Finally, the Buffalo Express says emphatically:
“The memorial recites the long and familiar list of Negro wrongs—the political disfranchisement, the denial of education in some States, the discriminations in public places, the forcing into menial occupations, the hostility of trades unions, the attempts to confine Negroes to certain quarters of towns, the insults to Negro women, etc. It need not be gone over here. Readers of the Express are familiar with the shameful record. The fact that this is an appeal to the people of Europe against the people of the United States will arouse fresh antagonism to the Negro in some quarters, but, on the whole, it will do good. For shame’s sake, if not for that of justice, it may arouse us to do our duty. The opinion of the civilized world must have some effect on the most calloused American official conscience. And it is our governing class, our men and women of light and leading, that need to be aroused on this question.”
The Baltimore attempt to segregate colored people has called forth widespread comment. A letter in the New York Sun thus portrays conditions:
“The Negro invasion in Baltimore is principally in a north and northwesterly direction, comprising the most beautiful, most exclusive and most valuable residential sections. About the year 1885 steadily but insidiously the Negro began to invade white residential sections. In Pennsylvania Avenue, beginning at Franklin Street in the downtown district and running north about twenty-six blocks to the intersection of North Avenue and Druid Hill Avenue, beginning at Paca Street in the downtown district and running north about twenty blocks to the intersection of North Avenue, as well as all blocks lying between Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues and containing substantially built three-story houses, are now in the exclusive possession of the Negroes. They are now beginning to invade McCulloh Street, Madison Avenue, Eutaw Place and Linden Avenue, which run parallel with Pennsylvania and Druid Hill Avenues.”
Some papers see in this indubitable evidence of the rise of colored people.
As the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel puts it:
“This is one of the most hopeful situations regarding the Negro which has been painted. It is enough to send shivers down the backs of the people who believe that ‘Cursed by Canaan’ is to hold good for all time. But it is an immense reassurance to those who are looking for the uplift of the black race. It seems, from this picture, that they must be getting rich rapidly. They are obtaining possession of fine residential property. They want to live in fine houses, the same as white folks with money. Doubtless, too, the same as white folks, they want to have the good things which money will buy.
“Judged by any test other than color, they seem to be very desirable citizens.”
Other papers, like the Bridgeport Telegram, scent danger:
“If they are deprived of the right to build homes where they please which is accorded to the most degraded white man who lands upon these shores provided people will sell land to him, and robbed of the right to become skilled workmen, their situation will be a much graver one than that from which the Civil War delivered them.”
Dr. Henry Moskowitz, in the New York Evening Post, points to the Russian analogy and the Boston Globe also insists on the failure of the Ghetto idea:
“Segregation has never been a very successful solution of the race problem, as may be seen in the experience of European cities with ghettos and in Russia’s attempt to keep Jews confined within certain pales. The Baltimore city council, however, by a piece of special pleading in its report, tries to justify the ordinance by saying that its ‘underlying purpose is the maintenance of peace and good order and the avoidance of friction and irritation between the two races.’ The ordinance ‘aims to prevent the whites from becoming a disturbing element to the blacks and likewise to prevent the Negroes from becoming a disturbing element to the whites.’ Ahem!”
The New York Journal calls the experiment dangerous:
“It is true that the establishment of homes of colored people in neighborhoods hitherto unfrequented by them causes antagonism and may produce trouble and disturb real estate values. But it is also true that it is dangerous, unjust and unworthy of this century to revive the obsolete ghetto system, denying to certain human beings the right to live where they please and where they can.
“We suppose that a white man who owns a house has a legal right to sell it to a Negro if he pleases. And we suppose that the highest court in the country will sustain the right of a colored man to live in his own home, subject to the tax laws and regulations of his neighborhood.
“Probably the plan to compel a hundred thousand colored people in Baltimore to live all together in one neighborhood could not legally be enforced.”
On the legal side of the matter Charles J. Bonaparte, formerly United States Attorney-General, says to a Baltimore Sun reporter:
“I have always understood, however, that it was a lawful use of private property to sell or rent one’s house for a proper purpose to an orderly person of whatever race or color, without regard to the wishes or the complexion of those who live next door, and, if this be true, then the well-known Radecke case, in Forty-ninth Maryland, to say nothing of other authorities, would seem to show clearly that if our always wise Mayor and City Council should undertake to interfere in such a matter, they could, and would, be politely advised to mind their own business.”
The Brooklyn Eagle, the Nyack (N. Y.) Star and the Dover (N. H.) Democrat call attention to the Lee Sing case (43 Federal Reports, 359), which voided an ordinance restricting the residence of a Chinaman.
The New York Sun says on the “property values” issue:
“The Baltimore ordinance cannot be supported on the ground that it is intended to protect one race against the indignities invariably experienced whenever it is compelled to force its presence upon another race in the pursuit of education, business and pleasure or in the exercise of political rights. Its frank purpose is to protect the property interests of the stronger race. In the opinion of the City Council of Baltimore real estate values in certain avenues have depreciated 30 to 50 per cent. owing to the presence of Negro residents, but if the sapient council were to study the recent census showing of Baltimore it would no doubt find that other causes have been at work in bringing about the depreciation. In any event, the proposed ordinance involves a principle which the courts are not likely to accept.”
The Manchester (N. H.) Union says:
“It would seem as if the Negroes themselves would tire of making purchases which immediately sink in value from a third to one-half, and it is somewhat peculiar that in Philadelphia and Washington there has been no tendency to anything of the kind, either as to encroachment upon the territory of the whites or a depreciation of the property occupied by the Negroes.”
The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph sees a chance for the Negro to make money through such segregation and to be proud of their Ghettos, but the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a colored paper, says:
“It is almost certain that wherever there is a Negro quarter there will be little or no city improvement. Notwithstanding Negroes pay the same rate of taxes, the streets on which they live are seldom paved, poorly lighted, and any public improvements that might be made are always last in coming to them. Thousands of Negroes make an effort not to buy within the white district but so near that district that they may be able to get some of the city improvements. There is also a measure of protection as well as a measure of convenience when Negroes live on the better streets.
“The Negro has a just protest against the sort of treatment he is forced to endure notwithstanding he is a taxpayer. It may be alleged that he is not a heavy taxpayer, and this we grant, but there are sections of cities sparsely settled which are improved at the behest of speculators while Negro residents are compelled to live in discomfiture and inconvenience because of the lack of improvement.”
Dr. Hughes of Baltimore, speaking for colored citizens, said:
“It means the stopping of self-respecting, law-abiding colored citizens in their efforts to secure homes and plant themselves in communities as taxpayers.
“Rental values will advance since there will be no outlet for an already congested population: they must stay where they are, and in order to do so pay any price which an unscrupulous money grabber may demand. With the high cost of foodstuffs and the low scale of wages for unskilled labor the passage of the West ordinance points to the creation of a pauper element in our city rather than a thrifty, law-abiding colored citizenship, and the pauper element of any city or community makes the more prosperous pay in one way or another for their support.
“In your ordinance you involve the bread of my people. Recently I stood in Pierce Street and overheard this conversation: A colored woman was asked, ‘Did you get the place?’ ‘Yes, I got it and started to work, when the lady asked me where I lived, and when I told her she said she could not have any one in her house who came from that street. She said there was too much disease there.’ It remained for that woman to move. With the West ordinance in force, where could she go? We have already a crowded colored population. For her to move out meant for some one else to move in. It affects not only the employed, but the employer, and the only way out is for the man who hires a servant to go to the additional expense of renting or buying a house for his servants in more healthy quarters, which will aggravate the already troublesome help problem.”
The Philadelphia Ledger adds helplessly:
“How the Negro is going to be helped to rise under these circumstances is one of the inscrutable problems of our time and generation. His own unaided efforts are blocked everywhere by caste restrictions and discriminations.”
The New York Globe says:
“The Negro has been told to smile and look pleasant as his political rights have been taken from him. The argument has been that if he did not make a fuss over voting the race prejudice of his white fellow citizen would abate—that he would be given a freer chance to work, to acquire property, to become of material weight in the community. But, North as well as South, doors of industry are being shut against the Negro. The economic tragedy of the educated Negro who aspires to good things is pitiful. He finds either that personal effort and merit do not count, or that they do not count much. In many places it is against the Negro who is not willing to stay down in the mire that antipathy blazes the most brightly. He is the ‘biggotty nigger’.”
Finally the Boston Herald pauses to remark:
“We purchased more than we knew with that first cargo of slaves sold by the Dutch captain to the Virginia planters now almost three hundred years ago.”
It seems pretty certain that Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, was to some extent misquoted on the Negro problem. The official version given by Mr. Charles Stetzle is as follows:
“The race problem came up in the convention, but not altogether by the choice of the delegates. President Gompers had given an address on the depressed races, remarking that it could not be expected that the Negro, for instance, could have as high an ideal for himself as the Caucasian. A morning newspaper came out next morning and in big headlines said that Gompers had ‘read the Negro out of the trades union,’ when, as a matter of fact, Gompers meant exactly the opposite. He took occasion to correct the erroneous impression which had been made upon the public. At any rate, he spoke of it at least three different times in public addresses.”
The incident has caused much comment, most of it based on the supposition that union labor is officially drawing the color line. The Chicago Post says:
“The American Federation of Labor has always declared that ‘the working people must unite and organize, irrespective of creed, color, sex, nationality or politics.’ For many years the Federation denied membership to all unions which drew the color line—a stand which kept out, for example, the International Association of Machinists until it eliminated the word ‘white’ from its constitution. Even when the A. F. of L. relented sufficiently to admit several of the railroad brotherhoods which were closed to Negroes, Mr. Gompers was always very robust in his assertion that organized labor welcomed the Negro worker. When the Industrial Commission of 1900 quizzed Mr. Gompers on the race issue, it drew from him some very touching stories of Negro loyalty to the trade union movement. He talked pretty much like an abolitionist up to a few years ago.”
The Chicago Daily News says:
“Mr. Gompers was represented in the original report of his address to have dealt with Negroes and Asiatics as if the problems presented by the two were similar. Everybody should know that they are not.
“The Negroes are native-born American citizens. They know no other land. It is their sincere desire, according to the measure of their abilities, to share in the life of the American people. They are making progress in education and industry. Under these conditions, to deny to Negroes the right to join labor unions when they meet the standards required of white applicants for membership would be clearly un-American.”
The comments of two other papers are characteristic. The Charleston (S. C.) News and Courier is complacent:
“There is no use to palaver about and invent reasons. Everybody who knows anything at all knows that racial antipathy is a real thing, even though intangible. Why beat about the bush and deny it? Aside from the ignorance of the Negro, his many weaknesses, his fatal physiological structure, his extraction prevents his recognition as a social equal, be he in South Africa, America or anywhere else. On that ground his elimination from white unions is a necessity. Concomitant reasons need not be given. They follow in natural sequence.”
The New York Evening Post says, however:
“But even should a reactionary policy of rigid exclusion prevail, it cannot keep the Negro down industrially; it will doubtless handicap him in many sections, but the only people who can keep the Negroes in an inferior economic and social position are the Negroes themselves. A race that has risen so rapidly against such wonderful odds is to be held back by no organization of workingmen, however powerful.”
The case of the child with one-sixteenth Negro blood whom the District of Columbia courts call a “Negro” has brought some comment. The Detroit News says:
“Eventually the courts must draw the line. The dark races when intimately associated with the white in overpowering numbers gradually bleach out. At the fourth remove the descendants are often blond in type. As the court seems to take no account of the actual color of the individual in applying the classification ‘colored,’ it must be assumed that definition must depend upon simple mathematics.”
The Taunton Gazette adds:
“By the same reasoning a man with one-sixteenth Chinese blood is a Chinaman and one-sixteenth of the blood of any race relegates him to that race. As a matter of fact, that question of one-sixteenth is not likely to arise in any case save where it is desired to make out a person a Negro, and that is where the nub of the whole matter rests.
“It is probable that there are thousands of persons in this country with one-sixteenth Negro blood in them who do not know it themselves nor does any one else, for family records are not always carefully kept along these lines.”
The Boston Transcript has this letter from Dr. Horace Bumstead:
“Dr. Doremus Scudder of Hawaii told the American Missionary Association in Tremont Temple that the American Negro of the future will thank his Southern white brother for depriving him of the ballot until he should have proved his fitness for it—and that he would thank him notwithstanding the manner in which his ballot had been taken away. Let us see just what this means.
“It means that the Negro will hereafter be grateful for a disfranchisement practically based on color rather than unfitness—which its promoters have boldly avowed was intended to disfranchise every Negro if possible and not one white man if it could be avoided, and which they accomplished through ‘grandfather’ and ‘understanding’ clauses artfully devised to deprive the Negro of his constitutional guarantees for a square deal as regards suffrage qualifications.
“It means that the Negro will hereafter be grateful for a disfranchisement which is seriously restricting his economic freedom and opportunity, the protection of his life and property, his right to travel in equal comfort for an equal fare, the education of his children, and the guarding of the virtue of his wife and daughters.
“This conclusion Dr. Scudder naively states he has arrived at after seven years’ residence, not in the South, but in Hawaii, and because the liquor dealers there have bought up the votes of the natives. In other words, when white men have so little control over their baser element that they cannot keep them from offering bribes, the proper course, in Dr. Scudder’s opinion, seems to be to take the ballot from all colored men because some of them have accepted bribes, rather than to disfranchise the few white men who have offered them.
“When American Negroes become grateful for a disfranchisement accomplished in such ways, and on such grounds, and with such detriment to their own welfare, they will have proved themselves unworthy of American citizenship. And that time will never come. They are willing to play the political game with their white brothers on equal terms, but not with loaded dice and marked cards.”
The Boston Herald reports General Burt’s views on Negro soldiers as follows:
“That in the five qualifications that go to make up a good soldier, drilling, marksmanship, marching, discipline and fighting, the Negro soldiers of the United States army are paramount, was the contention of Brigadier-General Andrew S. Burt, retired, ex-commander of the Brownsville Black Battalion, in his address last night on ‘The Negro Soldier in Ancient and Modern Warfare,’ at a meeting of colored people in St. Paul’s Baptist Church, under the auspices of the Boston Literary Association.
“He cited two instances in the Spanish-American War when the colored troops showed their true value as soldiers. The first instance being the rescue of the Rough Riders by the Tenth Colored Cavalry, the second the heroism of the Twenty-fourth Colored Infantry in volunteering as nurses during the yellow fever epidemic.
“In speaking of army discipline he referred the audience to his sworn testimony before the Senate committee on the Brownsville ‘shoot-up,’ and challenged the comparison of any records of any class of good citizens to equal that of the Twenty-fifth colored regiment.
“Speaking of the Negro soldier generally, he said: ‘I can find nowhere in the histories of the Revolutionary, the Indian, the Spanish-American or the war in the Philippines, a single instance where a Negro regiment showed the white feather or refused to charge the enemy when called to do so.’”
The A. P. O., of Cape Town, South Africa, a colored periodical, brings word of the appointment of Mr. Hull, a colored man, to the South African cabinet. It will be remembered that the South African Constitution requires cabinet members to be “persons of European descent.” Apparently men of mixed descent are not excluded. A. P. O. says:
“The decision of General Botha not to relinquish the premiership, and of Mr. Hull to accept a seat, and so retain the post of Treasurer-General, keep the Botha Ministry practically intact. We predicted that the Prime Minister would get over his defeat and cling to his office with its £4,000 a year.
“It is now safe to say that we are already on the road toward a Native Parliament, which, according to Dr. Broon, is only one hundred years off; for not only have many of the present M.L.A.’s an infusion of native blood in their veins, as is evidenced by their features, but the very Cabinet contains colored men. After all, we are moving pretty fast toward the realization of a native Government.”
The prophecy of Professor Broon, to which A. P. O. refers, is thus described in the Tsalo Ea Becoana:
“Prof. R. Broon, lecturing recently in Johannesburg on ‘South Africa 100 Years Hence,’ made some curious and interesting statements. He said he had gone into the question and was thoroughly convinced that the black man, if the present policy was continued, was going to rule South Africa in 100 years. He did not include the colored people in his meaning, but he referred to the Kafir or Bantu race. There were some 1,200,000 white people in South Africa, while there were 7,200,000 Kafirs. One of the principal factors that was welding the natives together was religion. More and more black labor was being employed in the Cape Colony, and in a short time the native would have a large number of trades in his hands. Intermarriage between natives and whites was taking place in Cape Colony. The segregation policy seemed to be the most practical way of saving South Africa for the whites.”