Following the Color Line — A Race Riot and After - part 2

_Results of the Riot_ And after the riot in Brownsville, what?

Here was a self-respecting community of hard-working Negroes, disturbing no one, getting an honest living.

How did the riot affect them?

Well, it demoralised them, set them back for years.

Not only were four men killed and several wounded, but sixty of their citizens were in jail.

Nearly every family had to go to the lawyers, who would not take their cases without money in hand.

Hence the little homes had to be sold or mortgaged, or money borrowed in some other way to defend those arrested, doctors' bills were to be paid, the undertaker must be settled with.

A riot is not over when the shooting stops!

And when the cases finally came up in court and all the evidence was brought out every Negro went free; but two of the county policemen who had taken part in the shooting, were punished.

George Muse, one of the foremost merchants of Atlanta, who was foreman of the jury which tried the Brownsville Negroes, said: "We think the Negroes were gathered just as white people were in other parts of the town, for the purpose of defending their homes.

We were shocked by the conduct which the evidence showed some of the county police had been guilty of."

After the riot was over many Negro families, terrified and feeling themselves unprotected, sold out for what they could get--I heard a good many pitiful stories of such sudden and costly sacrifices--and left the country, some going to California, some to Northern cities.

The best and most enterprising are those who go: the worst remain.

Not only did the Negroes leave Brownsville, but they left the city itself in considerable numbers.

Labour was thus still scarcer and wages higher in Atlanta because of the riot.

_Report of a White Committee on the Riot_ It is significant that not one of the Negroes killed and wounded in the riot was of the criminal class.

Every one was industrious, respectable and law-abiding.

A white committee, composed of W. G.

Cooper, Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, and George Muse, a prominent merchant, backed by the sober citizenship of the town, made an honest investigation and issued a brave and truthful report.

Here are a few of its conclusions: 1. Among the victims of the mob there was not a single vagrant.

2. They were earning wages in useful work up to the time of the riot.

3. They were supporting themselves and their families or dependent relatives.

4. Most of the dead left small children and widows, mothers or sisters with practically no means and very small earning capacity.

5. The wounded lost from one to eight weeks' time, at 50 cents to a day each.

6. About seventy persons were wounded, and among these there was an immense amount of suffering.

In some cases it was prolonged and excruciating pain.

7. Many of the wounded are disfigured, and several are permanently disabled.

8. Most of them were in humble circumstances, but they were honest, industrious and law-abiding citizens and useful members of society.

9. These statements are true of both white and coloured.

10. Of the wounded, ten are white and sixty are coloured.

Of the dead, two are white and ten are coloured; two female, and ten male.

This includes three killed at Brownsville.

11. Wild rumours of a larger number killed have no foundation that we can discover.

As the city was paying the funeral expenses of victims and relief was given their families, they had every motive to make known their loss.

In one case relatives of a man killed in a broil made fruitless efforts to secure relief.

12. Two persons reported as victims of the riot had no connection with it.

One, a Negro man, was killed in a broil over a crap game;

and another, a Negro woman, was killed by her paramour.

Both homicides occurred at some distance from the scene of the riot.

The men who made this brave report did not mince matters.

They called murder, murder; and robbery, robbery.

Read this: 13. As twelve persons were killed and seventy were murderously assaulted, and as, by all accounts, a number took part in each assault, it is clear that several hundred murderers or would-be murderers are at large in this community.

At first, after the riot, there was an inclination in some quarters to say: "Well, at any rate, the riot cleared the atmosphere.

The Negroes have had their lesson.

There won't be any more trouble soon."

But read the sober conclusions in the Committee's report.

The riot did not prevent further crime.

14. Although less than three months have passed since the riot, events have already demonstrated that the slaughter of the innocent does not deter the criminal class from committing more crimes.

Rapes and robbery have been committed in the city during that time.

15. The slaughter of the innocent does drive away good citizens.

From one small neighbourhood twenty-five families have gone.

A great many of them were buying homes on the instalment plan.

16. The crimes of the mob include robbery as well as murder.

In a number of cases the property of innocent and unoffending people was taken.

Furniture was destroyed, small shops were looted, windows were smashed, trunks were burst open, money was taken from the small hoard, and articles of value were appropriated.

In the commission of these crimes the victims, both men and women, were treated with unspeakable brutality.

17. As a result of four days of lawlessness there are in this glad Christmas-time widows of both races mourning their husbands, and husbands of both races mourning for their wives; there are orphan children of both races who cry out in vain for faces they will see no more; there are grown men of both races disabled for life, and all this sorrow has come to people who are absolutely innocent of any wrong-doing.

In trying to find out exactly the point of view and the feeling of the Negroes--which is most important in any honest consideration of conditions--I was handed the following letter, written by a young coloured man, a former resident in Atlanta now a student in the North.

He is writing frankly to a friend.

It is valuable as showing a _real_ point of view--the bitterness, the hopelessness, the distrust.

"...

It is possible that you have formed at least a good idea of how we feel as the result of the horrible eruption in Georgia.

I have not spoken to a Caucasian on the subject since then.

But, listen: How would you feel, if with our history, there came a time when, after speeches and papers and teachings you acquired property and were educated, and were a fairly good man, it were impossible for you to walk the street (for whose maintenance you were taxed) with your sister without being in mortal fear of death if you resented any insult offered to her?

How would you feel if you saw a governor, a mayor, a sheriff, whom you could not oppose at the polls, encourage by deed or word or both, a mob of 'best' and worst citizens to slaughter your people in the streets and in their own homes and in their places of business?

Do you think that you could resist the same wrath that caused God to slay the Philistines and the Russians to throw bombs?

I can resist it, but with each new outrage I am less able to resist it.

And yet if I gave way to my feelings I should become just like other men ...

of the mob!

But I do not ...

not quite, and I must hurry through the only life I shall live on earth, tortured by these experiences and these horrible impulses, with no hope of ever getting away from them.

They are ever present, like the just God, the devil, and my conscience.

"If there were no such thing as Christianity we should be hopeless."

Besides this effect on the Negroes the riot for a week or more practically paralysed the city of Atlanta.

Factories were closed, railroad cars were left unloaded in the yards, the street-car system was crippled, and there was no cab-service (cab-drivers being Negroes), hundreds of servants deserted their places, the bank clearings slumped by hundreds of thousands of dollars, the state fair, then just opening, was a failure.

It was, indeed, weeks before confidence was fully restored and the city returned to its normal condition.

_Who Made Up the Mob?

_ One more point I wish to make before taking up the extraordinary reconstructive work which followed the riot.

I have not spoken of the men who made up the mob.

We know the dangerous Negro class--after all a very small proportion of the entire Negro population.

There is a corresponding low class of whites quite as illiterate as the Negroes.

The poor white hates the Negro, and the Negro dislikes the poor white.

It is in these lower strata of society, where the races rub together in unclean streets, that the fire is generated.

Decatur and Peters streets, with their swarming saloons and dives, furnish the point of contact.

I

talked with many people who saw the mobs at different times, and the universal testimony was that it was made up largely of boys and young men, and of the low criminal and semi-criminal class.

The ignorant Negro and the uneducated white; there lies the trouble!

This idea that 115,000 people of Atlanta--respectable, law-abiding, good citizens, white and black--should be disgraced before the world by a few hundred criminals was what aroused the strong, honest citizenship of Atlanta to vigorous action.

The riot brought out all that was worst in human nature; the reconstruction brought out all that was best and finest.

Almost the first act of the authorities was to close every saloon in the city, afterward revoking all the licences--and for two weeks no liquor was sold in the city.

The police, at first accused of not having done their best in dealing with the mob, arrested a good many white rioters, and Judge Broyles, to show that the authorities had no sympathy with such disturbers of the peace, sent every man brought before him, twenty-four in all, to the chain gang for the largest possible sentence, without the alternative of a fine.

The grand jury met and boldly denounced the mob;

its report said in part: "That the sensationalism of the afternoon papers in the presentation of the criminal news to the public prior to the riots of Saturday night, especially in the case of the Atlanta _News_, deserves our severest condemnation."

But the most important and far-reaching effect of the riot was in arousing the strong men of the city.

It struck at the pride of those men of the South, it struck at their sense of law and order, it struck at their business interests.

On Sunday following the first riot a number of prominent men gathered at the Piedmont Hotel, and had a brief discussion;

but it was not until Tuesday afternoon, when the worst of the news from Brownsville had come in, that they gathered in the court-house with the serious intent of stopping the riot at all costs.

Most of the prominent men of Atlanta were present.

Sam D. Jones, president of the Chamber of Commerce, presided.

One of the first speeches was made by Charles T. Hopkins, who had been the leading spirit in the meetings on Sunday and Monday.

He expressed with eloquence the humiliation which Atlanta felt.

"Saturday evening at eight o'clock," he said, "the credit of Atlanta was good for any number of millions of dollars in New York or Boston or any financial centre; to-day we couldn't borrow fifty cents.

The reputation we have been building up so arduously for years has been swept away in two short hours.

Not by men who have made and make Atlanta, not by men who represent the character and strength of our city, but by hoodlums, understrappers and white criminals.

Innocent Negro men have been struck down for no crime whatever, while peacefully enjoying the life and liberty guaranteed to every American citizen.

The Negro race is a child race.

We are a strong race, their guardians.

We have boasted of our superiority and we have now sunk to this level--we have shed the blood of our helpless wards.

Christianity and humanity demand that we treat the Negro fairly.

He is here, and here to stay.

He only knows how to do those things we teach him to do; it is our Christian duty to protect him.

I for one, and I believe I voice the best sentiment of this city, am willing to lay down my life rather than to have the scenes of the last few days repeated."

_The Plea of a Negro Physician_ In the midst of the meeting a coloured man arose rather doubtfully.

He was, however, promptly recognized as Dr. W.

F.

Penn, one of the foremost coloured physicians of Atlanta, a graduate of Yale College--a man of much influence among his people.

He said that he had come to ask the protection of the white men of Atlanta.

He said that on the day before a mob had come to his home; that ten white men, some of whose families he knew and had treated professionally, had been sent into his house to look for concealed arms; that his little girl had run to them, one after another, and begged them not to shoot her father; that his life and the lives of his family had afterward been threatened, so that he had had to leave his home; that he had been saved from a gathering mob by a white man in an automobile.

"What shall we do?"

he asked the meeting--and those who heard his speech said that the silence was profound.

"We have been disarmed: how shall we protect our lives and property?

If living a sober, industrious, upright life, accumulating property and educating his children as best he knows how, is not the standard by which a coloured man can live and be protected in the South, what is to become of him?

If the kind of life I have lived isn't the kind you want, shall I leave and go North?

"When we aspire to be decent and industrious we are told that we are bad examples to other coloured men.

Tell us what your standards are for coloured men.

What are the requirements under which we may live and be protected?

What shall we do?"

When he had finished, Colonel A. J.

McBride, a real estate owner and a Confederate veteran, arose and said with much feeling that he knew Dr. Penn and that he was a good man, and that Atlanta meant to protect such men.

"If necessary," said Colonel McBride, "I will go out and sit on his porch with a rifle."

Such was the spirit of this remarkable meeting.

Mr. Hopkins proposed that the white people of the city express their deep regret for the riot and show their sympathy for the Negroes who had suffered at the hands of the mob by raising a fund of money for their assistance.

Then and there ,423 was subscribed, to which the city afterward added ,000. But this was not all.

These men, once thoroughly aroused, began looking to the future, to find some new way of preventing the recurrence of such disturbances.

A committee of ten, appointed to work with the public officials in restoring order and confidence, consisted of some of the foremost citizens of Atlanta: Charles T. Hopkins, Sam D. Jones, President of the Chamber of Commerce; L. Z.

Rosser, president of the Board of Education; J. W.

English, president of the Fourth National Bank; Forrest Adair, a leading real estate owner;

Captain W. D.

Ellis, a prominent lawyer; A. B.

Steele, a wealthy lumber merchant; M. L.

Collier, a railroad man; John E. Murphy, capitalist; and H.

Y.

McCord, president of a wholesale grocery house.

One of the first and most unexpected things that this committee did was to send for several of the leading Negro citizens of Atlanta: the Rev. H.

H.

Proctor, B. J.

Davis, editor of the _Independent_, a Negro journal, the Rev. E.

P.

Johnson, the Rev. E.

R.

Carter, the Rev. J.

A.

Rush, and Bishop Holsey.

_Committees of the Two Races Meet_ This was the first important occasion in the South upon which an attempt was made to get the two races together for any serious consideration of their differences.

They held a meeting.

The white men asked the Negroes, "What shall we do to relieve the irritation?"

The Negroes said that they thought that coloured men were treated with unnecessary roughness on the street-cars and by the police.

The white members of the committee admitted that this was so and promised to take the matter up immediately with the street-car company and the police department, which was done.

The discussion was harmonious.

After the meeting Mr. Hopkins said: "I believe those Negroes understood the situation better than we did.

I

was astonished at their intelligence and diplomacy.

They never referred to the riot: they were looking to the future.

I didn't know that there were such Negroes in Atlanta."

Out of this beginning grew the Atlanta Civic League.

Knowing that race prejudice was strong, Mr. Hopkins sent out 2,000 cards, inviting the most prominent men in the city to become members.

To his surprise 1,500 immediately accepted, only two refused, and those anonymously; 500 men not formally invited were also taken as members.

The league thus had the great body of the best citizens of Atlanta behind it.

At the same time Mr. Proctor and his committee of Negroes had organised a Coloured Co-operative Civic League, which secured a membership of 1,500 of the best coloured men in the city.

A small committee of Negroes met a small committee of the white league.

Fear was expressed that there would be another riotous outbreak during the Christmas holidays, and the league proceeded with vigour to prevent it.

New policemen were put on, and the committee worked with Judge Broyles and Judge Roan in issuing statements warning the people against lawlessness.

They secured an agreement among the newspapers not to publish sensational news; the sheriff agreed, if necessary, to swear in some of the best men in town as extra deputies; they asked that saloons be closed at four o'clock on Christmas Eve; and through the Negro committee, they brought influence to bear to keep all coloured people off the streets.

When two county police got drunk at Brownsville and threatened Mrs. Fambro, the wife of one of the Negroes killed in the riot, a member of the committee, Mr. Seeley, publisher of the _Georgian_, informed the sheriff and sent his automobile to Brownsville, where the policemen were arrested and afterward discharged from the force.

As a result, it was the quietest Christmas Atlanta had had in years.

But the most important of all the work done, because of the spectacular interest it aroused, was the defence of a Negro charged with an assault upon a white woman.

It is an extraordinary and dramatic story.

_Does a Riot Prevent Further Crime?

_ Although many people said that the riot would prevent any more Negro crime, several attacks on white women occurred within a few weeks afterward.

On November 13th Mrs. J.

D.

Camp, living in the suburbs of Atlanta, was attacked in broad daylight in her home and brutally assaulted by a Negro, who afterward robbed the house and escaped.

Though the crime was treated with great moderation by the newspapers, public feeling was intense.

A Negro was arrested, charged with the crime.

Mr. Hopkins and his associates believed that the best way to secure justice and prevent lynchings was to have a prompt trial.

Accordingly, they held a conference with Judge Roan, as a result of which three lawyers in the city, Mr. Hopkins, L. Z.

Rosser, and J. E.

McClelland, were appointed to defend the accused Negro, serving without pay.

A trial-jury, composed of twelve citizens, among the most prominent in Atlanta, was called--one of the ablest juries ever drawn in Georgia.

There was a determination to have immediate and complete justice.

The Negro arrested, one Joe Glenn, had been completely identified by Mrs. Camp as her assailant.

Although having no doubt of his guilt, the attorneys went at the case thoroughly.

The first thing they did was to call in two members of the Negro committee, Mr. Davis and Mr. Carter.

These men went to the jail and talked with Glenn, and afterward they all visited the scene of the crime.

They found that Glenn, who was a man fifty years old with grandchildren, bore an excellent reputation.

He rented a small farm about two miles from Mrs. Camp's home and had some property; he was sober and industrious.

After making a thorough examination and getting all the evidence they could, they came back to Atlanta, persuaded, in spite of the fact that the Negro had been positively identified by Mrs. Camp--which in these cases is usually considered conclusive--that Glenn was not guilty.

It was a most dramatic trial; at first, when Mrs. Camp was placed on the stand she failed to identify Glenn; afterward, reversing herself she broke forth into a passionate denunciation of him.

But after the evidence was all in, the jury retired, and reported two minutes later with a verdict "Not guilty."

Remarkably enough, just before the trial was over the police informed the court that another Negro, named Will Johnson, answering Mrs. Camp's description, had been arrested, charged with the crime.

He was subsequently identified by Mrs. Camp.

Without this energetic defence, an innocent, industrious Negro would certainly have been hanged--or if the mob had been ahead of the police, as it usually is, he would have been lynched.

But what of Glenn afterward?

When the jury left the box Mr. Hopkins turned to Glenn and said: "Well, Joe, what do you think of the case?"

He replied: "Boss I 'spec's they will hang me, for that lady said I was the man, but they won't hang me, will they, 'fore I sees my wife and chilluns again?"

He was kept in the tower that night and the following day for protection against a possible lynching.

Plans were made by his attorneys to send him secretly out of the city to the home of a farmer in Alabama, whom they could trust with the story.

Glenn's wife was brought to visit the jail and Glenn was told of the plans for his safety, and instructed to change his name and keep quiet until the feeling of the community could be ascertained.

A ticket was purchased by his attorneys, with a new suit of clothes, hat, and shoes.

He was taken out of jail about midnight under a strong guard, and safely placed on the train.

From that day to this he has never been heard of.

He did not go to Alabama.

The poor creature, with the instinct of a hunted animal, did not dare after all to trust the white men who had befriended him.

He is a fugitive, away from his family, not daring, though innocent, to return to his home.

_Other Reconstruction Movements_ Another strong movement also sprung into existence.

Its inspiration was religious.

Ministers wrote a series of letters to the Atlanta _Constitution_.

Clark Howell, its editor, responded with an editorial entitled "Shall We Blaze the Trail?"

W.

J.

Northen, Ex-Governor of Georgia, and one of the most highly respected men in the state, took up the work, asking himself, as he says: "What am I to do, who have to pray every night?"

He answered that question by calling a meeting at the Coloured Y. M. C. A.

building, where some twenty white men met an equal number of Negroes, mostly preachers, and held a prayer meeting.

The South still looks to its ministers for leadership--and they really lead.

The sermons of men like the Rev. John E. White, the Rev. C. B.

Wilmer, the Rev. W.

W.

Landrum, who have spoken with power and ability against lawlessness and injustice to the Negro, have had a large influence in the reconstruction movement.

Ex-Governor Northen travelled through the state of Georgia, made a notable series of speeches, urged the establishment of law and order organisations, and met support wherever he went.

He talked against mob-law and lynching in plain language.

Here are some of the things he said: "We shall never settle this until we give absolute justice to the Negro.

We are not now doing justice to the Negro in Georgia.

"Get into contact with the best Negroes; there are plenty of good Negroes in Georgia.

What we must do is to get the good white folks to leaven the bad white folks and the good Negroes to leaven the bad Negroes."

"There must be no aristocracy of crime: a white fiend is as much to be dreaded as a black brute."

These movements did not cover specifically, it will be observed, the enormously difficult problems of politics, and the political relationships of the races, nor the subject of Negro education, nor the most exasperating of all the provocatives--those problems which arise from human contact in street cars, railroad trains, and in life generally.

That they had to meet the greatest difficulties in their work is shown by such an editorial as the following, published December 12th by the Atlanta _Evening News_: No law of God or man can hold back the vengeance of our white men upon such a criminal [the Negro who attacks a white woman].

If necessary, we will double and treble and quadruple the law of Moses, and hang off-hand the criminal, or failing to find that a remedy, we will hang two, three, or four of the Negroes nearest to the crime, until the crime is no longer done or feared in all this Southern land that we inhabit and love.

On January 31, 1907, the newspaper which published this editorial went into the hands of a receiver--its failure being due largely to the strong public sentiment against its course before and during the riot.

After the excitement of the riot and the evil results which followed it began to disappear it was natural that the reconstruction movements should quiet down.

Ex-Governor Northen continued his work for many months and is indeed, still continuing it: and there is no doubt that his campaigns have had a wide influence.

The feeling that the saloons and dives of Atlanta were partly responsible for the riot was a powerful factor in the anti-saloon campaign which took place in 1907 and resulted in closing every saloon in the state of Georgia on January 1, 1908. And the riot and the revulsion which followed it will combine to make a recurrence of such a disturbance next to impossible.