The Negro Problem by Booker T. Washington, et al.

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In Georgia and the Carolinas, and all the Gulf States (except Texas, where
the farm labor is mostly white) the negroes on the farms are held by a
system of laws which prevents them from leaving the plantations, and
enables the landlord to punish them by fine and imprisonment for any
alleged breach of contract. In the administration of these laws they are
virtually made slaves to the landlord, as long as they are in debt, and it
is wholly in the power of the landlord to forever keep them in debt.

By section 355, of the Criminal Code of South Carolina, 1902, it is made a
misdemeanor to violate a contract to work and labor on a farm, subject to
a fine of not less than five dollars, and more than one hundred dollars,
or imprisonment for not less than ten days, or more than thirty. It is
also made a misdemeanor to employ any farm laborer while under contract
with another, or to persuade or entice a farm laborer to leave his
employer.

The Georgia laws are a little stronger in this respect than the laws of
the other States. By section 121, of the Code of Georgia, 1895, it is
provided, "that if any person shall, by offering higher wages, or in any
other way entice, persuade or decoy, or attempt to entice, persuade or
decoy any farm laborer from his employer, he shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor." Again, by act of December 17th, 1901, the Georgia
Legislature passed a law making it an offense to rent land, or furnish
land to a farm laborer, after he has contracted with another landlord,
without first obtaining the consent of the first landlord.

The presence of large numbers of negroes in the towns and cities of the
South and North can be accounted for by such laws as the above,
administered by ignorant country magistrates, in nearly all cases the
pliant tools of the landlords.

The boldest and most open violation of the negro's rights under the
Federal Constitution, was the enactment of the grand-father clauses, and
understanding clauses in the new Constitutions of Louisiana, Alabama, the
Carolinas, and Virginia, which have had the effect to deprive the great
body of them of the right to vote in those States, for no other reason
than their race and color. Although thus depriving him of his vote, and
all voice in the State governments at the South, in all of them his
property is taxed to pay pensions to Confederate soldiers, who fought to
continue him in slavery. The fact is, the franchise had been practically
taken from the negroes in the South since 1876, by admitted fraudulent
methods and intimidation in elections, but it was not until late years
that this nullification of the amendments was enacted into State
Constitutions.

This brings me to the proposition that it is mainly in the enforcement, or
the administration of the laws, however fair and equal they may appear on
their face, that the constitutional rights of negroes to equal protection
and treatment are denied, not only in the South but in many Northern
States. There are noble exceptions, however, of high-toned honorable
gentlemen on the bench as trial judges, and Supreme Court justices, in the
South, who without regard to consequences have stood for fairness and
justice to the negro in their courts.

With the population of the South distinctly divided into two classes, not
the rich and poor, not the educated and ignorant, not the moral and
immoral, but simply whites and blacks, all negroes being generally
regarded as inferior and not entitled to the same rights as any white
person, it is bound to be a difficult matter to obtain fair and just
results, when there is any sort of conflict between the races. The negro
realizes this, and knows that he is at an immense disadvantage when he is
forced to litigate with a white man in civil matters, and much more so
when he is charged with a crime by a white person.

The juries in the South almost always reject the testimony of any number
of negroes if given in opposition to that of a white witness, and this is
true in many instances, no matter how unreasonable or inconsistent the
testimony of the white witness may be. Jurors in the South have been heard
to admit that they would be socially ostracized if they brought in a
verdict upon colored testimony alone, in opposition to white testimony.

Perhaps it can be best explained how the negro fares in the courts of the
South by giving a few cases showing how justice is administered to him:

A negro boy was brought to the bar for trial before a police magistrate,
in a Southern capital city, charged with assault and battery on a white
boy about the same age, but a little larger. The testimony showed that the
white boy had beat the negro on several previous occasions as he passed on
his way to school, and each time the negro showed no disposition to fight.
On the morning of the charge he attacked the negro and attempted to cut
him with a knife, because the negro's mother had reported to the white
boy's mother the previous assaults, and asked her to chastise him. The
colored boy in trying to keep from being cut was compelled to fight, and
got the advantage and threw the white boy down and blacked his eyes. The
magistrate on this evidence fined the negro twenty-five dollars. The
mother of the negro having once been a servant for the magistrate, found
courage to rise, and said: "Jedge, yo Honer, can I speak?" The magistrate
replied, "Yes, go on." She said, "Well, Jedge, my boy is ben tellin' me
about dis white boy meddlin' him on his way to school, but I would not let
my boy fight, 'cause I 'tole him he couldn't git no jestice in law. But he
had no other way to go to school 'ceptin' gwine dat way; and den jedge,
dis white chile is bigger an my chile and jumped on him fust with a knife
for nothin', befo' my boy tetched him. Jedge I am a po' woman, and washes
fur a livin', and ain't got nobody to help me, and can't raise all dat
money. I think dat white boy's mammy ought to pay half of dis fine." By
this time her voice had become stifled by her tears. The judge turned to
the mother of the white boy and said, "Madam, are you willing to pay half
of this fine?" She answered, "Yes, Your Honor." And the judge changed the
order to a fine of $12.50 each, against both boys.

A celebrated case in point reported in the books is, George Maury vs. The
State of Miss., 68 Miss. 605. I reproduce the court's statement of the
case:--"This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of Kemper County.
Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life.
He appears in this court without counsel. The facts are briefly these:
One, Nicholson, a white man, accompanied by his little son seven years
old, was driving an ox team along a public road; he had occasion to stop
and the oxen were driven by his son; defendant, a negro, also in an ox
wagon, was going along the road in an opposite direction, and met
Nicholson's wagon in charge of the little boy. It was after dark, and when
the wagons met, according to the testimony of Nicholson, the defendant
insultingly demanded of the boy to give the way, and cursed and abused
him. Nicholson, hearing the colloquy, hurried to the scene and a fight
ensued between him and Maury, in which the latter got the advantage,
inflicting severe blows upon Nicholson. This occurred on Thursday, and on
the following Sunday night, Nicholson, in company with eleven or twelve of
his friends, rode to the farm of Maury, and after sending several of their
number to ascertain if he was at home, rode rapidly into his yard and
called for him. Not finding him, they proceeded to search the premises,
and found several colored men shut up in the smoke house, the door of
which some of the searching party had broken open. Maury, the accused, was
not found there, and about that time some one called out, "Here is
George." Some of the party then started in the direction of the cotton
house from which the voice proceeded, when a volley was fired from it, and
two of the searching party were killed, one of whom was the son of the
former owner of the defendant, and the other a brother-in-law of
Nicholson. The members of the raiding party testified that their purpose
in going to the home of the defendant was merely to arrest him. It was,
however, shown that Nicholson, immediately after the fight on Thursday,
informed Cobb, and Cobb between Thursday and Sunday night collected the
men who joined in the raid. No affidavit for the arrest of Maury had been
made, and none of the party had any warrant, or made any announcement to
the defendant or his family, of the object of their visit. The accused who
testified in his own behalf, denied that he was at home at the time of the
shooting, and says he fled before the raiding party arrived. He also
contradicted Nicholson in his account of the difficulty with him, and
denies that he spoke harshly to the child." Chief Justice Campbell, in
delivering the opinion of the court said, "It is inconceivable that the
crime of murder is predicable of the facts disclosed by the evidence in
this case. The time and place and circumstances of the killing forbid any
such conclusion as a verdict of guilty of murder." The judgment of the
trial court was reversed.

This same Chief Justice, in the case of Monroe vs. Mississippi, 71 Miss.
201, where a negro was convicted of rape, makes use of the following
brave and noble language, reversing the case on the ground of the
insufficiency of the evidence: "We might greatly lighten our labors by
deferring in all cases to the verdict approved by the presiding judge as
to the facts, but our duty is to administer justice without respect of
persons, and do equal right to the poor and the rich. Hence the
disposition, which we are not ashamed to confess we have, to guard
jealously the rights of the poor and friendless and despised, and to be
astute as far as we properly may, against injustice, whether proceeding
from wilfulness or indifference."

The country has produced no abler jurist, nor the South no greater man
than Ex-Chief Justice Campbell of Mississippi. If the counsel of such men
as he and Chief Justice Garret of the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas,
could obtain in the South, there would be no problem between the races.
All would be contented because justice would be administered to the whites
and blacks alike.

In the administration of the suffrage sections under the new
Constitutions of the South by the partisan boards of registrars, the same
discrimination against negroes was practiced. Their methods are of more or
less interest. The plan was to exclude all negroes from the electorate
without excluding a single white man. Under the Alabama Constitution, a
soldier in the Civil War, either on the Federal or Confederate side, is
entitled to qualification. When a negro goes up to register as a soldier
he is asked for his discharge. When he presents it he is asked, "How do we
know that you are the man whose name is written in this discharge? Bring
us two white men whom we know and who will swear that you have not found
this paper, and that they know that you were a soldier in the company and
regiment in which you claim to have been." This, of course, could not be
done, and the ex-soldier who risked his life for the Union is denied the
right to vote.

The same Constitution provides that if not a soldier or the legal
descendant of one, an elector must be of good character and understand the
duties and obligations of citizenship under a Republican form of
government. When a negro claims qualifications under the good character
and understanding clauses he is put through an examination similar to the
following:

"What is a republican form of government?

"What is a limited monarchy?

"What islands did the United States come into possession of by the
Spanish-American War?

"What is the difference between Jeffersonian Democracy and Calhoun
principles, as compared to the Monroe Doctrine?

"If the Nicaragua Canal is cut, what will be the effect if the Pacific
Ocean is two feet higher than the Atlantic?" Should these questions be
answered satisfactorily, the negro must still produce two white men known
to the registrars to testify to his good character. A remarkable
exception in the treatment of negroes by the registrars of Dallas county,
Alabama, is shown in the following account taken from the Montgomery
Advertizer:--

"An old negro barber by the name of Edward E. Harris, stepped in before
the registrars, hat in hand, humble and polite, with a kindly smile on his
face. He respectfully asked to be registered. He signed the application
and waited a few minutes until the registrars had disposed of some other
matters, and being impressed with his respectful bearing, some member of
the board commenced to ask a few questions. The old man told his story in
a straight forward manner. He said: "Gentlemen, I am getting to be a
pretty old man. I was born here in the South, and I followed my young
master through all of the campaigns in Virginia, when Mas' Bob Lee made it
so warm for the Yankees. But our luck left us at Gettysburg. The Yankees
got around in our rear there, and I got a bullet in the back of my head,
and one in my leg before I got out of that scrape. But I was not hurt
much, and my greatest anxiety was about my young master, Mr. John Holly,
who was a member of the Bur Rifles, 18th Mississippi. He was a private and
enlisted at Jackson, Miss.

"He could not be found the first day; I looked all among the dead on the
battle field for him and he was not there. Next day I got a permit to go
through the hospitals, and I looked into the face of every soldier
closely, in the hope of finding my young master. After many hours of
searching I found him, but he was dangerously wounded. I stayed by his
side, wounded as I was, for three long weeks, but he gradually grew worse
and then he died. I went out with the body and saw it buried as decently
as I could, and then I went back to Jackson and told the young mistress
how brave he was in battle, how good he was to me, and told her all the
words he had sent her, as he lay there on that rude cot in the hospital.
That is my record as a Confederate soldier, and if you gentlemen care to
give me a certificate of registration, I would be much obliged to you."
It is needless to say that old Ed. Harris got his certificate.

It is insisted upon by the leaders of public opinion at the South, that
negroes should not be given equal political and civil rights with white
men, defined by law and enforceable by the courts; but that they should be
content to strive to deserve the good wishes and friendly feeling of the
whites, and if the South is let alone, they will see to it that negroes
get becoming treatment.

While there is a large number of the high-toned, chivalrous element of the
old master class yet living, who would stand by the negro and not permit
him to be wronged if they could prevent it, yet they are powerless to
control the great mass of the poor whites who are most bitter in their
prejudices against the negro. They should also bear in mind that the old
master class is rapidly passing way, and that there is constantly an
influx of foreigners to the South, and in less than fifty years the
Italians, or some other foreign nationality, may be the ruling class in
all the Southern States; and the negro, deprived of all political and
civil rights by the Constitution and laws, would be wholly at the mercy of
a people without sympathy for him.

In order to show the fallacy and the wrong and injustice of this doctrine,
and how helplessly exposed it leaves the negro to the prejudices of the
poor whites, I relate a tragedy in the life of a friend of mine, who was
well known and respected in the town of Rayville, Louisiana.

Sewall Smith, for many years ran the leading barber shop for whites in the
town of Rayville, and was well-liked and respected by the leading white
men of the entire parish. At the suggestion of his customers he bought
Louisiana state lands while they were cheap, before the railroad was put
through between Vicksburg and Shreveport; and as the road passed near his
lands he was thereby made a rich man, as wealth goes in those parts. His
good fortune, however, did not swell his head and he remained the same to
his friends. He became so useful in his parish that there was never a
public gathering of the leading white business men that he was not invited
to it, and he was always on the delegations to all the levee or river
conventions sent from his parish. He was chosen to such places by white
men exclusively; and in his own town he was as safe from wrong or injury,
on account of his race or color, as any white man.

After the trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he
had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in
the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy
asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed
well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might
not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping
place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked permission to take
his satchel back to the train on the following day when he was to return.
The next day the boy came for the satchel, and they had nearly reached the
depot about train time, when they passed a saloon where a crowd of poor
whites sat on boxes whittling sticks. The sight of a negro having a white
boy carrying his satchel quite enraged them, and after cursing and abusing
Smith and the boy, they undertook to kick and assault Smith. Smith
defended himself. The result was a shooting affair, in which Smith shot
two or three of them and was himself shot. The train rolled up while the
fight was in progress, and without inquiring the cause or asking any
questions whatever, fully a hundred white men jumped off the train and
riddled Smith with bullets. That was the end of it. Nobody was indicted or
even arrested for killing an insolent "nigger" that did not keep his
place. That is the way the affair was regarded in Ruston. Of course, the
people of Rayville very much regretted it, but they could not do anything,
and could not afford to defend the rights of a negro against white men
under such circumstances, and the matter dropped.

I have preferred not to mention the numerous ways and many instances in
which the rights of negroes are denied in public places, and on the common
carriers in the South, under circumstances very humiliating and degrading.
Nor have I cared to refer to the barbarous and inhuman prison systems of
the South, that are worse than anything the imagination can conceive in a
civilized and Christian land, as shown by reports of legislative
committees.

If the negro can secure a fair and impartial trial in the courts, and can
be secure in his life and liberty and property, so as not to be deprived
of them except by due process of law, and can have a voice in the making
and administration of the laws, he shall have gone a great way in the
South. It is to be hoped that public opinion can be awakened to this
extent, and that it may assist him to attain that end.

_The Characteristics of the Negro People_

By H.T. KEALING

A frank statement of the virtues and failings of the race, indicating
very clearly the evils which must be overcome, and the good which must
be developed, if success is really to attend the effort to uplift them.

[Illustration: H.T. KEALING.]

The characteristics of the Negro are of two kinds--the inborn and the
inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen,
but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the
blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so,
of time and habitat. Inbred qualities are acquired, and are the result of
experience. They may be overcome by a reversal of the process which
created them. The fundamental, or inborn, characteristics of the Negro may
be found in the African, as well as the American, Negro; but the inbred
characteristics of the latter belong to the American life alone.

There is but one human nature, made up of constituent elements the same in
all men, and racial or national differences arise from the predominance
of one or another element in this or that race. It is a question of
proportion. The Negro is not a Caucasian, not a Chinese, not an Indian;
though no psychological quality in the one is absent from the other. The
same moral sense, called conscience; the same love of harmony in color or
in sound; the same pleasure in acquiring knowledge; the same love of truth
in word, or of fitness in relation; the same love of respect and
approbation; the same vengeful or benevolent feelings; the same appetites,
belong to all, but in varying proportions. They form the indicia to a
people's mission, and are our best guides to God's purpose in creating us.
They constitute the material to be worked on in educating a race, and
suggest in every case where the stress of civilization or education should
be applied in order to follow the lines of least resistance.

But there are also certain manifestations, the result of training or
neglect, which are not inborn. As they are inculcable, so they are
eradicable; and it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term
characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent
traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore,
we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with
sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to
possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form a
fair catalogue:

_He is intensely religious._ True religion is based upon a belief in the
supernatural, upon faith and feeling. A people deeply superstitious are
apt to be deeply religious, for both rest upon a belief in a spiritual
world. Superstition differs from religion in being the untrained and
unenlightened gropings of the human soul after the mysteries of the higher
life; while the latter, more or less enlightened, "feels after God, if
haply," it may find Him. The Negro gives abundant evidence of both phases.
The absolute inability of the master, in the days of slavery, while
successfully vetoing all other kinds of convocation, to stop the Negro's
church meetings, as well as the almost phenomenal influence and growth of
his churches since; and his constant referring of every event, adverse or
favorable, to the personal ministrations of the Creator, are things unique
and persistent. And the master class reposed more faith in their slaves'
religion ofttimes than they did in their own. Doubtless much of the
reverential feeling that pervades the American home to-day, above that of
all other nations, is the result of the Negro mammy's devotion and loyalty
to God.

_He is imaginative._ This is not evinced so much in creative directions as
in poetical, musical, combinatory, inventional and what, if coupled with
learning, we call literary imagination. Negro eloquence is proverbial. The
crudest sermon of the most unlettered slave abounded in tropes and glowing
tongue pictures of apochalyptic visions all his own; and, indeed, the
poetic quality of his mind is seen in all his natural efforts when the
self-consciousness of education does not stand guard. The staid religious
muse of Phillis Wheatley and the rollicking, somewhat jibing, verse of
Dunbar show it equally, unpremeditated and spontaneous.

I have heard by the hour some ordinary old uneducated Negro tell those
inimitable animal stories, brought to literary existence in "Uncle Remus,"
with such quaint humor, delicious conceit and masterly delineation of
plot, character and incident that nothing but the conventional rating of
Aesop's Fables could put them in the same class. Then, there are more
Negro inventors than the world supposes. This faculty is impossible
without a well-ordered imagination held in leash by a good memory and
large perception.

_He is affectionate and without vindictiveness._ He does not nurse even
great wrongs. Mercurial as he is, often furiously angry and frequently in
murderous mood, he comes nearer not letting the sun go down upon his anger
than any other man I know. Like Brutus, he may be compared to the flint
which,

"Much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again."

His affection is not less towards the Caucasian than to his own race. It
is not saying too much to remark that the soul of the Negro yearns for the
white man's good will and respect; and the old ties of love that subsisted
in so many instances in the days of slavery still survive where the
ex-slave still lives. The touching case of a Negro Bishop who returned to
the State in which he had been a slave, and rode twenty miles to see and
alleviate the financial distress of his former master is an exception to
numerous other similar cases only in the prominence of the Negro
concerned. I know of another case of a man whose tongue seems dipped in
hyssop when he begins to tell of the wrongs of his race, and who will not
allow anyone to say in his presence that any good came out of slavery,
even incidentally; yet he supports the widowed and aged wife of his
former master. And, surely, if these two instances are not sufficient to
establish the general proposition, none will gainsay the patience,
vigilance, loyalty and helpfulness of the Negro slave during the Civil
War, and of his good old wife who nursed white children at her breast at a
time when all ties save those of affection were ruptured, and when no
protection but devoted hearts watched over the "great house," whose head
and master was at the front, fighting to perpetuate slavery. Was it
stupidity on the Negro's part? Not at all. He was well informed as to the
occurrences of the times. A freemasonry kept him posted as well as the
whites were themselves on the course of the war and the issue of each
battle. Was it fear that kept him at the old home? Not that, either. Many
thousands _did_ cross the line to freedom; many other thousands (200,000)
fought in the ranks for freedom, but none of them--those who went and
those who stayed--those who fought and those who worked,--betrayed a
trust, outraged a female, or rebelled against a duty. It was love, the
natural wellings of affectionate natures.

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