Chapter II: Part 2

How this all works out from the stand-point of the Negro may be seen from the following. After the burning of M'Ilheron at Estill Springs the Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent a telegram to the President of the United States asking him to denounce such acts as disgraced the country at the very moment that we were fighting for justice and humanity abroad. The telegram was referred to the Attorney General, and the reply from his department was to the effect that "under the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Federal Government has absolutely no jurisdiction over matters of this kind; nor are they connected with the war in any such way as to justify the action of the Federal Government under the war power." The Association then appealed to Governor Rye of Tennessee to take action to bring to justice the perpetrators of the wrong against the honor of the state. The Governor replied in part as follows: "I could not anticipate that local officers, whose duty it is to take custody of prisoners would fail to accord protection, nor could any action upon my part be taken without being requested so to do by the local authorities or court officers." The Nashville _Banner_, however, printed an editorial, and the Chamber of Commerce in Chattanooga passed some resolutions, and at last accounts this was about all that had been done. The Negro citizen accordingly wonders about his general position when neither the Federal nor the State Government seems to have the power to protect him.

Meanwhile these outrages injure us abroad. We look upon Russia as benighted and chaotic; yet this was the country that hurled at a distinguished Baptist minister, Dr. R.S. MacArthur, the charge that his was the only civilized country in the world that tolerated lynching. We speak of Pan-Americanism and the Monroe Doctrine; but Professor Bingham informs us of a hostile paper in Lima, the government organ, that printed the following headlines to a two-column article: "NORTH AMERICAN EXCESSES--THE TERRIBLE LYNCHINGS--AND THEY TALK OF THE PUTEMAYO!" And the Peruvian editor says: "Do you realize that in the full twentieth century, when there is not a single country in the world whose inhabitants are permitted to supersede justice by summary punishment, there are repeatedly taking place, almost daily, in the United States, lynchings like that of which we are told in the telegraphic dispatch?" The natural result is to unite Latin America against us, especially when the United States draws a color-line offensive to South American sensibilities.

We call upon our country for a new consecration--to law, to order, to justice. Too long has the crime of lynching disgraced us in the eyes of the world. Too long have we eased our conscience with a specious thought of necessity or irresponsibility. What concerns our country's honor concerns every one of us; and as our Negro soldiers take up arms and embark for France, let them not think that their loved ones left behind are not protected. Let them rather feel that from our national escutcheon shall be washed away every stain, that justice shall yet be triumphant, and that democracy shall indeed find its true place in the world.

V

ASPECTS OF NEGRO EDUCATION

No one who really studies the problem has any reason to be discouraged at the results of fifty years of education for the Negro people of America. In 1880 the percentage of illiterates among the race was approximately 70. By 1890 it was 57, by 1900 44.5, and by 1910 the figure had been reduced to 30.4. We may then not unreasonably affirm that at the present time (1918) not more than one-fourth of all the Negroes of the country are illiterate, and this in spite of the fact that thousands of persons who did not have early advantages are still living.

In other ways also may improvement be marked. By reason of a more enlightened sentiment the schoolhouses in more than one vicinity are gradually being improved, civic and social organizations are constantly working for better conditions, and organizations among the institutions themselves look to greater coherence and coordination of effort in the future. The last few years have witnessed not only a continuance of the work of such agencies as the John F. Slater Fund and the General Education Board, but also the beginning of that of the Anna T. Jeanes Fund for the maintenance and assistance of elementary schools for Negroes in the Southern States and of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, a part of whose income also goes to Negro education. Meanwhile among the teachers actively at work have arisen different organizations, notably the Association of Colleges for Negro Youth. This association was formed at Knoxville, Tenn., in November, 1913, by representatives of the following institutions: Howard University, Atlanta University, Wilberforce University, Virginia Union University, Fisk University, Morehouse College, Knoxville College, and Talladega College. Since 1913 Shaw University, Bishop College, and Benedict College have also become members. The general aim of the organization has been to bring more closely together the colleges concerned for the consideration of such subjects as uniform requirements for entrance to college, the requirements for the college degree, the reception of students from other colleges, and other topics of vital interest.

All such things denote progress. And yet, when all consideration is given to the advance that has been made, there are those who feel that with the opportunity still more should have been done. They feel that the past is irrevocable, but that it is not too late to correct certain errors and tendencies for the future.

What is the situation as we actually find it to-day? Go to any one of the most representative institutions, and what do we find? Efficient teachers struggling against most enormous disadvantages and frequently dealing with the crudest possible material. The wonder is that so much has been accomplished in the face of the handicap. It is not enough to reply that in all the schools and colleges of the country the teaching is irregular and the systems too lenient--that there is no human perfection in fact; these Negro colleges are crying for a better chance and they ought to have it. Go into any one of their high school departments (for all are still forced to conduct closely affiliated academies), and the actual attainment of many of the students exhibits more and more the appalling shortcomings of the common schools. How could it be otherwise with a system that operates schools for only four or five months a year and that pays teachers twenty or thirty-five dollars a month? "It was this way, you see," said one young man who presented himself for entrance upon the work of the academy, "we had only a three months' school at my home, and I went one winter and my brother went the next." Said another, "I had a good teacher in arithmetic, but we didn't do much in grammar"; and the grammar may be said to embrace every subject in the common school in which precision is required except arithmetic. Penmanship is completely lacking in neatness and finish, and in nineteen cases out of twenty the students from the country can not spell. Nor can they read. Take them as you come to them, at the supposed completion of the eighth grade, and ask them to read aloud a single paragraph from Irving, or Cooper, or the morning paper, and very few indeed will be able to get through without an apology or serious errors in pronunciation or interpretation.

Grammar and reading and spelling, however, are apparent. Little by little the teacher becomes aware of something more fundamental--the lack of any adequate background for appreciation and culture. No time had the mother at the washtub or in the field for Cinderella or Mother Goose, and the childhood that should have been enriched by lines from Longfellow or Tennyson or the Bible was nodded away by the fire. Youth that craved adventure and inspiration found relief from the deadening routine of the week only in the coarse pleasure of the railroad on Sundays, or the big-meeting that came once a year. A gymnasium, a library, or an art museum the young man coming up to the academy in the city never saw in his life.

Such a background makes neither for accuracy in technical training nor for the foundation of the larger reaches of culture. Within recent years the problem has been even more complicated by the inadequate school facilities in the cities. As the population has shifted from the rural districts to the larger towns, congestion in the schools has resulted, and the lack of an adequate number of seats and the system of half-day sessions have frequently resulted only in the semblance of thorough and efficient training. Nor has the matter been made any better by the tendency in some places still further to degrade the schools.

There is yet a larger question, however, and that is the extent to which the higher schools and colleges themselves are fulfilling their function. We do not forget the work of Atlanta University in the training of common school teachers, nor that of Morehouse College for the Negro Baptists of Georgia, nor that of Spelman Seminary for the homes and Sunday Schools and rural schools of Georgia, when we raise the question if such institutions are really doing all that they should for their respective communities. We do not believe that they are, and we do not believe that the fault is wholly theirs.

All of this takes us back to some very fundamental things. For some years we have heard of a war between classical and industrial ideals, and it has become more and more the fashion to sneer at the sturdy pioneers who sought to instill into the minds of the recently emancipated freedmen the ideas of education that obtained in New England. Homer and Horace, it is affirmed, have no place in the education of a man who is to be a leader in a rural community. The whole utilitarian tendency has recently been strongly represented by the paper, "A Modern School," by Dr. Abraham Flexner, published in the _Review of Reviews_ for April, 1916, and reprinted as a pamphlet by the General Education Board. We read: "Modern education will include nothing simply because tradition recommends it or because its inutility has not been conclusively established. It proceeds in precisely the opposite way: It includes nothing for which an affirmative case can not now be made out."

Now hardly any one will be found to object to this principle, though when education in the large is considered many distinguished educators feel that in arriving at its large aim the "Modern School" is not altogether fair to some of the more traditional subjects in the curriculum. So far as higher education for the Negro is concerned, however, there is one point at which the utilitarians persistently misunderstand those who do not wholly agree with them. No one better appreciates the value of genuine industrial education than the teachers in the Southern colleges. What they do oppose, however, is that sort of large legislation which says that because the Negro is mainly an agricultural race, his children as a whole should have that sort of education which will make of them good farmers and domestics. Such a program offers no outlet at all for the boy of unusual talent and would ultimately irrevocably bind the whole race in the chains of serfs.

What then should be the aim of Negro education? We affirm that each boy should receive such education as would not only enable him to develop his individual powers to their highest point, but also enable him to fulfill his function most serviceably as a citizen of a great free republic. Such an aim it seems not altogether unreasonable to ask. Many Negroes will undoubtedly for many years find their true economic place as domestic servants, many will be and should be farmhands; but no scheme of education whatsoever should be devised that would logically force _every_ Negro boy or girl into such occupations as these whatever may be the individual capacity or desire.

In Negro schools accordingly we ask first of all for that education which will understand that all individuals are not alike and that will so plan the course of study for each student as to enable him ultimately to be of most service to his fellowmen. Logically no set program of study can do this. The student's playtime as well as his work time should be most carefully supervised. Here is a budding machinist. His true bent should, by some scientific test, be manifest to his principal or dean after just a few months of acquaintance. A special course of study should be built up for him. His reading should be so studied as to vary articles on mechanics with such fiction as would awaken his imagination. He should be taken to visit great industrial plants so as to see how they are operated, and any inventive faculty that he possesses should be encouraged. Here again is a bookish lad, one who seems to study always and who never wants to play. One instructor would inspire him along the line of history or literature or art, as the case might require, while the physical director would (without the boy's realizing it) seek until he found some form of exercise into which the boy would enter with enthusiasm and which would save him from undue introspection and generally look to his physical well-being. Whatever may be the special field, the training should be absolutely thorough. We should rather see a boy plane a board correctly than have him work a problem in trigonometry incorrectly; and on the other hand we should rather see a student construe Homer with precision than keep a dairy that is not perfectly clean.

Any such education as this of course calls for experts, and we are thus led on to our second point. We ask that the teachers in Negro schools and colleges should in deed and in truth be specialists. He who would teach any American youth in the new day, and certainly any Negro American youth, should be a genuine psychologist and sociologist and a large-hearted Christian man at the same time that he is a most thorough student in his own department. By "specialist" we do not mean a man who in English would count up the infinitives in Gower's poems, but one who in grammar, for instance, could bring from a broad scholarly background such a capacity for illustration as would inspire his students to be honestly more careful in their speaking or writing. The teacher of geometry would be one who could genuinely teach boys to think better; and with the true teacher of Latin, boys would have no desire to be dishonest. Whatever is taught should be dynamic; now as never before it must justify itself in terms of human life. Such instructors for our youth would call for such an outlay for education as has not yet been dreamed of. They could not be ready, however, until they had passed through a long period of preparation; and for such an investment they should later of course be adequately paid. Along with better teachers would go better equipment generally. Mr. Carnegie has given several library buildings, for instance. We wish now that somebody would give some books to put in them. More than one of the Negro colleges have no regular library appropriation. Whenever a book is bought it must be taken out of current funds and thus be stolen from some other legitimate use. And yet some people presume to sneer at what these institutions have done!

The third matter is a large and subtle one. It has to do with the whole moral and spiritual import of the schools in question. One of the amazing things about Negro education in the large in America is that one hears so much about boards and units and courses of study and so little about deeper essentials. Aside from the curriculum, what is the atmosphere that a boy breathes as soon as he sets foot on a college campus? Is he trained in honesty, in politeness, in high ideals of speech, in lofty conceptions of character? Does he have to obey orders? Is he taught to be neat, prompt, and industrious? Such questions are of things too often taken for granted, and too often lacking. We need new emphasis on the whole missionary impulse in education. In the providence of God, but through no effort of his own, the freedman in the decades after the Civil War had the benefit of the labors of consecrated men and women who served, sometimes even without pay, for his salvation. Cravath at Fisk, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, and Packard and Giles at Spelman are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving and praise. These men and women were not people of means. They labored often with the most inadequate facilities. And yet somehow they had the key to the eternal verities. They were earnest, efficient, and true, and to them a human soul was worth more than the kingdoms of this world.

Such consecrated workers, however, have now become rarer and rarer. Materialism and commercialism are abroad in the land. Segregation and proscription and injustice abound. We plead now that in all the disappointments and distractions of the new day our teachers shall at least remember the faith and high ideals of the pioneers, and remain close to God.

To train our boys in the virtues of citizenship and at the same time in knowledge of the rights of others; to teach them respect for others at the same time that they cultivate their own self-respect; to teach them the value of scholarship and also to let them know when scholarship must become dynamic; to teach them to work, to love, to sing, to have faith, even when they see wrong all around them--this is a task calling for all one has of Christianity, of scholarship, and of delicacy.

VI

A GREAT MISSIONARY: JOANNA P. MOORE

In the fall of 1862 a young woman who was destined to be a great missionary entered the Seminary at Rockford, Illinois. There was little to distinguish her from the other students except that she was exceedingly plainly dressed, and seemed forced to spend most of her spare time at work. Yes, there was one other difference. She was older than most of the girls--already thirty, and rich in experience. When not yet fifteen she had taught a country school in Pennsylvania. At twenty she was considered capable of managing an unusually turbulent crowd of boys and girls. When she was twenty-seven her father had died, leaving upon her very largely the care of her mother. At twenty-eight she already looked back upon a career of fourteen years as a teacher, of some work for Christ incidentally accomplished, but also upon a fading youth of wasted hopes and unfulfilled desires.

Then came a great decision--not the first, but one of the most important that marked her long career. Her education was by no means complete, and at whatever cost she was determined to go to school. That she had no money, that her clothes were shabby, that her mother needed her, made no difference; now or never she would realize her ambition. She would do anything, however menial, if it was honest and would give her food while she attended school. For one long day she walked the streets of Belvidere looking for a home. Could any one use a young woman who wanted to work for her board? Always the same reply. Nightfall brought her to a farmhouse in the suburbs of the town. She timidly knocked on the door. "No, we do not need any one," said the woman who greeted her, "but wait until I see my husband." The man of the house was very unwilling, but decided to give her shelter for the night. The next morning he thought differently about the matter; and a few days afterward the young woman entered school. The work was hard; fires were to be made, breakfasts on cold mornings had to be prepared, and sometimes the washing was heavy. In the midst of it all, the time for lessons was frequently cut short or extended far into the night. But the woman of the house was kind, and her daughter a helpful fellow-student.

The next summer came another season at school-teaching, and then the term at Rockford. 1862! a great year that in American history, one fraught with great events, and more famous for the defeat of the Union arms than for their success. But in September came Antietam, and the heart of the North took courage. Lincoln now issued a preliminary proclamation, "That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free."

The girls at Rockford, like the people everywhere, were interested in the great events shaking the nation. A new note of seriousness crept into their work. Embroidery was laid aside; instead, socks were knit and bandages prepared. On the night of January 1 a jubilee meeting was held in the town. At last the black man was free and everywhere throughout the North there were shouts of joy.

To Joanna P. Moore, however, the news bore a strange undertone of sadness. She was, as we have said, much more mature than her schoolmates, and to her, somehow, the problem of the spiritual and intellectual freedom of the bondsmen presented itself. Strange that she should be so possessed by this problem! She had of course thought of the possibility of working in China, or India, or Africa--but of this, never!

In February a man who had been on Island No. 10 came to the Seminary and told the girls of the hundreds of women and children there in distress. Cabins and tents were everywhere. As many as three families, with eight or ten children each, cooked their food in the same pot on the same fire. Sometimes the women were peevish or quarrelsome; always the children were ignorant and dirty. "What can a man do to help such a suffering mass of humanity?" asked the speaker. "Nothing. A woman is needed; nobody else will do." For the student listening so intently, the cheery schoolrooms with their sweet associations faded; the vision of foreign missions also vanished; and in their stead stood only a pitiful black woman with a baby in her arms.

She reached Island No. 10 in November. The outlook was dismal enough. The Sunday School at Belvidere of which she was a member pledged four dollars a month toward her support; and this was all the salary in sight. The Government had provided transportation and soldiers' rations. That was in 1863, more than fifty years ago; but every year since then, until 1916, in summer and winter, in sunshine and rain, in the home and the church, with teaching and praying, feeding and clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, Joanna P. Moore in one way or another ministered to the needs of the Negro people of the South.

In April, 1864, her whole colony was removed to Helena, Arkansas. The Home Farm was three miles from Helena. Here was gathered a great crowd of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a company of soldiers in a fort near by. Thither went the missionary, alone, except for her faith in God. She made an arbor with some rude seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four divisions, and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the Bible was read and explained, prayers were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted, and then the service was over.

Some Quaker workers were her friends in Helena, and in 1868 she went to Lauderdale, Mississippi, to help the Friends in an orphan asylum. Six weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and the parents left to take their child back to their Indiana home to rest. Miss Moore was left in charge of the asylum. Cholera broke out. Eleven children died within one week. She stood by her post. Often, as she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere the daylight came were in the cold grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night after night the lone woman prayed to God in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated.

From time to time the failing health of her mother called her home, and from 1870 to 1873 she once more taught school in the vicinity of Belvidere. The first winter the school was in the country. "You can never have a Sunday School in the winter," she was told. But she did; in spite of the snow the house was crowded every Sunday; whole families came in sleighs. Even at that the real work of the missionary was still with the Negroes of the South. In her prayers and in her public addresses they were always with her; and in 1873 friends in Chicago made it possible for her to return to the work of her choice. In 1877 the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society honored itself by giving to her its first commission.

Nine years she spent in the vicinity of New Orleans. Near Leland University she found a small, one-room house. After buying a bed, a table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping. Often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark. Most frequently she read the Bible to those who could not read. Sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. Sometimes she would teach the children to read or to sew. Often she would write letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in the dark days. She wrote hundreds and hundreds of such letters; and once in a while, a very long while, came some response.

Most pitiful of all the objects she found in New Orleans were the old women worn out with years of slavery. They were usually ragpickers who ate at night old scraps for which they had begged during the day. There was in the city an Old Ladies' Home; but this was not for Negroes. A house was secured and the women taken in, Miss Moore and her associates moving into the second story. Sometimes, very often, there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was not known who sent them; money or boxes came from Northern friends who had never seen the workers; and the little Negro children in the Sunday Schools in New Orleans gave their pennies.

In 1878 Miss Moore started on a journey of exploration. In Atlanta Dr. Robert at Atlanta Baptist Seminary (now Morehouse College) gave her cheer; so did President Ware at Atlanta University. At Benedict in Columbia she saw Dr. Goodspeed, President Tupper at Shaw in Raleigh, and Dr. Corey in Richmond. In May she appeared at the Baptist anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already behind her.

But each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments. She wanted her Society to establish a training school for women; but the objection was raised to this on the score that such an institution would overlap the educational work of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Down in Louisiana of course it was not without danger that a white woman attended a Negro Baptist Association in 1877; and there were always sneers and jeers. At length, however, a training school for mothers was opened in Baton Rouge. All went well for two years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the gate. The woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm; but the students had gone. Sick at heart and worn out with waiting, she left Baton Rouge and the state in which so many of her best years had been spent.

Bible Band work was started in 1884, and _Hope_ in 1885. Just how live the idea is to-day may be seen from the recent experience of one of the representative colleges for young men. With a crowded Sunday schedule, and with all the distraction of concerts, rhetoricals, and athletics, with Y.M.C.A. meetings and required chapel services, with church and Sunday School, thirty men voluntarily meet each week after the required Sunday evening service for the study of the lessons in _Hope_. This little paper, beginning with a circulation of five hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of more than eighteen thousand copies; and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands of mothers and children in the South. In connection with it all has developed the Fireside School, than which few agencies have been more potent for the salvation and uplift of the humble Negro home.

What wisdom has been gathered from the passing of fourscore years! On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations that for proverbial pith may be equaled only by the words of Franklin or Lincoln or Booker Washington:--

The love of God gave me courage for myself and the rest of
mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls. They
surely are worth more than anything else in the world.

Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. God cannot use
discouraged people.

I am very thankful to-day that there has always been some one
weaker than myself along some line, some one that I could really
help and comfort.

The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do,
but by praising God for what had been done.

So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for
the Bible lesson. Do not misunderstand me. I do love music that
impresses the meaning of words. But no one climbs to heaven on
musical scales.

I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any
vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it
into your every thought and prayer.

You must love before you can comfort and help.

There is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and
no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light
that we carry from the Cross.

How shall we measure such a life? Who can weigh love and hope and service, and the joy of answered prayer? "An annual report of what?" she once asked the secretary of her organization. "Report of tears shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken, cheering words, warning words--tender, patient words for the little ones, stern but loving tones for the wayward--songs of hope and songs of sorrow, wounded hearts healed, light and love poured into dark sad homes? Oh, Miss Burdette, you might as well ask me to gather up the raindrops of last year or the petals that fall from the flowers that bloomed. It is true I can send you a little stagnant water from the cistern, and a few dried flowers; but if you want to know the freshness, the sweetness, the glory, the grandeur, of our God-given work, then you must come and keep step with us from early morn to night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year."

Until the very last she was on the roll of the active missionaries of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society. In the fall of 1915 she decided that she must once more see the schools in the South that meant so much to her. In December she came again to her beloved Spelman. While in Atlanta she met with an accident that still further weakened her. After a few weeks, however, she went on to Jacksonville, and then to Selma. There she passed.

* * * * *

"When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.... Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

VII

SOME CRITICS AND THEIR FALLACIES

It is the purpose of the present chapter to reply to some of the more common of the arguments brought forward against the Negro. We shall by no means attempt to cover the whole ground, or even pretend that in every case we have summoned the most representative critics. At the same time we feel that those that are adduced are fairly typical of those of harsher view.

One of the noteworthy characteristics of discussion in recent years has been a tendency to deny the ideals on which America was founded, especially where the Negro was concerned. One of the frankest statements along this line was a Fourth of July address in 1911 by no less a person than Ex-President Eliot of Harvard University. This distinguished citizen gave voice to an opinion which is just now gaining more and more converts in this country, in effect this: The Declaration of Independence is a wornout document; it never was meant to be taken seriously; and, in the words of Rufus Choate, it is made up simply of "glittering and sounding generalities of natural right." The passage to which exception seems especially to be taken is this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It will be observed that in a way each successive one of the three clauses here explains the one preceding; that is to say, all men are equal in the rights given to them by God, and these rights consist in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The fathers were not thinking about such things as that one child was born in a palace and another in a hut, or that one was born with brilliant intellect and the other with little power of mind. Certainly the "facts submitted to a candid world" are based on no such principles as these. The founders were talking about things moral. Each man deserved at least that no other man should have power to declare that he _must_ live in a hut. In other words, each man deserved a man's chance in the world.

So far as the Negro is concerned then we hold that the Declaration of Independence is a very live document. More and more, however, within recent years has it been the fashion to fix attention upon his shortcomings, and this attitude has led some people to strange conclusions. One of the most accessible statements of the adverse point of view is "The Color Line," by Prof. William Benjamin Smith, for years a teacher at Tulane University. This book is in no sense better than many others. At the same time it was written by a man who had broadened his scholarship in Europe, being the holder of a doctor's degree from a German university, and who in his own studies had emphasized such subjects as mathematics and philosophy. From such a source one would at least expect some degree of consideration for logic; and yet "The Color Line" but shows the lengths to which some persons will go when they discuss the Negro. The central thesis seems to be the following (p. 174): "Drawing the color line, firm and fast, between the races, first of all in social relations, and then by degrees in occupations also, is a natural process and a rational procedure, which makes equally for the welfare of both." Professor Smith remarks several Negroes of distinction, shows that in fact most of them were not pure Negroes at all, but persons with an infusion of white blood, and concludes (p. 44): "It seems vain to deny that the mixed blood is notably more intelligent than the pure black; the necessary inference is that the white blood with which it was mixed is far more intelligent still." The same line of argument is used by Mr. Alfred Holt Stone in his _Atlantic_ paper on "The Mulatto Factor in the Race Problem," included in "Studies in the American Race Problem," as well as by Mr. E.B. Reuter in his recent study in the _American Journal of Sociology_, "The Superiority of the Mulatto." "Have equal opportunities," we are asked, "raised the Negroes in Pennsylvania to the white level?" Education has been a complete failure. Professor Smith visited a Negro school (p. 166): "An olive-colored young man was at the board trying to explain to a mulatto woman, the only member of the class, the mysterious nature of the perpendicular. He appeared very earnest in his exposition, but unable to awaken any answering intelligence." "The higher culture at 'colored universities' merely spoils a plough-hand or house-maid." Finally (p. 259), "nearly forty years of devoted and enthusiastic effort to elevate and educate the Southern Negro lie stretched out behind us in a dead level of failure."

This whole argument is guilty of the vicious fallacy of begging the question by arguing in a circle. First we degrade human beings by the curse of slavery for two hundred and fifty years, and then because they are not advanced we argue that they have not the capacity to rise. Far from being an advantage to both races the color line is the curse of both. Obsessed by the Negro problem, the white South has always been held back and still finds it impossible to think in the large; while the Negro is daily met with such insults as shake the very foundations of his citizenship. The argument on the mulatto goes back to the circle already remarked. Everybody knows that in a country predominantly white the quadroon has frequently been given some advantage that his black friend did not have, from the time that one was a house-servant and the other a field-hand; but no thorough test in Negro schools has ever demonstrated that the black boy is intellectually inferior to the fair one. This is all a part of the general American snobbishness that places on the Negro the burden of any blame or deficiency, but that claims for the white race any merit that an individual may show, even while many advantages of citizenship are withheld from both mulatto and Negro alike. Furthermore, and this is a point not previously remarked in discussions of the Negro problem, the element of genius that distinguishes the Negro artist of mixed blood is most frequently one characteristically Negro rather than Anglo-Saxon; note the romantic and elemental sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller and the mystical religious paintings of Henry O. Tanner. As to labor, how can any one assert that the Negro in the North has had an equal chance with the white man, in view of the attitude of the labor unions? The whole matter of education represents the circle worse than anything else. Would anybody who knows the South contend for a moment that public school appropriations are evenly divided between the white and black? And shall we allow one stupid pupil in a poorly organized school to offset the brilliant attainments in the foremost colleges in the country, from which institutions Negro graduates are each year coming by the scores? Not a year passes now but that some of these students win noteworthy honors, receive valuable prizes, or take doctors' degrees. Let one observe in full proof of this the educational number of the _Crisis_, published in July of each year. The point about "colored universities" simply represents a state of ignorance common throughout the South. The day never was when Fisk and Knoxville and Morehouse simply crammed Greek into unreceptive minds. No schools in the country have had a clearer idea of their mission, or have done more to answer it with limited facilities. The pity is that not one of a dozen representative colleges has the beginning of an adequate endowment, and all have had to do their work with the cheapest tools. And certainly such leadership as the race has had, and such advance as the race has made, have been due primarily to the large idea of Christian service behind the missionary institutions.

Within recent years, however, there has developed a fear of the part that the Negro is to play in American civilization. This was fairly well stated in an article in the _Forum_ a few years ago by Mr. W.W. Kenilworth, "Negro Influences in American Life." Mr. Kenilworth is much disturbed. "Can it be," he asks, "that America is falling prey to the collective soul of the Negro?" "It is unthinkable that the increase of Negro population, the increased and unhampered (_sic_) circumstances of Negro expression should not have an important reaction on the white population." The pity is that the whole article is based on unwarranted assumptions, and, in spite of some elements of truth, the reasoning, condensed, is somewhat as follows:--

The Negro element is daily becoming more potent in American society.

American society is daily becoming more immoral.

Therefore at the door of the Negro may be laid the general increase of divorce and all other evils of society.

Somewhat more subtle than all this is the criticism in Volume VII of "The South in the Building of the Nation," in the article on "The Intellectual and Literary Progress of the Negro" written by Mr. H.I. Brock. The central thesis here is the following: "The Negro is mentally quite sufficiently developed to use his brain with effect upon the immediate and the concrete. He is not sufficiently developed to start with the white man's generalizations, or more exactly, the formulas in which these generalizations are expressed, and work down to the concrete. He is in the class in arithmetic. He is not fit yet awhile for that in algebra and analytics." In proof of this position it is asserted that Booker T. Washington was in type and in fact "exactly like Peter the successful barber and Walker who runs a profitable carrier's business in a certain Southern town, though neither Peter nor Walker can read or write." As for Frederick Douglass, what happened to him "cannot be set down as his achievement. He was a sign and a symbol held up for men to see. He was floated on the top of the abolition wave into public office. He did not climb there." Phillis Wheatley was "taught the trick of verse. Her verses were printed as a curiosity at the time and her 'Poems' have no other interest." "Even Paul Laurence Dunbar has a fame quite disproportionate to his actual place in the catalogue of contemporary minor poets. He, too, is, in part, a curiosity." The whole question at issue, so far as the country at large is concerned, is "not so much how to advance the Negro as how to prevent the Negro from retarding the upward tendency of the rest of the population." All of his books and compositions so far "are like the schoolboy's essay which gets into the school magazine; they are to be considered as 'exercises,' not as achievements."

There is a very real criticism here, one deliberately frank and even harsh, but deserving of attention. If we understand it, it says in substance that the Negro in America has not yet developed the great creative or organizing mind that points the way of civilization. He has so far produced no Plato, no Jonathan Edwards, no Pierpont Morgan, no Edison. The larger thought here will be considered in our next chapter. Just now let us observe that the argument makes the familiar assumption that because a thing never has been it never will be. All America is crude, however. While she has made great advance in applied science, she certainly has not as yet produced a Shakespeare or a Beethoven. If America has not reached her heights after three hundred years, she ought not to be impatient with the Negro after only fifty years of opportunity. Furthermore, all signs go to prove the assumption fundamentally false. We know of some of the younger men of to-day who have not only mastered language and science, but who have outshone brilliant groups of white students in pure philosophy. It would be a miracle if this were the everyday occurrence. It is not; but the fact that it is an occurrence at all means that the Negro is at least capable of the highest things. Furthermore, it is not true that everything that the Negro has written may be dismissed with a wave of the hand as school boy exercises, though we grant that only a beginning has been made. Give us time. Give us time! Within the next fifty years we shall astound you!

VIII

THE PROMISE OF THE NEGRO

So far we have lightly touched upon some of the most important phases of the life of the Negro people in America. We have looked at a people whose ancestors were brought to the country against their own will and suddenly thrust into the rising civilization of a new nation, and we have looked at some of the more hopeful features of their life as well as at some of their greatest problems. Even now, however, in spite of untoward conditions there are those who honestly ask if the effort and money that have been expended have been wisely invested. Those who have spent most time on the problem only wish that ten times as much had been done. Nevertheless for the sake of the honest seeker after truth, we wish to answer one or two fundamental questions.

First of all, to what extent has the Negro exemplified the principle of self-help and thus justified philanthropic and missionary effort in his behalf? The best answer to this is found not in such a shining example of self-help as Booker Washington, but in efforts that better represent the rank and file of the race. Take education. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, that branch of the Methodists which has always emphasized the race idea, from very early years took an active interest in educational work. To-day it maintains twenty schools and colleges--one or more in each Southern state, two in Africa, and one in the West Indies. The property represented by these institutions is approximately $1,500,000. The third Sunday in September is set apart as Education Day, and on this a general collection is taken in all the churches. The total income from all sources for the educational work of the church is now not less than $175,000 a year. Two other distinct branches of Negro Methodists, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, have sometimes raised even more money in proportion to their membership. The Baptists because of their church polity are of course not so thoroughly organized. Most of the higher missionary effort of this denomination has been done through the American Baptist Home Mission Society, which from its headquarters in New York maintains wholly eight higher institutions, contributing in a smaller degree to twenty preparatory schools. The word of the secretary of this organization in a recent report may be taken as summing up what the Negro Baptists have done for themselves: "We are sometimes told that it is about time for the Negroes to do something toward their own education, and some members of our churches seem to believe that their missionary money boards and clothes the thousands of pupils in attendance at the twenty-eight schools of the Home Mission Society. The following facts entirely refute these assertions: During the ten years ending March 31, 1907, pupils paid for tuition $300,517.62; for board $954,822.01, and Negro churches and individuals gave for the support of the work or for new buildings to supplement the gifts of their Northern friends, $197,995.70. This makes a total of $1,453,335.33 paid or given by the Negroes for ten years, or $145,333.53 annually. It should be remembered that this is only a small part of the vastly larger amount contributed by these people for education, for all through the South many associations have their own denominational schools, and sacrifices are made for their maintenance which reflect credit upon the race which is so rapidly coming forward. The Negro presidents and principals are showing unusual wisdom in collecting funds for their work. Negro churches, too, are taking a great interest in these mission schools. The gifts from the Home Mission Society are hastening the day of still larger efforts from those benefited."

Let us, however, grant, say some, that the Negro helps himself; that is not sufficient. Anybody should help himself, anybody can; but what is the race worth as a constructive factor in American civilization? Is it finally to be an agency making for the upbuilding of the nation, or simply one of the forces that retard? What is its promise in American life?

In reply to this we recall first of all the work that has already been remarked along industrial lines. We have seen that the nation, especially in the South, depends upon Negro men and women as the stable labor supply in such occupations as farming, sawmilling, mining, cooking, and washing. Figures bearing this out have already been given. The tremendous new emphasis on farming and mining incident to the war is known to all. The Negro is now helping most vitally to feed the American people and to produce the materials for transportation and the making of munitions. Let any one ask, even the prejudiced observer, if he would like to see every Negro in the country out of it, and then he will decide whether economically the Negro is a liability for the country or an asset.

Again, consider the Negro soldier. In all our history there are no pages more heroic, more pathetic than those detailing the exploits of the black man. We remember the Negro, three thousand strong, fighting for the liberties of America when his own race was still held in bondage. We remember the deeds at Port Hudson, Fort Pillow, and Fort Wagner. We remember Santiago and San Juan Hill, not only how Negro men went gallantly to the charge, but how a black regiment faced pestilence and fever that the ranks of their white comrades might not be decimated. And then Carrizal. Once more, at an unexpected moment, the soul of the nation was thrilled by the bravery of the black troopers of the Tenth Cavalry. Once more, despite Brownsville, the tradition of Fort Wagner was preserved and passed on. It mattered not that "some one had blundered." "Theirs not to make reply; theirs but to do and die." So in the face of odds they fought by the cactus and lay dead beneath the Mexican stars.

And now, all around us, everywhere is the greatest of all wars. Once more has the Negro been summoned to the colors, and, because he is not fully protected in some places, because he has not the full power of suffrage, summoned out of all proportion to his numbers, summoned even when he could best serve at his regular work on the farms--not because the government intended unfairness, but because local registration officials have not been fair, because exemption boards have not been honest. And yet, even when physically disabled, even when he had the roughest work to do, he has still obeyed orders, not because he was not brave, not because he was not strong, but because he was true. Others might desert, but not the Negro; others might be spies or strikers, but not he--not he in time of peril. In peace or war, in victory or danger, he, the Negro, has ever been loyal to the Stars and Stripes.