Black Hundreds

“ But just as often as they come to this point, the present social condition of the Negro stands as a menace and a portent before even the most open-minded: if there were nothing to charge against the Negro but his blackness or other physical peculiarities, they argue, the problem would be comparatively simple; but what can we say to his ignorance, shiftlessness, poverty, and crime? can a self-respecting group hold anything but the least possible fellowship with such persons and survive? ”

“ We have here a race conflict; on the one side eight millions of blacks, we will say, and perhaps eight millions of irreconcilable whites on the other. And these dominant eight millions of white men maintain, with the utmost pertinacity—and they have the power in their right hand so far as we can see—that they propose to rule and keep down those eight millions of black men. ”

“ The time has not yet come for the great development of American Negro literature. The economic stress is too great and the racial persecution too bitter to allow the leisure and the poise for which literature calls. “The Negro in the United States is consuming all his intellectual energy in this gruelling race-struggle. ”

“ Now I like the colored people, and sympathize with all their reasonable aspirations; but you and I both know, John, that in this country the Negro must remain subordinate, and can never expect to be the equal of white men. ”

“ Though the negro population was sparse—numbering in 1860, only 1069—and thinly scattered over the territory, and were enjoying all the rights and privileges of American citizenship, nevertheless they gave up the luxuries of happy homes, threw down their implements of peaceful industry, broke from the loving embrace of wives and children, and with the generous patriotism which has always characterized the conduct of the race, they rushed to the aid of their yet oppressed countrymen, and the defense of the Union. ”

“ I commit this work to the public, white and black, to the friends and foes of the Negro, in the hope that the obsolete antagonisms which grew out of the relation of master and slave may speedily sink as storms beneath the horizon; and that the day will hasten when there shall be no North, no South, no Black, no White,—but all be American citizens, with equal duties and equal rights. ”

“ The figures given by the unsentimental census-taker showing that during the past decade there has been an increase of about 34 per cent. of this race in our population does not indicate that the black belt stretching along our Southern horizon is likely to fade away. The negro is here to stay, and in adjusting him to our natural life we are faced by a permanent, not a temporary problem. ”

“ Coming now to the slowly swelling stream of a distinct group literature, by and primarily for the Negro, we enter a realm only partially known to white Americans. First, there come the rich mass of Negro folk lore transplanted from Africa and developed in America. ”

“ We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? ”

“ And yet, with all this, the Negro has held the stage. In the South he is everything. You cannot discuss religion, morals, politics, social life, science, earth or sky, God or devil without touching the Negro. It is a perennial and continuous and continual subject of books, editorials, sermons, lectures and smoking car confabs. In the north and west while seldom in the center, the Negro is always in the wings waiting to appear or screaming shrill lines off stage. ”

“ One estimate is that a million Negroes came in the sixteenth century, three million in the seventeenth, seven million in the eighteenth and four million in the nineteenth or fifteen million in all. Certainly at least ten million came and this meant sixty million killed and stolen in Africa because of the methods of capture and the horror of the middle passage. ”

“ And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. ”

“ So great an economic and social revolution as swept the South in '63 meant a weeding out among the Negroes of the incompetents and vicious, the beginning of a differentiation of social grades. Now a rising group of people are not lifted bodily from the ground like an inert solid mass, but rather stretch upward like a living plant with its roots still clinging in the mould. The appearance, therefore, of the Negro criminal was a phenomenon to be awaited ”

“ On the other hand, to leave the Negro in the hands of Southern courts was impossible. In a distracted land where slavery had hardly fallen, to keep the strong from wanton abuse of the weak, and the weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. ”

“ To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise. It is no idle regret with which the white South mourns the loss of the old-time Negro,—the frank, honest, simple old servant who stood for the earlier religious age of submission and humility. ”

“ For the Negro everywhere discriminated against, segregated and shunned, mobbed and murdered—he it is whose melodies are on all our lips, and whose rhythms impel our marching feet in a ‘war for democracy.’ The irresistible music that wells up from this sunny and unresentful people is hummed and whistled, danced to and marched to, laughed over and wept over, by high and low and rich and poor throughout the land. The downtrodden black man whose patient religious faith has kept his heart still unembittered, is fast becoming the singing voice of all America. ”

“ The Negro question seems to be the race riddle of our civilization and it will take much tact, patience and wisdom to solve the problem. It may be a revelation to some of you to know, that at the rate the negro race has grown since the Civil War, when the twentieth century goes out, there will be sixty millions of negroes in one black belt across the Southland. I say across the Southland because, the main body of the negro race will never leave the track of the southern sun. The South held the negro in slavery, the North set him free. ”

“ The fiery trials of the young Colored men who gained admission to West Point, and the noble conduct of the four regiments of black troops in the severe service of the frontiers have strengthened the hopes of a nation in the final outcome of the American Negro.
But what of the future? Can the Negro endure the sharp competition of American civilization? Can he keep his position against the tendencies to amalgamation? ”

“ Many writers and artists have found hidden inspiration in their Negro blood and from the first importation in the fifteenth century down to today there has been a continual mingling of white and Negro blood in the United States both within and without the bonds of wedlock that neither law nor slavery nor cruel insult and contempt has been able to stop.
Besides these influences in economics and the home there has come the work of Negro women in revolt which cannot be forgotten. ”

“ The old leaders of Negro opinion, in the little groups where there is a Negro social consciousness, are being replaced by new; neither the black preacher nor the black teacher leads as he did two decades ago. ”

“ Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts and small towns of the South, that the character of all Negroes unknown to the mass of the community must be vouched for by some white man. ”

“ I see them swinging corners in the old Virginia reel to the music of the banjo and the fiddle and the bow, until the dust rises above them and swings corners with the moonbeams in the air. I see the old black mammies soothing their masters’ children to sleep with their lullabies. I see the whole black race rejoicing in their transplantation from darkest Africa and gladly serving the white race who led them into the light [431] of civilization and the Christian religion, leaving not an infidel among all those millions of slaves. ”

“ It was urged, on the other hand, that in its fearful struggle for existence, the Republic needed the help of the able-bodied negroes; that with their natural instincts of self-preservation, desire for liberty, habit of obedience, power of imitation, love of pomp and parade, acquaintance with the southern country and adaptation to its climate, they had elements which peculiarly fitted them for soldiers. It was further urged that the negro had more at stake than the white man, and that he should have a chance to strike a blow for himself. ”

“ On the other hand, the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful. "Why, you niggers have an easier time than I do," said a puzzled Albany merchant to his black customer. ”

“ Even now the whites stand accursed by their oppression of humanity, being subject to a degree of confusion, chaos, and enslavement to error and wrong, which northern society could not credit or comprehend.
"Added to the four millions of the colored race whose disaffection is increasing even more rapidly than their number, there are at least four millions more of the white race whose growing miseries will naturally seek companionship with those of the blacks. ”

“ It is usual to speak of the Negro as being the great example of the unassimiliated group in American life. This, of course, is flatly untrue; probably of the strains of blood longest present in America since the discovery by Columbus, the Negro has been less liable to absorption than other groups ”

“ If, as stated, the ten millions of black people in the United States have excelled all the other groups of their race-type in moral and Christian growth, let us trace the cause, and in doing so we may get some light and information that will be of value in dealing with the Negro race in America and elsewhere, and in elevating and Christianizing other races. ”

“ But the conflict between the white men and the negro, and particularly the American white man and the American negro, is likely to be more ruthless than any which the ancient world, fruitful in such histories, or the modern records of Algeria can furnish. ”

“ The Negro’s Method of Solution.
There are three classes of Negroes in the South, but only one desires a solution of the problem and that is class number two, of those I shall mention. Class number one is composed chiefly of the illiterate and superstitious Negroes. They usually work on the railroads, on the steamboats, in the large saw-mills, and on the farms for wages. They have no homes and do not want any ”

“ As the red man numbered millions when the eighteenth century was dying, and within a hundred years is far less than a quantité negligéable, so the black man, numbering millions when the nineteenth century is also a-dying, may possibly, before another century, fade out too. ”

“ They lived in the same home, shared in the family life, often attended the same church, and talked and conversed with each other. But the increasing civilization of the Negro since then has naturally meant the development of higher classes: there are increasing numbers of ministers, teachers, physicians, merchants, mechanics, and independent farmers, who by nature and training are the aristocracy and leaders of the blacks. Between them, however, and the best element of the whites, there is little or no intellectual commerce. ”

“ Thus instead of revolts among the negroes, slaves and free, as predicted by some Union men at the North, many became possessed of a fervor,—originating generally in fear,—stimulated by an enthusiasm of the whites, that swept the populace like a mighty sea current into the channel of war. The negro who boasted the loudest of his desire to fight the Yankees; who showed the greatest anxiety to aid the confederates, was granted the most freedom and received the approval of his master. ”

“ But what of the real and mythical jamboree breakers and bad men, or of Po’ Lazarus and [10] Stagolee, or of John Henry, “forehanded steel-drivin’ man” and ideal of the Negro worker?
Here are rare folk figures silhouetted against a sort of shifting race background with its millions of working folk and wanderers moving suddenly and swiftly across the scene. A brown-black army of ramblers, creepers, high flyers, standin’ men, all-night workers, polish men, “stick and ready” from the four corners of the States—Lazarus, Billy Bob Russel, Shootin’ Bill, Brady, Dupree, and the others. ”

“ And, when I say Negroes, it is to avoid the "people of color" circumlocution, because it is no longer easy to find a pure black. The colored population, especially those who are free, are mixed in the first, second, third and fourth degree. ”

“ Knowing the negro nature as I do, and knowing that he would not want anybody to derive the benefit of something that he thought he was entitled to, I got two white men in the county to come and offer me to take this piece of land and cultivate it on shares with me, giving me one half its product, whereas with them I was entitled to nothing. ”