Brawley Benjamin Griffith
Your Negro Neighbor
III
THE NEGRO AS AN INDUSTRIAL FACTOR
If the war has taught us anything, it has given us new respect for labor. There may once have been a time when great plantation owners despised workers in fields; but that time is past. Under the stress of new conditions, our richest captains of industry value the man who can raise cotton or make a shell or fix rivets in a ship.
The Negro has importance in America to-day as a working-man; and, aside from all questions of philanthropy or sentiment, he asks for consideration in this capacity. Some of our greatest businesses are becoming dependent upon him. In turn he asks if it is unreasonable for him to expect a man's chance to earn a living, fair wages for fair work, and such working conditions as make for general health and social betterment.
In 1910, of 3,178,554 Negro men at work in this country, 981,922 were listed as farm laborers and 798,509 as farmers. That is to say, 56 per cent. of the whole number were engaged in raising farm products either on their own account or by way of assisting somebody else. The great staples were of course the cotton and corn of the Southern states, and the new importance given to these crops by the war no one can gainsay. That is not all, however. If we take along with the farmers those engaged in the next occupations employing the greatest numbers of men – those of the building and hand trades, saw and planing mills, as well as those of railway firemen and porters, draymen, teamsters, and coal mine operatives – we shall find a total of 71.2 per cent. engaged in such work as represents the very foundation of American industry. What of the women? Of these, 1,047,146, or 52 per cent., were either farm laborers or farmers, and 28 per cent. more were either cooks or washerwomen. In other words, a total of exactly 80 per cent. were doing some of the hardest and at the same time some of the most necessary work in our home and industrial life. These are the workers for whom we ask consideration; and we make the request not on the basis of what they did fifty or a hundred years ago, but what they are worth now, to-day, as an important asset in the industrial life of the United States.
It has sometimes been said that these people are not reliable as workers, that they are migratory, that they fail to appear on Monday mornings, etc., and hence that it is hardly advisable to give them a chance in American industry on a large scale. Hear the testimony of Homer L. Ferguson, described as "the most human shipbuilder in America – and one of the ablest," fully half of whose 7,800 men and boys in his great Newport News shipyard are Negroes. Mr. Ferguson was born in North Carolina and he was talking to a Northern reporter: "Don't you dare come down from the North to this yard and tell us that the black man in the South is an industrial failure – you who only use him as an elevator boy or a parlor-car porter or a chauffeur and refuse to give him an equal industrial opportunity with white labor. How long would one of our expert machinists last at Taunton or at Paterson or at Schenectady? What opportunity would the unions give him? Can one of our good riveters go north and join the union? He can not. And otherwise he can not drive a single rivet."
What would the unions do in fact? What have they done already? We learn from the very valuable study by Mr. Abraham Epstein, "The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh," in the publications of the School of Economics of the University of Pittsburgh, that an official of a union which has a membership of nearly five thousand, said that it had about five colored members. An official of an even more powerful union was "greatly astonished when he learned that there are white people who take an interest in the Negro question. He absolutely refused to give any information and did not think it worth while to answer such questions, although he admitted that his union had no colored people and would never accept them." To be thoroughly concrete, however, let us consider the Negro plasterers of Pittsburgh. On January 1, 1917, about thirty of these men, discriminated against by the local white union, wrote to the national organization in Middletown, Ohio, asking formally to have a local body of their own. Headquarters sent back reply to the effect that a charter could not be given without the consent of the older organization. Then followed a meeting in which the Negro secretary was given five minutes before the white local at its regular meeting. Nothing resulted. Under such circumstances is it any wonder that Negroes adopt a canny attitude when labor unions are concerned? More than this, can not organized labor itself realize the dangers for all in this hostile attitude toward the black race?
In spite of the labor unions, however, the Negro has gone North. The war, suddenly putting an end to the great immigrant stream from Europe, brought a sudden demand for unskilled labor undreamed of five years ago. Nobody knows how many Negroes have gone from the South to the North within the last three years. Perhaps 500,000; perhaps even 200,000 more. We do know, however, that they have gone in amazing numbers; and the thing of really vital importance is that these people shall be adequately adjusted to their new environment. Some opportunity should be afforded them to rise from the ranks of unskilled into those of skilled laborers. It is moreover of the highest importance that these newcomers to our large cities shall be adequately housed. Thirty persons are known to have lived recently in a seven-room house in Philadelphia; and in Pittsburgh 57 out of 390 rooms investigated have shown over six persons using the same room. In many cases the paper is torn off the walls, plaster sags from the laths, windows are broken, and the ceiling is low and damp. The whole question is of course closely connected with disease and mortality. In many places, and even in some of our training camps, there is too little opportunity for wholesome refreshment for the Negro. When will our cities learn that tuberculosis and typhoid fever are no respecter of persons? It is not enough to isolate bad cases after they are found out. The conditions of home sanitation, or lack of sanitation, that lead to these should be made impossible. I recall a section of pleasant homes in the West End of Atlanta. Suddenly, in the midst of clean, comfortable little cottages for white people there yawned before me an alley in which Negroes lived, with its dilapidated two-room dwellings, general lack of cleanliness, and its unwholesome air. From these places came the cooks and the washerwomen for the white families in the neighborhood; and this condition in one section of Atlanta can be duplicated in any city in the South, and in many in the North.
In 1910 the death-rate in 57 representative cities was 27.8 per 1,000 for Negroes and 15.9 for white people. The rates for both white people and Negroes were higher in the South than in the North, but not a great deal more so. Among the Negroes the diseases that overwhelmingly outnumbered the others in their victims were tuberculosis and pneumonia. Can any one doubt that this is due to the unsanitary conditions under which these people are in many instances forced to live?
To argue, however, that the Negro should be looked after in order that white people should be protected is to be guilty of a fallacy. All should be protected because all should have the best chance at life that their city or their state can afford them. All the more important is the question since it involves the welfare of three million men and women upon whom so largely rest the burdens of our farming, our mining, our railroading, our planing industries, and our home life.
The war has already taught us many things, and among the most important is the need for a new adjustment of social and economic values. If we are to be together in a crisis we must be together in times of peace, with the broadest sympathy one for another. Especially must we give due consideration to those who have the hardest work to do. Too long have some few become rich by exploiting the poor, the unprotected, the ignorant. True democracy does not mean that any one race or any one class shall be on top or at the bottom, but that all shall advance together to the height of human attainment. Only thus can we finally be secure. Only thus can our country be the country of our dreams.
IV
LYNCHING
Within the last thirty-five years 3,200 Negro men and women have been lynched within the boundaries of the United States, an average of just a little less than 100 a year. While there has been some decrease within recent years, the figures between 1890 and 1900 were so extraordinary that the average is still high. Nor can one find much comfort in the fact that there has been some decrease within recent years, for some of the most recent cases were those of the most revolting torture. The year 1917 moreover was marked by the greatest outbreak of mob violence that the race has ever suffered, considerably more than one hundred Negro men, women, and children losing their lives in East St. Louis.
Fifteen years ago, in Mississippi, a Negro became involved in a quarrel with a white man who was just about to shoot him when the Negro himself fired, fatally wounding the man. He then fled to the woods and his wife accompanied him. Bloodhounds were sent after them, and after a long chase they were captured. Then followed such torture as is without parallel even in the history of lynching. The man and his wife were both tied to trees, one after another their fingers were cut off, then their ears, both fingers and ears being distributed as souvenirs among the members of the mob. The supreme stroke, however, was still to come. A large corkscrew was bored into the more fleshy parts of the two writhing bodies, and so jerked out as to tear out large pieces of flesh. Both the man and his wife were then burned alive. And the sun still shone in heaven!
Such is the story that with necessary differences of situation and detail has disgraced our country for forty years. Within eight months recently the state of Tennessee has been distinguished by three separate burnings. At Dyersburg a red-hot poker was rammed down the throat of the victim, and he was further mutilated in ways indecent and unmentionable. At Estill Springs all the colored people in the vicinity were made to walk around the scene of the burning as an object-lesson. Of Henry Smith in Texas some years ago we are told that "he was taken from his guards, red-hot irons were thrust into his eyes, down his throat, and on his abdomen, and he was then burned." In the case of Jesse Washington, a Negro boy of seventeen, in Waco, Texas, in May, 1916, we read: "On the way to the scene of the burning, people on every hand took a hand in showing their feelings in the matter by striking the Negro with anything obtainable; some struck him with shovels, bricks, clubs, and others stabbed him and cut him until when he was strung up his body was a solid color of red." It was estimated that the boy had twenty-five stab wounds. "Fingers, ears, pieces of clothing, toes and other parts of the Negro's body were cut off by members of the mob."
It will be argued, however, that only in extreme cases is burning resorted to; but to this it might be replied that sometimes there is a burning when rape is not even alleged, as in the case of the man and woman in Mississippi. Indeed, it may be remarked in passing that in only a third or a fourth of the cases enumerated each year is rape even alleged as a cause. The theft of seventy-five cents, a small debt, a fight, relationship to an offender, have all been considered sufficient cause for lynching within recent years. Moreover, even where there is not a burning, but a hanging, the circumstances are often such as to disgrace our civilization. Thus, early in 1915, at Monticello, Ga., because an officer was resisted, a father, his young son, and his two grown daughters were all lynched.
What must inevitably be the result of all this? Such an incident as the following: Very recently, at Gadsden, Ala., four little white boys at play, all twelve or thirteen years of age, decided that they would play "lynching." One of the four accordingly had a rope tied around his neck and was slowly strangling to death when a passer-by relieved him. The result of the incident was that the three playmates of the boy were all placed in jail under the charge of assault such as might have resulted in murder.
What is the remedy? Respect for the law of course, with proper enforcement of the same. All too frequently, however, the law is simply a subterfuge behind which officials take refuge; and this is a condition that applies to many things in our American life besides lynching. Asked a Georgia judge, however, in despair at the conditions that surrounded him: "If the grand jury won't indict lynchers, if the petit juries won't convict, and if soldiers won't shoot, what are we coming to?"
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.
