the scale of civilization was left to
posterity.
"4 What is he worth to us now ?' That is the
only question with which we are concerned, was
the ruling thought, if not the open confession.
" Let it be understood that statistics (which the
Negro did not compile) showed that the race at
that time was, as a mass, the most illiterate, the
least thrifty, and the most shiftless and criminal
of any class of American citizens—dividing the
population into natives—Irish emigrants, German
emigrants, Italians, Jews, and Poles. This was a
Now and Then
27
fact that hurt, regardless of who was responsible
for it.
" Then the question of color cut no small figure
in this problem. The Negro's color classified him;
it rang the signal bell for drawing' the color line'
as soon as he was seen, and it designated and
pointed him out as a marked man, belonging to
that horrible criminal class whose revolting deeds
were revealed every day in the newspapers. No
wonder he was shunned, no wonder the children
and women were afraid of him ! The great mass
of the people took the newspaper reports as true.
They never read between the lines and seldom
read the corrections of errors * that had been made.
In some cases the first report had been that a
Negro had committed a crime, and later it was
discovered that a white man with his face blacked
* " Errors " like the following, for instance: " A special dispatch
from Charleston, S. C., to the Atlanta Journal, reads: 'While dy¬
ing in Colleton county, former Section Foreman Jones, of the At¬
lantic Coast Line Road, has confessed being the murderer of his
wife at Ravenel, S. C., fourteen miles from Charleston, in May, 1902,
for which crime three Negroes were lynched. The crime which
was charged to the Negroes was one of the most brutal ever com¬
mitted in this State, and after the capture of the Negroes quick
work was made of them by the mob.'
" Comment is certainly superfluous. What must be the feelings
of those who participated in the lynching." (Raleigh, N. C., Morn¬
ing Post.)
28 Light Ahead for the Negro
had been the perpetrator. Some one has said,
' Let me write the songs of a people and I will
control their religious sentiments.' In a country
like America where the newspapers are so plenti¬
ful and where people rely on them so implicitly,
those who control the newspapers may be said to
control the views of the people on almost any
public question. With 30 per cent of the Negro
population illiterate, with a criminal record double
that of any of the emigrant classes above outlined,
with the News Distributing Bureau against it,
with no political or social standing—pariahs in the
land—with Northern capital endorsing serfdom,
with their inability to lose their race identity, on
account of their color—we realize how heavy the
odds were against the Negro race at that time.
"As a Negro orator once put it, ' De Southern
white man's on top'er de nigger and de Yankee
white man's on top er de Southern white man and
de bad nigger 's on top er dem bofe!'
" I now come to some of the proposed solutions
of the problem. Various meetings were held all
over the country to discuss the Negro problem,
and many a mediocre white man who thirsted for
a little newspaper notoriety, or political prefer¬
ment, in both the North and the South, had his
Now and Then
29
appetite in this direction satisfied by writing or
saying something on the Negro question. One
Thomas Dixon tried to out Herod Herod in taking
up the exceptional cases of Negro criminality and
using them in an attempt to convince his readers
of the Negro's unfitness for citizenship. A public
speaker named John Temple Graves # made lecture
*The following were the views of Mr. Noah W. Cooper, a Nash¬
ville lawyer, on one of Mr. Graves' addresses:
"John Temple Graves' address in Chicago contains more errors
and inconsistencies about the so-called Negro problem than any
recent utterance on the subject.
" He says that God has established the ' metes and bounds ' of
the Negro's habitation, but he never pointed out a single mete nor
a single bound He says, ' Let us put the Negro kindly and hu¬
manely out of the way;' but his vision again faded and he never
told us where to put the darkey.
" If Mr. Graves' inspiration had not been as short as a clam's
ear and he had gone on and given us the particular spot on the
globe to which we should ' kindly and humanely ' kick the darkey
'out of the way,' then we might have asked, who will take the
darkey's place in the South? Who will plow and hoe and pick out
12,000,000 bales of cotton? Who will sing in the rice fields? Who
will raise the sugar cane ? Who will make our 'lasses and syrup ?
Who will box and dip our turpentine ? Who will cut and saw the
logs, and on his body bear away the planks from our thousands
of sawmills ? Who will get down into the mud and swamps and
build railroads for rich contractors ? Who will work out their lives
in our phosphate mines and factories, and in iron and coal mines?
Who will be roustabouts on our rivers and on our wharves to be
conscripted when too hot for whites to work ? Who will fill the
darkey's place in the Southern home ?
30 Light Ahead for the Negro
tours advocating deportation as the only solution
of the problem, rejecting as unsound the theories
of Booker Washington, who was advocating in-
" Oh, I suppose Mr. Graves would say, we will get Dutch and
Poles, and Hungarians, Swedes or other foreigners ; or we will our¬
selves do all the work of the Negro. To me this is neither possi¬
ble nor desirable.
" The South don't want to kick the Negro out, as I understand
it. The separation of the Negro from us now—his exile, nolens
volens—would be a greater calamity to us than his emancipation or
his enfranchisement ever has been. We need him and he needs us.
"Mr. Graves says that God never did intend that 'opposite and
antagonistic races should live together.'
"That seems to me to be as wild as to say that God intended all
dogs to stay on one island; all sheep on another; all lions on an¬
other; or to say that all corn should grow in America and all wheat
in Russia.
" Mr Graves cites no 'thus saith the Lord ' to back up his new
revelation that antagonistic races must live separated.
"What God is it whose mind Mr. Graves is thus revealing?
Surely it can't be the God of the Bible—for He allowed the Jews
to live 400 years among the Egyptians; then over 500 years in and
out of captivity among the Canaanites; then in captivity nearly
100 years in Babylon; then under the Romans; then sold by the
Romans; and from then to now the Jews—the most separate and
exclusive of peoples—God's chosen people of the Old Covenant—
they have lived anywhere, among all people. Surely Mr Graves is
not revealing the mind of the God to whom the original thirteen
colonies bowed down in prayer; the God of the Declaration of In¬
dependence and the God of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. For how many different races were planted in this new
world ? English, Dutch, Swedes, Quakers, Puritans, Catholics,
French Huguenots, the poor, the rich—more antagonism than you
can find between 'Buckra' and the 'nigger.' Yet all these an-
Now and Then
31
dustrial education as the main factor in solving
the problem, because of the consequent clash that
would arise between white and colored mechanics
tagonisms, such as they were, did not prevent our forefathers from
uniting in one country, under one flag, in the common desire for
political freedom, moral intelligence and individual nobility of
character.
"Under Mr. Graves' God every colony would have become a
petty nation, with a Chinese wall around it. Mr. Graves' incon¬
sistencies reached a climax when he said in one breath, 'I appeal
for the imperial destiny of our mighty race,' and then in the next
breath says, 'let us put the Negro out.' Is it any more imperial
to boss the Filipino abroad than it is to boss the Negro at home?
"The God of the Bible commands peace among races and na¬
tions, not war; friendship, not antagonism and hatred. Did not
Paul, a Jew, become a messenger to the Gentiles ? Did he not
write the greater part of the New Testament of Christianity while
living in Gentile and pagan Rome ? Did not Christ set example
to the world when He, a Jew, at Jacob's well, preached His most
beautiful sermon to a poor Samaritan woman ? Winding up that
great sermon by telling the woman and the world that not the place
of his abode and worship, but the good character of man—'in
spirit and in truth '—was the only true worship. And that is the
only exclusive place whose metes and bounds God has set for any
man to live, 'in spirit and in truth.'
"How idle to talk of shutting off each race, as it were, into
pens like pigs to fatten them. This penning process will neither
fatten their bodies, enlighten their minds nor ennoble their souls.
Can Mr. Graves tell us how much good the great Chinese wall has
done for man ? If he can, he can tell us how much good will
come to us by putting the darkey out, and locking the door. Mr.
Graves' idea would reverse all the maxims of Christianity. It
would be much better for Mr. Graves' idea of the separation of
antagonisms to be applied to different classes of occupations, of
32 Light Ahead for the Negro
—rejecting also as unsound the theory of higher
education; because that would develop in the
Negro a longing for equality which the wdiite man
persons that are antagonistic. For instance, the dram-seller is an¬
tagonistic to all homes and boys and girls; therefore, put all dram-
sellers and dram-shops on one island, and all the homes and boys
and girls on another island, far, far away ! Now there is your
idea, Mr. Graves ! Then, again, all horse thieves, bank breakers,
train robbers, forgers, counterfeiters are antagonistic to honest
men; so here, we will put them all in the District of Columbia and
all the honest men in Ohio, and build a high wall between. All
the bad boys we would put in a pen; and all us good boys, we will go
to the park and have a picnic and laugh at the nincompoop bad boys
whose destiny we have penned up! Ah, Mr. Graves could no more
teach us this error than could he reverse the decree of Christ to let
the wheat and tares grow together until harvest. The seclusion or
isolation of an individual or a race is not the road that God has
blazed out for the highest attainments. The Levite of the great
parable drew his robes close about him and 'passed by on the
other side'—like Mr. Graves would have us do the Negro, except
that instead of passing him by we would ' put him behind us'—a
mere difference of words. But the good Samaritan got down and
nursed the dirty, wounded bleeding Jew; sacrificed his time and
money to heal his wounds. Now that Levite must be Mr. Graves'
ideal Southerner! He says the Negro is an unwilling, blameless,
unwholesome, unwelcome element. So was the robbed and bleed¬
ing Jew to the Levite; but did that excuse the Levite's wrong?
Ought the Levite to have put the groaning man ' out of the
way' of his ' imperial destiny' by kicking him out of the road ?
" Nay, verily. By the time that Mr. Graves gets all of the an¬
tagonistic races and all the antagonistic occupations and people of
the world cornered off and fenced up in their God-prescribed 'metes
and bounds,' and fences them each up, with stakes and riders to
hold them in—by that time I am sure he will envy the job of Sysi-
Now and Then
33
would not give and was never known to give an
inferior race, a statement which all honest white
people must regard as a base slander upon their
Christianity.
" Bishop Turner, senior bishop of the African
Methodist-Episcopal Church, one of the leading
organizations of the Negro race, also advocated
emigration to Africa as the only solution of the
problem, on the grounds that the white people
would never treat the Negro justly and that his¬
tory furnished no instance where a slave race had
ever become absolutely free in the land of its for¬
mer owners, instancing that to be free the Jews
had to leave Egypt; that William the Conqueror
and his followers slaughtered the native Britons,
rather than attempt to carry out what seemed to
them an impossible task, that of teaching two
races, a conquered race and a conquering one, to
live side by side in peace.
" One Professor Bassett made enemies of the
Southern newspapers and politicians by proposing
justice and equality as a solution of the problem.
The ' most unkindest cut of all' of Professor Bass-
ett's saying was that Booker Washington was
phus. But there is a grain of sober truth in one thing Mr. Graves
says—that the Negro is blameless."
C
34
Light Ahead for the Negro
' the greatest man, save Robert E. Lee, that the
South had produced in a hundred years.' The
politicians and their sympathizers seized upon this
statement as being a good opportunity to keep up
the discussion of the Negro issue, which many
better disposed people were hoping would be
dropped, according to promise, as soon as the
Negroes had been deprived of the ballot by the
amendments then being added to the constitutions
of the Southern States. They rolled it over as a
sweet morsel under their tongues. £ Othello's
occupation,' they realized, would be gone without
the ' nigger in the wood pile.' The politicians
disfranchised the Negro to get rid of his vote,
which was in their way, and they kept the Negro
scarecrow bolstered up for fear that the whites
might divide and that the Negro might then come
back into possession of the ballot.
" The politicians proposed no measures of relief
for the great mass of ignorance and poverty in
their midst. The modicum of school appropria¬
tions was wrung from them, in some instances, by
the threats of the better element of the people.
They were obstructionists rather than construc¬
tionists. One Benjamin Tillman boasted on the
floor of the United States Senate that in his state
Now and Then
35
he kept the Negroes ' in their place' by the use
of the shot-gun, in defiance of law and the consti¬
tution, and that he expected to keep it up. If
left alone, the feeling against Negroes would have
subsided to some extent and mutual helpfulness
prevailed, but the politicians had to have an issue,
even at the sacrifice of peace between the races
and at the expense of a loss of labor in many sec¬
tions where it was once plentiful—as many Negroes
left for more liberal states, where they not only
received better wages but also better treatment.
The Southern farmer and business man was pay¬
ing a dear price for office holders when he stood
by the politicians and allowed them to run off
Negro labor, by disfranchisement and political op¬
pression. It was paying too much for a whistle of
that quality.
" Many Negroes thought, with Bishop Turner
and John Temple Graves, that emigration was the
solution of the problem; not necessarily emigra¬
tion from the United States, but emigration indi¬
vidually to states where public sentiment had not
been wrought up against them. But the Negro,
owing to his ignorance, and also to his affection
for the land of his birth, and on account of a pe¬
culiar provincialism that narrowed his scope of
36
Light Ahead for the Negro
vision of the world and its opportunities, could not
bring himself to leave the South, so far as the
great mass was concerned. Then, too, he had
been told that the Yankees would not treat him
like the Southerner, and Southern newspapers took
especial pains to publish full details of all the
lynchings that occurred in the North and make
suggestive comments on them, in which they en¬
deavored to show that the whole country was
down on the Negro, and that while in the South
the whites lynched only the one Negro against
whom they had become enraged, in the North
they mobbed and sought to drive out all the Ne¬
groes in the community where the crime had
been committed. (The two clippings below oc¬
curred in the same issue of a Southern paper and
showed how, while the North was mobbing a Ne¬
gro, the South was honoring one.)*
* NEGRO TORN FROM JAIL BY AN OHIO MOB.
SHOT DEAD ON THE GROUND, THEN HANGED FROM TELEGRAPH POLE
YELLS OF LAUGHTER FOR HALF AN HOUR THE SWINGING
CORPSE SERVES AS A TARGET FOR THE MOB WHICH POURS LEAD
INTO IT, SHRIEKING WITH DELIGHT.
{By the Associated Press.)
Springfield, Ohio, March 7, 1904.—Richard Dixon, a Negro, was
shot to death here to-night by a mob for the killing of Policeman
Charles Collis, who died to-day from wounds received at the hands
of Dixon on Sunday.
Now and Then
37
" Instances of white mechanics North who were
refusing to work with Negroes, and instances of
Northern hotels refusing them shelter were also
O
Collis had gone to Dixon's room on the Negro's request. Dixon
said his mistress had his clothes in her possession. Collis accom¬
panied Dixon to the room, and in a short time the man and woman
engaged in a quarrel, which resulted in Dixon shooting the woman,
who is variously known as Anna or Mamie Corbin, in the left breast
just over the heart. She fell unconscious at the first shot and Collis
jumped towards the Negro to prevent his escape from the room.
Dixon then fired four balls into Collis, the last of which penetrated
his abdomen. Dixon went immediately to police headquarters and
gave himself up. He was taken to jail.
As soon as Collis' death became known talk of lynching the Ne¬
gro was heard and to-night a crowd began to gather about the
jail.
The mob forced an entrance to the jail by breaking in the east
doors with a railroad iron.
At 10: 30 the mob melted rapidly and it was the general opinion
that no more attempts would be made to force an entrance. Small
groups of men, however, could be seen in the shadows of the court
house, two adjacent livery stables and several dwelling houses. At
10: 45 o'clock the police were satisfied that there was nothing more
to fear and they with other officials and newspaper men passed
freely in and out of the jail.
Shortly before 11 o'clock a diversion was made by a small crowd
moving from the east doors around to the south entrance. The
police followed and a bluff was made at jostling them off the steps
leading up to the south entrance.
The crowd at this point kept growing, while yells of " hold the
police," " smash the doors," " lynch the nigger " were made, inter¬
spersed with revolver shots.
All this time the party with the heavy railroad iron was beating
at the east door, which shortly yielded to the battering ram, as did
38 Light Ahead for the Negro
made the most of and served the purpose of deter¬
ring Negro emigration from the Southern States.
Frequently some Negro was brought home dead,
the inner lattice iron doors. The mob then surged through the
east door, overpowered the sheriff, turnkey and handful of deputies
and began the assault on the iron turnstile leading to the cells. The
police from the south door were called inside to keep the mob from
the cells and in five minutes the south door had shared the fate of
the east one.
In an incredibly short time the jail was filled with a mob of 250
men with all the entrances and yard gates blocked by fully 2,500
men, thus making it impossible for the militia to have prevented
access to the Negro, had it been on the scene.
The heavy iron partition leading to the cells resisted the mob ef¬
fectually until cold chisels and sledge hammers arrived, which were
only two or three minutes late in arriving. The padlock to the
turnstile was broken and the mob soon filled the corridors leading
to the cells.
Seeing that further resistance was useless and to avoid the killing
of innocent prisoners the authorities consented to the demand of
the mob for the right man. He was dragged from his cell to the
jail door and thence down the stone steps to a court in the jail yard.
Fearing an attempt on the part of the police to rescue him, the
leaders formed a hollow square. Some one knocked the Negro to
the ground and those near to him fell back four or five feet. Nine
shots were fired into his prostrate body, and satisfied that he was
dead, a dozen men grabbed the lifeless body, and with a triumphant
cheer the mob surged into Columbia street and marched to Foun¬
tain Avenue, one of the principal streets of the town. From here
they marched south to the intersection of Main street, and a rope
was tied around Dixon's neck. Two men climbed the pole and
threw the rope over the topmost crosstie and drew the body about
eighteen feet above the street. They then descended and their
work was greeted with a cheer.
Now and Then
39
or one who had contracted disease in the North
came home and died. These occurrences were
also used as object lessons and had their effect.
" In fact, the Southern white people did not want
the Negroes to leave. They wanted them as
domestics, on the farm, and as mechanics. They
knew their value as such. < Be as intelligent, as
capable as you may but acknowledge my superior¬
ity,' was the unspoken command.
" Many individual Negroes acted on this sugges¬
tion and by shrewd foresight managed to accumu-
The fusillade then began and for thirty minutes the body was
kept swaying back and forth, from the force of the rain of bullets
which was poured into it. Frequently the arms would fly up con¬
vulsively when a muscle was struck, and the mob went fairly wild
with delight. Throughout it all perfect order was maintained and
everyone seemed in the best of humor, joking with his nearest
neighbor while re-loading his revolver.
A NEGRO HONORED.
COLUMBUS, GEORGIA, ERECTS A MONUMENT TO A HEROIC LABORER.
(By the Associated Press.)
Macon, Ga., March 9, 1902.—A Columbus, Ga., dispatch to the
Telegraph says a marble monument has been erected by the city to
the memory of Bragg Smith, the Negro laborer who lost his life last
September in a heroic but fruitless effort to rescue City Engineer
Robert L. Johnson from a street excavation. On one side is an
inscription setting forth the fact, while on the other side is chiseled,
" Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well thy part, there all the honor lies."
40
Light Ahead for the Negro
late considerable property, and so long as they
' minded their own business/ and ' stayed out of
politics' they did well, and had strong personal
friends among the white people. Their property
rights were recognized to a very large extent, in
fact the right of Negroes to hold property was
very generally conceded. This was true even to
the extent, in several instances, of causing reim¬
bursement for those who were run away from their
homes by mobs. In some states laws were passed
giving damages to the widows of those who were
lynched by mobs, said damages to be paid by the
county in which the lynching occurred. In fact
the South had long since discovered the Negro's
usefulness and the feeling against him partook
more of political persecution than race hatred.
The paradoxical scheme of retaining six million
Negroes in the population with all the rights and
duties of citizenship, less social and political stand¬
ing, was the onus of the problem in the South.
Such a scheme as this was bound to breed more or
less persecution and lawlessness, as did the slave
system. It was a makeshift at best, and though
in the main, honestly undertaken, it was impossible
of performance.
" The Southern people seemed to have no objec-
Now and Then
41
tion to personal contact with Negroes in a servile
capacity. Many Negro women made their liv¬
ing as ' wTet nurses,' and the Southern ' black
mammy' had become stereotyped. Then, too,
the large number of mulatto children everywhere
was some evidence of personal contact, on the
part of the men. Negro servants swarmed around
the well-to-do Southern home, cooked the food
and often slept with the children; the South¬
erner shook hands with his servants on his return
home from a visit and was glad to see them ; but
if any of these servants managed by industry and
tact to rise to higher walks of life, it became nec¬
essary, according to the unwritten law, to break
off close relations. Yet, in the great majority of
cases, the interest and good feeling remained, if
the Negro did not become too active politically—
in which case he could expect ' no quarter.'
" The subject of lynching became very serious.
This evil custom, for a while, seemed to threaten
the whole nation. While Negroes were the most
common victims, yet the fever spread like a con¬
tagion to the lynching of white criminals as well.
" At first it was confined to criminals who com¬
mitted assaults on women, and to brutal murderers,
but it soon became customary to lynch for the
42
Light Ahead for the Negro
slightest offense, so that no man's life was safe if
he was unfortunate enough to have had a difficulty
with some individual, who had friends enough to
raise a mob at night who would go with him to
the house of his victim, call him out, and either
shoot, or unmercifully beat him. The refusal of
the officers of the law to crush out this spirit in
its embryonic stage resulted in its growing to such
enormous proportions that they found, too late, that
they could neither manage nor control it. The
officers themselves were afraid of the lynchers.
"The method of lynching Negroes was usually
by hanging or by burning at the stake, sometimes
in the presence of thousands of people, who came
in on excursion trains to see the sight, and, pos¬
sibly, carry off a trophy consisting of a finger joint,
a tooth or a portion of the victim's heart. If the
lynching was for a crime committed against a
woman, and she could be secured, she was con¬
signed to the task of starting the flames with her
own hands. This was supposed to add to the nov¬
elty of the occasion.*
* BURNING OF NEGROES.
Birmingham, Ala., Special—The Age-Herald recently published
the following letter from Booker T. Washington:
" Within the last fortnight three members of my race have been
Now and Then
43
" 4 Why did not the Negro offer some resistance
to these outrages ? ' you may ask.
" That question, no doubt, is often propounded
by those who read of the horrors of this particular
period. Different theories are advanced. One is
that the Negro was overawed by numbers and re¬
sources—that he saw the uselessness of any such
attempt. Another theory is that during the whole
history of Negro slavery in this country there oc¬
curred only one or two rebellions worthy of the
burned at the stake; of these one was a woman. Not one of the
three was charged with any crime even remotely connected with
the abuse of a white woman. In every case murder was the sole
accusation. All of these burnings took place in broad daylight, and
two of them occurred on Sunday afternoon in sight of a Christian
church.
" In the midst of the nation's prosperous life, few, I fear, take
time to consider whither these brutal and inhuman practices are
leading us. The custom of burning human beings has become so
common as scarcely to attract interest or unusual attention. I
have always been among those who condemned in the strongest
terms crimes of whatever character committed by members of my
race, and I condemn them now with equal severity, but I main¬
tain that the only protection to our civilization is a fair and calm
trial of all people charged with crime, and in their legal punish¬
ment, if proved guilty. There is no excuse to depart from legal
methods. The laws are, as a rule, made by the white people, and
their execution is by the hands of the white people so that there is
little probability of any guilty colored man escaping. These burn¬
ings without trial are in the deepest sense unjust to my race, but
it is not this injustice alone which stirs my heart. These barbar-
44
Light Ahead for the Negro
name. One was the ' Nat Turner Insurrection ' in
Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. This
was soon put down and the ringleader hung, to¬
gether with several of his misguided followers.
So it must be concluded, since the Negro bore two
hundred and fifty years of slavery so patiently,
and made only a few feeble attempts to liberate
himself, that he is not naturally of a rebellious
nature—that he easily fits into any place you put
him, and with the fatalistic tendency of all bar-
ous scenes, followed as they are by the publication of the shocking
details, are more disgraceful and degrading to the people who in¬
fluence the punishment than to those who receive it.
" If the law is disregarded when a negro is concerned, will it not
soon also be disregarded in the case of the white man? And besides
the rule of the mob destroys the friendly relations which should
exist between the races and injures and interferes with the mate¬
rial prosperity of the communities concerned.
"Worst of all, these outrages take place in communities where
there are Christian churches; in the midst of people who have their
Sunday schools, their Christian Endeavor Societies and Young
Men's Christian Associations; collections are taken up to send mis¬
sionaries to Africa and China and the rest of the so-called heathen
world.
" Is it not possible for pulpit and press to speak out against
these burnings in a manner that will arouse a sentiment that shall
compel the mob to cease insulting our courts, our governors and
our legal authority, to cease bringing shame and ridicule upon our
Christian civilization.
" BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
" Tuskegee, Ala."
Now and Then
45
baric races, except the Indian, makes the best of
circumstances. It is possibly true that the Negro
would be a slave among us to-day if some one else
had not freed him. The sentiment, ' He who
would be free must first himself strike the blow,'
did not appeal to him.
"Another reason cited for the Negro's submis¬
sion so long to oppression both before and since the
American Civil War of 1860 to 1865 was his inabil¬
ity to organize. The white man learned this art by
thousands of years of experience and of necessary
resistance for the protection of those rights which
he holds most dear. The Negroes were never able
to make any concerted movement in their own be¬
half. They clashed too easily with one another
and any individual would swamp the ship, as it
were, to further his own scheme. The ' rule or
ruin' policy prevailed and the necessity of the
subordination of individuality for the good of the
whole was lost in a storm of personal aggrandize¬
ment whenever an attempt was made at anything
bordering on Negro national organization. This
was one of the fruits of slavery, which encouraged
jealousy and bickering. Several religious organi¬
zations had a successful existence for some time
and quite a number of business and benevolent
46
Light Ahead for the Negro
enterprises, but in politics all was chaos. The
Negroes cast their ballots one way all of the time;
it was known just as well ten years before an elec¬
tion how they would vote, as it was after the bal¬
lots were counted. No people of political calibre
like that could measure arms with the white man
politically ; his rebelling in such a condition would
have been preposterous. The Negro took his cue
in matters of race policy from his white friends—
he did not fight until the signal was given by them.
No Negro gained any national reputation without
first having been recognized by the white race,
instead of his own. The Negroes recognized their
leaders after the whites picked them out—not be¬
fore.
" The Negro nature at this time was still a pliable
one, after many years of drill training, but it was
much more plastic in the days of slavery, and for the
first forty years after reconstruction. The master
labored to subordinate the will of the slave to his
own, to make him like clay in the hands of the
potter. In this he had an eye to business. The
nearer the slave approached the horse, in follow¬
ing his master's guidance, the nearer perfect he
was, and this lesson of putting himself absolutely
at the mercy of his master was thoroughly learned,
Now and Then
47
and it was learned easily because there seemed to
exist a natural instinctive awe on the part of the
Negro for the white man. He had that peculiar
fondness for him that the mule has for the horse.
You can mount one horse and lead a thousand
mules, without bit or bridle, to the ends of the
earth.
" The Negro sought to please his master in all
things. He had a smile for his frowns and a grin
for his kicks. No task was too menial, if done
for a white master—he would dance if he was
called upon and make sport of the other Negroes,
and even pray, if need be, so he could laugh at
him. He was trustworthy to the letter, and while
occasionally he might help himself to his master's
property on the theory of a common ownership,
yet woe be unto the other Negro that he caught
tampering with his master's goods! He was a
' tattler' to perfection, a born dissembler—a dip¬
lomat and a philosopher combined. He was past
grand master in the art of carrying his point when
he wanted a ' quarter' or fifty cents. He
knew the route to his master's heart and pocket-
book and traveled it often. He simply made him¬
self so obliging that he could not be refused ! It
was this characteristic that won him favor in the
48
Light Ahead for the Negro
country from college president down to the lowest
scullion. Had he been resentful and vindictive,
like the Indian, he would have been deported or
exterminated long since.
" The Negro's usefulness had also bound him to
the South. The affection that the master and
mistress had for the slave was transmitted in the
blood of their children.
" As unto tlie bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other,"
applied to the relations between the Negro and
his white master. In the Civil War between the
states, many a slave followed his master to the
front. Here he was often the only messenger to
return home. He bore the treasured watch, or
ring, or sword, of the fallen soldier, and broke the
sad news to the family ; and there were black tears
as well as white ones spilled on such occasions.
" The white males went to the war leaving the
family and farm in charge of the blacks thereon.
They managed everything, plowed, sowed, reaped,
and sold, and turned over all returns to the mis¬
tress. They shared her sorrows and were her pro-
Now and Then
49
tection. When Union soldiers came near, the
trusted blacks were diligent in hiding property
from the thieves and bummers of the arm}'. They
carried the horses to the woods and hid them in
the densest swamps, they buried the jewelry and
silver and gold plate ; they secreted their young
mistresses and the members of the family where
tliey could not be found, and not one instance was
there ever heard of improper conduct, out of a
population of nearly four million slaves; in spite
of the fact that the war was being maintained by
their masters for the perpetuation of the shackles
of slavery on themselves ! The Negro was too
fond of his master's family to mistreat them, he
felt almost a kinship to them. The brutes of later
days came from that class of Negroes who had
been isolated from the whites, on the quarters of
large plantations.
"Was there ever a more glorious record ? Did
ever a race deserve more fully the affection of
another race than these southern Negroes, and did
not we owe it to their descendants to save them
from both deportation and serfdom ?
" You ask, ' Why was it that after the war there
was so much race prejudice, in the face of all these
facts ?'
D
50
Light Ahead for the Negro
" The answer to that question is fraught with
much weight and bears strongly on the final solu¬
tion of the Negro problem. The friends of the
Negro had this question to battle with from the
beginning, for the enemies of the race used every
weapon at hand in the long and terrible fight
against Negro citizenship.
" To begin with, I will state that after the war
the Negro became a free citizen and a voter—he
was under no restraint. His new condition gave
him privileges that he had never had before; it
was not unnatural that he should desire to exer¬
cise them. His attempts to do so were resisted
by the native whites, but his vote was needed by
the white men who had recently come into the South
to make it their home—and to get office—and also
for his own protection. It was necessary that
he should vote to save himself from many of the
harsh laws that were being proposed at the time.
Some of them were that a Negro should not own
land, that a Negro's testimony was incompetent in
the courts, that a Negro should not keep firearms
for his defense, that he should not engage in busi¬
ness without paying a high and almost prohibitive
tax, that he must hire himself out on a farm in
January or be sold to the highest bidder for a
Now and Then
51
year, the former owner to have the preference in
bidding.
" These laws were unwisely urged by those
whites who did not desire to accept the conse¬
quences of the war. To make the laws effective,
it was thought necessary by their advocates to
suppress the Negro voters; for, if they were al¬
lowed to vote, there were so many of them, and
so many of the whites had been disfranchised be¬
cause of participation in the war, that defeat was
certain. Here is where the bitterness, which for
a long time seemed to curse our country, had its
origin. The Negroes and their friends were lined
up on one side and their opponents on the other.
" The c Ku Klux Klan' was a secret organization
whose purpose was to frighten and intimidate
Negroes and thus prevent their voting. It had
branch organizations in the different Southern
states during the reconstruction period. When
the members went out on raids, they wore dis¬
guises ; some had false heads with horns and long
beards, some represented his satanic majesty, some
wore long gowns, others wrapped themselves in
sheets of different colors, and all sorts of hideous
shapes and forms, with masks representing the
heads of different animals, such as goats, cows
52 Light Ahead for the Negro
and mules. They proceeded on the principle of
using mild means first, but when that failed, they
did not hesitate to resort to harsher methods. The
object seemed to be only to so frighten Negroes
that they would not attempt to vote. But in car¬
rying out this scheme they often met resistance,
whereupon many outrages were perpetrated upon
people who made a stand for their rights under
the law of the land. In obstinate cases and toward
the end of their careers " klans " would visit Ne¬
gro cabins at night and terrify the inmates by
whipping them, hanging them up by their thumbs,
and sometimes killing them. Many Negroes who
assumed to lead among their people were run from
one county into another. Some were run out of
their states, and even white men who led the Ne¬
groes in thickly settled Negro counties were driven
out.
" The story was told of one case where a white
man named Stephens, the recognized political
leader of the Negroes as well as a few whites, in
one of the states, was invited into one of the lower
rooms of the courthouse of his county while a po¬
litical meeting by his opponents was in progress
above, and there told he must agree to leave the
county and quit politics or be killed then and there.
Now and Then
53
He refused to do either, whereupon two physicians,
with others who were present, tied him, laid him
on a table and opened his jugular veins and bled
him to death in buckets provided for the occasion.
Meanwhile the stamping of feet and the yelling
above, where the speaking was going on, was tre¬
mendous, being prearranged to deaden any outcry
that he might make. It is said that Stephens's last
words before he was put on the table were a re¬
quest that he might go to the window and take a
final look at his home, which was only a few rods
away. This was granted, and as he looked his
wife passed out of the house and his children
were playing in the yard. Stephens's dead body
was found by a Negro man who suspected some¬
thing wrong and climbed to the window of the
room in search for him.
" Such acts as these spread terror among the
Negro population, as well as bad feeling, and dug
a wide political pit between the Negro and the
Democratic party which organized these methods
of intimidation.* The ' Ku Klux Klan' was
finally annihilated by the strong hand of President
Grant, who filled the South with sufficient militia
to suppress it. A favorite means of evading the
*Tourgee relates this incident in "A Fool's Errand."
54
Light Ahead for the Negro
arrests made by the militia was to have the pris¬
oners released on habeas corpus by the native
judges. To stop this the writ of habeas corpus
was suspended by some of the provisional gov-
erners. One governor who did this was impeached
by the Democratic party when it returned to power
and he died broken hearted, without the removal
of his disabilities. You can easily see from these
facts how the political differences between the
Negro and the Democratic party arose."
Here my paper ended. When I had read it
over to Dr. Newell, he rose and went over to his
desk, saying,
" While looking over some old papers belong¬
ing to my grandfather, I found the following arti¬
cle inside of an old book. On it is a statement
that it was written in the year 1902 and republished
in 1950. I have often desired to get at the true
status of this question, and when I found this
my interest was doubly aroused. The so-called
Negro problem was truly a most crucial test of
the foundation principles of our government a
century ago, and I feel proud of my citizenship
in so great a country when I reflect that we have
come through it all with honor and that finally
truth has won out and we are able at last to treat
Now and Then
55
the Negro with justice and humanity, according to
the principles of Christianity! This problem tested
our faith as with fire."
He handed me the article, and gave his attention
to other matters until I had read it:—
" RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO GOVERN¬
MENT.
" In the ten years culminating with the decade
ending in 1902, the American Negroes have wit¬
nessed well nigh their every civil right invaded.
They commenced the struggle as freemen in 1865 ;
at the close of the civil war both races in the
South began life anew, under changed conditions—
neither one the slave of the other, except in so
far as he who toils, as Carlyle says, is slave to him
who thinks. Under the slave system the white
man had been the thinker and the Negro the toiler.
The idea that governed both master and slave
was that the slave should have no will but that of
his master.
" The fruits of this system began to ripen in the
first years of freedom, when the Negro was forced
to think for himself. For two hundred and forty
years his education and training had been directed
56
Light Ahead for the Negro
towards the suppression of his will. He was fast
becoming an automaton. He was taught religion
to some extent, but a thoughtless religion is little
better than mockery and this it must have been
when even to read the Bible in some states was a
crime. It is, therefore, not suprising that free¬
dom's new suit fitted the recently emancipated
slave uncomfortably close; he hardly knew which
way to turn for fear he would rend a seam.
Consultation with his former owners was his
natural recourse in adjusting himself to new
conditions.
"In North Carolina a meeting was called at the
capital of the state by the leading colored men, and
their former masters, and the leading white men
were invited to come forward, to take the lead and
to tell them what was best for them to do. It is a
lamentable fact that the thinking white men did not
embrace this opportunity to save their state hun¬
dreds of lives that were afterwards sacrificed dur¬
ing reconstruction. Many other evils of the
period, might have been thus averted. It was a
fatal blunder that cost much in money and blood,
and, so far as North Carolina is concerned, if
the Negroes in reconstruction were misled it was
the fault of those who were invited and refused
Now and Then
57
this opportunity to take hold and direct them
properly.
" The Negro, turned from the Southern white
man's refusal, followed such leaders as he could
find. In some instances these proved to be corrupt
camp followers, in others ambitious and unscrupu¬
lous Southern men who made the Negroes step¬
ping stones to joower or pelf. The Negroes of the
state received very little of the honor or harvest
of reconstruction, but very much of dishonor, and
they are now charged with the sins both of omis¬
sion and commission of that period. A pliant tool
he may have been in the hands of demagogues,
yet in the beginning he sought the leadership of
wise men. In this he showed a noble purpose
which at least relieves him—whatever was charged
to his account afterwards—of the charge of mali¬
cious intent.
" Here is a list of prominent white leaders in
North Carolina who controlled the ship of state
for the first ten years after the war, from 1869 to
1876:
" Wm. E. Rodman (Southern white), Judge Dick
(Southern white), W. W. Holden, Governor
(Southern white), Byron Laflin (Southern white),
Henry Martindale (Ohio white), Gen'l Ames
58
Light Ahead for the Negro
(Northern), G. Z. French, legislator (Maine), Dr.
Eugene Grissom, Superintendent Insane Asylum
Raleigh, North Carolina (Southern white), Tyre
York, legislator and party leader (Southern white),
Governor Graham (Southern white), Judge Brooks
(Southern white), S. J. Carrow (Southern white).
" This list shows that those who had the reins of
government in hand were not Negroes. The truth
is, that if the team went wrong the fault was that
of the white drivers and not that of the Negro
passengers who, to say the most, had only a back
seat in the wagon of state.
" But the enemies of Negro suffrage and advo¬
cates of the mistakes of reconstruction avow that
the sway of reconstruction demagogery could never
have prevailed but for Negro suffrage; that had
the Negro not been a voter he could never have
been made the tool of demagogues. This is ob¬
vious but the argument is sufficiently met by the
fact that the Negroes offered the brain and cul¬
ture of the South the opportunity of taking charge
of affairs. Instead of doing so they stiffened their
necks against Negro suffrage, the Howard Amend¬
ment, and the other propositions of the government
at Washington, looking towards the reconstruction
of the lately seceded states. If there had been less
Now and Then
59
resistance there would have been less friction, but
the South had its own ideas of how the thing
should be done and resisted any others to the point
of a revolution which had to be put down by
government troops. The government's plans
were carried finally at the point of the bayonet,
when they might have gone through smoothly,
had the Negro's call for Southern leadership been
heeded. Had this been done, the 'Ku-Klux'
would never have developed. The South came
back into the Union, ' overpowered,' it said,
' but not conquered.' So far as the Negro ques¬
tion is concerned that is true but in other matters
the South is essentially loyal. Although it came
back pledged never to deprive any citizen of his
rights and privileges i on account of color or pre¬
vious condition of servitude,' it is now engaged in
a bold and boasting attempt to do this very thing.
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina,
North Carolina and Virginia have all adopted
amendments to their constitutions which prac¬
tically nullify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the United States Constitution,
which the honor of these states was pledged not
to do when they were re-admitted into the Union
at the close of the war of secession! In Virginia
60
Light Ahead for the Negro
the amendment was established without submit¬
ting the question to the popular vote. To
secure these amendments in other states, fraud
and intimidation is alleged to have been used,
and the Southern states that have not amended
their constitutions have effected the same results
by a system of political jugglery with the Negro's
ballots.
"The Southern states seem to live in mortal
dread of the Negro with a ballot. They imagine
a Pandora's box of evils will open upon them if
the Negro is allowed to vote. This feeling arises
more from the fact that the whites want the of¬
fices than from any other cause. Past experience
shows that Negroes have never attempted to claim
all of the offices, even where they did ninety-nine
per cent, of the voting. It is a notable fact that
in North Carolina during the reconstruction times,
when few white men voted and Negroes had a
monopoly of the ballot, that white men were put
forward for official positions. The same condi¬
tion existed in the period from 1894 to 1898, dur¬
ing the ' Fusion Movement,' when out of ninety-
six counties, each of which had three commissioners
elected by the people, only four counties out of
the ninety-six had a Negro commissioner; and the
Now and Then
61
commissioners in two-thirds of the counties were
elected principally by Negro votes—in many of
the eastern counties, almost wholly by them. Out
of ninety-six counties the Negroes never demanded
a single sheriff or a mayor of a city, town or vil¬
lage. There were a few Negro magistrates in the
eastern counties, but always more white ones near
by and under a provision of a North Carolina
statute any defendant who thinks he cannot get
justice before the magistrate in whose court he is
summoned for trial, can have his case moved to
some other justice.
" The evils of reconstruction were due to the
general demoralization which followed the Civil
War, rather than to the Negro. War is 'hell'
and so is its aftermath.
"Another pet assertion of the opponents of
Negro suffrage is that Negro government is ex¬
pensive. Those who despair of reaching the
American conscience in any other way hope to do
so through the pocket argument, commercialism
if you please. This argument, like the others,
has no facts for a basis. It is a phantom, a delu¬
sion and is intended to affect the business element
of the North, which people sometimes mistakenly
think has more respect for prices than princi-
62
Light Ahead for the Negro
pies. It will not do, however, to listen to the
siren of commercialism whose songs are composed
by advocates of Negro disfranchisement. There
is method in the spell she would bring upon
you, and her story is literally nothing but a
song.
" The truth is that during the whole period of
the ' Fusion Movement' North Carolina never
had a more economical government—taxes then
were 93c. on a hundred dollar valuation; taxes
now are $1.23. North Carolina six per cent,
bonds then sold for $1.10; they now sell for
$1.09. The Fusion government made the state
penitentiary self-supporting ; the white supremacy
government has run it into debt to the amount of
$50,000. Under the Fusion government, most of
the counties paid off their debts and had a surplus
in their treasuries for the first time since the war.
Under the Fusion government more miles of rail¬
road were built than in any period of the same
length before or since, more cotton factories were
established ; one of them being owned and oper¬
ated by Negroes. A silk mill operated entirely by
Negro labor, from foremen down, was also estab¬
lished. The fees of public officers were cut down
about one-third. These are some of the phases of
Now and Then
63
the Fusion government—a government based al¬
most entirely on Negro votes—that the enemies
of Negro suffrage do not discuss.
" It is useless to refer to the period of reconstruc¬
tion to disprove the theory that Negro suffrage
would entail an expensive government on the
South, when we have the recent experiment in
North Carolina before us. For the sake of ar¬
gument, we might admit that the Negro was unfit
for suffrage forty years ago, but that by no means
proves that he is unfit now. Forty years of ex¬
perience under American institutions have taught
him many lessons. He is no longer the 1 child-
man,' as the white supremacy advocates call him.
These people are as false in their theories as were
the pro-slavery advocates who maintained the ab¬
surd proposition that if the Negro was emancipated
he would soon perish, for want of sufficient ability
to feed and clothe himself. Forty years after
emancipation—about as long as Moses was in the
wilderness—in spite of these false prophecies, we
can now find some of the sons of the prophets
fearing and foretelling, not that the Negroes will
perish, but that they will outstrip them in the
race of life ! So the white man in the new con¬
stitution is to be allowed to vote on his ' grand-
64 Light Ahead for the Negro
daddy's' * merits and the Negro must vote on his
own.
" These politicians were afraid to base the right
to vote on merit, as they feared the Negro would
win.f Among these people a Negro has to be
* The grandfather clause in the North Carolina constitution, as
recently amended, gives illiterate whites the right to vote if their
grandfathers voted prior to 1867. The negroes were enfranchised
in 1867 and their grandfathers therefore could not have voted
prior to that time. So, while all negroes must be able to read and
write the constitution, in order to vote, the illiterate white man
may do so because his " grand-daddy " voted prior to 1867.
t As Mr. A. V. Dockery, who is a competent authority, so
tersely said in the New York Age, June 23, 1904, the Negro has
been practically the only natural Republican in the South. That
a considerable number of soldiers were furnished by the South to
the Union army during the Civil War is not contested, and proves
little as to political conditions then and for several decades later.
It is well known that the mountain section of North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia sent many soldiers to the North¬
ern army; it may not be so well known that Madison county, North
Carolina, the home of Judge Pritchard, contributed more soldiers
to the Union cause, in proportion to population, than any other
county in the whole United States.
It was not asserted that all those soldiers were then, or after¬
wards became, Republicans. Before the emancipation, there were
some Republicans in this sparsely settled section, it is true, but
aggressive Republicanism in the South got its impetus and had its
birth in the actual emancipation, not necessarily the enfranchise¬
ment, of the Negro.
Yet when this remnant of white Republicans could no longer
protect the Negro in his right to vote, and successive Congresses
supinely consented to his disfranchisement, the South's contribu-
Now and Then
65
twice as smart as a white man to merit the same
favors, yet in a recent Civil Service examination
in Atlanta 19 Negroes out of 40 passed, while only
26 whites out of 115 succeeded. In an examina¬
tion of law students by the Supreme Court of
North Carolina only 40 per cent, of the whites
passed, while 100 per cent, of the colored got
licenses. A hundred other illustrations might be
made showing the speciousness of the arguments
put forth as to Negro incompetency. The fact is
that there is no use in arguing such a proposition.
tion to Congress consisted of less than half a dozen Republican
congressmen, and these only from the aforesaid mountain district.
The Negro, being held up as a terrible hobgoblin to political
white folks, it was necessary to destroy his citizenship; which was
accomplished by wily and cruel means. About one and a half
million citizens were disfranchised and yet we have a paradox.
This vast mass of manhood is represented in Congress—in what
way? By arbitrarily nullifying the constitution of the Nation.
It was the boast in 1861 that one Southern man could whip ten
Yankees. May not this same class of Southern politicians now
proudly and truly boast that one Southern vote is equal to ten
Yankee votes ?
Have the ten million American Negroes any more direct repre¬
sentation in Congress than the ten million Filipinos ?
In 1896 there was only one party in the South and its primaries
elected the congressmen. Seven congressional districts in South
Carolina cast a total of less than 40,000 votes for the seven con¬
gressmen elected to the Fifty-seventh Congress.
For the same Congress, Minnesota cast a total of 276,000 votes
for seven congressmen, an average of 39,428 votes each; whereas
E
66
Light Ahead for the Negro
The effort made to suppress the Negro has no just
basis. There has simply been a determination to
do it, right or wrong. The advocates of white
supremacy who watch the current of events, have
seen that the decitizenization of the Negro can be
accomplished with the shot-gun, without trouble to
themselves, and they have accomplished the task.
They have asked to be let alone with the Negro
problem; they have been let alone since 1876,
when the Republican party dropped the Negro
question as an issue. Since that time they have
the average in South Carolina was less than 6,000 votes per con¬
gressman. In other words, one South Carolina congressman is
equal to seven of the Minnesota article.
If every " lily white " Democrat in the old fighting South during
the last decade of the twentieth century (the " lily white" age)
had received an office, no benefit for the so-called Negro party
would have been attained, and the South would have remained as
solid as ever. The men there who amassed fortunes as a result of
the Republican policy of protection, remained Democrats, not¬
withstanding the elimination of the Negro as a political factor.
The "lily white" party had no other principle except greed for
office. It was a delicious sham and the people knew it, white and
blacks alike. It was distinctly proven that as long, and no longer,
as there was any Federal office in the South to be filled there was
a Democrat or a " lily white " handy and anxious to fill it and
willing to keep his mouth shut only during the occupation.
It is not surprising, therefore, that President Roosevelt early in
his administration gave the " lily-white " party to understand that
it was persona non grata at the White House. As a true patriot
and an honest man he could not have done lesa.
Now and Then
67
been politically tying the Negroes' hands. Real¬
izing his industrial usefulness, the aim has been to
eliminate him from politics and at the same time
use him as a tax-payer and a producer. The para¬
doxical task of defining his citizenship as that of
one with all the burdens and duties, less the rights
and privileges thereof, has been quite successfully
performed.
" The white supremacy advocates seem to have
selected a propitious period for this work—a time
when the Negro's friends in the Republican party
are occupied with similar problems in Cuba and
the Philippines. ' If the Republicans deny self-
government to the Philippines, Porto Rico and
Cuba,' inquire the Southerners, ' why have n't we
the right to do the same to Negroes ? Why allow
Negroes in the South to rule and deny the same
to Negroes in Hawaii?' are questions they are
asking with some force. Whatever else the ad¬
vocates of white supremacy may lack they are not
lacking in shrewdness. Their disfranchising
schemes have flaunted themselves under the very
nose of the government, and bid it defiance in the
National Senate with unmistakable boldness, since
the Spanish-American War and the policy grow¬
ing out of it. However there seems to be a man
68
Light Ahead for the Negro
in the White House who wants to set no example
that white supremacy can follow; so far as his in¬
dicated policy in dealing with Cuba was concerned,
President Roosevelt determined that the black
people of Cuba should be free.
" But the subordination of the Negro cannot last,
there will always be white people in this country
who will believe in his equality before the law.
These principles are too firmly entrenched in the
hearts of Americans to be utterly subverted.
They are the bed rock on which the government
was founded—on which the Civil War was main¬
tained. Too much of blood and treasure has been
spent now to go backwards. These principles
have been established at too great a cost to
abandon them so soon. It is true that the white
supremacy advocates seem now in control of the
situation, but that also seemed true of the advo¬
cates of slavery before the war. While the
enemies of liberty have always been cunning, yet
like all other advocates of false doctrines who get
power, they usually abuse it; the South might
have held her slaves for many years longer, had
she not overstepped the mark by trying to force
the institution on the North. She attempted to
extend slavery into new territories, she even at-
Now and Then
69
tempted to capture her slaves in the streets of
anti-slavery cities like Boston, by the Fugitive
Slave Law—under the very noses of the abolition¬
ists ! Had the pro-slavery people been satisfied
with restricted slavery, the abolitionists might
have had harder work in dethroning the institu¬
tion.
" If the question of lynching had been con¬
fined to Negroes guilty of assaults on females some
justification might exist, but it has been extended
to all crimes ; and not satisfied with hanging, burn¬
ing by slow fire has been substituted, accompanied
by stabbing, the cutting off of finger joints, the
digging out of eyes, and other torture.
" On the question of civil equality, the ' jim-
crow' system has not sufficed ; like the horse leech,
they continually call for more. If practiced only
in the South it might stand, but an attempt has
been made to cover the country, and the Pres¬
ident himself must not treat a colored gentleman
otherwise than as a scullion—according to the ad¬
vocates of white supremacy. In their doctrine all
Negroes are to be humiliated. This tendency to
dictate to others and go to extremes is character¬
istic, and it means that we may always depend on
this class of individuals to go too far, and by over-
70
Light Ahead for the Negro
stepping the mark to turn the country against
them.
" If a fool has rope enough the end is easy to
see."
After reading the article, I turned to the Doctor,
and said, " These statements are essentially correct,
according to my recollection of those times, and I
will say further that there were grave doubts one
hundred years ago as to the permanency of our
institutions under the strain of the Negro problem;
and no less prominent was the labor agitation or
the war between capital and labor. It is a happy
realization for me to return to my country and
find these questions peaceably adjusted and that
the South, which was for a long time considered
obdurate on this subject, has led in bringing
about this happy solution, in spite of the proph¬
ecies of many writers like this one. But the
problem I have been laboring with ever since my
second advent, as it were, is, how was it all done ?
" Well, we Southern people changed our leaders.
We took men of noble character; men who ap¬
pealed to reason and humanity, rather than pan¬
dered to the lowest passions of the people," he said.
" Tell me, Dr. Newell, how the labor question
Now and Then
71
was settled and how the labor unions learned to
leave off discriminating against Negroes. Accord¬
ing to my best recollections the American labor
organizations, almost without exception, excluded
Negro members."
"Yes," replied Dr. Newell, "that is correct, as
I have gleaned from the history of your times, but
—as all injustice must—this particular instance fol¬
lowed the fixed rule and finally gave way to truth.
Such discriminations were incompatible with the
spirit and trend of our government. The labor
leaders, however, yielded in the end more from a
sense of necessity than of justice to the Negro. As
Lincoln said, the nation could not exist half slave
and half free, and as Blaine said, in his famous
Augusta speech, no imaginary line could continue
to divide free labor from serf labor. The labor
leaders found, after serious second thought, that it
would be better to emancipate Negro labor than
to lend their efforts towards keeping it in serfdom.
For a long time the labor organizations desired
the Negroes deported, as a solution of the problem
for themselves alone. They found various in¬
fluences, especially capital, opposed to this; as one
writer put it, ' the Dollar was no respector of per¬
sons and would as soon hop into the hands of a
72
Light Ahead for the Negro
black man, in consideration of the performance of
a service, as in those of a white one.' Capital
wanted the work done and the man who could do
it the cheapest and best was the man that got the
Dollar every time. This phase of the question
was a constant menace to organized labor, and
finally caused a revolution in its tactics. White
labor began to see that it would be better to lift
the Negro up to the same scale with itself, by ad¬
mitting him into their organization, than to seek
his debasement. If Negroes were in a condition
to work for fifty cents per day and would do so,
and capital would employ them, then white men
must accept the same terms or get no work! This,
followed to its last analysis, meant that white
laborers must provide for their families and educate
their children on fifty cents per day, if the Negroes
could do it."
"Did not the South object to the organization
of Negro labor?" I asked.
"The Southern people, at first, strongly ob¬
jected.
" The laboring white people of the South have
made serious blunders in their position on the Ne¬
gro problem, having acted all along on the pre¬
sumption that the proper solution was to ' keep
Now and Then
73
the Negro down.' Towards this end, they bent
their best energies, under the mistaken idea of
conserving their own interests, not realizing the
all-important fact that as long as there was a large
number of Negroes in their midst who would work
for only fifty cents per day as above stated, and
capital was disposed to employ them, just so long
would every laboring white man have to accept
the same wages as the Negro.
" The intelligent solution of the problem was
found by making the Negro see what his interests
were, by taking him into the labor unions, where
he could be educated up to an intelligent appre¬
ciation of the value of his labor; instead of seek¬
ing further to degrade him by oppression, with the
consequent result of lowering the white man's
scale of wages. Further it has been found that
oppression does not oppress when aimed at the
Negro—he rather thrives under it. In those
communities where he was most oppressed and the
hand of every laboring white man seemed to be
against him, the Negro thrived and prospered to a
marked degree. Oppression simply drives negroes
together, they concentrate their trade in their
own stores and spend their wages among them¬
selves to a greater extent than otherwise—and
74
Light Ahead for the Negro
thus it more often than otherwise happened, that
Negro laborers as a mass, in such communities,
lived in better homes, and educated their children
better than the white laborers. The eyes of the
Southern white laboring men began to see this
point and a change of base took place, and now
they are and have been for a long time, seeking
to elevate the Negro laborer to their own standard
to keep him from pulling them down—a most in¬
telligent view of the matter !
"The South had congratulated itself on being
free from the strikes and lock-outs caused by or¬
ganized labor in the North. Their contention was
that the Negroes could not act intelligently in any
organization, and that serious consequences would
certainly follow. But all such predictions failed
to materialize after the Negroes were organized.
The work of organizing did not stop with their
admission into labor unions but courses of in¬
struction were mapped out and competent people
were employed to drill the members in the princi¬
ples of the order; and, so far as possible, in the
advanced methods of handling tools. The result
was the creation of a much better class of work¬
men, better wages and better living for all.
" The unions also opened their doors to women
Now and Then
75
in separate meetings. Schools of Domestic
Science were established and those who employed
servants soon found that they could leave the
household and kitchen work to a master-hand.
The wives and mothers of employers were eman¬
cipated from constantly 4 overseeing.' There was
a vast difference between the professional domestic
servant, who needed only orders, which would be
carried out faithfully, and the ' blunderbuss,'
who was continually at sea in the absence of the
directing hand and mind of her mistress. The
Southern people began to recognize the difference,
and soon became the firm champions of the new
system, and welcomed the new efforts of the labor
unions as a blessing rather than a curse."
" But, Doctor, am I to understand that there are
no labor problems at all in the country at present ? "
"No, not exactly that; organized labor still
has its problems, but you must remember that
they are not of the same character as those of a
hundred years ago. The essentials of life, such as
coal, iron, oil and other natural products are now
handled by the National Government, and the
government is pledged to see to it that labor in
the production of these commodities is paid a fair
share of the surplus accruing from sales. No at-
76
Light Ahead for the Negro
tempt at profit is allowed ; the management is
similar to that of the Post Office Department,
which has been conducted from the beginning for
the convenience of the people, and not for revenue
to the Government. The workmen are paid well
and the cost to the consumer is lessened by dis¬
carding the profits that formerly went into private
purses. We have no more strikes and lock-outs ;
the chief concern of the labor unions now is to
raise their less skillful members to a higher stand¬
ard (for a long time this effort was especially
directed toward the Negro members), and to assist
those who, because of infirmity and disease, find
themselves incapacitated for further service. It
may be well said that the problem of ' wherewithal
shall we be clothed' is solved in this country, so
far as organized labor is concerned, and more time
is now left for the perfection of skill and individ¬
ual improvement."
" A delightful situation, as compared with the
past as I recollect it to be," I remarked—" when
labor was paid barely enough to live on, while
enormous wealth was being accumulated in the
hands of a few fortunate people who happened to
be born into opportunities—or, better still, born
rich.
Now and Then
77
" As I remember the past, the laboring people
in coal and. iron mines earned barely enough for
subsistence and their hours of toil were so long
that anything like self-improvement was impos¬
sible. They were in a continual row with their
employers, who revelled in luxury and rebelled
against a 10 per cent, increase in wages, and who
in many instances, rather than pay it, would close
down the mines until their workmen were starved
into submission. I never could reconcile myself
to the logic of the principle that it was lawful for
capital to thus oppress labor. I think the legal
maxim of sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas (so
use your own as not to injure another) applies
with force in this instance. The application of it
is usually made in suits for damages, where one
person has injured another by negligence. But
the force of the maxim is applicable to capital as
well, and he who would use money (though in
fact it be legally his own) to oppress others has
violated both the letter and spirit of the maxim.
In saying this I would not be understood as in¬
dulging in that sickly sentimentality which de¬
spises all rich people simply because they are
rich, but rather to condemn the illegitimate use of
riches. A rich man can be a blessing as well as
78
Light Ahead for the Negro
a curse to his community, and I am indeed happy
to learn and see for myself that this is now the
rule, rather than the exception, as formerly.
"There is another phase of the question that
you have not yet referred to. What is the con¬
dition of the farm laborers of the Southern States ? "
I asked. "When I left they were working from
sunrise to sunset, the men earning fifty cents and
the women thirty-five cents per day, and they lived
in huts with mud chimneys—often a family of six
or eight in one room. They had a three months'
school during the winter season, when there were
no crops, and these were not too often taught by
skilled teachers. Has their condition improved so
that it is in keeping with the times ? "
At this juncture the Doctor was called out of
the room before he could reply.
While waiting for him to return, I had a sur¬
prise. His private secretary came in and seated
himself at a phonographic typewriter which
took down the words in shorthand, typewrote
them on a sheet for preservation in the office, and
at the same time sent the letter by telephone to
its destination. But my surprise was awakened
by the fact that this private secretary was a
Negro j not full black, but mixed blood—in color,
Now and Then
79
between an Indian and a Chinaman. I ascer¬
tained from this young man that it was now " quite
common " for Southern white men of large affairs
to employ Negroes for higher positions in their
offices, counting rooms, and stores. (They had a
precedent for this in the custom of the Romans,
who used their educated Greek slaves in this
way.) He also told me that the matter of social
equality was not mentioned. He naturally as¬
sociated with his own people. He simply wanted
to do his work faithfully, and neither expected
nor asked to sit by his employer's fireside. In a
word, he showed that to give the Negro an edu¬
cation need not necessarily " turn his head."*
The young man said, " Our theory has kept the
* A. A. Gunby, Esq., a member of the Louisiana bar, in a recently
published address on Negro education, read before the Southern
Educational Association, which met in Atlanta, 1892, took diamet¬
rically opposite ground to those who oppose higher education be¬
cause it will lead to the amalgamation of the races. Mr. Gunby
said: " The idea that white supremacy will be endangered by Ne¬
gro education does not deserve an answer. The claim that their
enlightenment will lead to social equality and amalgamation is
equally untenable. The more intelligent the Negro becomes the
better he understands the true relations and divergencies of the
races, the less he is inclined to social intermingling with the whites.
Education will really emphasize and widen the social gulf between
the whites and blacks to the great advantage of the State, for it is
a heterogeneous, and not a homogeneous, people that make a re¬
public strong and progressive."
80
Light Ahead for the Negro
two races pure and has developed both the Saxon
and the Negro types and preserved the best traits
of each."
I noticed that the subdued look of the old time
Negro was absent and that, without any attempt
at display, this man possessed " le grande air "
which is a coveted attribute in the highest walks
of life. I had already observed that an advance
in civilization produced more individuality and
more personal freedom in choosing one's associ¬
ates. It was not expected that a man was the
social equal of another because he worked at the
same bench with him, or rode in the same car on
the railroad. That was now considered the postu¬
late of an ignoramus.
Individuality is a marked development of ad¬
vanced civilization—of this I have always been
aware, the more so since witnessing the changes
wrought during my absence. Individuality gives
room for thought, out of which is born invention
and progress. When the individual is not al¬
lowed to separate from the crowd in thought and
action, the aggregate will, the aggregate thought,
is his master and he " dare not venture for fear
of a fall." Progress is measured only by the de¬
gree of swiftness made by the mass. Some indi-
Now and Then
81
viduals may be able to make better speed, but the
mass holds them back. Four horses are pulling a
load; two may be able to go faster than the
others, but the speed of the team is measured by
the speed of the slowest horse.
This does not always appear apropos of the
progress of communities, for a community may
be led by a few progressive spirits who seem to
reflect upon it their own standard and tone, but
the less progressive members of such a community
have merely subordinated their wills for the time
being and may on any occasion see fit to exercise
them; and at this point the illustration becomes
true again.
" Now," said Doctor Newell, on his return, " I
am sorry our conversation was interrupted, but
let us proceed. I believe you desired to ask me
some questions about the Negro farm laborers, did
you not ? "
I replied that I did, and recalled my state¬
ment as to their condition when I last knew of
them.
" Oh, it is very different from that now, Mr.
Twitchell. Many changes ; many, many, have oc¬
curred ! You will recall that, about the time you
left, the different Southern states were re-recon-
F
82
Light Ahead for the Negro
structing themselves, as it were, by making amend¬
ments to their constitutions which virtually dis¬
franchised a large proportion of the Negro voters—
enough to put the offices of the states absolutely
into the hands of white men, as outlined in the
magazine article you have just read, and as you
stated in your brochure for the Bureau of Public
Utility. Some passages from a book I have on
the subject may remind you of the discussion of
this question that was going on then."
Signifying to his secretary what he wanted, he
read to me the following excerpts from the history
of those times:
" NEGRO DISFRANCHISEMENT
"what dr. f. a. noble thinks
"In civil as in business affairs there is nothing
so foolish as injustice and oppression; there is
nothing so wise as righteousness. By the letter
of the amended Constitution, by the spirit and aim
of the amendments, and by all the principles of
our American democracy, the Negro is in posses¬
sion of the elective franchise. Men differ in their
views as to whether it was good policy to confer
Now and Then
83
this right upon him at the time and in the way,
and especially to the extent to which it was done;
but the right was conferred, and it is now his. To
deprive him of this right, for no other reason than
that he is a Negro, is to nullify the fundamental
law of the land, discredit one of the most sacred
results of Emancipation, and flaunt contempt in
the face of the idea of a government of the people
and by the people and for the people. To dis¬
courage the Negro from attempting to exercise
the right of the ballot is to belittle him in his own
estimation, put him at a serious disadvantage in the
estimation of others, and by so much remand him
back to the old condition of servitude from which
he was rescued at such cost to the nation. Wrong
done to the colored race involves the white race in
the catastrophe which must follow. To withhold
justice is worse than to suffer injustice. A people
deprived of their rights by the state will not long
be faithful to their duties to the state.
"WHAT HON". CARL SCHUEZ THINKS
" That the suppression of the Negro franchise
by direct or indirect means is in contravention of
the spirit and intent of the Fifteenth Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States hardly
84
Light Ahead for the Negro
admits of doubt. The evident intent of the Con¬
stitution is that the colored people shall have the
right of suffrage on an equal footing with the
white people. The intent of the provisions of
the State Constitutions in question, as avowed by
many Southern men, is that the colored people
shall not vote. However plausible it may be
demonstrated by ingenious argument that the
provisions in the State Constitutions are not in
conflict with the National Constitution, or that if
they were their purpose could not be effectively
thwarted by judicial decisions, yet it remains true
that by many, if not by all, of their authors they
were expressly designed to defeat the universally
known and recognized intent of a provision of
the national Constitution. * * *
" The only plausible reason given for that cur¬
tailment of their rights is that it is not in the in¬
terest of the Southern whites to permit the blacks
to vote. I will not discuss here the moral aspect
of the question whether A may deprive B of his
rights if A thinks it in his own interest to do so,
and the further question, whether the general ad¬
mission of such a principle would not banish jus¬
tice from the earth and eventually carry human
society back into barbarism. I will rather discuss
Now and Then
85
the question whether under existing circumstances
it would really be the true interest of the South¬
ern whites generally to disfranchise the colored
people. * * *
" Negro suffrage is plausibly objected to on the
ground that the great bulk of the colored popula¬
tion of the South are very ignorant. This is true.
But the same is true of a large portion of the white
population. If the suffrage is dangerous in the
hands of certain voters on account of their igno¬
rance, it is as dangerous in the hands of ignorant
whites as in the hands of ignorant blacks. To
remedy this two things might be done : To estab¬
lish an educational test for admission to the suf¬
frage, excluding illiterates; and, secondly, to
provide for systems of public instruction so as
to gradually do away with illiteracy—subjecting
whites and blacks alike to the same restrictions and
opening to them the same opportunities. * * *
" But most significant and of evil augury is the
fact that with many of the Southern whites a well-
educated colored voter is as objectionable as an
ignorant one, or even more objectionable, simply
on account of his color. It is, therefore, not mere
dread of ignorance in the voting body that arouses
the Southern whites against the colored voters. It
86
Light Ahead for the Negro
is race antagonism, and that race antagonism pre¬
sents a problem more complicated and perplexing
than most others, because it is apt to be unreason¬
ing. It creates violent impulses which refuse to
be argued with.
" The race antipathy now heating the Southern
mind threatens again to curtail the freedom of in¬
quiry and discussion there—perhaps not to the
same extent, but sufficiently to produce infinite
mischief by preventing an open-minded consid¬
eration of one of the most important interests.
* * * And here is the crucial point: There
will be a movement either in the direction of re¬
ducing the Negroes to a permanent condition of
serfdom—the condition of the mere plantation
hand, ' alongside of the mulepractically without
any rights of citizenship—or a movement in the
direction of recognizing him as a citizen in the
true sense of the term. One or the other will
prevail.
" That there are in the South strenuous advo¬
cates of the establishment of some sort of semi-
slavery cannot be denied. Governor Vardaman,
of Mississippi, is their representative and most
logical statesman. His extreme utterances are
greeted by many as the bugle-blasts of a great
Now and Then
87
leader. We constantly read articles in Southern
newspapers and reports of public speeches made
by Southern men which bear a striking resem¬
blance to the pro-slavery arguments I remember
to have heard before the Civil War, and they are
brought forth with the same passionate heat and
dogmatic assurance to which we were then accus¬
tomed—the same assertion of the Negro's predes¬
tination for serfdom; the same certainty that he
will not work without i physical compulsion';
the same contemptuous rejection of Negro educa¬
tion as a thing that will only unfit him for work ;
the same prediction that the elevation of the Ne¬
gro will be the degradation of the whites; the
same angry demand that any advocacy of the Ne¬
gro's rights should be put down in the South as
an attack upon the safety of Southern society and
as treason to the Southern cause. * * *
" Thus may it be said, without exaggeration,
that by striving to keep up in the Southern States
a condition of things which cannot fail to bring
forth constant irritation and unrest; which threat¬
ens to burden the South with another ' peculiar
institution,' by making the bulk of its laboring
force again a clog to progressive development, and
to put the South once more in a position provok-
88
Light Ahead for the Negro
ingly offensive to the moral sense and the enlight¬
ened spirit of the world outside, the reactionists
are the worst enemies the Southern people have
to fear. # * *
" A body of high-minded and enlightened
Southerners may gradually succeed in convincing
even many of the most prejudiced of their people
that white ignorance and lawlessness are just as
bad and dangerous as black ignorance and law¬
lessness ; that black patriotism, integrity, ability,
industry, usefulness, good citizenship and public
spirit are just as good and as much entitled to
respect and reward as capabilities and virtues of
the same name among whites; that the rights of
the white man under the Constitution are no more
sacred than those of the black man; that neither
white nor black can override the rights of the
other without eventually endangering his own;
and that the Negro question can finally be settled
so as to stay settled only on the basis of the fun¬
damental law of the land as it stands, by fair ob¬
servance of that law and not by any tricky cir¬
cumvention of it. Such a campaign for truth and
justice, carried on by the high-minded and en¬
lightened Southerners without any party spirit—
rather favoring the view that whites as well as
Now and Then
89
blacks should divide their votes according to their
inclinations between different political parties—
will promise the desired result in the same meas¬
ure as it is carried on with gentle, patient and
persuasive dignity, but also with that unflinching
courage which is, above all things, needed to
assert that most important freedom—the freedom
of inquiry and discussion against traditional and
deep-rooted prejudice—a courage which can be
daunted neither by the hootings of the mob nor
by the supercilious jeers of fashionable society,
but goes steadily on doing its work with indomit¬
able tenacity of purpose.
" WHAT THE ' NEW YORK EVENING POST ' THINKS
" This analysis of existing conditions and ten¬
dencies in the South is one to which the South
itself and the entire nation should give heed.
Mr. Schurz clearly perceives a dangerous drift.
Slavery ideas are again asserting themselves. The
movement to extinguish the Negro's political
rights is unconcealed. By craftily devised and
inequitable laws the suffrage is taken from him.
With all this go naturally the desire and purpose
to keep him forever 'alongside the mule.' Negro
education is looked upon with increasing hostility.
90
Light Ahead for the Negro
Every door of hope opening into the professions
is slammed in the face of black men merely be¬
cause they are black. The South works itself up
into hysterics over the President's spontaneous
recognition of manhood under a black skin.
While philanthropists and teachers are laboring to
raise the Negro to the full level of citizenship, an
open and determined effort is making at the South
to thrust him back into serfdom. As Mr. Schurz
says, the issue is upon the country, for one ten¬
dency or the other must prevail.
"It is his view of the great urgency of the
juncture which leads him to address a moving ap¬
peal to the South's best. He implores its leading
men to bestir themselves to prevent the lament¬
able injustice which is threatened, and partly ex¬
ecuted. By withstanding the mob ; by upholding
the law; by ridding themselves of the silly dread
of 4 social equality'; by contending for Negro
education of the broadest sort; by hailing every
step upward which the black man may take ; by
insisting upon the equality of all men before the
law, they can, Mr. Schurz argues forcibly, do
much to save the South and the country from the
disgrace and calamity of a new slavery. To this
plea every humane patriot will add his voice.
Now and Then
91
Mr. Schurz's paper is also a challenge to the mind
and conscience of the North. Unless they., too,
respond to the cause of the Negro—which to-day
is the cause of simple justice—it will languish and
die.
" WHAT < THE OUTLOOK ' THINKS
"It must not be forgotten that the so-called
race question is the only capital which a small
group of Southern politicians of the old school
still possess. They have no other questions or is¬
sues ; they depend upon the race question for a
livelihood, and they use every occasion to say the
most extreme things and to set the match to all
the imflammable material in the South. To these
politicians several occurrences which have hap¬
pened lately have been a great boon, and they are
making the most of them. But there is a large,
influential and growing group of Southern men,
loyal to their section, equally loyal to the nation,
open-minded and high-minded, who are eager to
give the South a new policy, to rid it of section¬
alism, to organize its spiritual, moral and intellect¬
ual forces, to develop education, and to treat great
questions from a national rather than from a sec¬
tional point of view ; men like Governor Aycock,
92
Light Ahead for the Negro
of North Carolina, and Governor Montague, of
Virginia. There is a whole group of educational
leaders who represent the best of the Old South
and the best of the New. It is the duty of wise,
patriotic men in the North to cooperate with these
new leaders ; to strengthen their hands ; to recog¬
nize and aid the best sentiment in the South, and
to stimulate its activity. The Negro question can
be settled by cooperation of the North with the
South, by sympathy, by understanding; it can
never be settled in any other way.
" WHAT GOV. AYCOCK, OF NORTH CAROLINA, THINKS
" I am proud of my state because we have solved
the Negro problem, which recently seems to have
given you some trouble. We have taken him out
of politics, and have thereby secured good gov¬
ernment under any party, and laid foundations
for the future development of both races. We
have secured peace and rendered prosperity a cer¬
tainty. I am inclined to give you our solution of
this problem. It is, first, as far as possible, under
the Fifteenth Amendment, to disfranchise him;
after that, let him alone; quit writing about him;
quit talking about him; quit making him ' the
white man's burden'; let him ' tote his own skil-
Now and Then
93
let'; quit coddling him; let him learn that no
man, no race, ever got anything worth the having
that he did not himself earn ; that character is the
outcome of sacrifice, and worth is the result of
toil; that, whatever his future may be, the pres¬
ent has in it for him nothing that is not the prod¬
uct of industry, thrift, obedience to law and up¬
rightness ; that he cannot, by resolution of council
or league, accomplish anything; that he can do
much by work ; that violence may gratify his pas¬
sions, but it cannot accomplish his ambition; that
he may rarely eat of the cooking equality, but he
will always find when he does that there is death in
the pot. Let the white man determine that no
man shall by act or thought or speech cross this
line, and the race problem will be at an end."
After reading these the Doctor explained that,
about the time I left, the Negro population of the
South began to drift towards the Northern states,
where better wages were offered, on account of
the improvements going on there.
" The farms were the first to be affected by this
turn in affairs," said the Doctor. "In fact, the
Negroes who had no land very generally left the
farms and this so crippled the cotton industry that
94
Light Ahead for the Negro
within ten years after the disfranchising acts were
passed, there was n't a ' ten horse ' farm (to quote
the expression used in the records) to be found in
some of the Southern states for miles and miles.
Every Negro laborer who went North found times
so much better that he wrote back for his friends.
The disfranchising acts seemed to give the dis¬
orderly element in Southern society a free hand.
The result was that Negroes were mobbed with
impunity for the slightest offences. In one in¬
stance I read of a Negro who accidentally stepped
on a white man's foot. He was promptly knocked
down. As it occurred in a public place where a
small crowd had gathered to look at base-ball bul¬
letins, seven or eight of the white by-standers in
the crowd took a kick and a knock at him. A
policeman appeared on the scene, who arrested
the Negro and put him under lock and key—be¬
cause he got knocked down !—as my father used
to say in relating the story. Then, too, the news¬
papers continued to hold the Negro up to ridicule
and whereas he formerly had some of his race on
juries, they were now excluded.*
* DOES THE NEGRO GET JUSTICE IN OUR COURTS ?
0Charlotte, N. C., News.)
The Charlotte Observer makes the sweeping statement regarding
Now and Then
95
" You can imagine that it was getting very un¬
comfortable for the Negroes in the South about
that time. Many of them left for the North and
West. Quite a number went to Africa—and Bishop
Smith of the African Methodist Church induced
many to go to Hayti. Vast tracts of land in the
Southwestern part of the United States were
opened up to the cultivation of cotton by a na¬
tional system of irrigation, and the Government
employed Negroes on these improvements and
also in the cultivation of the plant itself, after the
irrigation system was perfected."
" What happened to the Southern white farm¬
ers ? " I inquired.
" They moved to the cities in large numbers and
the Negro: " He is not ill-treated nor improperly discriminated
against except in the courts, and for the injustice done him there,
there seems to be no remedy."
A CLOSE CONTEST.
(<Charlotte, N. C., Observer.)
We always feel sorry for a North Carolina jury which gets hold
of a case in which a black man is the plaintiff and the Southern
Railway Company the defendant. A jury in Rowan superior court
last week had such a case and must have been greatly perplexed
about which party to the suit to decide against. After due deli¬
beration, however, it decided—how do you suppose—Why, against
the railroad. But the problem was one which called for fasting
and prayer.
96
Light Ahead for the Negro
engaged in manufacturing. As you will see when
you begin to travel with me the South is now a
great manufacturing country. This, they found
later, was a mistake, as they lost race vitality and
became virtually the slaves of the manufacturers,
on whom they had to depend for bread from week
to week. The National Government, however,
came to the relief of the South in quite a sub¬
stantial way (at the same time that it assumed con¬
trol of all coal and iron mines, and oil wells) by
buying up the cotton lands and parcelling them
out to young Negroes at a small price, accom¬
panied with means and assistance for the produc¬
tion of the crop. This was an act of the highest
statesmanship and a great help in the solution
of the Negro problem. It should have come im¬
mediately after reconstruction, but the intervening
interests of political parties and ambitious men
prevented it. A matter of serious moment for a
long time was how to eliminate party and personal
interests from the equation of politics. Too often
good measures were opposed by the different polit¬
ical parties with an eye singly to these interests.
The great work of General 0. 0. Howard in con¬
nection with what was known as the Freedmen's
Bureau was greatly hampered and met an untimely
Now and Then
97
end because of tlie selfishness and partisanship of
that period. In fact, this one feature has stood in
the way of progress in this Government from its
earliest existence. Example after example might
be cited where party policy and personal interest
has blocked the wheels of useful legislation.
" Oxenstiern said, ' See my son, with how little
wisdom nations are governed.'
" It is wonderful how tolerant the people of the
world have been in respect to bad government.
No group of business men would have allowed its
directors to spend the company's earnings in the
way the rulers of the world have done from time
immemorial. America has overlooked many of
these points because of the unlimited opportunities
here for money making—let the high tide of pros¬
perity once ebb and then these defects become
apparent! There were usually in a government
office twice as many employed to do small tasks
as any business organization would have thought
of hiring, and they were paid excellent salaries. In
other words, the more places a boss could fill with
his constituents or friends, the more public money
he could cause to be spent in his district, the more
sinecures he could get for his constituents, the
more popular he became. In addition to all this,
G
98 Light Ahead for the Negro
he wasted the people's money with long speeches
which were often printed and distributed at the
Government's expense. The National Congress
formerly was a most expensive institution. Its
methods of business were highly extravagant and
very often the time consumed resulted in accom¬
plishing nothing more than a mere pittance, per¬
haps, of the work to be done ; and that was carried
through because of party advantage or personal in¬
terest."
CHAPTER V
A VISIT TO PUBLIC BUILDINGS
THE time had now arrived for our promised
visit to some of the public buildings of the
city and we seated ourselves in an electric
motor car which the Doctor had summoned by
touching a botton. To my surprise, it made the
trip alone, by traversing a course made for this
purpose, somewhat on the order of the cash de¬
livery systems formerly used in our large stores,
being elevated some twenty feet above the sur¬
face. The coaches were arranged to come at a
call from any number on certain streets.
The Doctor suggested that we should first visit
the " Administration Building." I was expecting
to find Congress or some such body in session, but
to my surprise I was told by the Doctor that Con¬
gress had been abolished, and that the country
was run on what I had formerly understood as the
corporation plan; except that the salaries were
99
100 Light Ahead for the Negro
not so large. The business of the Government
was entrusted to bureaus or departments, and the
officers in them were chosen for their fitness by an
improved system of civil service.
"Who is president now," I inquired.
"President!" replied the Doctor, in surprise,
" why we have none. I never saw a president.
We need none. We have an Executive Depart¬
ment which fills his place."
"What as to proposing new measures? " I asked.
" Who writes the annual messages suggesting
them?"
" All this is left to a bureau chosen for that pur¬
pose, whose duties are to keep the nation informed
as to its needs, and to formulate new plans, which
are carried out along the idea of the initiative and
referendum system with which you are doubtless
somewhat acquainted, as I notice that it was dis¬
cussed as early as 1890."
I replied that I had a recollection of seeing the
terms but I could not give an intelligent defini¬
tion of them. Whereupon the Doctor explained
the system.
« You see," he said, " that the time wasted in
Congressional debate is saved and the chance to
block needed legislation is reduced to a minimum.
A Visit to Public Buildings 101
There are no political offices to parcel out to
henchmen, and the ambitions of demagogues are
not fostered at the expense of the people. Eng¬
land, you will recollect, has had a king only in
name for four hundred years. The American
people have found out there is no necessity for
either king, president, parliament or congress,
and in that respect we may be able sooner or
later to teach the mother country a lesson."
" To say I am surprised at all this, Dr.
Newell, is to express my feelings but mildly,"
said I, " but I can now see how the changes in
reference to the Negro have been brought about.
Under our political system, such as I knew it to
be, these results could not have been reached in a
thousand years ! "
" Yes, Mr. Twitchell," replied the Doctor, " our
new system, as it may be called, has been a great
help in settling, not only the Negro problem, but
many others; for instance the labor question,
about which we have already conversed,—and the
end is not yet, the hey-day of our glory is not
reached and will not be until the principles of the
Golden Rule have become an actuality in this land."
I here remarked that I always felt a misgiving
as to our old system, which left the Government
102
Light Ahead for the Negro
and management of the people's affairs in the
hands of politicians who had more personal interest
than statesmanship; but I could not conceive of
any method of ridding the country of this in¬
fluence and power, and had about resolved to ac¬
cept the situation as a part of my common lot
with humanity.
Doctor Newell stated that there was much op¬
position to the parcelling out of land to Negro
farmers. It was jeered at as " paternalism," and
"socialistic," and " creating a bad precedent."
" But," said he, " our Bureau of Public Utility
carried out the idea with the final endorsement
of the people, who now appreciate the wisdom of
the experiment. The government could as well
afford to spend public money for the purpose of
mitigating the results of race feeling as it could to
improve rivers and harbors. In both instances
the public good was served. If bad harbors were
a curse so was public prejudice on the race ques¬
tion. It was cheaper in the long run to remove
the cause than to patch up with palliatives. If
the Negro was becoming vicious to a large extent,
and the cause of it was the intensity of race prej¬
udice in the land, which confined him to menial
callings, and only a limited number of those ; and
A Visit to Public Buildings
103
race prejudice could not be well prevented owing
to the misconception of things by those who fos¬
tered it; and if an attempt at suppression would
mean more bitterness toward the Negro and
danger to the country, then surely, looking at the
question from the distance at which we are to¬
day, the best solution was the one adopted by our
bureaus at the time. At least, we know the plan
was successful, and ' nothing succeeds like suc¬
cess !'
" I am inclined to the opinion that the politi¬
cians, judging by the magazine article I gave you,"
said he, " were quite anxious to keep the Negro
question alive for the party advantage it brought.
In the North it served the purpose of solidifying
the Negro vote for the Republicans, and in the
South the Democrats used it to their advantage;
neither party, therefore, was willing to remove
the Negro issue by any real substantial legisla¬
tion. Enough legislation was generally proposed
pro and con to excite the voters desired to be
reached, and there the efforts ended."
I could not but reflect that the triumph of
reason over partisanship and demagoguery had at
last been reached, and that the American people
had resolved no longer to temporize with measures
104 Light Ahead for the Negro
or men, but were determined to have the govern¬
ment run according to the original design of its
founders, upon the principle of the greatest good
to the greatest number.
No President since Grant was ever more abused
by a certain class of newspapers and politicians
than President Roosevelt, who adopted the policy
of appointing worthy men to office, regardless of
color. He said that fitness should be his rule and
not color. In his efforts to carry out this policy
he met with the most stubborn resistance from
those politicians who hoped to make political cap¬
ital out of the Negro question. To his credit let
it be said that he refused to bow the knee to Baal
but stood by his convictions to the end.
I found from the published reports of the
Bureau of Statistics that the Negro's progress in
one hundred years had been all that his friends
could have hoped for. I give below a compara¬
tive table showing the difference :
A. D. 1900 A. D. 2004
Aggregate Negro Wealth $890,000,000... $2,670,000,000
Aggregate Negro population.. . 8,840,789... 21,907,079
Per cent, of illiteracy 45 per cent.... 2 per cent.
Per cent, of crime 20 per cent.... 1 per cent.
Ratio of home owners 1 in 100... 1 in 30.
Ratio of insane 1 in 1000 ... 1 in 500
Death rate 20 per M ... 5 per M.
A Visit to Public Buildings 105
A. D. 1900
A. D. 2004
Number of lawyers
Number of doctors.
250..
800..
150..
5,282
11,823
2,111
200,603
250,804
240,922
Number of pharmacists
Number of teachers
Number of preachers..
Number of mechanics..
30,000..
75,000..
80,000..
I noticed that Negroes had gained standing in
the country as citizens and were no longer objects
for such protection as the whites thought a Negro
deserved. They stood on the same footing legally
as other people. It was a pet phrase in my time
for certain communities to say to the Negro that
they " would protect him in his rights," but what
the Negro wanted was that he should not have to
be protected at all! He wanted public sentiment
to protect him just as it did a white man. This
proffered help was all very good, since it was the
best the times afforded, but it made the Negro's
rights depend upon what his white neighbors said
of him,—if these neighbors did not like him his
rights were nil. His was an ephemeral existence
dependent on the whims and caprices of friends or
foes. True citizenship must be deeper than that
and be measured by the law of the land—not by
the opinion of one's neighbors.
But the voice of the politician who wished to
106
Light Ahead for the Negro
contort civil into social equality was now hushed.
He no more disgraced the land, and a Negro could
have a business talk with a white man on the
street of a Southern city without either party be¬
coming subjects of criticism for practicing " social
equality."
CHAPTER VI
A HIDE WITH IRENE
SOON after this talk Miss Davis and I visited
prominent places in the city of Phoenix. I
had anxiously waited for this opportunity.
An uncontrollable desire to fulfill this engagement
had grown on me, from the day she informed me
that she had planned the outing. We visited Mc-
Pherson's monument, and standing with head un¬
covered in its shadow, I said that I was glad to see
that the cause he fought for was recognized as a
blessing to the South as well as to the North.
She replied that some of her relatives perished in
defense of the South, but she had been often told
by her father that her ancestors considered slavery
a great wrong and liberated their slaves by will.
" In fact," she remarked with womanly intui¬
tion, " I can see no reason for their having had
slaves at the outset. Why could n't the Negroes
have served us, from the first, as freemen, just as
107
108
Light Ahead for the Negro
they did after their emancipation ? What was the
necessity for adopting a system that gave a chance
for the brutal passions of bad men to vent them¬
selves ? The whole country has suffered in its
moral tone because of slavery, and we are not as
pure minded a nation to-day as we should have
been without it."
I replied that it was commercialism that fixed
slavery in the nation and rooted and grounded it
so deep that scarcely could it be eradicated with¬
out destroying the nation itself. I noticed that
she had none of the Southern woman's prejudice
against " Yankees," so prevalent in my day, and
that she was far enough removed from the events
of the Civil War to look at them dispassionately.
What a difference doth time make in people
and nations. What is wisdom to-day may be the
grossest folly to-morrow, and the popular theme
of to-day maybe ridiculed later on. Ye "men
of the hour " beware ! The much despised Yankee
has taught the South many lessons in industry, in
the arts, sciences and literature, but none more
valuable to her than to forsake her prejudice
against the evolution of the Negro.
We rode out to Chattahoochee farm, noted for
its picturesqueness and " up-to-dateness," a paying
A Ride with Irene 109
institution entirely under the management of Ne¬
groes. The superintendent was a graduate from
the State Agricultural College for Negroes, near
Savannah.
" Are there any other farms of this kind in the
state under Negro management/' I asked.
She replied that there were many, that a ma¬
jority of the landowners of the state had found
it profitable to turn vast tracts of land over to
these young Negro graduates, who were proving
themselves adepts in the art of scientific farming,
making excellent salaries, and returning good div¬
idends on the investments.
I remarked that I used to wonder why this
could not be done with the young Negroes com¬
ing out from such schools—since their ante-bellum
fathers were so successful in this line—and I
further said that this movement might have been
inaugurated in my day, but for the opposition of
the politicians, who approached the Negro ques¬
tion generally with no sincere desire to get ef¬
fective results, but to make political capital for
themselves.
She at once suggested, " And so you believe it
was a good idea then to dispense with the poli¬
ticians ? "
110
Light Ahead for the Negro
" Indeed," said I, " they were horrible stumps
in the road of progress."
We ended our ride after a visit to the park,
which was a beautiful spot. It served not only
as a place of recreation, but Musical, Zoological,
Botanical and Aquarian departments were open
to the public, and free lectures were given on the
latest inventions and improvements, thus coupling
information with recreation, and elevating the
thoughts and ideas of the people. I noticed the
absence of the old time signs which I had heard
once decorated the gates of this park, " Negroes
and dogs not allowed." Of course Irene had never
seen or heard of such a thing and I therefore did
not mention my thoughts to her. She was a
creature of the new era and knew the past only
from books and tradition. I had the misfortune,
or pleasure, as the case may be, of having
lived in two ages and incidents of the past would
continually rise before me in comparison with the
present.
On reaching my room that evening I felt that
my trip with Miss Davis had been very agreeable
and very instructive, but still there was an aching
void—for what I did not know. Was it that we
did not converse on some desired subject ?
CHAPTER VII
DR. NEWELL AND WORK OF THE YOUNG LADIES'
GUILDS
"fTIHESE Guilds," said Dr. Newell, taking
I my arm as we left the dinner table one
afternoon, " are most excellent institu¬
tions. Nothing has done more to facilitate a
happy solution of the so-called Negro problem of
the past than they, and their history is a most
fascinating story, as it pictures their origin by a
a young Southern heroine of wealth and standing
with philanthropic motives, who while on her way
to church one Sunday morning was moved by the
sight of a couple of barefooted Negro children
playing in the street. Her heart went out to
them. She thought of the efforts being made for
the heathen abroad, when the needy at our very
doors were neglected. Moved towards the work
as if by inspiration, she gave her whole time and
attention and considerable of her vast wealth to
organizing these guilds all over the country. She
111
112
Light Ahead for the Negro
met with much opposition and was ridiculed as the
' nigger angel,' but this did not deter her and she
lived to see the work she organized planted and
growing in all the Southland. Cecelia was her
name and the incorporated name of these organ¬
izations is the Cecilian Guild."
" I should be glad to read the history of this
movement,'' said I, " for all I have learned about
it through Miss Davis and yourself is exceedingly
interesting."
" One of the problems met with in the outset
was that of the fallen woman," said the Doctor,
" although the Negroes were never so immoral as
was alleged of them. You will recall that after
the Civil War many of the slave marriages were
declared illegal and remarriage became necessary.
Twenty-five cents was the license fee. Thousands
showed their faithfulness to each other by com¬
plying with this law—a most emphatic argument
of the Negro's faithfulness to the marriage vows.
Day after day long files of these sons of Africa
stood in line waiting with their ' quarters' in
hand to renew their vows to the wife of their
youth. Many were old and infirm—a number
were young and vigorous, there was no compul¬
sion and the former relations might have been
Dr. Newell
113
severed and other selections made; but not so,
they were renewing the old vows and making legal
in freedom that which was illegal now because of
slavery. Would the 500,000 white divorcees in
America in your time have done this ?" the doctor
asked.
" Let me relate to you a story connected with
the work of one of the Cecilian Guilds," said the
doctor. " A bright faced octoroon girl living in
one of our best Southern homes became peculiarly
attractive to a brother of her mistress, a young
woman of much character, who loved her maid
and loved her brother. The situation grew acute;
heroic treatment became necessary as the octoroon
related to her mistress in great distress every ap¬
proach and insinuation made by the young Lotha¬
rio, his avowals of love, his promises to die for
her, his readiness to renounce all conventionali¬
ties and flee with her to another state. To all
this the octoroon was like ice. Her mother had
been trained in the same household and was hon¬
ored and beloved. Her father was an octoroon—
and the girl was a chip of both old blocks. The
mistress remonstrated, threatened and begged her
brother to no avail, and finally decided to send
the girl North, as a last resort, a decision which
H
114
Light Ahead for the Negro
pleased the maid, who desired to be rid of her tor¬
mentor.
" But the trip North only made matters worse.
Two years after Eva had made her home with a
family in Connecticut, John Guilford turns up.
He had been married to his cousin, whom he
did n't love, and while practising medicine in one
of the leading cities had become distinguished in
his profession. He met Eva during a professional
visit to her new home in Connecticut. The old
flame was rekindled. He concealed the fact of
his marriage and offered her his hand, stating that
he must take her to another town and keep her
incognito, to avoid ruining his practice by the
gossip which his marriage to a servant girl would
naturally create. Fair promises—which generally
do 4 butter parsnips,' in love affairs, at least—
overcame the fair Eva; she consented to marry
the young physician. She lived in another town,
she bore him children, he loved her. Finally the
real wife, who had borne him no offspring, ascer¬
tained the truth. Her husband pleaded hard with
her, told her of his love for the girl and how, un¬
der the spell of his fondness for children, and fol¬
lowing the example of the great Zola, he had
yielded to the tempter. ' But,' he begged, (for-
Dr. Newell
115
give me because of your love—save my name and
our fortune.' This she finally did. Poor Eva,
when her second child was four years old, died,
never knowing but that she was the true wife of
her deceiver. Her children were adopted by the
Guilfords as their own, grew up and entered so¬
ciety under the Guilford name and no one to-day
will charge them with their father's sin."
CHAPTER VIII
WITH IRENE AGAIN
1 FREQUENTLY saw Irene during the few
weeks of my sojourn at the Newell residence,
but hers was a busy life and there was not
much time for tete-a-tete. One evening, however,
she seated herself by my side on the veranda and
amid the fragrance of the flowers and the songs of
the birds we had an hour alone which passed so
swiftly that it seemed but a moment. Time hangs
heavy only on the hands of those who are not en¬
joying it. I had noticed her anxiety for a letter
and her evident disappointment in the morning
when the pneumatic tube in the Newell residence
did not deliver it.
Not purposely, but unavoidably, I saw a few
days later an envelope postmarked, " Philippines."
I ventured to say, with an attempt at teasing, that
I trusted she was in good humor to-day since her
letter had come, and surmised that it bore " a mes-
116
With Irene Again 117
sage of friendship or love " for her. She adroitly
avoided the subject, which was all the evidence I
wanted to assure me of the truth of my theory as
to its contents. The clue was given which I in¬
tended to establish in asking the question. Love
may be blind but it has ways for trailing its game.
Finding no encouragement for pursuing this
subject further, I turned to the discussion of books
and finally asked if she had read an old book which
in my day used to be referred to as, " Tom Dixon's
Leopard's Spots." She said she had not, but had
seen it instanced as a good example of that class
of writers who misrepresented the best Southern
sentiment and opinion. She stated that her in¬
formation was that there was not a godly character
in the book, that it represented the Southern people
as justifying prejudice, and ill treatment of a weaker
race, whose faults were admittedly forgivable
by reason of circumstances. She also stated that
" the culture of the present time places such writ¬
ers in the same class with that English Lord who
once predicted that a steamer could never cross
the Atlantic for the reason that she could never
carry enough fuel to make the voyage."
" And probably in such cases the wish was father
to the thought," I added.
118 Light Ahead for the Negro
She also had heard of those false prophets whom
history had not forgotten, but who lived only in
ridicule and as examples of error. She seemed to
be ashamed of the ideas once advocated by these
men, and charitably dismissed them with the re¬
mark that, "It would have been better for the
cause of true Christianity had they never been lis¬
tened to by so large a number of our people, as
they represented brute force rather than the
Golden Rule."
I heard with rapt attention. Although I had
already seen much to convince me of the evolu¬
tion of sentiment in the South, these words sank
deeper than all else. Here was a woman of aris¬
tocratic Southern blood, cradled under the hills of
secession and yet vehement in denunciation of
those whom I had learned to recognize as the
beacon lights of Southern thought and purpose!
And when I reflected that her views were then
the views of the whole South, I indeed began to
realize the wonderful transformation I was being
permitted to see. I silently prayed, " God bless
the New South! " My heart was full, I felt that
I had met a soul that was a counterpart of my
own,—" Each heart shall seek its kindred heart,
and cling to it, as close as ever."
With Irene Again
119
The pent-up feelings of my breast must find
some expression of admiration for her lofty ideals
of joy, for the triumph I had been permitted to
see of truth over error in the subjugation of Amer¬
ica's greatest curse, prejudice, and finally of the
meeting with a congenial spirit in flesh and blood,
and of the opposite sex; which alone creates for
man a halo peculiarly its own.
I was hardly myself, and I burst forth with,
" Irene, are you engaged to the man in the 4 Philip¬
pines' ?"
I was rather presumptuous, but the gentle re¬
ply was, "I will tell you some other time"—and
we parted.
CHAPTER IX
THE PRIZE ESSAY
IN looking for the cause of so many improve¬
ments I found that the Bureau of Public Util¬
ity had been of great service to the country
in bringing about such a happy solution of the
Negro problem. Among other novel methods
adopted I found they had established public board¬
ing schools. I was astonished to learn that they
were based on some suggestions made by a Negro
of my own times, in an essay which had won a
prize of $100 offered by a Northern philanthropist.
The writer was a Southern Negro from the state of
North Carolina. His ideas were carried out in a
general scheme of education for the Negro.
The good results of this course have proved
their wisdom; in fact the results were of such
importance as to warrant my reproducing part of
what he wrote:
120
The Prize Essay 121
THE KIND OF EDUCATION THE NEGKO NEEDS
"I have noticed a growing tendency in the
writings of those whites who discuss the racial
question, in the newspapers, towards helpfulness
and kindness to the Negro race. Some articles
are very bitter, abusive, and unfair, the writers
seeming to be either playing to the galleries of a
maudlin sentiment or venting personal spleen—
but in the main this is not so. The Negroes, who
withal had rather love than hate white people,
are generally thankful for all expressions favor¬
able to themselves. They realize as a mass that
there has grown up within the last thirty years an
idle, vicious class of Negroes whose acts and habits
are of such a nature as to make them objection¬
able to their own race, as well as to the whites.
What to do with this class is a problem that per¬
plexes the better element of Negroes, more,
possibly, than it does the whites; since their
shortcomings are generally credited to the whole
Negro race, which is wrong as a fact and unjust
in theory.
" This vicious element in the race is a constant
subject of discussion in Negro churches and in
private conversation. It is a mistake to say that
crime is not condemned by the better class of Ne-
122
Light Ahead for the Negro
groes. There may be a class that attend the
courts when their 'pals ' are in jeopardy and who
rejoice to see them exonerated, but the real sub¬
stantial Negro man is seldom seen ' warming the
benches' of court rooms. Unlike the white spec¬
tators, who are men of leisure and spend their
time there out of interest in what is going on, and
often to earn a per diem as jurors,—the leisure
class in the Negro race is generally composed of
those who have ' served time' in prison or of their
associates.
" The Negro problem, as now considered, seems,
so far as the discussion of it is concerned, to be
entirely in the hands of white people for solution,
and the Negro himself is supposed to have no part
in it, other than to i wait and tend' on the bid¬
ding of those engaged at the job. He is ' a looker
on in Venice.' I therefore offer my suggestion
as to method or plan with fear of being asked to
stand aside. Yet, in my zeal for the work and in
my anxiety to have it accomplished as speedily
and correctly as possible, I venture a few sugges¬
tions, the result of twenty years' observation and
experience in teaching, which appear to my mind
as the best way to go at this Herculean task.
" In the first place I suggest that the boarding
The Prize Essay
123
school is the only one fitted for the final needs of
the young of the race—a school where culture and
civility would be taught hand in hand with labor
and letters. The main object in education is
training for usefulness. i Leading out' is the mean¬
ing of the term education, and what the young of
the race needs is to be lead out, and kept out of
vice, until the danger period is passed. The pub¬
lic schools turn out the child just at that period
when temptations are most alluring. From the age
of puberty to twenty-one is the danger time, and
the time of forming character. The kind of
character then formed remains. If the child can
be steered over this period, under right influences
and associations, the problem of his future is com¬
paratively settled for good, otherwise for bad.
Too much is expected of the public schools as
now constituted, if it is presumed that they can
mould both the mind and the heart of the child;
when they usually drop him just at the period
that he begins to learn he has a heart and a mind!
He is mostly an animal during the period allotted
to him in the public schools. Many are fortunate
enough to have parents who have the leisure and
ability to train them properly. Some follow up
the course in the public schools with a season in a
124
Light Ahead for the Negro
boarding school—these are fortunate, but where
is the great mass? They became boot-blacks,
runaways, i dudes,' or temporary domestics, in
which calling they earn money more to satisfy
their youthful propensities than for any settled
purpose for the future of their lives.
" Out of six hundred pupils who had left one
public school in Virginia I found only 85 who had
settled down with any seemingly fixed purpose.
I counted 196 who had become domestics, and,
either married or single, are making orderly citi¬
zens. The rest have become mere bilge water
and are unknown. Among the girls fourteen are
of the demirep order. The public schools are do¬
ing some work it is true—a great work, all things
considered—but their ' reach' is not far enough.
What the young of the Negro race needs, beyond
all things, is training—not only of the head, but
of the heart and hand as well. The boarding
school would meet the requirements, if properly
conducted. The girl and boy should remain at
useful employment under refined influences until
the habit of doing things right and acting right is
formed. How can the public schools mould char¬
acter in a child whom they have for five hours,
while the street gamins have him for the rest of
*t*M 1Ti *
Ihe rnze bssay
125
the day ? And further, as before stated, when the
child leaves the public schools at the time when
most of all he is likely to get into bad habits ?
" Good home training is the salvation of any
people. Many Negro children are necessarily
lacking in this respect, for the reason that their
parents are called off to their places of labor dur¬
ing the day and the children are left to shift for
themselves. Too often when the parents are at
home the influence is not of the most wholesome,
thus there is a double necessity for the inaugura¬
tion of a system of training that will eliminate this
evil. The majority of working people do not earn
sufficient wages to hire governesses for their
children,—if they should quit work and attempt
the task for themselves the children would suffer
for bread, and soon the state would be called upon
to support them as paupers. The state is unable
in the present condition of public sentiment to
pass upon the sufficiency of wages from employer
to employee, but it can dictate the policy of the
school system. All selfish or partisan scruples
should be eliminated and the subject should be ap¬
proached with wisdom and foresight, looking solely
to accomplishing the best results possible.
" My idea is to supplement the term of the public
126 Light Ahead for the Negro
schools, which might be reduced to four years, by
a three years' term in a public boarding school in
which the pupil could do all the work and produce
enough in vacation to make the school self-sus¬
taining ; except the item of the salaries of the
teachers, who would be employed by the state.
Make three years in these schools compulsory on
all who are not able to or do not, select a school
of their own choice. Three years'military service
is demanded of the adults in most of the European
states, which is time almost thrown away so far as
the individual is concerned, but a three years' serv¬
ice in schools of this kind would be of the great¬
est advantage of the child and state as well.
"How it can be done
" There is idle land enough to be used for the es¬
tablishment of such schools in every township in
the South, and with the proper training in them,
the pupils from such institutions woidd come out
and build up hundreds of places that are now go¬
ing to waste for lack of attention. The solution
of the race problem cannot be effected by talk
alone, nor by a reckless expenditure of public
funds, but if the state is to undertake the educa¬
tion of its children with good citizenship in view
The Prize Essay
127
—thus becoming as it were the parens patrice,
then let the job be undertaken as a parent would
be likely to go at it for his own children. In
well regulated communities wayward children are
placed in homes which the wisdom of experience
has found to be the best place for them, and they
come out useful citizens. If the youth of the
colored race is incorrigible because of instinct or
environment, or both, the place for them is in
some kind of home where they can be protected
against themselves and society, and trained and
developed. Let them have four years of training
in the public schools and emerge from these into
' a boarding and working school.' This would
be far better than furnishing a chain gang system
for them to go into after bad character has been
formed.
" ' An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure' right here, and is a cheaper and a more
substantial investment. Experience shows that
the vicious become more vicious by confinement
in the chain gangs, and it not infrequently hap¬
pens that individuals, after having been degraded
by a first sentence, become outcasts and spend
from a half to two-thirds of their lives thereafter
in prison. The chain gang system can hardly be
128
Light Ahead for the Negro
urged in any sense as a reformatory, and from the
frequent returns thereto of the criminal class can
be hardly styled as a first-class preventive of crime.
It is simply an institution in which criminals can
be kept out of their usual occupations. While
they are so confined crime is that much decreased,
but it opens up again on their exit.
" The value of the boarding school idea as a sup¬
plement to the public school system is borne out
by the statistics of the boarding schools already
established for colored people by private funds.
The pupils turned out by these schools are a credit
to the race and the state. They are good citizens,
they accumulate property, they are industrious
and upright. There is not one case in a thousand
where you find them on the court records. They
are the genuine 1 salt of the earth,' so far as the
product of the schools for the freedmen is con¬
cerned. The public schools have been the feeders
in a large measure of these private schools, but
only a small percentage of those who leave the
public schools ever reach private schools. Under
the plan above suggested all pupils will spend
three years in a private school, or a school of that
nature which will accomplish the same end.
" If the Negro has a greater native tendency to
The Prize Essay
129
crime than the other races, as is urged by some,
then it is necessary to take more care in protect¬
ing him against it. If his disease is of a more
malignant type than ordinary when it attacks him,
then the more heroic should be the remedy. It
is as illogical to apply a system of education to a
child who is not prepared for it as it would be to
treat a patient for appendicitis when he has the
eczema. Results are what the state wants, and
if the schools now established are not giving them,
the system should be changed to one that for
thirty years has been a success. The money sent
South by Northern charity has not been wasted.
Some people think it has destroyed some farm
hands—this may be true, but it has created larger
producers in other lines fully as beneficial to the
state as farming.
" The state is suffering because of its criminal
class both white and black, and it will continue to
do so until this cloud is removed, and in under¬
taking the education of its citizens, the state is not
working for the farmers especially (as some seem
to imply by their arguments on this subject) but
for a higher type of citizenship along all lines.
e More intelligence in farming, mining, manufac¬
turing, and business' is the motto, a general up-
i
130 Light Ahead for the Negro
lift in which all shall be benefited. Neither the
farmer, the miner nor the manufacturer can hope
to build up a serf class for his special benefit.
The state has not established the school system
for that purpose, and should the theory once ob¬
tain that it was so established, the handwriting
would at once appear on the wall. The ideal
school system is that in which each citizen claims
his part with all the rest. No line should be
drawn in the division of the funds to the schools,
and as a fit corollary to this, they should not be
established to foster the financial interests of any
one class of citizens as against another. Pro
bono publico is their motto and may it ever re¬
main so !"
I might add that as a substantial proof of the
great success of the new system of Negro educa¬
tion the Southern states have joined in preparing a
great Negro Exposition, open to Negroes all over
the world, in which, it is expected, a fine showing
will be made by members of the race in almost
every field of human endeavor.
CHAPTER X
SAD NEWS FOR IRENE
f | VWO years have passed since Irene promised,
I on the veranda of the Newell residence, to
tell Gilbert Twitchell if her hand was
pledged to the man in the Philippines from whom
she had received a letter. Other and sadder news
had come since that time. The young officer
(Kennesaw Malvern) was dead. He was accident¬
ally shot during a target practice on a U. S. vessel
cruising in the Philippines, where by the way peace
and independence have long prevailed. Irene was
now in black for him. She saw Gilbert Twitchell
not quite so often as before, but her mourning
robes made it unnecessary that she should answer
the question he propounded to her on the ve¬
randa.
At the first opportunity, however, Gilbert told
her that he loved her, but that he would not ask
her hand in marriage till such a time as she thought
131
132 Light Ahead for the Negro
proper. Her reply was that her whole soul was
a complete wreck. She felt as if the world had
no further charm, and that death would be wel¬
come if she knew she would be with him.
But time works many changes, even in such a
constant and abiding force as a true woman's love.
God made them sincere, it may be said, but few
there are that stand the test of time, and the as¬
saults of a persistent man's devotion. Many would
freeze their hearts if they could, but the manly
temperature is too high in most cases and they
melt sooner or later under its radiations. Some¬
times in her despair, in her dilemma, in her war
between the heart force and the will, she resolves
to marry her beseecher " to be rid of him," too
considerate of his feelings to say " no," and too true
to former pledges to say " yes." What tunes in¬
deed may " mere man " play on such heart-strings !
All this was not the case with Irene exactly,
but it was true in some particulars, for Irene was
a woman, and the only important truth to Gilbert
was that the year 2007 saw them husband and
wife and that the love that once went to the
Philippines was bestowed on the man she helped
rescue from his trip in an air ship.