Many solutions of the Negro problem have been proposed. Men so gifted with imagination that they do not find it necessary to consider either logic or facts, over and again, in a single speech or magazine article, have solved it to their individual satisfaction. Such proposed solutions are usually no less preposterous than visionary. With these I have nothing to do. As elsewhere in this study, so also here, I consider only what seems to have a firm basis of fact.
However, in passing, I may be pardoned, if I have the temerity to suggest the following, which, although seemingly fanciful, yet may have sufficient ground in reason as to merit some consideration: If about 100,000 square miles of territory on the Gulf of Mexico, embracing, say, Louisiana east of the Mississippi River, excepting New Orleans,—the southern part of Mississippi and Alabama, the part of Florida south of Alabama, and a small part of southwest Georgia, were set apart as a State or States to which all the Negroes in other parts of the country be encouraged or obliged to migrate, it might result in great good to both races.
Something like half the population of this section are Negroes, while the whites that are here are mostly in the towns and cities. The area suggested is more than that of New York and Pennsylvania combined. There would be room for all Negroes in the country for generations to come. As the Negro states would be members of the Union, with representatives and senators in Congress, the Negroes would have an opportunity under the Federal Government to develop a political and social world of their own removed from the overshadowing presence of the white man. If the Negro showed himself unable to develop the power of local self-government under such an arrangement, his case would be absolutely hopeless. However, there are so many difficulties in the way and so many objections that might be made that no one need either hope or fear that any such thing will ever be undertaken.
But somewhat more in keeping with common sense and prevalent ideas is the proposal that Negroes be encouraged to distribute themselves equally over the country; thus relieving the South of its burden of Negro population. If such an equalization of the Negro population could be carried out, the Negro then being everywhere few in numbers to the whites, could the better be held to the white man’s standard of conduct. Not only so, but the Negro would have an opportunity to absorb the white man’s civilization more quickly, if ever. In addition, the race question would cease to be sectional, and laws mutually advantageous to both races could then be passed.
Before going further, even at the risk of digressing,—for it is a matter of justice to the Negro,—it should be said in favor of the Negro that even though he is the most alien race among us, no question as to his patriotism is ever raised. He has fought in all our great wars and has shown himself patriotic to the core.
A day or two after President Wilson had made his German War address before Congress, the writer happened by the Star bulletin board in Washington, and noticed a German talking to a big burly Negro against war with Germany. He pointed to the bulletin board and told him not to believe anything he saw there for it was all lies made in London. The Negro seemed to listen in a half-disgusted sort of way, but as he started off he was understood to say:
“I wish I was with some colored soldiers in Europe. We would show the Germans how to fight.”
The Negro has no kindred country to look to, so he is undivided in his allegiance. This cannot be said of all other races among us,—not of the Japanese and Chinese who seek admission at our Pacific shores. Like the Negro they cannot be assimilated by our people. In numbers, however, they would constitute a much more dangerous element to our welfare and safety than the Negro. Japan is almost abreast of our civilization and the western nations are doing their best to train China to be an antagonist worthy of their steel, should she ever have cause to cross swords with them. Large numbers of Chinese and Japanese would not only add to our race problems but would increase our chances for friction with their home governments. In addition they might constitute a reverse army of the enemy in our midst in case of war. But no such danger need be feared from the presence of the Negro.
I have just adverted to the fact that the yellow race and the black are not easily assimilated with the white race. It may be well that it is so. To the normal white man amalgamation with these races is almost unthinkable. Nevertheless, there are a few misguided individuals who surely have either a mental or a moral twist who persist in joining together that which nature has put asunder.
A few years ago, a minister sent the following telegram to the Governor of California:[145:1]
“I have just married a Japanese to an American and have done more for God and Uncle Sam than the alien land bill will do in 1000 years.”
It is not the ungodly that cause the suffering in the world so much as the bigoted if well-intentioned fools. Self-elected good people can usually be counted on to cause a lot of mischief. If those who set themselves up as leaders and ethical teachers would but first make sure that they were possessed of at least a fair amount of common sense!
In a recent Methodist Conference at Roanoke, Virginia, the statement was made that the records of some churches in Massachusetts show that in the previous year “17 per cent of the marriages were those in which Negro men married white women or white men married Negro women.”[145:2] This is the more remarkable when account is taken of the very small Negro population of that State.
It is even sometimes asserted that the Negro would bring to the white race some qualities which would tend toward the development of a more perfect man. But such an idea has no basis in fact. The following quotation is to the point:
“We have ample experience to go upon in South America, in the West Indies, in the Southern States themselves. The mulatto exists and has existed for generations, not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions; in what respect has he proved himself the superior of the pure Spaniard, or Portuguese, or Anglo-Saxon? Does South American history bear testimony to his political competence? Have his achievements in science, in literature, in music, been superior to the un-Africanized peoples? Or waiving the question of superiority, has he ever in these domains, produced meritorious work in any fair proportion to his numbers? I do not say that it is impossible to make out a sort of case for him, by the ransacking of records and the employment of a very indefinite standard of values. But I do most emphatically say that no conspicuous or undeniable advantage has resulted from the blending of bloods, such as can or ought to counteract the instinctive repugnance of the South.”[146:3]
It is said that an investigation of 2200 Negro authors showed that nearly all of them come from the mixed stock.[146:4] How many of these would take first, second, or even third rank in the literary world? It is needless to answer. Indeed, Negroes and mulattoes have been toilers in the United States for generations but who ever heard of an important labor saving instrument invented by them? The same abilities or characteristics which would make a white man only locally important would make a Negro or a mulatto famous. There were thousands upon thousands of white men intellectually and otherwise superior to Booker T. Washington who gained but little recognition, but because he was a negro, or rather mulatto, Washington’s abilities stood out in striking relief. Mulattoes ought to furnish the leaders of the Negro race for the best white blood runs in the veins of some of them. Although mulattoes may furnish the Negro leaders, there can be no doubt that they also furnish far beyond their share of the vicious and the criminal elements of the race as well.
It may be pertinent in this connection, however, to observe that in the South the two races have been gradually drawing apart, amalgamation or miscegenation is becoming more and more repugnant, the conditions which favored it do not obtain to anything like the extent as formerly, as a consequence the mixing between the whites and the blacks is rapidly lessening. Although the census shows an increase in the number of mulattoes from decade to decade, the increase is mainly due to the mixing of mulattoes with pure Negroes.
Some students of the subject, who seemingly are more familiar with the conditions in the North and the border States than with those of the farther South, sometimes estimate from one-third to one-half of the Negroes in the United States to be mulattoes. This, I am confident, is a mistake. I was reared in a border State, have spent some time in the North as well as in several Southern States, and have been in many of the leading cities of the South. My observation leads me to believe that the Census, in this respect, is more nearly correct than any other source of information.
The Agents of the Census, in 1910, were instructed to “report as ‘black’ all persons who were evidently full blood Negroes and as ‘mulattoes’ all other persons having some proportion or perceptible trace of Negro blood.” Accordingly in a population of 9,928,000 Negroes in the United States there were found to be 2,050,000 mulattoes, 20.9 per cent, or a little more than one-fifth.
By geographic divisions the percentage of mulattoes among the Negroes was as follows: New England, 33.4 per cent; Middle Atlantic States, 19.6; East North Central, 33.2; West North Central, 28.7; South Atlantic, 20.8; East South Central, 19.1; West South Central, 20.1; Mountain, 28.6; and Pacific States, 34.7.
Of the Northern States, Michigan took first place, with 47 per cent of mulattoes among her Negroes. Maine was next, with 45.9; and Wisconsin third, with 39.4. Those with the smallest percentage were Wyoming, 13.1 per cent; New Jersey, 15.8; and Pennsylvania, 19.2. The Southern States having the largest percentage were, Virginia, 33.2 per cent; West Virginia, 32.5; and Missouri, 28.4 per cent. A large number of States in the South had a small percentage of mulattoes among their Negroes: Maryland, 18.6 per cent; Georgia, 17.3; Mississippi, 16.9; Alabama, 16.7; South Carolina, 16.1; Florida, 16.0; Delaware, 11.9; and the Eastern Shore of Maryland which borders Delaware on two sides, had only 11.1 per cent, or one mulatto to every nine Negroes; thus the Eastern Shore has the distinction of having fewer mulattoes in proportion to its Negro population than any other section. It is therefore evident that in the North the proportion of mulattoes among the Negroes is from about one-fifth to almost one-half; while in the South the proportion ranges from above one-eighth to about one-third. In the States where the bulk of the Negro population is found it is only about one-sixth. With slight exceptions, it seems to be true that the fewer to the white population the more mulattoes there are in proportion to the number of the Negroes.
Indeed, may it not be true that the much larger proportional number of mulattoes among the Negroes of the North in no small measure accounts for the greater proportional amount of crime among the Negroes of the North? So it would appear that the amalgamation or miscegenation of the whites and the Negroes is not a leveling up but rather a leveling down process; at best nothing otherwise than building up the Negro by lowering the white. So no greater nor more fearful calamity could befall the white race in America than that the Negro should lose his identity through being absorbed by this great division of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Again, many optimistic white men have thought that the Negro could be raised to the white man’s level by means of the training and culture that comes through the study of books. To these education for the Negro has been a watchword. To a large extent Southern whites have been in sympathy with the education of the Negro. Indeed, many years ago, contrary to what one not familiar with the South might suppose, a prominent man in North Carolina in seeking a congressional nomination on a platform hostile to Negro education failed even to carry his home county. And efforts to restrict the amount appropriated to Negro schools to the part of the school taxes paid by Negroes have failed.
Since 1870 the South has spent on Negro education around $230,000,000 and is now appropriating for that purpose near $10,000,000, annually. It is doubtful if the Negro contributes in taxes even half the amount spent on his public schools. In 1912, according to the Educational Report of that State, North Carolina spent $436,480.08 for Negro teachers and Negro school buildings, of which the Negro contributed in taxes for schools $190,378.81, or a little more than two-fifths. Texas spends not far from $2,000,000 a year on Negro schools, and Georgia about $850,000. The District of Columbia, indeed, spends more per capita on Negro pupils than on whites. However, this is a notable exception.
There are also more than six hundred private and denominational schools of secondary and college grade in the United States for the higher education of the Negro. The property of these is valued at about $28,500,000.[151:5] From 1865 to 1917 about $65,000,000 has been contributed to Negro education in the South through various religious and philanthropic organizations.
But notwithstanding the fact that the illiteracy of the Negro race had been reduced by 1910 to about thirty-three per cent, there is a widespread feeling of disappointment in Negro education. Not that it has made the Negro more criminal as has sometimes been said, however, this is not yet well determined, but rather that it has failed to make him a greater producer, or to aid him to adjust himself to economic conditions. Instead of firing him with the desire to do more and better work, too often he quits it altogether.
As a teacher or a preacher the Negro has a wide field for his race needs him and the State and the Church pay him. But as a doctor, lawyer, or other professional, poverty and pauperism (the condition of the greater part of the Negro race) militate against them. In addition, the Negro has not yet sufficient confidence in the professional skill of those of his own race as to cause him to employ them exclusively.
There is a growing conviction in the South that the first aim of Negro education should be to fit the Negro for the opportunities of his social and industrial environment. Also that it should endeavor to strengthen his will power, in order that he may overcome his constitutional inertia; and that it should give him a knowledge of sanitary living, thus preventing disease.
In the South Carolina Public School Report for 1915, the State Superintendent of Schools has this to say:
“The Negro is here and is here to stay. He cannot remain ignorant without injury to himself, his white neighbors and to the Commonwealth. His training should fit him for the work that is open to him. . . . While industrial education is needed for both races it is especially desirable for the Negro.
“The money now expended for Negro education is largely wasted. Can we afford longer to allow this large element in our population to follow their present practices and remain in their present condition?”
Such schools as Hampton Institute and Tuskegee have fairly well demonstrated that industrial education is at least a good thing for the Negro. In these and other such schools thousands have been given an inspiration for a higher plane of living. Indeed, it is claimed that very seldom is any graduate of these two schools convicted of crime:[153:6] The influence of Tuskegee on the Negro in a material way may be appreciated by the statement that in 1881 when the school was opened in Macon County, Alabama, not more than fifty or sixty Negroes in the county owned land, but in 1910, 503 Negroes in the county owned 61,689 acres, “probably the largest amount of land owned by the Negroes of any county in the United States.”[154:7]
If a few Negro industrial schools make such a good showing, then why not multiply the number? Indeed, it is yet too early for either the Negro or his friends to indulge in too much optimism in regard to the matter. For while it may be true in general that whatever is done in behalf of a lower element in a society benefits the whole society, at the same time, it needs to be borne in mind that to the extent that it is done to the cost or by the neglect of a more homogeneous and wholesome element in the society or if it in any way militates against such element it is a questionable proceeding.
What if the industrial education of the Negro should be found to conflict with the interests of the white laborer or skilled worker? Does any one suppose that it is the purpose of the South so to educate the Negro (or even allow him to be so educated) as to enable him to take the bread from the white man’s mouth? And does any one suppose that the laboring white man of the arrogant and aggressive Anglo-Saxon race will stand tamely by with folded arms while there is danger of its being done?
This is the central point of the whole situation. But in the South the contest between these two conflicting interests is not yet, as the demand for labor skilled or unskilled is too great. The Negro has had and can have all the work he wants and more for the asking; indeed, often his labor is anxiously solicited. How long this will continue no one knows, positively. However, when the population of the country reaches 150,000,000 or 200,000,000 then labor will likely be as plentiful here as it is now in Europe. Then, the labor of the Negro will hardly be solicited, rather otherwise. The white man’s sympathetic attitude toward the Negroes’ many shortcomings is fast passing. When the Negro is required to measure up to the white man’s standard and is found wanting, what remains for him?
Furthermore, the Negro might as well get fully in mind that, although the white man sometimes may win without merit (yet often fails to win even though deserving to do so), for the Negro himself, even though merit may not win, without it he will have absolutely no show. He must be not only as well adapted to an occupation, or qualified for it, as a white man but better.
Until lately those especially interested in the welfare of the Negro might have entertained the hope that he would hold his place in his customary occupations or even make them in great part his very own. This would have been a kind of segregation to occupation analogous to his segregation as regards residence and at least as advantageous to him. But in hardly more than one occupation is such the case. As a porter he seems to have the field practically to himself, and as hod-carrier he is in demand. But as a barber he has fast been losing ground. The Negro as a waiter takes more pride in his occupation and is more polite and obliging than the white man of the waiter class but he is even being displaced in this work. Even as a farm laborer, for which service he has been trained for generations, he is losing his grip. “Too slow, unreliable, inefficient” are some of the counts against him.
The idea that prevails outside the South that Negroes do practically all the work on Southern farms is far from the truth. More than half of the cotton crop is raised by white labor,—in Texas, three-fourths or more. Even in sugar and rice fields white labor is getting common.[156:8] Often, indeed, a farmer will not employ a Negro if he can get a white man.
Indeed, the Negro farm laborer and the Negro farmer are the greatest stumbling-blocks in the way of the agricultural development of the South. Were it possible to remove from the South at least three-fourths of these and replace them with whites whether native or foreign there can be no doubt that the production of Southern farms would be wonderfully increased. It is an injury to the South and to society as a whole that the Negro has under his control even as much land as at present. When his “slipshod” farming gives place to more scientific and businesslike methods there will be more farm products for distribution.
The inefficiency of the Negro as a farmer is strikingly shown by a study of the conditions in several Mississippi counties:
“Lowdnes County with three Negroes to one white man, having 21,972 blacks and 7121 whites, requires 3.15 acres to make a bale of cotton, while James County, with three whites to one negro, having 13,156 whites and 4,670 blacks, requires 1.98 acres to make a bale. The farm lands of Jones county are valued in the census reports at $2.85 per acre and the farm lands of Lowdnes County at $9.83 an acre. Yet the poor lands of Jones County under intelligent cultivation produced nearly twice as much per acre as the rich lands of Lowdnes County when cultivated mostly by Negroes . . . in every comparison made between a white county and a black one the black was the most fertile, yet the white was nearly twice as productive.”[158:9]
Such a poor showing for the Negro almost persuades one that he deserves to be supplanted by whites in farm work and in farming, even if he should not be. At present the South holds out unequaled attractions in the way of climate, rich soil, and cheap lands, to those of other sections of the country who may be seeking farm homes. And there can be little doubt that with the passing of the free public lands the tide of immigration in the near future will set in that direction, in spite of the presence of the Negro. Then what will become of the Negro when he shall have to compete with the thrifty hard-working Poles, Bohemians, and native Americans from the North and the West? Will he be simply pushed aside and left to gravitate to a still lower level? Nothing will save him unless he soon wonderfully changes in habits and disposition. So the Negro may as well look forward to the time when he will be supplanted in these occupations to which he thinks himself so well adapted and in which he thinks himself so well fortified,—those of farm laborer and farmer.
Finally, may not the unquestioned physical deterioration of the Negro since his emancipation as shown by his susceptibility to disease together with his high death rate portend the ultimate practical extinction of the race in the United States? During slavery times the Negro was fairly well fed and usually worked according to set regulations. Evidently such food and training had no little to do with developing a sound body, and disciplined his mind to some extent as well.[159:10]
According to De Bow, the mortality of the free Negroes before the War was a hundred per cent greater than that of the slaves. It even appears that the death of the Negroes in the South at that time was less than that of the whites. In Charleston, S. C., the average death-rate from 1822 to 1861 was 25.98 a thousand for whites and 24.05 for Negroes. About the same was true of some other cities. From 1865 to 1894, however, the average death-rate at Charleston was 26.77 a thousand for whites and 43.29 for Negroes.[160:11] No doubt the slight increase of the death rate among the whites was due to the rapid increase among the Negroes as the whites necessarily came more or less in contact with the Negroes.
Indeed, very significant in this connection, is the statement made in the “Negro Year Book” (1914-15) that an average of 450,000 Negroes in the South are seriously ill all the time, and that 600,000 of the present population will die of tuberculosis.
The Census shows that both pneumonia and tuberculosis are diseases very fatal to Negroes. And strange as it may now seem, in slavery times Negroes were thought to be practically immune from tuberculosis. Indeed, it is said that, about 1882-3, there was exhibited at a clinic in Charleston, S. C., what was supposed to have been the second case of tuberculosis ever found among Negroes.[160:12] This is very remarkable, if true.
In each city of the following list of twelve is given the number of times more deaths that occurred from tuberculosis among Negroes in 1910, according to the Census, than among whites: Providence, 1.82; Richmond, 2.05; Boston, 2.46; Atlanta, 2.48; New York, 2.64; New Orleans, 2.70; Memphis, 2.80; Philadelphia 3.00; Baltimore, 3.14; Washington, 3.34; Charleston, S. C., 3.55. It may be noticed that more than three and one-half times as many Negroes as whites died of tuberculosis in Charleston. The comparative statistics for pneumonia differ not very much from those of tuberculosis.
However, the ratio of death-rate from combined causes is much lower than this. The average death rate a thousand in eight Northern States in 1910 was 21.9 for Negroes and 15.1 for whites; while the average for two Southern States was 23.7 for Negroes and 15.2 for whites. In ten Northern cities it was 23.64 for Negroes and 15.99 for whites; for the same number of cities in the South it was 30.60 for Negroes and 17.22 for whites.[161:13] Again, in thirty-three Northern cities the death rate among Negroes was 25.1 a thousand and 15.7 among whites, while in twenty-four Southern cities the death-rate was 29.6 for Negroes and 16.9 for whites. For the fifty-seven cities together, 27.8 for Negroes and 15.9 for whites.[162:14] Thus, it is seen that the death rate among Negroes is not far from twice as great as among whites, but contrary to the general impression it is less in the North than in the South.
Moreover, statistics show that the Negro is not increasing in this country as fast in proportion as is the white man. Indeed, he seems to be falling behind in his own percentage of increase. Between 1890 and 1900 his increase was 1,345,318 but from 1900 to 1910 it was only 993,769. Again, the percentage of Negroes in the population of the country decreased from 19.03 per cent in 1810 to 10.69 per cent in 1910, and from 14.13 per cent in 1860 to 10.69 per cent in 1910. In other words, while the whites increased nearly three and one-half (3.4) times between 1860 and 1910, the Negro increased only two and two-tenths (2.2) times.
That this difference between the increase of the two races was not due to the immigration of whites is shown by the fact that from 1800 to 1840 when there was scarcely any immigration of whites the population of the country increased more than three and a fifth (3.21) times, while from 1870 to 1910, an equal number of years, when immigration was almost at its height, the increase was only a little more than two and a third (2.38) times. Again, during the fifty years, 1790 to 1840, it increased four and a third (4.34) times; also, between 1810 and 1860 it increased in the same ratio (4.34); while for the fifty years from 1860 to 1910 it increased only something more than two and three-fourths (2.86) times.
Indeed, it is said that “the Southern States, which have received practically no immigrants since the Civil War, have increased their population as rapidly as the Northern States; that is, the increase of population among the Southern whites has been equal to the Northern increase assisted by immigration.”[163:15]
While these facts may not be sufficient evidence that the Negro will finally become extinct in this country, nevertheless, it is impossible for one to escape the conclusion that as the years go by the members of his race will become fewer and fewer in proportion to the whole population. As this comes about the Negro will gradually cease to be such a problem, as at present.
FOOTNOTES:
[145:1] Baltimore American, May 23, 1913.
[145:2] Baltimore Sun, March 30, 1917.
[146:3] William Archer, in McClure’s, July, 1909.
[146:4] C. A. Ellwood, “Sociology and Modern Social Problems,” p. 241.
[151:5] Negro Education (Government Report), Vol. I, p. 8.
[153:6] “Education and Crime,” South Atlantic Monthly, January, 1917.
[154:7] Scott and Stowe, “Life of Booker T. Washington,” p. 176.
[156:8] Year Book, Dept. of Agriculture, 1910, p. 193.
[158:9] Quoted by A. H. Stone in “American Race Problem,” pp. 177-8, from J. C. Hardy, “The South’s Supremacy in Cotton Growing,” p. 9.
[159:10] “There were imported in the British West Indies 4,000,000 Negro slaves and when they were manumitted there were 800,000. Into the Southern States 400,000 were imported and there were before the war 4,000,000; this decrease in the former and increase in the latter are strong facts. The climate influence was on the side of the West Indies. There must have been a very different treatment.”—Charleston (S. C.) Mercury, Nov. 23, 1863. Quoted by it from a London paper, written by an Englishwoman who had spent a short time in the South.
[160:11] R. W. Woolley, Pearson’s Magazine, Feb., 1910, p. 210, quoting Drs. Seale, Harris and W. C. Woodward.
[160:12] Report of Board of Prison Inspectors of Alabama, Sept., 1910-1914, p. 45.
[161:13] Northern States: Me., Mass., Mich., N. J., N. Y., O., Pa., and R. I.; Southern: Md. and N. C. These were the only Southern States mentioned in this connection in the census. Northern cities: New Haven, Boston, Detroit, Atlantic City, Trenton, Cleveland, Springfield, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City; Southern: Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, N. C., Mobile, Atlanta, Savannah, New Orleans, Memphis, Charleston, S. C., and Richmond.
[162:14] Department of Commerce Bulletin 129, p. 44.
[163:15] C. A. Ellwood: “Sociology and Modern Social Problems,” p. 212.