Following the Color Line — The Southern City Negro - part 1

CHAPTER III THE SOUTHERN CITY NEGRO

After my arrival in Atlanta, and when I had begun to understand some of the more superficial ramifications of the colour line (as I related in the last chapter,) I asked several Southern men whose acquaintance I had made where I could best see the poorer or criminal class of Negroes.

So much has been said of the danger arising from this element of Southern population and it plays such a part in every discussion of the race question that I was anxious to learn all I could about it.

"Go down any morning to Judge Broyles's court," they said to me, "and you'll see the lowest of the low."

So I went down--the first of many visits I made to police and justice courts.

I chose a Monday morning that I might see to the best advantage the accumulation of the arrests of Saturday and Sunday.

The police station stands in Decatur Street, in the midst of the very worst section of the city, surrounded by low saloons, dives, and pawn-shops.

The court occupies a great room upstairs, and it was crowded that morning to its capacity.

Besides the police, lawyers, court officers, and white witnesses, at least one hundred and fifty spectators filled the seats behind the rail, nearly all of them Negroes.

The ordinary Negro loves nothing better than to sit and watch the proceedings of a court.

Judge Broyles kindly invited me to a seat on the platform at his side where I could look into the faces of the prisoners and hear all that was said.

_In a Southern Police Court_ It was a profoundly interesting and significant spectacle.

In the first place the very number of cases was staggering.

The docket that morning carried over one hundred names--men, women, and children, white and black; the court worked hard, but it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon before the room was cleared.

Atlanta, as I showed in a former chapter, has the largest number of arrests, considering the population, of any important city in the United States.

I found that 13,511 of the total of 21,702 persons arrested in 1906 were Negroes, or 62 per cent.

, whereas the coloured population of the city is only 40 per cent.

of the total.

[2] A very large proportion of the arrests that Monday morning were Negroes, with a surprising proportion of women and of mere children.

In 1906 3,194 Negro women were arrested in Atlanta.

It was altogether a pitiful and disheartening exhibition, a spectacle of sodden ignorance, reckless vice, dissipation.

Most of the cases, ravelled out, led back to the saloon.

"Where's your home?"

the judge would ask, and in a number of cases the answer was: "Ah come here fum de country."

Over and over again it was the story of the country Negro, or the Negro who had been working on the railroad, in the cotton fields or in the sawmills, who had entered upon the more complex life of the city.

Most of the country districts of the South prohibit the sale of liquor; and Negroes, especially, have comparatively little temptation of this nature, nor are they subjected to the many other glittering pitfalls of city life.

But of late years the opportunities of the city have attracted the black people, just as they have the whites, in large numbers.

Atlanta had many saloons and other places of vice; and the results are to be seen in Judge Broyles's court any morning.

And not only Negroes, but the "poor whites" who have come in from the mountains and the small farms to work in the mills: they, too, suffer fully as much as the Negroes.

_Negro Cocaine Victims_ Not a few of the cases both black and white showed evidences of cocaine or morphine poisoning--the blear eyes, the unsteady nerves.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A NEGRO WORKINGMAN'S HOME, ATLANTA, GEORGIA] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A NEGRO HOME OF THE POOREST SORT IN INDIANAPOLIS]

"What's the trouble here?"

asked the judge.

"Coke," said the officer.

"Ten-seventy-five," said the judge, naming the amount of the fine.

They buy the "coke" in the form of a powder and snuff it up the nose; a certain patent catarrh medicine which is nearly all cocaine is sometimes used; ten cents will purchase enough to make a man wholly irresponsible for his acts, and capable of any crime.

The cocaine habit, which seems to be spreading, for there are always druggists who will break the law, has been a curse to the Negro and has resulted, directly, as the police told me, in much crime.

I was told of two cases in particular, of offences against women, in which the Negro was a victim of the drug habit.

So society, in pursuit of wealth, South and North, preys upon the ignorant and weak--and then wonders why crime is prevalent!

One has only to visit police courts in the South to see in how many curious ways the contact of the races generates fire.

"What's the trouble here?"

inquires the judge.

The white complainant--a boy--says: "This nigger insulted me!"

and he tells the epithet the Negro applied.

"Did you call him that?"

"No sah, I never called him no such name."

"Three-seventy-five--you mustn't insult white people."

And here is the report of the case of a six-year-old Negro boy from the _Georgian_: Because Robert Lee Buster, a six-year-old Negro boy, insulted Maggie McDermott, a little girl, who lives at 507 Simpson Street, Wednesday afternoon, he was given a whipping in the police station Thursday morning that will make him remember to be good.

The case was heard in the juvenile court before Judge Broyles.

It was shown that the little Negro had made an insulting remark to the little girl.

_Story of a Negro Arrest_ The very suspicion and fear that exist give rise to many difficulties.

One illuminating case came up that morning.

A strapping Negro man was brought before the judge.

He showed no marks of dissipation and was respectably dressed.

Confronting him were two plain-clothes policemen, one with his neck wrapped up, one with a bandage around his arm.

Both said they had been stabbed by the Negro with a jack-knife.

The Negro said he was a hotel porter and he had the white manager of the hotel in court to testify to his good character, sobriety, and industry.

It seems that he was going home from work at nine o'clock in the evening, and it was dark.

He said he was afraid and had been afraid since the riot.

At the same time the two policemen were looking for a burglar.

They saw the Negro porter and ordered him to stop.

Not being in uniform the Negro said he thought the officers were "jes' plain white men" who were going to attack him.

When he started to run the officers tried to arrest him, and he drew his jack-knife and began to fight.

And here he was in court!

The judge said: "You mustn't attack officers," and bound him over to trial in the higher court.

_A White Man and a Negro Woman_ Another case shows one of the strange relationships which grow out of Southern conditions.

An old white man, much agitated and very pale, was brought before the judge.

With him came a much younger, comely appearing woman.

Both were well dressed and looked respectable--so much so, indeed, that there was a stir of interest and curiosity among the spectators.

Why had they been arrested?

As they stood in front of the judge's desk, the old man hung his head, but the woman looked up with such an expression, tearless and tragic, as I hope I shall not have to see again.

"What's the charge?"

asked the judge.

"Adultery," said the officer.

The woman winced, the old man did not look up.

The judge glanced from one to the other in surprise.

"Why don't you get married?"

he asked.

"The woman," said the officer, "is a nigger."

She was as white as I am, probably an octoroon; I could not have distinguished her from a white person, and she deceived even the experienced eye of the judge.

"Is that so?"

asked the judge.

The man continued to hang his head, the woman looked up; neither said a word.

It then came out that they had lived together as man and wife for many years and that they had children nearly grown.

One of the girls--and a very bright, ambitious girl--as I learned later, was a student in Atlanta University, a Negro college, where she was supported by her father, who made good wages as a telegraph operator.

Some neighbour had complained and the man and woman were arrested.

"Is this all true?"

asked the judge.

Neither said a word.

"You can't marry under the Georgia law," said the judge; "I'll have to bind you over for trial in the county court."

They were led back to the prisoners' rooms.

A few minutes later the bailiff came out quickly and said to the judge: "The old man has fallen in a faint."

Not long afterward they half led, half carried him out across the court room.

One thing impressed me especially, not only in this court but in all others I have visited: a Negro brought in for drunkenness, for example, was punished much more severely than a white man arrested for the same offence.

The injustice which the weak everywhere suffer--North and South--is in the South visited upon the Negro.

The white man sometimes escaped with a reprimand, he was sometimes fined three dollars and costs, but the Negro, especially if he had no white man to intercede for him, was usually punished with a ten or fifteen dollar fine, which often meant that he must go to the chain-gang.

One of the chief causes of complaint by the Negroes of Atlanta has been of the rough treatment of the police and of unjust arrests.

After the riot, when the Civic League, composed of the foremost white citizens of Atlanta, was organised, one of the first subjects that came up was that of justice to the Negro.

Mr. Hopkins, the leader of the League, said to me: "We complain that the Negroes will not help to bring the criminals of their race to justice.

One reason for that is that the Negro has too little confidence in our courts.

We must give him that, above all things."

In accordance with this plan, the Civic League, heartily supported by Judge Broyles, employed a young lawyer, Mr. Underwood, to appear regularly in court and look after the interests of Negroes.

_Convicts Making a Profit for Georgia_ One reason for the very large number of arrests--in Georgia particularly--lies in the fact that the state and the counties make a profit out of their prison system.

No attempt is ever made to reform a criminal, either white or coloured.

Convicts are hired out to private contractors or worked on the public roads.

Last year the net profit to Georgia from its chain-gangs, to which the prison commission refers with pride, reached the great sum of ,853. 55. Of course a very large proportion of the prisoners are Negroes.

The demand for convicts by rich sawmill operators, owners of brick-yards, large farmers, and others is far in advance of the supply.

The natural tendency is to convict as many men as possible--it furnishes steady, cheap labour to the contractors and a profit to the state.

Undoubtedly this explains in some degree the very large number of criminals, especially Negroes, in Georgia.

One of the leading political forces in Atlanta is a very prominent banker who is a dominant member of the city police board.

He is also the owner of extensive brick-yards near Atlanta, where many convicts are employed.

Some of the large fortunes in Atlanta have come chiefly from the labour of chain-gangs of convicts leased from the state.

_Fate of the Black Boy_ As I have already suggested, one of the things that impressed me strongly in visiting Judge Broyles's court--and others like it--was the astonishing number of children, especially Negroes, arrested.

Some of them were very young and often exceedingly bright-looking.

From the records I find that in 1906 1 boy six years old, 7 of seven years, 33 of eight years, 69 of nine years, 107 of ten years, 142 of eleven years, and 219 of twelve years were arrested and brought into court--in other words, 578 boys and girls, mostly Negroes, under twelve years of age!

"I should think," I said to a police officer, "you would have trouble in taking care of all these children in your reformatories."

"Reformatories!"

he said, "there aren't any."

"What do you do with them?"

"Well, if they're bad we put 'em in the stockade or the chain-gang, otherwise they're turned loose."

I found, however, that a new state juvenile reformatory was just being opened at Milledgeville--which may accommodate a few Negro boys.

An attempt is also being made in Atlanta to get hold of some of the children through a new probation system.

I talked with the excellent officer, Mr. Gloer, who works in conjunction with Judge Broyles.

He reaches a good many white boys, but very few Negroes.

Of 1,011 boys and girls under sixteen, arrested in 1905, 819 were black, but of those given the advantage of the probation system, 50 were white and only 7 coloured.

In other words, out of 819 arrests of Negro children only 7 enjoyed the benefit of the probation system.

Mr. Gloer has endeavoured to secure a coloured assistant who would help look after the swarming Negro children who are becoming criminals.

The city refused to appropriate money for that purpose, but some of the leading coloured citizens agreed to contribute one dollar a month each, and a Negro woman was employed to help with the coloured children brought into court.

Excellent work was done, but owing to the feeling after the riot the Negro assistant discontinued her work.

_Care of Negro Orphans_ With many hundreds of Negro orphans, waifs, and foundlings, the state or city does very little to help them.

If it were not for the fact that the Negroes, something like the Jews, are wonderfully helpful to one another, adopting orphan children with the greatest willingness, there would be much suffering.

Several orphanages in the state are conducted by the coloured people themselves, either through their churches or by private subscription.

In Atlanta the Carrie Steele orphanage, which is managed by Negroes, has received an appropriation yearly from the city, and has taken children sent by the city charities department.

After the riot the appropriation was suddenly cut off without explanation, but through the activities of the new Civic League, it was, I understand, restored.

Without proper reformatories or asylums, with small advantage of the probation system, hundreds of Negro children are on the streets of Atlanta every day--shooting craps, stealing, learning to drink.

A few, shut up in the stockade, or in chain-gangs, without any attempt to reform them or teach them, take lessons in crime from older offenders and come out worse than they went in.

They spread abroad the lawlessness they learn and finally commit some frightful crime and get back into the chain-gang for life--where they make a profit for the state!

Every child, white or coloured, is getting an education somewhere.

If that education is not in schools, or at home, or, in cases of incorrigibility, in proper reformatories, then it is on the streets or in chain-gangs.

_Why Negro Children Are Not in School_ My curiosity, aroused by the very large number of young prisoners, led me next to inquire why these children were not in school.

I visited a number of schools and I talked with L. M.

Landrum, the assistant superintendent.

Compulsory education is not enforced anywhere in the South, so that children may run the streets unless their parents insist upon sending them to school.

I found more than this, however, that Atlanta did not begin to have enough school facilities for the children who wanted to go.

Like many rapidly growing cities, both South and North, it has been difficult to keep up with the demand.

Just as in the North the tenement classes are often neglected, so in the South the lowest class--which is the Negro--is neglected.

Several new schools have been built for white children, but there has been no new school for coloured children in fifteen or twenty years (though one Negro private school has been taken over within the last few years by the city).

So crowded are the coloured schools that they have two sessions a day, one squad of children coming in the forenoon, another in the afternoon.

The coloured teachers, therefore, do double work, for which they receive about two-thirds as much salary as the white teachers.

Though many Southern cities have instituted industrial training in the public schools, Atlanta so far has done nothing.

The president of the board of education in his last published report (1903) calls attention to this fact, and says also: While on the subject of Negro schools, permit me to call your attention to their overcrowded condition.

In every Negro school many teachers teach two sets of pupils, each set for one-half of a school day.

The last bond election was carried by a majority of only thirty-three votes.

To my personal knowledge more than thirty-three Negroes voted for the bonds on the solemn assurance that by the passage of the bonds the Negro children would receive more school accommodations.

The eagerness of the coloured people for a chance to send their children to school is something astonishing and pathetic.

They will submit to all sorts of inconveniences in order that their children may get an education.

One day I visited the mill neighbourhood of Atlanta to see how the poorer classes of white people lived.

I found one very comfortable home occupied by a family of mill employees.

They hired a Negro woman to cook for them, and while they sent their children to the mill to work, the cook sent her children to school!

_How Negroes Educate Themselves_ Here is a curious and significant thing I found in Atlanta.

Because there is not enough room for Negro children in public schools, the coloured people maintain many private schools.

The largest of these, called Morris Brown College, has nearly 1,000 pupils.

Some of them are boarders from the country, but the greater proportion are day pupils from seven years old up who come in from the neighbourhood.

This "college," in reality a grammar school, is managed and largely supported by tuition and contributions from Negroes, though some subscriptions are obtained in the North.

Besides this "college" there are many small private schools conducted by Negro women and supported wholly by the tuition paid--the Negroes thus voluntarily taxing themselves heavily for their educational opportunities.

One afternoon in Atlanta I passed a small, rather dilapidated home.

Just as I reached the gate I heard a great cackling of voices and much laughter.

Coloured children began to pour out of the house.

"What's this?"

I said, and I turned in to see.

I found a Negro woman, the teacher, standing in the doorway.

She had just dismissed her pupils for recess.

She was holding school in two little rooms where some fifty children must have been crowded to suffocation.

Everything was very primitive and inconvenient--but it was a school!

She collected, she told me, a dollar a month tuition for each child.

Mollie McCue's school, perhaps the best known private school for Negroes in the city, has 250 pupils.

Many children also find educational opportunities in the Negro colleges of the city--Clark University, Atlanta University and Spellman Seminary, which are supported partly by the Negroes themselves but mostly by Northern philanthropy.

Mr. Landrum gave me a copy of the last statistical report of the school board (1903), from which these facts appear: School No. of With Without Population Schools Teachers Seats Seats White 14,465 20 200 10,052 4,413 Coloured 8,118 5 49 2,445 5,673 Even with a double daily session for coloured pupils nearly half of the Negro children in Atlanta, even in 1903, were barred from the public schools from lack of facilities, and the number has increased largely in the last four years.

Some of these are accommodated in the private schools and colleges which I have mentioned, but there still remain hundreds, even thousands, who are getting no schooling of any kind, but who are nevertheless being educated--on the streets, and for criminal lives.

_White Instruction for Black Children_ I made a good many inquiries to find out what was being done outside of the public schools by the white people toward training the Negro either morally, industrially or intellectually--and I was astonished to find that it was next to nothing.

The Negro is, of course, not welcome at the white churches or Sunday schools, and the sentiment is so strong against teaching the Negro that it is a brave Southern man or woman, indeed, who dares attempt anything of the sort.

I did find, however, that the Central Presbyterian Church of Atlanta conducted a Negro Sunday School.

Of this Dr. Theron H. Rice, the pastor, said: "The Sunday School conducted in Atlanta by my church is the outcome of the effort of some of the most earnest and thoughtful of our people to give careful religious training to the Negroes of this generation and thus to conserve the influence begun with the fathers and mothers and the grandfathers and grandmothers of these coloured children when they were taught personally by their devoted Christian masters and mistresses.

The work is small in point of the number reached, but it has been productive of sturdy character and law-abiding citizenship."

A white man or woman, and especially a Northern white man or woman, in Atlanta who teaches Negroes is rigorously ostracised by white society.

I

visited one of the Negro colleges where there are a number of white teachers from the North.

We had quite a talk.

When I came to leave one of the teachers said to me: "You don't know how good it seems to talk with some one from the outside world.

We work here year in and year out without a white visitor, except those who have some necessary business with the institution."

Explaining the attitude toward these Northern teachers (and we must understand just how the Southern people feel in this matter), a prominent clergyman said that a lady who made a social call upon a teacher in that institution would not feel secure against having to meet Negroes socially and that when the call was returned a similar embarrassing situation might be created.

_Apologising for Helping Negroes_ Just in this connection: I found a very remarkable and significant letter published in the Orangeburg, S. C.

, _News_, signed by a well-to-do white citizen who thus apologises for a kind act to a Negro school: I had left my place of business here on a business trip a few miles below, on returning I came by the above-mentioned school (the Prince Institute, coloured), and was held up by the teacher and begged to make a few remarks to the children.

Very reluctantly I did so, not thinking that publicity would be given to it or that I was doing anything that would offend anyone.

I wish to say here and now that I am heartily sorry for what I did, and I hope after this humble confession and expression of regret that all whom I have offended will forgive me.

The sentiment indicated by this letter, while widely prevalent, is by no means universal.

I have seen Southern white men address Negro schools and Negro gatherings many times since I have been down here.

Some of the foremost men in the South have accepted Booker T. Washington's invitations to speak at Tuskegee.

And concerning the very letter that I reproduce above, the _Charlotte Observer_, a strong Southern newspaper, which copied it, said: A man would better be dead than to thus abase himself.

This man did right to address the pupils of a coloured school, but has spoiled all by apologising for it.

Few people have conceived that race prejudice went so far, even in South Carolina, as is here indicated.

Logically it is to be assumed that this jelly-fish was about to be put under the ban, and to secure exemption from this, published this abject card.

To it was appended a certificate from certain citizens, saying they 'are as anxious to see the coloured race elevated as any people, but by all means let it be done inside the colour line.'

The narrowness and malignity betrayed in this Orangeburg incident is exceedingly unworthy, and those guilty of it should be ashamed of themselves.

The Rev. H.

S.

Bradley, for a long time one of the leading clergymen of Atlanta, now of St. Louis, said in a sermon published in the Atlanta _Constitution_: ...

We have not been wholly lacking in our effort to help.

There are a few schools and churches supported by Southern whites for the Negroes.

Here and there a man like George Williams Walker, of the aristocracy of South Carolina, and a woman like Miss Belle H. Bennett, of the blue blood of Kentucky, goes as teacher to the Negro youth, and seeks in a Christly spirit of fraternity to bring them to a higher plane of civil and moral manhood, but the number like them can almost be counted on fingers of both hands.

Our Southern churches have spent probably a hundred times as much money since the Civil War in an effort to evangelise the people of China, Japan, India, South America, Africa, Mexico, and Cuba, as they have spent to give the Gospel to the Negroes at our doors.

It is often true that opportunity is overlooked because it lies at our feet.