UC-NRLF 
 
 
 
 C\J 
 O 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Gl FT OF 
 
 Class 
 
SOME PHASES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NEGRO QUESTION 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES W. MELICK, B.Sc., M.S. 
 
 1906 
 DAVID H. DELOE 
 
 MT. RAINIER. MD. 
 AND WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
ex" 
 
 Copyright, 1908, by Charles \V. Melick. 
 All rights Reserved 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. Origin of the Negro 
 
 2. Carroll s Theory of the Origin of the Indian and 
 
 Mongolian ........ 10 
 
 3. The Effect of the Importation of the Negro Into 
 
 America and Influence of the Ballot in his Hands 13 
 
 4. Rate of Increase of the Negro ... 20 
 
 5. Negro Labor in Competition with Anglo-Saxon 
 
 Labor 22 
 
 6. Amalgamation is Slowly, but Gradually, Increasing 25 
 
 7. The Tuskegee Institute and Negro Education in 
 
 the United States ... 32 
 
 8. Statistics of the Negro in the United States as Af 
 
 fected by Education ..... 37 
 
 9. Occupation of the American Negro ; has Education 
 
 Influenced it ? .... .44 
 
 10. The Influence of Booker T. Washington Should 
 
 Extend to Liberia . . 48 
 
 11. Two Factions Among the Negroes of the United 
 
 States . 51 
 
 12. Opinions of Eminent Northern Men Before and 
 
 After Having Visited the South .... 53 
 
 13. Extracts from Senator Tillman s Speeches in the 
 
 United States Senate Chamber ... 62 
 
 14. Literature on the Negro Question .... 66 
 
 15. Local Option in the South . . . . . 71 
 
 16. References from the Daily Press . . 73 
 
 17. Results of Colonizing the American Negro in Africa 78 
 
 18. The Opinion of Americo- Africans Regarding Col 
 
 onization There ....... 86 
 
 19. General Conclusions . . 89 
 
 182799 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Having spent the first twenty-nine years of my life in the Middle 
 West, chiefly in Nebraska, and having only a meager conception of 
 conditions existing in the South, like most other northern and western 
 people I did not at that time interest myself in the race problem, 
 because there are so few negroes in those localities that one s attention 
 is seldom attracted to it there. 
 
 In 1906 my profession called me to Maryland, where about one- 
 fourth of the population of that state are negroes. 
 
 I at once noticed an entirely different attitude of both races toward 
 each other than that which prevailed in the West. In traveling through 
 many of the states farther south I noticed a still more intense feeling. 
 Almost unknowingly I began to study the question, and discussed it 
 with a great many southern and northern people, who, like myself, had 
 come south to live. Without exception, every northern person with 
 whom I conversed had acquired an aversion for the negro, which 
 continued to grow in negro environment. 
 
 In the North we met the best class of negroes, well-dressed, as waiters 
 and porters, where for twenty-five-cent tips they are very polite and 
 obliging. They lack the initiative and the power to lead, but are 
 imitative, and the majority of them can be taught to skillfully perform 
 certain lines of work, and, under the direction of more intelligent white 
 men, become valuable laborers. 
 
 A few negroes in an environment of hustling western whites are far 
 superior to those of a population of one-third negroes in the South. 
 
 In the South we see them in groups of hundreds, ragged, dirty, 
 ignorant, and having a pungent, sickening odor. 
 
 In a community of 10,000 white inhabitants and 25 negroes, the 
 question is an academic one, and the doctrinarian and sentimentalist 
 have an easy time with it. In a community of 10,000 white inhab 
 itants and 2,000 negroes there is less philosophy and more silence. In 
 a community of 10,000 white inhabitants and 10,000 negroes the police 
 man supersedes the philosopher in relative importance, and the problem 
 moves along as best it can under the circumstances. 
 
The South has acted wisely in excluding the illiterate negro front 
 the right of suffrage, and it is determined that the white race shall 
 continue to control the political developments of the country, as it 
 should. This deprives the negro of no legal right, for it also disfran 
 chises the illiterate white, a law which should prevail in every state 
 in the Union. 
 
 In many districts of the South racial conditions are nothing less than 
 appalling; a disgrace to civilization. Here an unnatural condition 
 exists in which the application of the golden rule would be almost a 
 miracle. Immediately after the Civil War a few northern politicians 
 succeeded in passing laws enfranchising the negroes, regardless of edu 
 cational or other qualifications, while the southern whites who partici 
 pated in the war were disfranchised for from four to twelve years, 
 depending upon their official position in the Confederacy. The negroes 
 proved themselves entirely incapable of executive ability, and the 
 southern whites then wrested the power from them contrary to 
 existing laws. 
 
 This condition naturally developed the worst side of the negro of the 
 South, and, with the exception of the educated members of his race, he 
 is less competent or trustworthy to-day than in slavery times. While 
 there are still a few good old mammies and slaves with whom their 
 employers would not part, the average southern negro is a degenerate. 
 
 The South is passing from an agricultural order, depressed by 
 poverty and misrule, to an industrial democracy, wherein it is regaining 
 its natural state. 
 
 The southern people have developed an overwhelming public senti 
 ment in favor of education of all classes at public expense, thus making 
 of a social system, semi-feudal in character, a democracy in social usage, 
 as well as in political philosophy. 
 
 Perhaps the chief political constructive act of southern genius with 
 reference to the negro has been the elimination of the idea of manhood 
 suffrage, regardless of qualifications, thus removing the ignorant blacks 
 from politics and drawing their attention to industrial life. 
 
 The South does not want so much to rid herself of the negroes as to 
 place them on a level commensurate with their ability. She wants to 
 retain them as servants, eliminating social and legal equality. In doing 
 this contrary to existing laws it has been necessary to resort to severe 
 and almost inhuman means. It would therefore be advantageous for 
 both races if the negroes would consent to colonization in Africa, South 
 America, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, or even in Florida and 
 enough adjacent territory to support them. 
 
 The North admits that it was a stupendous error for a few northern 
 politicians to enfranchise the negro, and the South admits the wrong of 
 slavery. The only present difference of opinion is due to the existing 
 
local environment with reference to the negro. This difference will 
 continue to exist so long as there is a difference in the proportion of 
 negroes to white population in the two sections. Should the proportion 
 of negroes to whites become the same throughout the United States or 
 amalgamation be effected, then the difference of opinion will be 
 obliterated. 
 
 Having thus observed race conditions in various states of environ 
 ment, having read numerous misleading magazine articles and books 
 on the subject, having received frequent inquiries from friends of the 
 middle west regarding the negro of the South, and believing that the 
 people of the North and West should know southern racial conditions as 
 they actually exist, I spent my spare evenings for a few weeks and 
 wrote this book from an unprejudiced standpoint. 
 
 I have quoted others extensively, because of their eminence and 
 authority on the questions at issue; also to substantiate my views. All 
 of those quoted have lived in the South long enough to familiarize 
 themselves with race conditions. 
 
 The book was written for popular reading, and those who do not 
 accept the theory of the evolution of man are given a plausible and 
 well substantiated line of thought regarding the development of the 
 negro. 
 
 The race problem in the United States is gradually turning toward 
 amalgamation and local option. If this does not meet the approval of 
 the American people they should interest themselves enough to take 
 some definite action toward colonization or some other solution. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORIGIN oi> THE NEGRO. 
 
 With a view to studying the race question from an unprejudiced 
 standpoint let us consider briefly the two theories of man s creation, 
 trace them down to the present time, and see what bearing they have 
 upon present racial conditions in the United States of America. 
 
 1. Divine Creation. 
 
 2. Natural Development. 
 
 In the former, "God formed man out of the dust of the ground and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living 
 soul," and in "the image of God;" Thou mad st him a little lower 
 than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honor." 
 
 Such creative power is similar to that of the birth of Jesus, born 
 of the Virgin Mary, a human being, his mother, and God. a spirit, his 
 father. 
 
 These biblical teachings can be harmonized with the scientific theories 
 of "Natural Development" in two ways : First, as described by 
 Winchell in "Pre-Adamites," where he shows how the Almighty may 
 have created man by "Natural Development," according to the following 
 diagram, in which the sixth day spoken of in Genesis extended, as did 
 the other days of that chapter, through unknown centuries. 
 
 Second, by combining the essential part of this theory with that of 
 Divine Creation, we may assume that Adam and Eve were instantly 
 made by the Almighty God and arc the progenitors of the Caucasia. i 
 race, while the lower orders of man advanced by evolution to their 
 present state of development. 
 
 The Caucasian differs from all other races; he is humane, civilized, 
 and progressive. He conquers with his head as well as with his hands. 
 It is intellect, after all, that conquers, not the strength of man s arm. 
 The Caucasian has often been master of the other races never their 
 slave. He has carried his religion to their races, but never taken theirs. 
 All the great limited forms of monarchies are Caucasian ; republics are 
 Caucasian. All the great sciences are of Caucasian origin ; all inven 
 tions are Caucasian ; literature and romance came from the same stock ; 
 all the great poets are of Caucasian origin. No other race can bri.ig 
 up to memory such celebrated names as the Caucasian race. 
 
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The white race has an intensity of will and desire which is controlled 
 by intellectuality. 
 
 Great things are undertaken readily, but not blindly. It manifests 
 a strong utilitarianism, united with a powerful imagination, which 
 elevates, ennobles, and idealizes its practical ideas. The negro can 
 only imitate, the Chinese only utilize the work of the white, while the 
 latter is abundantly capable of producing new works. His high sense 
 of honor is a faculty unknown to other races, and springs from an 
 exalted sentiment of which they show no indications. His sensations 
 are less intense than in either the black or yellow, but his mentality is 
 far more developed and energetic. 
 
 In support of the theory of Divine Creation we have the Bible and 
 its millions of teachers. In support of the theory of "Evolution" we 
 have many of the Bible teachers and thousands of scientists who com 
 prise the foremost body of intellectual instructors and investigators of 
 modern times. There is in reality no conflict between the two, for, as 
 we have previously shown, God in His wisdom could have created man 
 in either of the two ways. 
 
 A fire-mist and a planet, 
 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 A jelly-fish and a saurian, 
 
 And caves where cave-men dwell ; 
 Then a sense of law and beauty, 
 
 And a face turned from the clod; 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 A haze on the far horizon, 
 
 The infinite tender sky, 
 The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields, 
 
 And the wild geese sailing high, 
 And all over upland and lowland 
 
 The charm of the golden-rod ; 
 Some of us call it Autumn, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 L,ike tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
 
 When the moon is new and thin, 
 Into our hearts high yearnings 
 
 Come welling and surging in; 
 Come from the mystic ocean, 
 
 Whose rim no foot has trod ; 
 Some of us call it Longing, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 William Herbert Carruth. 
 
 According to science, every living creature passes through the various 
 stages of development of its race. 
 
Ckiss, Mamalia. 
 Order, Bimana. 
 Genus, Homo. 
 Species, Man. 
 
 Dr. Young. 
 
 I have seen negro boys, two and three years old, sleep sitting on their 
 "haunches," as it may best be expressed, resting their head on their 
 knees; a position that is common in the ape tribe. 
 
 H. M. Bernelot Moens, Dutch professor of zoology, left Paris March 
 27, 1908, with a scientific expedition for the French Congo. The 
 financial backing for the affair is provided by Queen Wilhelmina of 
 Holland, the prince consort and the queen mother. The Pasteur 
 Institute, of Paris, is also aiding the expedition, and the French govern 
 ment has instructed the governor of the French Congo to assist in every 
 possible way. 
 
 The object of this expedition is to create a new race midway between 
 the anthropoid (man-like) apes and the Congolese negroes. Fossil 
 skulls that have been found one near Dusseldorf in 1856, a second 
 in a cave near Namur in 1879, an d a third in the Isle of Java in 
 1891 prove that such an intermediate race once existed. Professor 
 Moens believes that the time is come for science, in full freedom and 
 disregarding religious prejudices, to experiment in this field. Speak 
 ing of this investigation, Professor Moens said : 
 
 "The anthropoid ape is the type nearest to man. It has the same 
 number of bones, the same number of muscles, the teeth are similar, 
 the nervous system is the same, and the embryonic evolution the same. 
 
 "Recent researches prove that identical blood circulates in man and 
 the anthropoid ape. This fact is of extreme importance, for animals 
 not closely akin have blood of different composition. That is, we 
 cannot succeed in mixing those bloods. When the blood of a cat is 
 mixed with the blood of a hare both animals die in a few minutes of 
 convulsive attacks. On tke other hand, we can mix the blood of the 
 rabbit with that of the hare, of tl*e horse and the donkey, and the blood 
 of a dog and a wolf without destroying the red corpuscles. Also. 
 experience shows that such kindred animals can breed and have 
 descendants ; then why not the hybrid of a man and an anthropoid ape ? 
 Science has already crossed the various apes, overcoming the prejudices 
 and dislikes of these animals for each other by artificial means. 
 
 "The crossing of anthropoids with the lower apes is of great value 
 to science. It now remains for science to cross anthropoids with the 
 higher race, and I have chosen the negroes of the French Congo as 
 being the nearest of all humans to these apes. Of course, you under 
 stand I shall use artificial methods, selecting as mothers the youngest 
 and healthiest specimens of the anthropoid apes. I expect also to carry 
 on similar experiments with Congolese negroes and female gorillas and 
 
7 
 
 chimpanzees. Unscientific people may criticise this work, but it is 
 of the greatest value as showing the origin and development of the 
 human race." 
 
 The fifth, ninth, tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis ; the first 
 chapter of ist Chronicles, and the first chapter of Matthew, upon which 
 the theory of the descent of the negro from Ham is based, does not 
 convey that idea to the thoughtful reader. Genesis 10-19 proves the 
 contrary. 
 
 If the Hamite origin of the negro were true, the Hottentots, Aus 
 tralians, Papuan and negroes have greatly degenerated, contrary to all 
 the laws of nature, as will be observed by the outline on pages 5 and 6. 
 
 Dr. Winchell says : 
 
 "Negroes are void of sensibility to a surprising degree. They are not sub 
 ject to nervous disease, nor does any mental disturbance keep them awake. 
 
 "The mental indolence of negroes is further shown in the comparative rec 
 ords of insanity and idiocy. While among whites mania occurs in the pro 
 portion of 0.76 per thousand, among negroes it is only o-io per thousand. 
 While idiocy among the former is 0.73 per thousand, among the latter it is 
 0.37 per thousand. 
 
 "Let me mention one fact especially, drawn from my own experience of 
 forty years. 
 
 "The coarseness of their organization makes them require about double 
 the dose of ordinary medicine used for whites. 
 
 "The exemption of the negro from malarial diseases, and sundry other 
 pathological affections of the white race is another significant diagnostic. If 
 the population of New England, Germany, France, England, or other north 
 ern climates, should come to Mobile, or to New Orleans, a large propor 
 tion would die of yellow fever. On the contrary, negroes, under all cir 
 cumstances, enjoy an almost perfect exemption from the disease, even 
 though brought from our northern states. 
 
 "In the negro the development of the body is generally in advance of the 
 white. His wisdom teeth are cut sooner; and in estimating the age of his 
 skull we must reckon it as at least five years in advance of the white. 
 
 "The person of the white exhales an odor which is scarcely perceptible, 
 and not especially offensive. In striking contrast to this the negro is char 
 acterized by a very strong, offensive odor. 
 
 "Among negroes the forearm is longer in proportion to the arm than is 
 the case with whites. The same is true of anthropoid apes. The negro s 
 arm when suspended by the side reaches the knee-pan within a distance of 
 only four and three-eighths per cent of the whole length of the body. The 
 white man s arm reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is seven 
 and one-half per cent of the whole length of the body. This length of the 
 arm is a quadrumanous characteristic. 
 
 "The teeth of the negro are wider apart than in the white races, beauti 
 fully white, very firm and sound, and set slanting in the jaw. Their ears 
 are small, round, and their border not well curled, the lobule short and 
 scarcely detached, and the auditory opening wide. The neck is short, lips 
 thick, hair woolly, nose flat, calves slender, and the retreating contour of 
 the chin as compared with the European approximates the negro to the 
 chimpanzee and lower mammals. The entire face, and especially the lower 
 portion, projects forward. The face occupies the greater portion of the 
 total length of the head. The anterior cranium is less developed than the 
 
posterior, relatively to that of the white. In other words, the negro has 
 the cerebral cranium less developed than the white. 
 
 "In some parts of southern Asia and eastern Africa the natives live to 
 gether in herds without the slightest attempt at clothing, and their whole 
 mode of living shows much more resemblance to that of hordes of wild 
 apes than to any civilized community. 
 
 \ 
 
 There are also places in rural districts of Louisiana where the negroes 
 live in a similar manner. They live in large colonies, poor, filthy, 
 diseased, and act like semi-savages. 
 
 "It is a well-known fact that the chimpanzees and monkeys of Africa use 
 stones to crack nuts, and throw them with almost as much accuracy as the 
 natives of that continent. 
 
 "Burrons chimpanzee offered people his arm and walked with them in an 
 orderly manner. He also used a knife and fork while eating." 
 
 This is only one of the thousands of similar known instances of 
 almost human intelligence that have been displayed by these animals. 
 In view of the fact that all nature tends to rise in the scale of life, is it 
 any wonder that science was led to trace the relationship of such 
 human-acting creatures to the lowest forms of man ? 
 
 "The inferiority of the negro is fundamentally structural. 1 have enum 
 erated the points in his anatomy in which he diverges from the white race 
 and have indicated that, in all these particulars, he approximates the organ 
 isms below. It follows that what the negro is structurally at the present 
 time is the best he has ever been. It follows that he has not descended 
 from Adam." 
 
 Negroes know no bashfulness, and arc never ashamed of their con 
 duct. If accused they enumerate all sorts of excuses, and assume a 
 look of innocence that would do credit to a saint. 
 
 On March 12, 1908, I saw a negro boy, evidently about thirteen 
 years old, being led by handcuffs through the Baltimore union depot. 
 He walked erect, rattled his handcuffs, and attracted attention, with 
 apparent pride in the performance. Eye-witnesses to his theft said 
 that he professed absolute ignorance of it. 
 
 Dr. Winchell also says that capacity of cranium is universally recog 
 nized as a criterion of psychic power. 
 
 "The average weight of the European brain, male and female, is 1340 
 grams; that of the negro is n/8; of the Hottentot, 974. The brain of 
 Byron, the poet, at 36 years of age, weighed 1807 grams, and that of Cuvier, 
 the naturalist, at 63 years, weighed 1829 grams." 
 
 The following table shows the inferiority of an admixture of negro 
 
 blood : 
 
Weight of brain in grams. 
 
 24 whites 1424 grams. 
 
 25 three-quarters white 1390 
 
 47 one-half white 1334 
 
 51 one-quarter white 1319 
 
 95 one-eighth white 1308 
 
 22 one-sixteenth white 1280 
 
 50 negroes > 1278 
 
 Anthropology. 
 
 Notwithstanding these facts, there are some who claim that the negro 
 is the equal of the Caucasian. 
 
 Dr. Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian and National Museum, and one 
 of the best authorities on the subject, says: 
 
 While the chimpanzee is very close to man in a great many respects, yet 
 it is probable that the one or several direct progenitors of mankind were 
 other primates, now modified or extinct- Man s evolution has doubtless 
 been in most respects gradual, and intermediary forms between the last 
 ape-primate and the actual man were surely innumerable." 
 
 Such evolution of the negro is certainly no more improbable than 
 that of the domestic fowl from the snake family, as proved by science. 
 
 The earliest known historical reference to the "races of men" is 
 given by Plato, 300 years B. C. His father, Solon, a law-giver of 
 Athens, spent ten years in Egypt, where he obtained fragments of the 
 history of the lost continent of Atlantis, from which the earliest races 
 probably sprung. Plato frequently alludes to "the human race" and 
 "the race of men." 
 
 Since Plato s time, Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, 
 Winchell, M. de Quatrefages and others have traced the probable 
 development of certain species of animals to the lower species of man, 
 types of the negro, leaving us to conclude for ourselves whether or not 
 the Malay, Indian, Mongolian and Caucasian developed from the 
 former. 
 
 From this we -may assume that whether we believe in the theory of 
 Natural Development, or Divine Creation, the negro descended from a 
 species of prehistoric animal of which there may be several "missing 
 links." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 CARROLL S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE: INDIAN AND MONGOLIAN. 
 
 History has taught us that in all great migrations, where one class of 
 people migrated to or invaded another country, one of three conditions 
 is inevitable : 
 
 First, the invaders might absorb and finally exterminate the original 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Second, they might be driven out by the original possessors of the 
 country. 
 
 Third, they might be absorbed by the original inhabitants. 
 
 The first condition mentioned was what happened with regard to the 
 North American Indians. There was no absorption or amalgamation ; 
 they were driven westward, step by step, as the white man advanced. 
 
 Examples of the second are numerous among the various tribes of 
 Africa. The Jews of Russia may also be included in this class. 
 
 As to the third, the belief is quite prevalent that the Indian and 
 Mongolian are the result of an amalgamation of the Caucasian race and 
 those of the Malay and negro. 
 
 Many of the nations that have achieved greatness and whose powers 
 are a thing of the past have probably been reduced to their present 
 condition by the adoption of such methods. 
 
 Greece, Rome and China are the most remarkable examples of this 
 phenomena. Carroll discusses the subject as follows: 
 
 "Mixed bloods in which the white blood largely predominates may, under 
 favorable conditions, retain more or less of their inherited possessions for 
 an indefinite period. From among the numerous examples of this kind 
 which are furnished by various continents we shall select Greece as an 
 illustration, since her history, both ancient and modern, is more generally 
 understood. 
 
 "There was a period in the history of Greece when her people were famed 
 throughout the world for their white skins, their fair hair, and their posses 
 sion of all the exalted physical and mental characters which are peculiar 
 to that sublime creature whom God honored in the creation by the bestowal 
 of His likeness and His image. In that remote age of her history, Greece 
 gave to posterity a galaxy of intellects whose names and whose achieve 
 ments adorn the brightest pages in the world s history. But, alas ! alas ! 
 their towering intellectuality, their boundless enterprise, their resistless 
 energy, their dauntless courage, combined with their forgetfulness of God, 
 paved the way to their ruin. During their various wars thousands of 
 
11 
 
 negroes were captured and imported into Greece as slaves, together with 
 thousands of captives taken from the mixed-blooded tribes and nations 
 against whom Greece waged war. 
 
 "These were never exported, yet they have long since disappeared, leaving 
 no progeny of negroes in their stead. And it is a scientific fact, and one 
 which no anthropologist, no historian, and no traveler will deny, that the 
 white-skinned, fair-haired Greek of ancient times has also disappeared, leav 
 ing no progeny of white-skinned, fair-haired Greeks. 
 
 "What became of them? A glance at our surroundings should convince 
 us that, in an evil hour, amalgamation laid its blighting touch upon the 
 vitals of Greece; and, in the course of centuries, under its destructive influ 
 ences, the white-skinned, fair-haired Greek and the black-skinned, woolly- 
 haired negro disappeared, and were replaced by the dark-haired Greek of 
 modern times. This radical change in the physical characteristics of her 
 population was accompanied by a corresponding change in their mentality, 
 and consequently in the status of Greece among the nations of the earth; 
 and that fair land, once the home of the highest culture, became the abode 
 of ignorance and superstition. Many a long century has dragged its weary 
 length into eternity since Greece produced a Homer, an Aristides, a Hero 
 dotus, a Pericles, a Solon, a Plato, or a Demosthenes. 
 
 "Pausing amid the busy scenes of daily life to view the routes which man 
 has trodden from the creation to the crucifixion, or even down to the fall 
 of the Roman Empire, or down to our day, if you will, we observe the 
 wrecks of principalities, kingdoms and empires, with here and there one 
 which in the zenith of its wealth and power ruled the world. But, alas ! 
 their glory has departed; their once intellectual, cultured and powerful 
 populations no longer grace the earth ; their name is history ; in many 
 instances even their national boundaries are stricken from the maps of the 
 world; their once fertile fields that bloomed and fruited in the smiles of 
 heaven and yielded an abundant harvest as the reward of intelligent, indus 
 trious culture are now barren wastes ; their former cities, once the flourish 
 ing marts of the world s commerce, are now buried beneath the earth, or 
 if any vestige of them remains upon its surface still, a mass of ruins alone 
 mark their sites ; their once splendid capitals, within the palaces of which 
 royalty, the nobility, the intellect, the culture, the beauty, the chivalry, the 
 wealth and fashion of those ancient realms held high revel, are now swept 
 from the earth, or are in ruins. Like Petra, Idumea s once proud capital, 
 they are degraded to a fold for herds and flocks ; or, like Ninevah, that 
 city that dwelt carelessly, they have become a desolation a place for 
 beasts to lie down in ; or, like Palenque, the ruins of their former beauties 
 and grandeurs are now buried in the gloom and solitude of the jungle. 
 Their histories or their traditions, if any have descended to us, or their 
 monuments or their inscriptions, if any remain, all teach us that in their 
 prosperous days the white and black man and negro were represented in 
 their populations. But, strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true thru 
 any remnant of their descendants which can be identified are colored some 
 shade of brown or yellow. If neither history, nor tradition, nor monument, 
 nor inscription, nor any remnant of their descendants can be found, an 
 investigation of the ruins of their civilization reveals the idol the most 
 infallible evidence that amalgamation destroyed them." 
 
 "Many valuable arts which these ancient whites possessed were inherited 
 by their mixed-blooded descendants and lost; such as the art of tempering 
 copper to the hardness of steel, etc/ 
 
 "On the monuments of Central America there are representations of 
 bearded men. How could the beardless American Indian have imagined a 
 bearded race? 
 
12 
 
 Professor Wilson describes the hair of the ancient Peruvians as found 
 upon their mummies as a light brown and of a fineness of texture which 
 equals the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 "Ancient ruins of remarkable edifices were found near Hungaria, and 
 described by Cieca de Leon, who said that, according to tradition, that city 
 was built by bearded white men who came there long before the time of 
 Incas and established a settlement." 
 
 Quatrefages says : "In the crossings between unequal human races 
 the father almost always belongs to the superior race. In every case, 
 and especially in the transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself ; 
 man is less delicate." This is also proven in the association of the 
 whites and negroes of America. 
 
 According to Renouf, Wilkerson, Rawlinson, Legge, Clark and Max 
 Muller, many of the mixed-blooded races, such as the Chinese, Hindoos, 
 Egyptians, etc., have preserved some of the literature of their white 
 ancestors. Careful investigation of this literature reveals the fact that 
 their remote ancestors were monotheists. Yet in every instance their 
 mixed-blooded descendants, when far removed from the influence of 
 the whites, have lost all knowledge of God, and have in many instances 
 descended to idolatry. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF THE IMPORTATION OF THE NEGRO TO AMERICA, AND 
 INFLUENCE OF THE BALLOT IN His HANDS. 
 
 From time immemorial the various tribes of Africa have made slaves 
 not only of their enemies, but also of numbers of their own tribes. 
 Almost every European nation has from time to time secured and 
 retained as slaves these blacks of Africa. 
 
 Negroes were not, as a rule, filched from their homes by white depre 
 dators, but were gathered into convict gangs by their own village chiefs 
 and driven to the baracoons (barracks), where they were held until 
 purchased and shipped oft" to foreign lands. Neighbors who had 
 domestic quarrels had only to prefer charges of witchcraft in order to 
 get each other into the chain gang, ordeals by poison, or fire, deter 
 mining their guilt, subject to the caprice of the petty officials adminis 
 tering them, and these in turn were easily susceptible to bribes. As a 
 rule, white slave traders, or contractors, as they were termed, had 
 native chiefs in their service, who went on raids for the purpose of 
 collecting slaves for export ; so that, between the upper and nether 
 millstones, common people had a poor chance for a permanent residence 
 on the Dark Continent. 
 
 Following this custom, a Dutch trader sailed to Liberia, situated 
 on the western , coast of Africa, and captured in 1620 a ship load of 
 these black natives of the jungle, and, thinking only of his ill-gotten 
 gain, regardless of the future results upon the nation, introduced the 
 slave trade into America. 
 
 At that time the people of the southern States were as loath to 
 keeping slaves as were those of the northern States. No slave was 
 ever brought to this country by a southern vessel. 
 
 From 1620 to 1864 negroes were kept as slaves south of Mason and 
 Dixon s Line (boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania), 
 where they cultivated cotton, tobacco, and corn. During this time they 
 learned to till the soil, harvest crops, raise live stock, and some of them 
 learned the rudiments of the carpenter trade. 
 
 Their contact with American people, especially on the plantations of 
 men like George Washington, had a tendency to make them more 
 capable of making a living and supporting a family than in their natural 
 
14 
 
 state. They were still entirely incapable of managing their own affairs, 
 but in this condition were turned loose in 1864 a free race among the 
 most highly civilized people of the world. Some of them were glad to 
 get away from cruel traders ; others refused to leave good masters. 
 
 Through the influence of United States Senators Thaddeus Stevens 
 and Charles Sumner, the former one of the most unscrupulous, yet 
 influential, politicians that was ever in the United States Congress, a 
 law was passed giving the negroes a right to vote and disfranchising 
 the southern whites who had participated in the civil war. Stevens 
 opposed Lincoln in all of his policies. In his argument with Stevens, 
 Abraham Lincoln said: "1 believe that there is a physical difference 
 between the white and black races which will forever forbid their living 
 together on terms of political and social equality. If such be attempted 
 one must go to the wall." 
 
 "Very well," said Stevens, "pin the southern white man to the 
 wall ! Our party and the nation will then be safe. The life of our 
 party demands that the negro be given the ballot and made the ruler of 
 the South." 
 
 "My God! Stevens, are you a man or a savage?" replied Lincoln. 
 "The negro has cost us $5,000,000,000, the desolation of ten great 
 states, and rivers of blood. We can well afford a few million dollars 
 more to effect a permanent settlement of the issue. We must assimi 
 late or expel them. 
 
 "I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the 
 negro into our social and political life as our equal. A mulatto citizen 
 ship would be too dear a price to pay even for emancipation. We can 
 never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed of, with millions of 
 an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible 
 nor desirable. A nation cannot exist half white and half black, any 
 more than it could exist half slave and half free." The Clansman. 
 
 At this point it will be well to recall the fact that in 1778 Virginia, 
 and in 1798 Georgia, passed acts prohibiting the importation of slaves, 
 Virginia fixing as a penalty the fine of 1,000 pounds. 
 
 Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky formed a compact to support 
 a practical system of emancipating slaves by degrees. This move 
 ment was stopped by the abolitionists, who demanded immediate and 
 uncompensated freedom of all slaves. 
 
 After the assassination of Lincoln, which marked the saddest event 
 that the nation ever knew, and at one of the most critical crises, when 
 he, above all men, was needed to solve the race problem of America, 
 Thaddeus Stevens was not only instrumental in annulling Lincoln s 
 plans, but succeeded in enforcing laws directly contrary to them. Lin 
 coln had told Stevens that he promised to reinstate the South when they 
 laid down their arms. This he intended to do, regardless of Stevens 
 
15 
 
 or anyone else. He also told Stevens that he would colonize the negro. 
 Stevens replied : "The South must be wiped off the map and made 
 submissive/ 
 
 After the disfranchising of all southern whites who had participated 
 in the war and placing the ballot in the hands of the negroes a condi 
 tion existed in the southern states the equal of which has never been 
 recorded in history. Big, black, burly, bare- footed, ragged negroes 
 with dirty white collars and bright red or yellow neckties sat in public 
 offices, and, although they could neither read nor write their names, 
 executed the laws of their communities, while the aristocratic southern 
 men, who had been their masters and owners, could neither command, 
 instruct, nor vote with them. 
 
 J. S. Pike, who at that time was United States Minister to Holland, 
 and who had been an abolitionist during the war, visited the South, and 
 afterwards wrote a little book called "Black Parliament," in which he 
 
 "Here, then, is the outcome, the ripe fruit, of boasted civilization of the 
 South. She gradually rose to wealth, culture, and refinement. Now reduced 
 and prostrate in the dust. Overruled by conglomerate ranks of its own 
 servile population, rude, most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, 
 invested with functions of government. The dregs of the population in 
 habit the robes of their predecessors. Barbarism overwhelming civilization. 
 A wonder and a shame to civilization/ 
 
 W. L. Clowes, a northerner, reporting for The New York Times, who 
 spent twelve years in the South investigating race conditions at that 
 time, writes in "Black America" : 
 
 "In North Carolina several members of the State Legislature were unable 
 to read. They robbed the state and trifled with its credit. A barroom was 
 established in the capitol building , where drinking and smoking continued 
 from morning till night." 
 
 On account of the Republican party being in power during the civil 
 war and at its close, the negroes were Republicans to a man. 
 
 In Alabama there were 26 negroes in the House and I in the Senate. 
 
 The negroes sold their votes to the highest bidder. Strife and ill- 
 feeling was kept up between the two races. 
 
 In South Carolina, in 1876, the election returns for delegates for 
 framing a new state constitution showed 63 negroes and 34 whites. 
 The whites were northern adventurers and southern renegades. The 
 constitution drawn up by this body was adopted in 1867 by negro voters, 
 who were not legally franchised until March 30, 1870. 
 
 They exploited the state for their own private interests. Fancy 
 clocks, expensive sofas, and $20 spittoons replaced the old ones. A 
 combination restaurant and saloon was also established in the capitol. 
 
16 
 
 In this morass of rottenness the state expenses amounted to $2,000,- 
 ooo in 1872, while the annual expenses were normally $400,000. 
 
 Decency, intelligence, and property were subjected to the domination 
 of a black, ignorant, pauper multitude. Vice superseded. A bloody 
 riot with the incensed whites occurred in Edgefield county in January, 
 1875, m which lives were lost on both sides. 
 
 In Georgia the state debt increased from $5,827,000 to $18,183,000 
 from 1868 to 1870, and the state bonds became almost unmarketable. 
 Ballot boxes were tampered with and election returns falsified. 
 
 "In Virginia," writes Mr. Robert Stiles, "I appeared in circuit court 
 before a bench on which sat a so-called judge, who had the day before 
 been a clerk in a village grocery store, and who was no better fitted for 
 the dignity and duty devolving upon him than any other negro grocery 
 boy." 
 
 In Mississippi, as Mr. Clowes expressed it, "It was a fool s paradise 
 for negroes." 
 
 The Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1867 was manipulated 
 to show 45,218 white and 84,463 colored votes. Only six white mem 
 bers succeeded in obtaining seats in the Senate. 
 
 Corruption and bribery reigned supreme. 
 
 The New Orleans Republican, in which Governor Warmoth, a tricky 
 "carpet bagger," was principal shareholder, received in one year $1,140,- 
 88 1 for public printing. 
 
 The negroes became intensely proud and began to assert themselves. 
 This led to the organization of the Ku Klux Klan, an order of southern 
 whites, improperly called white caps, sworn to stamp out African rule, 
 and who caused the mysterious disappearance of many a negro and 
 white instigator of negro outrages. They frequently raided and fright 
 ened whole communities of superstitious negroes almost into hysterics. 
 An incident of this kind occurred one night in a little town in southern 
 Kentucky. A party of the "Ku Klux" came quietly into the negro 
 quarters of the little burg about 12 o clock, when every resident was 
 sleeping soundly, and after carefully tying several small dogs in flour 
 sacks, dropped them simultaneously down as many chimneys of the 
 negro dwellings. The result can easily be imagined. An uproar and 
 stampede followed, in which cries of "De Debbil am a comin sho!" 
 "Oh, Lawd a massy !" etc., were mingled in ridiculous accents. A few 
 pistol shots from the retreating Ku Klux only added to the pande 
 monium. 
 
 The following letter from one of the original members of the Klan, 
 now a United States senatorial clerk, will be of interest in this con 
 nection : 
 
17 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., May 6, 1908. 
 C. W. MELICK, 
 
 MY DEAR SIR: Replying to yours of the 4th, I will say that I have now 
 in advanced preparation a book giving a history of the origin, purposes and 
 accomplishments of the Ku Klux Klan. Responding to your questions seri 
 atim, there was only one order of the Ku Klux Klan, without any branches. 
 General Forrest, who was the Supreme Wizard of the Klan, in his testi 
 mony before the "Joint Commission to Investigate Conditions in the Insur 
 rectionary States," placed the membership at about 500,000. The Klan was 
 organized in April, 1867, at Pulaski, Tennessee, and was disbanded by order 
 of the Supreme Wizard in 1869. It operated in nearly all of the southern 
 states, but its principal field of action was in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisi 
 ana, and South Carolina. The Klan was originally organized for pastime, 
 but having adopted a peculiar garb and practiced some spectacular antics that 
 impressed the superstitious negroes, it was soon observed that it had a con 
 trolling effect ov<er the negroes who were beginning to go into excesses under 
 the inspiration of mean white men, and so the Klan was early turned into 
 somewhat of a political organization. Under evil influences, the negro was 
 fast rushing upon his own destruction, for it would have soon been neces 
 sary to either annihilate him or give him full sway over southern interests 
 and southern people. The punitive efforts of the Klan were almost always 
 directed at the white instigator of negro deviltry, realizing that the negro 
 himself was most tractable and could be easily kept within safe bounds if 
 his evil advisers were suppressed. The final result of the movement was to 
 get rid of these white scalawags and save the negro from annihilation. The 
 Ku Klux Klan stood resolutely for law and order, and it was a necessary 
 adjunct of civilization then, because the courts were inadequate and in many 
 places indisposed to protect the property interests and personal rights of the 
 people, and they had to take things into their own hands. I have no kind 
 of doubt that but for the Ku Klux Klan there would inevitably have been 
 a war of races that would have resulted in the destruction of the negro race, 
 and it would have been far more disastrous to southern property interests 
 than even the civil war, and my opinion is that the Ku Klux Klan was one 
 of the great movements ordained by Providence along the ages to further 
 civilization and human progress, and that when the final truth is known 
 history will say that it did more for the negro himself than anything else 
 appertaining to his emancipation from slavery and ignorance. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 LAPS D. McCoRD. 
 
 From a copy of the original Prelate of the Ku Klux Klan, which 
 two of the members showed me, I judge that its mission was purely of 
 a patriotic nature. The majority of the excesses in such lines were 
 committed by unscrupulous bands of night riders, disguised in the name 
 of the Ku Klux, after that organization had disbanded. 
 
 Northern politicians took advantage of the situation, and before every 
 election of any consequence many of them went down through the 
 South, or sent their representatives, and solicited votes, and at election 
 time collected them. Naturally, those who covered the most territory 
 secured the largest number of votes, regardless of his policies. These 
 electioneers were called "carpet baggers." 
 
 From that time nntil the present the negro vote has been a disgrace 
 to civilization. There are many places in Maryland and Virginia where 
 
1$ 
 
 the negroes line up or sit on a fence in a row near the polls waiting for 
 politicians to come along and make bids for their vote. There are some 
 places in the states farther south where they are kept away from the 
 polls entirely. 
 
 The full-blooded negro has little or no patriotism. They have no 
 country they can call their own, and, like you or I, or anyone else under 
 the same circumstances, would have little interest in government affairs. 
 
 They were frequently made to think that when they voted the heavens 
 would open and send them a blessing, or something similar would hap 
 pen. Since they found out differently they vote principally the way 
 they are paid for it, or influenced by white politicians. 
 
 In some states they are not allowed to vote unless they are able to 
 interpret the names on the ticket. 
 
 The shrewd politicians meet this difficulty by holding meetings in 
 schoolhouses and halls every evening for a week or so previous to elec 
 tion, and instructing the negroes by the use of a ballot-box and ticket 
 prepared similar to those used on election day. 
 
 A few years after the civil war Abraham Lincoln s picture was used 
 on the ticket, and anyone who wished to vote the straight Republican 
 ticket would make their mark on this picture. When public sentiment 
 demanded a more intelligent vote, this system was abandoned for sepa 
 rate party tickets, where a straight ticket could be voted or each sepa 
 rate name scratched. 
 
 This has recently been abandoned for a single ticket, with all the 
 parties included, and the names intermixed. A great deal of instruc 
 tion or scheming is therefore required in order to obtain an intelligent 
 negro vote. All soiled or improperly folded ballots are also discarded. 
 Several instances have been brought to my notice where the political 
 instructors cut holes in sheets of pasteboard or brown paper in such 
 a manner that when placed directly over the ticket a scratch could be 
 made through each hole and the names of the desired persons thus 
 scratched. 
 
 These pasteboards were folded and distributed among the negro 
 voters, who carried them to the polls in their pockets and used them 
 when voting. 
 
 I also know of one negro, a Bill Scott, of the fifth district of Balti 
 more county, Maryland, who in the fall election of 1899 was told to 
 swear by the Bible that he was a legal resident of that district, and, not 
 seeming to understand what was required, began to eat the leaves of 
 the Bible on which he was to place his hand. The Bible was used in 
 some districts at that time for swearing in voters. After such a display 
 of ignorance he was permitted to cast his vote. A highly intelligent 
 and patriotic piece of business for United States citizens ! 
 
 All of the southern states have adopted laws making the eligibility 
 requirement for voting so rigid, and aimed directly at the negro, that 
 
they disqualify the majority of them. The substance of the law in the 
 southern states, as a whole, differing slightly in some of them, is as 
 follows : 
 
 No person may be allowed to vote unless he can read and intelligently 
 interpret a part of the Constitution; who himself, or wife, has not $500 or 
 n;ore; or unless his grandfather voted before the war. 
 
 The first part of this law applies equally to the white and black the 
 educational requirement. The "grandfather clause" and property re 
 quirement admits most of the whites regardless of education. 
 
 This law seems unjust to a Northern or Western man, but the South 
 of necessity had to adept some such means to control the negro rabble. 
 Any sane white man under similar conditions would have used his 
 influence to adopt similar laws. Virginia and Maryland were the last 
 states to pass such laws. Virginia passed hers in 1902, and Maryland 
 followed in 1908. 
 
 A great many of the Southern men whose business a high tariff 
 benefits are Republicans on national issues and Democrats on local 
 issues. Many of the rice, sugar, and tobacco dealers belong to this list. 
 
 Not only have the white voters of the Southern states controlled the 
 elections ever since 18/6 by combining in the Democratic party, but 
 they have recently adopted that method in the Republican party in 
 Virginia. 
 
 On April 8th, 1908, the sixth congressional district of that state held 
 its Republican convention to elect delegates to the National Convention 
 in Chicago. 
 
 When the chairman took his seat he said: This is a white man s 
 meeting, representing a white Republican party, and any statement to 
 the contrary is a lie." 
 
 There were about twenty negroes present, who repeatedly tried to 
 gain the floor, but were as often and as readily silenced. 
 
 This is the first record of a Republican meeting south of the Mason 
 and Dixon line in which negroes were not permitted to participate. 
 
 Occasionally a negro will become broad-minded enough to say, as 
 did Mr. A. M. Church (colored), of Vicksburg, Miss.: "The mass of 
 negroes would do themselves and the country more good if the ballot- 
 box were out of their reach." Many of them, however, are among 
 the class which the f ollov/ing represents : 
 
 On the 23rd of March. 1908, a party of colored men from certain 
 districts of the South visited the White House and complained to 
 President Roosevelt about ill-treatment at the polls. 
 
 They were not from Maryland or Virginia, or they would have re 
 ceived fifty cents and a glass of whiskey apiece for their vote, instead 
 of being driven from the polls. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RATE OF INCREASE OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 The rate of increase of the negro is, as a whole, less than that of the 
 white, partly because the mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons seldom 
 intermarry with full-blooded negroes, but intermarry among themselves 
 or with whites, and their offspring eventually becomes so near white 
 that they are classed as such. 
 
 The chief cause, however, for the lesser rate of increase is due to 
 the fact that, although their birth rate is higher, their death rate is so 
 much higher than their birth rate that the result is a lower per cent of 
 increase. 
 
 The higher death rate is obviously due to their unsanitary habits of 
 living. When we see them living, as Mr. Bond says, in Chapter VII, 
 "like hogs ! yes, sir, like hogs !" we wonder that some of them live 
 as long as they do. I know of whole families of them who have died 
 of tuberculosis contracted by unsanitary living. 
 
 Not only is this true of the full-blooded negroes who colonize in the 
 rural swamp districts of South Carolina and Louisiana and have be 
 come so degraded as to live like wild animals, speaking in South Caro 
 lina a dialect composed of a mixture of degenerate English and the 
 original African tongue, and in Louisiana a French yiddish, but in parts 
 of Washington, D. C., there is, aside from dialect, a semblance of 
 similar conditions. 
 
 Right in Washington, where some of the greatest efforts have been 
 made to educate and develop the best that there is in the negro, where 
 he has had exceptional educational, religious, and social opportunities, 
 the illegitimate births among the colored population of that city were, 
 in 1879, 17 & per cent; in 1893, 27 per cent, and in 1894, 26.46 per cent. 
 During those years the per cent of illegitimate births among the whites 
 of Washington was, in 1879, 2.32 per cent; 1893, 2.82 per cent, and 
 in 1894, 2.56 per cent. 
 
 Our fair capital is one of the most beautiful cities in the Union, but 
 its beauty is confined to the government buildings, parks, and Penn 
 sylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts avenues. Go to Monkey Hol 
 low, Black-and-Tan Court, or any other negro suburb, or to the city 
 jail any morning, and you will have a different version of the national 
 capital. 
 
21 
 
 I have known of negro mothers allowing their babies less than two 
 years old to go month after month without a bath, sleep in unventilated 
 rooms containnig ten or a dozen people, and for breakfast receive 
 nothing but tea or coffee. And some of the men drink whiskey, when 
 obtainable, in preference to either. 
 
 Another cause of the higher rate of increase among the southern 
 whites is that of northern white immigration during the past ten years. 
 
 The government has expended millions of dollars during this time in 
 experimental and investigation work in the South in every branch of 
 agriculture, for the purpose of aiding the people of the southern states 
 in reclaiming the depleted soil of abandoned plantations. 
 
 Northern capital and northern men are rapidly developing the busi 
 ness interests and reclaiming the soil of the South by modern scientific 
 methods. 
 
 As the western frontier became exhausted, enterprising immigration 
 sought these large tracts of untilled plantation land left idle by the 
 freed slaves. 
 
22 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 NEGRO LABOR IN COMPETITION WITH ANGLO-SAXON LABOR. 
 
 One reason why the South is better adapted to the negro than the 
 North, and the reason that Booker T. Washington advises him to remain 
 there, is because of the more advanced racial spirit which prevails in 
 the South. Prejudice there being sharper has forced the negro back 
 upon his own resources. 
 
 When he can no longer cling to the skirts of the white man, he either 
 lapses into worthless idleness, or supports negro enterprises. 
 
 As one negro expressed it : "Forty years ago the white man emanci 
 pated us, but we are only just now discovering that we must emancipate 
 ourselves." 
 
 On account of negro labor being practically the only labor of the 
 South, negroes are more readily accepted there as carpenters, black 
 smith, etc., than in the North, where white labor predominates. For 
 this reason the average amount of work per day in the South is less 
 than half what it is in the North. 
 
 The negro of the North, is, for the most part, compelled to take a 
 second place in industry. 
 
 Here they meet the competition of the native whites, the Swedes, 
 Danes, Norwegians, Irish, and Germans, who are all far more ener 
 getic, and generally do more than double the amount of work of the 
 negro. 
 
 In the smaller cities, where the negro population is not increasing 
 rapidly, or in exceptional instances, such as that of the Van Camp 
 Packing Company, of Indianapolis, Indiana, who fitted up a new plant 
 to be operated entirely by negroes, they are not discriminated against. 
 But in large cities, where they exist in great numbers, a feeling of 
 opposition is steadily growing. 
 
 In abolition times the negroes of northern cities w r ere highly respect 
 ed. Many of them were accorded unusual opportunities and favors; 
 such as the better educated negroes are given there to-day ; such as 
 they found several years ago in Germany. In a few instances these 
 negroes became wealthy. 
 
 At the time when the North was passionately concerned in the aboli 
 tion of slavery, the color of the skin frequently gave the negro special 
 advantages, even honors. For years after the war this condition con- 
 
23 
 
 tinned. Then a stream of immigration of southern negroes began to 
 appear, increasing in numbers, until to-day all of our large northern 
 cities have negro colonies, usually in the lowest suburbs. 
 
 As the negro colonies increased, outrageous assaults began to occur. 
 In such localities the northern whites soon became as hostile to the 
 negro as the Southern whites. An illustration of this was demonstrated 
 in the mob riot of Springfield, Illinois, August 14 to 19, 1908, in which 
 the jail and negro settlements were repeatedly stormed, with loss of 
 several lives and thousands of dollars worth of property, and quiet was 
 only restored by state troops, police, and fire departments. 
 
 The riot was instigated by two negro assaults. First, a negro, Joe 
 James, entered, after night, the home of Mr. A. Ballard, a prominent 
 Christian, and attempted to assault his eighteen-year-old daughter. Mr. 
 Ballard, in defending her, was stabbed to death by the negro. Second, 
 on August 14 a negro crept into the home of Mrs. Earl Hallem, dragged 
 her from her bed into her garden, where he assaulted her and left her 
 unconscious. 
 
 The color line soon began to be drawn to a certain extent by those 
 who came in contact with the negroes, either in social or business life. 
 
 The following examples amply illustrate this fact : 
 
 A certain electric company of New York recently wrote to the presi 
 dent of an industrial college asking if he had a few good bright boys 
 who wanted employment. The president of the school replied that he 
 had several, and among them two negroes. The next mail brought the 
 following letter: "No colored boys, however promising, are wanted." 
 
 The manager of a business firm in Lincoln, Nebraska, said, when 
 asked why he did not employ negro help : It isn t so much the color 
 as efficiency. I have no sentiment in the matter. It s business. The 
 average colored man can t do as much work nor do it as well as the 
 average white man. The negroes lack speed and skill." 
 
 A Chicago firm replied to the same question : "We have tried negro 
 help over and over again, hoping to aid the condition of negro idleness 
 in this vicinity. Out of several hundred we have had two or three 
 good negro workers. The majority of the rest were wholly undis 
 ciplined, and irresponsible, and generally dishonest." 
 
 From this we see thrt it is not so much color discrimination as actual 
 lack of efficiency that places the northern negro where he is industrially. 
 
 Perhaps no life in the world requires as much brain and muscle of 
 all classes as that of the northern cities of the United States. In such 
 circumstances the negro naturally followed the lines of least resistance, 
 and is serving the white population in the capacity of porters, waiters, 
 hackmen, etc. 
 
24 
 
 In northern cities, where the negro population is large, skilled labor 
 unions have begun to show hostility toward them, even though there is 
 no rule against their admission. 
 
 Illiteracy of the negro is discussed on page 40. The requirement, 
 however, for passing such an examination is ver) low, especially be 
 fore a census reporter, who is usually in a hurry. The requirement is 
 reading and writing. Illiteracy in the race, as a whole, is gradually de 
 creasing, but a large majority of literates are found among the mulat- 
 tocs, and those who live in cities. The masses of negroes living in the 
 rural districts of the South are for the most part illiterate. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AMALGAMATION is GRADUALLY INCREASING. 
 
 The most serious handicap which our present generation of the Anglo- 
 African has to carry, and one seldom thought of by those who are 
 working for his salvation, is his lack of family antecedents. He be 
 longs to the innominate ; to the grand army of cyphers. In these days 
 of egoism, when every man who is proud of himself is studying to trace 
 his lineage, the black man is absolutely without recourse. This dis 
 ability was felt even in slave times, before the war, and at that time 
 high-class servitors, with ambition and ideas of their own personal 
 consequence, were fain to call themselves by the names of their 
 masters, especially when to the manor born ; and they ranked in impor 
 tance among their fellows, as well as among the white people them 
 selves, according to the social status of their households. In these 
 crucial days, when credentials are indispensable and references are re 
 quired, where or how can the unfortunate black man come in? This 
 is the misery of it, to him, and the most devoted of his friends cannot 
 help him establish a pedigree. 
 
 In continental United States about one- fourth of the negro popula 
 tion are of mixed blood, while in Cuba one-half and in Porto Rico 
 five-sixths have been so classed. 
 
 The census statistics and observation all through the southern states 
 reveal most emphatically the fact that amalgamation is being effected 
 to a considerable degree. 
 
 One cannot go down the streets of Washington, D. C., without seeing 
 on almost every street car and almost every street mulattoes, quadroons, 
 and octoroons ; it is frequently hard to tell which. They themselves do 
 not always know. 
 
 The same is true of New Orleans and most all the other large cities 
 of the South. 
 
 When children are born to mulattoes in this country, especially in the 
 northern states, they are usually a few shades lighter than their parents. 
 White blood predominates in the United States, and the tendency is 
 toward a lighter color than that of the native African. So, without 
 amalgamation with the Anglo-Saxon race, the negro of North America 
 may in time acquire a considerably lighter color. 
 
 The increase in mulatto to total population is shown in the accom 
 panying table : 
 
26 
 
 CONTINENTAL 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 1890 
 
 1870 
 
 1860 
 
 1850 
 
 PERCENT MULATTO TO 
 TOTAL NEGRO 
 POPULATION 
 
 Negro population 
 Mulatto 
 
 7,474,040 
 1,132,060 
 
 4,880,009 
 548,049 
 
 4,441,830 
 588,363 
 
 3,638,808 
 405,751 
 
 1900 
 ~& 
 
 1890 
 15.2~ 
 
 1870 
 12 
 
 1860 
 13 
 
 1850 
 
 ~TTT 
 
 The census reporters experienced so much difficulty in trying to dis 
 tinguish the mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, etc., from whites that in 
 1900 they gave it up in discouragement. It can, therefore, be only 
 estimated that one-fourth of the negro population of the country bear 
 evidence of an admixture of blood. This admixture was found by the 
 enumerators to be more prevalent in sections where the proportion of 
 negroes to whites is smallest, and least prevalent where the proportion 
 of negroes to whites is largest. 
 
 As one passes from the great cotton-growing states between South 
 Carolina and Texas toward the north, the proportion of mulattoes 
 among the negroes as a rule increases. 
 
 Rank of States and Territories in order of increasing per cent 
 mulatto in total negro population 1890, 1870, 1860 and 1850: 
 
 STATE OR TERRITORY 
 HAVING AT I^EAST 1,000 
 NEGROES IN 1850 
 
 Rank in Order of Increasing Per Cent 
 Mulatto in Total Negro Population 
 
 Per Ceat 
 Negro in 
 Total Popu 
 lation, 1890 
 
 1890 
 
 1870 
 
 1860 
 
 1850 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 59.9 
 
 Georgia 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3.. 
 
 2 
 
 
 2 
 
 46.7 
 
 Alabama 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 448 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 
 3 ....57.6 
 
 Florida 
 
 5 
 
 12. ... 
 
 6 
 
 5.. 
 
 11 
 
 
 ::::.::: 6 
 
 5 
 
 42.4 
 16.9 
 
 Delaware 
 
 6 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 12 
 
 27.4 
 
 Texas 
 
 
 .. 8 
 . 9 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 21.8 
 
 North Carolina 
 New Jersey 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 
 8 
 
 34.7 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 9 
 
 
 15 
 
 . 3.3 
 
 Maryland 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 13 
 
 12 
 
 
 10 
 
 20.7 
 
 I/ouisiana 
 Tennessee 
 
 
 
 
 .12 
 
 16 
 
 8 
 
 
 9 
 
 50.0 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 13 
 
 
 7 
 
 24.4.. 
 
 Virginia 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 14 
 
 15 
 
 
 14 
 
 38.4 
 
 Kentucky 
 New York 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 19 
 
 17 
 
 
 13 
 
 14.4 
 
 1.2.... 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 9 
 
 14 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 15 
 
 16 
 
 
 16 
 
 5.6 
 
 Pennsylvania 
 Connecticut 
 
 
 
 
 .18 
 19 
 
 18 
 
 21 
 
 
 . 21 
 
 2.1 
 
 22 
 
 18 
 
 19 
 
 1.6 
 32.8 
 2.1 
 
 District of Columbia 
 Rhode Island 
 
 
 
 
 .20 
 
 .21... 
 
 17 
 20 
 
 22 
 19 
 
 22 
 ...18 " 
 
 Illinois 
 
 
 
 
 .22 
 
 21 
 
 24 
 
 25" 
 
 1.5 
 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 
 25 
 
 26" 
 
 2.1 
 
 Massachusetts 
 Ohio 
 
 
 
 
 .24 
 
 25 
 
 20 
 
 ...20" 
 
 1.0 
 
 25 
 
 23 
 
 23 
 
 27 
 
 2.4 
 
 Michigan 
 
 26 
 
 27 
 26 
 
 27 
 26 
 
 24 
 23 
 
 0.7 
 2 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27 
 
 Before the Civil War the field hands in the cotton-growing regions of 
 the South associated with the whites much less intimately than the house 
 servants, and the latter class much more frequently than the former 
 included a perceptible strain of white blood. Away from the cotton- 
 growing area the difference was less, but in the border states no small 
 proportion of the slaves in the cities, many of them belonging to the 
 class of household slaves, were infused with white blood. 
 
 No legal intermarriages between the races existed during slavery 
 times, and yet there was a widespread admixture of blood. Concu 
 binage was a common practice. A mulatto was worth more money 
 than a full-blood negro, because he was more intelligent. He could 
 learn more readily and do more complicated work. He was always 
 sought for at the slave sales by traders, and consequently as many 
 mulatto children as possible were raised. 
 
 They were at that time infused with some of the best blood of the 
 South, hence the intelligence of some of the foremost of their race. 
 It is to this custom that the mulattoes owe their origin. 
 
 The mulattoes thus raised have for the most part been educated by 
 their white fathers. Wilberforce College, the oldest negro institution 
 of learning in the United States, founded in 1856, was largely supported 
 in slavery times by southern white men who were fathers of mulatto 
 children. 
 
 Those practices of slavery times have not ceased yet. Intermar 
 riage between the two races is forbidden by law in all of the southern 
 states, and also the following northern and western states : Delaware, 
 Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Ari 
 zona, California and Oregon. In all of the remaining northern and 
 western states intermarriage is lawful. Such laws have meant little 
 or nothing so far as they affect the problem of amalgamation. 
 
 In Delaware, Maryland and the Virginias there are not a few white 
 men living with mulatto women, chiefly in rural districts, and raising 
 families unmolested. Occasionally, though very rarely, white women 
 thus make homes for negro men. The most pitiful case of this kind 
 that has ever been brought to my attention is in Harford county, Mary 
 land. A white girl was rescued from drowning by a full-blooded negro, 
 and the latter took advantage of her gratitude at the time and obtained 
 her consent to live with him. He was a day laborer a part of the time 
 and fished or did nothing the remainder of the time. They now have 
 fourteen children, varying in color from light yellow to dark brown, 
 with a varying combination of white and negro features. They live in 
 a two-room house eight miles from the nearest railroad station, and 
 about a mile from the nearest public road. She never goes to town or 
 to call on a neighbor, and when anyone calls at the house she either 
 
28 
 
 remains out of sight or draws a bonnet down over her eyes. Her folks 
 ".ave frequently asked her to return to them, but she says she doesn t 
 want to leave the children. 
 
 While such cases of white women living with negro men are the 
 extreme exception, the negro women as a rule exert every possible 
 influence to induce white men to cohabit with them. 
 
 I have known them to make repeated advances to business men and 
 college boys with such intentions. A college student of a southern 
 college who fed some horses morning and evening for my neighbor 
 noticed the negro servant girl come out to the barn almost every time 
 he went there for over two months. He told me he would shoot her 
 rather than touch her. 
 
 Many men, however, who have been raised in the South or near In 
 dian reservations in the West have become so accustomed to practices 
 that have existed in those sections ever since the advent of the negro 
 to our country, or the associations of the cowboys with Indian women, 
 that they do not regard it as do the people of other sections barbarous. 
 
 In the states south of the Virginias a custom called miscegenation/ 
 a system of concubinage, is very prevalent in the cities. Many white 
 men, sometimes prominent in business, have mulatto as well as white 
 families. The following statement by Rev. J. A. Rice, of the Court 
 Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Montgomery, Alabama, repre 
 sents an average condition in the majority of the large cities of the 
 south. Dr. Rice made this statement in his pulpit about a year ago : 
 
 "There are in the city of Montgomery about four hundred negro women 
 supported by white men." 
 
 This does not represent a condition of mere vice. Most of these 
 women are comfortably provided for and have families of children. 
 
 Almost invariably the negro concubines of white men are received 
 in the negro churches and among the negroes generally with honor. 
 They are the most intelligent of negro women, have the best homes, 
 and more money to contribute to charitable purposes. They are proud 
 of their light-colored children, and generally consider themselves more 
 fortunate than their relatives who have black children and less money 
 to spend. 
 
 The better classes in several states have begun to organize against the 
 present practice of concubinage. At Francisville, Louisiana, in May, 
 1907, a meeting was called to organize against what one of the speakers, 
 Mr. WicklirTe, termed the "yellow peril" of the South. He saivl. in 
 part: 
 
 "Everyone familiar with conditions in our midst knows that the enormous 
 increase in persons of mixed blood is due to men of the white race openly 
 keeping negro women as concubines." 
 
29 
 
 About this time another similar meeting was held at Vicksburg, Mis 
 sissippi, and anti-miscegenation leagues formed at each place. 
 
 The class of white men who live with or retain negro concubines at 
 the present time are as a whole of a lower class than those of slavery 
 times, or even five years ago. As the practice is abandoned by the 
 better classes, the mulatto offspring are naturally of a lower sort. 
 
 The home life of the masses of negroes is so primitive that in their 
 crowded condition privacy and decency are almost unknown. The 
 more comely and intelligent negro girls are therefore a prey not only 
 for white men, but, like all of their sex, are more of a prey for men 
 of their own race. 
 
 From such circumstances and examples it is no wonder that the 
 negroes as soon as they were free and placed on a social equality began 
 to assault white women. 
 
 The only difference now between the relations of the men of both 
 races to the women of their opposite race is that in one practice, "mis 
 cegenation," harmony exists, and there is more enthusiasm shown on 
 the part of the negro women than the white men ; while the other prac 
 tice, assault and rape, embodies the most loathsome crime. Although 
 no excuse can be offered for concubinage in any form, the concubines 
 are treated like queens as compared with the barbarous, dastardly, 
 beastly, fiendish manner in which the negro men assault pure, innocent 
 white girls at almost every opportunity. The southern white farmers 
 of many rural districts leave their houses with apprehension in the 
 morning, and thank Providence when they return from their work in 
 the evening to find all well with the women folks of their home. Many 
 of them either carry revolvers or keep a shotgun hanging over the door. 
 
 In New Orleans and vicinity the Frenchmen and negro women have 
 introduced the so-called creole negro class (French negroes), which 
 constitutes a majority of the negro population of that city. Besides 
 English, they speak a French dialect. From these two classes the large 
 majority of prisoners of the jails and penitentiary are drawn. These 
 Frenchmen have for the most part only common names. Those hav 
 ing long names similar to that of Helie de Sagan, Boni de Castellane, 
 Alfonso Emanuel Bernard, Gaston de Luines d Ailly, Due de Pic- 
 quigny, etc., frequently marry American girls who have inherited more 
 money than brains. 
 
 If these girls could see their future relatives in the creole role in 
 New Orleans they might think twice before marrying such relics of 
 royalty. 
 
 The Mayor of New Orleans recently said: 
 
 "If it were not for the negroes and Creoles we officers would have nothing 
 to do ; we would be out of a job." 
 
30 
 
 It has become proverbial that New Orleans practices the Ten Com 
 mandments with the "nots" omitted. 
 
 It is a common occurrence there for an officer to shoot a negro for 
 resisting arrest. I once saw this done in St. Louis. A negro merely 
 saw a policeman coming and ran down an alley. The policeman told 
 him to halt, and, as he continued to run, the policeman shot him. 
 
 A young mulatto, speaking on the subject recently, said: 
 
 "They have given us their blood, and now they resent our response to the 
 same ambitions that they have. They have given us fighting blood and 
 expect us not to struggle." 
 
 While many of the mulattoes hold themselves aloof from the black 
 negroes, marry only among themselves, and in many cities through the 
 North and South have separate churches, yet as a whole they do not 
 care to associate with the whites, but rather form an intermediate class. 
 This attitude is due to the fact that they are ostracised from white 
 society if even a trace of negro blood is perceptible. 
 
 The most remarkable instance of this kind on record is that of Miss 
 Cecelia Johnson, who, in 1906, was a leader in her class in the Chicago 
 University, a member of the Pi Delta Phi Society and president of the 
 Englewood House, an exclusive girls club. When it became known 
 that she possessed negro blood she was shunned by most of her former 
 white friends. 
 
 A few years ago a dark-complected, black-eyed girl graduated 
 from Vassar College, and by merest incident it was discovered at com 
 mencement that she was part negro. 
 
 Judge Robert H. Terrell, of the subdistrict court, District of Colum 
 bia, and his wife, a member of the school board of Washington, contain 
 almost an imperceptible inkling of negro blood. While on a recent tour 
 through Virginia I saw three white children coming from a negro school 
 with colored children. I afterwards saw their parents, and could only 
 detect a trace of negro blood in their father. Their mother, althoug;h 
 an octoroon, would never be suspicioned as other than white. Their 
 children, however, although as white as Caucasians, were compelled to 
 attend the negro school. 
 
 And so I might enumerate hundreds of similar cases if space would 
 permit. 
 
 This class of people are placed in the most critical social strata 
 imaginable neither black nor white, and yet both. 
 
 Like Booker T. Washington and Professor DuBois, they cling 
 to the negro side because of the prejudice that white people have forced 
 upon them. In case of race riot, however, the mulattoes, siding with 
 negroes, lending keener wits and higher intelligence, cause more trouble. 
 
 Occasionally some of the octoroons, or those containing still less 
 negro blood, "go over to white," or "cross the line," and pass for white 
 
31 
 
 people, but they dare not openly associate with their colored relatives. 
 
 In such cases the negro relatives suppress the facts with apparent 
 glee, as though the negro thus got even with the dominant white man. 
 
 Some of the mulattoes "cross the line" by declaring themselves Mex 
 ican, Spanish, French or Armenian. The Creole negroes of Louisiana, 
 and, in fact, most of the mulattoes, have little difficulty in thus passing 
 unchallenged among the white people, where, as negroes, they would 
 be instantly ostracised. No one can estimate the number who have thus 
 "gone over to white," but wherever there is an advantage to be gained 
 in a business or social way the practice continues. Not long ago an 
 octoroon of New York, who holds a prominent political appointment 
 under the state government, entered a hotel in Baltimore, and, as the 
 negro porter took his suit case, he stared at him and then said : "Hello, 
 Bob, let me carry your satchel ; I won t give you away." While at din 
 ner in a hotel in Washington, D. C., a few days ago, I mentioned the 
 fact that that was the day on which Senator Foraker was to make his 
 speech in defense of the negro soldiers of Brownsville. A dark- 
 complected gentleman sitting at my right looked uneasy, but said 
 nothing. A gentleman from Alabama, sitting at the same table, ex 
 claimed : "Foraker is a fool and ought to be hung ! He is a nigger in 
 a white skin !" I afterwards learned that the dark-complected man 
 at my right was an octoroon. 
 
 In this unpleasant, almost tragic, state of existence mulattoes would 
 probably succumb to prejudice-feelings were it not for the care-free, 
 light-heartedness inherited from their negro ancestors. 
 
 The average white man is worried almost desperate upon loss of 
 position or decline in business, while the average negro without a cent 
 in his possession, and not knowing where his next meal is to come from, 
 will join his comrades in a hearty laugh and jig-dance on any street 
 corner or cross road. As Ray Stannard Baker says : "It is this ele 
 ment of light-heartedness, indeed, that accounts in no small degree for 
 the survival of the negro in this country." 
 
 While an admixture of white blood has proved advantageous to the 
 negro, it is naturally a detriment to the white race. As near as can be 
 estimated, about 28 per cent of the negroes of the United States have 
 white blood in their veins. Among these we find the more intelligent 
 class of negroes, foremost among whom are Booker T. Washington, 
 Dr. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, Charles W. Chesnutt, William Stan 
 ley Wraithwaite, H. O. Tanner, Judge Terrell and his wife. Messrs. 
 Chestnutt and Wraithwaite are the foremost literary men, and Mr. 
 Tanner the foremost painter of his race. Mrs. Terrell is a member of 
 the school board of Washington, D. C. 
 
 Professor Keane says : "No full-blooded negro has ever distin 
 guished himself." 
 
32 
 
 Thus far I have spoken only of the negro in general. Let us now 
 consider the educated class and one of the sources from which the 
 country looks for his improvement. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will 
 efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work 
 upon immortal minds, we engrave on those tablets something that will 
 brighten to all eternity." Daniel Webster. 
 
 THE: TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, AND NEGRO EDUCATION IN THE UNITED 
 
 STATES. 
 
 In his first message to the first Congress, Washington included this 
 paragraph : 
 
 "Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness, in 
 one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so im 
 mediately from the sense of the community as in ours, it is proportionately 
 essential." 
 
 That distinguished French writer, Monseigneur Dupenloup, beauti 
 fully says: 
 
 "That work of the educator bears a likeness to the work of the Creator. 
 If he does not create from nothingness, he draws from slumber and lethargy 
 the benumbed faculties, he gives life and movement and action to an exist 
 ence yet imperfect. In this light, an intellectual, moral and religious educa 
 tion is the highest possible human work. It is the continuation of the highest 
 and noblest work of divinity, the creation of souls." 
 
 On July 4th, 1881, Booker Taliaferro Washington, mulatto, who 
 had been born in slavery, and whose first name was given as a nickname 
 on account of his fondness for books, founded the Normal Industrial 
 Institute, of Tuskegee, Alabama. Booker Washington graduated 
 from the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, for colored per 
 sons, at Hampton, Virginia, in 1875 5 received his A. M. at Harvard, 
 1896, and LL.D. at Dartmouth, in 1901. 
 
 After graduating at Hampton he taught in that institution until he 
 founded the institute at Tuskegee and became its principal. Since then 
 he has written "Up From Slavery," "Sowing and Reaping," "Future 
 of American Negro," "Character Building," "Story of My Life," 
 "Working With Hands," "Tuskegee and Its People," and a few later 
 books. 
 
33 
 
 In speaking of work at Tuskegee, Mr. Washington says : 
 
 "It is comparatively easy to build up wornout soil and make it pro 
 ductive. It is infinitely harder to change a state of mind. To change in 
 grained habits and customs of a community or a people is a task requiring 
 time and patience. Before the school at Tuskegee was started I spent a 
 month traveling about the country getting acquainted with the people. What 
 I discovered, discouraging as it appeared at the time, was after all what 
 might have been expected. Some of the people I met were living practically 
 in the same places where they or their fathers or mothers had formerly 
 been slaves. The change which freedom had brought to them, important 
 as it was for them potentially, had made very little practical difference in 
 their lives. Their methods of work, their customs and habits of thought 
 had remained to all intents and purposes what they had been before emanci 
 pation. In some cases where they had used their freedom to get something 
 better the results were often at once ludicrous and pathetic. In the planta 
 tion districts I found large families, including the visitors, when any ap 
 peared, living and sleeping in a single room. I found them living on fat 
 pork and cornbread, and yet not infrequently I discovered in these cabins 
 sewing machines which no one knew how to use, which had cost as much 
 as $60-00, or showy clocks which had cost as much as $10.00 or $12.00, but 
 which never told the time. I remember a cabin where there was but one 
 fork on the table for the use of five members of the family and myself, 
 while in the opposite corner was an organ for which the family was paying 
 $60.00 in monthly installments. The truth that forced itself upon me was 
 that these people needed not only book learning, but knowledge of how to 
 live; they needed to know how to cultivate the soil, to husband their re 
 sources, to buy land and build houses, and make the most of their oppor 
 tunities. 
 
 "The same thing was true of students who applied for entrance at the 
 school. Many had themselves been teachers. Others had picked up various 
 scraps of learning here and there, of which they were, of course, very proud. 
 Some had studied many books. But their knowledge was, in many cases, 
 regarded as a toy or an ornament. 
 
 "That is to say, they perceived only a slight connection between education 
 [.r;d work. Education was rather a device for escaping work. Among the 
 institutions in which some had been trained a feeling prevailed that it was 
 beneath the dignity of an institution of learning to give time and attention 
 to the industries. I remember cases where students who were thinking 
 of entering the school at Tuskegee were warned that it would disgrace them 
 to enter a working school, or a school for poor boys and girls. 
 
 "During the first two or three years of the school I received constant re 
 quests from parents, and from the students themselves, that only book studi.es 
 be given, and there were not a few students who, if they did work, preferred 
 not to be seen working. 
 
 "It was not long before the school acquired a small tract of land. The 
 first live stock of which it became possessed was an old blind mule, the gift 
 of a white man living in the neighborhood. This represented the capital of 
 the school. 
 
 "At the close of the school year, in May, 1905, it owned 2,000 acres of land 
 and 83 buildings, large and small, used as dwellings, dormitories, class 
 rooms, shops and barns, which, together with the equipment, live stock, 
 stock in trade and other personal property, were valued at $831,895.32. This 
 does not include 22,000 acres of public land remaining unsold from the 
 25,000 granted by Congress, valued at $135,000, nor the endowment fund, 
 which amounted January i, 1906, to $1,275,664." 
 
34 
 
 In his report on the financial condition of the school for the year 
 ending May 31, 1907, Mr. Washington says: 
 
 "Since my last annual report, $256,154.39 have been added to the endow 
 ment fund, increasing it to $1,494,021.64. 
 
 "The value of the school property as represented in buildings, land, equip 
 ment, etc., not counting endowment, is now placed at $917,237.60. 
 
 "The largest single gift that has come to us during the year is that of 
 $231,072.00, left as a bequest by the late Mr. Albert Wilcox, of New York 
 city. The amount has been added to the endowment fund. 
 
 "During the year 1904-5 there were enrolled in the regular normal and 
 industrial departments 1,504 students 1,000 young men and 504 young 
 women an average attendance of 1,224. 
 
 "In 1906 a negro farmers newspaper was established at Tuskegee and has 
 a wide circulation among the negroes of the south. This is probably the 
 first local newspaper devoting itself exclusively to the affairs of a single 
 locality ever printed and published in the interest of a negro farming 
 community. 
 
 "It aims to take account of every effort for progress^ and improvement 
 made by an individual or a community in the county. The building of a 
 new school house in a community or the purchase of a mule by some indi 
 vidual in that community is an item of general interest. 
 
 "Six thousand students have come for a longer or shorter time under the 
 influence of the institution during the past twenty-five years. So far as I 
 have been able to learn, not one of the graduates has been convicted of a 
 crime, and less than 10 per cent of these are failures in the occupations 
 which they have adopted. Twenty-five Years of Tuskegee. 
 
 "A large number of race interests that for one reason or another seem 
 to center at Tuskegee Institute add considerably to the expense of conduct 
 ing the institution. 
 
 "Close examination will show, I think, that in a large sense these outside 
 movements are educational and have a race-building value. Among them 
 are the Tuskegee Negro Conference, with its numerous branches; the Na 
 tional Negro Business League, with over 400 branches, and the Colored 
 Department of the Alabama State Fair, as well as other racial matters, which 
 make necessary an enormous correspondence." 
 
 The average colored man sees money only once a year when he 
 sells his cotton. Booker T. Washington advised raising chickens and 
 vegetables, and, having something to sell, so as to get used to handling 
 money all the year, and then not to spend it for candy, red-wheeled bug 
 gies, organs, accordions, banjos, and cheap sewing machines. 
 
 Booker Washington further states in "Negro Self-Help" : 
 
 "A pup gets his eyes open in nine days, but it took us niggahs thirty-nine 
 years from mancipation to get our eyes open." 
 
 "The colored people support the liquor dispensaries. We say, The Lord 
 blesses these white people, while it is really the colored people who bless 
 them by buying whiskey of them. The white man will live in a big house 
 with ten rooms, well furnished, while the colored man lives in the bare, one- 
 roomed cabin, all because the colored man spends his nickles, dimes, and 
 quarters buying beer and whiskey from the white man. But that is not the 
 right kind of a blessing." 
 
35 
 
 Mr. Scott Bond, a negro of Crittenden, Arkansas, is quoted in the 
 same pamphlet in an address before a Tuskegee Negro Conference as 
 
 follows : 
 
 "Give a horse clover and a warm stable, and you can t drive that animal 
 away. Treat your sons properly, and they ll behave as well as a horse. 
 Too many negroes live like hogs ! Yes, sir, like hogs ! The girls don t know 
 how to sweep a room; and yet they want to ride in first-class cars, with 
 clean people. God forbid!" 
 
 Besides the Tuskegee Institute, which is the largest and most impor 
 tant negro school in the world, there are at present, according to the 
 Government Bureau of Education, 155 other industrial schools in the 
 United States for negroes (besides 254 high schools and secondary 
 schools). 
 
 We have spent about $800,000,000 on negro education since the war. 
 
 The people of Alabama in framing their laws have been especially 
 scrupulous in giving the colored race these advantages, and during the 
 last thirty years the southern states have expended $115,954,299 for 
 negro education. 
 
 The South is at present expending $4,000,000 annually to educate 
 the negro. 
 
 Among their most important industrial schools are the following: 
 Alabama Agricultural and Mechanic Arts College for Negroes, at Nor 
 mal, Alabama ; Delaware State College for Colored Students, at Dover ; 
 Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons, Frank 
 fort, Kentucky ; Princess Anne Academy for Colored Persons, Princess 
 Anne, Maryland; the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the 
 Colored Race, Greensboro, N. C. ; the Colored Normal Industrial, Agri 
 cultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina, Orangeburg, S. C. ; 
 Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Virginia, and 
 West Virginia Colored Institute, at Institute, W. Va. 
 
 In general the course of instruction given at these institutions is as 
 follows : 
 
 English Language. 
 
 Mathematics. 
 
 Political Economy. 
 
 Domestic Economy sewing, cooking, household management. 
 
 Drawing. 
 
 Bookkeeping. 
 
 Music. 
 
 Carpenter and Blacksmithing. 
 
 Bricklaying. 
 
 Dairying. 
 
 Harness-making. 
 
 Shoemaking. 
 
 Bible Training. 
 
36 
 
 President Janson of the Delaware College gives a course which he 
 calls "Mental and Moral Science." 
 
 During the school year of 1905-6 there were 7,663 negro boys and 
 13,959 negro girls studying industrial branches in these schools. 
 
 In the secondary and higher schools for colored people there were 
 1,730 boys and 177 girls studying professional courses. 
 
 Exclusive of the industrial, there were 1,429 male teachers and 2,648 
 female teachers in the public high and secondary higher schools for 
 colored people. 
 
 Including those attending public schools, there were in the Conti 
 nental United States 1,096,734 negroes attending school during the 
 census year of 1900. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 STATISTICS OF THE; NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 We will now turn to the latest census statistics, Bulletin 8, of the 
 United States Census Bureau, Washington, D. C., and see how free 
 dom, educational advantages, and association with the Anglo-Saxon 
 race has affected the negro. 
 
 Occupation 
 
 1900 
 
 1890 
 
 Increase 
 
 1890 to 1900 
 
 Per 
 Cent 
 
 Continental U. S. ( all occupations 
 
 3,992,337 
 
 3,073,164 
 
 919,173 
 
 29.9 
 
 Agricultural laborers 
 Farmers, planters and overseers 
 
 1,344,125 
 757 822 
 
 1,106,728 
 590,666 
 
 237,397 
 167,156 
 
 21.5 
 28.3 
 
 Laborers (not specified) 
 
 545,935 
 
 349,002 
 
 196,933 
 
 56.4 
 
 Servants and waiters 
 lyaunderers and laundresses 
 
 465,734 
 220,104 
 
 401,215 
 152,684 
 
 64,519 
 66,420 
 
 16.1 
 43.2 
 
 Draymen, hackmen and teamsters 
 Steam railroad employes 
 
 67,585 
 55,327 
 
 43,963 
 47,548 
 
 23,622 
 7,779 
 
 53.7 
 16.4 
 
 Miners and quarrymen 
 
 36,561 
 
 19,007 
 
 17,554 
 
 92.4 
 
 Saw and planing niill employes 
 Porters and helpers 
 
 33,266 
 28 977 
 
 17,276 
 11,694 
 
 15,990 
 17,283 
 
 92.6 
 147.8 
 
 Teachers and college instructors 
 Carpenters and joiners 
 
 21,267 
 21,113 
 
 15,100 
 22,581 
 
 6,167 
 1,468 
 
 40.8 
 *6.5 
 
 Barbers and hairdressers 
 
 18 942 
 
 17 480 
 
 2,462 
 
 14.1 
 
 Nurses and midwives 
 Clergymen 
 
 19,431 
 15 582 
 
 5,213 
 12 159 
 
 14,218 
 3,369 
 
 272.7 
 27.7 
 
 Tobacco and cigar factory 
 
 15,349 
 
 15,004 
 
 0,345 
 
 2.3 
 
 Hostlers 
 
 Masons 
 
 14,496 
 14 386 
 
 10,500 
 9 760 
 
 3,996 
 4,626 
 
 38.1 
 47.4 
 
 Dressmakers 
 
 12,569 
 
 7,586 
 
 4,983 
 
 65.7 
 
 Iron and steel workers 
 
 12,327 
 
 6,579 
 
 5,748 
 
 87.4 
 
 Seamstresses 
 
 11 537 
 
 11 846 
 
 309 
 
 X 2.6 
 
 Janitors and saxons 
 Housekeepers and stewards 
 
 11,536 
 10596 
 
 5,945 
 248 
 
 5,591 
 1,348 
 
 94.0 
 14.6 
 
 Fishermen and oystermen 
 
 10,427 
 
 10,071 
 
 356 
 
 3.5 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 10,100 
 
 . 10,988 
 
 888 
 
 X8.1 
 
 x decrease 
 
 A glance at this table shows us that the negro is pre-eminently a 
 servant, and the increase in porters, 147.8 per cent, janitors. 94.0 per 
 cent, general laborers 56.0 per cent, and nurses 272.0 per cent, between 
 1890 and 1900, as against the smaller per cent of increase in other lines 
 of work, indicates progress along manual labor rather than intellectual 
 lines. 
 
 The majority of those who attend the previously mentioned schools 
 and colleges obtain more or less knowledge, which, when rightly applied, 
 is of considerable service to them. The few who really become edu- 
 
38 
 
 cated are materially improved by it. Unfortunately, however, the 
 masses of the negroes of the South have hardly been influenced by 
 education. 
 
 A large per cent of almost every other nationality that comes to 
 America are thrifty, and thousands of instances could be cited where 
 they have come here with less than a hundred dollars, and are to-day 
 either millionaires or at least wealthy. 
 
 Nothing of this kind can be said of the negro. 
 
 In the entire negro population of the Continental United States, 
 8,333,994, there are only 757,822 farmers, planters and overseers com 
 bined. Of the remaining 7,576,172, only 3,234,515 are engaged in 
 gainful occupations. This leaves 4,341,657 unemployed. Of these 
 there are 2,418,413 children, and 261,403 negroes over 65 years old. 
 Eliminating these, we have 1,661,841 unemployed. Of those who have 
 employment, 1,159,900 are unemployed a part of each year. 
 
 Where the negro does engage in farming for himself he is pre 
 eminently a small farmer, cultivating 50 acres where the white farmer 
 has 160. 
 
 There is some evidence of a slight separation between the two 
 races in the South since 1890, the center of population for southern 
 negroes being 79 miles from that for southern whites in 1890 and 94 
 miles in 1900. 
 
 The rate of increase of negroes declined steadily through the nine 
 teenth century. 
 
 In the southern states the increase of the negroes in each decade 
 between 1800 and 1840 was more rapid than that of the whites ; since 
 1840 it has been less rapid. Between 1860 and 1900 southern negroes 
 increased 93.4 per cent and southern whites 134.9 per cent. In the 
 country districts of the South, excluding the population of the 242 cities 
 which had at least 2,500 inhabitants, both in 1890 and in 1900, the 
 negroes increased, 1890 to 1900, 16.4 per cent; in the 242 southern 
 cities, as a whole, they increased 21.7 per cent. Their increase in the 
 country districts was about two-thirds as rapid as that of the whites 
 in the same area ; their increase in southern cities was nearly five- 
 sixths as fast as that of the whites in the same cities. 
 
 In the largest southern cities, that is the five having at least 100,000 
 inhabitants, in 1900, the negro population increased 25.8 per cent, 1890 
 to 1900; the white population of the same cities increased only 20.8 per 
 cent. This is the only group of southern cities in which the rate of 
 increase of negro population exceeded that of the whites. In the 38 
 cities of this class in Continental United States the per cent of increase, 
 1890 to 1900, was 38 for negroes and 32.7 for whites. 
 
39 
 
 Illiteracy among negroes is about seven times as common as among 
 whites, and this ratio between the races has not altered materially in 
 the last ten years. 
 
 Illiteracy among southern negroes is more than four times that among 
 southern whites, and much more prevalent in rural districts than in 
 cities. Thus in the southern states nearly one-half (49.8 per cent) of 
 the negroes at least 10 years of age living outside cities having 25,000 
 or more inhabitants are illiterate. In the cities, however, less than one- 
 thircl (31.5 per cent) of the negroes are illiterate. Here they come in 
 closer contact with the whites. 
 
 The per cent of negro children who attend high schools in cities, 
 especially northern cities, is much larger than it is in rural districts 
 of the south. 
 
 The prevalence of illiteracy in the two races is shown in the follow 
 ing tables : 
 
 Race, Contjiiental U. 8. 
 
 1900 
 
 1890 
 
 Number Illiterate 
 
 Percent Illiterate 
 
 1900 
 
 1890 
 
 1900 
 
 1890 
 
 White Population 
 Negro 
 
 51,250,918 
 6,415,891 
 
 12,020,539 
 5,664,975 
 
 41,931,074 
 5,328,972 
 
 9,456,368 
 4,751,763 
 
 3,200,746 
 2,853,194 
 
 1,401,273 
 2,717,606 
 
 3,212,574 
 3,042,668 
 
 1,412,983 
 2,882,216 
 
 6.2 
 44.5 
 
 11.7 
 48.0 
 
 7.7 
 57.1 
 
 14.9 
 60.7 
 
 South Atlantic and South 
 Central Divisions 
 
 White Population 
 
 Negro 
 
 When we consider that there are included in these tables the thou 
 sands of illiterate foreign whites who migrate to the United States 
 every year, and bear in mind that there are as many schools for negroes 
 as for whites in the south in proportion to their population, and that the 
 schools of the northern and western states admit the negro on an equal 
 basis with the whites, we can readily see that to maintain their standard 
 the whites have a much greater proportion of illiteracy to overcome 
 than do the negroes. 
 
 The following table will show the per cent of increase of criminals in 
 the United States for both races : 
 
 Prisoners in County Jails, 1890 
 
 Native White 
 
 Total 
 
 9,794 
 
 Percent 
 
 literate 
 
 92.9 
 
 Illiterate 
 
 4.4 
 
40 
 
 Prisoners in County Jails, 1890 
 
 Negro 
 
 Total 
 
 Percent 
 
 I4terate% 
 
 Illiterate % 
 
 Pure 
 
 Mixed 
 
 5,497 
 
 .078 
 
 62.1 
 
 31.4 
 
 4,539 
 
 958 
 
 To avoid obtaining an erroneous idea from this table it is necessary 
 to note distinction between mere literacy and education. 
 Educated negroes are the least criminal. 
 
 Prisoners in Penitentiaries 
 
 White 
 
 Negro 
 
 1900 
 1904 
 
 23,095 
 86,833 
 
 .03% 
 .108% 
 
 14,267 
 23,698 
 
 .2% 
 .263% 
 
 10,884 
 
 3,383 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Percent Colored among 
 prisoners committed during 1904 
 
 Percent Colored in 
 general population 
 
 Continental U S 
 
 16 4 
 
 12.1 
 
 North Atlantic Division 
 
 6.9 
 
 1.9 
 
 South Atlantic Division . . 
 
 64.4 
 
 35.8 
 
 
 13 4 
 
 2 1 
 
 South Central Division 
 
 60.2 
 
 30.3 
 
 
 8.3 
 
 5.3 
 
 
 
 
 These figures would be changed materially if the large number of 
 negro criminals of the southern states were included who never reach 
 a prison, but who are lynched by mob. 
 
 Three-tenths of the negroes are found in the southern South Atlantic 
 states, nearly three-tenths more in the eastern South Central and nearly 
 two-tenths in the western South Central. These three regions contain 
 over three- fourths (77.7 per cent) of the entire negro population of 
 the United States. The Western states and the New England states 
 have the smallest number, only i per cent of the negroes being found 
 in these regions, which contain 12.8 per cent of the total population. 
 
41 
 
 
 
 1900 
 
 
 State 
 
 Native 
 White 
 
 Negro 
 
 Total In 
 cluding 
 Foreign 
 Whites 
 
 Maine 
 New Hampshire 
 Vermont 
 Massachusetts 
 
 692,226 
 410.791 
 342,771 
 2,769,764 
 
 1,319 
 662 
 
 826 
 31,974 
 
 694,466 
 411,588 
 243,641 
 2,805,346 
 
 Rhode Island 
 Connecticut 
 New York- 
 
 419,050 
 892,424 
 7,156,881 
 
 9,092 
 15,226 
 90,232 
 
 428,556 
 908,420 
 7,268 294 
 
 New Jersey 
 Pennsylvania... 
 
 1,812,317 
 6,141,664 
 
 69,844 
 156,845 
 
 1,883,669 
 6,302,315 
 
 Maryland 
 Delaware 
 
 952,424 
 153,977 
 
 335,064 
 30,697 
 
 1,188,044 
 184,735 
 
 Virginia.. 
 
 1,192,855 
 
 660,722 
 
 1,854 184 
 
 West Virginia 
 North Carnlina . 
 
 915,233 
 1,263,603 
 
 43,499 
 624,469 
 
 958,800 
 1,893,810 
 
 South Carolina 
 Georgia 
 
 557,807 
 1,181,294 
 
 782,321 
 1,034,813 
 
 1,340,316 
 2,216,331 
 
 Florida 
 Alabama 
 Mississippi 
 
 279,333 
 1,001,152 
 641,200 
 
 230,730 
 827,307 
 907,630 
 
 528,542 
 1,828,497 
 1,551,270 
 
 Kentucky 
 Tennessee 
 Ohio.. .. 
 
 1,862,309 
 1,540,186 
 4 060 204 
 
 284,706 
 480,243 
 96 901 
 
 2,107,174 
 2,020,616 
 4,157 545 
 
 Indiana 
 Illinois 
 Michigan 
 
 2,458,502 
 4,734,873 
 2,398,563 
 
 57,505 
 85,078 
 15,816 
 
 2,516,462 
 4,821.550 
 2,420,982 
 
 Wisconsin 
 Minnesota 
 Iowa. 
 
 2,057,911 
 1,737,036 
 2 218,667 
 
 2,542 
 4,959 
 12 693 
 
 2,069,042 
 1,751,394 
 2 231 853 
 
 Missouri. 
 
 2,944,843 
 
 161,234 
 
 3,106,665 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 944 580 
 
 336 856 
 
 1 313 564 
 
 lyouisiana 
 
 729,612 
 
 650,840 
 
 1,381,625 
 
 Texas 
 
 2,426,669 
 
 620,722 
 
 3,048,710 
 
 Oklahoma 
 
 367,524 
 
 18,831 
 
 398,331 
 
 Kansas 
 
 1,416,319 
 
 52,003 
 
 1,470,495 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 1 056 526 
 
 6 269 
 
 1 066 300 
 
 South Dakota 
 North Dakota 
 
 380,714 
 311,712 
 
 465 
 
 286 
 
 401,570 
 319,146 
 
 Montana 
 Idaho.. . 
 
 226,283 
 154,495 
 
 1,523 
 ?93 
 
 243,329 
 161,772 
 
 Wyoming 
 Utah 
 Colorado 
 New Mexico 
 Arizona 
 
 89,051 
 272,465 
 529,046 
 180,207 
 92,903 
 
 940 
 672 
 8,570 
 1,610 
 
 1,848 
 
 92,531 
 276,749 
 539,700 
 195,310 
 222,931 
 
 Nevada 
 
 35 405 
 
 134 
 
 42 335 
 
 California 
 Oregon 
 
 1,402,727 
 394,582 
 
 11,045 
 1,105 
 
 1,485,053 
 413,536 
 
 Washington 
 
 496 304 
 
 2,514 
 
 518 103 
 
 Alaska 
 
 30,493 
 
 166 
 
 63,592 
 
 More than three-tenths of the entire negro population of the country 
 are living in the three adjoining states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mis 
 sissippi. These, together with the adjacent Atlantic coast states of 
 Virginia and North and South Carolina, and the two gulf states of 
 Louisiana and Texas, are the only states each having over half a million 
 negroes in 1900. Taken together, these eight states contain nearly 
 seven-tenths of all of the negroes in the country. The states with the 
 smallest r. umber of negroes ?re, as a rule, those at the greatest distance 
 from these states. Thus there are nineteen of the fifty states and 
 
42 
 
 territories which have less than 10,000 negroes each, and contain to 
 gether less than two two-hundredths of the negro population of the 
 United States, although having more than one-eighth of the total 
 population. 
 
 There are 55 counties in the United States in each of which at least 
 three- fourths of the population are negroes; 19 in Mississippi, n in 
 Alabama, 8 in Louisiana, 5 in Arkansas, 5 in Georgia, 4 in South Caro 
 lina, 2. in Florida, and I in Virginia. This shows clearly that the great 
 region of predominant negro population lies along the lower Missis 
 sippi, where 29 of these 55 counties are situated. 
 
 In the north and west the negro is almost as pre-eminently a denizen 
 of cities as in the south he is a denizen of country districts. In the 
 north and west seven-tenths of the negroes and only half the whites live 
 in cities having at least 2,500 inhabitants. The difference is most 
 marked in cities having at least 100,000 inhabitants. Such cities in 
 clude less than one-fourth of the whites and more than one-third of 
 the negroes. 
 
 Cities of the United States having over 30,000 negroes : 
 
 Cities of the United States having over 30,000 negroes. 
 
 Washington 86,702 
 
 Baltimore 79,258 
 
 New Orleans 77,714 
 
 Philadelphia 62,613 
 
 New York 60,666 
 
 Memphis 49,9*0 
 
 Louisville 39,^39 
 
 Atlanta 35,727 
 
 St. Louis 35,5i6 
 
 Richmond 32,230 
 
 Chicago 30,150 
 
 Nashville 30,044 
 
 The following table shows the increase of negroes and of whites in 
 the 38 cities of the United States having at least 100,000 inhabitants 
 in 1900 and in the rest of the country : 
 
 Continental 
 United States 
 38 Cities 
 
 Population 
 
 Increase of Popula 
 tion. 1890 to 1900 
 
 1900 
 
 1890 
 
 Number 
 
 Per Cent 
 
 Negro 
 
 668,254 
 13 .507,327 
 
 484,346 
 10.181,905 
 
 183,908 
 3,325,422 
 
 38.0 
 32.7 
 
 White 
 
 
 Remainder of 
 Country 
 
 Negro 8.165,740 
 
 White 53.301,869 
 
 7,004,330 
 M4.919.353 
 
 1,161,410 
 8,382,516 
 
 16.6 
 18.7 
 
43 
 
 These figures show that in the large cities of the country, as a whole, 
 negroes are increasing at a somewhat higher rate than whites. This 
 is the more noteworthy, both because in the country, as a whole, and 
 in the country outside these cities, the increase of negroes is somewhat 
 slower than that of whites, and, also, because 33 of these 38 large cities 
 lie outside of the southern states, in which nearly nine-tenths of the 
 negroes live, so that the rapid increase of their negro population must 
 involve, in many cases, long-distance migration. This has also to a 
 great extent been due to the importation of negro laborers by large 
 manufacturing firms of the northern cities. When discharged by such 
 firms they remain in the north. The following is an example of negro 
 migration: On August 16, 1893, Rev. J. F. Davidson (colored) ar 
 rived in Tacoma, Washington, from New Orleans with 25 negroes for 
 the purpose of colonization. 
 
 The negro race has a much larger proportion of children than the 
 white race. Their death rate is also much higher, as shown by the 
 following table : 
 
 Registration Area, 1900 
 
 Race 
 
 Population 
 
 Number 
 of Deaths 
 
 Death Rate 
 
 White 
 Negro . 
 
 27,555,800 
 1 180 546 
 
 475,640 
 35.710 
 
 17.3 
 30 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 In Continental United States, 4,394 negro children under 15 years 
 of age, over five-sixths of them girls, were reported as married. Ex 
 cluding the children under 15 years of age, there were, in 1900, 53 per 
 cent of the negro population of the United States reported married and 
 55.9 per cent of the white population reported married. 
 
 From these reliable statistics it is obvious that 
 
 1. The occupation of the negro has varied only in a small degree dur 
 ing the past forty years. 
 
 2. Their birth rate and death rate is higher. 
 
 3. Illiteracy is gradually being overcome by the more progressive. 
 
 4. Amalgamation is gradually taking place between the two races. 
 
 5. The percentage of crimes among negroes continues to increase. 
 
 6. The center of the negro population remains in the South, and over 
 nine-tenths of the colored population of the United States has remained 
 in the southern states. 
 
 Upon careful consideration one could only expect these natural re 
 sults. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 OCCUPATION OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 
 
 I. The negro as a race is naturally indolent. They inherited this 
 trait, and we will not criticise them for being so. We will merely 
 comment on it in connection with other characteristics. In the north 
 ern and western states, where the percentage of negroes is small, they 
 are more progressive than in the southern states. The negroes of the 
 latter seem to prefer picking up coal along a railroad track, fishing, 
 picking berries, or hunting all day for a rabbit or coon than to work 
 steadily at any occupation. 
 
 From all I have been able to observe, comparatively few negroes 
 work steadily the year around. The statistics show that of all those 
 who have employment, there are on an average 1,159,900 unemployed a 
 part of each year. 
 
 Permanent progress is only found in continued industry or employ 
 ment, or in thrift and practice of moral obligations. This seems to be 
 most lacking ki the negro race. 
 
 Many of the southern whites employ negroes simply because they 
 can get no one else. Their efficiency as day laborers is far below that 
 of the whites, and far below that of slavery times. People of every 
 southern state tell me that there is little choice between leaving their 
 work undone and hiring average negro help. A few personal illustra 
 tions may serve to explain this statement. I employed at various times 
 within a year eight different negro women and seven negro men. In 
 every instance their work had to be looked over and in many cases done 
 over after them. The women would burn clothes when ironing, leave 
 corners dirty when scrubbing, or cleaning, waste more in the kitchen 
 than their wages amounted to, accomplish about half as much as the 
 average white person, and leave a pungent odor on every piece of cloth 
 ing or material in the kitchen that would absorb it. 
 
 They seemed to regard their work in a subconscious state of mind 
 most of the time. 
 
 When I left the men to saw wood they usually began about 10 
 o clock A. M., and, although the weather was mild, being in October, 
 they always built a fire by which to keep warm while sawing. When 
 ever any of their friends came along they stopped sawing, lit cigarettes, 
 and talked for hours at a time. When pay-day came they were disap- 
 

 TYPICAL SOUTHERN NEGRO 
 
45 
 
 pointed with the wages promised, saying that they received more at a 
 previous place. I inquired at the place they mentioned, and the gentle 
 man said he did not give them as much. 
 
 I know of several society women of Washington, D. C., who were 
 in the habit of sending their negro girls ov.t on the streets with their 
 babies in their buggies until they discovered them in a dingy negro shanty 
 being amused by a dozen or more shiny-faced youngsters or having no 
 company at all. Some of them were left in such places for hours, when 
 their parents thought they were enjoying fresh air. 
 
 The negro girls of one community in which we lived had a habit of 
 carrying home every night a supply of food for their families or friends. 
 They could not be induced to remain over night at the place where they 
 worked, however comfortable the quarters prepared for them. They 
 flocked to a settlement where they lived in poorly furnished, dirty 
 houses, and from two to fourteen in a room. In this way they spread 
 gossip and disease, and lived from the white people s tables. This way 
 of living is common among negroes in all of the southern states. 
 
 In communities where negro house servants are employed few mod 
 ern conveniences for facilitating work are to be found. The negroes 
 use a scrub board and scrub brush, because they never heard of a 
 washing machine or mop. They knead dough with their fists, for they 
 never used a bread mixer. The white ladies who employ them do not 
 realize the need of improved facilities, because they don t do the work 
 themselves. Consequently, the most obsolete methods prevail where 
 negro servants are employed exclusively. In other words, such people 
 live in large, beautiful houses devoid of most of the conveniences of 
 life. 
 
 A well-known colonel of Richmond, Virginia, recently learned that 
 his negro servant was in the habit of carrying a plate of choice victuals 
 up to her room every morning for her husband, who had no occupation 
 other than to come in through the back door at that time, an early hour 
 in the morning, before the family was up. 
 
 The colonel accordingly prepared a plate of pine tar, raw cornmeal 
 and molasses, and with it met his servant carrying the usual plate of 
 breakfast upstairs to her husband. He said: "Sally, I ll take it up 
 this morning," and took it from her. He then set it away, sent her 
 downstairs, and took the mixture he had prepared into the room where 
 her husband was waiting. The negro looked at him and said : "Don t 
 believe I m hungry this morning, boss." The colonel pulled out a re 
 volver, and, pointing it at him, replied: "Eat every bit of it, or I ll 
 buttonhole you." He ate it without further protest, after which the 
 colonel gave him a whipping with a little rawhide, kicked him out, and 
 advised him never to return. 
 
46 
 
 A president of a well-known southern university was paying his 
 butcher bill at the end of a certain month in 1905, and noticed a charge 
 of porterhouse steak in several places on the bill. Being unable to 
 recall having purchased any such steak during that month, he asked 
 his colored servant about it. The latter replied : "Oh, that was for my 
 wife at home; she can t eat anything but porterhouse; her teeth are 
 poor." 
 
 A negro deliveryman last September spilled three gallons of kero 
 sene which I had ordered, and, after paying for the entire bill, I noticed 
 the empty can. He promised to bring the kerosene next day, so I al 
 lowed him to keep the money. He put the money in his pocket, brought 
 the kerosene the next day, made out another bill, and turned in both as 
 unpaid. At the end of the month we were charged up with the entire 
 six gallons on those two dates. His proprietor had never heard of the 
 circumstance until I explained it. 
 
 The negro does not seem to be altogether responsible for his deeds. 
 His head is undeveloped in the forehead where brain capacity is indi 
 cated, and strongly developed in the sensory points indicating lust 
 passion. 
 
 The inherited instincts of sensuality and stealing are so pronounced 
 in negroes that they are for the most part very religious, and at the 
 same time frequently find the neighboring chicken roosts and water 
 melon patches after night. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Tucker said at the American Church Congress : 
 
 "I have known negroes to steal from each other in the midst of prayer- 
 meeting, and rob hen roosts on the way home." 
 
 Sensuality seems to go hand in hand with religious superstition in 
 the negro. 
 
 I have heard negroes trying to persuade others to accept religion, and 
 a few minutes afterward swear in the most vile terms imaginable. 
 
 I witnessed a recent negro revival meeting in which the stovepipe was 
 knocked down by the commotion of the shouting, jumping participants. 
 The minister said : "Pick it up, Broder Jones, de Lawd won t let it 
 burn yo." The brother negro addressed slowly picked the stovepipe up 
 and dropped it a great deal quicker, exclaiming: "De hell he woi t!" 
 
 Dr. Shufeldt says: "At southern negro camp-meetings unbridled 
 lust is a common practice." 
 
 It is a pity that more of this general class of negroes do not attend 
 one of the industrial schools, or practice Booker T. Washington s 
 teachings. 
 
 As Mr. Washington says, their efficiency is frequently enhanced by 
 the whiskey habit. When wages are high they need only work half as 
 long to obtain enough spending money as when wages are low. Since 
 
47 
 
 many of them require little more than that amount, high wages in such 
 instances are a detriment. Drunkenness has been very prevalent 
 among the southern negroes, and it was not uncommon before local 
 option prevailed to see them half drunk while working. 
 
 There are still a few out-of-the-way places in local option districts 
 where men may sneak away and obtain whiskey, but these are van 
 ishing. 
 
 The individual, race, or nation is respected as it becomes self-respect 
 ing, and its advancement is assured when an impulse to become self- 
 respecting is awakened. This impulse has not been very forcibly dem 
 onstrated among the negro race, as a whole, by the statistics or obser 
 vation. 
 
 Many negroes have been employed in responsible positions, but com 
 paratively few have retained them with any degree of success. In the 
 various government departments I know of twelve negroes who hold 
 positions as messengers and clerks. Some of them have been school 
 teachers, and all have attended a high school or university. Not one 
 of them can be depended upon to construct a correct sentence. They 
 frequently do their work correctly, but whenever it involves much 
 thinking it has to be looked over by others before being filed. 
 
 There are at present thirty-eight negroes on the police force in 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 I have also known negro policemen in Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, 
 Lincoln, and Denver. They are, on the whole, less active and cour 
 ageous than the white police. They will arrest a boy or try to main 
 tain order under ordinary circumstances, but in case of emergency, or 
 real danger, they will avoid it, and allow an armed white man to escape 
 every time rather than face his pistol. They render the best service 
 among the negro districts of Washington, St. Louis, or any other city, 
 for they understand their own race better. 
 
 Negroes were never known to rob a railroad train or commit a daring 
 assault. Their crime usually consists of snatching a purse from or 
 assaulting a lady. 
 
48 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON SHOULD EXTEND TO 
 
 LIBERIA. 
 
 Among the 1,666,799 people of mixed blood there is only one 
 Booker T. Washington. Several others have risen to some degree of 
 fame, for which they deserve credit, but none of them have ever ap 
 proached him in genius, skill, or practical knowledge. This he has 
 inherited from his white father. Compared to some of the presidents 
 of our leading universities, such as Charles Eliot of Harvard, Wood- 
 row Wilson of Princeton, J. G. Schurman of Cornell, Cyrus Northrop 
 of Minnesota, E. Benjamin Andrews of Nebraska, and David Starr 
 Jordon of Leland Stanford, he is at the foot of the list. 
 
 He is, however, an exception to his race. He established and main 
 tains the best negro school in the world. Unfortunately, he cannot 
 reach the masses of his people. Great men may be picked from almost 
 every race. An example of this was illustrated by Mr. V. K. Welling 
 ton Koo, a Chinese student of Columbia University, who on February 
 28, 1908, debated with the Columbia team against Cornell and was 
 instrumental in winning the debate. 
 
 Mr. Washington is shrewd enough to employ as instructors in his 
 school only those who have a large proportion of white blood. His 
 secretary, Emmett J. Scott ; treasurer. Warren Logan, and other mem 
 bers of the faculty possess apparently only a trace of negro blood. 
 These men Mr. Washington has selected from the best of the negro 
 race in America, and they are doing all in their power to uplift the 
 remainder of their race. In their best efforts, however, they are ob 
 viously far below the standard of the whites in education, as in other 
 things. I will give two examples to illustrate this fact. 
 
 At the Nebraska State University, where I attended from 1900 to 
 1904, 1 became acquainted with a negro who recited in one of my classes 
 three days of the week for one semister. He was one of the most po 
 lite boys I ever met, and was highly respected. But he failed in many 
 of his examinations, and was a poor student in every branch of work. 
 He went to Tuskegee and taught there for a time and with apparent 
 success. In answer to my inquiry regarding his work, Mr. Wash 
 ington wrote: "Mr. - , of Nebraska, did very creditable work in 
 
 our English department." 
 
49 
 
 At the Kansas State Agricultural College, where I was instructing 
 in 1905 and 1906, I was obliged to flunk a colored boy who simply 
 couldn t grasp enough of the subject to get a passing mark. Three 
 months after this examination he had charge of a branch of the same 
 work at Tuskegee Institute. These boys, although below the average 
 white student, are capable of teaching the average of their race as much 
 as the latter are capable of learning, and we will not discredit the good 
 work they are doing. 
 
 Booker T. Washington, as the leader of his race, has more influence 
 upon the negroes than any other man. The educated class of his race 
 in the United States look to him for advice on all matters of importance. 
 In almost every respect his advice and instruction is of a high order. 
 On one topic, however, he differs from many other students of the race 
 question. He tells them : "We are here to stay ; we are not going to 
 colonize in Cuba, Liberia, or any place else, but we ll stay right here." 
 
 Mr. Washington s work is one of noble aims and should not be 
 limited to the United States. A branch of it should be established in 
 Liberia. 
 
 He could induce hundreds of his graduates and those of other negro 
 schools to go over there and teach their relatives who have never had 
 the advantages of civilization. 
 
 Henry M. Stanley says there is space enough in one section of the 
 Upper Congo basin to locate double the number of negroes of the 
 United States, without disturbing a single tribe of the aborigines now 
 inhabiting it. 
 
 George W. Williams, an educated mulatto, has written a very com 
 mendable history of the negro, in which he states : "The negroes with 
 whom the slavers were supplied represent the dangerous, the destitute, 
 the diseased classes of African society. Pathologically he is weak, 
 sickly, and short-lived. His legs are slender almost to calfless; the 
 head is developed in the direction of passion, while the whole form is 
 destitute of symmetry. He spends his days in sloth and his nights in 
 debauchery. He smokes hashish until he stupefies his senses or falls 
 into convulsions ; he drinks palm wine till he brings on a loathsome dis 
 ease ; he abuses his children ; stabs his poor brute of a wife, whose 
 hands keep him from starvation, and makes a trade of his offspring; he 
 swallows up his youth in premature vice ; he lingers through a manhood 
 of disease, and his tardy death is hastened by those who no longer care 
 to find him food." 
 
 With such conditions existing in his native country, where so much 
 missionary work is needed, America would like to see Booker T. 
 Washington plant a colony and start a school over there. 
 
 Occasionally he has a few native Africans in school at Tuskegee who 
 are being educated to go back as missionaries, but the American-born 
 negro he retains within the borders of Continental United States. 
 
50 
 
 I never saw a negro who showed any patriotism for his fatherland, 
 however, and but few who display much patriotism to the United States. 
 
 We have seen from the degree of patriotism they displayed in the 
 reconstruction days in the South that as a race they are entirely in 
 capable of executive ability in Anglo-Saxon governmental affairs. 
 They may be capable after all these years of contact with the latter 
 race to govern themselves if colonized with mulattoes as their leaders, 
 for it must be remembered that the darkest American negro is far 
 superior to the native African. 
 
 Then those who are complaining about ill-treatment at the polls 
 may vote without being molested. 
 
 The subject of increase in crime among negroes has been discussed 
 under previous heads. Suffice it to say, however, that when a race of 
 people in their stage of development are placed by law on a social and 
 legal equality with another race so far in advance of them as is the 
 Anglo-Saxon, and then suppressed by the superior race in opposition to 
 that law, their vicious traits are naturally brought out. As long as 
 this social condition exists we can expect nothing else. 
 
J 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Two FACTIONS AMONG THE NEGROES OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In the South the most intelligent and most educated negroes are, gen 
 erally speaking, the leaders of their race, but in northern cities some of 
 the ablest negroes will have nothing to do with the masses of their own 
 people or with racial movements ; they hold themselves aloof, assert 
 ing that there is no color line, and if there is, there should not be. 
 Their business and their associations are largely with white people, and 
 they cling passionately to the maintenance of such relationship. 
 
 In the South a general setting apart of negroes as such is being effected 
 on an immeasurably wider scale. By disfranchisement they are being sep 
 arated politically, the "Jim Crow" laws set them apart socially and 
 physically, and the hostility of white labor in some callings pushes them 
 aside in industrial activities. But the South presents no such striking 
 contrasts as the North, because no southern negroes were ever accorded 
 a high degree of citizenship by the whites of that section. 
 
 Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, is not a leader of men, 
 as is Booker T. Washington. He is rather a promulgator of ideas. 
 While Washington is building a great educational institution and organ 
 izing the practical activities of the race, DuBois is the lonely critic hold 
 ing up ideals. DuBois is the foremost of an element in the negro race 
 who claim equal rights socially, politically, and in every other respect. 
 Booker T. Washington is the leader of the more progressive element 
 who are following the advice of the southern whites and allowing indus 
 try to take precedence of politics and discrimination. 
 
 Mr. William M. Trotter, the mulatto editor of the Boston Guardian, 
 and a follower of the DuBois doctrine, violently denounces Booker T. 
 Washington, and President Roosevelt. This paper advises the North 
 to again take up arms against the South to punish them for their posi 
 tion pn the negro question. It breathes a spirit of prejudice. He de 
 nounces Washington as a "Jim Crowist," and President Roosevelt on 
 account of his action regarding the Brownsville riot. 
 
 Three years ago Mr. Washington went to Boston to address a col 
 ored audience in Zion Church of that city. Mr. Trotter and his friends 
 scattered cayenne pepper on the rostrum and created such a disturbance 
 that the meeting broke up. Mr. Trotter went to jail for the offense. 
 
52 
 
 The majority of the negro newspapers of the country, chief of which 1 
 is the New York Age, are supporters of Booker T. Washington and 
 his ideals. 
 
 The Astor House, a negro hotel, which is operated by negroes for 
 negro guests, has 200 rooms, with a telephone in each, a restaurant, and 
 other accommodations. Many of the colored people of the city are 
 opposed to this, because they think, as one negro expressed it, "The col 
 ored man must not draw the line himself if he don t want the white 
 man to." 
 
 A white woman sought to establish a help and rescue mission in 
 Boston for colored girls similar to those conducted for Jews, Italians, 
 and other nationalities in various cities of the country, and was vio 
 lently opposed on the ground that it set up a precedent for color dis 
 crimination. 
 
 A colored cigar manufacturer of St. Louis says he has the hardest 
 time to get a few dealers of his own race to handle his goods. 
 
 There are also several very good negro restaurants in St. Louis, but 
 twice as many negroes patronize white restaurants and lunch counters 
 of those vicinities to avoid color discrimination. 
 
 Everything that tends to separate the negro from the white is op 
 posed by this element among the colored people. 
 
 They fought the Jamestown Exposition because it had a Negro Build 
 ing, which they called the "]im Crow Annex." They fought the Na 
 tional Christian Endeavor Convention because the leaders could not 
 assure negro delegates exactly equal facilities in the hotels and res 
 taurants. 
 
 This element seems to be growing, although there are in mixed 
 schools in the North occasional requests by negroes for separate schools. 
 
 With the increasing number of negro students, prejudice has in 
 creased in the Chicago medical schools, until recently some of them 
 have, by agreement, been closed to colored graduate students. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OPINIONS OF EMINENT NORTHERN MEN BEFORE AND AFTER HAVING 
 VISITED THE SOUTH. 
 
 The center of the negro population remains in the South, and 
 over nine-tenths of the colored population has remained in the south 
 ern states. They are more adapted to the climate and conditions there 
 than anywhere else in the United States. 
 
 As a northern man I can frankly say, as I have heard hundreds of 
 others : "We of the North have no conception of the real situation until 
 we visit the South. We cannot appreciate the attitude of the southern 
 whites until we live down there among the negroes." 
 
 Hon. William Jennings Bryan made the following statement in 
 April, 1908: 
 
 "Under the laws disfranchising the negro by demanding educa 
 tional requirements in the South he has an opportunity to get within 
 the law by coming within the qualification. The negro in the South 
 has the protection of living under the laws made for the black man 
 and the white man alike, but the Filipinos are kept under laws made 
 for them and not for us. 
 
 "The white man in the South has disfranchised the negro ia self- 
 protection, and there is not a Republican in the North who would not 
 have done the same thing under the same circumstances. Those Re 
 publicans in the North who dispute this or say that they are different 
 from the South are either not frank with themselves or are assuming 
 what is not trv;e. The white men in the South will not allow a few 
 men to use the solid black vote to further their own financial and 
 political interests. And that is what was being done. 
 
 "I want to say right now that the white men in the South are giving 
 the negroes better laws than the negroes would give to the white men if 
 they were making the laws. Why, right in Washington they disfran 
 chised every negro, even if they had to disfranchise some white men 
 to do it. The white men of the South are determined that the negro 
 will and shall be disfranchised everywhere it is necessary to prevent 
 the recurrence of the horrors of carpet-bag rule." 
 
 In 1878 William Morrow, of Chesterville, Ohio, wrote in the Tran 
 script of the Ohio Wesleyan University : 
 
54 
 
 "In early life I had conceived a horror of slavery in all its forms, and 
 had long held to the opinion that the negro, once free, and having a fair 
 opportunity, would surely make rapid progress toward becoming a good and 
 honorable citizen. I expected a good deal more than I have found." 
 
 After narrating a variety of experiences through the South, he says : 
 
 "As a rule the negroes do not learn as well as do children of Ohio. When 
 it comes to reasoning they usually fail. I had in my charge a class in arith 
 metic that had been half way through the book; upon examination I found 
 that not a single one of them could work an example in long division. Their 
 anger knows no bounds, often attacking a teacher in open school. They 
 never plead guilty, and have an excuse for any and all occurrences." 
 
 Mr. William Thorn wrote in the Globe Review of New York city in 
 the issue of December, 1900: 
 
 "During the spring of 1895, and after more than thirty years of sincere, 
 old-fashioned abolition sympathy with the negro race, I made two visits to 
 several of our southern states, with the following results : I. All my old aboli 
 tion sympathies vanished like so many scattered sophistries, for which I had 
 no further use. 2. The negroes of this country are more than ever a shift 
 less, unteachable, immoral race, incapable of any true civilization in our land, 
 and unworthy of American citizenship. 3. I was convinced that inside the 
 next thirty years the South would be obliged to re-enslave, kill, or export 
 the bulk of its negro population." 
 
 Rev. Clayton Smith, of Akron, Ohio, after spending several months 
 in active missionary work in the South, casually remarked : 
 
 "Well, if the Northern people were placed in the South for a while, they 
 would treat the negroes just as the southerners do." 
 
 I will quote a few of my personal friends on this phase of the sub 
 ject, all of whom are Northern men, but who have visited or lived long 
 enough in the South to acquaint themselves with conditions there. 
 
 A prominent business man of Washington, D. C., told me only a few 
 days ago that, although he was raised in New York and never had any 
 ill-feeling toward the negroes until he visited several months in the 
 South, nothing now excited his disgust and anger quicker than a dis 
 cussion of the negro question. He said : 
 
 "I am a church member, but I can t keep from swearing at those d coons 
 when I discuss the subject." 
 
 Dr. E. M. Santee, of Cortland, N. Y., told me that after traveling a 
 few months in Maryland and Virginia he saw enough of negro life to 
 sicken him of their presence. He said: 
 
 "I cannot discuss the subject without saying too much. I will merely say, 
 it is the white man s burden." 
 
55 
 
 Mr. C. H. Kelley, of Belle Plaine, Iowa, remarked to me a few 
 months ago: 
 
 "I wish my Iowa friends could see what I have seen of the negroes while 
 at the Jamestown Exposition. The people vfho think so much of them ought 
 to have to live with them a while." 
 
 MONTGOMERY, ALA., March 22, 1908. 
 
 MY DEAR PROFESSOR: It is hard for me to compare the southern negroes 
 with western negroes. 
 
 The negroes here are not as well educated and their morals are much 
 lower; in fact, I would say that coons here have no morals at all. I did 
 not look upon negroes in Kansas as I do here. Up there I thought them 
 human. Here I class them just a little above animals, where they belong. 
 The intermarriage and illegal association with the lower class of whites is 
 something frightful. I did not conceive of such a thing until I came here. 
 
 A great many prominent business men support colored women. They do 
 not live with them, but have illegal associations, and of course if the busi 
 ness men have such relations the less prominent men do likewise. In the 
 rural districts old white bachelors frequently live with negro women. Con 
 sequently a yellow people in the South are quite numerous, and the fin&l 
 outcome is going to be a serious matter some day. 
 
 The negro is becoming so diseased that I believe they would die off if 
 white blood were kept out. 
 
 Of course, this goes hand in hand with criminality. Very few negroes 
 can be trusted here. They never lose a chance to steal, and in lying they 
 are talented. My brother was on the grand jury recently, and he said that 
 three-fourths of the cases had to do with women, chiefly negroes. 
 
 Negro labor is gradually becoming more inferior. They are not to be 
 depended upon. They are best fitted for work that does not require skill 
 or thought. We employ negro help entirely because we can get no other. 
 They are making progress in no line except criminality. If left to them 
 selves they would soon become as they wer* originally. It is impossible 
 for anyone who has never lived here to fully appreciate conditions. I say 
 that the negro was better off in slavery. This may not meet with your 
 approval, however, but just come and see for yourself. 
 
 In spite of all this there is a great chance for development by hustling 
 business men. We have a plantation of 527 acres, bought four years ago 
 for $20 per acre, now worth $50. Real estate is advancing rapidly, and 
 northern people are moving in in large numbers. 
 
 I was over to Tuskegee last summer, and was greatly surprised at the 
 institution and university. I believe that school is O. K., and the students 
 are far above the average. Any slighting remarks about that negro college 
 are out of order. 
 
 Hoping that this information may be of service to you and that you may 
 find time to make us a visit in the near future, I am, 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 CHAS. S. JONES. K. A. C. 06. 
 
 DALLAS, TEXAS, April 14, 1908. 
 
 DEAR MR. MEUCK : I have your letter about the negro question. Sometime 
 when I see you I shall be able to dilate upon the subject and possibly to give 
 voice to some strong sentiments I have. I have been in the South now for 
 
56 
 
 over five years. Much of the time I have been traveling, and my work has 
 given me special opportunities to observe the negro animal in his various 
 aspects. As a result I have come to the conclusion that the negro is a moral, 
 physical, and social curse to this country. 
 
 He is a moral curse because he lowers the tone of business dealings. It 
 is necessary to deal with him frequently by force, to watch to prevent stealing 
 and to force work out of him. If he had his way he would work only 
 enough days in the week to make money to buy food until the next Monday 
 morning. 
 
 He is a physical curse because he is a stern reality and must be dealt with. 
 
 He is a social curse because the female of his species is ordinarily proud 
 to li i.ve intercourse with young white men. Many white men of line prom 
 ise get started along this road and waste the best years of their lives if 
 indeed they don t contract disease that is transmitted to their offspring. 
 
 The French cohabit regularly with the negroes. I have seen many a negro 
 who could talk nothing but French. As you are aware, the voting restric 
 tions are very diverse. The only act which restricts their voting in this state 
 is one requiring the payment of a one dollar poll tax six months in advance. 
 On account of the shiftlessness of the race a large percentage are eliminated 
 in this way. At the same time, there is no restriction on account of race, 
 because the undesirable white man is cut out at the same time. In fact, the 
 working of the law is excellent. It raises the class of voters considerably. 
 I believe it would be a good enactment in any state. 
 
 As I said in the beginning, this is a large subject. I could write a book 
 on it. Perhaps this will do for the present. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 W. D. HUNTER. 
 
 ORATION OF SOLON W. CUNNINGHAM, MANHATTAN. KANSAS. 
 
 Turn back with me in fancy to the year i620, and to the knoll rising 
 abruptly above the gentle decline stretching away towards the village of 
 Jamestown. We look out o er the cabin tops into the mysteries of an At 
 lantic sunrise. Wrapped in a mellow, golden glow, reflected back upon us 
 from white, dense clouds in the west, we gaze enraptured at the flashing, 
 changing splendors on that restless water stretching out beyond the horizon. 
 
 As we look, there breaks into our line of vision the white sails of a ship. 
 A ship ! We forget, at once, the sunrise and its splendors. From whence 
 does this craft come? The Golden Horn has been but eight days out of port. 
 The Cross Bar can no more than have left England on her return voyage. 
 The ship has been sighted by the villagers. Many are making their way 
 toward the seashore. Taking off to the north, the vessel, with sails reversed, 
 swings back and drops anchor in the harbor. 
 
 Eagerly the villagers watch every move made by the ship s crew. The 
 hold is uncovered. At the crack of a short club-like whip (a "slaver," we 
 hear someone remark,) black, half-naked people swarm up through the hold. 
 Partly in fear, and partly in the spirit of rebellion, they trample one another 
 in their efforts to reach the deck. Huddling to one side of the ship, they 
 are, as so many cattle, cut out, ten by ten, and brought ashore. With cowed, 
 sullen steps they are marched to the market place to await their purchase 
 by plantation owners. 
 
 Such was the coming of the Ethiopian into this Western Hemisphere. His 
 descendants to-day constitute a people eight million in numbers a people 
 who have contributed nothing to the world or to national advancement. The 
 one great shadow which clouds the future of the American Republic is the 
 approaching tragedy of the irrepressible conflict between the negro and the 
 white man in the development of our society. 
 
o/ 
 
 At the present rate of increase the negro will number sixty millions by 
 the end of this century. Think for a moment of what this means, and you 
 face the gravest problem which ever puzzled the brain of statesman or 
 philosopher. A problem of such proportions never before confronted the 
 white man in his recorded history. 
 
 Meet it and fight it to a finish. For more than one-half century it has 
 been pushed out into the future. Although our fathers spilled their heart s 
 blood upon many a battlefield to free the black man, they nevertheless thrust 
 the solution of this question from them. With doubled proportions it has 
 drifted down to us. How much farther are we going to let it drift? Are we 
 going to let it float upon the current of inaction, increasing in magnitude, for 
 our posterity to contend with? 
 
 Abraham Lincoln foresaw this tragedy when he wrote his emancipation 
 proclamation. At the close of the civil war he, recognizing the serious prob 
 lem which his proclamation had created, asked Congress for an appropriation 
 of a billion dollars to colonize the whole negro race. He never believed it 
 possible to assimilate him into our national life- No man ever expressed this 
 idea more clearly than did Lincoln when he said : "There is a physical dif 
 ference between the white and black man which I believe will forever forbid 
 them living together on terms of social and political equality." 
 
 What is this physical difference? Its secret lies in the gulf of thousands 
 of years of inherited progress which separates the child of the Aryan from 
 the child of the African. 
 
 Human history begins in the valley of the Nile. That land occupied by 
 the Egyptians has a history dating back from five thousand to seventeen 
 thousand years before Christ. In this long lapse of years we find an occa 
 sional record of the negro. 
 
 In that iabled valley God planted the Egyptian and the negro side by side. 
 Theirs were equal opportunities. The world was new. No man could teach 
 his neighbor, for he had nothing to lend. No man could better his neigh 
 bor s environment, for their environment were identical. 
 
 Here was the earth fresh from the hand of the Creator. On her restlessly 
 tossed the mysterious sea, and far away into the inky blackness of the night 
 giiir.ed. with their lesson spread, the uncounted stars. All the^e wero to 
 be studied; all were to be conquered. No color line was drawn, and the 
 door of hope swung wide. 
 
 There were no trusts in those days, no monopolies, no riches or poverty. 
 Nothing had been bought; nothing homesteaded. There were no masters 
 a:id no slaves; everything was equal. 
 
 Follow down the records of history and note the lapse of a few centuries. 
 The high state of civilization which Egypt reached is almost incompre 
 hensible. The Egyptian was skilled in medicine. He wrote works on 
 astronomy, architecture, and anatomy, fragments of which have a place 
 in the sciences of to-day. He had erected constitutional government and 
 safeguarded the people s rights. He had harnessed the Nile and reared the 
 pyramids. His cities are to-day the wonder of mankind. 
 
 But the negro s jungle was still a jungle. He had no government, no 
 learning, no arts. He had no clothing, no cities, no aspirations. Left alone, 
 contented in his jungle, he had progressed backwards, and become ,i .Veder 
 upon human flesh, a polygamist, without religion, family ties, or morals. 
 
 The negro started shoulder to shoulder with the Egyptian. He helped to 
 build the Temple of Rfimeses. He toiled upon the columns of Karnark. He 
 came and went through the hundred gates of Thebes. If he gained any^ con 
 ception of these colossal works, he never used it for his own welfare. Under 
 the lash of Egypt he could build the pyramids, but no comprehension of the 
 spirit which reared those massive monuments ever penetrated his skull. 
 
58 
 
 Mankind is making history. The Assyrians conquered Egypt- The Persian 
 dynasty rose and fell. Mighty Carthage unmoored her thousand galleys, 
 dominated the maritime world and fell before the onset of armored Rome. 
 Africa s shores trembled with the tread of Genseric s armies, returning from 
 the conquest of the Roman Empire. Conquering Moslems swept westward, 
 crossed into Spain and subjugated it. Steel-armed warriors came out of the 
 north white savages, who beat down the barriers of Rome and overran the 
 world. Boneparte marshalled his modern gladiators in the shadows of the 
 pyramids. The negro watched them all and remained unchanged. 
 
 The American colonies rent asunder the ties that bound them to Great 
 Britain. A second war was fought, and the black man found himself free. 
 
 The negro through sixty turbulent centuries knew nothing of history. 
 History knew nothing of the negro. He was not a contributor to the onward 
 march and gained nothing from it. All the peoples of the world claimed a 
 page in the great book of world events all save one. Changeless, im 
 mutable as the graven sphinx, he stood stock still, wondering at these rest 
 less nations who dreamed and accomplished beyond his comprehension. Of 
 all created things, he alone escaped the universal uplift, the world-wide bet 
 terment. With him there has been no voluntary transition. Left to himself, 
 he has never done anything for himself, has not shown the slightest inclina 
 tion to better his own condition. 
 
 Buckle, in his history of civilization, says : "The actions of bad men 
 produce only temporary evil. The actions of good men only temporary good. 
 The discoveries of genius alone remain. To these we owe all that we now 
 have. They are for all ages and all times. Never young and never old, 
 they bear the seeds of their own lives ; they are essentially cumulative." 
 
 Judged by this supreme test, the African, has contributed absolutely noth 
 ing to human progress. Six thousand years of savagery will have to be 
 obliterated ere he will ever contribute anything to the records of civiliza 
 tion. In the environment he is afforded he becomes imitative, but his imita 
 tion does not reach the basic virtues of his model. 
 
 Upon this imitation are based these words of Booker T. Washington: 
 "The negro race has developed more rapidly in the thirty years of its free 
 dom than the Latin race has in one thousand years of freedom." 
 
 Oh, the pitiful puerility of this statement issuing from the mind of the 
 wisest and greatest man the black race has ever produced! Italy is the 
 mother of genius, the inspiration of the ages, the creator of architecture, 
 agriculture and manufactures ; the formulator of commerce, law and finance ; 
 the cradle of philosophy, science, and church organizations. Through her 
 culminated sculpturing, painting, literature, and music. And yet, the Amer 
 ican negro in thirty years has outstripped her thousands of years of priceless 
 ;>rbirveir ent p 
 
 We cannot say that the negro s environment is not lifting him. Within 
 the walls of almost all our universities and colleges we find the negro fitting 
 himself for higher things. 
 
 Booker T. Washington is training the black man of the south to be inde 
 pendent, to plant his own fields, to own and operate his own industries. 
 Every negro who is thus schooled steps out into the world to battle for 
 himself. 
 
 I do not say this is not commendable. I do not say that it is not honor 
 able. I only ask, what will the end be for the negro when the work is per 
 fect? He will have climbed to the bitterest experiences he has yet realized. 
 It will place him upon his own resources. Force him into competition with 
 the white man and by the law of survivorship he must stand or fall. 
 
 It is a matter of common knowledge that no colored race has ever been 
 
59 
 
 able to survive in competition with the whites. From the beginning of time 
 the white races have never bowed to a superior. They have tolerated other 
 peoples so long as those peoples did not come into direct competition and 
 conflict with them. 
 
 For the Ethiopian, competition means extermination. It is war in its 
 worst and most merciless form. The white man, with inherited competency 
 and intelligence will demand the best places and the best wages. Yea, with 
 his increasing population he will, in a few more generations, demand them 
 all, from the greatest to the least. In commerce the white man will outwit 
 the negro, in politics control him, in war annihilate him. 
 
 Does any man believe that, when the negro ceases to work under the direc 
 tion of the white man, he will allow the negro to master his industrial sys 
 tem and crowd him to the wall? Could fatuity reach a sublimer height than 
 the idea that the white man will stand idly by and watch this performance? 
 
 What will we do when put to the test ? We will do that which we have 
 done from time immemorial : Take for our own selves what we desire, 
 regardless of the issue it may evolve. 
 
 By our present attitude we are deceiving this weaker race, brought to our 
 shores by the sins of our fathers. The negro, forgetting that self-preserva 
 tion is the first law of nature, hopes and dreams of amalgamation. His 
 black blood, back of which lies thousands of years of listless, ambitionless, 
 savage ancestry, forbids his assimilation. It would but drag the Anglo 
 Saxon from his course of advancement, quench his aspirations, minimize his 
 ambition, and dull his intellect. 
 
 We owe the negro a square deal, but he will never get it in America. The 
 hopes that we instill, the dreams that we inspire, and the aspirations that we 
 create, he can but dash to pieces against the bars of competition. "No 
 amount of education of any kind, industrial, classical or religious, can bridge 
 the chasm of the centuries which separates him from the white man in the 
 evolution of human civilization." 
 
 His future, if it be brighter, lies elsewhere than in contact with the 
 Anglo-Saxon. Colonization abroad is the only means through which the 
 negro s future will be left to him. It offers the possibility that the negro, 
 schooled as he has been in the ways of the white man, will work out his 
 own salvation. We, the Anglo-Saxon referred to by Professor Kelly Miller 
 as "the most arrogant and rapacious, the most exclusive and intolerant race 
 in history," will never permit the American negro to rise above his present 
 plane. Africa, that great unutilized continent, offers unbuilded empires and 
 unenlightened nations that the American negro, if he be capable, could build 
 and enlighten. 
 
 It is time we were up and forcing the question. In the following, Thomas 
 Dixon, Jr., has voiced the minds of those who are willing to face the issue : 
 "We have spent eight hundred millions on negro education since the war. 
 One-half of this sum would have been sufficient to have made Liberia a rich 
 and ppv/erful negro state. Liberia is capable of supporting every negro in 
 America. Why not face this question squarely? We are temporizing and 
 playing with it, letting it drift to greater issues. All our educational schemes 
 are but compromises and temporary makeshifts. Mr. Booker T. Washing 
 ton s work is one of noble aims. A branch of it should be immediately estab 
 lished in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. A gift of ten millions would do 
 this and establish a colony of a half million negroes within two years. They 
 could lay the foundations of a free, black republic, which, within twenty-five 
 years, would solve our race problem on the only rational basis within human 
 power." 
 
 Colonization is not a failure. It has never been tried. 
 
60 
 
 If it lead to the negro s reversion to savagery, let it. Can we, in justice 
 to our own posterity, leave this problem, with its increasing complexity, for 
 their solution ? Can the American people in reason be expected to blast their 
 future and jeopardize their integrity by running the increasing risk of mis 
 cegenation? Is not the right of self-preservation stronger in law and ethics 
 than the doubtful duty of sustaining a race that will not and cannot stand 
 alone? This cancer upon the body politic requires heroic surgery. Remove 
 it now, before it consumes our bodies, obliterates our glorious past, and 
 imperils our future. 
 
 The above solution of the "Negro Problem" was delivered by Solon 
 W. Cunningham, February 10, 1908, at the annual oratorical contest 
 at the Kansas Agricultural College. 
 
 It expresses the ideas of probably one-half of the white people of the 
 United States. To stimulate such an idea to legislative action would 
 require sufficient agitation through public opinion to repeal the Four 
 teenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 This would require a vote of two-thirds majority of the voters, and 
 as long as the negroes are allowed to vote the plan, however desirable, is 
 not likely to be carried out. 
 
 The question has received more or less attention from various sources 
 ever since the civil war. The following outline of one meeting held for 
 a discussion of the subject is an example of hundreds that have been 
 held for this purpose: On Wednesday, June 9, 1890, a conference of 
 men and women, invited by Mr. A. K. Smiley, met at the Lake Hohonk 
 Hotel, Ulster County, New York, and discussed plans to raise to full 
 stature of American citizenship the negro race. Ex-President R. B. 
 Hayes was made chairman ; secretaries, Rev. A. H. Bradford, D. D., 
 Montclair, N. J. ; George P. Whittlesey, Washington, D. C. ; Mrs. Isa 
 bel C. Barrows, Boston, Mass. Dr. C. L. Warner of New York city 
 was elected treasurer, and an executive committee composed of the fol 
 lowing was elected : M. E. Gates, LL. D., president Rutger s College, 
 New Brunswick, N. J. ; Dr. E. M. Strieby, New York ; H. O. Hough- 
 ton, Boston ; Rev. R. H. Allen, D. D., Pittsburg, Pa. ; Rev. A. W. Pitzer, 
 D. D., Washington, D. C. All of the officers were appointed from 
 states where the negro problem does not exist, and who, from their re 
 marks, knew little about it. 
 
 The first address was given by Mr. Hayes. Its sentiment may be 
 summed up in one of his sentences : 
 
 "We are, indeed, the keepers of our brothers in black; having deprived 
 them of their labor, liberty, and manhood, and grown rich and strong while 
 doing it, we have no excuse for neglecting them, if our selfishness prompted 
 us to do so." 
 
 The majority of the other papers were by northern men and ex 
 pressed the same sentiment. Dr. White alone took a broad view of the 
 subject. The second speaker, S. B. Armstrong, of Hampton, Va., 
 said that the greatest trouble with the negro is deficiency in character : 
 
61 
 
 "You can feed and clothe the negro, build his home and give him knowl 
 edge; but that does not necessarily build up character." 
 
 He said that the whites were in the golden age and the black back in 
 the iron age. 
 
 W. T. Harris said that the seventeen states in which slavery existed 
 previous to the civil war had in attendance in their public schools 
 1,140,405 colored children, 17,683 in private and endowed, and 5,066 in 
 colleges. 
 
 Andrew D. White, ex-president of Cornell University, said : "This 
 question is not a national, but a local one. The Indian question is na 
 tional. It is a national heritage and a national obligation. It presses 
 upon all parts alike and presses upon no section. This is not the case 
 with the negro problem. While it has only touched the North in spots, 
 the problem and the race are throughout the entire southern country 
 from one end to the other. The southern people understand the negro 
 better than anyone else and should have the management of the ques 
 tion." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM SENATOR TINMAN S SPEECHES IN THE UNITED 
 STATES SENATE CHAMBER. 
 
 The northerners never knew what negro domination was. The ques 
 tion does not concern them, because it does not interfere in the least 
 with their business or social pleasure. When I lived in Nebraska I 
 seldom gave it a thought. Since coming to Maryland, and after trav 
 eling through most of the southern states, I realize that it is a serious 
 proposition, and one that should interest every patriotic citizen. 
 
 My observations coincide so nearly with some of the conditions de 
 scribed in the speeches of Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, of South 
 Carolina, in the Congressional Record, and since his observations cover 
 many more years than mine, I will quote a few paragraphs from these 
 congressional speeches. In his speech of February 23rd, 1903, he said : 
 
 "The history of education in South Carolina for the last twenty-five 
 years, before the new Constitution and since, has been that there are more 
 negro children in our public schools than there are white. The abolition of 
 slavery gave the death blow to open vice, but those great controllers of moral 
 action, self-respect, attachment to law, and veneration of God, which slavery 
 destroyed, freedom has resuscitated. I realize that no man should approach 
 this subject from any standpoint other than that of patriotic Americans 
 who have to deal with the terrible conditions which will require the best 
 minds and the best hearts in this country to even ameliorate, much less to 
 solve. In the Spanish war the southern states sent their quotas of volun 
 teers as promptly to be marshalled under the common flag as the northern 
 states. The North has had little or no hatred for us. But they do net know 
 what is involved in this issue. They cannot understand it, because they have 
 no similar conditions." 
 
 In the North Democrats and Republicans are on a level. You do 
 not know the difference as you walk along the streets. Personal 
 friendship and business relations are most intimate. But in the South, 
 where every negro is a Republican, the whites are Democrats, so that 
 they may be able to control the negroes if for nothing else. 
 
 In his speech of January 24, 1907, Mr. Tillman says : 
 
 "The recollection of the actions of the negro soldiers who were quartered 
 in the South in 1866 and 1867, the outrages, the infamies, the cruelties that 
 
63 
 
 were perpetrated dpon our people by them, there is no wonder that we hate 
 the very idea of a negro soldier wearing the uniform of the United States 
 and representing authority." 
 
 "We had 8,000 negro militia organized by carpet baggers. The carpet bag 
 governor had come to Washington and had persuaded General Grant to 
 transcend his authority by issuing to the state quota of arms under the 
 militia appropriation for twenty years in advance, in order to get enough to 
 equip these negro soldiers. 
 
 "All this after Abraham Lincoln had said : No more insane blunder could 
 now be made than any further attempt to use the negro troops to preserve 
 peace in the South. 
 
 "Clashes came. The negro militia grew unbearable and more and more 
 insolent. I am not speaking of what I read ; I am speaking of what I know, 
 of what I saw. There were two militia companies in my township and a 
 regiment in my county. We had clashes with these negro militiamen. The 
 Hamburg riot was one clash, in which seven negroes and one white man 
 were killed. A month later we had the Ellenton riot, in which no one ever 
 knew how many negroes were killed, but there were forty, or fifty, or a 
 hundred. It was a fight between barbarism and civilization, between African 
 2nd Caucasian, for nastery. It was then that we shot them; it was then 
 that we killed them; it was then that we stuffed the ballot-boxes. 
 
 "After the troops came and told us we must stop this rioting, we had 
 decided to take the government away from men so debased as were these 
 negroes I will not say baboons ; I never have called them baboons ; I be 
 lieve they are men, but some of them are so near akin to the monkey that 
 scientists are yet looking for the missing link. 
 
 "We saw enough of the evil of giving the ballot to creatures of this kind, 
 and saying that the vote shall count, regardless of the man behind it, whether 
 or not that vote would kill mine. So we thought we would let you see that 
 it took something else besides having the shape of a man to make a man. 
 Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. 1867 was the hundredth 
 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the action of the 
 white men of South Carolina, in that year, in taking the state away from 
 the negroes, we regard as a second Declaration of Independence by the 
 Caucasian from the African barbarism. 
 
 "If we had been content to submit to the reconstruction acts which had 
 thrust the ballot into the hands of ignorant and debased negroes, slaves five 
 years before, and only five years removed from African barbarism, the state 
 of South Carolina to-day would be a howling wilderness, a second San 
 Domingo. 
 
 "If this issue is presented to the American people, if they are made clearly 
 to understand what is involved in the conditions in the South now, and what 
 will inevitably come in the near future, they can no longer, and never will, be 
 rallied again under the cry of enfranchising the negro of the South. 
 
 "We have butchered the Indian and taken his land. We have denied that 
 the Malay is fit. Vet wr- stand proclaiming that the African is fit. The ne 
 groes of the old slave days, the negroes with whom I played in childhood 
 never presumr-d t< assert equality. For these negroes there is throughout 
 the south a universal feeling ot respect and love. I have a photograph oi 
 one of these. I term him Old Black Joe, for he is a full-blooded negro and 
 about sixty years old. He has been living with me about thirty-five years. 
 He now has the keys to my home in South Carolina. He has full charge 
 of my stock, and my plantation. He is a shining example of what the negro 
 can be and how he can get along with the white man peacefully, pleasantly, 
 and honorably, enjoying all his liberties and rights. He has never meddled 
 
64 
 
 with voting. He occupies the same attitude as the white man and negro do 
 in this District. They do not meddle with voting. Every child I ever had 
 would share his last crust with that negro to-morrow." 
 
 "During the civil war there were in the South about 800,000 negro men 
 of adult age. The women and children of the Confederate soldiers were 
 left at home entirely helpless with these negroes. There is not on record a 
 solitary instance of one white woman having been wronged until near the 
 close of the war. 
 
 "The putrefaction is now going on. 
 
 Relieved from police control, they are no longer compelled, as the Indians 
 have been, by troops to stay on their reservations. These negroes move 
 where they please. They have a little smattering of education. That soon 
 reaches its limit. Some of them have white blood in their veins, and are 
 taught that they are as good as white men. They ask why not as good as 
 white women? And when caste feeling, race pride, and every instinct that 
 influences and controls the white women makes them spurn the thought, rape 
 follows. Murder and rape become a monomania. The negro becomes a 
 fiend in human form. 
 
 "Race hatred grows day by day. There is no man who is honest, going 
 through the South, and conversing with the white people and blacks, but will 
 return and tell you this is true. Some of the negroes have a good excuse. 
 I will not dispute it. If I were a negro I would probably do as they do, but 
 being a white, man, I expect to do just as I am doing, so help me God, as 
 long as I live. 
 
 "The south is occupying an attitude of constant friction, race riot, butch 
 ery, the inevitable, irrepressible conflict, between a white civilization and a 
 black barbarism. I plead for the negro as much as for the white man. This 
 body of death is chained to our backs by two constitutional amendments, 
 and I ask you in God s name ; I ask you in the name of civilization ; I ask 
 you in the name of purity and virtue of the white women of the South, to 
 do something to relieve us from this body cf death in the South." 
 
 In Mr. Tillman s speech before Congress, January 12, 1907, in dis 
 cussing the shooting affray at Brownsville, Texas, on the nights of 
 August 13 and 14, 1906, he further says: 
 
 "The War Department in its dispatches showed great earnestness and 
 dread lest if the accused were surrendered they could not be defended, and 
 as I say they were sneaked out of Brownsville because of the dread that if 
 it were known that they were being carried away somebody, somewhere, 
 might meet the train and have a lynching. I want to ask anybody here 
 whether, if these had been white soldiers, there would have been a word 
 said about mob violence? 
 
 "If the race question looms up here as prominently as the Washington 
 Monument looms across the western horizon, what is the use for us to shun 
 and dread its discussion? 
 
 "We settled slavery, and we settled the question of nationality. We de 
 stroyed one, and we settled forever the proposition as to whether we were a 
 confederation or a nation. We are a nation with a big N, but the southern 
 half of this country has no conception of the word nation except that it is 
 connected with the word nigger. More s the pity! 
 
 "Broadly speaking, the white people of the United States are face to face 
 with the vital issue as to whether the Caucasian race shall share its inherit 
 ance with the other races of the earth. 
 
65 
 
 "On the Pacific Coast the relationship between the Caucasians and mongo- 
 lians is involved. Obliteration of the race line, and granting of full citizen 
 ship is bitterly opposed by the Americans. These Americans ought to know 
 what is for their best interests. They ought to have, and undoubtedly will 
 have, the sympathy and aid of their fellow-citizens, north and south, in pro 
 tecting their interests. But these two phases of the race problem sink into 
 insignificance compared with the greater and more vital question of rela 
 tionship of the races in the southern states of this Union. 
 
 "Are there any senators in this chamber who would have the Caucasian, 
 highest and noblest of the five races, as is attested by history, descend to the 
 level of the lowest of them, with the inevitable result that pure white blood, 
 mixing for centuries with black, will disappear from the face of the earth, 
 and, after the mixing shall have completed the amalgamation, we shall have 
 all men of one type and one skin? 
 
 "Are things to drift until direful tragedies multiply on every hand and 
 blood shall flow like water? Is the statesmanship of our time inadequate 
 to cope with this question, just as statesmanship of 1860 failed to prevent 
 the dire catastrophe of civil war? That war was fought to settle the race 
 question, but forty years after its termination we find conditions more threat 
 ening in some of their aspects than they were in 1861. 
 
 "The North went to war to destroy slavery and restore the Union. If 
 they had stopped there we would have none of this trouble on our hands 
 now. The question would have been allowed to evolute naturally, and we 
 would have been permitted to give to those negroes who may have shown 
 themselves qualified to hold the ballot the right to vote. But we have made 
 a mistake of enfranchising a race, slaves last week, barbarians three genera 
 tions ago. If it was a mistake why not say so? And why not retrace our 
 steps ? 
 
 "I plead with senators here not to ignore the gravity of the situation, not 
 to allow things to go on as they are going on now, involving a struggle for 
 mastery between the two races in the South, coupled with the direful trag 
 edies that will come, because the white people are resolved to maintain their 
 civilization and protect their women. It is a serious obligation of duty, and 
 if I do nothing else in this debate than to have the subject presented broadly 
 from the standpoint of patriotism and of statesmanship by somebody else, I 
 will welcome the opportunity to give some more facts when the time comes. 
 This Brownsville incident would never have attracted a thousandth part of 
 the interest it has but for the fact that this great underlying question is 
 involved in it. 
 
 "I have merely tried to point out that we in the South are on the crest of 
 a volcano; we are environed with dangers of which the people of the north 
 have no conception, and we realize the fearful tragedies that are confronting 
 us unless something can be done to ameliorate conditions. It is high time 
 that something was being done to have this great and vital question brought 
 before the country in some practical and sensible way. The deep interest 
 shown in the Brownsville tragedy is ample evidence that the people of the 
 country are beginning to feel concerned in the various phases of this ques 
 tion. It is absolutely useless for doctrinarians and politicians to undertake 
 to pooh, pooh, the question and dismiss it with a wave of the hand, and I 
 for one am ready to go to battle under the slogan, America for Americans i 
 This is a white man s country, and white men must govern it." 
 
 From these remarks we can readily see that, although it is prac 
 tically a sectional problem, it has a national aspect, and should concern 
 every patriotic citizen of the United States to the extent of using his 
 
66 
 
 vote or influence in bringing relief to the situation should it ever be 
 made a national issue. A negro free in the South is not half free, un 
 less he lives in a community where negroes are so largely in the ma 
 jority that a white man dare not express his opinion in public. In such 
 communities life for a white man is almost unendurable. Equality in 
 such places is a hopeless dream. Is it any wonder that progress in the 
 South is so far behind that of the North to-day? 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 LITERATURE AND COMMENTS ON THE NEGRO QUESTION. 
 
 There have been many contributors to the cause of solution of the 
 race problem. Hundreds of books and magazine articles have dis 
 cussed it pro and con, and a wealth of ignorance has been expended 
 on the subject with little or no effect. 
 
 Too many people have written on this problem before having had an 
 opportunity to study it thoroughly. One should not give public ex 
 pression to this grave question until he has spent at least a few months 
 in the South. 
 
 One writer in a New York daily paper wrote: "The negroes of 
 Alabama are far superior to the poor whites who lounge about the rail 
 way stations," etc. The writer probably wrote what he imagined at 
 a thousand miles distance. 
 
 The human mind is plastic and adapts itself to its environment. It 
 is, therefore, perfectly natural that the opinions of people of the North 
 should differ from the views of those of the South on the negro ques 
 tion. Neither are to blame for their views, but some of the northern 
 people make the mistake of drawing conclusions and expressing their 
 opinions on southern conditions which they have never seen. 
 
 It is chiefly the people of the northeastern part of the United States, 
 those who have had little or nothing to do with foreign races, who are 
 the greatest sympathizers of the negro. True, the greater part of the 
 European emigration to this country enters through the ports of this 
 part of the Union, but these foreigners are for the most part members 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 The people of the western part of the country, who have had to 
 contend with the influx of Chinese and Japanese, or those who have 
 lived on the Indian frontier, know how to sympathize with the South 
 or any other section burdened with a foreign race. 
 
67 
 
 I have known cowboys who would not hesitate an instant to shoot an 
 Indian for stealing a calf or pig, and Indians who were afraid to leave 
 their reservation alone for fear of being shot by rachmen, who re 
 member the tomahawk and scalping knife. 
 
 This merely illustrates the effect of environment upon man. 
 
 On the evening of April 27, 1908, the Cosmopolitan Society of New 
 York City gave a banquet at Peck s restaurant, on Fulton street, in 
 which colored and white people sat together at each table. Editor Holt, 
 in an address at this banquet, advocated intermarriage as a solution to 
 the race problem, and was vociferously applauded. He said, in part: 
 
 "When the colored people get educated the whites in the South will have 
 to recognize them as their equals. What must be the remedy? Intermar 
 riage, if continued long enough, would solve the race problem." 
 
 Miss Mary White Ovington addressed the banqueters as follows : 
 
 "Move your chairs nearer together and get up closer. I like to think that 
 we are going to eat with and stand up for our colored brothers and sisters 
 wherever and whenever we meet them, or wherever we can. We hope to 
 have many such clubs soon. I believe it would be a terrible state of affairs 
 when the negro gives up any of his rights as a man. He should never be 
 satisfied until his equality is recognized." 
 
 Other similar addresses followed. 
 
 This affair naturally became a subject of comment throughout the 
 United States on the following morning. Many prominent southern 
 men gave public expression to their views. Governor Swanson of Vir 
 ginia commented on it as follows : 
 
 "It is difficult to believe the accounts of the action of the Cosmopolitan 
 Society of New York at their recent dinner. It is such disgraceful perform 
 ances as these, and expression of such views, that make more difficult the 
 solution of the negro problem. The persons who are most injured by such 
 actions in the North are the negro people of the South. 
 
 "This matter is absolutely settled and admits of no discussion. The sooner 
 negroes and their pretended friends realize and understand this the better. 
 The speeches and performances as reported can bring nothing but disgust 
 to reputable people of the North and South, who must entertain for such pro 
 ceedings supreme contempt." 
 
 Mass-meetings were held among the most respectable negro com 
 munities of the South in charge of the clergymen of the colored 
 churches denouncing the action of the Cosmopolitan Club of New York 
 and the renewed race feeling and opposition which was brought upon 
 them as a consequence. 
 
 Unfortunately, there was too much in the bearing of the people of 
 the North to impress the negro that he was in all respects equal to the 
 white, and therefore entitled to every privilege which they enjoyed. 
 Many people from the Northern states, actuated by mistaken philan- 
 
68 
 
 thropy, encouraged this idea, while in other cases unscrupulous white 
 men sought to increase their influence over these deluded beings by 
 encouraging them in the belief of their absolute equality, if not su 
 periority, to the southern whites. 
 
 To these teachings we can trace nearly all the turmoils, strifes and 
 sufferings of the southern negro. 
 
 These mischief-makers, innocently for the most part, have committed 
 this error : Instead of teaching the negro that he must elevate himself 
 and better his condition by personal effort by the acquisition of knowl 
 edge and by hard labor ; in other words, advancing his condition the 
 same as has been done by the white race much of the teaching has 
 been to impress upon the negro that he is already equal to the whites 
 in every respect, and it is his duty to himself to asert this equality. 
 
 Some idea of the effect of even a little of such teaching can be imag 
 ined if we consider the effect upon schoolboys if told they know more 
 than their teachers, and that they were unreasonable and cruel, and 
 ought not to be obeyed ; or the effect upon soldiers if told the same with 
 regard to their officers. 
 
 The negro should also be impressed that the only elevation that he 
 has received above barbarism has been by associating with and having 
 the advantages of the example and teachings of the whites. 
 
 The two most popular books on slavery and racial conditions, "Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin" and "The Clansman," each represent but one side of 
 the subject. 
 
 The majority of the other books written from either point of view 
 are even more one-sided than these. 
 
 "Uncle Tom s Cabin" portrays racial conditions of slavery times 
 from the northern point of view only, showing the worst side of the 
 slaveholder and the best side of the negro. "The Clansman" takes up 
 the story where it is dropped in "Uncle Tom s Cabin," and portrays 
 the southern view. One should read both books to comprehend the 
 exact situation. 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe received her inspiration to write "Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin" by watching some white neighbor children playing from 
 time to time with freed slave pickaninnies brought by the Tichenor and 
 Overaker families from New Orleans to Cincinnati. Topsy, Black 
 Sam, and a few other characters of the book were taken from real life 
 from among this retinue of freed household servants. Topsy s real 
 name was Joan. After an unsuccessful attempt to develop her into a 
 reasonable being she drifted into the abandoned stratum of Cincinnati 
 life. 
 
 Thomas Dixon received his inspiration to write "The Clansman" by 
 observing southern conditions during the reconstruction period after 
 the war, and also from reading "Uncle Tom s Cabin." He wanted the 
 public to know both sides of the question. 
 
69 
 
 General Joseph Wheeler once said, in the New York Journal: "The 
 picture painted by Uncle Tom s Cabin gave a very distorted and in 
 correct view of the condition of the negro in the southern states. There 
 were, no doubt, instances of great wrong and hardship inflicted upon 
 them. But the general condition which surrounded the negro slave 
 was such as to elevate him far above the conditions which exist in the 
 wilds of Africa from which he came." 
 
 During slavery times many of the southern churches were built with 
 galleries for the negro slaves. These galleries were rilled regularly 
 every Sunday, and on Communion Sundays, after the white worshipers 
 had finished their communion services, the negroes were invited down 
 to partake of the sacrament. 
 
 Not one northern person in a thousand would imagine such a condi 
 tion by reading "Uncle Tom s Cabin." 
 
 Northern people cannot understand the southern negro until they 
 live for a time in his environment. 
 
 Dr. White, in the First Mohonk Congress, previously mentioned, 
 struck the keynote of the situation when he asserted that northern peo 
 ple could not manage the negroes as well as the southerners do. At 
 the slightest misdemeanor on the part of a negro the southerner s blood 
 is up and there is fire in his eye. He shoots one square look at the 
 negro, and if that isn t sufficient, he follows it up with whatever hap 
 pens to be in his mind at the time, and the latter is ready to obey almost 
 any command. He also has far more respect for such a white man 
 than for one who places himself on the negro s level. 
 
 So long as the negroes were exclusively in the hands of the people 
 who, by constant association with them, had learned their characteris 
 tics, the question was managed by methods beneficial to both races. 
 But in just so far as the destiny of the negro fell under the control of 
 those who were ignorant of his peculiar traits the troubles and turmoil 
 seemed to commence. 
 
 A child has more respect for its parents or teacher when they enforce 
 discipline or subordination. Similarly the negro mind in its stage of 
 development esteems more highly the white man who in a legitimate 
 manner enforces submission and admits of no equality. 
 
 Southern hospitality has become proverbial. I have been enter 
 tained at many southern homes, and in some instances where the host, 
 although unable to pay his farm mortgage, would put an elaborate 
 spread on the dinner table that would do honor to a king. 
 
 They treat white men as such, and negroes as a servant class. 
 
 As long as a negro keeps his place there, he is treated kindly. As 
 soon as he tries to assert equality he meets with more than hostile 
 opposition. 
 
70 
 
 Where the "Jim Crow" law exists the negroes are generally sub 
 missive to the rules and customs, and it is principally where the negro 
 is made to feel that he is the white man s equal where contention and 
 strife occurs. 
 
 Not long ago Jjfiss Mary Bennett, a prominent Washington society 
 lady, was riding on a Lincoln Park street car, when a negro stepped in, 
 and, although there were several vacant seats in the car, he sat down 
 right against her. Miss Bennett got up and took another seat. A gen 
 tleman acros the aisle, evidently from Kentucky, clinched his fists, and, 
 glaring at the negro, said: "It s well for you that this isn t in Ken 
 tucky." 
 
 The removal of the ballot-box from the negro would, to a great ex 
 tent, relieve the situation. This should be left, however, to the local 
 option of each state. If the negroes are then disfranchised in the South 
 and want to vote bad enough to come up and live in the North, the 
 northern states will very soon adopt local option on this topic and also 
 disfranchise them. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 LOCAL OPTION IN THE: SOUTH. 
 
 Local option in the saloon business is ridding many counties of whis 
 key and its adoption is rapidly spreading. 
 
 The presence of 8,000,000 negroes has operated as a tremendous 
 incentive for prohibition of the liquor traffic in the South. The Atlanta 
 and Mississippi riots showed the dangers of the saloon. It was an 
 attractive social center for the dangerous elements of the southern pop 
 ulation the lower levels of both races. Following the racial lines 
 from top to bottom, they converged at the saloon, which was situated 
 in the acute angle of this inverted social pyramid. When they had 
 been closed for a week in Atlanta, the better class of whites thought, 
 why not for a year? Or forever? The liquor traffic fostered and 
 encouraged the depraved and criminal negro and the vengeful and irre 
 sponsible white. Of both the South is tired. 
 
 Prohibition in that section in the civic program as a final policy 
 is an exhibition of rare moral courage, an innovation in Anglo-Saxon 
 human nature, in which the liquor traffic has always found a responsive 
 chord. 
 
 Thousands of whites who keep whiskey and wines in their homes 
 continually, voted for local option to prevent the negroes from obtain 
 ing it. The negroes, for the most part, voted against prohibition, and 
 were defeated. 
 
 In 1883 Col. Archie Hughes, of Columbia, Tennessee, who was an 
 officer in the Spanish- American war, helped round up and conduct 500 
 illiterate negroes to the pools and voted them against local option, thus 
 defeating the temperance cause in that district for the time being. 
 
 In a vote taken on May 12, 1908, in Prince Georges County, Md. 
 (in the "wet" districts only), the question of local option was defeated 
 by 266 votes (1,688 to 1,422). The negro vote defeated the movement, 
 as the majority of votes cast against the local option proposition are 
 known to have been negro votes, while nine-tenths of the vote cast by 
 white men were in favor of it. 
 
 In some of the southern districts a number of the negroes were 
 driven from the polls during the local option vote. I consider this jus 
 tifiable where it was the necessary means to obtain prohibition of the 
 sale of intoxicating liquors. On such vital points on which depends the 
 
72 
 
 welfare of the American homes, the negro should not be allowed to 
 interfere. 
 
 "Locker Clubs" were formed by the saloonkeepers and their cus 
 tomers in many of the local option districts. 
 
 In the city of Savannah alone 147 of these secret dram drinkers dens 
 were organized the day after prohibition went into effect, and one of 
 these included 1,700 negroes. 
 
 Finally Judge Emory Speer, one of the ablest United States judges 
 in the South, handed clown a decision in Savannah that these lockers 
 were illegal, and the owners subject to the penalties of any seller of 
 intoxicating liquors. 
 
 There are still a few out-of-the-way places in local option districts 
 where men may sneak away and obtain whiskey, but these are van 
 ishing. 
 
 While riding through a local option district in the South last spring 
 I saw three negroes with several jugs get off the train at a little station 
 and walk off toward an old barn in the woods. A traveling man told 
 me that they were going out there for whiskey, the sale of which was 
 prohibited in their district. 
 
 Wine, containing alcohol, is now forbidden at sacramental services in 
 the churches of Georgia, and certain other temperance districts of the 
 South. 
 
 Since prohibition went into effect in the South not a financial failure 
 has been accredited to the new reform. 
 
 Not a dollar has been dropped from the value of real estate. 
 
 The saloons have been turned into stores and marts of fashion or 
 trade. Many a low den has been turned into commercial lines of 
 activity, and the per cent of crime, including the negro assaults on 
 women, has been greatly reduced. 
 
 We have reason to expect good results from local option ; much bet 
 ter results than from prohibition as a national issue. If the southern 
 states had waited to elect a President of the United States on a pro 
 hibition ticket, they might have waited until the millennium for tem 
 perance. Any given locality knows better than the rest of the nation 
 what it needs, and their situation should command the attention and 
 respect of the remainder of the country. 
 
73 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 REFERENCES FROM THE DAILY PRESS. 
 
 One need only read the southern newspapers to learn of the unlawful 
 work of the night riders, moonshiners, and other organizations of 
 whites, lynching, or shooting some negro who has assaulted a white girl 
 or committed some outrage. Scarcely a day goes by but what even 
 some of the northern daily papers give an account of trouble between 
 the whites and the negroes ; usually a negro crime avenged by a white 
 mob. I will insert only a very few such notices taken from recent 
 daily papers : 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 Galveston, Tex., June 23, 1908. 
 
 The first trouble between the whites and the blacks in Sabine county, 
 the earliest settled county in Texas, has resulted in a determination on 
 the part of the whites that the large population of negroes must imme 
 diately immigrate. 
 
 Following the lynching of ten negroes and the beating of fifty more 
 yesterday, notices were issued that every negro must leave the county 
 under penalty of death. A dozen or more white men, charged with 
 having instigated the negro depredations and murders, were included 
 in the edict. Newton and San Augustine counties joined Sabine in its 
 crusade against the blacks. More than 1,000 negroes crossed the lines 
 to-day, most of them going to Louisiana. The militia and State rangers 
 attempted to persuade the white men from this action, but were over 
 whelmed and had to confine their work to preventing open fights. 
 
 Arms were found in every negro cabin, and these were confiscated 
 by the State rangers. About twenty or more young negroes who re 
 sisted being driven across the line were cowhided. 
 
 Washington Evening Star: 
 
 Way Cross, Ga., June 27, 1908. 
 
 Just at sundown this afternoon two negroes were lynched by a mob 
 of at least 1,000 persons. The lynching occurred on the eastern out 
 skirts of the city. The negroes were Walter Wilkins and Albert 
 Baker, who were brought here this morning from Wayne county, one 
 of them charged with assaulting the fourteen-year-old daughter of Mr. 
 Wiley Wainwright Thursday evening. 
 
 The negroes were lodged in the Ware county jail during the day, 
 and late this afternoon were taken out by Wayne county officers for 
 the purpose of carrying them to Jesup for safekeeping. Suddenly a 
 rush was made and a dozen hands clasped each officer and his gun. 
 
74 
 
 The negroes were jerked across the railroad track and a hundred 
 persons pounced upon them, others still holding the guards. 
 
 Through the wire fence of the railroad the mob shoved the negroes 
 and then started in a run across College Hill. 
 
 For nearly half a mile they continued to the first oak tree in the old 
 Cherokee nursery. Here an attempt was made to break the handcuffs 
 which held the negroes together, but without avail. 
 
 No one had a rope, but a heavy trace chain which was locked around 
 one of the negroes was broken apart and a loop was soon made around 
 his neck. Some one mounted the tree, and from the first limb caught 
 the end of the chain, tying it around the limb, while others held the 
 alleged assailant of the girl up from the ground. He was then turned 
 loose, his feet about two feet from the ground. The other negro, still 
 handcuffed to the body of the hanging man, stood with hands clasped 
 around the tree. The mob, stepping back about ten paces, opened fire 
 upon the men, hundreds of shots being fired into the bodies. 
 
 Many tried to prevent the killing of the negro, who was clasping the 
 tree, there being much doubt about his connection with the outrage. 
 Nothing could be done with the enraged mob. 
 
 After the lynching the mob dispersed. The crime occurred near the 
 home of Wiley Wainwright Thursday night. 
 
 The negro Albert Baker was arrested yesterday morning and carried 
 before the girl for identification. He was with several other negroes at 
 the time, and she readily pointed him out. 
 
 Washington Post: 
 
 ANNAPOLIS, MD., March 10, 1908. 
 
 In the senate to-night Senator Linthicum, of Baltimore, read a letter he 
 had, threatening death for introducing a bill for the separation of negroes 
 and white people in electric cars. It is signed "Negro," and its concluding 
 paragraph is as follows: 
 
 "Deprivation and such outrages you urchins are making upon us will 
 drive up to anything. The poor of Russia and other countries have existed 
 only through continued murder of some member responsible for the law 
 that kept them in serfdom. Now, this is what we intend to do with you 
 and Ike Strauss unless you cease at once to advocate your bills. It is better 
 that a few men die than a whole race perish." 
 
 Washington Post: 
 
 PADUCAH, KY., March 10, 1908. 
 
 Masked night riders, 100 strong, entered the town of Birmingham, Marshall 
 county, Kentucky, early this morning, shot and killed a little negro girl, 
 wounded her father and four members of his family, and whipped five other 
 negroes. 
 
 The riders took possession of the town and shot into every negro cabin 
 in the place. In one of these, John Scruggs, his wife, and three children, 
 and a granddaughter, were struck by bullets. Scruggs two-year-old daugh 
 ter is dead ; he and two other members of his family fatally wounded. 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 March 12, 1908. 
 
 Miss Mamie Wright, of 915 Sixth street southwest, reported to the police 
 that last night about 9.15 o clock, while she was walking in Seventh street 
 southwest, a negro grabbed her purse containing $4.26. 
 
75 
 
 The young woman said she was returning from a shopping tour, and was 
 between H and I streets, on Seventh street southwest, when a negro jumped 
 from behind a treebox, and, grabbing her by the arm, wrested her purse 
 from her. She screamed. 
 
 The negro pushed her away when she tried to grapple with him and fled 
 through an alley, she says. 
 
 Miss Wright describes the negro as of medium height, and intensely black. 
 She says he was wearing torn and dirty overalls. 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 LYNCHBURG, VA., March 27, 1908. 
 
 George Twitty, a hard-working negro farmer, who lived in the lower end 
 of Campbell county, Virginia, was taken to the woods nearby by three men 
 and nearly beaten to death. He managed to escape, but while he was running 
 two shots struck him in the back. He died Wednesday, after making a 
 statement, the import of which is withheld pending an investigation. 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 TAZEWEU,, VA., March 27, 1908. 
 
 Walter Rippey, the negro assailant, was hanged in the jail yard this morn 
 ing. Death ensued in a few minutes after the trap was sprung. The negro 
 made a short speech in front of the jail. 
 
 It is estimated that 500 persons, among the number being seven women, 
 were on the outside of the inclosure. 
 
 The crime for which Rippey was hanged was assault on Mrs. Mary 
 Dancey, a young widow, near Pocahontas, on the afternoon of February 13. 
 The woman was returning from a shopping visit to Pocahontas, carrying 
 her two-year-old baby in her arms. The negro threatened to kill the baby, 
 and thus forced her to accompany him. 
 
 Baltimore Sun: 
 
 Annapolis, Md., May 14, 1908. 
 
 One marine was shot in the leg and another had his ear grazed by a 
 bullet during a clash between about fifty sailors and marines on one side and 
 nearly that number of negroes on the other to-night at Annapolis. 
 
 A miniature battle, with all the weapons on the negroes side, was fought 
 with considerable liveliness until the arrival of the police, who did quick 
 work in quelling what might have been a serious riot. 
 
 The affray took place at 9.30 P. M.. and the battleground was in front of 
 a row of negro houses known as Buzzards Roost, located at the edge of the 
 town, along the tracks of the Baltimore and Annapolis Short Line. It is said 
 the trouble started over the taking of a sailor s hat by a negro. The sailors 
 and marines had been drinking, it is said, and a group of them came upon a 
 number of negroes near Buzzards Roost. 
 
 The marines and sailors say that the negroes attempted to sandbag sev 
 eral of their number. They called to their comrades for help, and when a 
 ne^ro ran with a sailor s hat a general fight followed. A number of shots 
 were fired by the blacks, and many bricks and stones were thrown. None 
 of the sailors and marines were armed. The firing attracted a large crowd, 
 and the police were highly praised for the dispatch with which they dispersed 
 the antagonists. 
 
 Several marines were arrested, but the blacks all escaped. The wounded 
 marine was hurried away by his comrades. 
 
76 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 March 22, 1908. 
 
 James Thomas Heflin, representative in Congress from the Fifth Alabama 
 district, an ardent temperance advocate, in company with Mr. Ellerbe, 
 boarded a Capital Traction car in front of the Raleigh Hotel. There were 
 six or seven other persons in the car, including women. 
 
 When the car passed Seventh street, Lundy, a negro, took a flask of 
 whiskey from his pocket and placed it to his lips. 
 
 Heflin remonstrated with him about drinking in a public car in the pres 
 ence of ladies. The negro replied with an oath. 
 
 Ellerbe left the car in front of the Metropolitan Hotel. Heflin was still 
 arguing with the negro. 
 
 The car had just crossed Sixth street, when the negro is said to have 
 grabbed the congressman by the lapel of his coat. Heflin then drew his 
 revolver, and, holding the negro close against him, fired. 
 
 The bullet grazed the negro, went through the window, and struck Thomas 
 McCreery, who was standing in front of the St. James Hotel. Heflin then 
 hit the negro over the head with the butt of the gun and pushed him to the 
 door. He then kicked him to the pavement. 
 
 The negro staggered upon hitting the ground and began to curse and 
 abuse the congressman. Heflin reached through a window and fired at the 
 negro. 
 
 At the time of the shooting Heflin was on his way to the Metropolitan 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, at Four-and-a-half and C streets northwest, to 
 deliver a lecture there on the subject of "Temperance." Five hundred or 
 more men and women had gathered and were awaiting for his arrival and 
 lecture. 
 
 When they heard he had been arrested and was held by the police on a 
 charge of shooting a negro with intent to kill they beat a precipitate and 
 rather disorganized retreat from the church. None of them, as far as could 
 be learned, called at the station house to see if they could do anything to 
 help him. 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 April i, 1908. 
 
 Miss Carrie Jenkins, twenty-two years old, of 1719 Thirteenth street north 
 west, was robbed of her pocketbook at 8.30 o clock last night, within a block 
 of her home, after being brutally attacked by, a negro. 
 
 The man grabbed Miss Jenkins by the tljjroat as she passed an alley on 
 Riggs street, only half a block from her liome on Thirteenth street. He 
 knocked her to the ground, and, still clutching her throat, beat her head 
 against the sidewalk until she was all but unconscious. He then wrenched 
 her purse, containing her month s salary, minus a few dollars, from t her 
 hand, and ran through an alley. 
 
 Although descriptions of the negro were sent to every station house in the 
 city and several central office detectives were set to work on the case, the 
 purse-snatcher had not been arrested at an early hour this morning. One 
 policeman, on duty near the scene of the crime, declared that he saw the 
 negro some time after the outrage, but was unable to arrest him. 
 
 After telling her story to Policeman Wheeler, Miss Jenkins was too 
 nervous to talk further of the affair. Her throat still bore the imprint of 
 the negro s fingers, and the back of her head was swollen and bruised from 
 contact with the sidewalk. 
 
 The description given by Miss Jenkins tallies in several particulars with 
 that given of a negro who robbed Mrs. McKeever of a suit case on a 
 
Seventh street car yesterday, and also tallies with that of a negro who 
 snatched a purse from a white woman in the crowded downtown section 
 last Saturday evening. 
 
 Miss Wharton, matron of the Woman s Christian Association, said to a 
 reporter for the Washington Herald last night: 
 
 "I feel awfully sorry for the poor girl, for, besides her physical injuries, 
 shock, and nervousness, she lost every cent she had in the world. She 
 works hard for her money, and had had the benefit of only something less 
 than a dollar, having just sent $5 away to relatives." 
 
 Washington Herald: 
 
 April 13, 1908. 
 
 Telephone messages were received at police headquarters last night from 
 an officer at Indian Head, Md., who wanted trained bloodhounds. 
 
 The officer told Lieutenant Peck, who answered the telephone call, that 
 a white woman had been attacked by a negro and left in a critical condition. 
 He said the negro had escaped, and that bloodhounds were wanted to assist 
 in the capture of the fugitive. 
 
 Lieutenant Peck was unable to get further information from the Indian 
 Head officer. He was unable, also, to comply with the request to furnish 
 bloodhounds, as none are available in Washington, so far as known, for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Such racial crimes which are of daily occurrence in the southern 
 states, and a disgrace to civilization, cannot be suppressed by enforcing 
 equality laws without creating an exceedingly grave crisis. 
 
 It would, therefore, be advantageous for both races if the negroes 
 would consent to colonization. 
 
 Disfranchising the illiterate and non-property holder, as has been 
 done in the South, might stimulate this movement. This has proved 
 advantageous for the welfare of that section, and it undoubtedly would 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The intelligent mulatto, however, has an inherited right to suffrage, 
 but should be compelled to meet the educational requirements. Dr. 
 E. A. Alderman, president of the University of Virginia, says: "The 
 South is pursuing a far-sighted policy of justice, both to the negro 
 and to the white man." 
 
78 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 WHAT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED IN COLONIZING THE AMERICAN 
 
 NEGRO IN AFRICA ? 
 
 Liberia was founded in 1820 by the American Colonization Society, 
 an organization of American philanthropists who tried the experiment 
 of colonizing freed negroes who wished to enjoy political and social 
 privileges denied them in the United States. 
 
 The sum of about three million dollars was contributed and put into 
 the scheme. About 13,000 colored people were aided in migrating from 
 the United States to Liberia from 1820 to 1847. 
 
 Many difficulties inseparable from such an undertaking were bravely 
 overcome. 
 
 At an annual meeting of the society in 1824, upon a motion of Gen. 
 Robert G. Harper of Maryland, the colonial territory was named Li 
 beria, signifying a country for freedmen. Its future capital Monrovia 
 was named in honor of James Monroe, who was at that time President 
 of the United States. 
 
 In 1847 the colony organized a government upon a similar basis to 
 that of the United States, the president and vice-president, however, 
 being elected every two years. 
 
 They have a senate and house of representatives, cabinet, justices, 
 local magistrates, supreme and lower courts, and a modern system of 
 universal suffrage, with secret ballot. 
 
 The government is entirely in the hands of the Americo-Liberians. 
 no white man being permitted to own land in the republic. 
 
 Every town and village has its school, and in Monrovia is located 
 the West-African College, whose president, Rev. R. B. Richardson, is 
 an Americo-Liberian. 
 
 The laws under which the colony, or republic, as it became in 1847, 
 has been governed, were framed by Mr. Thomas Dixon, Sr., of the 
 colonization society. He also framed their currency system, which 
 has since been revised. When the movement first started the colonists 
 could not read, and it became necessary to provide a currency desig 
 nating varying amounts by plainer means than numbers. Pictures 
 were therefore used in the following manner: 
 
79 
 
 The smallest paper money, six cents, was distinguished by a picture 
 of one duck. The picture of two ducks on a note represented twelve 
 cents. Chickens were valued at a higher rate than ducks. A note 
 with the picture of one chicken represented twenty-five cents, and that 
 with two chickens fifty cents. 
 
 For several years the state of Maryland and various philanthropic 
 societies of different states made annual appropriations for the main 
 tenance of the colony. About $100,000 were annually contributed to 
 this cause until 1847, when the amount began to decrease. There are 
 no contributions now. The freed negro was one of the problems of 
 that generation, and this colony was looked upon as the means of solv 
 ing it. 
 
 In the days of deepest interest in the colonization movement several 
 prominent Marylanclers, influenced by conscientious motives, freed 
 their slaves and paid their passage over to Liberia. Labor was diffi 
 cult to obtain at that time, and many of those who freed their slaves 
 did so with great personal sacrifice and financial loss. Mr. Daniel Mur 
 ray, of Elkridge, whose estate became unprofitable through inability to 
 obtain laborers after freeing his slaves, was compelled to teach school 
 to support himself and family. Miss Margaret Mercer, of West River, 
 who had been left with a large estate and many slaves, also freed every 
 one of them, and paid their way to Liberia. She was unable to secure 
 labor on her plantation, and her income became so reduced that she, too, 
 resorted to school teaching as a means of maintenance. 
 
 In a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society, March 9, 
 1885, by John H. B. Latrobe, then president of the society in Baltimore, 
 I find the following summary of commercial facts, as they relate to the 
 city of Baltimore alone, during the thirty years of the society s active 
 connection with the colony (Maryland), for which it stood sponsor. 
 These I have arranged after the following manner : 
 
 1. Shipments required for the use of the colony and for the trade con 
 nected with it, upward of $1,000,000. 
 
 2. Shipments for the American Colonization Society, half a million more. 
 
 3. Built in the city of Baltimore, under the auspices of the state society, 
 eight vessels for the trade, at a cost of $113,000. 
 
 4. Bought for the trade, vessels already built, at a cost of $22,000, making 
 a total of $135,000 for the construction and purchase of ships. 
 
 5. Sailed from the port of Baltimore, in addition to the foregoing, under 
 the auspices of both the Maryland state society and the parent society at 
 Washington, 52 chartered vessels. As a basis for calculation, the charter of 
 each is put down at $3,000, thus making a lump sum of $156,000 for the 
 charter of vessels alone sailing from Baltimore. To this add the cost of 
 vessels built and bought by the state society for its operation in Liberia, and 
 we will have the aggregate of $291,000. It is estimated from the books of 
 the society that from the passage of the act of 1831, which marks the dawn 
 of the society s operation, to the absorption of the colony of Maryland by 
 Liberia proper, in 1851, twenty years thereafter, about $2,000,000 were spent 
 under the auspices of Maryland alone. 
 
80 
 
 The loss of the trade in the colony, and in Liberia proper, is due not 
 so much to the withdrawal of colonial authority as to the withdrawal 
 of maritime communication by American ships. The revival of our 
 merchant marine will bring with it a revival of American trade along 
 the whole West African coast. 
 
 The Republic of Liberia is located on the coast of Upper Guinea be 
 tween the parallels of 4 and 7 north latitude, reaching from the Mannoh 
 river on the north, boundary between Sierra Leone and Liberia, to the 
 Cavalla on the south, embracing a remarkably fine coast line of about 
 500 miles on the Atlantic Ocean, thence eastward to the King Moun 
 tains, a distance of about 300 miles. 
 
 Out of a total population of about 2,500,000, only 25,000 are Amer 
 ico-Liberians, the remainder, for the most part, being aborigines. 
 These latter are divided into many sovereign tribes, having their own 
 territory, language and government. The more important of these are 
 the Veys, Deys, Golahs, Mombas, Queahs, Pesseys, Bassas, and the 
 Kroos. Their language, habits, and dress are, of course, far inferior 
 to those of the Americo-Liberians. The latter are the only Christians 
 in the republic. 
 
 Coffee, rubber, and palm oil are the chief exportations from Liberia. 
 Coffee grows wild and is also cultivated by the Americo-Liberians, and 
 the rubber forests are extensive. These are a source of considerable 
 revenue. 
 
 Several species of cattle, sheep, buffalo, deer, and antelope are found 
 there. 
 
 Many of the houses are built of brick, with verandas, large windows, 
 and bedrooms. As a whole they are far superior to the average negro 
 houses of America. This is due to the fact that the best class of ne 
 groes were colonized there, and under American management. A tele 
 phone system and many other modern conveniences were also estab 
 lished in Monrovia by the colonization society. 
 
 Although the colony was composed of the better class of American 
 negroes, many of them being mulattoes, occasionally a "black sheep" 
 slipped into the bunch, of which the following is an example : 
 
 One family sent a negro boy Jim, whom they considered worthless, 
 and imagined that he would relapse into barbarism. A few years later 
 a war vessel off the coast of Liberia sent a boat load of sailors ashore 
 for water. The latter encountered a band of half-naked blacks, who 
 brandished spears and looked extremely unfriendly. The sailors ac 
 cordingly displayed their rifles and would have dispersed the natives 
 had not their leader shouted in plain English : "Don t shoot, boss ; we 
 won t hurt you !" The sailors were sure from what they knew of Jim 
 that he was the leader of that crowd. 
 
81 
 
 some time after the colony was established more or less ill- 
 feeling existed between the native blacks and the Americo-Liberians. 
 This has been overcome and perfect harmony has prevailed ever since. 
 
 In 1861 the United States Department of the Interior entered into 
 contract with the American Colonization Society to support for one 
 year about 5,000 Africans who had been recaptured on the high seas by 
 armed United States vessels. One hundred dollars a year was appro 
 priated for the support of each of these negroes above eight years of 
 age, and fifty dollars a year for every one under that age. 
 
 The Act, approved June 16, 1860, prohibiting slave trade in the 
 United States, had thus been violated, and such was tMkost of enforc 
 ing the law regarding it. 
 
 The following is a summary of the principal Americo-Liberia towns 
 and settlements, with their approximate populations. The enumeration 
 commences with Roberts Port, not far from the western (Sierra 
 Leone) frontier of Liberia, and proceeds northward, southward, and 
 eastward to the French frontier along the Kavalli river: 
 
82 
 
 County of Montser- 
 rado: 
 
 Roberts Port 
 
 Americo- 
 I^iberian 
 Population 
 
 400 
 50 
 
 200 
 200 
 300 
 400 
 100 
 50 
 300 
 250 
 300 
 400 
 100 
 150 
 150 
 250 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 Coast between Grand Basa 
 and River Ses 
 
 50 
 100 
 350 
 125 
 125 
 
 100 
 500 
 100 
 50 
 100 
 50 
 50 
 50 
 75 
 25 
 100 
 25 
 25 
 
 Americo 
 Siberian 
 Population 
 
 8.850 
 
 150 
 50 
 
 750 
 150 
 
 1,250 
 150 
 
 Royesville 
 
 On the River Ses 
 
 St. Paul s River Settle 
 ments : 
 
 New Georgia . . .... 
 
 County of Sino : 
 
 Sino Settlements : 
 Sino River 
 
 Caldwell 
 
 lyCxington.. 
 
 Brewerville 
 
 Greenville 
 
 Clay Ashland 
 
 Philadelphia ...: 
 Georgia 
 
 lyOisiana 
 
 New York- 
 
 Settlements on Kru Coast : 
 Nana Kru. 
 
 White Plains 
 
 Millsburg 
 
 Arthington . 
 
 Careysburg 
 
 Crozierville 
 
 Sete Kru 
 Nifu 
 Sas Town . . 
 
 Benson ville 
 
 Roberts ville 
 
 Harrisburg .. . 
 
 Ga ra we 
 
 
 Settlements around Cape 
 Palmas and on the lower 
 Kavalli River : 
 
 Rock Town . 
 
 Settlements on the Mesura- 
 do River : 
 
 3,150 
 
 200 
 2,500 
 
 225 
 150 
 125 
 
 300 
 
 Harper 
 
 Gardeners ville 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Johnson ville 
 
 l,atrobe 
 
 Pay nes ville . . 
 
 Cuttington 
 Half Kavalli 
 
 Monrovia 
 Junk River Settlements : 
 
 Schiefflin and Powells- 
 ville 
 
 Middlesex 
 
 Jacksonville 
 
 Bunker Hill 
 Tubman Town 
 New Georgia 
 
 Mount Olive 
 
 Hillierville 
 
 Marshall 
 
 Americo-Iyiberians scattered 
 about I^elipo in far inter 
 ior of Maryland County; 
 in the Boporo County, 
 near the Sierra I^eoue 
 frontier, and on the up 
 per St. Paul s River .etc., 
 
 Farmington River and 
 Owen s Grove 
 
 
 County of Grand Basa : 
 Basa Settlements : 
 lyittle Basa 
 
 800 
 
 50 
 250 
 50 
 350 
 400 
 600 
 50 
 
 Edina 
 
 Total Siberians of American origin... 11,350 
 
 Hartford 
 
 St. John s River 
 Upper Buchanan 
 
 lyOwer Buchanan (Basa) 
 Tobakoni 
 
 Carried forward 
 
 1,750 
 
 8,850 
 
83 
 
 Port of Import 
 
 United 
 States 
 
 England 
 
 Holland 
 
 Germany 
 
 All other 
 Countries 
 
 Total 
 
 Monrovia.... 
 
 8 
 
 332 
 
 4 
 
 744 
 
 56 
 
 1 144 
 
 Marshall 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 16 
 
 G, C. Mount . 
 
 
 156 
 
 
 112 
 
 
 268 
 
 Grand Bassa 
 
 4 
 
 380 
 
 12 
 
 148 
 
 8 
 
 552 
 
 River Cess 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 Sinoe 
 
 
 84 
 
 
 32 
 
 
 116 
 
 Maryland 
 
 
 72 
 
 
 36 
 
 
 108 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 12 
 
 1,036 
 
 16 
 
 1,088 
 
 64 
 
 2,216 
 
 Value 
 
 Port of Import 
 
 United 
 States 
 
 England 
 
 Holland 
 
 Germany 
 
 All Other 
 Countries 
 
 Total 
 
 Monrovia 
 
 $ 16 
 
 $12 308 
 
 $528 
 
 $33 504 
 
 2 612 
 
 *AQ V\8 
 
 Marshall 
 
 
 
 
 *200 
 
 
 200 
 
 G. C. Mount.. 
 
 
 8 716 
 
 
 4 880 
 
 
 13 596 
 
 Grand Bassa 
 
 224 
 
 20 368 
 
 436 
 
 3 756 
 
 320 
 
 
 River Cess 
 
 
 756 
 
 
 
 
 756 
 
 Sinoe 
 
 
 4,048 
 
 
 8% 
 
 
 4 944 
 
 Maryland 
 
 
 2,152 
 
 
 1,124 
 
 
 3,276 
 
 Total 
 
 $240 
 
 $48,348 
 
 $964 
 
 $44,360 
 
 $2,932 
 
 $96,244 
 
 This table is a sad commentary upon the loss of our commercial 
 prestige not only in Liberia, but on all the west coast of Africa, as will 
 be seen by what follows relating to the large commercial transaction 
 once carried on between Maryland county, one of the four divisions 
 of the Republic of Liberia, and the city of Baltimore, wherein lived 
 the society whose efforts in the colonization of free American colored 
 people resulted in the birth of the African colony, then known as 
 "Maryland in Liberia." The relinquishment of active authority in the 
 colony by the society was followed by an abandonment of commercial 
 relations with the people of the United States, and the trade, which 
 up to that time had reached the million mark, was transferred to 
 European markets. 
 
 On May 23, 1908, five delegates from Liberia G. W. Gibson, for 
 merly president of the republic; James Dawson, vice-president of Li 
 beria; Charles B. Dunbar, an attorney; A. T. Faulkner, and Charles 
 Branch, citizens of Monrovia arrived in Washington to confer with 
 President Roosevelt regarding encroachments of England and France 
 over the boundary lines of Liberia. They also wished to stimulate 
 action toward establishing direct trade relations between the United 
 States and Liberia. 
 
84 
 
 Mr. Dunbar told me that they would like to have the United States 
 guarantee them an independent republic. He said that the excuse 
 offered by England and France for breaking former treaties and con- 
 fiscating territory within the Liberian boundaries was that warring 
 tribes were not being controlled, and that sufficient developments of 
 the country were not being made by the Liberian government. They, 
 therefore, had to take it upon themselves. 
 
 This is true to a great extent, but it was evidently not entirely for 
 beneficent purposes that these nations assumed the undertaking. 
 
 The delegation to America was far above the average negro. Aside 
 from their silk stovepipe hats and other apparel to match, they dis 
 played no small degree of knowledge and intelligence. They spent 
 several weeks in this country, during which time they visited Tuskegee 
 Institute and many other places of interest to them. 
 
 They gave Booker T. Washington an idea of their situation in Liberia 
 and requested his co-operation in creating a friendly influence toward 
 their republic. 
 
 The colonization society has now on deposit about $100,000, the in 
 terest of which maintains a board of trustees, president and secretary. 
 Little financial aid can at present be given to negroes who desire to 
 colonize, but information regarding facilities for emmigration are 
 freely distributed. 
 
 Persons wishing to emigrate to Liberia and desiring information or 
 assistance should address "Mr. J. Ormond Wilson, secretary of the 
 American Colonization Society, Colonization Rooms, 450 Pennsylvania 
 avenue northwest, Washington, D. C.," giving their names, ages, and 
 circumstances. Applications for assistance have become so numerous 
 that the society will hereafter give the preference, all other things being 
 equal, to those who will pay the most toward the cost of their passage 
 and settlement in Liberia. 
 
 When I called at Mr. Wilson s office I was surprised to find the old 
 gentleman in sueh a hopeless frame of mind regarding the colonization 
 movement. He threw up both hands as he said : "Oh, when we began 
 there were only 2,000,000 negroes in the United States. Now there are 
 10,000,000. We received $1,000,000 a year for the cause at that time, 
 but we receive nothing now." 
 
 I asked him if he had read Dr. Shufeldt s late book on "The Amer 
 ican Negro," and he replied : 
 
 "I don t read anybody s books on the negro question any more. It seems 
 to be a hopeless case." 
 
 Frederick Douglass was one of the great men of the negro race. He 
 advocated the acquisition of some of the islands in the Caribbean Sea 
 to be held by this government and governed as territories, and the heads 
 
85 
 
 of families of American negroes who voluntarily emigrate to those 
 islands to receive homesteads free on terms similar to those on which 
 homesteads are given in our territories. 
 
 President Grant indorsed that Douglass proposition, and the latter 
 was sent to Santo Domingo to investigate. Douglass thoroughly ex 
 amined the resources of that country by a personal visit to all parts 
 of it, and on his return made a favorable report to President Grant, 
 stating Santo Domingo was capable of supporting 7,000,000 people. 
 Senator Charles Sumner was instrumental in overthrowing all further 
 investigations or plans for any action on the subject at that time. 
 
86 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE OPINION OF AMERICO-LIBERIANS REGARDING COLONIZATION 
 
 THERE. 
 
 The Hon. S. T. Prout, postmaster-general of the republic, couched 
 his views in the following paragraph: 
 
 "Too many should not come at one time. They should be able to support 
 themselves for at least six months, and be prepared to build their houses, 
 and open farms, etc. The kind of immigration wanted: First, men and 
 women who are not ignorant, worn-out or needy. These will only be a 
 burden to our government. They should, therefore, be skilled laborers, and 
 possess a certain amount of capital to give them a start. Second, they should 
 bring their books, if professional men ; or their tools and implements, if 
 mechanics or farmers. Doctors should come supplied and prepared for 
 work. Third, men and women are wanted who are patriotic lovers of free 
 dom, self-reliant men, men of push, men who can originate ideas and execute 
 them, responsible men, men who come determined to stand by the Republic 
 of Liberia and succeed as she succeeds, or fall as the republic falls; moral, 
 industrious, Christian men. These are the men and women wanted to im 
 migrate from America to Liberia. Anything short of this had better remain 
 where they are." 
 
 The Hon. Daniel E. Howard, secretary of the treasury, expressed 
 himself in the following words : 
 
 "The people of Liberia are ready and willing to welcome all worthy and 
 thrifty negroes who have a right idea of manhood and freedom, and who 
 are willing to endure hardships and really persuaded in their own minds 
 that they can live in Liberia. If those who desire to immigrate have really 
 gotten enough of all they can get out of America, the good and the bad, 
 then, and not till then, let them come. They must be willing to leave the 
 flesh pots as well as the lynching. Of course, every sane person will agree 
 that an indiscriminate, heterogenous, wholesale influx of negroes or anybody 
 else would be undesirable here or anywhere else. 
 
 "An absolute discriminate immigration is needed, and, therefore, preferred 
 in Liberia." 
 
 Discussing the subject of immigration July 26, 1905, on the occasion 
 of the national celebration, Mr. Thomas W. Howard, at that time postmaster 
 at Monrovia, expressed the following sentiments which were warmly ap 
 plauded : 
 
 "It is absolutely necessary that every inducement should be given to the 
 return of our brethren across the sea to their fatherland. But it should be 
 distinctly understood that none but those who are capable of coming to assist 
 ur, in solving the great problems of the state are needed, for, quoting the 
 
remarks made by Bishop H. M. Turner, a celebrated negro of the United 
 States, They had better stay there and die as dogs than to come to Liberia 
 in a helpless and useless condition. We want no such men in Liberia. 
 
 "Never before in the history of the republic has there been a greater need 
 for immigration than at the present time, for the purpose of infusing into 
 our body politic new blood and energy. But this need is for a select class 
 of negro immigrants, not only from the United States, but also from the 
 West Indies and other parts of West Africa. Men of intelligence, industry, 
 thrift and patriotism. Not a lazy, thriftless class, seeking a place of rest, 
 but a class realizing the dignity of labor and the true meaning of national 
 independence. Liberia has passed her pioneering period and has now en 
 tered upon a constructive era, and as such must have within herself creative 
 elements of the kind just mentioned, otherwise her progress will be retarded 
 and a repetition of the scene which has presented itself to us in the care of 
 the recent immigrants from the United States which the government located 
 at Cheesemanburg." 
 
 The following is a part of President Barclay s inaugural address, at 
 Monrovia : 
 
 "The colored American, or, rather, the class that would be a valuable 
 acquisition to the country the men of some culture, the small capitalist, 
 and the men of initiative and push, are not inclined at present to come to 
 Liberia. The leaders of the colored people are opposed to immigration to 
 Liberia. They are in the fight for social and political equality with the 
 white American. The success of the struggle is for them very doubtful, if 
 not entirely hopeless. The negro masses are being lifted gradually and 
 slowly, learning self-reliance, thrift and initiative. It is important that the 
 intending immigrant possess these qualities ; it cannot be denied that the 
 country is not prepared for the movement. While preparing a home the 
 immigrant must have facilities for procuring work. At present these do 
 not exist. There is a class of men slowly coming into the country who will 
 likely prove a most useful acquisition. They are rather above the average. 
 As the country develops and opportunities offer they will encourage their 
 friends to come over." 
 
 On one occasion of the Fourth of July, at the American Legation in 
 Monrovia, President Barclay, in response to the address of Minister 
 Lyon, ^vho proposed the sentiment, "The Republic of Liberia and the 
 Health of its Chief Executive," said, among other things : 
 
 "For my own part, I think it is providential that there has been no great 
 rush of civilized negroes from America or elsewhere. There is the great 
 danger that they would form a caste and would have and manifest an undue 
 feeling of superiority calculated not to attract, but to repel their aboriginal 
 brothers. Yet, I am aware that our state must have accessions of civilized 
 persons of negro blood from America and the West Indies ; but we must all 
 see the danger of the incoming at this critical period, when we are trying 
 to place on a proper footing our relations with the tribal communities of the 
 country of a great number of people ignorant alike of the experience through 
 which the older settlers have passed and of their conclusions thereupon ; and, 
 for some years, at least, after settlement, careless of both national organism 
 and ideal." 
 
88 
 
 From these remarks we readily see that the Americo-Liberians will 
 oppose any movement to colonize the entire negro race in Liberia. The 
 white people who are connected with the interests of the Liberian gov 
 ernment, such as Consul-General of Liberia C. H. Adams of Boston, 
 A. L. Bassler of New York, and others, are also opposed to a general 
 transportation of the negroes to Africa. They live so far from the 
 masses of the negroes of the South that they do not realize true condi 
 tions there. They consider only the welfare of the negro regardless 
 of the Southern white population. 
 
 Under such circumstances there is no relief for America from that 
 source. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 No two races have ever been able to live together on terms of 
 political and social equality, and whoever believes that history will be 
 reversed in this republic in reference to these two races is a dreamer 
 and not a statesman. 
 
 What, then, is best for both races? Can a method be found that 
 will, to some extent, settle this growing and dangerous race question 
 and be just to both races? I believe it possible. 
 
 The home of the negro race has for unknown ages been near the 
 earth s equator in a hot, wet climate, and it is wholly unnatural for the 
 negro to migrate into a northern climate. Statistics show that in pro 
 portion to population consumption kills two negroes in the District of 
 Columbia to one white person. In Florida consumption is scarcely 
 known among the negroes. There they are so healthful that their skins 
 glisten like polished ebony, and they are the happiest people on earth. 
 
 It would, therefore, be advantageous to both races if the negroes 
 would consent to colonization in South America, Cuba. Porto Rico, 
 San Domingo, or in the southeastern corner of the United States. 
 
 Colonization has not been advocated entirely by the white people of 
 the country. Although the majority of the negroes at first resent such 
 a plan until advocated by the leaders of their race, some of them have 
 shown a desire to colonize. 
 
 Frequent crusades have been made through the South by the more 
 intelligent and educated colored people, holding meetings for the pur 
 pose of arousing enthusiasm among their race to stimulate the move 
 ment of immigration to Liberia. 
 
 In many such instances Scripture was quoted, songs sung, and 
 speeches made, and finally a collection taken for the good of the cause, 
 and the agitators moved on to the next place. Said agitators made a 
 good living at that business for several years. 
 
 Recently, however, a few of the foremost negroes of the United 
 States are beginning to realize that their race would enjoy more free 
 dom if colonized in another country. They are, therefore, manifesting 
 an interest in the movement. 
 
 On October 30, 1893, a delegation of colored lawyers met at Chat 
 tanooga, Tennessee, and proceeded to Washington, ). C., to ask Con- 
 
90 
 
 gress for $i,cxx),(X>o,ooo with which to send their race back to Liberia. 
 Representative Murray, of the Seventh South Carolina District, al 
 though not as enthusiastic over the project as the others, presented 
 their cause to Congress, but met with no success. 
 
 On October 20, 1885, fifty prominent negroes of Kansas, Missouri, 
 Arkansas, and Kentucky met at Topeka, Kansas, and organized a 
 "Central and South American Immigration Association and Equal 
 Rights League of the Western Continent." The object of the organi 
 zation was to build new homes in Central and South America, colonize 
 the negroes of America there and thus solve the race problem. 
 
 After a great deal of discussion, in which no definite conclusions 
 were reached, they disbanded, and each proceeded to lecture to the 
 negroes of his native town or district on the merits of the undertaking. 
 These efforts likewise produced no results. 
 
 In view of the fact that the negroes could be transported to Liberia 
 at a cost of $100 per head, while many of the ships would be returned 
 empty, and to South America for $15 per head, and the ships returned 
 with cargoes of sugar and coffee, the latter would be the more feasible 
 plan. 
 
 It was then proposed that every state in the Union be requested to 
 organize a branch of the society to push the scheme and raise funds 
 sufficient to send one hundred families to South America on an experi 
 ment, each state to arrange with a national board for the transportation. 
 
 As suggested by Dr. Shufeldt, should they depart from the stations 
 or steamboat wharves of their present home villages singing their old 
 plantation songs an enthusiasm would probably be created among them 
 and many of those remaining would want to go along. 
 
 To successfully carry out such plans it will be necessary to build a 
 few vessels to ply between New Orleans and South America, collect 
 and diffuse full and reliable information regarding the country into 
 which they are to be taken, secure the sympathy of the rank and file 
 of both races regarding the movement, secure funds to apply on educa 
 tion and to foster a system of public schools. 
 
 Bishop Turner, the great religious leader of his race in the South, 
 says the negro race must emigrate and go out of this country, as the 
 Hebrews went out of Egypt. If our government should adopt the 
 Fred Douglass plan, Bishop Turner would probably lead his people to 
 San Domingo. 
 
 Those negro island governments would be accorded free trade with 
 the states, the same as exists now with our continental territories, and 
 that would give them a chance to utilize these islands that are now 
 immensely rich in natural resources. 
 
 How the problem will eventually be solved no one can tell. Colon 
 ization to any appreciable extent will probably never be accomplished 
 
91 
 
 outside of the United States unless a race war should occur. Under 
 proper regulations, however, the American negroes are a most peace 
 able class of citizens. 
 
 Alpeople who are so mixed with another, as dodder in alfalfa, are 
 almost impossible to eradicate. They could be colonized, however, in 
 the southeastern corner of the United States. 
 
 As extensive traveling becomes more popular each year a larger 
 number of people will visit and become familiar with race conditions 
 in the South. They will then invariably be ready to sympathize with 
 the southern whites. 
 
 The educated negroes will advance through succeeding generations 
 in the natural course of evolution. Several generations of consistent 
 study will be required, however, on the part of the negro to capacitate 
 him for education. 
 
 Immigration of the northern people into the South will probably 
 result in an example of the survival of the fittest and crowd the 
 ignorant negro into local colonies, where his habits and conditions can 
 be no worse than is the case in such colonies at the present time. 
 
 The negro leaders, such as Booker T. Washington, can do more 
 to uplift and educate the race than the combined forces of white mis 
 sionaries. Just as the religion of the white man has been disseminated 
 among the colored people through the negro preachers, so must all 
 negro principles of morality, culture, and ethics, etc., be derived from 
 the white race and transmitted to the lower race through the agents 
 of that race. 
 
 In all race troubles, whether they are with the Indian, Mongolian, or 
 negro, the people of the section where the friction occurs should be 
 permitted to direct the course of readjustment or solution, and should 
 receive the sympathy and support of the entire nation. 
 
 Therefore I say, until the question becomes a national issue, leave 
 the southern negro to the South and the northern negro to the North. 
 Neither section can solve the problems of the other, but each should 
 lend their sympathy on such grave questions. 
 
 Leave the ballot in the hands of the illiterate negro, place liquor 
 where he can get it, permit miscegenation, and advocate social equality, 
 and the trouble will never end. 
 
 Give the negro educational advantages, but show him his place, and 
 the illiterate of his race will to a great extent colonize in various locali 
 ties of the South and probably become as near harmless as is possible 
 on American soil. The mulattoes and more progressive negroes will 
 not be a great burden to the North under such conditions. 
 

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 182799