Chapter XI: Section 3: Until July 4, 1870, all persons who voluntarily (1)

adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort,
shall be excluded from the right to vote for Representatives in
Congress and for Electors for President and Vice-President.

This section was defeated but relative to it Mr. Stevens in a speech said:

"The 3rd section may encounter more difference here. Among the
people I believe it will be the most popular of all the
provisions; it prohibits rebels from voting for members of
Congress and electors of President until 1870. My only objection
to it is that it is too lenient.

I would be glad to see it extended to 1878, and to include all
State and municipal as well as national elections."

There are two things about the advice that seem incongruous. First that intelligent Negroes would think that any men of the master class would join hands with them, some of whom had probably been their slaves, to govern the State. In the second place it is hard to believe that Sumner and Stevens, men of brilliant legal minds, would give advice that could not be carried out, even if practicable.

No man of the master class in South Carolina, however conservative, would stand for being called a scalawag.

There were practically no Union men in South Carolina. There were a few men who opposed secession at the time but when the ordinance of secession was passed a man who did not go with the State was considered a traitor. South Carolina was not considered a safe place for a white man who was opposed to secession after the ordinance was passed. This probably accounts for the statement in the last part of the affidavit relative to the frustration of the plans.

I regard the statement in reference to Messrs. Sumner and Stevens as a reflection on the memory of two of the greatest friends of the Negro.

History, unless it is based on facts, incontrovertible facts, is worthless.

If there are any readers of _The Journal of Negro History_ who can produce "irrefragable evidence" relative to this matter I would be glad if they would do so. Truth is supreme and everlasting.

Prof. R. T. Greener, now of Chicago, Harvard's first Negro graduate, and the first and only Negro who occupied a chair in one of the old Southern universities, delivered on Public Day, June 29, 1874, in the historic South Carolina University, a most eloquent and scholarly address on "Charles Sumner, the Idealist, Statesman and Scholar." It made such an impression on the members of the faculty that they requested Prof. Greener to allow them to have it published and distributed. Professor Greener was the only Negro on the faculty. He occupied the chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy. Professor Greener was closer to Mr. Sumner than any other colored man, although very much younger, and enjoyed a friendship with the Senator vouchsafed to very few white men. It is possible that he may be able to throw some light on the subject in so far as Mr. Sumner is concerned.

Letters from scholars in this field will help us to learn the truth. A copy of a letter from J. F. Rhodes follows:

RAVENSCLEFT, SEAL HARBOR, MAINE,
Sept. 27, 1920.

HENRY A. WALLACE,

_Dear Sir_:

I have your valued favor of 23 with enclosure. It is now about
fourteen years since I made my study of Reconstruction, and on
some details my memory is not fresh, but I have no hesitation in
saying that I never found anything that would lead me to believe
that either Sumner or Stevens was in favor of the scheme
outlined. The story told by the affidavit "does not fit into the
situation" as Samuel R. Gardiner used to say. Nothing but
irrefragible evidence could lead one to such a view. Your
examination of the subject seems to have been thorough and I
thank you for giving me the results of it.

Very truly yours,
enc. returned Signed. JAMES F. RHODES.

_A Copy of a Letter from Samuel W. McCall_

24 MT. VERNON ST., September 13, 1920.

MR. HENRY A. WALLACE,
245 West 139th St.,
New York, N. Y.

_Dear Sir_:

In reply to your favor of the 3rd inst., with enclosed copy of
the affidavit concerning the position of Thaddeus Stevens and
Charles Sumner upon the proposed policy of organization for the
negroes, I would say that I do not remember ever having come
across anything of the kind in my researches concerning Mr.
Stevens, nor have I ever heard of it about Mr. Sumner.

Very truly yours,
Signed. SAML. W. MCCALL.

_A Copy of a Letter from Hon. H. C. Lodge._

NAHANT, MASS.,
September 8, 1920.

_My dear Sir_:

I have received your letter of the 6th. I have never heard before
of the point which you raise in regard to Mr. Sumner and really
know nothing about it. As I am separated from my library, which
is in Washington, I am sorry that I can give you no information
about it, but if you would examine the Life of Charles Sumner by
Edward L. Pierce, which is very elaborate and thorough, you would
find something about it there, if anywhere.

Very truly yours,
Signed. H. C. LODGE.

HENRY A. WALLACE, ESQ.,
245 West 139th St.,
New York, N. Y.

As the native white men of the master class were ineligible to
hold office until the new Constitution and the 14th Amendment
were ratified and their political disabilities were removed, even
had they acted in an advisory capacity to the newly enfranchised
Negroes, the Northern men being eliminated, only Negroes and
white men of the "cracker" element could have held office and
have been elected delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

There were some native white men of the "cracker" element in the
Constitutional Convention and also in the first legislature
elected.

Very respectfully,
HENRY A. WALLACE.

245 WEST 139TH ST.,
NEW YORK CITY,
January 16, 1921.

CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D.,
Editor, THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY,
1216 You St., N. W., Washington, D. C.

_Dear Sir:_

In connection with my letter to you of the 11th instant,
pertaining to the affidavit of Messrs. Miller and McKinlay
relative to the statement made by Mr. Francis Cardoza to them
concerning Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens, as published in _The
Journal of Negro History_ for January, 1920, I respectfully
invite your attention to a copy of a letter from Dr. J. W.
Burgess, formerly of Columbia University. You will find him
listed in "Who's Who in America."

Dr. Burgess is the author of two books covering the Civil War and
the Reconstruction period, _The Civil War and the Constitution_
and _Reconstruction and the Constitution_, and evidently made a
thorough research in collecting the data for publication.

I regard this as a very important matter and the truth or falsity
of the statement should be established. It is only by publicity
that the facts can be established.

The names of Stevens and Sumner should be imperishable to the
Negro race and any reflection on their attitude during the
Reconstruction period should not go unchallenged.

A copy of letter from John W. Burgess follows:

BROOKLINE, MASS.,
January 14, 1921.

MR. HENRY A. WALLACE:

Your favor of January 12, forwarded to me here, interests me
highly, and I thank you most sincerely for it. I am obliged to
reply, however, that the affidavit of Messrs Miller and McKinlay
astonished me very much. I cannot remember to have ever read
anything of the kind anywhere and like you, I am very skeptical
about it. I was in the world and a student at Amherst College in
the year 1867, and was even then collecting the material for my
history. I am pretty sure that I should have known of anything of
this kind had it existed. I am going to try to run this assertion
down, as I am here among the acquaintances and relatives of
Sumner.

Very sincerely yours,
Signed. JOHN W. BURGESS.

I have written to Dr. Burgess to inform me as to the result of
his investigation and will let you know what he reports.

Yours very truly,
HENRY A. WALLACE.

BOOK REVIEWS

_Rachel._ By ANGELINA W. GRIMKÉ. Boston, Mass., The Cornhill
Company, 1920. Pp. 96. Price, $1.25.

Miss Grimké's drama of Rachel is a beautiful and poetic creation. She has produced this effect by a literary instinct which is fine and mainly cultivated. Its native vigor carries the reader past an occasional crudity, which it would seem to be hypocritical to notice. The sweep of passion in the drama is elemental. She has connected the story of a girl-woman with the most woeful of earthly tragedies, namely the crime of a great nation against one of its component parts.

The feelings expressed in the drama, though elemental, are uttered in the terms of modernity. The structure of the drama is modern, and yet there is something in the figure and movement of Rachel herself which reminds the present writer of Antigone. We do not see Antigone before the hour when she has chosen to meet the doom that man's law has decreed should she perform the task that human love and religious faith have enjoined upon her. Antigone goes to the death of her body declaring that in the Infinite there is a longer time for love than there is on earth.

But we do see Rachel before the ultimate choice has come to her. She is a gay and happy girl. The drama proceeds to the hour when she too must choose between the issues of earthly love and those which reach into eternity. She learns from her mother, Mrs. Loving, that ten years before, they all lived in the South and her father and her half brother were lynched. Briefly summarized, this is Mrs. Loving's story. As a young widow with a boy seven years old, she had married an educated man of color. She was a person of color herself. Mr. Loving owned and edited a paper in which he wrote on behalf of the people of color. A Negro innocent of all crime was murdered by a mob in that region. Mr. Loving denounced the murder and the murderers in his paper. He received an anonymous letter apparently written by an educated person, threatening him with death, if he did not retract what he had said. In the next issue of his paper he published an equally stern arraignment of the lynchers and their crime.

That night a dozen masked men broke into his house. Mr. Loving had a revolver. He defended his life and his home. Mrs. Loving tried to close her eyes. She could not. She saw all that happened in her bedroom. Four of the masked assailants fell. "They did not move any more ... after a little while." Then she saw her husband dragged out of the room. Her older boy, George, tried to help his stepfather. He was dragged out also. She went to the bedside of her two younger children. They were asleep. Rachel was smiling. The mother knelt down and covered her ears. When at last she let herself listen, she heard only the tapping of the branch of a pine tree against the side of the house. She did not know at first that it was _the tree_.

She fled with her two little children to the North. Those children had never before this day of revelation known how their father had died. The shadow of white cruelty to the body and souls of black folks had darkened somewhat over their lives in the North, but still they had been frolicsome and loving young creatures. Now they begin to realize the full significance of "race prejudice."

Rachel speaks to her mother: "Then, everywhere, everywhere throughout the South, there are hundreds of dark mothers who live in fear, terrible, suffocating fear, ... whose joy in their babies ... is three parts pain.... The South is full of ... thousands of little boys who one day may be, and some of whom will be lynched." "And the babies, the dear, little, helpless babies ... have _that_ sooner or later to look to. They will laugh and play and sing and grow up, and perhaps be ambitious,--just for that."

"Yes, Rachel," answers her mother. The girl is one of those rare, feminine creatures whose soul and body are framed for maternity. In one swift rush of realization and of premonition, she comprehends all that the doom upon her race must eventually mean to her; she utters the cry of Africa's heart in America. "It would be more merciful to strangle the little things at birth.... This white Christian nation has set its curse upon the most beautiful, ... the most holy thing on earth ... motherhood."

Let us consider the historic background forth from which Miss Grimké has drawn her story. How do its incidents compare with known facts? In 1844, Massachusetts sent Judge Hoar to South Carolina to look after the interests of Massachusetts citizens of color there. The mob spirit showed itself so violently that this father of the future Senator was obliged to leave the South. More careful investigation into hidden causes for lynching would doubtless disclose more cases when educated men have been threatened or actually murdered. The rope with which to hang Wendell Phillips was actually carried into the hall where he was to speak. And the concerted plan had been to hang him on Boston Common.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has investigated and published statistics showing that from 1889 to 1918 in the United States, 702 whites and 2522 blacks have been lynched, and that 11 of these victims were white women and 50 were women and girls of color. 6 whites and 142 Negroes were lynched for "no crime."

A few instances may well be cited. After some race riots in 1894 in which crimes had been committed on both sides, MacBride, "a respectable Negro of Portal, Georgia, was beaten, kicked, and shot to death for trying to defend from a whipping at the hands of a crowd of white men, his wife who was confined with a baby three days old." No offence on the part of the wife or the three days old baby is recorded, but the one of that helpless couple who could speak may have made about the riots remarks which disturbed the delicate sensibilities of these southerners who are so discriminating in their "chivalrous treatment" of women.

In 1895 a Negro in Texas was killed by a mob because he was accused of riding over a little white girl and seriously injuring her. "Later developments proved that the mob murdered the wrong negro." In 1899 in Louisiana "an attempt had been made to assault a white woman." Afterwards one Michael Curry saw a large Negro wandering in a field. For no reason whatever he decided that that man had been the assailant. Some white would-be murderers were quickly got together and shot the black man to death. Then it was discovered that he was an escaped lunatic, whose recent history did not square with the theory that he was the assailant.

In Georgia there was in 1911 a Negro woman described as "a good reliable servant" in her normal condition, but who was subject to attacks of violent mania. She killed a white woman in such an attack, as many years ago poor English Mary Lamb killed her own mother. The world knows with what chivalry her brother Charles shielded her through life. This Negro native of Georgia had once been adjudged to be a fit subject for an insane asylum; but the State institution was crowded and she was not then or now taken into it. Georgia took care of her in an easier way. Its lynchers put her into an automobile and placed a rope around her neck, fastened it to a tree, and started the car from under her, and left her to die. No arrests followed. But why mention that fact in this case? There are very few instances of mob murder when white murderers have ever been arrested.

In Oklahoma in 1914, two white men assaulted a seventeen-year-old girl of color. Her screams brought her brother to the rescue. There was a fight. He killed one of the men. The next day a mob came to the house in search of the brother. They could not find him so they killed the girl. In 1915 a sheriff in Georgia was murdered, and straightway five Negroes were killed. About a year later it was learned that all five were innocent. Sometimes "race prejudice" is given as the reason why certain Negroes were lynched. That probably means that in no such instance had the lynched Negro committed any offence, or at most none deserving the death penalty by any legal process.

The next historical question, which Miss Grimké's drama raises, was pertinently put to the present writer: "Was an educated, high-toned man like Loving ever lynched?" The answer as to probabilities is easily made. The American impulse towards mob-murder has always been strong whenever and wherever the rise of the Negro, either free or enslaved, has been considered vitally obnoxious to the community. In the slavery days, Northern mobs prepared often to kill William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other Abolitionists, but they were foiled every time except when, in 1836, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a white Northerner, was killed in Alton, Illinois, for denouncing, in his own paper, the burning to death of a Negro in Missouri. It was supposed, however, that the men who shot Lovejoy were Missourians and not Illinoisans.

The southern temper as to the educated Negroes was certainly voiced to a large extent, when in the eighties, the librarian of a large library in a southern town made answer to a question asked by a northern visitor: "Oh, no, the colored people don't come here to take out books. We don't believe in social equality, you know." And the Negro teacher in that town answered thus another Northerner's question: "Why don't you go there and ask for a book?" "I shouldn't like to do that, if I am going on living here."

In 1898 there were some terrible race riots in North Carolina. Two well educated Negroes owned and edited a small paper. Like the black Loving in Miss Grimké's drama, like the white historical Lovejoy, sixty-two years before, they printed editorials on the side of the Negroes. They were threatened. They fled and escaped pursuit. It is safe to assume that, had they been caught, they would have been lynched.

About a year ago, John R. Shillady, a white man, was engaged on a peaceful mission in Texas on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose agent he was. Prominent white citizens assaulted and beat him severely. It has always been the same story; white or black, educated or ignorant, in every part of this country the defenders of the Negroes have been liable to the decree or the abuse of the mob.

Still fresh is the memory of that shameful day when a white mob fired the Omaha jail where a Negro, still unconvicted of crime, was confined. He helped several of the other prisoners to get in line to leave the prison in safety, and then went down the steps himself to the mob which grabbed him and killed him. Meanwhile the ruffians had seized the Mayor of the town as he was on his way to try to enforce law and order. They hanged him, but somebody cut the rope before he was quite dead. There was strong evidence to show that the murdered Negro was innocent.

We come next to the question: What sort of men are they who make up these murderous mobs? Wendell Phillips once said, as to the North, that he had faced many mobs between the seaboard and the Mississippi, and that he never saw one that did not show that it was inspired if not actually led by "respectability and what called itself education." It is harder to know exactly what is the personnel of southern lynching parties. But a close study of known facts shows that "respectability and what calls itself education" has countenanced, approved, and participated in a large proportion of these orgies of horror. And the southern approval has developed in the South a most abhorrent type of white woman who holds up her babies to see a black man cut and burned to death. Miss Grimké's historical accuracy is unimpeachable when she allows "church members" to lynch Loving and his stepson.

George W. Cable said to the present writer in the winter of 1888-89, "You are right, the southerners do not want the Negroes to be educated." Miss Grimké, inferentially, dates her lynching somewhere in the decade of the nineties. The mass of black, brown, and olive-tinted ignorance at that time in the South, was appalling. It is appalling now--largely through the governing white man's fault. But still there were in the South at that time and before then many colored people who had obtained the rudiments of education and some who might be truthfully called well educated. Some of these became known to the whole country; but there might easily have been obscure ones like Loving scattered in many communities.

Now ordinary critics are sure to cry out against my analysis of the historical situation and remind me of Booker Washington. They will say, "He was not lynched. He was accepted. Any Negro like him is safe, if he behaves himself." I answer that I have no fancy for mob murder or torture of any human being, ignorant or wise, good or bad. There are, moreover, other answers to the riddle of that great constructive educator's career. One is creditable to the white southerners. They are not all eager for Negro blood. There is yet another solution. Booker Washington surrendered many of the Negro's rights to southern prejudices. The South liked that surrender. Northern philanthropists occasionally liked it well enough to give money for purposes which would tend to make the Negro useful in the ways the whites wanted him to be, and yet to insure him a little intellectual comfort in his life.

To return to the direct consideration of Miss Grimké's Rachel; we see the girl, from the hour that she learns what things are done, and may be done, in the South to the dusky sons and daughters of America, she lives under a cloud--a sense of doom. Yet the cloud breaks now and then. She loves so much, and especially she loves so many little children, that she cannot fail to be happy sometimes. She also comes to love a man, and all the possibilities of marriage and motherhood open radiantly before her. But the shadow falls denser than ever upon her. She sees, even in the North, the grown men of her race, no matter how well educated, seldom able to get work befitting their ability. All this sort of thing would not happen in every northern town but every careful observer knows that such things do happen in many northern villages and cities.

Little children flock around her, drawn by the magic of her incarnated motherliness. She sees them ill-treated by their white school mates. She has adopted a little boy, Jimmy, and she sees him suffer. She sees a little girl, very black and ugly, but still a child, who has been frightened almost into idiocy by white children. Finally Rachel's ears are so filled with the sound of real wailing that her brain reels with the thought of the crying children all over the land, and at last voices come to her from the infinite spaces. Voices of unborn babies, the little babies who were meant to be born unto her.... They were begging her never to bring them into earthly existence. Now, like Antigone, she makes her choice; to soothe a ghostly pain no matter what may be her earthly doom.

Her lover leaves her. She cries after him once, as if to call him back. Then she ceases that cry, knowing that her fate is fixed, and her vow never to be a mother on earth is irrevocable. She begins to talk as to the pre-existent ghosts of her unborn children, and all the while the crying of her adopted child mingles fitfully with the wailing that seems to come to her from the caverns of the unknown regions.

The drama would probably have to be remoulded for use in the regular theatre, yet it is the present writer's opinion that to create the part of Rachel on the stage might well allure any actress who possesses the most delicate and passionate genius.

LILLIE BUFFUM CHACE WYMAN.

* * * * *

_Songs and Tales from the Dark Continent, recorded from the
Singing and Sayings of C. Kamba Simango, Ndau Tribe, Portuguese
East Africa and Madikane Cele, Zulu Tribe, Natal, Zululand, South
Africa._ By NATALIE CURTIS BURLIN. New York, G. Schirmer, 1921.
Pp. 170.

This work as its title imports does not cover a wide field of investigation and it was not done in Africa. The object of the author is to introduce Europeans and Americans to the soul of the African, who has too long been regarded merely as an object for exploitation. Believing that in the folk-music of a people is imaged the real soul, the author has made in this field researches, the results of which have been herein set forth. The aim finally is to show that the human family is near of kin and that basic emotions of love, of sorrow, of rejoicing and of prayer, whether men be primitive or advanced, white, yellow, red or black, are the same root-feelings planted in us all.

The book begins with a rather long introduction, discussing the geography, history, and institutions of Africa. Much space is here given to spiritual beliefs as a stimulus to the development of music. Then follows a discussion of song-poems and of the early music to which they were set. The actual contents begin with a treatment of songs, tales, and proverbs of the Ndau tribe by C. Kamba Simango. The reader, if he has found the details of the contents mentioned above a little tiresome, will have his interest quickened again by the explanation of the _Song of the Rain Ceremony_, the _Spirit-Song_, the _Love-Song_, the _Dance of Girls, Children's Songs, Laboring-Songs, Mocking-Songs_, and the like. There are also such folk-tales as the _Hare and the Tortoise_, the _Baboon, How the Animals dug their Well_, the _Jackal and the Rooster, Death of the Hare_, the _Legend and Song of the Daughter and the Slave_, and the _Sky-Maiden_.

After this portion of the book comes the Songs and Tales of the Zulu Tribe, recorded from the singing and sayings of Madikane Cele, a Zulu of royal blood. This includes such as the _Song of War_, _Song of Children_, _Dance Songs_, _Love Songs_ very much like those mentioned above. It treats also of such folk-tales as the _Creation Story_. The music to which these song poems have been set, doubtless will interest most the student of music. Along with this appear keys to the pronunciation of the dialects and translations of some of the songs.

The book is well printed and well illustrated with the art work of the Africans portraying in different ways another phase of African life.

* * * * *

_Educational Adaptations._ By THOMAS JESSE JONES. Phelps-Stokes
Fund, New York, 1919. Pp. 92.

This work presents valuable history in its introduction, which consists largely of a sketch of the life of the founder of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, Caroline Phelps Stokes. It is interesting to note that she was a descendant of English Puritan ancestors, eminent for their ability and Christian character. They early manifested interest in the relief of the poor and in the enlightenment of the heathen in foreign parts. From them, therefore, came much of the assistance given to promote the Sunday School movement, Bible and tract societies, missionary organization, the colonization enterprise, and the abolition of slavery. With this record before her it is not surprising, therefore, that Miss Caroline Phelps Stokes early united with the church with a desire "to live the years that still remained with a fixed and determined purpose to do her duty to God, regardless of how disagreeable that duty might be."

Measuring up to this ideal Miss Stokes became interested in the Negro race. She visited the South to inspect the schools for the education of the Negro and impressed with their needs she thereafter lavished upon them gifts which had a direct bearing upon the development of education among these people. Among these were donations to the Haines Industrial School, Hampton, and Tuskegee. Manifesting interest also in the local problems of the race, she undertook to secure better housing for the poor whites and blacks in New York City and established the Phelps-Stokes Fund for the improvement of tenement house dwelling in New York City for the poor families of New York City and for educational purposes in the enlightenment of Negroes, both in Africa and the United States North American Indians and deserving white students.

There follows then a brief account of how the provisions of this will have been carried out. Next one finds set forth a plan for educational-co-operation and the scope of the work of the committee on education which finally brought out the two-volume report of Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, the Educational Director of the fund. This is followed by a brief statement on Negro education in the United States, which is a resumé of Dr. Jones's report. The more interesting part of this volume is that which sets forth in detail the manner in which this fund is being used by co-operation with the educational and religious agencies in the South, by giving fellowships to students in Southern universities to stimulate research into Negro life and history, by assisting the work of the University Race Commission on Race Questions, and that of the Southern Publicity Committee.

* * * * *

_The Negro Faces America._ By HERBERT J. SELIGMANN, formerly
Member of the Editorial Staffs of the _New York Evening Post_ and
the _New Republic_. New York and London, Harper and Brothers,
1920. Pp. iv., 319. Price, $1.75 net.

"There is, in fact, no race problem in the United States." A sociological study which within its first four pages makes this assertion must gain the reader's attention and interest at the start. That there is no solution to the race problem is a statement heard so often in America that it has become almost proverbial; that the solution is simple if our citizens would approach the problem fairly is an observation made less often; but that _there is no problem_ would seem to be either the flippant remark of one who dabbles in sociology or the profound utterance of a new seer.

Mr. Seligmann, nevertheless, does not hesitate either to make this assertion or to attempt to demonstrate its truth. In "the conversational tone of the scientist," he cites the testimony of anthropologists, the opinions of students of racial and sociological questions, the conclusions reached by scientific surveys of rural and urban conditions, the observations of sworn eye-witnesses and the findings of grand juries in cases of inter-racial disturbance. The conclusion to be reached, to his mind, is that the so-called race problem is not a problem in itself, but a "blind spot" in the eye of the American public, a "color psychosis," a "habit of thought" by which questions of race and racial differences are connected, "frequently deliberately," with phases of American life with which they should have nothing to do,--in fact, with every phase of American life. This habit of thought, Mr. Seligmann says, is prevalent throughout the southern part of this country and is spreading through the North and West. In the cities, it makes the smallest and most natural examples of race tension "definitely subject to manipulation by political leaders and their allies in newspaper offices," raises the rent to Negro applicants for houses, protests against their living in certain localities, opposes the Negro in industry as he awakens to the strategic position which he occupies and uses such opposition in the fostering of race riots. In the rural communities of some parts of the South, it has created an "American Congo" in which peonage is practiced openly. In the World War, it made the United States' "essential struggle" internal rather than external, brought about the rebirth of the Ku-Klux Klan on this side of the waters, and worked against the success of the Nation's arms abroad. In social questions it makes sex "the distorted glass by which the Negro is presented to view." It "lays its fetters upon science" and stifles the truths of anthropology with a blanket of myth. The spread of the habit of thought is in many cases part of a deliberate propaganda, the chief agent of which is the American newspaper, and "the only course for white Americans to pursue is to cultivate thorough-going skepticism as to everything which American newspapers publish about the Negro."

Such are the conditions. Meanwhile, Mr. Seligmann continues, a "new Negro" has been rising. His growth was not started by the War, as some think, but accelerated by it, for it was inevitable that he should come into being. He ranges, in type, from the radical editors of _The Messenger_ to the "new bourgeoisie" which has learned to fight back and die, if need be, for the sake of principle and justice. This is the type of Negro who, in spite of differences of opinion within the race itself, is gradually working his way toward leadership; and this is the Negro who now "faces America." "Newly emancipated from reliance upon any white savior, [he] stands ready to make his unique contribution to what may some time become American civilization."

What is to be his future? It is Mr. Seligmann's opinion and conclusion that his future lies largely with the forces of labor, among whom "color and the habits of thought which come from emphasizing color distinctions must be subordinated to the need for joint consideration of common difficulties." "It depends largely," too, "upon the emancipation of the American people from their newspapers" and upon whether or not they will demand and obtain "systematic information on matters concerning colored people and their relation to white people"; for a knowledge of the truth will set the nation free from the "color psychosis" under which it now labors.

That such a book as this should have been written is in itself an indication, let us hope, of the coming of the new day in racial relations toward which Mr. Seligmann points the way.

D. A. LANE, JR.

NOTES

Houghton Mifflin & Company has published John Drinkwater's _Lincoln, the World Emancipator_. This is not a biography of Lincoln but rather a type representing the ideals of the American nation and at the same time the bonds which have attached the people of the United States to those of England.

* * * * *

In the _Magazine of History_ for November-December 1917, there appeared an important letter of Abraham Lincoln to the Mayor of New York bearing upon a proposed celebration of the Union victories in the West during the Civil War.

* * * * *

The article entitled "Fifty Years of Negro Citizenship," by Dr. C. G. Woodson which appeared in the last number of _The Journal of Negro History_, is now being used as supplementary reading by the Senior Class of the Law School of Howard University. This article has been reprinted.

* * * * *

In the January number of _The American Historical Review_ appeared a number of documents entitled: "General M. C. Meigs on the conduct of the Civil War." In that same number is an interesting article entitled: "A Confederate Diplomat at the Court of Napoleon III," by L. M. Sears.

* * * * *

The Associated Publishers, a firm recently organized to publish books bearing on the Negro will soon bring out Dr. C. G. Woodson's work on _The Negro Church_. This is an intensive treatise of the development of religion among the American Negroes. The leading topics discussed are: The Attitude of the Early Missionaries toward the Negro, the Dawn of the New Day, Pioneer Negro Preachers, The Independent Church Movement, The Growth of the Negro Church, The Situation in the South before the Civil War, Preachers of Versatile Genius in the North, The Civil War and the Church, Religious Education, The Call of Politics, The Statistics of the Negro Church and The Negro Church Socialized.

This same firm in the near future will publish also Dr. Woodson's long delayed text book to be entitled _The Negro in Our History_. Because of the many upheavals in the publishing world, it has been impossible to bring out this work at an earlier date but this firm promises the publication of it by next fall.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. VI--JULY, 1921--NO. 3

THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ANCIENT NIGERIA.

The opinion of the Western World toward Africa and Africans is in the process of a very slow, yet very tremendous, change. The distant yet ultimate development of this process will bring about a most important revolution in the world of modern thought. It will be marked by a complete reversal of the prevailing present-day evaluation of the history of a continent and of the accomplishments and possibilities of a great people.

To the lay mind of the modern world, Africa is a gigantic jungle of barbarians, bamboo and baboons, where Livingstone traveled, Rhodes prospected, and Roosevelt hunted. Furthermore, it is only within the last twenty-five years or more that even that learned group whose profession is the exposition and interpretation of human history has begun to modify its opinions in this connection.

An insight into the spirit of learned opinion regarding Africa and the Africans only a comparatively short time ago may be gained from the following article, which appeared in a Berlin journal in 1891.[1] The article, in part, runs:

"With regard to its Negro population, Africa in contemporary
opinion offers no historical enigma which calls for a solution,
because from all the information supplied by our explorers and
ethnologists, the history of civilization proper in the continent
begins, as far as concerns its inhabitants, only with the
Mohammedan invasion.

"Before the introduction of a genuine faith and a higher standard
of culture by the Arabs, the nations had neither political
organization nor, strictly speaking, any religion, nor any
industrial development. None but the most primitive instincts
determine the lives and conduct of the Negroes who lack every
kind of ethical inspiration. Every judicial observer and critic
of alleged African culture must once for all make up his mind to
renounce the charm of poetry and wizardry of fairy lore, all
those things which in other parts of the world remind us of a
past fertile in legend and song; that is to say, must bid
farewell to the attractions offered by the Beyond of History, by
the hope of eventually realizing the tangible impalpable realm
conjured up in the distance which time has veiled within its
mists, and by the expectation of ultimately wresting some relics
of antiquity every now and again from the lap of the earth.

"If the soil of Africa is turned up today by the colonist's
plough share, no ancient weapon will lie in the furrow; if the
virgin soil be cut by a canal, its excavation will reveal no
ancient tomb; and if the ax effects a clearing in the primeval
forest, it will nowhere ring upon the foundations of an old world
palace. Africa is poorer in record history than can be imagined.
'Black Africa' is a continent which has no mystery, nor history!"

But now this view of Black Africa and its peoples so widespread and well established a generation ago is being slowly dissipated and a new and revolutionary view of the mysterious contents is building itself in its stead. The facts and forces bringing about this great change fall into three main classes; they are of an historical, archaeological and ethnological character.

The real beginning of this change of opinion may be said to date from the capture of the old African city of Benin by the British military forces in the year 1897. The economic and political aspects of the incident do not concern us here, but from an anthropological point of view it proved to be one of the most important incidents of the nineteenth century. For as Ling Roth,[2] the noted traveler and ethnologist, has said, "the taking of Benin City opened up to us the knowledge of the existence of hitherto unknown African craft, the productions of which will hold their own among some of the best specimens of antiquity of modern times."

Many of these objects of art were carried away from Benin by the members of the invading expedition to Europe, where they created a profound impression and astounding surprise in scientific circles throughout the continent. C. H. Read, in a paper before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, on the "Art of Benin City," the year following their discovery, says: "It need scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find."[3]

Just about this time, and continuing down to the present day, a number of Oriental scholars began to bring out modern language translations of the works of numerous Arab writers bearing upon African history--chief among them being the works of El Bekri, Ibn Batuta and Ibn Khaldoun. The most important, however, at least from one angle, was a translation of the _Tarikh es Sudan_, or _The History of the Sudan_, which is not the work of an Arab at all, but the joint work of several Sudanese blacks. In its original form it was written both in Arabic and in the Songhay languages. The book was translated into French by M. Houdas, the eminent French professor of the Oriental School of Languages of Paris.

"The book," says Lugard,[4] "is a wonderful document, the
narrative of which deals mainly with the modern history of the
Songhay Empire, relating the rise of this black civilization
there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and its decadence
up to the middle of the seventeenth century.... But it is not
merely an authentic narrative. It is for the unconscious light
which it sheds upon the life, manners, politics and literature of
the country that it is valuable. Above all, it possesses the
crowning quality displayed usually in creative poetry alone, of
presenting a vivid mind picture of the character of the men with
whom it deals. It has been called the 'Epic of the Sudan.' It
lacks the charm of form, but in all else the description is well
merited. Its pages are a treasure house of information for the
careful student, and the volume may be read many times without
extracting from it more than a small part of all that it
contains."

Barth, who obtained some fragments of an Arabic copy when he was on his way to Timbuctoo, goes so far as to say that the book forms "one of the most important additions that the present age has made to the history of mankind."[5] Like the unknown culture which the Benin bronzes revealed, the translation of these documents brought to the attention of the learned and academic circles of the Western World, in a more available form, surprising accounts of the sometime existence of powerful and age-old kingdoms and empires in the heart of Black Africa, which hitherto had scarcely been suspected.

Following close upon this was the cursory but illuminating report of _Une mission archeologique au Sudan francais_, headed by the soldier-ethnologist, Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes. The report, _Le Plateau Central Nigirien, Paris, 1907_, brought to Europe much valuable information bearing upon the past cultures of the practically unknown Nigerian plateau regions.

Passing over a few very important ethnological studies bearing for the most part upon present-day cultures, we come last of all to what is in the truest sense of the word the wonderful and astounding revelations regarding the pre-historic culture of an ancient Negro race on the West Coast of Africa. These revelations were brought to light as the result of the publications by Leo Frobenius of his _Der Afrika Sprach_ in Berlin in 1913.[6] This was a popular account of the experiences and findings of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition during its travels in the Nigerian area for the years 1910-1912. As important as are the ethnological and archaeological finds of this expedition, which will be considered further on, one of its most significant features was its bold advocacy and support of an idea which has been hesitantly advanced in a few circles ever since the study of the Benin bronzes and the Nubian monuments, namely, the existence of a genuinely superior type of culture in Central Africa in pre-classical and pre-Christian times.

Such, then, by way of introduction is the nature of the sources from which comes the influence which is slowly and haltingly, yet surely, bringing about the change in current opinion regarding "Black Africa" as is evidenced by the timely but hitherto unsuccessful effort of Harvard University to treat the records of the African peoples scientifically in keeping with the standard set in the first volume of the _Varia Africana_. This paper, however, as may be inferred from its title, does not undertake to survey the facts covering the whole field, but restricts itself to materials of a more or less archaeological character, that is, to the architecture, tombs and the arts and crafts of a small section of this ancient land.

There are two reasons for approaching this whole subject in this way. First, the materials and facts herewith considered are in the main of a tangible and undisputed character; and, secondly, it is the study of architecture and the arts and crafts of this particular locality that has been the premier force in changing the old opinion of the world towards Africa. Let us then turn now for a somewhat detailed study of these materials.

As has been said in the introduction, it was the revelation incident to the taking of Benin by the British that marks the real beginning of a serious and scientific interest in the past cultures of Central Africa. The incident started a movement of both a forward and a backward reach. On the one hand, it led to subsequent searchings which ultimately resulted in the finding of additional evidences of culture in that territory, as well as to a reconsideration of the value of the reports of the travelers and adventurers on the West Coast from the fifteenth century on.[7] The combined result has been the bringing to light of objects and evidences of achievement which place the ancient and medieval African on a plane with, and in many cases above, his contemporaries in Europe and America.

The reports of earlier adventurers and travelers in the Benin territory previous to the British conquest gave us pictures of towns and buildings which, all things considered, are of no mean order, and which reflect the existence of a social and cultural development of a very long standing. The earliest recorded description of Benin City, according to Ling Roth,[8] is that of an old Dutch chronicler who wrote as "D. R." and whose works first appeared in Germany in 1604. His description is as follows:

"At first the town seems very large; when one enters it one comes
at once into a broad street which appears to be seven or eight
times broader than the Warme street in Amsterdam; this extends
straight out, and when one has walked a quarter of an hour along
it, he still does not see the end of the street.... At the gate
at which one enters there is a very high bulwark, very thick and
strongly made, with a very deep, broad ditch, but it was dry and
full of high trees. This ditch extends a good way, but we do not
know whether it extends around the town or not. That gate is a
well-made gate, made of wood, to be shut according to their
methods, and watch is always kept there. Outside this gate there
is a large suburb.... One sees a great many lanes and streets on
both sides, which also extend far and straight, but one can not
see the end of them on account of their great extent.

"The houses in this town stand in good order, one close to the
other, like houses in Holland. Houses in which well-to-do people,
such as gentlemen, dwell, have two or three steps to go up, and
in front have an ante-court where one may sit, which court or
gallery is cleaned every morning by their servants, and straw
mats spread for sitting on. Their rooms or apartments with (the
court) are four square, having a roof all round, which, however,
does not join in the middle, but is left open, so that the wind,
rain and daylight may enter. In these houses they live and eat,
but they have specially built little houses for cooking, as well
as other huts and rooms.... The king's court is very large, being
many square places within, surrounded by courts wherein watch is
always kept. This king's court is so large that the end is not to
be seen, and when one thinks he has come to the end, one sees
through a gateway other places or courts, and one sees many, many
stables."

Another description of Benin which seems to corroborate this former description, and which was itself substantiated by later and more recent reports, appeared in a book[9] published by one Dapper, a Dutchman, in Amsterdam in 1668. It seems that Dapper himself was never at Benin, but received most of his information about the country from the writings of a Sam Blomert, who, Dapper says, lived for many years in Africa.[10] As Ling Roth points out, subsequent reports and the recent finds seem to bear out the truth of his account.

According to Dapper,

"the town comprising the queen's court is about five or six
[Dutch] miles in circumference, or, leaving out the court, three
miles inside the gates. It is protected at one side by a wall ten
feet high, made of double stockades of big trees tied to each
other by cross beams, fastened crosswise and stuffed up with red
clay solidly put together.... The town possesses several gates,
eight or nine feet in height, and five feet in width, with doors
made of a single piece of timber hanging, or turning on a peg
like the peasants' fences here in this country. [Holland.]

"The king's court is square and stands at the right-hand side as
one enters the town by the gate of Gotton, and is certainly as
large as the town of Harlem, and entirely surrounded by a special
wall like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many
magnificent palaces, houses and apartments for courtiers and
comprises beautiful long and square galleries about as large as
the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting
on wooden pillars from top to bottom, covered with cast copper on
which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and
battles, and are kept very clean. Most palaces and houses are
covered with palm leaves instead of square pieces of wood
[shingles], and every roof is decorated with a small turret,
ending in a small point on which birds are standing, these birds
being cast in copper, and having outspread wings cleverly made
after living models.

"The town has thirty very straight and broad streets, each of
them about one hundred and twenty feet wide or about as wide as
the Heeren or Keezersgracht [canals] at Amsterdam from one row of
houses to the other, from which branch out many side streets,
also broad, but less so than the main streets.

"The houses are built alongside the street in good order, the one
close to the other as here in this country [Holland], adorned
with gables and steps and roofs made of palm or banana leaves, or
leaves from other trees; they are not higher than a 'stadie,' but
usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the
case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms,
which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected,
and they can make and keep them as shiny and smooth by washing
and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and
they are like mirrors. The upper storys are made of the same sort
of clay; moreover, every house is provided with a well for a
supply of fresh water."