Chapter XXXVIII: How to Help the Negro to Help Himself 468 (5)

Hon. C. H. Mebane, Superintendent of Public Instruction for
North Carolina, says of him: "If I had fifty such men as
Prof. Atkins in North Carolina, I could make a complete
revolution in educational work in a short while, a complete
revolution as to moral uplift and general good of the negro
race."

In addition to his work as an educator, Prof. Atkins has
taken much interest in the work of the American Academy of
Social and Political Science, of which he is a member. He is
also a member of the American Statistical Association, and
has been twice elected Secretary of Education of the A. M.
E. Zion Church.

The esteem in which he is held by leading men of the nation
wherever he is known is fairly indicated in the following
statement of Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., ex-minister to
Spain and agent of the great Peabody and Slater Trusts for
educational purposes. Dr. Curry says: "I regard President
Atkins, of The Slater Industrial and State Normal School at
Winston, N. C., as one of the most worthy and capable men
connected with the education of the Negroes in the South.
His intelligence, courtesy, good deportment, high character
and efficiency as the head of a school have won the
confidence and goodwill of the people among whom he lives,
and of all who best know his work and worth."

"The education of a Negro is the education of a human being. In its essential characteristics the human mind is the same in every race and in every age. When a Negro child is taught that two and two are four he learns just what the white child learns when he is taught the same proposition. The teacher uses the same faculties of mind in imparting the truth as to the sum of two and two. The two children use the same faculties in learning the truth; it means the same thing to them both. In further teaching and training the methods may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the individual."--Bishop Haygood.

The above quotation from Bishop Haygood indicates my answer to the question. This question is simply a revival of the old superstition concerning the Negro that manifested itself in the inquiry as to whether the Negro had a soul. Civilization and fraternity have so far developed that it would be hard in these days to find a person whose skepticism concerning the Negro would find a doubtful expression as to the Negro's humanity. The light has become too strong for the existence of that kind of mist; hence the unsympathetic critic has been forced to find a new way of putting his wish begotten thought.

There is still a higher authority for a negative answer to the question, "Should the Negroes be given an education different from that given to the whites?" in the following language: "God had made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of all the earth."

This declaration of St. Paul goes to the core of the matter, unless it is proposed to revive the old superstition that the Negro is not included as a part of the "nations of men." It is a strange fact that nobody ever proposes a modified or peculiar form of education for any other nationality.

It is the glory of the backward peoples of the earth that they are adopting the forms and methods of education which have made Western civilization the touch-stone of the world's progress.

But the implied contention that the Negro should be given an education of a different kind is not absolute. Most disputants on this subject--so far as published statements go--allow that after a long period of adaptation and modified training the American Negro may reach a stage in his mental evolution that he may assimilate the same kind of mental food that is admittedly suited to the Caucasian, Mongolian and others. This view of the matter leaves out of the count another great fact, viz., that the American Negro is more American than anything else, that he is not an alien either by birth or blood. Whatever exceptions might be alleged against Africa can no longer be made a bar to him.

But let us recur again to the evolution theory, and I will not undertake to consider this theory as Darwinian.

It is not generally advanced as a presumption that the Negro is not yet a thoroughbred, but it is presented in certain catchy and specious phrases such as suggest the necessity of beginning at the bottom rather than at the top, the necessity of giving to the colored American a kind of colored education, the necessity of making his civilization earthbound and breadwinning rather than heavenbound and soul-satisfying--the necessity of keeping him close to mother earth--as he "is of the earth earthy."

In those assumptions it is forgotten that education is not a question of mechanics; it is rather a question of ethics and immortality. Education is primarily an effort to realize in man his possibilities as a thinking and feeling being.

Man's inheritance is first from heaven, from above. That is the respect in which education differs from all merely constructive processes. The stimulating and quickening power is from above. Historically this is eminently true.

Education has been a process from above. It is not my intention to enter upon the discussion of the merits of any particular kind of education. My contention is that because the Negro is a part of humanity, because he is an American with an American consciousness and with a demonstrated capacity to take on training after the manner of an ordinary man he should not be treated as a monstrosity. Bishop Haygood sets forth the only proper line of distinction in education in the following sentence: "In further teaching and learning the methods may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the individual." The "peculiarities" here indicated unquestionably exist. They may be noted even in the same family, but these peculiarities are found in differences which lie deeper than the skin. There is no philosopher, unless he "is joined to idols," so bold as to base his presumption of difference in human beings upon the skin, for then his judgment might have to depend on whether the skin is dark, copper-colored, brown, white, yellow, freckled, red, etc. Human differences, all will admit, are essentially differences of _individual souls_, and this does not preclude the importance of environment and other incidental influences.

The great fact is that mind is mind--of like origin and like substance--and that it has been found to yield to like treatment among all nations and in all ages. There is no system of pedagogy that would hold together for a moment if the idea of the unity of the human race and the similarity of mind were invalidated. Philosophy itself would be threatened and all science would be in jeopardy. Investigation and practice never fail to support this theory of the solidarity of the human race. In the schools where it has been tried it has been found not to be a matter of color, nor even of blood--and certainly the differences have not depended on race affiliation. It has been a question of the individual and of local environment.

But so positive and indivisible is the human identity that even the influence of individualism and environments is overcome by the great universal processes of education, the great processes of mind quickening and mind development. In many of our best institutions there sit side by side the representatives of many nationalities and races, and it has never been found in the work of these institutions--as far as I have been able to discover--that any one color or race could monopolize the benefits, but, on the contrary, it has been found that the benefits were realized according to individual temperament and power.

My position is not one in reference to non-essentials but essentials; it is not a contention based even so much on degree, but rather on quality and capability. I would not contend that environment would not make a whole group of children more or less backward, and I do not dispute the fact that because of better environments the whites represent as a whole a higher state of civilization. But I hold that this is true not because of race identity but rather because of individual embarrassment. Give a white child and a colored child the same environment and their progress or backwardness, I hold, would be essentially the same under the same stimulants and encouragements. Wherever colored and white children have been put to comparative tests too little attention has been paid to difference of environment, and too often there has been a dormant presumption that the same environment would not have produced the same results upon white children. Wherever these tests have been made it has been too often overlooked that the facilities for their education were not equal; they may have been nominally equal but the fact remains that they were not really equal.

Considering the inequalities of environment and educational facilities the results of most of the comparative tests are complimentary to the colored child and demonstrate the similarity of his mental susceptibilities--demonstrate that he is but a normal constituent part of the great human race with substantially the same limitations and capabilities as other members of the great human family.

FOURTH PAPER.

SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO THE WHITES?

BY PROF. J. H. JONES.

REV. JOSHUA H. JONES.

The Rev. Joshua H. Jones was born at Pine Plains, South
Carolina, June 15, 1856. He professed religion at ten years
of age and joined the Shady Grove A. M. E. Church of the
Bull Swamp Circuit, South Carolina. At the age of fourteen
he was made Sunday School teacher, and at the age of sixteen
Sunday School superintendent. By the time he was eighteen he
had served in all the local spiritual offices of the church,
and was then licensed as a local preacher by the quarterly
conference of said circuit. The pastors soon discovered his
usefulness and aid to them. He was a diligent student and an
ardent churchman, and acquired education rapidly. At the age
of twenty-one years he entered the Normal Department of
Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and in 1880
finished the Normal and College Preparatory Courses. He then
taught and preached one year, after which he returned to
Claflin University, and in 1885 graduated with the degree at
A. B. Not daunted nor yet satisfied with his attainments he
came north, studied awhile at Howard University, Washington,
D. C., thence to Wilberforce University, where in 1887 he
graduated from the Theological Course with the degree of B.
D. In 1893 Wilberforce University conferred upon him the
degree of D. D. in recognition of his superior worth and
ability. In June, 1900, he was elected President of
Wilberforce University, and a year later Claflin University
conferred upon him the degree of M. A.

As a minister of the Gospel he has been pastor in charge of
Williams Chapel, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Branchville
Circuit, South Carolina; Fort Motte Circuit, South Carolina;
Wheeling, West Virginia; The Holy Trinity Church,
Wilberforce, Ohio; Lynn, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode
Island; Columbus, Ohio; and Presiding Elder of the Columbus
District, Ohio Conference; Pastor at Zanesville, Ohio. In
all an unbroken period of thirty-six years of church work
and twenty-eight years in the ministry he has never known a
failure. His labors have been indefatigable and his
ministrations clean and inspiring.

In his public services he has been an inspiration to the
race. For fourteen years he has been a Trustee of
Wilberforce University, five years Trustee and Secretary of
the Normal and Industrial Department at Wilberforce, and a
constant and ardent helper in the establishment and
development of the same. For six consecutive years he was
elected and served as member of the Columbus Board of
Education, and through his efforts six colored teachers were
put into the mixed schools of Columbus, Ohio, as teachers.

In private affairs he has been industrious, frugal,
economical and administrative. He has accumulated a
comfortable estate and stands well with the banking and
business circles of Columbus, Ohio, and pays taxes on a tax
valuation of $10,000.

He has always been an ardent lover of his race, of his
church, of his country and his God, and has always been a
striking figure in the circles of men wherever his lot has
fallen. Fifteen years ago he was elected Dean of Allen
University, Columbia, South Carolina; eight years ago
Professor of Theology in Payne Theological Seminary, neither
of which he was able to accept because of heavy demands upon
his energy elsewhere. In 1890 he was elected delegate to the
Methodist Ecumenical Conference and has been several times
delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church,
and in 1900 was a strong candidate for the Bishopric,
receiving fifty or more votes on the first ballot. In his
present position he bids fair to give the church good
service.

If this question is to be answered affirmatively or negatively, I emphatically say no. If the question be asked inquiringly, carrying with it the thought of race experience, race opportunity, race status and the variations growing out of these, then I would give the dubious answer, _yes and no_. In the first place, all things are educative and all forms of education have a definite relation to all other forms of education, and all educational processes have definite relations to all other educational processes, so all of these factors make for unity in education, and the completest education is that which embraces the greatest number of educational factors. It is perfectly true that educational processes may be varied so as to suit varying ideals or they may be varied so as to accomplish certain ends, for unvarying sequences follow definite antecedents; even so educational systems may be framed for the accomplishment of varying results or definite results as the framers of such systems may determine to suit the conditions of mankind as conceived at any given time. The end in view in an educational system is everything. What the chosen end of any system of education may be ought to depend upon the institution of the country in which a people lives and every educational system should be framed so as to utilize all of the agencies and involve all of the processes that make most rapidly for the achievement of the end in view.

If the end in view is serfdom for the Negro, then a vast amount of industrial training by rote, minus the natural sciences and mechanic arts for the generation of capacity, plus such rudiments in arithmetic, reading and writing as will enable him to be an efficient workman under the directions of others is the requisite. If it is the desire to make the Negro a useful agent in the production of wealth through the operation of the basal industries, in the largest quantity or the highest quality for the smallest amount of outlay, then a still higher class of training would be necessary, whether this production of wealth be for the good of self or for the common good of society. But if the end in view is to prepare him for the higher responsibilities of American citizenship, involving as that citizenship does the relationships, obligations and duties which devolve upon freemen and equally binding upon him as upon the whites in a democratic society or in a country of the people, for the people and by the people, it is evident that such a system must have structural affinity with such a system of education carried on by the whites and for the whites. In other words, such must be his education that his whole being is developed and in him there is the largest generation of capacity, insight, foresight, the power to think with proportions so as to give him that mastery over his environments and over the questions of common good which will enable him at all times to do the right things, the wisest things, the best things under any given circumstances in the midst of which he may be thrown. Any educational system that has an aim short of this as its end will certainly fail to prepare the Negro for the high duties which belong to a free individual in a democratic society.

Why should the Negro be given an education different from that given to the whites? Is he not a man? Is he not a free man? Is he not a citizen? Is he not held responsible by society for the performance of duties enjoined upon him by law? Is he not a subject of government? As a subject of government, ought he not participate in the affairs of the government? I think it will be admitted by all fair-minded men that all governments are for the welfare of the governed. Now, since the Negro is more interested in his own welfare than anybody else is and since to have a thing well done you had better do it yourself, since also his welfare is shaped by any government under which he lives, it must necessarily follow that his best good requires that he participate in the affairs of that government if he is to continue to be a free man. It is argued--and that not without some degree of reason--by part of the more favored people in this country, that the gift of the high privileges of citizenship carries with it the demand that the recipients of these gifts possess the capacity to exercise them for the common good of all who belong to the body politic. They also argue that human conditions for government are grounded in intelligence, virtue and property. So good, so well. But how is the Negro to acquire intelligence, virtue and property according to the American standard if his education is to be according to an un-American system? There are four fundamental American doctrines that both experience and philosophy attest as being right: (I) The right of education is a human right. (II) That the schools furnished by the state should be open to all of the children of the state. (III) The safety of the state depends upon the intelligence of our citizens of that state. (IV) As a matter of self-defense the state should compel all of its citizens to become intelligent. These doctrines have their root in the great truth that every individual is a member of society and that therefore society has an interest in him, in his capacity, in his intelligence, in his worth, and in turn is injured by his incapacity, his lack of worth, his ignorance. The great war-cry of American leadership is "Educate, educate, educate;" yea, more, "Educate your masters." No man lives unto himself. God has made every man dependent, associative and co-operative, and hence the good of every individual is found in the common good of society and the common good of society is found in the good of the individual. Every man who is not at his best or not doing his best is to that extent a failure and a hurt to the common good.

To me it is perfectly clear that if the Negro is to be in this country and not of it then his education should be different from that given to the whites. But if he is to be in the country and of the country it follows without argument that he must be educated in common with all of the people of the country so that the nation may have a common ideal and a common consciousness so that our whole society may have or feel a common interest in our common country. To be more explicit, whether or not the Negro should be given the same kind of education the whites are given depends upon whether or not the whites have the proper kind of education. I should rather contend that if the whites have the proper kind of education for mankind, then that given to the Negro should be exactly like it. If the whites have not the proper kind of education for mankind, then it follows that the Negro should be given a different kind, for whether or not one man should have the same thing as another depends upon whether or not that thing is fit for mankind in general. This would naturally force upon us the inquiry as to what kind of education the whites receive. If upon proper inquiry we find that theirs is the proper kind for man, in this same finding we should discover that this is the proper kind for the Negro.

Here differentiation begins, even in the field of education itself. A careful study of the constitution of man, involving the fundamentalities that grow out of his intellectual, moral, industrial, social and political nature will lead us, I think, to see that much of the white man's education is to be regretted and repudiated; much of it is to be approved and appropriated. All training given in avarice, hatred, prejudice, passion, sensuality, sin and wickedness, growing out of self-conceit and vanity, must assuredly be repudiated. But all things embraced in their education that make for the good, the true, the beautiful, the just and the elevation of mankind should be embraced, seized upon, masticated, digested and assimilated--transmuted into the elements of Negro character, forming a part of the very sub-consciousness of his being. In short, whatever education the whites have had or do get which makes for human enlargement, for righteousness, and brings man into closer relationship with God and gives him a fuller conception of the laws of God made manifest by the operation of His laws throughout the cosmos enabling him to discover the relationships which he sustains to God, to his fellow-men, to the lower creatures which inhabit this earthly sphere in which man lives and the laws that govern the universe, expressing modes of existence and orders of sequence, together with the principles of industry, frugality and economy, which determine the material accumulations necessary for the maintenance of life, these the Negro should know as largely as possible, for certainly they have been fields of educational processes found necessary for the white man through many generations. It is to be noticed that for centuries the white man has studied in order to get a thorough grasp, first of all, upon the intellectual tools--so to speak; in other words, to know how to read, write and cipher in terms of his own language, and at the same time to lay a foundation broad enough to pursue useful knowledge in all other directions possible. For instance, having mastered his own language to a reasonable degree, he takes the Latin and the Greek that he might acquaint himself with the development of the institutions out of which his own was evolved as well as to make double his hold upon his own; he studies Hebrew and the cognate languages to get mastery of the great truths, philosophy and institutions of a great people, adding to his own thereby; he studies the modern languages, German, French, Spanish and Italian, that he may gather the best fruits of the achievements of these nations and add them to his own store; yea, he covers the whole field of philology that he may add to his own store the best that has been garnered by all of the nations of the earth; he studies the literature, science and philosophy of all living races of his day and time with the same end in view and when he has swept the field of historic times he delves into the mysteries of geology and archæology and follows the mute footsteps of man through Neolithic and Paleolithic times to the very zero of human beginnings and comes back laden with truths to enrich the thought of his day.

He studies natural science as God manifested in nature, by observation and experiment; he commences, with God through the discovery of the reign of law, classifying and systematizing the same and thus broadening his own vision and adding to the store of knowledge in our day and generation. As a preparation for this scientific research, he studies mathematics from the elementary principles through the largest elaborations of Euclid, Keppler, Newton and Copernicus, and their illustrious successors; he studies sociology, biology and mechanics; he studies civil and sociological laws and principles to the end that the intricacies of democratic business intercourse might be the more fully and clearly understood, mastered and applied in civilized processes. No form of industry has escaped him, no law of frugality has eluded him; whatever has in it an element of truth or virtue, he has pursued with a relentlessness that knows no failure. As a student, he has gone the rounds of the world in search of truth and has come back rich in the knowledge of the things that God would have us know.

How the Negro can live in the midst of a civilization created by such a people, drawing upon such vast resources as we have but faintly indicated and be given an education different from that of this people--and yet live among them with any degree of security--for the life of me, I cannot see. If, to keep up with the requirements of such a civilization as America furnishes to-day, a white child--notwithstanding his inheritance--has to go to school from his earliest days away into the years of his majority and be systematically trained in all of the subjects as taught in the kindergarten, the public schools, the secondary schools, the academies, the universities, and the professional schools, how much more imperatively necessary must it be that the Negro should have like training. It seems to me that he should not only have the same training but that he should have more of it than the white man has. His education should be physical, moral, intellectual, social, industrial and political, and his educational processes should have the highest structural affinity with the educational processes of the whites so that he may be brought into national and political assimilation with the white man's institutional life.

TOPIC V.

SHOULD THE IGNORANT AND NON-PROPERTY-HOLDING NEGRO BE ALLOWED TO VOTE?

BY JOHN P. GREEN.

HON. JOHN P. GREEN.

Hon. John P. Green was born in 1845 at New Berne, N. C., of
free parents. As a boy twelve years of age, he went with his
widowed mother to Cleveland, Ohio. He was educated in the
Cleveland public schools, graduating from the Central High
School in 1869.

He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1870.
Returning to Cleveland, he for nine years served as justice
of the peace. In 1881 he was elected member of the Ohio
Legislature, serving three terms. In 1897 he was appointed
to a position in the postoffice department by President
McKinley.

He was also delegate to the National Republican Convention
in 1872, in 1884 and 1896.

All citizens who are industrious, honest, brave and patriotic should vote, without regard to their color; for, a man may possess all these characteristics and yet be "ignorant." Ignorance is only relative anyway.

(a) The Negro is a citizen. See XIV Amendment to Constitution, etc.

(b) He is industrious, and by his industry has not only helped to develop the resources of the United States but he has produced much of the property which is unjustly held by many white voters, and withheld from him; especially in the South.

The property of the South is due not more to the capital invested in the agricultural and manufacturing enterprises of that section than to the labor of the Negro, who furnishes the foundation of all wealth--labor--there.

(c) The untutored Negro has shown himself to be honest; he has never betrayed a trust imposed in him. During the great Civil War he was true to the trust imposed in him by his master at the front, who confided to his care the sustenance and even life of his wife and little ones. This was the supremest test of his honesty, which he sacredly discharged. Since the war, he has faithfully adhered to and followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him from what he considers the path of gratitude and honor.

(d) He is brave; as the records of our wars will prove. His blood has stained many battlefields where, under "Old Glory," he fought for the Union and Liberty; not only on American soil, but also in foreign lands. The Negro, in contending in war, for the life and liberties of this Republic, has literally covered himself with glory.

(1) That he is patriotic goes without saying, in the light of what has been written in the foregoing paragraph. With all his coarse and homely ignorance, the heart of the American Negro, when yet a slave, throbbed with patriotic love and loyalty; and this, too, at a time when his college-bred and intelligent (?) master was doing his uttermost to destroy this glorious fabric of Union.

It is only reasonable to assume that a man whose ignorance does not blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other voters, vote rightly.

(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in the hands of the Philistines.

(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them. It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance and affiliation to the Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from them and leaving them to be swayed by a set of _educated men_, many of whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.

(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the Republic is not resident altogether in the _brains_ of the voters. The _heart_ plays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.

(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for, many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races, are "non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous--a reverse of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family--a drought or flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin," where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.

It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant, with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected in the exercise of the function.

Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would seem to be the proper one to the foregoing proposition. Under our present Constitution, yes; the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" ought to vote.

TOPIC VI.

IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?

BY ATTORNEY R. S. SMITH.

ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.

Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N.
W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida,
April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common
schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard
University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he
taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate
delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican
Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the
national capital he served as a clerk in the United States
Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and
in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington
correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating
from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883,
was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District
of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the
practice of his profession. He has not only established a
lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a
life insurance company and other corporations. In November,
1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference
of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West
Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent
of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.

Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican
Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of
the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to
the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded
indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore
evident that he is a man of versatility as well as
ability.--_Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States_.

The subject of this sketch also served as assistant
sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican
Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several
important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations,
and has been generally successful. He has also been retained
in many equity, real estate and contested will cases,
wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost
exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience
of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court
of the District.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street,
Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty
years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome
Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa
Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.

At first glance the above question would seem to be fully answered with one word comprising but two letters, namely, N-o. And yet, upon second thought, it will be seen that that answer would not apply, for the reason that the alleged criminal Negro seldom reaches a court-house in the South before alleged summary justice is visited upon him by an unreasoning Judge Lynch.

The fact that the question is asked whether the criminal Negro is justly dealt with in the courts of the South, would imply that there is at least a doubt as to the genuineness of the justice meted out to him there. In legal phraseology, a criminal is one who has been duly convicted of crime. This being so, it would seem that my first inquiry should be, whether the Negro who has been legally ascertained to be a criminal is justly dealt with in the South, in the matter of his punishment therefor? This line of inquiry leads me into the investigation of the convict lease system which obtains in certain Southern states, and other unlawful abuses of colored criminals there.

It is not my purpose in the limited space allotted to consider this phase of the subject at great length, but rather to briefly point out its manifest injustice.

One of the greatest wrongs of the South is its convict lease system; and its lynch law, and its disfranchising statutes are like unto it. Although the emancipation proclamation, written and promulgated by the immortal Lincoln, has been operative for more than thirty-six years, yet a species of slavery still exists there, fostered and nurtured by the statutes authorizing the convict lease system. So vile became this evil in Anderson county, South Carolina, that the leading officials there denounced it as brutal and barbarous, a crime against nature and nature's God--a crime against civilization and humanity.

Some of the specific charges against the system were that these unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together in prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors of a Spanish prison, and you have somewhat of an idea of the iniquitous institution of the barbarous convict lease system.

But as if compounding crime, it is asserted with many of the appearances of truth, that Negro boys and girls, upon trivial charges, are convicted and sent to the convict camp for the express purpose of securing to the lessees of convicts the benefit of their unrequited toil until they reach their majority. Thus confined among confirmed criminals they naturally partake of the character of their environments, and conceive and multiply vice and criminology. This system punishes the real criminal unjustly. The ill-gotten gain it offers furnishes the incentive to thrust the innocent into prison pens.

Then, too, it is claimed with the appearance of truth that unscrupulous white men in certain Southern localities actually trump up charges against Negro men and procure their convictions and sentence to the convict camp for the double purpose of affording the lessees the comparatively free labor of the alleged criminals and to deprive them of the right to vote. While heartily approving of such reasonable punishment as shall deter crime, I can command no language strong and severe enough to condemn in fitting terms the cruelties and deviltries heaped upon the Negro in certain sections of the South in the name and for the sake of those who profit by the convict lease system.

It is undisputed that some of those sent to the convict camp have been properly found guilty; some have been illegally convicted; some deserve proper punishment, while some, by reason of their tender years, should have been put into reformatories, where they might have been rescued from a life of crime and brought up as law-abiding citizens. Such institutions may have been intended to protect society from the dishonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.

But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?--it could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most diabolical crime.

The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.

In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found, his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.

In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.

The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early part of the seventeenth century. From that time to the present the slogan of every campaign, the rallying cry of every battle, has been justice in some form or other. And yet, in the alleged interest of innocence, justice, in certain localities, is often outraged, law dethroned, and mob rule exalted.

Whether or not the Negro charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts of the South can only be answered relatively, for in some localities fair trials are granted even to Negroes charged with the commission of crime. But for the most part, it must be admitted that Negroes brought into the courts of the South accused of crime against white people are not accorded a fair trial.

The reason of this unjust dealing with the Negro in the courts of the South is not far to seek; he is looked upon as an alien; then, too, the doctrine that he has no rights which a white man is bound to respect is exploded in certain localities only in theory, for in practice it is still unmistakably prevalent.

The crying need of the times is a wholesome respect for law and order, and a righteous condemnation of mob rule everywhere. Every pulpit North and South should speak out against mob rule and lynch law. The eloquent divine in Greenville, Miss., who recently denounced with righteous indignation the damnable outrages of mob violence in that state, was as a voice crying in the wilderness. For some reason his brethren of the cloth have not seen fit to join him in a crusade against this abominable sin. If the Southern clergy could only be induced to preach against this evil occasionally, there would soon be created throughout the sin-ridden districts such a healthy public sentiment and respect for law and order that these crimes against the state would soon become things of the past; nor could there be found throughout our broad land a miscreant, who, under the influence of the spirit of lawlessness, would take the life of our Chief Magistrate; nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as would openly criticise our Chief Executive for dining a representative member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.

But let us consider the alleged crime for which lynching is attempted to be justified. L. H. Perkins, Esq., of the Kansas Bar Association, in an address to its annual meeting, in July, 1901, said:

"Lord Coke observes: 'There are crimes that are not so much as to be named among Christians.' It is difficult for us in Kansas to believe that certain crimes exist; crimes against nature, practiced by force upon defenseless childhood, disclosed in criminal records of great cities; but there is one crime in Kansas that we have learned to know. It ought not to be named, much less permitted in a Christian land. The crime and its fit punishment, can scarcely be discussed; but how else can it be expunged? Shall it be by fire? Must he who writes the story of this new-born age still further shock the world and foul the fair name of America by pictures of a howling mob, profaning every law of God and man; with every bulwark of our rights thrown down, the gates of hell unchained, and passion, loose, unbridled as hurricane, roaring above the prostrate guardians of the peace, annihilating in an hour the civilization of six thousand years?

"Death in flames! Savage, bloodthirsty vengeance! Three things this savory orgy lacks: salt and sweet herbs and a good appetite.

"There is a law that in the last extremity, in the presence of impending death, all barriers are removed, all ranks are leveled, all rights are equalized. Supreme necessity is supreme law. Can it be possible that some such overmastering impulse at times dethrones the public mind, and, while the fit is on, the latent cannibal runs riot in the land? It seems it must be so; and, if it be, 'twill be until we rise to the necessity.

"We may excoriate the cannibal, but which of us will now affirm the provocation is not great? Poor, helpless woman! Why don't she learn to shoot? This monstrous crime pursues her like a nightmare. It is an ever present peril to every woman in the land. Must she shun every alley and fly from every bush lest lascivious eyes be on her and unbridled, brutal passion block her way? Of all the hobgoblins abroad in the night, in fact or fancy or in song or story, there is none so hideous as the stealthy form of the lecherous brute that leaps forth out of darkness and drags defenseless woman to her ruin.

"And can it be that we who make the laws; we who have wives and daughters and sisters and mothers who are dearer than life itself; we who honor woman, not for her strength but for the very attributes that render her the prey of force; can it be that we can make no laws that will protect her, or satisfy the public that justice will be done?

"Concede that in the sight of God the crime of rape is worse than murder, yet is it plain that the punishment should be death? In the interest of woman herself were it not better that the brutal ravisher have somewhat more to bear if he do also murder? Else would not the motive to silence forever the most dangerous witness be complete?

"I offer the suggestion of three degrees for rape--the first to cover only ravishment by brutal violence and force; the second all the intermediate grades save statutory rape, which alone shall constitute the third degree. I am no firm believer in the justice of our age of consent, and would leave corporal punishment for statutory rape to the discretion of the trial court. The terms of imprisonment as now prescribed are doubtless long enough, but let us add to them the sting and shame of the ancient whipping post. For the third degree, in the court's discretion, not more than seven lashes. For the second degree two floggings of twenty lashes each, soundly administered within twelve months. And for the first degree, three several floggings of forty lashes each within twelve months, and then castration. There is much reason in this ancient penalty, and the time has come when it should be revived. If, as some say, this morbid and unbridled passion is disease, then treat it like appendicitis--remove the cause."

Mr. Perkins is on the right track. I am glad that he neither endorses lynching nor takes stock in the absurd report from certain sections of the South that all Negroes are ravishers of white women. I think his suggested remedy against rape a good one for white and black.

But to return to the consideration of the other phase of the question, I desire to say that Mrs. Helen Douglass, the widow of the lamented Frederick Douglass, is accepted authority on the convict lease system, and consequently I am indebted to her for most of the data used in this article touching that subject. In a well prepared lecture on convict leases, Mrs. Douglass introduces her theme as follows:

"We know what happens when manufactories are shut down and a vast amount of accumulated material is suddenly thrown upon the market. For 250 years the South had been manufacturing a peculiar article; had been literally stamping this article with its own lineaments and putting it upon a market created especially for it. The war came! The manufactories were closed; the material was on hand; what should be done with it? Never in the world, perhaps, has there been a clearer demonstration of the irrevocable nature of law, as affecting society, and the awful power of habit as the sum of reiterated choice."

At the Prison Reform Convention, held in Atlanta in 1888, Dr. P. D. Sims of Chattanooga, Tenn., said that, the impoverished condition of the South succeeding the War of the Rebellion, caused it to drift into the convict lease system, for which there were many excuses, but no justification. The lessee buys from the State the discipline of prisoners solely for gain; that neither the State nor the lessee had regard to the element of reform or consideration of a philanthropic character; that although many good men were engaged in it, the system was wrong. He presented the statistics of thirty-nine State prisons, showing that in the non-leasing prisons, the annual mortality was fifteen per thousand, while in the leasing, it was sixty-four per thousand, and that in the former, escapes were but five per thousand, and in the latter, they were fifty-one per thousand. He appealed to the South to change the system.

The lease system was adopted in Georgia in 1869, both Democrats and Republicans favoring it. The first year there were 350 convicts to be hired, and the second year the number doubled. An investigation showed that one company paid nothing to the State for the labor of its convicts, and that although the law provided for a chaplain, the State had none; that convicts were worked on Sundays contrary to law, and in some instances whipped to death. The evils of the system became so flagrant that a Senator on the floor of the Senate Chamber declared that the rich and powerful were allowed to go free, while the poor white person and the ignorant Negro were shown no mercy. It was proved that even a governor of the State was himself a lessee, working State convicts for private gain, under a $37,000 bond in force until 1899, although he was the convict's only protection against the wrongs of the lessee.

The ease and facility with which colored persons were sent to the penitentiary kept a goodly supply of prisoners on hand. While it was burdensome to taxpayers to keep them within walls, it was unjust to mechanics to allow them to learn trades; ergo, they were leased out to grade streets, to work on railroads, in mines and the like, where their physical powers might be availed of, but where they could learn nothing, save yes and no, axe and hoe.