Following the Color Line — The Mulatto: The Problem of Race Mixture - part 1

THE MULATTO: THE PROBLEM OF RACE MIXTURE

I had not been long engaged in the study of the race problem when I found myself face to face with a curious and seemingly absurd question: "What is a Negro?"

I saw plenty of men and women who were unquestionably Negroes, Negroes in every physical characteristic, black of countenance with thick lips and kinky hair, but I also met men and women as white as I am, whose assertion that they were really Negroes I accepted in defiance of the evidence of my own senses.

I have seen blue-eyed Negroes and golden-haired Negroes; one Negro girl I met had an abundance of soft straight red hair.

I have seen Negroes I could not easily distinguish from the Jewish or French types; I once talked with a man I took at first to be a Chinaman but who told me he was a Negro.

And I have met several people, passing everywhere for white, who, I knew, had Negro blood.

Nothing, indeed, is more difficult to define than this curious physical colour line in the individual human being.

Legislatures have repeatedly attempted to define where black leaves off and white begins, especially in connection with laws prohibiting marriage between the races.

Some of the statutes define a Negro as a "person with one-eighth or more of Negro blood."

Southern people, who take pride in their ability to distinguish the drop of dark blood in the white face, are themselves frequently deceived.

Several times I have heard police judges in the South ask concerning a man brought before them: "Is this man coloured or white?"

Just recently a case has arisen at Norfolk, Va.

, in which a Mrs. Rosa Stone sued the Norfolk & Western Railroad Company for being compelled by the white conductor, who thought her a Negro, to ride in a "Jim Crow" car.

Having been forced into the Negro compartment, it remained for a real coloured woman, who knew her personally, to draw the line against her.

This coloured woman is reported as saying: "Lor, Miss Rosa, this ain't no place for you; you b'long in the cars back yonder."

It appears that Mrs. Stone was tanned.

_Curious Story of a White Man Who Was Expelled as a Negro_ Here is a story well illustrating the difficulties sometimes encountered by Southerners in deciding who is white and who is coloured.

On March 6, 1907, the Atlanta _Georgian_ published this account of how a man who, it was said, was a Negro passing for a white man, was expelled by a crowd of white men from the town of Albany, Ga.

: Peter Zeigler, a Negro, was last night escorted out of town by a crowd of white men.

Zeigler had been here for a month and palmed himself off as a white man.

He has been boarding with one of the best white families in the city and has been associating with some of Albany's best people.

A visiting lady recognised him as being a Negro who formerly lived in her city, and her assertion was investigated and found to be correct.

Last night he was carried to Forester's Station, a few miles north of here, and ordered to board an outgoing train.

Zeigler has a fair education and polished manners, and his colour was such that he could easily pass for a white man where he was not known.

Immediately after suffering the indignity of being expelled from Albany, Mr. Zeigler communicated with his friends and relatives, a delegation of whom came from Charleston, Orangeburg, and Summerville, S. C.

and proved to the satisfaction of everyone that Mr. Zeigler was, in reality, a white man connected with several old families of South Carolina.

Of this return of Mr. Zeigler the Albany _Herald_ says: The _Herald_ yesterday contained the account of the return to Albany of Peter B. Zeigler, the young man who was forced to leave Albany between suns on the night of March 4th.

The young man upon his return was accompanied by a party composed of relatives and influential friends from his native state of South Carolina.

Nothing surely could throw a more vivid light on colour line confusions in the South than this story.

Another extraordinary case is that of Mrs. Elsie Massey, decided in Tipton County, Tenn.

, after years of litigation, in which one side tried to prove that Mrs. Massey was a Negro, the daughter of a cotton planter named "Ed" Barrow, and a quadroon slave, and the other side tried to prove that she was of pure Caucasian blood.

On June 13, 1907, a jury of white men finally declared that Mrs. Massey was white and that she and her children might inherit ,000 worth of property.

Such instances as these, a few among almost innumerable cases, will indicate how difficult it often is to decide who is and who is not a Negro--the definition of Negro here being that used in the South, a person having any Negro blood, no matter how little.

_How Many Mulattoes There Are_ Few people realise how large a proportion of the so-called Negro race in this country is not really Negro at all, but mulatto or mixed blood, either half white, or quadroon, or octoroon, or some other combination.

In the last census (1900) the government gave up the attempt in discouragement of trying to enumerate the mulattoes at all, and counted all persons as Negroes who were so classed in the communities where they resided.

The census of 1870 showed that one-eighth (roughly) of the Negro population was mulatto, that of 1890 showed that the proportion had increased to more than one-seventh.

But these statistics are confessedly inaccurate: the census report itself says: "These figures are of little value.

Indeed, as an indication of the extent to which the races have mingled, they are misleading."

From my own observation, and from talking and corresponding with many men who have had superior opportunities for investigation, I think it safe to say that between one-fourth and one-third of the Negroes in this country at the present time have a _visible_ admixture of white blood.

At least the proportion is greater than the census figures of 1870 and 1890 would indicate.

It is probable that 3,000,000 persons out of the 10,000,000 population are visibly mulattoes.

It will be seen, then, how very important a matter it is, in any careful survey of the race problem, to consider the influence of the mixed blood.

In the North, indeed, the race problem may almost be called a mulatto problem rather than a Negro problem, for in not a few places the mixed bloods are in excess of the darker types.

Many mulattoes have a mixed ancestry reaching back to the beginning of civilisation in North America; for the Negro slave appeared practically as soon as the white colonist.

Many Negroes mixed (and are still mixing in Oklahoma) with the Indians, and one is to-day often astonished to see distinct Indian types among them.

I shall never forget a woman I saw in Georgia--as perfect of line as any Greek statue--erect, lithe, strong, with sleek straight hair, the high cheekbones of the Indian, but the lips of the Negro.

She was plainly an Indian type--but had no memory of anything but Negro ancestry.

A strain of Arab blood from Africa runs in the veins of many Negroes, in others flows the blood of the Portuguese slave-traders or of the early Spanish adventurers or of the French who settled in New Orleans, to say nothing of every sort of American white blood.

In my classification I have estimated 3,000,000 persons who are "visibly" mulattoes: the actual number who have some strain of blood--Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Indian--other than Negro, must be considerably larger.

It is a curious problem, this of colour.

Several times, in different parts of the country, I have been told by both white and coloured observers that Negroes, even without the admixture of white blood, were gradually growing lighter--the effect of a cold climate, clothing and other causes.

A

tendency toward such a change, an adaptation to new environment, is certainly in accord with the best scientific beliefs, but whether a mere century or two in America has really operated to whiten the blackness of thousands of years of jungle life, must be left for the careful scientist to decide.

It is certain that the darkest American Negro is far superior to the native African Negro.

_Story of a Real African Woman_ At Montgomery, Ala.

, Mr. Craik took me to see a real African woman, one of the very few left who were captured in Africa and brought to this country as slaves.

She came in the _Wanderer_, long after the slave trade was forbidden by law, and was secretly landed at Mobile about 1858. She is a stocky, vigorous old woman.

She speaks very little English, and I could not understand even that little.

She asserts, I am told, that she is the daughter of a king in Africa, and she tells yet of the hardships and alarms of the ocean voyage.

Her daughter is married to a respectable-looking Negro farmer.

Mr. Craik succeeded, in spite of her superstitious terrors, in getting her to submit to having a picture taken.

And yet all these strange-blooded people are classed roughly together as Negroes.

I remember sitting once on the platform at a great meeting at the People's Tabernacle in Atlanta.

An audience of some 1,200 coloured people was present.

A prominent white man gave a brief address in which he urged the Negroes present to accept with humility the limitations imposed upon them by their heredity, that they were Negroes and that therefore they should accept with grace the place of inferiority.

Now as I looked out over that audience, which included the best class of coloured people in Atlanta, I could not help asking myself: "What is this blood he is appealing to, anyway?"

For I saw comparatively few men and women who could really be called Negroes at all.

Some were so light as to be indistinguishable from Caucasians.

A bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who sat near me on the platform was a nephew of Robert Toombs, one of the great men of the South, a leader of the Confederacy.

Another man present was a grandson of a famous senator of South Carolina.

Several others that I knew of were half-brothers or sisters or cousins of more or less well-known white men.

And I could not hear this appeal to heredity without thinking of the not at all humble Southern blood which flowed in the veins of some of these men and women.

How futile such advice really was, and how little it got into the hearts of the audience, was forcibly impressed on me afterward by the remark of a mulatto I met.

"They've given us their blood, whether we wanted it or not," he said, "and now they ask us not to respond to the same ambitions and hopes that they have.

They have given us fighting blood and expect us not to struggle."

_Attitude of the Mixed Blood Toward the Black Negroes_ In the cities of the South no inconsiderable communities of mulattoes have long existed, many of them highly prosperous.

Even before the war thousands of "free persons of colour" resided in Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans.

In places like Charleston they had (and still have to some extent) an exclusive society of their own which looked down on the black Negro with a prejudice equal to that of the white man.

The census of 1860 shows a population of 3,441 "free persons of colour" in Charleston alone, of whom 2,554 were mulattoes.

In New Orleans in the same year lived 9,084 free Negroes, of whom 7,357 were mulattoes; and they were so far distant in sympathy from the slave population that they even tendered their support to the Confederacy at the beginning of the war.

But with the Emancipation Proclamation the aristocratic "free person of colour" who had formed a sort of third class as between the white above and the black below, lost his unique position: the line was drawn against him.

When I went South I expected to find a good deal of aloofness between the mulatto and the black man.

It does exist, but really less to-day in the South than in Boston!

The very first mulatto, a preacher in Atlanta, with whom I raised the question, surprised me by denying that the mulatto was in any degree potentially superior to the real Negro: that if the black man were given the same advantages and environment as the mulatto, he would do as well, that the prominence of the mulatto is the result of the superior advantages he has long enjoyed, being the house servant in slavery times, with opportunities for education and discipline that the black man never possessed.

This was his argument, and to support it he gave me a long list of black Negroes who had achieved success or leadership.

I found Booker T. Washington and Professor Du Bois (themselves both mulattoes) arguing along the same lines.

In other words, the prejudice of white people has forced all coloured people, light or dark, together, and has awakened in many ostracised men and women who are nearly white a spirit which expresses itself in the passionate defence of everything that is Negro.

And yet, with what pathos!

What is this race?

The spirit and the ideals are not Negro: for the people are not Negro, even the darkest of them, in the sense that the inhabitants of the jungles of Africa are Negroes.

The blackest of black American Negroes is far ahead of his naked cousin in Africa.

But neither are they white!

One evening last summer I attended a performance at Philadelphia of a Negro play called the "Shoo-Fly Regiment."

It was written, both words and music, by two clever mulattoes, Cole and Johnson; and it was wholly presented by Negroes.

The audience was large, mostly composed of coloured people, and the laughter was unstinted.

The point that impressed me was this, that the writers had chosen a distinct Negro subject.

The play dealt with two questions of much interest among coloured people: the matter of industrial education, and the Negro soldier.

That, it seemed to me, was significant: it was an effort to appeal to the class consciousness of the Negro.

And yet as I sat and watched the play I could not help being impressed with the essential tragedy of the so-called Negro people.

The players of the company were of every colour, from the black African type to the mulatto with fair hair and blue eyes.

In spite of this valiant effort to emphasise certain racial interests, one who saw the play could not help asking: "What, after all, is this Negro race?

What is the Negro spirit?

Is it in this black African or in this white American with the drop of dark blood?"

In a recent address a coloured minister of San Francisco, J. Hugh Kelley, said: "My father's father was a Black Hawk Indian, seven feet tall.

My father's mother was an Irishwoman.

My mother's father was an American white man.

Her mother was a full-blooded African woman.

What am I?"

_Pathetic Desire of Negroes to Be Like White Men_ Even among those Negroes who are most emphatic in defence of the race there is, deep down, the pathetic desire to be like the dominant white man.

It is not unreasonable, nor unnatural, for all outward opportunity of development lies open to the white man.

To be coloured is to be handicapped in the race for those things in life which men call desirable.

I remember discussing the race question one evening with a group of intelligent coloured men.

They had made a strong case for the Negro spirit, and the need of the race to stand for itself, but one of them said in a passing remark (what the investigator overhears is often of greater significance than what he hears), speaking of a mulatto friend of his: "His hair is _better_ than mine."

He meant _straighter_, more like that of the white man.

The same evening, another Negro, referring to a light-complexioned coloured man, said: "Thank God, he is passing now for white."

At Philadelphia a dark Negro made this comment on one of the coloured churches where mulattoes are in the ascendancy: "You can't have a good time when you go there unless you have straight hair."

This remark indicated not only the ideal held by the speaker, but showed the line drawn by the light-coloured man against his darker brother.

In the same way it is almost a universal desire of Negroes to "marry whiter;" that is, a dark man will, if possible, marry a mulatto woman, the lighter the better.

The ideal is whiteness: for whiteness stands for opportunity, power, progress.

Give a coloured man or woman white blood, educate him until he has glimpses of the greater possibilities of life and then lock him forever within the bars of colour, and you have all the elements of tragedy.

Dr. DuBois in his remarkable book, "The Souls of Black Folk," has expressed more vividly than any other writer the essential significance of this tragedy.

I read the book before I went South and I thought it certainly overdrawn, the expression of a highly cultivated and exceptional Mulatto, but after meeting many Negroes I have been surprised to find how truly it voices a wide experience.

_Experience of a Highly Educated Mulatto_ DuBois tells in this book how he first came to realise that he was really a Negro.

He was a boy in school near his home in Massachusetts.

"Something," he writes, "put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting cards--ten cents a package--and exchange.

The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card--refused it peremptorily, with a glance.

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.

That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade;

for the worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs not mine....

With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny; their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?

The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half-hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above."

If space permitted I could tell many stories illustrative of the daily tragedy which many mulattoes are meeting in this country, struggles that are none the less tragic for being inarticulate.

Here is a letter which I received not long ago from a mulatto professor in a Western Negro college: "I wonder how you will treat that point to which you have thus far only referred in your studies, 'Where does the colour line really begin?'

What is to become of that large class of which I am a part, that class which is neither white nor black and yet both?

There are millions of us who have the blood of both races, and, if heredity means anything, who have the traditions, feelings, and passions of both.

Yet we are black in name, in law, in station, in everything save face and figure, despite the overwhelming white blood.

And why?

Certainly not because we have to be.

America is a big country: it is easy to get lost, even in a neighbouring state.

Some of us do, and the process has been going on so long in certain large cities of the North until we cease to think about it.

But the majority of us stay and live and work out our destiny among the people into whom we were born, living ofttimes side by side with our white brothers and sisters.

When I go back to Atlanta after an absence of two years, I can, if I wish, go back in a Pullman, go out of the main entrance of the station, get my dinner at the Piedmont Hotel, and when I am tired of being Mr. Hyde, I can stroll down Auburn Avenue with my friends in the full glory of Dr. Jekyll.

As a matter of fact I shall doubtless avail myself of the privilege of a sleeper, sneak out the side entrance, get on the last seat of the car, despite the conductor's remonstrance, go on to my friends at once and be myself all the time I am there.

I wouldn't be a white man if I had to.

I want to be black.

I want to love those who love me.

I want to help those who need my help.

And I know hundreds just like me: I know others who are not.

"I wonder if you can decide: 'Where does the colour line really--end?'

" _A Negro Who Lived First as a White Man, Then as a Negro_ When I was in Philadelphia I met an intelligent Negro named A. L.

Manley, who is at present the janitor of a large apartment house.

He has been connected with the good-government movement in Philadelphia, being the leader of a club of coloured men who have supported the reform party.

When I first met him I should not have known him for a Negro, he is so white.

His white grandfather was a famous governor of North Carolina--Charles Manley.

He was educated at Wilmington, N. C.

, and at Hampton Institute.

For a time he published a Negro newspaper at Wilmington, but during the race riot in that city a number of years ago he was driven out and his property was destroyed, his office being burned to the ground.

After a year or two in Washington he came to Philadelphia, where he endeavoured to get work at his trade as a painter and decorator, but the moment he informed employers that he was a coloured man they refused to hire him--usually excusing themselves on the ground that union labour would refuse to work with him.

"So I tried being white," he said: "that is, I did not reveal the fact that I had coloured blood, and I immediately got work in some of the best shops in Philadelphia.

I joined the union and had no trouble at all."

But during all this time he had to live, as he says, "the life of a sneak."

He had to sneak out of his home in the morning and return to it only after nightfall, lest someone discover that his family (he has a wife and two children) was coloured.

"The thing finally became unbearable," he said; "no decent man could stand it.

I preferred to be a Negro and hold up my head rather than to be a sneak."

So he dropped his trade and became a janitor.

In other words, he stepped back, as so many Negroes in the North are forced to do, into a form of domestic service, although in his case the position is one of responsibility and good pay.

Such stories of the problem of the mulatto are innumerable; and yet I do not wish to imply that the life is all shadow, for it isn't. The Negro blood, wherever it is, supplies an element of light-heartedness which will not be wholly crushed.

It is this element, indeed, that accounts in no small degree for the survival of the Negro in this country.

Where the Indian perished for want of adaptability, the Negro has survived by sheer elasticity of temperament: it is perhaps the highest natural gift of the Negro race.

One hears much of the unfavourable traits of the Negro, but certainly, judging from any point of view, the power of adaptability displayed by the Negro in a wholly foreign environment, under the harshest conditions, and his ability to thrive and increase in numbers, even meeting the competition of the dominant race, and to keep on laughing at his work, is a power which in any race would be regarded as notable.