In spite of these interstate movements, the
Negro still continued as a perplexing problem, for the
country was unprepared to grant the race political and civil
rights. Nominal equality was forced on the South at the
point of the sword and the North reluctantly removed most of
its barriers against the blacks. Some, still thinking,
however, that the two races could not live together as
equals, advocated ceding the blacks the region on the Gulf
of Mexico.1 This
was branded as chimerical on the ground that, deprived of
the guidance of the whites, these States would soon sink to
African level and the end of the experiment would be a
reconquest and a military regime fatal to the true
development of American institutions.2
Another plan proposed was the revival of the old
colonization idea of sending Negroes to Africa, but this
exhibited still less wisdom than the first in that it was
based on the hypothesis of deporting a nation, an expense
which no government would be willing to incur. There were
then no physical means of transporting six or seven millions
of people, moreover, as there would be a new born for every
one the agents of colonization could deport.3
With the deportation scheme still kept before the people by
the American Colonization Society, the idea of emigration to
Africa did not easily die. Some Negroes continued to
emigrate to Liberia from year to year. This policy was also
favored by radicals like Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who,
after movements like the Ku Klux Klan had done their work of
intimidating Negroes into submission to the domination of
the whites, concluded that most of the race believed that
there was no future for the blacks in the United States and
that they were willing to emigrate. These radicals advocated
the deportation of the blacks to prevent the recurrence of
"Negro domination." This plan was acceptable to the whites
in general also, for, unlike the consensus of opinion of
today, it was then thought that the South could get along
without the Negro.4
Even newspapers like the "Charleston News and Courier",
which denounced the persecution of the Negroes, urged them
to emigrate to Africa as they could not be permitted to rule
over the white people. The "Minneapolis Times" wished the
scheme success and Godspeed and believed that the sooner it
was carried out the better it would be for the Negroes.
Most of the influential newspapers of the country, however,
urged the contrary. Citing the progress of the Negroes since
emancipation to show that the blacks were doing their full
share toward developing the wealth of the South, the
"Indianapolis Journal" characterized as barbarism the
suggestion that the government should furnish them
transportation to Africa. "The ancestors of most of the
Negroes now in this country," said the editor, "have
doubtless been here as long as those of Senator Morgan, and
their descendants are as thoroughly acclimated and have as
good a right here as the Senator himself."5
This was the opinion of all useful Negroes except Bishop H.M.
Turner, who endorsed Morgan's plan by advocating the
emigration of one fourth of the blacks to Africa. The editor
of the "Chicago Record-Herald" entreated Turner to temper
his enthusiasm with discretion before he involved in
unspeakable disaster any more of his trustful compatriots.
Speaking more plainly to the point, the editor of the
"Philadelphia North American" said that the true interest of
the South was to accommodate itself to changed conditions
and that the duty of the freedmen lies in making themselves
worth more in the development of the South than they were as
chattels. Although recognizing the disabilities and
hardships of the South both to the whites and the blacks, he
could not believe that the elimination of the Negroes would,
if practicable, give relief.6
The "Boston Herald" inquired whether it was worth while to
send away a laboring population in the absence of whites to
take its place and referred to the misfortunes of Spain
which undertook to carry out such a scheme. Speaking the
real truth, "The Milwaukee Journal" said that no one needed
to expect any appreciable decrease in the black population
through any possible emigration, no matter how successful it
might be. "The Negro," said the editor, "is here to stay and
our institutions must be adapted to comprehend him and
develop his possibilities." "The Colored American", then the
leading Negro organ of thought in the United States,
believed that the Negroes should be thankful to Senator
Morgan for his attitude on emigration, because he might
succeed in deporting to Africa those Negroes who affect to
believe that this is not their home and the more quickly we
get rid of such foolhardy people the better it will be for
the stalwart of the race.7
A number of Negroes, however, under the inspiration of
leaders8 like
Bishop H.M. Turner, did not feel that the race had a fair
chance in the United States. A few of them emigrated to
Wapimo, Mexico; but, becoming dissatisfied with the
situation there, they returned to their homes in Georgia and
Alabama in 1895. The coming of the Negroes into Mexico
caused suspicion and excitement. A newspaper, "El Tiempo",
which had been denouncing lynching in the United States,
changed front when these Negroes arrived in that country.
Going in quest of new opportunities and desiring to
reenforce the civilization of Liberia, 197 other Negroes
sailed from Savannah, Georgia, for Liberia, March 19, 1895.
Commending this step, the "Macon Telegraph" referred to
their action as a rebellion against the social laws which
govern all people of this country. This organ further said
that it was the outcome of a feeling which has grown
stronger and stronger year by year among the Negroes of the
Southern States and which will continue to grow with the
increase of education and intelligence among them. The
editor conceded that they had an opportunity to better their
material condition and acquire wealth here but contended
that they had no chance to rise out of the peasant class.
The "Memphis Commercial Appeal" urged the building of a
large Negro nation in Africa as practicable and desirable,
for it was "more and more apparent that the Negro in this
country must remain an alien and a disturber," because there
was "not and can never be a future for him in this country."
The "Florida Times Union" felt that this colonization
scheme, like all others, was a fraud. It referred to the
Negro's being carried to the land of plenty only to find out
that there, as everywhere else in the world, an existence
must be earned by toil and that his own old sunny southern
home is vastly the better place.9
Only a few intelligent Negroes, however, had reached the
position of being contented in the South. The Negroes
eliminated from politics could not easily bring themselves
around to thinking that they should remain there in a state
of recognized inferiority, especially when during the
eighties and nineties there were many evidences that
economic as well as political conditions would become worse.
The exodus treated in the previous chapter was productive of
better treatment for the Negroes and an increase in their
wages in certain parts of the South but the migration,
contrary to the expectations of many, did not become
general. Actual prosperity was impossible even if the whites
had been willing to give the Negro peasants a fair chance.
The South had passed through a disastrous war, the effects
of which so blighted the hopes of its citizens in the
economic world that their land seemed to pass, so to speak,
through a dark age. There was then little to give the man
far down when the one to whom he of necessity looked for
employment was in his turn bled by the merchant or the
banker of the larger cities, to whom he had to go for
extensive credits.10
Southern planters as a class, however, had not much sympathy
for the blacks who had once been their property and the
tendency to cheat them continued, despite the fact that many
farmers in the course of time extricated themselves from the
clutches of the loan sharks. There were a few Negroes who,
thanks to the honesty of certain southern gentlemen,
succeeded in acquiring considerable property in spite of
their handicaps.11
They yielded to the white man's control in politics, when it
seemed that it meant either to abandon that field or die,
and devoted themselves to the accumulation of wealth and the
acquisition of education.
This concession, however, did not satisfy the radical
whites, as they thought that the Negro might some day return
to power. Unfortunately, therefore, after the restoration of
the control of the State governments to the master class,
there swept over these commonwealths a wave of hostile
legislation demanded by the poor white uplanders determined
to debase the blacks to the status of the free Negroes prior
to the Civil War.12
The Negroes have, therefore, been disfranchised in most
reconstructed States, deprived of the privilege of serving
in the State militia, segregated in public conveyances, and
excluded from public places of entertainment. They have,
moreover, been branded by public opinion as pariahs of
society to be used for exploitation but not to be encouraged
to expect that their status can ever be changed so as to
destroy the barriers between the races in their social and
political relations.
This period has been marked also by an effort to establish
in the South a system of peonage not unlike that of Mexico,
a sort of involuntary servitude in that one is considered
legally bound to serve his master until a debt contracted is
paid. Such laws have been enacted in Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. No
such distinction in law has been able to stand the
constitutional test of the United States courts as was
evidenced by the decision of the Supreme Court in 1911
declaring the Alabama law unconstitutional.13
But the planters of the South, still a law unto themselves,
have maintained actual slavery in sequestered; districts
where public opinion against peonage is too weak to support
federal authorities in exterminating it.14
The Negroes themselves dare not protest under penalty of
persecution and the peon concerned usually accepts his lot
like that of a slave. Some years ago it was commonly
reported that in trying to escape, the persons undertaking
it often fail and suffer death at the hands of the planter
or of murderous mobs, giving as their excuse, if any be
required, that the Negro is a desperado or some other sort
of criminal.
Unfortunately this reaction extended also to education.
Appropriations to public schools for Negroes diminished from
year to year and when there appeared practical leaders with,
their sane plan for industrial education the South
ignorantly accepted this scheme as a desirable subterfuge
for seeming to support Negro education and at the same time
directing the development of the blacks in such a way that
they would never become the competitors of the white people.
This was not these educators' idea but the South so
understood it and in effecting the readjustment, practically
left the Negroes out of the pale of the public school
systems. Consequently, there has been added to the Negroes'
misfortunes, in the South, that of being unable to obtain
liberal education at public expense, although they
themselves, as the largest consumers in some parts, pay most
of the taxes appropriated to the support of schools for the
youth of the other race.15
The South, moreover, has adopted the policy of a more
general intimidation of the Negroes to keep them down. The
lynching of the blacks, at first for assaults on white women
and later for almost any offense, has rapidly developed as
an institution. Within the past fifty years
16 there have been
lynched in the South about 4,000 Negroes, many of whom have
been publicly burned in the daytime to attract crowds that
usually enjoy such feats as the tourney of the Middle Ages.
Negroes who have the courage to protest against this
barbarism have too often been subjected to indignities and
in some cases forced to leave their communities or suffer
the fate of those in behalf of whom they speak. These crimes
of white men were at first kept secret but during the last
two generations the culprits have become known as heroes, so
popular has it been to murder Negroes. It has often been
discovered also that the officers of these communities take
part in these crimes and the worst of all is that
politicians like Tillman, Blease and Vardaman glory in
recounting the noble deeds of those who deserve so well of
their countrymen for making the soil red with the Negroes'
blood rather than permit the much feared Africanization of
southern institutions.17
In this harassing situation the Negro has hoped that the
North would interfere in his behalf, but, with the
reactionary Supreme Court of the United States interpreting
this hostile legislation as constitutional in conformity
with the demands of prejudiced public opinion, and with the
leaders of the North inclined to take the view that after
all the factions in the South must be left alone to fight it
out, there has been nothing to be expected from without.
Matters too have been rendered much worse because the
leaders of the very party recently abandoning the freedmen
to their fate, aggravated the critical situation by first
setting the Negroes against their former masters, whom they
were taught to regard as their worst enemies whether they
were or not.
The last humiliation the Negroes have been forced to submit
to is that of segregation. Here the effort has been to
establish a ghetto in cities and to assign certain parts of
the country to Negroes engaged in farming. It always
happens, of course, that the best portion goes to the whites
and the least desirable to the blacks, although the
promoters of the segregation maintain that both races are to
be treated equally. The ultimate aim is to prevent the
Negroes of means from figuring conspicuously in aristocratic
districts where they may be brought into rather close
contact with the whites. Negroes see in segregation a
settled policy to keep them down, no matter what they do to
elevate themselves. The southern white man, eternally
dreading the miscegenation of the races, makes the life,
liberty and happiness of individuals second to measures
considered necessary to prevent this so-called evil that
this enviable civilization, distinctly American, may not be
destroyed. The United States Supreme Court in the decision
of the Louisville segregation case recently declared these
segregation measures unconstitutional.18
These restrictions have made the progress of the Negroes
more of a problem in that directed toward social
distinction, the Negroes have been denied the helpful
contact of the sympathetic whites. The increasing race
prejudice forces the whites to restrict their open dealing
with the blacks to matters of service and business,
maintaining even then the bearing of one in a sphere which
the Negroes must not penetrate. The whites, therefore, never
seeing the blacks as they are, and the blacks never being
able to learn what the whites know, are thrown back on their
own initiative, which their life as slaves could not have
permitted to develop. It makes little difference that the
Negroes have been free a few decades. Such freedom has in
some parts been tantamount to slavery, and so far as contact
with the superior class is concerned, no better than that
condition; for under the old regime certain slaves did learn
much by close association with their masters.19
For these reasons there has been since the exodus to the
West a steady migration of Negroes from the South to points
in the North. But this migration, mainly due to political
changes, has never assumed such large proportions as in the
case of the more significant movements due to economic
causes, for, as the accompanying map shows, most Negroes are
still in the South. When we consider the various classes
migrating, however, it will be apparent that to understand
the exodus of the Negroes to the North, this longer drawn
out and smaller movement must be carefully studied in all
its ramifications. It should be noted that unlike some of
the other migrations it has not been directed to any
particular State. It has been from almost all Southern
States to various parts of the North and especially to the
largest cities.20
What classes then have migrated? In the first place, the
Negro politicians, who, after the restoration of Bourbon
rule in the South, found themselves thrown out of office and
often humiliated and impoverished, had to find some way out
of the difficulty. Some few have been relieved by
sympathetic leaders of the Republican party, who secured for
them federal appointments in Washington. These appointments
when sometimes paying lucrative salaries have been given as
a reward to those Negroes who, although dethroned in the
South, remain in touch with the remnant of the Republican
party there and control the delegates to the national
conventions nominating candidates for President. Many
Negroes of this class have settled in Washington.21
In some cases, the observer witnesses the pitiable scene of
a man once a prominent public functionary in the South now
serving in Washington as a messenger or a clerk.
The well-established blacks, however, have not been so
easily induced to go. The Negroes in business in the South
have usually been loath to leave their people among whom
they can acquire property, whereas, if they go to the North,
they have merely political freedom with no assurance of an
opportunity in the economic world. But not a few of these
have given themselves up to unrelenting toil with a view to
accumulating sufficient wealth to move North and live
thereafter on the income from their investments. Many of
this class now spend some of their time in the North to
educate their children. But they do not like to have these
children who have been under refining influences return to
the South to suffer the humiliation which during the last
generation has been growing more and more aggravating.
Endeavoring to carry out their policy of keeping the Negro
down, southerners too often carefully plan to humiliate the
progressive and intelligent blacks and in some cases form
mobs to drive them out, as they are bad examples for that
class of Negroes whom they desire to keep as menials.22
There are also the migrating educated Negroes. They have
studied history, law and economics and well understand what
it is to get the rights guaranteed them by the constitution.
The more they know the more discontented they become. They
cannot speak out for what they want. No one is likely to
second such a protest, not even the Negroes themselves, so
generally have they been intimidated. The more outspoken
they become, moreover, the more necessary is it for them to
leave, for they thereby destroy their chances to earn a
livelihood. White men in control of the public schools of
the South see to it that the subserviency of the Negro
teachers employed be certified beforehand. They dare not
complain too much about equipment and salaries even if the
per capita appropriation for the education of the Negroes be
one fourth of that for the whites23
In the higher institutions of learning, especially the State
schools, it is exceptional to find a principal who has the
confidence of the Negroes. The Negroes will openly assert
that he is in the pay of the reactionary whites, whose
purpose is to keep the Negro down; and the incumbent himself
will tell his board of regents how much he is opposed by the
Negroes because he labors for the interests of the white
race. Out of such sycophancy it is easily explained why our
State schools have been so ineffective as to necessitate the
sending of the Negro youth to private institutions
maintained by northern philanthropy. Yet if an outspoken
Negro happens to be an instructor in a private school
conducted by educators from the North, he has to be careful
about contending for a square deal; for, if the head of his
institution does not suggest to him to proceed
conservatively, the mob will dispose of the complainant.24
Physicians, lawyers and preachers, who are not so
economically dependent as teachers can exercise no more
freedom of speech in the midst of this triumphant rule of
the lawless.
A large number of educated Negroes, therefore, have on
account of these conditions been compelled to leave the
South. Finding in the North, however, practically nothing in
their line to do, because of the proscription by race
prejudice and trades unions, many of them lead the life of
menials, serving as waiters, porters, butlers and
chauffeurs. While in Chicago, not long ago, the writer was
in the office of a graduate of a colored southern college,
who was showing his former teacher the picture of his class.
In accounting for his classmates in the various walks of
life, he reported that more than one third of them were
settled to the occupation of Pullman porters.
The largest number of Negroes who have gone North during
this period, however, belong to the intelligent laboring
class. Some of them have become discontented for the very
same reasons that the higher classes have tired of
oppression in the South, but the larger number of them have
gone North to improve their economic condition. Most of
these have migrated to the large cities in the East and
Northwest, such as Philadelphia, New York, Indianapolis,
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit and Chicago. To
understand this problem in its urban aspects the
accompanying diagram showing the increase in the Negro
population of northern cities during the first decade of
this century will be helpful.
Some of these Negroes have migrated after careful
consideration; others have just happened to go north as
wanderers; and a still larger number on the many excursions
to the cities conducted by railroads during the summer
months. Sometimes one excursion brings to Chicago two or
three thousand Negroes, two thirds of whom never go back.
They do not often follow the higher pursuits of labor in the
North but they earn more money than they have been
accustomed to earn in the South. They are attracted also by
the liberal attitude of some whites, which, although not
that of social equality, gives the Negroes a liberty in
northern centers which leads them to think that they are
citizens of the country.25
This shifting in the population has had an unusually
significant effect on the black belt. Frederick Douglass
advised the Negroes in 1879 to remain in the South where
they would be in sufficiently large numbers to have
political power,26
but they have gradually scattered from the black belt so as
to diminish greatly their chances ever to become the
political force they formerly were in this country. The
Negroes once had this possibility in South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and, had the
process of Africanization prior to the Civil War had a few
decades longer to do its work, there would not have been any
doubt as to the ultimate preponderance of the Negroes in
those commonwealths. The tendencies of the black population
according to the censuses of the United States and
especially that of 1910, however, show that the chances for
the control of these State governments by Negroes no longer
exist except in South Carolina and Mississippi.27
It has been predicted, therefore, that, if the same
tendencies continue for the next fifty years, there will be
even few counties in which the Negroes will be in a
majority. All of the Southern States except Arkansas showed
a proportionate increase of the white population over that
of the black between 1900 and 1910, while West Virginia and
Oklahoma with relatively small numbers of blacks showed, for
reasons stated elsewhere, an increase in the Negro
population. Thus we see coming to pass something like the
proposed plan of Jefferson and other statesmen who a hundred
years ago advocated the expansion of slavery to lessen the
evil of the institution by distributing its burdens.28
The migration of intelligent blacks, however, has been
attended with several handicaps to the race. The large part
of the black population is in the South and there it will
stay for decades to come. The southern Negroes, therefore,
have been robbed of their due part of the talented tenth.
The educated blacks have had no constituency in the North
and, consequently, have been unable to realize their
sweetest dreams of the land of the free. In their new home
the enlightened Negro must live with his light under a
bushel. Those left behind in the South soon despair of
seeing a brighter day and yield to the yoke. In the places
of the leaders who were wont to speak for their people, the
whites have raised up Negroes who accept favors offered them
on the condition that their lips be sealed up forever on the
rights of the Negro.
This emigration too has left the Negro subject to other
evils. There are many first class Negro business men in the
South, but although there were once progressive men of
color, who endeavored to protect the blacks from being
plundered by white sharks and harpies there have arisen
numerous unscrupulous Negroes who have for a part of the
proceeds from such jobbery associated themselves with ill
designing white men to dupe illiterate Negroes. This
trickery is brought into play in marketing their crops,
selling them supplies, or purchasing their property. To
carry out this iniquitous plan the persons concerned have
the protection of the law, for while Negroes in general are
imposed upon, those engaged in robbing them have no cause to
fear.
A Century of Negro Migration, March 31, 1918