What the Southern Negro is Doing for Himself Read online

  There are conspicuous cases of individual prosperity in nearly all the large centres and in the agricultural districts. Thus, in Montgomery, Alabama, a colored barber, originally a slave, has accumulated property amounting to $75,000 or $100,000. An ex-slave in Mississippi has bought one of the plantations that formerly belonged to Jefferson Davis. The colored people of Maryland are said to possess property to the amount of $9,000,000. In Baltimore, there are several colored men worth $15,000 each, three or four worth from $40,000 to $60,000, and the estate of a Negro recently deceased was appraised at $100,000. In Washington, also, colored men have profited by the rise of real estate, and a few are possessed of ample fortunes. These instances might be greatly multiplied from my notes.

  The subject of Negro education is vast and absorbing. Among its varied aspects two are of special and correlative interest: first, What is education doing for the Negro; secondly, What is the Negro doing for education? In this paper I can refer only to the latter topic. But these questions cannot be absolutely separated. No man "receives an education" who does not get a good deal of it himself. The student is not so much inert material; he reacts on the forces which impress him. The Negroes are showing their awakened and eager interest in education by the zeal with which they are embracing their opportunities. Everywhere I found in colleges, normal institutes, and district schools fresh, live interest. In some sections, the eagerness of the colored people for knowledge amounts to an absolute thirst. In Alabama, the state superintendent of education, a former Confederate major, assured me that the colored people in that State are more interested in education than the whites are. Nothing shows better this zeal for education than the sacrifices made to secure it. President Bumstead, of Atlanta University, asks, "Where in the history of the world have so large a mass of equally poor and unlettered people done so much to help themselves in educational work?" This challenge will long remain unanswered. The students of Atlanta University pay thirty-four per cent of the expenses of that institution. A letter from the treasurer of Harvard College informs me that about the same proportion of its expenses is paid from tuition fees. If we compare the wealth represented by the students of Harvard with that represented by the colored students of Atlanta, we shall find how large a sacrifice the latter are making in order to do so much. It must be remembered, also, that at Harvard tuition fees and other expenses are mostly paid by parents and guardians; at Atlanta they are paid by the students themselves, and to a large degree by personal labor. President Bumstead calculates that for every million dollars contributed by the North at least a half million is contributed by the colored people for educational purposes. Though it is difficult to get the material for such large and general totals, it is easy to furnish a vast number of facts illustrating the truth that in the very process of getting his education the Negro is learning the lesson of self-help. Among the denominational colleges, the Livingston Institute at Salisbury, North Carolina, is a good illustration of this capacity for self-help. It receives no state aid. The colored people of the Zion Methodist Episcopal church give $8000 towards the support of this school. The students give towards their own support not less than $6000 more. The president, Dr. Price, one of the ablest colored orators of the South, is a conspicuous example of what the colored man can do for himself.

  Another remarkable illustration is furnished by the Tuskegee Normal School. This institution was started in 1881 by a Hampton graduate, Mr. Booker T. Washington, on a state appropriation of $2000. It has grown from 30 pupils to 450, with 31 teachers. During the last year 200 applicants had to be turned away for want of room. Fourteen hundred acres of land and fourteen school buildings form a part of the equipment. While friends of education, North and South, have generously helped its growth, the success of the school is due largely to the executive ability of Mr. Washington and his officers. General Armstrong says, "I think it is the noblest and grandest work of any colored man in the land." All the teachers are colored. Of the fourteen school buildings, eight have been erected, in whole or in part, by the students. The school is broadly unsectarian. It is teaching the colored people the dignity of labor and how to get out of debt. It is an agricultural and industrial school combined. Its stimulating and renovating influence is felt all through the Black Belt.

  One of the most important results of the excellent work done by Hampton, Atlanta, and Tuskegee is seen in the radiating influence they exert through the country in stimulating primary education. In most of the communities of the lower Southern States, the money derived from local taxation is not sufficient to keep the school more than three months in the year, and the pay of teachers is poor. The interest of these communities is so quickened by a good teacher that the people raise money to extend the school time and supplement the pay of the teacher. A few examples taken from many will illustrate. In one district in Alabama, the school time was thus extended by private subscription from three months to seven. In Coffee County, the teacher's salary was increased from ten to twenty-five dollars a month. In many cases the raising of this extra sum means a good deal of self- denial. As the State makes no appropriation for school-houses, most of the schools in the Black Belt are held in churches, which gives rise to sectarian jealousy and disturbance. To overcome these difficulties and build school-houses, additional sacrifice is required. In a district of Butler County, Alabama, the children formed a "one cent society." They brought to the teacher a penny a day. About thirty dollars was raised to buy land, and the school-teacher, a colored girl, helped to clear it and burn the brush. In one township, where the school fund is sufficient for seven or nine months, the teachers are paid thirty-five dollars a month. In Lee County, the people "supplement" for an assistant teacher. One district school which I visited, eighteen miles from Tuskegee, taught by a graduate of its institute, well illustrated the advantage of industrial education. Having learned the carpenter's trade at the normal school, he was able, with the help of his pupils, to build a fine new school-house. The girls often do better than the men. One, who teaches about twenty-five miles from Tuskegee, has now a good two-story school building with four rooms. She has two assistant teachers, who live with her in the building. She has revolutionized that section of the country. A Hampton student whom I met once applied for a school in his district, as he wished to learn to read and write. He was told that there was not a sufficient number of children. Then he offered to give a school building, if the town would furnish a teacher. With the aid of his father he carried out the plan, and established a good school. Samuel Smiles might easily make a library of books on Self-Help out of thousands of individual examples furnished by the colored people.

  The interest in education is seen also in the self-denial and sacrifice which parents make to keep their children at school. This sacrifice falls chiefly on the mothers. A student told me that two thirds of the younger scholars at Tuskegee were sent by their mothers. Very often the mother is a widow. She may get twenty dollars a month, or eight, or only four, for her labor. Out of this small sum she sends to college and clothes her boy or girl. "I know mothers," said a student, "who get three dollars a month, and out of that pay one dollar for the rent, and yet send their children to school." To do this they will wash all day and half the night. Said a colored clergyman in Chattanooga: "Sometimes, when I go about and see how hard many of these mothers work, I feel almost inclined to say, 'You ought to keep your child at home;' but they hold on with wonderful persistence. Two girls graduated from Atlanta University. Their mother had been washing several years to keep them in school. She came up to see them graduate. She was one of the happiest mothers I ever saw." At Selma University, some of the students walk from ten to fifteen miles a day in going to and from the university.

  There is one education which the children get; there is another which they give to their parents. The influence of the normal school reacts on the home life. The boys and girls at Hampton and Tuskegee are taught to keep house. They are not satisfied to live in the old way, when they go home. "I have
seen," says Professor Washington, "the influence of the daughter so potent, when she got home, that the father has torn down the old house, and built another and better one."

  The result of higher education is seen in the rise of a professional class. I remember the time when a colored doctor was a curiosity even in Washington; but colored physicians, lawyers, journalists, college professors, dentists, educated clergymen, and teachers are now to be found in all the large cities of the South. In Montgomery, Dr. Dorsette has built up a thriving practice. He has erected a three-story brick building, on the lower floor of which are two stores, one of them a large and well- equipped drug store. A hall above is used for the accommodation of colored societies. In Birmingham, there are two practicing physicians, one dentist, and one lawyer. At Selma, the practicing physician is a graduate of the university. There is also a pharmacist, owning his drug store, who studied at Howard University. There are six colored lawyers and seven colored physicians in Baltimore. The professional men command the confidence and support of their own people.

  Journalism is growing slowly. There are now about fifty-five well established Negro newspapers and journals. Thirty-seven are in the Southern States; seven are monthlies and two are semi- monthlies. The aggregate weekly circulation of all is about 805,000 copies. There are other ephemeral journals, not included in this list. The largest circulation, 15,000, is claimed for the Indianapolis Freeman.

  The colored people are determined to have their churches, and they subscribe, in proportion to their means, large sums to sustain them. Last year the Zion Methodist Episcopal church in North Carolina raised $84,000 to support its religious institutions. This amount represents but one State and but one denomination. The churches built reflect fairly the social standard of the people. In the comparatively new city of Birmingham, there are seven comfortable colored churches, ranging in cost from $2000 to $15,000. In Washington, two churches cost nearly $30,000 each, and the money has been raised almost exclusively by the colored people. In Baltimore, there are forty-four colored churches, holding a large amount of property. The old-time preacher still fills the pulpit in many communities, and the old slaves are loath to give up the hysteric emotionalism of revival preaching. The younger and progressive Negroes are breaking away from it, and demanding preachers whose intelligence and education secure respect. They are giving up, too, the old slave melodies. Modern Protestant hymnology is substituted. The universities and theological schools are meeting the demand for better preachers. The colored people are also ambitious to pay their preachers as much as the whites pay theirs. In Montgomery, one colored preacher has a salary of $1200 a year with a parsonage. In another city in Alabama, $1800 is paid.

  The standard of morality is rising, also. There is more respect for property now that the Negro is learning what mine and thine mean. An eminent judge of Louisiana assured me that intoxication among the colored people is the principal cause of crime, but that crime does not exist to the same extent that it formerly did. Marriage, he said, had changed largely the condition of their society. The Negroes are seeking to make this a matter of importance, so that their rights of property may be respected. The temperance movement makes headway. In Methodist conferences in North Carolina, and possibly elsewhere, no one is admitted to the ministry who uses liquor or tobacco.

  The colored people do more towards taking care of their unfortunate classes than is generally realized. With all the destitution that exists, there is almost no mendicancy. When one considers how much is done in the North for hospitals, homes, and institutions of every sort, and how little in the South, it is apparent that aid must come from some other quarter. The colored orphan asylum established by Mrs. Steele in Chattanooga is, I am told, the only Protestant colored orphan asylum south of Washington. What, then, becomes of orphan children? They are adopted. I have met such children in many homes, and their love and respect for their foster parents refute the charge that the Negro is incapable of gratitude. Thus the colored people have instinctively and of necessity adopted the placing-out system for orphans, which, other things being equal, is the best disposition that can be made of them.

  In other respects the colored people have developed a laudable disposition to take care of their own poor. In addition to the Odd Fellows, Masons, and Knights of Pythias, benevolent and fraternal organizations are multiplying. The city churches are feeling a new impulse to such work. Brotherhoods, Good Samaritan societies, and mutual benefit organizations are established. Members of these organizations are allowed a regular stipend when sick. In New Orleans, the colored people have started a widows' home, and have collected enough money to buy a piece of ground and to put up a respectable building. In Montgomery, I visited the Hale Infirmary, founded by the late Joseph Hale and his wife, leading colored citizens. It is a large two-story building, especially designed by the son-in-law of the founder for hospital purposes. Such gifts and such organizations show that there is a disposition among the colored people to adopt the practices of a higher order of society. It is charged that the Negro imitates the vices of the white; it is often overlooked that he also imitates his virtues. A good illustration of practical Christianity was given by the Young Men's Christian Association at Tuskegee, in building, last year, a little house for an old colored woman. A colored teacher paid the cost of the lumber, and the young men gave the labor. They are planning more work of this kind. One interesting case of Negro generosity shows the reverses of fortune which followed emancipation. An ex- slave in Louisiana bought a farm, paid for it, and became prosperous. Not long after his old master came to him in a state of destitution. The Negro took him in, kept him for a week, and gave him a suit of clothes on his departure.

  Under slavery the Negroes were not organized, except in churches. The organic spirit must have time for growth. Cooperation has made no great headway. In various States and counties the Farmers' Alliance is attracting attention, many of the Negroes hoping to find relief through it from the bondage of the mortgage system. Small stock companies for various purposes exist in a number of cities. A little has been done in the way of building associations. There is one at Atlanta, with branches and local boards elsewhere; others at Tuskegee, Montgomery, Selma, Baltimore, and Washington. In Baltimore there are three or four such associations, but the German organizations, managed by white people, have had much more of their patronage. A daily paper of Charlotte, North Carolina, in speaking of the loan associations there, said that the colored shareholders were outstripping the white. It was noticeable that they paid more promptly. A penny savings bank, chartered under state law, was organized at Chattanooga about ten months ago. It has already one thousand depositors, the amounts ranging from two cents to one thousand dollars. The white as well as the colored children are being educated to save by this bank. In Birmingham, a similar institution was opened last October, and has about three thousand depositors. A school savings bank or postal savings bank system, as recommended by the Mohonk Negro conference, would be of great benefit to the colored people.

  A full report of what the colored man is doing for himself within the old slave States can be given only when the census reports are elaborated, or when such a thorough record of his progress is made in every State as Dr. Jeffrey A. Brackett has made for the State of Maryland. All that has been attempted in this article is to give such indications and evidence as can readily be obtained by one who travels through the South, on this mission, with his eyes and ears open.

  To sum up, then, the facts which show what the Negro is doing for himself, it is clear that the new generation of Afric-Americans is animated by a progressive spirit. They are raising and following their own leaders. They are rapidly copying the organic, industrial, and administrative features of white society. They have discovered that industrial redemption is not to be found in legislative and political measures. In spite of oppressive usury and extortion, the colored man is buying farms, building homes, accumulating property, establishing himself in trade, learning the mechanic arts, d
evising inventions, and entering the professions. Education he sees to be the pathway to prosperity, and is making immense sacrifices to secure it. He is passing into the higher stages of social evolution. In religion the "old-timer" is giving way to the educated preacher. Religion is becoming more ethical. The colored people are doing much to take care of their own unfortunate classes. The cooperative spirit is slowly spreading through trades unions, building associations, and benevolent guilds. In no way is the colored man doing more for himself than by silently and steadily developing a sense of self-respect, new capacity for self-support, and a pride in his race, which more than anything else secure for him the respect and fraternal feeling of his white neighbors.

  Samuel J. Barrows.

 

 

  Samuel J. Barrows, What the Southern Negro is Doing for Himself

 

 

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