The Negro Part 14

In these same years the Negro has relearned the lost art of organization.

Slavery was the almost absolute denial of initiative and responsibility.

To-day Negroes have nearly 40,000 churches, with edifices worth at least $75,000,000 and controlling nearly 4,000,000 members. They raise themselves $7,500,000 a year for these churches.

There are 200 private schools and colleges managed and almost entirely supported by Negroes, and these and other public and private Negro schools have received in 40 years $45,000,000 of Negro money in taxes and donations. Five millions a year are raised by Negro secret and beneficial societies which hold at least $6,000,000 in real estate. Negroes support wholly or in part over 100 old folks' homes and orphanages, 30 hospitals, and 500 cemeteries. Their organized commercial life is extending rapidly and includes over 22,000 small retail businesses and 40 banks.

Above and beyond this material growth has gone the spiritual uplift of a great human race. From contempt and amus.e.m.e.nt they have pa.s.sed to the pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while within their own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open protest and more and more manly self-a.s.sertion. Where nine-tenths of them could not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300 papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compelling attention. Already in poetry, literature, music, and painting the work of Americans of Negro descent has gained notable recognition. Instead of being led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes are gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals.

Self-realization is thus coming slowly but surely to another of the world's great races, and they are to-day girding themselves to fight in the van of progress, not simply for their own rights as men, but for the ideals of the greater world in which they live: the emanc.i.p.ation of women, universal peace, democratic government, the socialization of wealth, and human brotherhood.

FOOTNOTES:

[90]

The figures given by the census are as follows: 1850, mulattoes formed 11.2 per cent of the total Negro population.

1860, mulattoes formed 13.2 per cent of the total Negro population.

1870, mulattoes formed 12 per cent of the total Negro population.

1890, mulattoes formed 15.2 per cent of the total Negro population.

1910, mulattoes formed 20.9 per cent of the total Negro population.

Or in actual numbers: 1850, 405,751 mulattoes.

1860, 588,352 mulattoes.

1870, 585,601 mulattoes.

1890, 1,132,060 mulattoes.

1910, 2,050,686 mulattoes.

[91] Cf. "The Spanish Jurist Solorzaris," quoted in Helps: _Spanish Conquest_, IV, 381.

[92] Hurd: _Law of Freedom and Bondage_.

[93] "Obi (Obeah, Obiah, or Obia) is the adjective; Obe or Obi, the noun.

It is of African origin, probably connected with Egyptian Ob, Aub, or Obron, meaning 'serpent.' Moses forbids Israelites ever to consult the demon Ob, i.e., 'Charmer, Wizard.' The Witch of Endor is called Oub or Ob.

Oubaois is the name of the Baselisk or Royal Serpent, emblem of the Sun, and, according to Horus Appollo, 'the Ancient Deity of Africa.'"--Edwards: _West Indies_, ed. 1819, II. 106-119. Cf. Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, pp. 65-66; _also Atlanta University Publications_, No. 8, pp. 5-6.

[94] _Boston Transcript_, March 24, 1906.

[95] Ba.s.sett: _North Carolina_, pp. 73-76.

[96] Cf. Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_.

[97] Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_, p. 108.

[98] _American Historical Review_, Vol. XV.

[99] Report to President Johnson.

[100] _Reconstruction and the Const.i.tution._

[101] Brewster: _Sketches_, etc.

[102] McPherson: _Reconstruction_, p. 52.

[103] Report to the President, 1865.

[104] _American Historical Review_, Vol. XV, No. 4.

[105] _Occasional Papers_, American Negro Academy, No. 6.

[106] _Occasional Papers_, American Negro Academy, No. 6.

[107] _Jackson (Miss.) Clarion_, April 24, 1873.

[108] Allen: _Governor Chamberlain's Administration_, p. 82.

[109] Reconstruction Const.i.tutions, practically unaltered, were kept in Florida, 1868-85, seventeen years; Virginia, 1870-1902, thirty-two years; South Carolina, 1868-95, twenty-seven years; Mississippi, 1868-90, twenty-two years.

XII THE NEGRO PROBLEMS

It is impossible to separate the population of the world accurately by race, since that is no scientific criterion by which to divide races. If we divide the world, however, roughly into African Negroes and Negroids, European whites, and Asiatic and American brown and yellow peoples, we have approximately 150,000,000 Negroes, 500,000,000 whites, and 900,000,000 yellow and brown peoples. Of the 150,000,000 Negroes, 121,000,000 live in Africa, 27,000,000[110] in the new world, and 2,000,000 in Asia.

What is to be the future relation of the Negro race to the rest of the world? The visitor from Altruria might see here no peculiar problem. He would expect the Negro race to develop along the lines of other human races. In Africa his economic and political development would restore and eventually outrun the ancient glories of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Yoruba; overseas the West Indies would become a new and n.o.bler Africa, built in the very pathway of the new highway of commerce between East and West--the real sea route to India; while in the United States a large part of its citizens.h.i.+p (showing for perhaps centuries their dark descent, but nevertheless equal sharers of and contributors to the civilization of the West) would be the descendants of the wretched victims of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century slave trade.

This natural a.s.sumption of a stranger finds, however, lodging in the minds of few present-day thinkers. On the contrary, such an outcome is usually dismissed summarily. Most persons have accepted that tacit but clear modern philosophy which a.s.signs to the white race alone the hegemony of the world and a.s.sumes that other races, and particularly the Negro race, will either be content to serve the interests of the whites or die out before their all-conquering march. This philosophy is the child of the African slave trade and of the expansion of Europe during the nineteenth century.

The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were s.h.i.+pped as long as the traffic paid. When the Americas had enough black laborers for their immediate demand, the moral action of the eighteenth century had a chance to make its faint voice heard.

The moral repugnance was powerfully reenforced by the revolt of the slaves in the West Indies and South America, and by the fact that North America early began to regard itself as the seat of advanced ideas in politics, religion, and humanity.

Finally European capital began to find better investments than slave s.h.i.+pping and flew to them. These better investments were the fruit of the new industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, with its factory system; they were also in part the result of the cheapened price of gold and silver, brought about by slavery and the slave trade to the new world.

Commodities other than gold, and commodities capable of manufacture and exploitation in Europe out of materials furnishable by America, became enhanced in value; the bottom fell out of the commercial slave trade and its suppression became possible.

The middle of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the rise of the modern working cla.s.s. By means of political power the laborers slowly but surely began to demand a larger share in the profiting industry. In the United States their demand bade fair to be halted by the compet.i.tion of slave labor. The labor vote, therefore, first confined slavery to limits in which it could not live, and when the slave power sought to exceed these territorial limits, it was suddenly and unintentionally abolished.

As the emanc.i.p.ation of millions of dark workers took place in the West Indies, North and South America, and parts of Africa at this time, it was natural to a.s.sume that the uplift of this working cla.s.s lay along the same paths with that of European and American whites. This was the _first_ suggested solution of the Negro problem. Consequently these Negroes received partial enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, the beginnings of education, and some of the elementary rights of wage earners and property holders, while the independence of Liberia and Hayti was recognized. However, long before they were strong enough to a.s.sert the rights thus granted or to gather intelligence enough for proper group leaders.h.i.+p, the new colonialism of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries began to dawn. The new colonial theory transferred the reign of commercial privilege and extraordinary profit from the exploitation of the European working cla.s.s to the exploitation of backward races under the political domination of Europe. For the purpose of carrying out this idea the European and white American working cla.s.s was practically invited to share in this new exploitation, and particularly were flattered by popular appeals to their inherent superiority to "Dagoes," "c.h.i.n.ks," "j.a.ps," and "n.i.g.g.e.rs."

This tendency was strengthened by the fact that the new colonial expansion centered in Africa. Thus in 1875 something less than one-tenth of Africa was under nominal European control, but the Franco-Prussian War and the exploration of the Congo led to new and fateful things. Germany desired economic expansion and, being shut out from America by the Monroe Doctrine, turned to Africa. France, humiliated in war, dreamed of an African empire from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Italy became ambitious for Tripoli and Abyssinia. Great Britain began to take new interest in her African realm, but found herself largely checkmated by the jealousy of all Europe. Portugal sought to make good her ancient claim to the larger part of the whole southern peninsula. It was Leopold of Belgium who started to make the exploration and civilization of Africa an international movement.

This project failed, and the Congo Free State became in time simply a Belgian colony. While the project was under discussion, the international scramble for Africa began. As a result the Berlin Conference and subsequent wars and treaties gave Great Britain control of 2,101,411 square miles of African territory, in addition to Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan with 1,600,000 square miles. This includes South Africa, Bechua.n.a.land and Rhodesia, East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar, Nigeria, and British West Africa. The French hold 4,106,950 square miles, including nearly all North Africa (except Tripoli) west of the Niger valley and Libyan Desert, and touching the Atlantic at four points. To this is added the Island of Madagascar. The Germans have 910,150 square miles, princ.i.p.ally in Southeast and South-west Africa and the Kamerun. The Portuguese retain 787,500 square miles in Southeast and Southwest Africa.

The Belgians have 900,000 square miles, while Liberia (43,000 square miles) and Abyssinia (350,000 square miles) are independent. The Italians have about 600,000 square miles and the Spanish less than 100,000 square miles.

This part.i.tion of Africa brought revision of the ideas of Negro uplift.

Why was it necessary, the European investors argued, to push a continent of black workers along the paths of social uplift by education, trades-unionism, property holding, and the electoral franchise when the workers desired no change, and the rate of European profit would suffer?

There quickly arose then the _second_ suggestion for settling the Negro problem. It called for the virtual enslavement of natives in certain industries, as rubber and ivory collecting in the Belgian Congo, cocoa raising in Portuguese Angola, and diamond mining in South Africa. This new slavery or "forced" labor was stoutly defended as a necessary foundation for implanting modern industry in a barbarous land; but its likeness to slavery was too clear and it has been modified, but not wholly abolished.

The _third_ attempted solution of the Negro sought the result of the _second_ by less direct methods. Negroes in Africa, the West Indies, and America were to be forced to work by land monopoly, taxation, and little or no education. In this way a docile industrial cla.s.s working for low wages, and not intelligent enough to unite in labor unions, was to be developed. The peonage systems in parts of the United States and the labor systems of many of the African colonies of Great Britain and Germany ill.u.s.trate this phase of solution.[111] It is also ill.u.s.trated in many of the West Indian islands where we have a predominant Negro population, and this population freed from slavery and partially enfranchised. Land and capital, however, have for the most part been so managed and monopolized that the black peasantry have been reduced to straits to earn a living in one of the richest parts of the world. The problem is now going to be intensified when the world's commerce begins to sweep through the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

All these solutions and methods, however, run directly counter to modern philanthropy, and have to be carried on with a certain concealment and half-hypocrisy which is not only distasteful in itself, but always liable to be discovered and exposed by some liberal or religious movement of the ma.s.ses of men and suddenly overthrown. These solutions are, therefore, gradually merging into a _fourth_ solution, which is to-day very popular.