Brawley Benjamin Griffith
Your Negro Neighbor
Less direct than open revolt, but more effective sometimes, was escape by running away. In general the slaves directed their way to the North or to the swamps such as those in Virginia and Florida. The Dismal Swamp became a famous hiding-place. Soldiers never ventured into the colony, and bloodhounds sent thither did not return. The first Seminole War was very largely caused by fugitives who had been befriended by the Indians, and the second was even more directly so caused than the first.
In the ordinary social life of the Negro, however, the decade after Nat Turner's insurrection was one of the most trying in the history of the race in America. Repressive measures in the Southern states have just been remarked. In the North the free Negro was beginning to feel the force of economic ostracism. In Ohio no Negro was allowed to settle unless he gave bond for his support. When this law and others of similar import began to be put in force in 1829, serious riots prevailed in Cincinnati for three days, in the course of which several Negroes were killed. Mobs in Philadelphia at various times within the period also murdered Negroes.
Meanwhile migration was strongly urged in some quarters as a solution of the problem. Says Dr. DuBois: "As early as 1788 a Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed a general exodus to Africa. John and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for the right to vote in 1780, started in 1815 for Africa, organizing an expedition at their own expense which cost four thousand dollars. Lott Carey organized the African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negro college graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of public schools… About two thousand black emigrants eventually settled in Hayti."
Even after the Civil War migration efforts were renewed, the Baptists and the Methodists of South Carolina joining hands in 1877 in the formation of the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Company. As early as 1833, however, in his pamphlet entitled "Thoughts on African Colonization," Garrison showed the futility of the whole plan as a means of solving the problem of the Negro in the United States, and time has justified his view.
Gradually, in spite of all the discouraging circumstances, hope appeared on the horizon. England emancipated the slaves in her colonies in 1833, and more and more conventions of free Negroes showed an interest in the welfare of the race. A strong foothold began to be gained in certain occupations, such as those of the barber and caterer. Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass appeared on the public platform; the poems of Phillis Wheatley ran through three new editions within four years; Elizabeth Greenfield sang before the royalty of Europe; and the African Methodist Church began to show what it was possible for the Negro to do in organization. By 1850, the year of the Fugitive Slave Law, when things were looking especially dark, the turning of the tide was much nearer than most people imagined. The South was still triumphant; but each new victory had to be more fiercely fought for than the last, and awakened stronger and stronger elements of opposition.
Into the crucible of war of course fell not only slavery, but every other great question of interest to the American people. Free labor, free speech, woman suffrage, the authority of the Federal Government, were all at stake as well as the cause of the Negro. So far as the Negro himself was concerned, one of the first questions that the Northern generals had to settle was what to do with the fugitive slaves that flocked to their standards. In May, 1861, while in command at Fortress Monroe, Major-General Benjamin F. Butler put such men to work, justifying their retention on the ground that, being of service to the enemy for purposes of war, they were, like guns, powder, etc., "contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. On August 30th of this year Major-General John C. Frémont, in command in Missouri, placed the state under martial law and declared the slaves there emancipated. The administration was embarrassed, Frémont's order was annulled, and he was relieved of his command. The next May, however, Major-General David Hunter, in charge of the Department of the South, issued his famous order freeing the slaves in his territory, and thus brought to general attention the matter of the employment of Negro soldiers in the Union armies. The Confederate government outlawed Hunter, Lincoln annulled his order, and the grace of the nation was again saved; but in the meantime a new situation had arisen. While Brigadier-General John W. Phelps was taking part in the expedition against New Orleans, a large sugar-planter near the city, disgusted with Federal interference with the affairs of his plantation, drove all the slaves away, telling them to go to their friends, the Yankees. Phelps attempted to organize the Negroes who came into troops. Accordingly he too was outlawed by the Confederates and his act disavowed by the Union, that was not ready to take this step. It was not until a great many men had been killed, and until the Emancipation Proclamation had changed the status of the Negro, that steps were taken by the Union for his employment as a soldier. Opinion in his favor gained force after the Draft Riot in New York, when Negroes in the city were mobbed and beaten by the enemies of conscription. Soon a distinct bureau was established in Washington for the recording of all matters pertaining to Negro troops, a board was organized for the examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. By the end of 1864 nearly 200,000 Negroes had been enrolled in the army. The exploits of these men at Port Hudson, Fort Wagner, and Fort Pillow are a part of the romance of American History.
The Civil War meant more than the emancipation of four million slaves, with all the perplexing problems that that liberation brought with it; it involved the overturning of the whole economic system of the South. To educate the freedmen, to train them in citizenship, and to give them a place in the new labor system, was all a problem calling for the wisest statesmanship and the largest and most unselfish patriotism. Strange contradictions moreover were frequently in evidence to increase the practical difficulties of the situation. Some Negroes, because of personal attachment, refused to leave their former masters; while the South in general, although it laid all its ills at the door of the Negro, violently opposed any considerable effort to have him taken away.
What was the Federal Government to do with the freedman? Of course it could leave him alone. Having emancipated him, it could let him work out his destiny as he would. In view of the situation, however, and the principles for which the war had been fought, such a course was manifestly impossible, especially as the so-called Black Codes of some of the Southern states raised the question if the results of the war were really being accepted in good faith. The next course then was some form of Federal oversight; and thus we have the Freedmen's Bureau. The best exposition of the work of this institution is to be found in the writings of Dr. DuBois. It started the ex-slaves on their new career as free laborers, gave them recognition before the courts, and established the free common school in the South. It did not wholly guard its methods from paternalism, however; it did not live up to its implied promise to furnish the freedmen with land; and, worst of all, when the Negroes in spite of all their disadvantages had actually accumulated a total of three million dollars, the same being deposited in the Freedman's Bank, this bank, morally if not technically a part of the Freedmen's Bureau, failed, and the former slaves, at the very beginning of their economic freedom, received a severe blow not only to their confidence in the good faith of their government but also to that in the virtues of self-reliance and thrift. Gradually, through the efforts of Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House, the conviction was forced upon the country that the only solution of the problem was to give the Negro the ballot as the full protection of his citizenship. Thus in 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment was passed. All the logic of the situation demanded it, in spite of temporary disadvantages; and yet it has never since ceased to be bewailed in some quarters as a grave political error, even by such a representative student as James Bryce. In proof of this position theft and the incompetency of officials in the Reconstruction era are cited, when everybody knows that the carpetbaggers rather than the freedmen themselves received most of the spoil, and that the good points of the Reconstruction governments, such as the emphasis on common school education, have just as sedulously been belittled. In 1875 the second Civil Rights Act was passed, designed to give Negroes equality of treatment in theaters, railway cars, hotels, etc.; but this the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883. Meanwhile the KuKlux Klan was already at work; the withdrawal of the Federal troops and the wholesale removal of disabilities by Congress weakened the Reconstruction governments; and thus the way was paved for democratic success in the South.
Now ensued a period of such harshness in the ordinary life of the Negro as can not easily be imagined. The general lack of protection in the country districts and the greater economic attractiveness of the cities led many laborers to leave the farms and to find an outlet in some other occupations. To counteract this movement the "convict lease system" appeared in all its hideousness. By every possible means the effort was made to bind the Negro laborer to the soil, and in numberless instances not even the sanctity of his home life was regarded. At the same time, in ordinary intercourse with his fellowmen, many times a day was he subjected to personal indignities. By 1879, by reason of such things as these, as well as excessive rents and the exorbitant prices at some stores, matters had become so bad as in many places to be no longer tolerable. Not unnaturally many Negroes had come to fear that they were about to be remanded to slavery. A general convention in Nashville in May, 1879, adopted a report that set forth their grievances and encouraged migration to the North and West. Thousands now left their homes in the South, going in greatest numbers to Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana. Within about twenty months Kansas alone received thus an addition to her population of 40,000 Negroes. Difficulties of adjustment of course arose, but the whole movement was sufficient to prove utterly false the contention of some that no amount of unfairness and injustice in the South would induce the Negro to move away.
As the KuKlux Klan declined, however, and the Negro, in spite of discouraging circumstances, steadily advanced in property, education, and culture, more and more the South felt the need of reënforcing its position by definite legislation. In 1890 the era of disfranchisement was formally inaugurated. In this year Mississippi so amended her constitution as to exclude from the suffrage any person who had not paid his poll-tax or who was unable to read any section of the Constitution, understand it when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation of it. Real discretion in interpretation of course lay only with the registrars, who could admit just so many persons as they deemed of good character and as understanding the duties of citizenship. South Carolina amended her constitution to similar purpose in 1895; and in 1898 Louisiana invented the so-called "grandfather clause." This excused from the operation of her disfranchising act all descendants of men who had voted before the Civil War, thus admitting to the suffrage all white men who were illiterate and without property. Other Southern states in one way or another followed these three. In the final estimate of history the whole effort must appear simply as a pathetic attempt to delay the full operation of justice and the rights of man.
For the present, however, the question of the Negro's attitude toward the problem was one of surpassing moment. Suddenly, in 1895, arose a new and genuine leader, Booker T. Washington, who offered a very definite program. In a remarkable speech at the Atlanta Exposition he said to the white South: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress… Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the State Legislature was worth more than real estate or industrial skill." What seemed the common sense and the sweet reasonableness of this program at once commanded attention; and the South, in the first flush of a new era of industrial development, and the North, perfectly ready to accept any program that promised to make Southern investments secure, both approved the new leader, who along the lines of thrift and self-reliance certainly gave tremendous inspiration to thousands of his brother-laborers in the South.
From the very first, however, there was a distinct group of Negro men that honestly questioned the wisdom of the platform offered by Mr. Washington. They felt that in seeming to be willing temporarily to accept segregation and to waive political rights he had given up altogether too much. As the opposition, however, they were not at first unitedly constructive, and in their utterance they sometimes offended by harshness of tone. Some years ago they were sneered at as the "intellectuals," "the idealists," etc. It is significant that to-day the sneers are few, and that a constructive program has more and more commanded attention. The recognized leader who has risen from the group is W.E. Burghardt DuBois, editor of the Crisis, the voice of an organization formed in 1910 and known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This organization frankly "proposes to make 11,000,000 Americans physically free from peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically free from disfranchisement, and socially free from insult." To this end it is waging a fight for justice in every way, whether at the polls, in the courts, in public conveyances, in schools, in chances for earning a living, and it has widened the door of hope not only for the college man or woman, but for the agricultural laborer as well.
Let it not be forgotten that even in the first of these two large programs there was much that was admirable. Its virtues, however, fell distinctly short of the second. A man might have ten thousand dollars in his pocket; but if he was in a strange town and legally denied a bed late at night, or if he could not buy a meal in a restaurant when he was hungry, he would learn that there are some things in the world greater than money; and to-day more than ever we might assert that anything other than the fullest emphasis on the ordinary rights of citizenship is out of harmony with the principles of American democracy.
In this rapid review we have of course touched only lightly upon some matters of the highest importance. Among these are the economic advance of the race and its very great importance as an industrial factor; lynching; education; political significance; literature and music; and the connections with the present great war. Some of these will be considered more fully in the pages that follow. More and more we trust that it will be found that a struggling people is working out its own salvation, slowly out of the darkness climbing to the light.
