CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 5 

Address of Chairman 9 

By Mr. William Hayes Ward 
Race Differentiation Race Characteristics 14 

By Prof. Livingston Farrand 
The Negro Brain 22 

By Prof. Burt G. Wilder 
Address 67 

By Prof. Edwin R. A. Seligman 
Address 71 

By Prof. John Dewey 
Race Reconciliation 74 

By Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley 
Politics and Industry 79 

By Prof. W. E. B. DuBois 
Race Prejudice as Viewed from an Economic Standpoint. .. 89 

By Dr. William L. Bulkley 
The Negro and the South 98 

By Mr. William English Walling 

Discussion no 

Address of Chairman 121 

By Judge Wendell Phillips Stafford 
Address 127 

By Mr. John T. Milholland 
The Race Problem 131 

By the Rev. Jenkins Lloyd Jones 
Is the Southern Position Anglo-Saxon ? 136 

By Prof. John Spencer Bassett 
Evolution of the Race Problem 142 

By Prof. W. E. B. DuBois 
The Problem s Solution 159 

By the Rev. J. Milton Waldron 
Civil and Political Status of the Negro 167 

By Bishop A. Walters 



341993 



Lynching Our National Crime 174 

By Mrs. Ida Wells-Barnett 
Negro Disfranchisement as it Affects the White Man 180 

By Hon. Albert E. Pillsbury 
The Need of Organization 197 

By Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard 
Effect on Poor Whites of Discrimination Against Negroes.. 207 

By Hon. Joseph C. Manning 
The Negro and the Nation 211 

By Dr. William A. Sinclair 
Address 214 

By the Rev. C. E. Stowe 
Address 217 

By the Rev. E. W. Moore 
Address 220 

By Mr. Charles Edward Russell 

Resolutions 222 

Letter from Mr. William Lloyd Garrison 226 

Letter from Hon. Brand Whitlock . . .228 



PREFACE 



Early in 1909 some twenty persons met together in 
New York City for the purpose of utilizing the public in 
terest in the Lincoln Centennial in behalf of our colored 
fellow citizens. Within a few weeks this number was 
enlarged to about fifty, one-third of whom were from 
other cities than New York. From the outset this com 
mittee was composed of white and colored people alike, 
and represented the most varied opinions; all agreed only 
in the feeling that no one of the great efforts now being 
made by the Negroes or by whites in their behalf or all 
of them put together fully responded to the needs of the 
situation. 

It was the opinion of all the members of the prelimi 
nary committee,* and I believe also of every one of those 
since interested in the Conference, that the most neglect 
ed side of the Negro s welfare is his right to civil and 
political equality, recognized for nearly half a century in 
this country and clearly expressed in the Constitution. 

It was realized that no organization then ex 
isted, composed of colored and white people alike, that 
was making its main object the preservation of these 
rights, now threatened from so many quarters. It 
was considered highly important to establish a re- 



*The Committee invites communications of all kinds, not only 
questions as to its work, but all possible information and sug 
gestions concerning the civil and political status of the colored 
people and related matters, the deteriorating effects of civil and 
political wrongs on general welfare; and also with reference to 
the indirect effect of such civil and political disabilities on those 
white elements of the population which, being most similarly 
situated to the Negroes in their daily life and occupations, are 
often similarly affected by the prevailing persecution. 



lation between organisations already in existence 
as well as among individuals who, while working for the 
colored population primarily in some other direction, were 
also, firmly decided to stand for the Negro s political and 
civil rights, but were unable to do so effectively on ac 
count of the absence of such an established relationship. 

The same unanimity that prevailed in regard to the 
main objects of the new organization extended also to 
its choice of methods. It was decided that a series of 
conferences would be the best means at once to 
attract the attention of all those who might become 
interested in the proposed organization, to put the pres 
ent situation of the Negro in its entirety in the fore 
ground of public interest and to establish a basis of fact, 
reasoned policy and even of science for its future 
conduct. 

The first Conference was necessarily of a general char 
acter. It is hoped and believed that each of the coming 
conferences will be limited to a more definite field, 
and therefore give results of a still greater scientific 
value. The intention is, also, to make them even more 
thoroughly representative of the whole body of opinion 
in this country that stands for all the rights of the col 
ored population including equal opportunity to enter 
into and to rise in every field of employment, public and 
private, ivithout exception. 

The results of the first Conference more than justified 
the greatest hopes of its promoters. The programme, 
as arranged, while covering a very broad field, showed 
the feasibility of building up an organization on these lines. 
The character of the delegations composing the Confer 
ence and its final action proved the possibility of secur 
ing harmony between half a dozen different currents of 
opinion favoring the Negroes, already existing among 
the white population, and a similar number of diverging 
movements among the colored people themselves. 



It is confidently believed that the proceedings of the 
first Conference of 1909 and the resolutions passed will 
serve as a convincing appeal for public support, that they 
will bring not only a very large increase in the number 
of those attending the conference but also new forces 
which will strengthen it for the work it has already un 
dertaken, broaden its scope and define still more clearly 
the friendly attitude of all public-spirited and democratic 
citizens. 

In view of the resolutions adopted in 1909 it is 
scarcely necessary to state that it is the deep conviction 
of all that not only the ultimate solution of the problem 
but the crying necessities of the moment will be best met 
not by any suppression or postponement of the fullest 
and freest possible discussion of the question in all its 
aspects, but by bringing it into the very foreground of 
public attention. Every available means should be adopt 
ed for this purpose, not only investigations of the situa 
tion in all of its manifold forms and in every section of 
the country, but also conferences, public meetings, 
speeches and articles by members of the organization and 
all others interested, co-operation with other organiza 
tions and the furnishing to the public press of news hith 
erto suppressed or difficult to obtain. 

By all these and other means it is hoped and believed 
that the so-called Negro question, in its broader aspects, 
will become more and more a subject of daily interest 
to all classes of the American people, until the nation 
is at last in a mood to deal with this momentous evil 
of race discrimination in the thoroughgoing spirit with 
which alone it can be successfully handled. 

W. E. W. 
NATIONAL NEGRO CONFERENCE HEADQUARTERS, 

500 FIFTH AVENUE, 
NEW YORK CITY. 



Morning Session, May 31 
William Hayes Ward, Chairman 



Address of 

William Hayes Ward 

Editor The Independent 
New York 

The purpose of this conference is to emphasize in word 
and, so far as possible, in act, the principle that equal jus 
tice should be done to man as man, and particularly to the 
Negro, without regard to race, color or previous condi 
tion of servitude. It is not strange that with the aboli 
tion of slavery, and the legal and nominal grant of suf 
frage and equal rights to care for himself, there should 
have followed, with many among us, a cooling sympathy, 
or the thought that our duty was all done and that now 
the freedman could look out for himself as the rest of 
us do. As the years have passed and a new generation 
has come which has no memory of the Civil War or of 
the Proclamation of Emancipation, and no knowledge of 
the efforts made during the period of reconstruction and 
the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend 
ments to reduce the Negro back to a condition of serf 
dom, we need not wonder that the old fervor of sympa 
thy has much subsided, while at the same time there has 
been a readiness to apologize for old wrongs; and we 
have even seen the effort, too often successful, to pervert 
the history of the old struggle. 

There is an absolute divergence of view between the 
ruling majority in the South, who desire to hold the 

9 



Negro in virtual serfdom, and ourselves. They are, in 
a degree, honest in their position, if not Christian. They 
believe that the Negro is essentially inferior, something 
less than fully human, half a brute, and incapable of 
reaching the standard of civilization. This is an ignor 
ant position, but yet actually held and believed. I sup 
pose that it is not generally known what is the scientific 
basis of that popular opinion which still finds its ex 
pression in speeches, editorials, and books, and even in 
popular novels and plays. For that belief the respon 
sibility rests on a book which for some years before the 
Civil War had great circulation and influence, and which 
was the armory from which the defenders of slavery 
drew their weapons and ammunition. It was entitled 
The Types of Mankind" by Nott and Glidden. Dr. Nott 
was a physician and he contributed to the work all the 
data of anatomy and ethnology which could be gathered 
to show the physical and mental inferiority of the Negro. 
Particularly he argued that the smaller brain and simpler 
brain structure of the Negro made it absolutely impossi 
ble that he could ever rise to be anything more than an 
inferior and subject race. Mr. Glidden had been a trav 
eler in Egypt, somewhat of a student of its antiquities, 
and he contributed the evidence that in the time of the 
Egyptian grandeur the Negro was also subject and 
slave; and to this he added all the proofs possible to 
show the degraded condition of the various Negro tribes, 
their cannibalism and sensuality, their resistance to civi 
lization, and the conclusion that to them slavery has 
been the greatest blessing. The book had a great vogue. 
It claimed to give the last word of science. Its con 
clusions were very pleasing to those who profited by 
slavery, and to this day, while the book is forgotten, its 
assertions are repeated as if they were still uncontra- 
dicted, and a multitude of people believe them true. 
Doubtless Dr. Nott believed them true. Immediately 

TO 



after the Civil War he had occasion to reiterate them with 
intense and personal emphasis. He was at the head of 
a medical school in Mobile, Alabama. The school was 
broken up, and the premises vacated. General O. O. 
Howard, at the head of the Freedmen s Bureau, seized 
the building for a school for Negroes. It was actually 
an attempt to disprove the assertions which Dr. Nott 
had made of Negro incapacity. Dr. Nott was most in 
dignant and utterly outraged. He wrote a pamphlet in 
protest, a copy of which I have in my hands, in which 
he not only bitterly assailed our government for seizing 
the premises, but with all the fury of an old prophet he 
foretold the sure failure of emancipation. He declared 
that the Negro could not support himself, that he would 
starve to death, unless the country, that is, the North, 
which had emancipated him, should feed and clothe him 
as a pauper. Let me read a few sentences which are 
mere fragments of the entire argument. 

"History proves indisputably that a superior and an 
inferior race cannot live together practically on any other 
terms than that of master and slave, and that the 
inferior race, like the Indians, must be expelled or ex 
terminated." 

"I was born among the Negroes of the South, have 
spent many years in the study of their natural and civil 
history, and feel confident in the prediction that they are 
doomed to extermination which is being cruelly hastened 
by the unwise action of a party that will not study and 
comprehend the subject it is dealing with. The Negro 
has an instinctive and unconquerable antipathy to steady 
agricultural labor, and must therefore be gradually sup 
planted by the whites, whose energy, industry and in 
telligence will rule in this and all other important pur 
suits." 

"The blacks, like the American Indians, Tartars, and 
other nomadic races, are instinctively opposed to agri- 

i j 



cultural labor, and no necessity can drive them to it. 
Slavery is the normal condition of the Negro, the most 
advantageous to him, and the most ruinous, in the end, 
to a white nation. 

"After removing your Bureau and the troops, I see 
but one duty remaining for you to perform, and that 
is, to assist us in feeding and clothing colored paupers. 
The old, the infirm, the women and children, the worth 
less vagrants, will form a burden that we are unable to 
carry. As long as women and children were property, 
and the unproductive child was one day to be a profit 
able producer, the owners could afford to feed women 
and children that constitute one-half this population. All 
this is now changed, and the capital of the South is no 
longer adequate to provide for such enormous charity. 

"I say, then, that you have brought this state of things 
upon the South, in spite of remonstrances, and you must 
pav out or see the victims of your policy starve," 

Such was the prophecy of the leading ethnologist whose 
science taught and still teaches a large section of our 
people. He declared that the Negro could never be fit 
to live on equal terms with the white, to be anything 
,more than a slave, because nature had given him nine 
I/ less cubic inches of brain than she had given us of the 
Germanic stock. Now consider how this gloomy pro 
phecy with all its science has been exploded. The Negro 
freedman has proven that he is willing to work, and 
that he is capable of thrift. He has supported himself 
and his dependent children and invalids. He has been 
the chief agricultural producer in the southern states, 
and in twenty years had doubled the cotton crops, and 
nearly quadrupled other farm products. By the last 
census 34% of the white people of Massachusetts owned 
their homes, but 37% of the Negroes of Virginia owned 
theirs. 

Negroes own more than 177,000 farms in the country, 

12 



and operate 581,000 more, a total of 38,250,000 acres. 
In Mississippi and Louisiana there are more Negro farm 
owners than white. . Thus a large part of the agricultu 
ral South is coming into the possession of Negroes. As 
to pauperism there are over a third more white paupers 
per thousand than Negro. And meanwhile the less than 
four million Negroes when Dr. Nott was writing have 
increased to about ten million. That does not look like 
extermination. 



RACE DIFFERENTIATION RACE 
CHARACTERISTICS 

Livingston Farrand M. D. 

Professor of c-/4nthropology 
Columbia University 

I have been asked to say a word here this morning on 
the general problem of race differentiation and race 
characteristics from the anthropological standpoint; and 
I am afraid I must indulge in what I wish particularly to 
warn against, and that is, generalities, because of the 
short time at my disposal. 

If there is one subject in the discussion of which cau 
tion is to be observed it is this very theme which we 
are here to consider. There is no field of investigation 
in which generalization is more frequent or in which it 
is more often unjustifiable. At the same time during 
recent years when the problem has been actively inves 
tigated it would seem that certain trends of authorita 
tive opinion have appeared, some of which it may be 
worth mentioning. 

Let me add another word of explanation, and that is 
with regard to the term "race." I believe that word 
to be at the present time in hopeless disrepute. We do 
not know what it means and are unable to agree upon 
an arbitrary definition of it. While I shall use the 
word . T wish it distinctly understood that I use it in a 
general and popular sense. 



When we are speaking of race differentiations we are 
not necessarily dealing with permanent or invariable dif 
ferences, but are simply using a convenient term and 
vehicle of discussion. Any classification of so-called 
"races" becomes a pure matter of description, and, from 
the point of view of accuracy, physical characteristics 
afford perhaps the most defensible basis for such classi 
fication. At the same time, no matter what physical fac 
tor may be taken as a criterion, we find that the varia 
tions within the groups so defined are so wide as to cause 
overlapping in every direction and make definite conclu 
sions difficult, or even impossible. This difficulty is il 
lustrated as well by the criterion of skin color as any 
other, and yet it is probably the most commonly used 
and certainly the most convenient of any of the physical 
factors suggested as a basis. 

It has been hoped that the accurate measurements of 
the skull would afford material of a character so defi 
nite that a safe foundation might be afforded, and yet 
in recent years it has become evident that even so rela 
tively stable a character as the shape of the head exhibits 
variability of the most pronounced type. It has recently 
been shown that among the Jews, distributed as they are 
throughout the civilized world among different racial 
groups of all kinds and yet retaining to a marked degree 
an apparent purity of stock or race, the head form 
varies according to the environment, that is, it tends to 
approach the head form of the group among which the 
given Jews in question may reside. 

All this by way of caution as to the difficulty in reach 
ing a classification acceptable to even a small number of 
anthropologists or others competent to form an opinion. 

The problem which more immediately concerns a con 
ference such as this is the question whether it is possible 
from an anthropological standpoint to classify groups 
of men upon a psychological basis. In other words, 

15 



are there permanent mental or psychological differences 
which will permit definite group differentiations? 

In attacking this problem we are forced to deal with 
the mental expressions and mental reactions of men in 
groups which naturally exhibit themselves as customs. 
That there are differences in such mental expressions no 
one can deny. The Australian savage differs from the 
German and the Negro differs from the Chinaman, the 
problem being to determine upon what these differences 
of mental expression ultimately rest. 

It is commonly held that two possible lines of expla 
nation are open. These psychological differences may 
represent actual differences in mental organization, which 
in turn represent different degrees of mental evolution, 
or, they may be the results simply of the mental experi 
ences of the individuals which constitute the groups in 
question. In other words, there may be differences of 
mental capacity representing the grades of development, 
or they may be the result of differences of environment 
and training which modify the mental contents of the in 
dividuals of the groups, but which do not necessarily 
represent any appreciable difference in mental organiza 
tion or development. 

The question as it is ordinarily put resolves itself into 
this : Does civilized man represent a higher stage of men 
tal evolution than the savage? 

In considering the problem we must remember that we 
are apt to form our judgments very largely upon 
differences of culture, and in so doing we are apt to con 
fuse a perfectly obvious cultural evolution with a perfect 
ly problematical mental evolution. The two terms are 
by no means synonymous. It seems clear that one may 
accumulate the products of men s minds and hand over 
the material so assembled to the child, which process car 
ried on throughout a given group will necessarily pro 
duce a higher stage of culture without making necessari- 

16 



ly one iota of difference in the initial mental capacity of 
the individuals so treated. 

There is another point which perhaps ought to be 
considered as preliminary, and that is the light which 
anatomical considerations might throw upon the question. 
I am very glad to see that this aspect of the subject is 
to be discussed by one far jriore qualified than I Profes 
sor Wilder who is to follow me this morning. But for 
fear Dr. Wilder will not say just what I would like him 
to say let me speak for a moment of my own point of 
view. 

If we consider the brain, which it is agreed is the 
anatomical factor most closely concerned with the ques 
tion, from the point of view of size, weight, and complex 
ity, we shall find undoubtedly certain differences existing 
between the brains of one racial group and those of an 
other racial group. It is true that a large series of brains 
from Central African Negroes compared with an equal 
number taken at random from Central Europe would 
show a slightly less degree of size and weight in the Afri 
can brains as compared with the European. On the other 
hand this would simply mean that the great mass of the 
two series so compared would coincide and it would only 
be in the extreme members of the two groups that any 
recognizable differences would appear. Stated in another 
way it appears that the variation within each group is so 
wide that for nearly every African brain there would be 
a corresponding European brain so far as size and weight 
are concerned. This being the case it seems obvious to 
any candid mind that inferences with regard to the de 
velopment of groups so treated are extremely dangerous 
and that inferences with regard to the mental develop 
ment of the groups so considered are entirely unjustifi 
able. This is naturally still more true from the fact that 
we are quite unable to state the correlation which may 
exist between mental capacity and brain development. 

17 



Let us not, however, fall into the similar error on the 
other side and deny with equally indefensible dogmatism 
that such differences as do exist have no significance and 
can be left entirely out of account. The only statement 
which it seems to me will bear the scrutiny of candid 
science is that thus far the investigations of this point 
are negative. 

Returning again to the question of psychology it is 
obvious that there are differences of mental expression 
in different groups of men. On the other hand if we 
inspect these groups broadly we find it equally obvious 
that the general mental processes are similar or identical. 
If we attempt to decide whether the mental capacity, so- 
called, of one group of men is greater or less than that 
of another group of men we are met at once by the dif 
ficulty of determining a criterion by which we may judge 
such differences. I have never yet been able to find psy 
chologists who could lay down exact standards appli 
cable to field observation which could be used in solving 
this particular problem. 

If we inspect the more obvious conscious processes 
such as sense perception there is certainly no difference 
to be described. The acuteness of vision of the English 
man and the American Indian are perfectly comparable 
The Indian or Australian may exhibit marvellous powers 
in following trails or in tracking game, but it has been 
shown that this skill is based not upon increased visual 
acuteness but upon training in perception of certain stim 
uli through a life of necessity. The same principle holds 
true of differences which present themselves in the other 
senses. 

If we consider certain of the more complex mental 
processes in which it might be thought that differences 
in kind might exist it seems to me that the results of 
analysis are similar to those obtained in an inspection of 
the simpler processes. 

18 



It has often been held that the ability to inhibit im 
pulses is a mark of high mental development, whether 
individual or racial. Inhibition expresses itself ordi 
narily in the individual as self-control, the ability to 
check impulse to action of one sort or another, and it 
has been assumed that the savage or more primitive in 
dividual is characterized by a lack of self-control; that 
is that he tends to yield to the impulse of the moment 
whatever it may be. It would seem that an inspection of 
the evidence would not bear out this contention. It is 
clear that the self-control exerted by the individual in 
any group is to a large extent a conventional one. He 
is taught to inhibit along certain lines in certain groups, 
and what is conventional or good form for the individual 
in one group is not necessarily so in another. You and 
I are taught from childhood to inhibit certain reactions 
and expressions and as we grow older such repression 
becomes habitual with us. The same is true of the savage. 

It was impressed upon the American Indian from his " 
earliest days that if he were put to torture by his enemies 
he was not to give way to any expression of pain, but 
to endure the utmost agony without a moan. Should 
the crucial test arrive he seldom failed to meet the de 
mand, but that same Indian in the bosom of his family 
would exhibit behavior of the most childish character 
over an injury of the slightest kind. Where there is no 
necessity or conventional call for inhibition he does not 
exhibit it. 

Further, the savage often exhibits self-control under 
conditions where you and I would be incapable of it. 
The Eskimo may be in a state of semi-starvation with 
seals lying all around him on the ice, yet if for religious 
reasons a taboo has been placed upon these seals the 
Eskimo will starve to death before he will kill and eat 
one. You and I would not do that. Your religious pre 
judice and mine would disappear in the face of hunger 



and the innate nutritive impulse. What is true of the 
Indian or the Eskimo is true of the Negro, Australian, 
and every other primitive group. The direction which 
the inhibition of impulse or self-control shall take is 
dependent largely upon training and convention, and so 
far as we can see does not exhibit particular differences 
of degree or strength. 

Probably equal attention has been given to the ques 
tion of the evolution of ethics. It seems clear that there 
are two problems involved in this discussion, one the evo 
lution of ethical standards as such, and the other the de 
gree of conformity to these standards, whatever they may 
be, as exhibited by different racial groups. We find, of 
course, that different standards exist in different groups 
and that what is right in one group may not be right in 
another, or what is right at one time may not be right 
at another, but the point which concerns us, it seems to 
me, is chiefly the degree of conformity to the standards 
recognized by particular groups rather than the standards 
themselves. Viewed in this way the strictness of con 
formity to ethical standards among savages is quite com 
parable to that which exists among civilized man. 

Time does not permit discussion of this point in de 
tail, but ethnology is full of evidence to that end. 

If I may be permitted to sum up these discursive re 
marks I have been making and to express what I believe 
is the point of view of an increasing school of anthropolo 
gists, it is that the apparent differences of mental capacity 
in different groups of men are probably to be assigned 
much more to the contents of the minds of the individuals 
of these groups than to any inherent differences of men 
tal capacity which would indicate a recognizable differ 
ence of mental evolution. 

I don t believe it is possible, I don t believe it is right 
to say that there are no differences of degree of evolu 
tion between different groups. Such a thing, of course, 

20 



is possible theoretically and I believe it is to a certain ex 
tent actually. It is reasonable to suppose that a certain 
selection has operated which would have produced pos 
sible differences of mental organization, but let us not 
forget that the time during which such special selection 
can have operated is extremely short and that further 
it is equally possible that a similar selection may have been 
going on in savage groups where conditions have not been 
favorable for the development of a culture to the point 
which we call civilization. 

Now I will inhibit. In conclusion I wish to bring 
out this one point that it is absolutely unjustifiable to 
assert that there is trustworthy evidence for the view 
that marked differences of mental capacity between the 
different races exist; that if they exist they are certainly 
of a much slighter extent than would appear from hasty 
observation. On the other hand it is equally unjustifi 
able to assert that no differences exist. 

A very wise remark was made a few years ago by an 
American sociologist when he said : "It may be true that 
blood will tell, but we must not be too hasty in saying 
just what it is that the blood tells, or which particular 
blood it is that speaks." 



21 



THE BRAIN OF THE AMERICAN 
NEGRO 

Burt G. Wilder 

Professor of Neurology and Vertebrate 
Zoology in Cornell University 

[The address on this subject, as delivered extemporaneously at 
the Negro Conference, was prepared within a necessarily lim 
ited time. For present publication it has been recast and much 
new material has been added, mainly in the form of Notes, 
Tables, Illustrations, and a List of Publications referred to.] 

Do any physical characteristics of the brain of the 
American Negro warrant discrimination against him, as 
such ? 

The American Negro is on trial, not for his life but 
for the recognition of his status, his rights and his 
opportunities. At this, as at most other trials, experts 
disagree. Fortunately, against none of them can be 
laid the charge of being influenced by the hope of 
"power or pelf." But prepossessions may result from 
circumstances, and even in science the "personal equa 
tion" must be reckoned with. Approximate impartiality 
is claimed by me because, on the one hand, as a believer 
in the derivation of the human body from some anthro 
poid stock, I incline to minimize the differences be 
tween man and the higher apes ; and because, on the 
other, during both my army and university experiences, 
there have been occasions when I was tempted to 
exclaim, "Yes, a white man is as worthy as a colored 
man provided he behaves himself as well." 

22 



To the initial question jny reply is, in brief : Respect 
ing the brains of American Negroes there are known 
to me no facts, deductions, or arguments that, in my 
opinion, justify withholding from men of African de 
scent, as such, any civil or political rights or any educa 
tional or industrial opportunities 1 that are enjoyed by 
whites 2 of equal character, intelligence, and property. 

To the above negative testimony I add the affirma 
tion, based upon personal observation, that the title to 
such rights and opportunities was earned during the 
Civil War by the general conduct of soldiers of African 
descent, by their valor, by their initiative under trying 
conditions, and by their deliberate self-sacrifice for the 
sake of a principle. 

The consideration of special aspects of the subject 
may well be prefaced by two general declarations re 
specting the African race by the late Professor Huxley; 

1. Among the matters here named should not be interjected 
questions of social or marital relations ; they are no more ger 
mane than religious affiliations. The case has been well stated 
by President Kilgo (South Atlantic Quarterly, vol 2, p. 383) : 
"Social equality is everywhere a matter of individual choice. Each 
man chooses his companions and on the grounds of personal 
congeniality. The Negroes are not socially equal among them 
selves, neither are the white people, and the wild cry that the 
time will come when one man will be forced to associate with 
another contrary to his wishes is a nightmare and a political 
hocus-pocus." Let me say here that among the cleanest phys 
ically and morally men that I have known have been some 
of African descent. As to the interdiction of legal intermar 
riage, but for the tragic aspect of the whole subject there would 
be something ludicrously inconsistent in the horror at the mere 
entrance of an African male into a southern mansion pother- 
wise than in a menial capacity) when far closer relations of 
occupants of those mansions with African females are attested 
by the numerous mulattoes, some of them rightly bearing "first 
family" names. 

2. To avoid complications all the statements in this address 
refer to males only. Unless otherwise stated, by whites are 
meant male Caucasians of the United States or Canada; by 
Negroes, Afro-Americans, men of African descent in the same 
countries. 

23 



they exemplify the clearness, consistency, conciseness, 
and correctness that characterize his writings; if they 
lack completeness (the last of the "five CV that I have 
for many years commended to my pupils) it is because 
nearly half a century has elapsed since they were 
penned,, and because he had had no opportunity of ob 
serving the modern American Negro and his treatment 
by certain individuals and communities : 

"Middle Africa exhibits a new type of humanity in 
the Negro, with his dark skin, woolly hair, projecting 
jaws, and thick lips. As a rule, the skull of the Negro is 
remarkably long; it rarely approaches the broad type, 
and never exhibits the roundness of the Mongolian. 
A cultivator of the ground and dwelling in villages; a 
maker of pottery, and a worker in the useful as well 
as ornamental metals; employing the bow and arrow as 
well as the spear, the typical Negro stands high in 
point of civilization above the Australian." Essays, 
vol. 7, p. 233. 

"It may be quite true that some Negroes are better 
than some 3 white men ; but no rational man, cognisant of 
the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, 
still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if 
this be true, when all his disabilities are removed, and 
our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, 
as well as no oppressor, 4 it is simply incredible that he 
will be able to compete successfully with his bigger- 
brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is 
to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites." Essays, 
vol. 3, p. 67. 

3. Were this valiant champion of justice alive to-day and fa 
miliar with the character and achievements of leading Afro- 
Americans he might change "some" in the first line to many, 
or even echo the opinion of the former editor of the 
South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 2, p. 299. 

4. Not to adduce more savage methods, is oppression or mere 
ly repression the appropriate term for the exclusion of a Uni 
versity professor of African descent from a public library for 
which he and his fellows are taxed? 

24 



In the foregoing paragraph Huxley meant, of course, 
that prognathism is more common among Africans than 
Caucasians ; but every observer knows that it is by 
no means either constant with the former or absent with 
the latter. In fact, by far the most prognathous human 
being that I ever saw was a trained violinist from the 
interior of Europe. In the museum of Cornell Univer 
sity the following incident was witnessed by me : 
Among a party of visiting youths were a "low-down" 
Negro and a rough Irishman. From opposite direc 
tions they chanced to approach a stuffed chimpanzee. 
As each caught sight of it he raised his finger and 
pointed, with a grin, at the other fellow. The resem 
blance was not a matter of race, but, as Prof. Farrand 
has remarked, .of individual culture. 

It will be noted that, like all other scientists known 
to me, Huxley recognizes the African as one of the 
human races. The contrary view is doubtless enter 
tained by some, but as yet, so far as I am aware, it has 
been publicly formulated only by a clergyman of the 
Lutheran denomination, Rev. G. C. H. Hasskarl. In the 
subtitle of his little book, The Missing Link" (1898), 
is the query, "Has the Negro a Soul?" His own reply 
seems to be contained in the following passages : 

"The Negro is a separate and distinct species of the 
genus homo from Adam and Eve"; p. 29. "The Negro 
is not a human being" ; p. 28. "He is inevitably a beast 
and as a beast entered the ark" ; p. 29. "The differ 
ence between the white man immortal and the Negro 
soulless"; p. 33. 

"The Missing Link" is evidently based upon narrow 
and prejudiced interpretations of the literal sense of 
certain passages of Scripture, and the arguments would 

5. A letter from Mr. Hasskarl, dated Williamsport, Pa., Dec. 
24, 1909, says : "For want of time I am unable at present to 
enter into a discussion of your soul-problem concerning the 

25 



probably appeal only to persons of comparatively lim 
ited knowledge and influence. But no such mitigating 
circumstances apply in the case of a liberally educated 
writer who had every opportunity for ascertaining the 
facts and whose statements would undoubtedly and ma 
terially affect the numerous readers intelligent but 
uninformed of a popular periodical. 

In order to avert further misapprehension of which 
there has been too much already this matter shall be 
told, so far as practicable, in selections from a corre 
spondence between Mr. Owen Wister 6 and myself. In 
terpolations are in brackets. 

My second letter to Mr. Wister was dated Dec. 29, 
1905, and ran as follows : 

"I beg to acknowledge the receipt, yesterday, of the 
reply to my queries of the 2Oth. Pardon my persistence, 
but there is more to be said. In your [very interest 
ing] story, "Lady Baltimore," in the Saturday Evening 
Post of Dec. 9th, the relator, evidently a man of at 
least average intelligence and discrimination, when shown 
three skulls, viz., of an Aryan (ordinary white), of a 
gorilla, and of a South Carolina nigger (to .quote a 
word that I would not otherwise employ), recognizes 

Negro. In about two months there will be out a publication of 
mine on Christian Pedagogy. In it I am treating of the souls 
of both man and beast, and when you have examined the same 
you will understand what I mean by the adjective soulless 
when speaking of the Negro in contrast to the white man." 

"The Missing Link" was discussed by several colored clergy 
men in the New York Tribune for May 28 and 29, 1899. 

As reported in the Tribune for February 4, 1910, the Rev. E. 
H. Richards, for thirty years a missionary in Uganda, Africa, 
believes that the Negro is descended from "one of several 
brothers of Adam." 

6. Strictly speaking the correspondence was with the private 
secretary of Mr. Wister. That the latter evidently did not 
know me from Adam or Ham was, of course, a blow to my 
self-esteem; it may also be interpreted as signifying that, while 
the scientist must have romance, the novelist may or sometimes 
thinks he may dispense with science. 

26 



a gap between the first and the other two, but between 
those two a brotherhood, a kinship which stares you 
in the face ; he avows that the difference in their names 
was the only difference he saw between them, e.g., be 
tween the skulls of a gorilla and of a South Carolina 
Negro. 

"To my inquiry as to whether this comparison was 
intended to indicate merely your own impression or was 
based upon some anthropologic authority, you reply 
that it incorporates no special knowledge, but only 
information of the ordinary kind which is to be found 
in any museum of anatomy or academy of natural 
sciences. 

"Before expressing my own opinion permit me to call 
your attention to the following paragraph from the 
first scientific account of the gorilla in the Boston 
Journal of Natural History, vol. 5, Aug. 18, 1847. Its 
author, Professor Jeffries Wyman of Harvard Univer 
sity, was noted for his freedom from prejudice, for 
his accuracy of observation, and for his clearness of 
expression. He says (using orang as a general name 
for the tailless or anthropoid apes, and thus as embrac 
ing not only the true orang but the chimpanzee and the 
gorilla) : Any anatomist who will take the trouble 
to compare the skeletons of the Negro and the orang 
cannot fail to be struck at sight with the wide gap 
which separates them. The differences between the 
cranium, etc., in the Negro and the Caucasian [here 
used, like your Aryan, as a term for the white race] 
sinks into comparative insignificance when compared 
with the vast difference which exists between the con 
formation of the same parts in the Negro and the 
orang. 

"Under Jeffries Wyman I began to compare the skulls 
of men and apes in the fall of 1859, nor has my interest 
in them ceased merely because it is now surpassed by 
my interest in their brains. Not to risk the mixing 
up of things, which Mrs. Carlyle so aptly denounced as 

27 



the great bad, let us agree that (i) There are racial 
differences; and (2) When all things are considered, 
the whites have advanced further than the blacks from 
our [presumed] ape-like ancestors. 7 

"But I believe the present state of our knowledge 
warrants the following propositions : First, in an as 
semblage of adult male skulls of the apes and the various 
human races a child would unhesitatingly separate the 
men from the apes, and might go further and set apart 
the gorilla by reason of the prominent bony crests. 
Secondly, among three skulls such as are indicated in 
your story the expert anatomist might recognize one as 
presenting certain features that are more often found 
in Africans ; but even to him, and, a fortiori, to the lay 
man, these peculiarities, as compared (to use Wyman s 
phrase) with the Vast difference between the Negro and 
the gorilla, would sink into comparative insignificance. 

The validity of these propositions may be ascertained 
from any comparative anatomist or from the collec 
tions in your city, and I venture to express the hope and 
belief that you will feel called upon to make immediate 
retraction of the contrary statements in your story. 

"At best, however, a month would have elapsed since 
the original publication. Hence, failing to receive 
within a reasonable time assurance of your intention to 
take such action, unwelcome as the task would be, I 
could not evade what seems to me the obligation to try 

7. This is also warranted by the following passage from the 
same paper of Wyman : "It cannot be denied that the Negro 
and the orang [meaning the tailless apes, as above] do afford 
the points where man and the brute, when the totality of their 
organization is considered, most nearly approach each other" ; 
1847, p. 441. In this connection, however, it should be added 
that, in respect to the location of the foramen magnum, the hole 
in the base of the skull where the brain is continuous with the 
spinal cord, Wyman found the North American Indian to rank 
lower than the Negro; 1868, p. 447. Likewise should not be 
overlooked the fact that the hair of apes and monkeys is 
straight and thus resembles that of the Negro less than it does 
the curly locks of many Caucasians. 



to arrest the further diffusion of the scientific error 
and the political venom that characterize the passages 
in question." At a meeting of the American Anthropo 
logical Society, Dec. 28, 1905, I laid the matter before that 
Society in a paper. 

Under date of Jan. 3, 1906, was given this assurance: 
"Mr. Wister will investigate the matter at the earliest 
opportunity, and if he find that what he said is not 
justified by sufficient scientific authority he will take 
every step in his power to set the matter right." 

In the February number of Alexander s Magazine, as 
part of an Appendix to the Garrison Centenary address 
as printed in the preceding number, and under the cap 
tion, "A Novelist s Needless Error," I said: "Even 
if the misstatement is qualified or retracted in the 
book- form of "Lady Baltimore," the atonement will be 
far from adequate. I print this note (and trust it may 
be reprinted) as an authoritative correction of an inju 
rious scientific error." 

Under date of Feb. 24th, in the acknowledgment of 
the receipt of a reprint of the Address and Appendix 
above mentioned, it is stated : "Mr. Wister is very 
glad you have taken the step of personally correcting 
his overstatement. It seemed to him that the personal 
and public retraction which you demanded was out of 
proportion with the error. The passage stands cor 
rected after having been submitted to Mr. Arthur Erwin 
Brown. It is a middle course between the extreme one 
originally taken in Mr. Wister s sentences, and the other 
extreme one taken in your own." 

The passage in question, on p. 171 of "Lady Balti 
more," is now as -follows : 

"There was a similarity of shape, a kinship there be 
tween the three, which stared v you in the face; but in 
the contours of the vaulted skull, the projecting jaws, 
and the great molar teeth what was to be seen? Why, 

29 



in every respect that the African departed from the 
Caucasian, he departed in the direction of the ape." 

Neither the emendation, nor the disclaimer in the 
preface of a "feeling against the colored race," seem 
to me to constitute reparation for the original wrong. 
For one cultivated and discriminating reader of the 
volume there are probably ten who have been directly 
or indirectly misled by the statement in the periodical. 
In my judgment, especially in view of the declaration 
quoted above from the letter of Jan. 3rd, "he will take 
every step in his power to set the matter right," the 
author was and still is bound to publish an explicit 
retraction in the same periodical. A nearly equal re 
sponsibility rests upon the conductors of the periodical. 

The episode narrated above has an indirect as well 
as direct significance. So far as known to me no other 
person protested against the original allegation. This 
might be taken to signify merely indifference. But it 
may also be interpreted as indicating a general lack 
of accurate knowledge respecting the skulls of apes and 
of races of men. Since such specimens are readily ob 
tained and easily prepared, and since they are exhibited 
in all large museums and represented in comprehensive 
works, there may fairly be assumed an even greater and 
more widely spread ignorance concerning the contents 
of these bony cases. Such brains are far less easily 
obtained and preserved ; in museums they are less com 
mon and less accessible; they are very complex (the 
human brain presents at least five hundred features, 
parts, and combinations of parts visible to the naked 
eye and provided with one or more names) ; and 
fewer anatomists devote themselves to their study and 
comparison. 8 Hence it may not be out of place to offer 
a few elementary statements, general and particular. 

8. It is encouraging to note that the reorganized Wistar In 
stitute of Anatomy in Philadelphia has made early and special 

30 



1. Among the brains of vertebrates, from the lamprey 
up to man, under multifarious differences of detail, 
there is recognizable such unity of type as to furnish one 
of the strongest arguments for the belief that the higher 
or more specialized forms have been evolved from 
lower or more generalized. 

2. The animals most nearly resembling man in struc 
ture are the three true apes, orang, chimpanzee, and go 
rilla. Among the points in common are the total absence 
of a tail and the presence of the cecal appendix. 9 

3. When human and ape brains are compared, whether 
from the several external surfaces (Figs. 5, 6, 7) or after 
division into right and left halves as shown in charts 
not reproduced here 10 the resemblances are so numerous 
and impressive that anyone who accepts the general 
doctrine of evolution can hardly resist the conclusion 
that men and apes have been derived from some common 
stock. 

4. Nevertheless, and irrespective of absolute size (the 
smallest human brain [680 grams or 24 ounces] out 
weighs the largest ape brain [500 grams or 17 ounces], 
see Tables I and III), between the brains of 
all animals, including the apes, and those of all human 
races, so far as examined, the differences are several, 

provision for neurologic research by experts. Even more 
imperative, in my judgment, is the acquirement by all persons 
of a certain amount of personal familiarity with brains repre 
senting the principal vertebrate groups. Upon several occa 
sions I have urged that this practical work begin in the pri 
mary school, and during the last five years I have specified, as 
most favorable for beginners, the brain of the Acanth shark 
(Squalus acanthias) commonly known as the "spiny or horned 
dog-fish"; sec the paper, 1907, and the references in it. 

9. In these respects and some others man is also approached 
by the gibbons, but in other respects these are evidently less 
removed from the tailed monkeys than are the other apes. 

10. Some of these charts included the entire brain ; but the 
figures here given represent only the cerebral hemispheres, the 
parts related most directly to consciousness, volition, and intel 
lectuality. 

31 



considerable, and practically constant. So far as I know 
there has never been examined a brain respecting which 
there could be a doubt as to its human or ape nature. 11 

5. At various times and by various writers certain 
differences have been alleged to exist between African 
and Caucasian brains, viz., color, the presence of the 
"ape-fissure" (named "pomatic by me in 1889, and "lu- 
natus" by G. Elliott Smith later), the greater frequency 
and distinctness of the postrhinal fissure (to the presence 
and morphologic significance of which I called attention 
at the American Neurological Association in 1885), the 
absence of r the "sulcus frontalis mesialis," the brevity 
of the Sylvian fissure, the lateral extension of the occip 
ital fissure, the general simplicity of fissuration, less 
development of the frontal portion of the callosum (the 
great band of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemis 
pheres, Fig. 13), ventral concavity or lateral flatten 
ing, or both, of the prefrontal lobe, less relative size of 
the entire frontal lobe, and less weight of the entire 
brain. 

6. So far as I have been able to ascertain from the 
writings of others and from my own observations, none 
of the features above ^numerated is comparable in extent 
and significance with the differences between all human 
and all ape brains ; none is constantly present in the 
African, and each occurs sometimes in the Caucasian. 

Before considering some of these alleged differences 
more in detail I state my conviction that, even were 
they more numerous, more considerable, and more con 
stant, they should not invalidate conclusions legitimately 
derived from conduct indicative of lofty ideals and of 
the ability and disposition to act in accordance with them. 



IT. This remark applies, of course, only to forms now living. 
Speculation as to the conditions in Pithecanthropus crcctus, the 
fossil primate of Java, would be out of place here. 



Color.; Since the brain, like the rest of the central 
nervous system, is primarily derived from the same 
embryonic layer as the skin, and since part of the mem 
brane covering the sheep s brain is black, and with the 
"spoon-bill sturgeon" (Polyodon) the fatty connective tis 
sue surrounding the brain is richly pigmented, one might 
not unnaturally expect to find the African brain of a 
darker hue. Such was claimed to be the case in a 
mulatto by Laboulbene in 1849, but it was probably an 
individual peculiarity. Museum specimens present many 
shades of color due to the nature of the preservatives 
employed. For example, in the Cornell University col 
lection the darkest brain (3531) was from a physician 
and poet, while that of a Negro (3808) is one of the 
lightest. 

Most of the other alleged characteristics of the Af 
rican brain 12 could not be discussed without technical 
ities out of place on this occasion. 

Fissural or gyral simplicity. The surface of the 
cerebrum is smooth in early stages of development and 
remains approximately so with the lower monkeys; with 
the higher monkeys and with the apes the arrangement 
is simpler than in man. Hence, upon the supposition 
that the African race, as a whole, has made less progress 
than the Caucasian from ancestral and infantile condi 
tions, the cerebral fissures of Negroes might be expected 
to present a less degree of complexity and a more ob 
vious symmetry between the right and left sides. 

The literature of this subject has been reviewed by 



12. It will be interesting to ascertain from the careful examina 
tion of many well prepared African brains whether there is 
any resemblance to the lower mammals, including the apes, in 
a greater absolute or relative size of the olfactory bulb, or of the 
part variously called thalamic fusion, middle commissure, and 
massa intermedia; my own observations do not look that way, 
but they are too few for generalization. 

33 



Mall who has also compared many brains of the 
two races ; he makes the two following statements : 
"Brains rich in gyri. and snlci (fissures) of the 
Gauss type, 13 are by no means rare in the American 
Negro"; p. 24. "With the present crude methods the 
statement that the Negro brain approaches the fetal or 
simian [ape] type more than does the white is entirely 
unwarranted"; p. 20. 

In this connection my own experience, while not per 
haps unique, may be related as exemplifying the undesir- 
ability of drawing conclusions from a small number of 
cases. One of the first brains obtained entire for Cor 
nell University was that of an unknown and presumably 
obscure mulatto of medium color. It was hardened 
within the skull so that the contours, both general and 
special, were perfectly preserved. Although the fissure^ 
were peculiar in some respects they and the intervening 
gyres w r ere far simpler than any known to me and were 
employed as the basis of. diagrams that have served my 
pupils and those of others in the elucidation of the more 
complex usual conditions. 

Later acquisitions showed how unwise it would have 
been to regard this mulatto brain (Fig. 3) as a type of the 
mixed black and white, or to assume that all Caucasian 
brains are more complex, and that still greater simplicity 
prevails with the full blacks. The next three African 
brains obtained by us (3118, 3808, and 2912) presented 
various degrees of the usual fissural complexity, and the 
last of these, from an illiterate janitor, apparently full 
black, is comparable with that of a mathematician and 
hilosopher (3334, Fig. 8). 14 

13. Gauss was a German mathematician and his cerebral fissures 
were unusually complex. 

14. So altruistic was this man, and so keen his sense of justice, 
that he would surely rejoice to know that his brain had con 
tributed in any way to the increase of knowledge and the 
righting of wrong. 

34 



On the other hand, the cerebrum of Chauncey Wright, 
another philosopher and mathematician (Fig. 4), dis 
tinctly recalls that of the mulatto in what may be termed 
its "Egyptian" style of architecture as contrasted with 
the more common "Corinthian" style. Finally, and to 
complete this series of warning paradoxes, in the Cornell 
collection the nearest approach to the Wright-mulatto 
type is made by the brain of Ruloff (965) who, although 
a murderer, was fairly educated and interested in 
linguistic problems; his skull is the thickest that I ever 
saw, while the thinnest is that of the mulatto; Figs, 
i and 2. 

Alleged pre frontal deficiency in the Negro brain. 
The anterior portion of the cerebrum, sometimes dis 
tinguished as the prefrontal lobe, includes a part, at 
least of the "anterior association areas" which are sup 
posed to subserve the higher psychic faculties, especially 
reason, judgment, and self-control or voluntary inhibi 
tion. In apes and monkeys this region is both absolutely 
and relatively smaller than in man (Fig. 10, orang and 
baboon), and although the other contours are more or 
less rounded there is a distinct ventral concavity. Upon 
information of Hrdlicka and at the suggestion of Mall, 
I Jean undertook to determine whether the brains of 
American Negroes are deficient in this important region, 
and examined many specimens to that end. His obser 
vations and conclusions were published in the same year, 
1906, in the American Journal of Anatomy and in the 
Century Magazine for September; these periodicals will 
be distinguished as A. J. A. and Century; the article in 
former is fuller but that in the latter is less technical 
and more likely to be accessible to the laity. 

On p. 412 of the A. J. A., Bean claims, mainly if not 
wholly from the form and size of the frontal lobe, that 
"the Negro brain can be distinguished from the Cau 



casian with a varying degree of accuracy according to 
the mixture of white blood." 

In a later number of the same journal Mall reviews 
(1909) the several statements of Bean in the light of an 
extensive series of his own observations. He says 
(p. 18) that the flattening over the anterior association 
area may be seen in most full-blood Negroes, certainly 
in more than one-half. A mixed lot of sixty Negro 
brains and thirty white were assorted correctly in seven- 
ty-five per cent, of the cases. A more satisfactory test 
would be the assortment of larger and equal numbers 
of the two races. No one would be justified in the in 
ference that the determination could be made with any 
such certainty as that between the brains of all apes and 
those of all human races. 

In the Century article, however, p. 782, Bean makes 
this sweeping declaration : 

"The size and shape of the front end of the brain is 
different in the two races, being smaller and more angu 
lar in the Negro, while it is larger and more rounded in the 
Caucasian. Fig. i shows vertical sections taken through 
the frontal lobes between 1.5 and 2 centimeters from 
the front end of the brain of a Negro, and between 2 
and 2.5 centimeters from the front end of the brain of a 
Caucasian. 15 The section of the Caucasian brain is larger 
and more circular than that of the Negro, not exhibiting 

15. Since the frontal lobe commonly tapers forward a section 
nearer the front end will usually be smaller than one further 
back; hence it was only just in Bean to state (as in the above 
extract) that the Negro brain was cut nearer the front end. 
Unfortunately, however, this qualification is not repeated in 
connection with the figure itself, which is on the following 
page. Now figures are so much more impressive than descrip 
tions that probably most readers would infer that the two 
sections were made at the same level and would interpret the 
difference in size to the disadvantage of the Negro. This un 
warranted interpretation seems to have been made in an edi 
torial in American Medicine (April, 190? p. 197) which stig 
matizes the enfranchised Negroes as "an electorate without 
brains." 

36 



the narrow projecting sides and pointed tips above and 
below." 

From the foregoing and from the accompanying fig 
ures it might naturally be inferred that the two forms of 
the prefrontal lobe are constant and characteristic of the 
two races. That this is not the case may be seen from 
my Figs. 10 and n. These are photographic reproduc 
tions of transections of eight primate 16 cerebral hemis 
pheres in the prefrontal region. In order that the 
sections might be at the same structural level in all, 
there was adopted the "base-line" employed by Bean 
(A. J. A., p. 404, said by him, p. 354, to have been 
suggested by Mall), passing just below the hinder end 
of the callosum and just above the precommissure 
("anterior commissure") and usually coinciding nearly 
with the greatest length of the hemisphere. By means of 
a frame the several sections were made at right angles 
with this line at a level half-way between the end of the 
hemisphere and the precommissure. 

The sections of the orang and the baboon (both un 
usually intelligent, individuals) display decided inferior 
ity as to both form and extent. Between the two jurists 
there is little difference, but what there is seems to 
favor him of the higher character and greater self- 
control (2870). With the white philosopher (3334) and 
the illiterate black janitor (2912) the ventral excavation 
is nearly equal, but the latter presents a dorso-laterai 
flattening that is wholly absent from the former. 

The white murderer (3335) equals the other three 
whites in form and surpasses them in area. There is a 
slight ventral concavity which does not appear at all in 
the mulatto thief (3118); in the latter, moreover, the 
slight dorsal concavity is deceptive, and due to the break- 



16. This word relates to any member of the order Primates, 
including man, apes, monkeys, baboons, marmosets, and lemurs. 

37 



ing off of a slightly attached piece; the natural outline 
at that point is rounded. 

Surely no detailed arguments are required to expose 
the fallacies lurking in any comparisons of small num 
bers of specimens. Bean s collocation of the transec- 
tions of the prefrontal lobes of a Negro and a Caucasian 
(even if made at the same level) as if they represented a 
constant racial difference, is no more conclusive as to 
the two races than would be my collocation of the white, 
3652, with the Negro, 3118, as proving the cerebral 
superiority of the African race, or the collocation of the 
righteous judge (2870) with the executed murderer 
(3335) as a guide to our relative esteem for the crim 
inal classes and those who pass upon their misdeeds. 

Alleged less size of the entire frontal lobe in the 
Negro. According to Bean (A. J. A., p. 377) the whole 
region in front of the central fissure ("fissure of 
Rolando") is smaller in the Negro than in the white. 
Mall reviews the evidence and concludes (p. 13) that 
"it is incorrect to say that the frontal lobe of the Negro 
is lighter than that of the white." 

In the concluding paragraph of his article Mall em 
phasizes the need of more material and better methods 
as follows: 

"In this study of several anatomical characters, said 
to vary according to race and sex and intellectuality, 17 
the evidence advanced has been tested and found want 
ing. It is found, however, that portions of the brain 
vary greatly in different brains and that a very large 
number of records must be obtained before the norm 
will be found. For the present the crudeness of our 
methods will not permit us to determine anatomical 
characters due to race, sex, or genius, which if they 
exist are completely masked by the large number of 

17, In a private letter Dr. Mall authorizes me to interpolate this 
word, not included in the original. 

38 



marked individual variations. The study has been still 
further complicated by the personal equation of the in 
vestigator. Arguments for difference due to race, sex, or 
genius will henceforward need to be based upon new 
data, really scientifically treated, and not on the older 
statements." 

Brain-weight. Just how much significance should be 
ascribed to the weight of the brain is by no means certain ; 
it is, however, a subject of natural and general interest 
upon which statements are not always correct and inter 
pretations not always sound. The following nine tables 
have been compiled from the latest reliable sources ac 
cessible to me. An effort has been made to construct 
them so as to tell their own story. The notes and com 
ments are numbered to correspond with the lines in each 
Table, whether or not the lines are numbered. 18 

Upon the present occasion it has been found impracti 
cable to take into account several very important quali 
fying factors, viz., the absolute and relative size of the 
cerebrum alone, the thickness and histologic structure of 
the cortex, and the correlations with stature, body- 
weight, age, and disease ; these last four topics have been 
ably discussed by Donaldson, 1895, 1908, and 1909. 

General conclusion. So far as I can determine from 
the publications of others and from my own observations, 
the utmost that can be said at present is: (i ) The aver 
age brain-weight of obscure American Negroes is a little 
(about 2 ounces, or 50-60 grams) less than that of 
obscure American whites, and (2) With Negroes more 
frequently than with whites does there occur prefrontal 
deficiency. I Jut (i) Many Negro brains weigh more 
than the white average, and many white brains weigh 



1 8. The ounce is the avoirdupois, sixteen to the pound, equiva 
lent to 28.349 grams; in reducing from one system to the other 
the ounce is reckoned as 28.35 Drains. Conversely, 100 grams 
equals 3.52 ounces, roughly three and one-half. 

39 



less than the Negro average; (2) Some white brains 
present lateral or ventral depression of the prefrontal 
lobe, and some Negro brains do not. As yet there has 
been found no constant feature by which the Negro brain 
may be certainly distinguished from that of a Caucasian ; 
whereas either of them is at once distinguishable from 
the brain of an ape, and would be by a dozen or more 
points of structure, even if they were of the same size. 
For the determination of possible racial peculiarities 
larger numbers of brains of both races should be exam 
ined with impartiality and by more exact methods. Par 
ticularly useful would be the brains of persons of Af 
rican descent who have achieved eminence in any respect. 19 
Yet, even if it should appear that certain features or 
conditions occur more frequently in the Negro, so long 
as these conditions are not constant in the Negro and so 
long as they sometimes occur with whites, and even with 
those who are morally and intellectually superior, the 
greater average frequency in the Negro should not be 
interpreted to the disadvantage of worthy individuals of 
that race. 

TABLE I. APPROXIMATE BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SOME ANIMALS 
LARGER THAN MAN 

Pounds Ounces Grams 

Gorilla, the largest ape . . 17 500 

Bison, four years old . . 18 529 

Some whales 5 80 2265 

Rhytina, extinct "sea-cow" 5 79 2242 

Elephants 10 160 4500 

i. Of five adult male gorillas Turner found (1897, P- 45 1 ) the 
largest to have a cranial capacity of 590 cubic centimeters. Em 
ploying as the coefficient .87 (stated by Spitzka [1907, p. 218] to 

19. Should the Afro-American leaders of to-day bequeath their 
brains to some institution that would preserve them properly 
and study them fairly and thoroughly the next generation might 
find the statistics of brain-weight telling a very different story. 
Copies of a "Form of Bequest of Brain" may be obtained from 
the writer. 

40 



be that of Manouvrier), gives as the weight of its brain 513 
grams ; but as the average cranial capacity of the five was 494 
c.c., the round number, 500, is here provisionally adopted. The 
adult male gorilla is estimated by Owen (1868, p. 144) to weigh 
nearly 200 pounds, considerably more than the average man. 

2. The bison, although young, had probably gained the full 
size of both body and brain ; the latter is said by Hrdlicka 
( 1 95, P- 98) to have weighed 529 grams, something more than 
a pound. 

3. From the nature of the case the brains of large cetaceans 
have seldom been weighed fresh. According to Bischoff (1880, 
p. 23), that of an individual 75 feet long weighed 1942 grams 
after hardening in alcohol, and he estimates the fresh weight 
as 2816; even if this be excessive the general weight assigned in 
our Table is certainly moderate. 

4. The Rhytina inhabited the shores of Bering s Strait; it 
resembled the manatee, or "sea-cow," but was much larger; no 
brain was actually weighed, but Bischoff states (p. 24) that 
from a cast of the cranial cavity the weight was estimated by 
Brandt at 2242 grams; see also Smith*, p. 347. 

5. Like the manatee s, the brain of the rhytina was probably 
simple, with large ventricles. But the elephant s brain is 
very substantial and richly convoluted. The average weight 
of five brains enumerated by Bischoff (p. 23) is 4485 grams, 
in round numbers 4500, or nearly ten pounds. 

Although three of the above-named animals surpass man in 
the absolute weight of the brain, their bodies are so gigantic 
that the relative weight falls far below the human, about one 
to forty-five ; in this respect, also, man surpasses the bison, the 
gorilla, and indeed most animals larger than a cat. But. as 
may be seen from the Table in Hrdlicka s paper (1905) the 
brain is relatively larger than in man with some small monkeys 
(marmosets), with some birds, with several rodents, and with 
a shrew-mole. In all these, however, the cerebrum is nearly 
or quite devoid of convolutions. 

It appears from the above statistics that any statement as to 
the comparative brain- weight of animals and man must be ac 
companied by several qualifications. 



TABLE II. AVERAGE BRAIN-WEIGHTS F<;R CERTAIN RACES, COLIN 
TKIES AND STATUS 



Number Race 


Country 


Ounces Grains 


i 


27 


Cauc. 


U. S. & Can. 


Notable 


53 


53-25 


1510 


2 


14 


" 


Gt. Britain 


" 


52 


52.24 


1481 


3 


24 


" 


U. S. 


Soldiers 


52 


52.06 


1475 


4 


108 


" 


Various 


Notable 


52 


51-95 


H73 


5 


70 




" 


** 


52 


5L92 


1472 


6 


3 


Eskimo N. A. 


Various 


51 


51-39 


M57 


7 


20 


Cauc. 


France 


Notable 




51-35 


M57 


8 


3 


" 


Ger. & Aus. 


" 


51 


50.75 


M39 


9 


2,000 


(t 


Europe 


Various 


49 


49,38 


1400 


10 


51 


" 


U. S. 


Obscure 


47 


47.26 


M4i 


it 381 African 


Soldiers 


47 


46.73 


1325 


12 


51 


* 


* ( 


Obscure 


46 


45-57 


1292 


13 


70 


" 


i( 


" 


45 


45-39 


1287 


4 


10 


(<. 


Africa 


" 


43 


42.64 


1209 



i, 2, 4, 5, 7. and 8 are derived from the "List of the brain- 
weights of 1 08 notable men" constituting Table I of the paper 
(1907) by E. A. Spitzka. 21 In that Table the individuals are 
named in the order of their brain-weight, beginning with the 
highest. In using it I have found it convenient to number the 
individuals, serially, 1-108; then, in a separate column, to pre 
fix the numbers under which the cases are discussed at greater 
or less length upon pages 107-209. From these fuller accounts, 
and with the cooperation of the author were corrected the fol 
lowing errors : the brain-weight of E. C. Seguin (40) should 
be 1502, not 1505; that of Oliver (65), 1416, not 1418; that of 
Agassiz (43), 1514, not 1495, and that of Zeyer (95), 1310, not 
1320. It was not noticed at first that No. 31 is Taguchi, a 
Japanese anatomist; his brain, however, weighed 1520 grams, 
coming thus within the middle fifty of the series and not af 
fecting materially the average or the comparison with other 
series. 

I. These include twenty-five residents of the United States 
and two Canadians; from the standpoint of climatic environ 
ment there seems to be no reason for separating them. The 
superior brain-weight, as compared with the fourteen 
Hritish notables, may have accompanied greater stature 
and body-weight, as remarked by Hunt (1869, p. 53), in the 
case of soldiers of this country and of Europe; but such data 



20. The worthy son of an eminent father, E. C. Spitzka ; were 
the latter not fully occupied in other directions his knowledge 
and his nature (as exemplified in his almost single-handed de 
fiance of the c o.r turbac respecting the mental status of the 
assassin, Guiteau) would naturally enlist him in behalf of the 
still oppressed Afro-American, 

42 



are not available with these notables. The average brain- 
weight of these twenty-seven American notables is nearly iden 
tical with that (1513) of the nine eminent Caucasians in Spitzka s 
Table A, p. 304. 

3. This item is from Hunt. The superior brain-weight may 
be compared with that of the obscure whites in line 10. 

5. These seventy were chosen by lot for comparison with an 
equal number of obscure Negroes in line 13 (from Table VI.). 
The 108 serial numbers were written upon small cards together 
with the corresponding brain-weights. The cards were shaken 
thoroughly in a box. The drawer, blindfolded, drew out seventy, 
and their average weight was ascertained; the cards were shaken 
a second time and the drawing repeated. The first average was 
1481, the second, 1462. The average of the two is 1471.5, tab 
ulated as 1472, or 51.9 ounces, nearly identical with that of the 
entire 108. 

6. These three Eskimo weights, as found, respectively, by 
Chudzinski, Hrdlicka, and Spitzka, to be 1398, 1503, and 1470. 
are recorded by the last named (1902, p. 31). The average is 
interestingly high, and may be correlated with the necessity for 
strenuous effort for self-preservation in high latitudes, but the 
number is too small for generalization. 

9. According to Bean (Century, p. 782, the averages for males 
and females were obtained from several sources respecting 4000 
European Caucasians; I have assumed that the sexes were equally 
represented. 

10 and 12. These items are from Bean s Century article, p. 782, 
and are presumably based upon his Table I in the A. J. A. 
So far as I can judge, in most cases the brains were not weighed 
until after they had been subjected to a preservative, either 
before or after removal ; see under Table V. Without attempt 
ing to account for the sudden drop from the European average 
(excepting upon the supposition that the latter included eminent 
as well as obscure individuals), Bean s average for the obscure 
Africans coincides nearly with that derived from the seventy in 
the next line, and as an average may be accepted even if doubt 
exists respecting individuals. 

II. These 381 Afro-American soldiers are from Hunt, 1869, 
p. 51; see Table VII. The higher average, as compared with 
the obscure negroes, recalls that of the white soldiers in line 3. 
As indicating the selection of individuals more or less superior 
as to mental and physical endowment it illustrates the force of 
an argument in favor of peace, viz., the undesirability of ex 
posing such potentially efficient citizens to wounds and death. 

13. These are from Lamb, as stated under Table V. 

14. From Waldeyer, 1894, p. 1220; see Table 4. The contrast 
between the two averages recalls the possibility of climatic in 
fluence as with the 27 North American notables; it is regarded 
by Waldeyer (1894, p. 1221) as indicating an interesting and 
difficult problem probably involving several factors; he speci- 

43 



fies only one, viz., the mixture of white blood; but from the 
right column of Table 5 it will be seen that the average brain- 
weight of the 29 full-blacks is 1283 grams, 74 above that of the 
native Africans and only 4 below that of the 70 of all grades. 

TABLE III. BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SELECTED INDIVIDUALS OF VARIOUS 
RACES, COUNTRIES., AND STATUS 

Name; race; country; status Ounces Grams 

1 Turgenev ; Russian writer; eminent 71 70.90 2012 

2 Negro; nearly white; U. S. ; obscure.... 56 55.97 1587 

3 Negro, black ; U. S. ; obscure 55 55.02 1560 

4 Kishu ; Eskimo; chief of tribe 53 53.01 1503 

5 Native East African 51 51.14 1450 

6 Hottentot ; unusually tall 50 50.00 1417 

7 J. E. O. ; mathematic teacher ; philosopher 50 49.94 1416 

8 G. F. ; black janitor; illiterate 44 44.09 1250 

9 Gall ; German phrenologist 42 42.25 1198 

10 X. Y. Z. ; jurist, politician; drunkard ... 39 38.90 1103 

1 1 Native East African 36 36.40 1030 

12 D. L. ; white watchman 24 24.00 680 

13 F. W. B. ; congenital idiot 13 12.52 355 

1. From Spitzka, head of his Table T. 

2. and 3. From Lamb ; see TaHe V. 

4. From Hrdlicka and Spitzka; see Table II, 6. 

5. From Waldeyer; see Table IV, first entry. 

6. From Wyman (1862) ; the man was 5 ft. 5^/2 in. high, un 
usual for that race ; I saw him alive and took part in the dis 
section. 

7. Prof. James Edward Oliver of Cornell University, a pro 
found thinker, an enthusiastic teacher, and of the loftiest char 
acter. His brain was represented and described by me in 1889 
and 1900. 

8. George Field; apparently full black; illiterate; janitor of 
the Zeta Psi Chapter House at Cornell University ; said to have 
been faithful and worthy. 

9. From Spitzka s Table I, near foot of list. 

10. X. Y. Z., said to have been an able lawyer and successful 
politician in a large city; see p. =,/ and fig. 5. 

11. See last item of Table IV. 

12. So far as known to me this is the smallest brain of a ra 
tional man ; it has been kindly loaned to me by Prof. J. H. 
Larkin of Columbia University, and will be described at the 
coming General Meeting of the American Philosophical Society. 
Compare the exceptionally small native African brain men 
tioned in the note under Table IV. 

13. From Macnamara and Burne, 1903. The brain is said to 
have presented ape-like features, but it was unmistakably human. 
See also Smith, p. 463. 

44 



TABLE IV. BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF TEN NEGROES FROM GERMAN 
EAST AFRICA (WALDEYER) 

Original Original 

Number Ounces Grams Number Ounces Grams 

12 50.15 1450 6 43.20 1225 

10 45.30 1285 8 40.50 1150 
4 45.00 1275 3 3970 1125 
2 44.10 1250 i 37.10 1050 

11 44.10 1250 7 36.40 1030 

Average of the ten, 42.64 oz., equals 1209 grams. 

These cases are from Waldeyer, 1894. In the originai there 
are twelve brains. The weighing was done in Africa by Dr. 
Steudel and recorded in grams, here reduced to ounces. Neither 
Waldeyer, in publishing the weights, nor Duckworth in quoting 
the average (1904, p. 436), seems to have been impressed with 
the preponderance of round numbers. Accepting them as given 
they have been reduced to ounces, and ten have been rearranged 
so as to bring the higher weights above, but retaining the num 
bers of the original list. Two have been omitted. No. 5 was 
not weighed till after hardening ; the fresh weight was then 
computed at 907, markedly below the fresh weights known for 
the ten here included. No. 9 was from a youth of 18, dying 
of sepsis and greatly emaciated ; the fresh weight is given as 
780 grams, reduced to 630 by hardening. The fresh weight is 
so low as to suggest subnormal intelligence, perhaps imbecility, 
that invalidates comparison with what seem to be representative 
individuals ; were these more numerous its inclusion with them 
might be warranted, as would be the inclusion of the excep 
tionally small brain of "D. L." (Table III, item 12), among 
hundreds or thousands of whites. The omission of the two 
doubtful cases above mentioned raises the average weight of 
these ten native Africans from 1148 to 1209, sixty-one grams 
or a little more than two ounces ; but this still leaves consider 
able and probably significant margins between it and 1287 for the 
obscure Afro-Americans, and 1325 for the United States soldiers 
of African descent ; the inclusion of the two doubtful cases 
would increase the size of the margins. 



45 



TABLE V. BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SEVENTY OBSCURE AMERICAN 
X ECHOES IN Six GROUTS ACCORDING TO COLOR (LAMB) 



Various Sliades 
Serial No. Grains 
50 1446 

62 1432 

1261 



33 

Av. of 3 



1 380 



Mulatto 



83 


1446 


68 


1403 


59 


1403 


42 


1361 


44 


1318 


4i 


1304 


98 


1304 


32 


1261 


7i 


1247 


24 


1247 


i8 


1148 


94 


IT20 


Av. of 12 


1297 



Light Mulatto 
96 1247 

36 1191 

7 no? 

Av. of 3 1181 

Nearly White 

21 1587 



Dark 


Mulatto 


Serial No. 


Grams 


Si 


1417 


52 


14.17 


88 


1375 


82 


1375 


69 


1361 


73 


1361 


27 


1318 


22 


1304 


87 


1304 


45 


1304 


57 


1290 


23 


1290 


79 


1276 


85 


1247 


49 


1247 


64 


1219 


77 


1205 



51 
14 

20 
Av. Of 22 



II9I 

Il62 
Il62 

1134 
1 1 2O 

1276 



Black 

Serial No. Grains 
1660 
89 
58 



37 

55 
2521 
56 
9i 
30 

2522 
43 
63 
28 
66 
61 
40 



2912 

84 

75 
92 

93 

35 

80 
29 
67 
95 
17 
1661 



1560 
1530 
1502 

1502 



1417 
T395 
1375 
1361 
1361 
1350 
1332 
1332 
1304 
1276 
1276 
1261 
1261 



1219 
1219 
1191 
1191 
1191 

1162 

1148 
1077 
1063 
1063 
1040 



Av. of 29 1283 


In view of the n .rity of available records of the brain- 
weights of individual American Negroes I have added to the 
65 males in Lamb s series the only other five known to me, viz., 
2912, the illiterate black janitor mentioned under Table III, 
and numbers 1660, 1661, 2521, and 2522 of Bean s series; as I 
understand his Table I and the statements oh pp. 358-9, these four 
are the only ones that were weighed fresh and before the in 
jection of a preservative that might affect the weight. 

45 



TABLE VI. AVERAGE BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF SEVENTY OBSCURE 

\KGKOF.S IN SlX GROUPS ACCORDING TO COLOR (LAMB) 

Averages 





Num 






ber 


Racial Admixture 


I 


i 


Nearly white 


2 


3 


Light mulatto 


3 


12 


Mulatto 


4 


3 


Various shades 




22 


Dark mulatto 


6 


- J 9 


Black 



Ounces 


Grams 


Totals 


56.00 


1587 


1587 


41.65 


1181 


3543 


45-75 


1297 


15562 


48.68 


1380 


4M9 


45-00 


1276 


28079 


45-25 


1283 


37209 



70 Totals 45-39 1287 901 19 

4. The few individuals included under this vague title have 
been given an intermediate place. 

6. The greater brain-weight of the full-blacks than of those 
with slight admixture of white blood is interesting and has been 
commented upon by others; see Table VII; its cause and signifi 
cance are yet to be determined. 

TABLE VTI. AVERAGE BRATN-WETGHTS OF 381 UNION SOLDIERS 

OF AFRICAN DESCENT (HUNT) 
Racial Admixture Ounces 



Number 
25 
47 
51 
95 

22 

141 



Grams Totals 



4 White [quadroon] 
[mulatto] 
j sambo] . . 



49-05 
47.07 

46.54 
46.16 
45-18 
46.96 



1390 
J334 
1319 
1308 
1280 
1 33 1 



34750 
6269^ 
67269 

124260 
28160 

187671 



46.73 1325 504808 

This is based upon the "Ethnographical Table" of Hunt, 1869, 
pp. 40-54. The records were made under the direction of Sur 
geon Tra Russell, nth Massachusetts Volunteers, during the 
Civil War. The original weights are given in ounces; thc^ re 
ductions to grams here offered coincide with those of Work 
(1906), p. 27, note). In the Century (1906, p. 782) Bean under 
takes to reproduce Hunt s Table, but the average weights are 
stated in grams only; for the. three-fourths white his number, 
1390, is the same as ours; for the whites (see Table X) his 
number is three grams higher, while for all the other grades of 
the colored the numbers are three, four or five lower; prob 
ably the reductions were made in haste and not verified. The 
Century article of Bean (1906) contains (p. 782) an independent 
column of weights for several grades of color to which he 
refers in the A. J. A., p. 410, as warranting practically the same 
conclusions as those of Hunt. See, however, under Tables II 
and V. 

As to the degrees of racial admixture, in the absence of 
statement to the contrary it is assumed that the fractions in 
the second column represent declarations as to parentage made 

47 



by the soldiers and recorded at or subsequent to enlistment. 
In estimating the extent of admixture from the degree of color 
ation two observers are apt to differ. 

TABLE VIII. COMPARISON OF BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF OBSCURE AFRO- 
AMERICANS WITH THOSE OF OBSCURE EUROPEANS 

Can- Afri- 
casians cans 

Total number , 559 70 

Below the lowest Caucasian, 1018 oo 

Above the highest African, nearly white, 1587. . 24 

Above the highest black, 1560 29 

Approximately equal, within 5 grams 55 55 

Unrepresented witnin 5 grams: 1261 (3); 1250 

(i); 1247 (4); 1191 (4); 1148 (2); 1105 (i) 15 

The Africans are the same seventy as in Tables V and VI. 
The Europeans are from the first part of Table I of Bischoff s 
series (1880) following p. 171. For fifty-five of the seventy 
African weights were found in the European series counter 
parts, either exact or differing not more than five grams. Of 
the fifteen for which no such approximate counterparts oc 
cur in the European series there are three of 1261 grams; one 
of 1250; four of 1247; four of 1191; two of 1148, and one of 
1105. 

This and the following table substantiate the eminently clear 
statement of the .case by Prof. Farrand, p. 17. 

TABLE IX. NEARLY IDENTICAL BRAIN-WEIGHTS OF 27 NOTABLE 
WHITES AND 27 OBSCURE NEGROES SELECTED FROM 108 OF THE 
FORMER AND 70 OF THE LATTER; THE HEAVY-FACED NUMBERS 
ARE FROM FULL-BLACKS. 



Serial Notable 
Number Whites 
[19 higher] 



Obscure Serial Notable Obscure 
Negroes Number Whites Negroes 



20 
23 
29 
38 
40 
60 
62 
64 
65 
67 
72 
73 
76 
83 



1590 
1560 
1530 
1503 
1502 
1445 
1437 
1418 
1416 
1415 
1403 
1403 
1395 
1374 



1587 
1560 
1530 
1502 
1502 
1446 
1432 
1417 
1417 
1417 
1403 
1403 
1395 
1375 



84 

85 

86 

87 

88 

91 

92 

96 

97 

99 
100 
101 
103 

Averages 
48 



1373 1375 

1370 1375 

1365 1361 

1361 1361 

1358 1361 

1349 1350 

1332 1332 

1300 1304 

1290 1290 

1276 1276 

1272 1276 

1257 1261 

1250 1250 

[24 lower] 

1390.52 1391.04 



This is based upon Spitzka s Table I, "List of brain-weights 
of 108 notable Caucasians of various nations," and Bond and 
Lamb s list of brain-weights of 65 obscure Afro-Americans plus 
the 5 mentioned in connection with Table V. The serial 
numbers of the notables are given at the left of each column. 
At the head of the first column "19 higher," in brackets, indi 
cates that so many notable weights were greater than any of the 
obscure; at the foot of the second column "24 lower" indicates 
that so many obscure weights were less than the lowest notable. 
The gaps in the serial numbers indicate notables for which 
there were no approximate counterparts among the obscure. 

Of course a natural and fairer comparison would have been 
between equal numbers of the same general status; but there 
is available to me no such scries of obscure white Americans. 
It is not surprising to find that 24 of the obscure Negro brains 
are lighter than the lightest of the notables ; that 19 of the latter 
are heavier than the heaviest of the former ; or that, among the 
higher weights, are omitted more than fifty serial numbers be 
cause there were no approximate counterparts among the 
Negroes. But surely it is worthy of note that in n cases there 
should be absolute equality; that in the remaining 16 the 
difference should not exceed 5 grams (one-sixth of an ounce). ; 
that the excess should be so evenly distributed that the averages 
are practically identical ; and that of these 27 obscure men of 
African descent whose brains approximately equalled in weight 
those of 27 notable whites, 16, more than half, were full-blacks. 

TABLE X. SOME STATISTICS OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH REGIMENT OF 
MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, COLORED; THE COM 
MISSIONED OFFICERS WERE WHITE; ONE, GEORGE T. GARRISON, 
WAS A SON OF HIM WHOM GoLDWIN SMITH (1892) CALLED 
A "MORAL CRUSADER " 

980 Total number of enlisted men 

430 Mixed blood 

550 Apparently pure black 

247 Had been slaves 

319 Could read and write 

477 Could read only 

184 Could neither read nor write 

52 Were church-members 

219 Were married 

112 Died from disease 

54 Killed in action or died from wounds 



49 



TABLE XI. ABRIDGED RECORD OF THE ENLISTED MEN OF THE 
FIFTY-FIFTH MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, COLORED. 

1863 Jan. 26. Authority of Secretary of War for enlistment on 

same terms as white soldiers, $13.00 per month, plus 

$3.00 allowance for clothing 
May 12, Enrolment began 
July 25, Service in South began 
Nov. 28, Refused $10.00 per month, pay of laborers, less 

$3.00 for clothing 
December, Refused balance, $6.00, from Massachusetts 

1864 Persistent refusal of lower pay 

June 18, One shot for resisting officer 

July 2, "Rivers Causeway," took initiative in action; out of 

about 350, 7 killed and 19 wounded 
Oct. 7, First payment, after more than 14 months 
October, Celebration decorous; all loans repaid; by Adams 

Express alone, over $60,000.00 to families 
Nov. 30, "Honey Hill"; out of about 360 engaged, 32 

killed and 88 wounded 
1865, Sept. 23, Mustered out 

American Negroes in the Civil War 

I was asked to speak of the brain, and was also told 
that I might emphasize my opinion of the African race 
by a few words upon a different subject. It was my good 
fortune to enter the medical service of the army in 
July, 1862, and to be commissioned in the spring of 1863 
as one of the medical staff of the Fifty-fifth Massachu 
setts Infantry (colored) ; see Tables X and XL 

I think the youths of to-day, white or black, do not 
realize under what circumstances those two regiments, 
the Fifty-fifth and the Fifty-fourth, went into the field. 
They went not only against the prejudice of the commun 
ity and the indifference of the government, but in the face 
of Confederate declarations to the effect that if captured 
they should be treated as runaway slaves. 21 The situation 
is outlined in the following extract from Col. Henry Lee s 
"Shaw Monument Address," 1897, PP- 58-59- 

"No one can appreciate the heroism of the officers 
and soldiers [of the colored Massachusetts regiments] 
without adding to the savage threats of the enemy the 

50 



disapprobation of friends, the antipathy of the army, 
the sneers of the multitude here; without reckoning 
the fire in the rear as well as the fire in front. One 
must have the highest form of courage not to shrink 
from such dismaying solitude." 

The composition and record of the Fifty-fifth are 
indicated in Tables X and IX, below. 

After our regiment had been arduously engaged in 
the siege of Charleston, S. C, in the summer of 63, for 
some months, the paymaster appeared with orders to 
pay the enlisted men ten dollars a month, the wage of 
laborers, less three dollars a month for clothing! 22 

The Fifty-fourth and the Fifty-fifth had been enlisted 
in Massachusetts under orders of the Secretary of War. 
which are on record, and under authority from Governor 
Andrew, and with the full understanding upon the part 
of everyone concerned in Massachusetts, and with the 
understanding of the men themselves, that they were 
to be treated in every respect like white troops, the pay 
of which was thirteen dollars besides the regular uni 
form. The men consulted and decided that they would 
not accept ten dollars a month. That was on the 28th 
of November. 

21. The actual treatment of colored prisoners is described by 
Emilio, "Appendix." For various official Confederate utter 
ances see "War Records," vol. 22, p. 965; Serial No. 117, p. 946, 
and Serial No. 118, p. 940; the last is a joint resolution of the 
Confederate Congress, May I, 1863, to the effect that the white 
officers of colored troops should be put to death; this threat 
was never carried out. h>ee also extracts in The Nation, Sep 
tember 28, 1899, p. 241. 

22. For various accounts of the matter of the pay of these and 
other colored troops see Fox (1868), Emilio (1894), Hallowell 
(1897), Lee and Kennard (1897), Pearson (1904, vol. 2, pp. 94- 
120), and my Garrison address (1905). So moderate a man as 
Jeffries Wyman whose most violent expletive, "By George," 
was heard by me only once wrote me as follows under date of 
May 26, 1864 : "All you say about the pay of the soldiers puts 
the Government in a very shabby light ; its members are dis 
gracing themselves in the eyes of the world." 

51 



In December, knowing the circumstances, knowing 
that a goo;l many of them were without other means, 
that some were married, and that others had mothers 
or fathers or friends that they wished to help the 
Legislature of Massachusetts passed a law to the effect 
that provisionally the state should make up the differ 
ence between what was offered by the United States and 
what the men felt they had a right to receive. 

The State Commissioners and the officers of the regi 
ment urged the men to accept this as a compromise for 
the sake of their families. Again they met and con 
sulted and decided, almost unanimously, that they would 
net take the money. They said, "We have not enlisted 
in this war for pay ; we are here to fight for our coun 
try and for the honor of our race, and we will take 
nothing until the United States government pays what i^ 
our due, and what we were promised when we enlisted." 

Months passed. The men continued to work, to 
watch, to fight and to wait for justice. 

In the meantime a few of them had lost control of 
themselves some of us whites lose control of our 
selves ami one resisted an officer. For his offense I 
saw that man shot. The government that could not 
find law to pay him otherwise than as a laborer could 
nevertheless find law to shoot him as a soldier. 

During this payless period both regiments had fought 
bravely. The attack of the Fifty- fourth upon Fort 
Wagner (see Fmilio, Hallowell, Lee and Kennard) 
could not be surpassed for heroism. Col. Shaw and the 
other officers gallantly led and were as gallantly sup 
ported by the enlisted men. 

If it be said, Negro soldiers merely follow their offi 
cers and do what they are told, I reply that on one 
occasion 23 when our officers suppose:! the order was to 

23. At Rivers Causeway, James Island, near Charleston, S. C.. 
(July 2, 1864,), as described by Fox (1868, pp. 29-32) and myself 

52 



retire, the enlisted men rushed forward, captured two 
field-pieces, and fired them upon the retreating foe. If, 
again, it be said, it is natural for the male animal to 
fight, and physical courage is shared with the brutes; 
then I reply that these men displayed moral courage and 
self-restraint under the very trying conditions described 
above in respect to their pay. Nor was this all. When 
at last the United States government came to its senses ; 
when at last it decided to do justice, fourteen months 
after their service began, 24 then these men received their 
money, and they had a celebration not nearly as boister 
ous as that in a college town after the victory of an 
athletic team. 

To refute the declaration that the Negro, when he 
gets his money, squanders it, I add that out of that first 
payment to the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts there was sent 
home to the wives and families and friends in Massa 
chusetts by the Adams Express Company alone not 
counting other express companies, and other means of 
conveyance there was sent home by these soldiers, 
majiy of whom had been slaves, $60,000 ! 25 

Xor is this all. Some months earlier, at the urgent 
request of the soldiers, the officers had received their 
pay. Then we had loaned various sums to them, and 
out of what had been loaned during that year and a quar 
ter by the officers, in sums ranging anywhere from fifty- 
dollars down to twenty-five cents, there is not on record 
or in recollection a single instance in which payment was 
not made and made promptly. I will not say what white 
soldiers would have done under similar circumstances. 
Hut could they have behaved any better ? 

(1906, p. 24). A comparable action of white enlisted men is 
said to have occurred at Missionary Ridge. 

24. With the Fifty-fourth the service in the field began two 
months earlier. 

25. See Fox (1868, n. 37) J niy letter of Oct. 16, 1864, says $65,- 
ooo.oo, but Fox is probably correct. 

53 



Being myself merely a student of natural history, I have 
appealed to several professors of wnnatural history, and 
have failed as yet to learn that, taking into account all the 
circumstances of the payment of the two colored Massa 
chusetts regiments, there has ever been a finer example 
of self-renunciation and sacrifice for the sake of what 
was regarded as a principle. 20 

Shall we now deny civil and political rights, and educa 
tional and industrial opportunities, to men merely be 
cause they are black, because the average weight of their 
brains is a little less, and because a certain region of the 
brain may be more frequently less developed, when two 
4 housand of their fellows, nearly half a century ago. 
could manifest not merely the highest kind of physical 
courage, but as high a kind of moral courage, as has 
been chronicled in the history of the world? 



26. Should the writer be spared until other conditions permit 
he will regard it as a sacred duty to put in a form accessible 
to others his observations and impressions of the military and 
personal conduct of the members of the Fifty-fifth Massachu 
setts as recorded in daily letters, all of which have been pre 
served. 




Fig. i, No. 322, Obscure Mulatto. 

Fig. 2, No. 965, White Murderer, Ruloff. 

The specimens represented above were photographed together 
and reduced to a little less than one-third natural size. They 
are the "skull-caps" (calvas or calvaria), as sawn off the top 
of the skull for the removal of the brain. That of the mulatto 
was cut at a lower level than the other ; had the latter been 
sawn at the same level some portions of the cut edges might not 
have been quite so wide, but the rest of the skull was not pre 
served and the question cannot be settled ; even allowing for 
this the white skull is much thicker than the mulatto; both are 
exceptional; see p. 34. 

As remarked by Huxley in the passage quoted on p. 23, the 
African skull is usually narrow, and^the one figured above may 
be fairly representative ; the Caucasian skull seems to me un 
usually short and rounded. In the latter the small hole at 
either side is artificial. In Fig. I, at the upper end. corre 
sponding with the forehead, are seen the slight frontal sinuses 
between the inner and outer tables of the skull; they do not 
appear in the other skull, but may have existed at a lower level. 

55 




Fig. 3, No. 322, Obscure Mulatto. 

Fig. 4, White Philosopher and Mathematician, Chauncey 
Wright. 

Dorsal (upper) aspects of two cerebral hemispheres, photo 
graphed together so as to be a little less than one-half natural 
size. With both there is an unusual simplicity of the fissures 
and the intervening gyres (convolutions), as mentioned on p. 34. 
The more common conditions appear in Fig. 5. 

The mulatto brain was hardened in the skull and hence re 
tains its original form. That of Wright evidently underwent 
some distortion after removal, but as appears when viewed 
at a different angle the front (upper, in cut) end was unusually 
square. The mulatto brain was not weighed fresh ; Wright s 
weighed 1516 grams, 53.50 ounces. 

Both brains present fissural peculiarities which are discussed in 
my "Handbook article, Figs. 762 et seq., and Fig. 770. In Fig. 
4 the Central fissure is interrupted by an isthmus marked by a 
black x ; in Fig. 3 the continuous fissure passes behind the two 
similar marks and the paper strip bearing the number. 

56 



p 



Fig. 5. The continuous black line is the outline of the left 
cerebral hemisphere of No. 3652; the interrupted line is the out 
line of the right hemisphere of No. 2912. They were photo 
graphed together so as to be about one-third natural size. On 
2912 the Central fissure is marked C; on 3652 its course is shown 
by the undulating black line ; the shorter line at the lower margin 
represents part of the Sylvian fissure. 

These are the opposite halves of the cerebrums of two 
very unlike persons. The right half is from G. F., an illiterate 
black janitor. The left from a white jurist and politician. As 
an ally of Tammany Hall he probably condoned, if he did not 
encourage, the race riots in this city in the spring of 1863 when 
the first northern colored troops enlisted in spite of Democratic 
opposition. If so, we may charitably ascribe his conduct to 
sharing the general belief that every Negro s brain is so small 
as to unfit him for citizenship or even for military service. ; Yet 
the brain of the black janiter weighed 5 ounces more than that 
of the white jurist (Table 3), and now, when the left half of the 
latter is held against the right half of the former so that the 
lower margins coincide, at nearly all other points the black s 
outline may be seen beyond the white s. Let us hope that 
X. Y. Z. now rejoices that at least one of the blunders of his 
^ fe has been rectified after his death. 

57 




Fig. 7 
No. 3564 
Orang 



Fig. 6 
No. 3557 
Baboon. 



All about two-thirds natural size. 
58 




Fig. 9, No. 3334, White Philosopher and Mathematician. 

This and the figures on the opposite page are from photo 
graphs of blackboard diagrams (themselves based on photo 
graphs) of the left cerebral hemispheres, reduced to about two- 
thirds natural size. The Sylvian fissure is named on all; the 
upper end of the Central is indicated by C; the O indicates the 
location of the Occipital fissure, most of which is on the mesal 
(median or inner) aspect. There is an obvious community of 
general pattern of fissuration, by which any of them would be 
recognized as a primate rather than a dog, sheep, or other 
mammal. The orang was unusually intelligent, and the baboon 
was highly trained in a show. The black was the illiterate 
janitor, G. R, mentioned on .p. 34; he and the white philos 
opher are included in Table III. The two present individual 
differences of fissuration, such as might occur between two 
whites or two blacks, but no racial differences recognized by me. 
Transactions of the frontal lobes are represented in Figs. 10 
and ii. 



59 



Upright 



Jurists 



Unscrupulous 




Orang 



Baboon 



Fig. 10. Transactions of the frontal lobes of a baboon, No. 
3557, an orang, No. 3564, an "upright judge," No. 2870, and 
an unscrupulous, intemperate jurist-politician, No. 3652. These 
specimens and the four represented on the opposite page were 
prepared in the same manner as described on p. 36 and photo 
graphed all together so as to be. reduced in the same degree to 
about five-sevenths of the natural size. 

The sections of the orang and the baboon (both unusually in 
telligent individuals) display decided inferiority as to both form 
and extent. Between the two jurists there is little difference, 
but what there is seems to favor him of the higher character 
and greater self-control (2870). 



60 



Mulatto thief 



White murderer 




Black janitor White philosopher 

Fig. ii. With the white philosopher (3334) and the illiterate 
black janitor (2912) the ventral excavation is nearly equal, inn 
the latter presents a dorso-lateral flattening that is wholly absent 
from the former. 

The white murderer (3335) equals the other three whites in 
form and surpasses them in area. There is a slight ventral 
concavity which does not appear at all in the mulatto thief 
(3118) ; in the latter, moreover, the slight dorsal concavity is 
deceptive, and due to the breaking off of a slightly attached 
piece ; the natural outline at that point is rounded. 

For general commentary see p. 37. 

61 




Fig. 12. .Transaction of Cat s Brain, enlarged. This and 
Fig. 13 on the opposite page are to be considered together. Both 
are from drawings kindly loaned by Spitzka; similar reproduc 
tions form part of Plate XVI of his paper, 1907. They are semi- 
diagrammatic representations of the main features of the two 
cerebrums when cut across at nearly the same level. The meson 
(middle plane) corresponds with the cleft nearer the right of 
each figure, most of that half being omitted to save space. The 
two are represented as of the same size. The darker marginal 
zone represents the cortex; this and the other dark areas are 
cinerea or gray matter, composed in part of nerve-cells ; the 
light areas represent alba, composed of nerve-fibers. The black 
lines in the ahba indicate the general direction of the fibers. The 
callosum (indicated by C on Fig. 12) is a thick oheet of fibers 
connecting the two cerebral hemispheres at the bottom of the 
mesal cleft. 

6s 




Fig. 13. Transection of Human Brain, reduced. For the 
general features see the description of Fig. 12. 

Contrary to the general impression the human brain has a 
relatively larger amount of the alba (white matter) composed of 
fibers connecting (a) the cerebral cortex with the lower parts 
of the brain and so, indirectly, with the body; (b) the right and 
left hemispheres, the callosum; (c) the several portions of the 
same hemisphere, the association fibers; p. 34. Man s su 
periority is supposed to be correlated with the development of 
these association fibers and of the cortical areas \vith which 
they are connected. Spitzka found the callosum unusually large 
in an eminent naturalist, Joseph Leidy, and thinks there is evi 
dence of correlation in this respect as between individuals and 
perhaps races. 

63 



List of Publications Referred to 

Bean, R. B., 1906. The Negro brain. The Century, Septem 
ber, 1906, pp. 778-784, with map, figures and tables. (Unless 
otherwise indicated by A. J. A. this article will be understood 
as referred to since it is the more likely to be accessible to 
readers of the present publication.) 

1906. Some racial peculiarities of the Xegro brain. 
American Journal of Anatomy, vol. 5, No. 4, September, 1906. 
Pp- 353~43 2 with many tables, charts, and figures. 

Bischoff, T. L. W. v., 1880. Das Hirngewicht des Menschen. 
O., pp. 171, with about as many pages of Tables. 

Boas, F., 1906. Commencement Address at Atlanta Univer 
sity, May 31, 1906. Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19. 

Carnegie, Andrew, 1908. Scotch and Negro Progress Weigh 
e:l. Remarks, as reported in the New York Tribune, December 
20, 1908. 

Donaldson, H. H., 1895. The- growth of the brain. Con 
temporary Science Series, O., pp. 374. London. 

1908. The weight of the brain as modified by nutrition 
and disease. Read before the American Neurological Associa 
tion. May, 1908. (Manuscript copy.) 

1909. Some conditions modifying the interpretation of hu 
man brain-weight records. Read at the General Meeting of the 
American Philosophical Society, April 23, 1909. (Manuscript 
copy. ) 

Emilio, L. K, 1894. A Brave Black Regiment. History of 
the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865. 
Second ed., O., pp. 452, portraits and maps. Boston. 

Fox, C. B., 1868. Record of the service of the Fifty-fifth 
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Privately printed by the 
Regimental Association, Cambridge. O., pp. 194, 1868. 

Hallowell, N. P., 1897. The Negro as a Soldier in the War 
of the Rebellion. Read before the Military Historical Society 
of Massachusetts, Jan. 5, 1892. O., pp. 29, Boston, 1897. 

Hasskarl, G. C. H., 1898. The Missing Link, or the Negro s 
Ethnological Status. D., pp. 176. Reprinted from the East 
ern Lutheran. Published by the author, Philadelphia. 

Hrdlicka, Ales, 1905. Brain-weight in vertebrates. O., pp. 
89-112. Reprinted from Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 
Quarterly Issue, vol. 48. 

Hunt, San ford B., 1867, 1869. The Negro as a soldier. Jour 
nal of Psychological Medicine and Jurisprudence, October, 1867, 
p. 182. Also in the Anthropological Review^ vol. 7, pp. 40-54, 
January, 1867. [From the footnote to p. 40 it may be inferred 
that this paper was printed originally as a report to the U. S. 



Sanitary Commission, but I have been unable to locate it 
among its publications.] 

Huxley, T. H., 1865. Emancipation, black and white. Col 
lected Essays, vol. 3, Science and Education, 1894, pp. 66-75. 

On the African Negro. Methods and Results of 
Ethnology, Essays, vol. VII, 233. 

Laboulbene, 1849. Comptcs Rendus des Seances et Memoires 
de la Societc de Biologic dc Paris, p. 6. 

Lamb, D. S., 1894. Some brain-weights in the Negro race. 
American Anthropologist, N. S., vol. 6, pp. 364-366. For 
original records of 1865-6, see under Table V, supra. 

Lee, H., and Kennard, M. P., Committee, 1897. The Monu 
ment to Robert Gould Shaw. Q., pp. 98, Boston. 

Macnamara, N. C, and Burne, R. H., 1903. The Cerebrum 
of a Microcephalic Idiot. Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 
N. S., vol. 17, pp. 258-265, 6 figures. 

Macnamara, N. C., 1908. Human speech. The International 
Scientific Series, vol. XCV. O., pp. 284. London. 

Mall, F. P., 1909. On Several Anatomical Characters of the 
Human Brain, said to Varv According to Race and Sex, with 
especial reference to the Frontal Lobe. American Journal of 
Anatomy, vol. IX., 1-32, February, 1909. 

Owen, R., 1868. On the Anatomy of Vertebrates, vol. 3, O., 
pp. 915. 

Pearson, H. G., 1904. The life of John A. Andrew, Gover 
nor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865. O., 2 vols. Boston and New 
York. 

Smith, Goldwin, 1892. The Moral Crusader, William Lloyd 
Garrison. D., pp. 190, Toronto. 

Smith, G. Elliott, 1902. Descriptions of the Brains of Verte 
brates in vol. 2 of the Physiological Catalogue of the Museum 
of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 1902. 

Spitzka, E. A., 1902. Contributions to the Encephalic Anato 
my of the Races; First paper; Three Eskimo brains. American 
Journal of Anatomy, vol. 2, pp. 25-71. 

1903. Brain-weights of Animals with special Reference to 
the Weight of the Brain in the Macaque Monkey. Jour, of 
Comp. Neurology, vol. 13, pp. 9-17, 1903. 

1907. A Study of the Brains of Six Eminent Scientists 
and Scholars, etc. Transactions of the American Philosophical 
Society, N. S., vol. 21, part 3. Philadelphia. 

Turner, Sir William, 1897. Some Distinctive Characters of 
the Human Structure. Address before the Anthropological 
Section of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science. Abstract in Britisli Medical Journal, August 2ist, 
1897, PP- 450-453- 

65 



Waldeyer, 1894. Ueber einige anthropologisch bemerkens- 
werthe Befunde an Negerhirnen. Berlin Akad. d. Wissenschaften, 
Sistungsberichte, 1894, Band II, pp. 1213-1221. 

Wilder, B. G., 1885. On Two Little-known Cerebral Fissures, 
with Suggestions as to Fissural and Gyral Names. Amer. 
Neurol. Asso., Transactions. Journal of Nervous and Mental 
Disease, vol. 12. 

1889. Article, Brain, Gross or Macroscopic anatomy. Buck s 
Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences, vol. 8, pp. 107- 
164; also vol. 9, pp. 99-110. Second edition, vol. 2, pp. 136-218, 
1900. 

1905. Two examples of the Negro s Courage, Physical 

and Moral. Address at the Garrison Centenary, Dec. 10, 1905. 
Alexander s Magazine, January and February. 1906. See also 
the Sunday News, Charleston, S. C, Dec. 7, 1902. 

1907. The Educational Uses of Sharks and Rays, especial 
ly the Acanth Shark. Proceedings of the I2th annual meeting of 
the New York State Science Teachers Association, Bulletin of 
the University of the State of New York, No. 431, 1907, pp. 
95-96. (This refers to my previous papers on the same sub 
ject.) 

Woodworth, B. S., 1909. Racial Differences in Mental Traits. 
Address before the Section in Anthropology and Psychology, 
American Association Adv. Science, 1909. Science, February 
4, 1910. 171-186. 

Work, M. N., 1906. The Negro Brain. Article 3 of "The 
Health and Physique of the Negro American." The Atlanta 
University Publications, No. n, 1906. Pp. 24-27. W. E. B. 
DuBois, Editor. 

Wyman, Jeffries, 1847. Osteology of the Gorilla. Part of a 
paper by Savage and himself. Boston Society of Natural His 
tory, Proceedings, Aug. i8th. Boston Journal of Natural His 
tory, vol. 5, part 4, pp. 417-442. [Of this very important memoir 
some reprints were made for the author in quarto form ; for 
information as to the whereabouts of such the present writer 
will be grateful.] 

1868. Observations on Crania. Boston Society of Natural 

History, Proceedings, vol. n, 1868, pp. 440-462. 

1862. Account of the dissection of a Hottentot. Boston 

Society of Natural History, Proceedings, April 2, 1862, vol. 9, 
PP- 56-57; also pp. 352-357, and Anthropological Rei iew, III, 
330-335- 



66. 



Address of 

Edwin R. A. Seligman 

Professor of Political Economy 

at 

Columbia University 

As one of the advocates of that unnatural science of 
which we have just heard, 1 desire to say a word only 
as to the phase of the subject which falls directly within 
my own sphere, that is, of economics an.l social science. 
If there is anything that has been brought out in the 
papers this morning, I think it is the keen realization of 
the fact that we must indeed not overlook the forces of 
heredity or disparage them. After all, the controlling, 
the really important point to the student of social evolu 
tion is the fact of social environment. We may take a 
leaf out of the book of that great wizard of California, 
Mr. Burbank, who has shown us how in the course 
of several generations the character of a plant can be so 
completely changed that we will have a new genus. Any 
one who has given much study to the forces of asso 
ciation, and especially of economic progress, must realize 
that within a space of a very few generations we find 
the most profound alterations in what seems to be 
the very texture of human life. 

While I do not wish to range through the whole field 
of social life, I desire to call attention to the fact that 
amid all the other important forces at work, the economic 

67 



consideration is the one which is receiving far more at 
tention to-day than it ever did before. And therein 
lie the hope and the potency of the future. It is just 
because the economic environment is changing, just 
because there is a hope in the future of such funda 
mental alterations in the environment of the American 
Negro, that we can look forward with confidence to a 
point yet to come. At the same time I desire to empha 
size in the few words I have to say, one scientific con 
clusion : the necessity of distinguishing between the 
individual and the group and the danger of making 
unduly broad generalizations. What we need above all 
in social life is to be able to distinguish in our attitude 
to our fellows, between the individual and the group. 

As a member of a race which has also borne hard 
ships, I wish to call attention to this particular fact : It is 
often said of the Jews that they run through the whole 
gamut of society; they have both the Jesus type and the 
Shylock type, coming from one and the same race. Now 
the trouble with the Negro is that the ordinary man con 
siders only the Shylock type, if there is a man that cor 
responds to the Shylock type, and that we have not yet 
learned to appreciate the Jesus type. To me there is 
nothing more tragic in the whole of human experience 
than the lot of that American Negro, cultivated, refined 
gentleman, who at the same time is thrown into the cal 
dron and fused with a mass of his unhappy and more 
unfortunate brethren. The scientific man, of course, 
knows no prejudice. I say that, and yet I remember 
that when I was a student at a German university, 
shortly after the Franco-Prussian war, there was a strain 
for some time between the French and the Germans, 
which shows of course that we- are first human and 
secondly scientific. But at least it may be said that the 
more scientific we are, the less prejudice we have. 

68 



The great advantage of a meeting like this and the 
great benefit of all knowledge and of all science, is that 
it tends gradually to enable the ordinary man to distin 
guish between the individual and the group. That 
see mVto me to be the real hope for the future, because 
after all, we can expect to see the elevation of the great 
mass come about only very, very slowly. The great 
mass of any nation to-day is very little different from 
the great mass of people thousands and thousands of 
years ago. It is the great man, it is the sport or freak, 
of whom the naturalists tell us, who gradually by his own 
influence, by his own great personality and example, is 
able slowly to mold and to change these general forces. 

As regards the general forces, you must not be misled 
even if you look at the economic point of view. My own 
conviction is that things are going to get worse before 
they get better in this country, so far as the Negro ques 
tion is concerned, simply because of the exceeding diffi 
culty of bringing to bear the forces of science upon popu 
lar imagination. I do not share the pessimistic view, be 
cause my view is not pessimistic. But it is nonetheless 
true that certain economic conditions are now at work 
in the South which are temporarily going to make 
things worse. It is because the "poor white trash," 
as he is called, the ordinary white man, is now 
coming to his own in the South, that the economic 
competition and the economic pressure are going to be 
felt more severely than before. And the hope we have 
of the future is that slowly and gradually the great men 
both the white and the black that those great men will 
utilize all the forces of science and all the forces of the 
higher ethics, and will gradually bring to bear upon this 
larger mass that environs us all, an appreciation of the 
more human and the more scientific aspect of the case. 
Therefore, gentlemen, let us not be mistaken; let us be 

69 



prepared to face the future as it comes; but let us be 
prepared also to put up a good fight. 

By that I do not mean to say that I have not 
the utmost sympathy with our friends of the South, 
both white and black. The human race is about the same 
all over. We are all, so far as we are not suffused with 
the scientific instinct, full of prejudice. Put yourselves, 
the Negro man and woman, into the conditions in which 
the white man and woman are, and many of you would 
feel about the whole subject as they do. We have a com 
paratively easy time in the North. We have not the great 
temptations to meet. We must not be too harsh in our 
judgments. But what we must always do is to hold forth 
and emblazon on our banner the scientific aspect of the 
question and then there can be only one answer. 

That being true, I say there is call for two qualities 
on the part of the rank and file, as well as among the 
leaders, of the Negro race the quality of patience, 
of recognizing that mankind moves very slowly, 
and that prejudice gives way to science still more slow 
ly; but on the other hand, the fervent hope and the con 
fident expectation that in the long run, and in the not too 
long run, the forces of science and the ethical forces, 
which after all are deep down in the heart of every one 
of us, white and black that those forces will continue 
to grow in their influence and finally achieve their 
desired and deserved success. 



Address of 

John Dewey 

Professor of Philosophy 
Columbia University 

The ground has already been so well covered in the 
matter of this scientific discussion, that I shall de 
tain you but a moment or two, in fact I should not have 
appeared at all, were it not that it gave me the oppor 
tunity to express my sympathy with the purpose of this 
gathering and to give myself that privilege, I venture to 
detain you for these very few moments. One point that 
has been made on the scientific side, might perhaps be 
emphasized, namely with reference to the doctrine of 
heredity. 

It was for a long time the assumption an assumption 
because there was no evidence or consideration of evi 
dence that acquired characteristics of heredity, in other 
words capacities which the individual acquired through 
his home life and training, modified the stock that was 
handed down. Now the whole tendency of biological 
science at the present time is to make it reasonably cer 
tain that the characteristics which the individual acquired 
are not transmissible, or if they are transmissible, then 
in such a small degree as to be comparatively and rela 
tively negligible. At first sight this taken by itself may 
seem to be a disappointing and discouraging doctrine, 
that what one individual attains by his own effort and 



training, does not modify the level from which the next 
generation then starts. But we have put over against 
that this other point that has been made with reference 
to social heredity, and the fact that there is a great dif 
ference between mental culture from the standpoint of 
the individual and mental culture from the standpoint of 
society. 

This doctrine that acquired characteristics are not trans 
mitted becomes a very encouraging doctrine because it 
means, so far as individuals are concerned, that they have 
a full, fair and free social opportunity. Each generation 
biologically commences over again very much on the 
level of the individuals of the past generation, or a few 
generations gone by. In other words, there is no "in 
ferior race," and the members of a race so-called should 
each have the same opportunities of social environment 
and personality as those of a more favored race. Those in 
dividuals start practically to-day, where the members of 
the more favored race start again as individuals, and if 
they have more drawbacks to advance, they lie upon the 
side of their surrounding opportunities, the opportunities 
in education, not merely of school education but of 
that education which comes from vocation, from work 
responsibilities, from industrial and social responsibilities, 
p.nd so on. It is therefore the responsibility of society as 
a whole, conceived from a strictly scientific standpoint 
leaving out all sentimental and all moral considerations 
it is the business of society as a whole to-day, to see to 
it that the environment is provided which will utilize all 
of the individual capital that is being born into it. 

For if these race differences are, as has been pointed 
out, comparatively slight, individual differences are very 
great. All points of skill- are represented in every race, 
from the inferior individual to the superior individual, 
and a society that does not furnish the environment and 

72 



education and the opportunity of all kinds which will 
bring out and make effective the superior ability wherever 
it is born, is not merely doing an injustice to that particu 
lar race and to those particular individuals, but it is doing 
an injustice to itself for it is depriving itself of just that 
much of social capital. 



72 



Afternoon Session, May 31 
Celia Parker Woolley, Chairman 



RACE RECONCILIATION 

Celia Parker Woolley 

Head-worker Frederick Douglass Centre 
Chicago 

The color problem does not pertain to this country 
alone, still less to a particular section of the country. The 
cry so often heard, "This is a southern problem," "The 
South alone understands the Negro," "Leave this matter 
to us" is but a repetition of the old cry which we heard 
before the war. The same human passion and sectional 
pride, the same sense of special ownership and right of 
final appeal inspires the later as the earlier cry. The color 
question is a national problem, it is a question of repub 
lican faith and well-being. Its just settlement is a mat 
ter of national honor and moral consistency. If the 
Negro is a citizen of these United States then his safety 
and welfare should be as much a matter of patriotic con 
cern in Massachusetts and Illinois as in Mississippi and 
Alabama. Sectional feeling has no place in the settle 
ment of this problem any more than in questions of the 
tariff and railway control. 

We know what the situation is in India and South 
Africa, in the Philippines and on the California coast. 
Everywhere the dark-skinned man is coming to the 

74 



front, claiming his share in the great comprehensive boon 
of civilization, with all it holds or implies of material 
benefit, of individual opportunity, of intellectual gain and 
social partnership in the common task of building a race 
that is only incidentally white or black, Oriental or Occi 
dental, Teutonic, Asiatic or Negroid, but first and mainly 
human. Had we a tithe of the faith and courage which 
our political and religious professions are supposed to 
bestow we should recognize in this race or color question 
but one more demand for those manhood rights which we 
pretend to grant to all alike, one more application, in a 
case of special urgency and need which should win in 
stant response, of that religion of reason and righteous 
ness which we profess. 

It is not the Negro who is at stake in this controversy, 
deep and widespread as are his wrongs. It is the white 
man, the white man s civilization, the white man s repub 
lic. It is not a question of Negro supremacy, but of the 
worth of those claims to superiority which are so easily 
alarmed for their own safety and continuance. It is not 
a question of the black man s political enfranchisement, 
important and just as this phase of the question is. The 
Negro can better afford to lose his vote than the white 
man can afford to deprive him of it. The main question 
underlying this and all our social problems the woman 
question, the labor question, and a host of minor prob 
lems is one that casts doubt on all our high professions 
of democracy and humanity. What is our republic 
worth ? How long and in what fashion will it continue 
to exist? What is our Christianity worth? Whence do 
we derive it, from the Sermon on the Mount or from 
those notions of hierarchy and social separation which 
the church as an institution condones and fosters? 

The present greatest need of the Negro in this coun 
try is the discriminating friendship of the white man. 

75 



The Negro suffers from a wholesale judgment that makes 
no distinctions or exceptions. It is only the Negro as 
cook or butler, waiter or porter, whom the average white 
man knows and takes into account. What a commen 
tary on our Americanism is that state of mind which de 
crees an entire class or portion of the state and com 
munity to a position of fixed inferiority. The crux of 
the race question lies not at all in any feeling we may 
have, favorable or unfavorable, towards the colored cook 
or butler. It is not the class to which these belong that 
suffers most from race prejudice, but the colored man 
and woman who has risen far above the position of 
menial service, necessary and honorable as this may be. 
It is the educated man who through hardship and sacri 
fice, such as in any other case than the American Negro s 
would have won for him friendly recognition and re 
ward, finds himself in spite of all his efforts still subject 
to the same popular disfavor, the same restrictions as 
before. 

I do not forget the Negro s share of responsibility for 
the situation from which he and we suffer. I do not for 
get the mass of black idleness, ignorance and vice with 
which the social reformer must deal. The Negro has 
accomplished marvels for himself in many cases of in 
dividual worth and attainment, signalized in names like 
Washington, Du Bois, Kelly Miller, Scarborough, Keal- 
ing, the Grimke brothers, but no one knows so well as 
these how deep and dire, how constant and pressing are 
the needs in the lower stratum of Negro life, not in the 
South alone but in the large cities of the North. 

We are in less danger to-day from the crass barbari 
ties of the Tillmans, the Dixons and the Vardamans than 
from the super-refined and highly intellectualized utter 
ances of certain distinguished scholars. When Senator 
Tillman accidentally runs across Booker Washington in 

76 



the White House and, having never before seen the dis 
tinguished man of color, improves the occasion to look 
him over carefully, arid says to a waiting reporter after 
wards, "He has white blood in him," we only smile with 
amusement, and comfort ourselves with the reflection 
that if Mr. Tillman represents the type that is purely 
white we have reason to be thankful for the mixture of 
blood currents in the veins of his dark-skinned com 
patriot. 

But when the venerable leader of our most dis 
tinguished seat of learning, founded on Pilgrim faith 
and love of liberty, speaks with unqualified condemna 
tion of race unions of every kind and degree, even be 
tween separate families of the same race household, as 
the English and the Scandinavian, we are in truth griev 
ed and discouraged. But we are at the same time thank 
ful that men like Frederick Douglass and Booker Wash 
ington were luckily born and given to the world before 
the monstrous evil of their mixed race inheritance was 
discovered. 

If race mixture, particularly the mixture of black and 
white, is of such injurious effect, let us address our argu 
ments and appeals, our warnings and rebukes, to the 
guilty party the white man of the South and of the 
North, Let us attach the crime and the crime s punish 
ment to the sinning factor, and not darken innocent lives 
and increase ill-doing, punishing the guiltless progeny of 
such unions. The attitude of the average mind, learned 
or unlearned, on this phase of the question is as shame 
less as it is cruel, in its open connivance at crime and so 
cial misdoing The majority of people care very little 
about race mixture so long as it keeps itself safe from 
polite observation under the dark cloak of illicit prac 
tices. It is only when seeking to lift itself from the 
level of passion and shield itself in honest marriage, 
graced and upheld by the moralities and amenities of the 

77 



home, that the sense of moral outrage is aroused. A 
strange anomaly. 

This Race Conference meets at a timely hour and it 
should be the beginning of a permanent organization, with 
branches in every large center, whose work is to complete 
the upbuilding of the republic, to make good our pro 
fessions of human brotherhood. Its aim must be two 
fold, to arouse the sense of responsibility among the 
more privileged and powerful, where social favor and 
opportunity are found on the white man s side. Its 
work for the black man is to help and encourage in all 
ways which conduce to a high and self-respecting, self- 
sustaining type of manhood. 



POLITICS AND INDUSTRY 

W. E. B. DuBois 

Professor of Economics and History 
Atlanta University 

Atlanta, Georgia 

In discussing Negro suffrage we must remember that 
in the three hundred years between the settlement of 
this country and the present, there never has been a time 
when it was not legal for a Negro to vote in some con 
siderable part of this land. From 1700 to 1909 Negroes 
have probably cast their ballots at some time in every 
single state of the Union, and all the time in some states 
and there has been no period in the history of the land 
when all Negroes were disfranchised. The early move 
ment for disfranchisement came in two waves: the first, 
early in the i8th century when Negro freedmen first 
appeared with required qualifications for voting. In this 
case Negroes along with Jews and Catholics, were de 
prived of a vote. This initial movement was persisted 
in only in South Carolina and Georgia. In all other 
states, South and North, it subsided and Negroes regu 
larly voted in nearly every other state. Then came a 
second wave of disfranchisement in the North, about the 
beginning of the i8th century, which had the same ob 
ject as the disfranchising clauses in the western states 

79 



early in the next century : namely, to discourage and drive 
out free Negroes. The third wave of disfranchisement 
came in the South about 1830 and marked the end of the 
abolition movement there, and the beginning of the cot 
ton kingdom. The population of free Negroes began to 
decrease and the complete subjection of the black race 
was in sight. 

The last wave of disfranchisement began in 1890 in 
Mississippi and now embraces Virginia, North Carolina 
and the Gulf states excepting Florida and Texas. These 
states have adopted four kinds of qualifications: i. Edu 
cational qualifications; 2. Property qualifications; 3. 
Qualifications of birth ; 4. Other miscellaneous qualifica 
tions the effect of which depends entirely on local elec 
tion officials. These qualifications have been proposed 
with two reasons: (a ) To keep the Negroes from vot 
ing, (b ) To eliminate the ignorant electorate. 

Against both these excuses there were strong argu 
ments, but at the time they were gathering force and mo 
mentum there came a counter argument that practically 
stopped all effective opposition to the disfranchisement 
laws. This argument was that the economic develop 
ment of the Negro in right lines demanded his exclusion 
from the right of suffrage at least for the present. This 
proposition has been insisted on so strenuously and ad 
vocated by Negroes of such prominence that it simply 
took the wind out of the sails of those who had proposed 
defending his rights, and to-day so deeply has this idea 
been driven that to most readers minds the Negroes of 
the land are divided into two great parties one asking 
no political rights but giving all attention to economic 
growth and the other wanting votes, higher education 
and all rights. Moreover, the phrase "take the Negro 
out of politics" has come to be regarded as synonymous 
with industrial training and property getting by the black 
men. 

80 



I want in this short paper to show that, in my opinion, 
both these propositions are wrong and mischievous. In 
the first place there is no such division of opinion among 
Negroes as is assumed. They are practically a unit in 
their demand for the ballot. The real difference of 
opinion comes as to how the ballot is to be gained. One 
set of opinions favors open, frank agitation. The other 
favors influence and diplomacy; and the result, curious 
to say, is that the latter party has to-day an organized 
political machine which dictates the distribution of of 
fices among black men and sometimes among Southern 
whites. It is not too much to say that to-day the politi 
cal power of the black race in America is in certain re 
stricted lines very considerable. But those of us who 
oppose this party hold that this kind of political develop 
ment by secrecy and machine methods is both dangerous 
and unwholesome and is not leading toward real de 
mocracy. It may and undoubtedly does put a large num 
ber of black men in office and it lessens momentary fric 
tion, but it is encouraging a coming economic conflict 
which will threaten the South and the Negro race. 

And this brings me to the second proposition : that po 
litical power in the hands of the Negro would hinder- 
economic development. It is untrue that any appreci 
able number of black men to-day forget or slur over the 
tremendous importance of economic, uplift among 
Negroes. Every intelligent person knows that the most 
pressing problem of any people suddenly emancipated 
from slavery is the problem of regular work and accu 
mulated property. But this problem of work and prop 
erty is no simple thing it is complicated of many ele 
ments. It is not simply a matter of manual dexterity 
but includes the spirit and the ideal back of that dex 
terity. 

We who want to build and build firmly the strong 
foundations of a racial economy believe in vocational 

81 



training, but we also believe that the vocation of a man 
in a modern civilized land includes not only the tech 
nique of his actual work but intelligent comprehension 
of his elementary duties as a father, citizen, and maker 
of public opinion, as a possible voter, a conservor of the 
public health, an intelligent follower of moral customs, 
and one who can at least appreciate if not partake some 
thing of the higher spiritual life of the world. We do 
not pretend that all of this can be taught each individ 
ual in school but it can be put into his social environ 
ment, and the more that environment is curtailed and 
restricted the more emphatic is the demand that some 
part at least of the group shall be trained and trained 
thoroughly in these higher matters of human develop 
ment, if and here is the crucial question if they are 
going to be able to share the surrounding civilization. 

This brings us to the matter of voting. It is possible 
easily possible to train a working class who shall 
have no right to participate in the government. Most 
of the manual workers in the history of the world have 
been so trained. It is also possible, and the modern 
world thinks desirable, to train a working class who 
shall also have the right to vote both these things are 
possible although the overwhelming trend of modern 
thought is toward making workers voters. But the one 
thing that is impossible and proven so again and again 
is to train two sets of workers side by side in economic 
competition and make one set voters and deprive the 
other set of all participation in government. To attempt 
this is madness. It invites conflict and oppression. A 
nation cannot exist half slave and half free. Either 
the slave will rise through blood or the freeman will 
sink. 

So far tremendous effort in the South has been put 
forth to keep down economic competition between the 
races by confining the Negroes by law and custom to 

82 



certain vocations. But, for two reasons, this effort is 
bound to break down : First there is no caste of ability 
corresponding with the caste of color, and secondly be 
cause if every Negro in the South worked twenty-four 
hours a day at the kinds of work which are tacitly as 
signed him, he could not fill the demand for that kind of 
labor. Economic competition is therefore inevitable as 
facts like these show : In Alabama there are 94,000 Negro 
farm laborers and 82,000 whites. In Georgia there are 
1,100 Negro barbers and 275 white barbers. In Florida 
there are 2,100 Negroes employed on railroads and 1,500 
whites. In Tennessee there are 1,000 white masons and 
1,200 black masons. And so on we might go through 
endless figures showing that economic competition among 
whites and blacks was not only existent but growing. 

Moreover the schools that increase the competition are 
the industrial schools and this is both natural and proper. 
Negro professional men, teachers, physicians and artists 
come very -seldom in competition with the whites. But 
farmers, masons, painters, carpenters, seamstresses and 
shoe repairers work at the same work as whites and 
largely under like conditions. This competition accen 
tuates race prejudice ; when a whole community, a whole 
nation, pours contempt on a fellow-man it seems a 
personal insult for that man to work beside me or at the 
same kind of work. Thus one of the first results of the 
denial of civil rights is industrial jealousy and hatred. 
Here is a man whom all my companions say is unworthy 
and dangerous as a companion on the street car or steam 
car, as a fellow listener at a concert, theatre or lecture, 
as a table companion in the same house or restaurant, 
often as a dweller in the same street or same neighbor 
hood and always as a worshipper in the same church or 
occupant of the same graveyard. If all this is so 
and this the Southern white working man is industrious 
ly taught from the cradle to the grave if this is so then 

83 



why shonl 1 I be forced to work at the same job as this 
man or be engaged in similar kinds of work, or receive 
the same wages? If we cannot play together why should 
we work together? 

Not only is there this feeling but there is also power 
to act. After the Atlanta riot the police and militia 
searched the houses of colored people and took away 
guns and ammunition, while the sheriff almost gave away 
guns to some of the very men who had composed the 
mob. We think this monstrous but it is but a parallel 
of the action of the whole nation : they have put the 
ballot in the hands of the white workingmen of the 
South and taken it away from the black fellow- workmen. 
The result is that the white workman can enforce his 
feeling of prejudice and repulsion. Other things being 
equal the employer is forced to discharge the black man 
and hire the white man public opinion demands it, the 
administrators of government, including police, magis 
trates, etc., render it easier, since by preferring the white 
many intricate questions of social contact are avoided and 
political influence is vastly increased. 

Under such circumstances there is nothing for the 
Negro to do but to bribe the employer by underbidding 
his white fellow : to work not only for less money wages, 
but for longer hours and under worse conditions. No 
sooner does he do this than he is mocked at as a "scab" 
from Mexico to Canada, and visited with all the conse 
quent penalties. He is said to be dragging down labor 
and he is said to be taking bread from others mouths 
and he may be, but his excuse is tremendous : he is 
dragging others down to keep himself from complete sub 
mergence and he is taking some of the bread from others 
mouths lest his children starve. Does he want to do 
this? Does he like long hours? Ignorant as he is as a 
mass, has he not intelligence enough to perceive the value 
of the labor unions and the meaning of the labor move- 

84 



ment ? No, it is not because the black man is a fool but 
because he is a victim that he drags labor clown. 

Faced by this situation the next step of the white work 
men is to enforce by law an 1 administration that which 
they cannot gain by competition. In the past these laws 
have been laws to separate an 1 humiliate the blacks, but 
more aggressive laws are demanded to-:!ay and will be in 
the future. The Alabama child labor law excepts from 
its operation children in domestic service and in agricul 
ture i. e., Negro children. They may grow up in ab 
solute ignorance so far as the law is concerned. The 
Alabama law makes the breaking of a contract to work 

o 

by a farm laborer a felony punishable by a penitentiary 
sentence. Such a breaking of law in other industries is 
a misdemeanor punishable by a fine. Certain oppres 
sive labor regulations in many southern states are only 
applicable to such counties as vote their enforcement. 
Counties with white workmen vote it down. Counties 
with disfranchised black workmen vote it in. In the 
state civil service no Negro can be employed at any job 
which any white man wants, for obvious reasons. More 
than that no white man whose business depends on pub 
lic approbation, or political concession can dare to hire 
Negroes or if he hires them promote them as they may 
deserve. He must often be content with a distinctly in 
ferior grade of white help. 

Judges and juries in the South are at the absolute 
mercy of the white voters. Few ordinary judges would 
dare oppose the momentary whim of the white mob and 
practically only now and then will a jury convict a white 
man for aggression on a Negro. This is true not only 
in criminal but also in civil suits, so much so that it is a 
widespread custom among Negroes of property never to 
take a civil suit to court but to let the white complainant 
settle it. In all public benefits like schools and parks 
and gatherings and institutions, Negroes are regularly 

85 



taxed for what they cannot enjoy. I am taxed for the 
Carnegie Public Library of Atlanta where I cannot en 
ter to draw my own books. The Negroes of Memphis 
are taxed for public parks where they cannot sit down. 

The public schools of the South on account of virulent 
opposition of the white working classes are (save in a 
few cities and a few exceptional counties), worse off than 
they were twenty years ago with poorer teachers, lower 
salaries and more negligent supervisors. This statement 
covers nine-tenths of the public Negro schools of the 
South. 

Even in serving his own people and organizing 
his own business the Negro is at the absolute mercy of 
the white voters. It is often said grandiloquently: let 
the Negroes organize their own theatres, transport their 
own passengers, organize their own industrial companies ; 
but such kinds of business are almost absolutely depend 
ent on public license and taxation requirements. A thea 
tre built and equipped could by a single vote be refused 
a license, a transportation company could get no fran 
chise, and an industrial enterprise could be taxed out of 
existence. This is not always done, but it is done just 
as soon as any white man or group of white men begin 
to feel the competition. Then the voters proceed to 
put the industrial screws on the disfranchised. Witness 
the strike of the white locomotive firemen in Georgia to 
day. Negro firemen get from fifty cents to one dol 
lar a day less than the white firemen, have to do menial 
work and cannot become engineers. They can, how 
ever, by good service and behavior be promoted to the 
best runs by the rule of seniority. Even this the white 
firemen now object to and say in a manifesto: the 
"white people of this state refuse to accept Negro equal 
ity. This is worse than that." The other day the white 
automobile drivers of Atlanta made a frantic appeal in 
the papers for persons to stop hiring black drivers. The 

86 



black drivers replied, "We have had fewer accidents than 
you and get less wages," but the whites simply said, 
"This ought to be a white man s job." 

This sort of thing is destined to grow and develop. 
The fear of Negro competition in all lines is increasing 
in the South. The demand of to-morrow is going to be 
increasingly not to protect white people from ignorance 
and degradation, but from knowledge and efficiency 
that is, to so arrange the matter by law and custom as 
to make it possible for the inefficient and lazy white 
workman to be able to crush and keep down his black 
competitor at all hazards, and so that no black man shall 
be allowed to do his best if his success lifts him to any 
degree out of the place in which millions of Americans 
are being taught he ought to stay. 

This is bad enough but this is not all. The voteless 
Negro is a provocation, an invitation to oppression, a 
plaything for mobs and a bonanza for demagogues. They 
serve always to distract attention from real issues and 
to ride fools and rascals into political power. The 
political campaign in Georgia before the last was avowed 
ly and openly a campaign not against Negro crime and ig 
norance but against Negro intelligence and property 
owning and industrial competition as shown by an 83% 
increase in their property in ten years. It swept the 
state and if it had not culminated in riot and bloodshed 
and thus scared capital it would still be triumphant. As 
it is the end is not yet. The political power of a mass 
of active working people thus without votes is greater 
for harm, manipulation and riot than the power of the 
same people with votes could possibly be, with the addi 
tional fact that voters would learn to vote intelligently 
by voting. Fourteen years ago Mississippi began dis 
franchising Negroes. You were promised that the re 
sult would be to settle the Negro problem. Is it settled? 
No, and it never will be until you give black men the 

,87 



power to be men, until you give them the power to 
defend that manhood. When the Negro casts a free and 
intelligent vote in the South then and not until then will 
the Negro problem be settled. 



RACE PREJUDICE AS VIEWED FROM 
AN ECONOMIC STANDPOINT 

William L. Bulkley 

Principal in the Public Schools 
New York 

I wish to preface my argument with the following in 
dictment: Race-prejudice in the South 

( i ) Does not recognize the value of an intelligent, con 
tented laboring class. (2) Closes the door to occupa 
tions requiring skill and responsibility. (3) Drives out 
of the South, by humiliating and oppressive laws and 
practices, many of its most desirable citizens. (4) 
Forces across the line thousands of mixed bloods. (5) 
Forces into the ranks of unskilled labor in the North 
and West many who are skilled. 

Considering the race question from a purely economic 
standpoint, no part of this country, North, South, East 
or West, ought to continue the unjust industrial restric 
tions upon us as a people. In the North these restric 
tions act as an injustice to the weaker race, but do not 
cause any perceptible economic loss to the community. 
In the South, on the contrary, any limitation put upon 
the development of the Negro in any line of manual 
labor or skill seriously affects its economic development. 
Already is this loss to its industrial life evident in the 
desperate efforts exerted to induce European immigra 
tion. But the suggestion that this need of more and bet 
ter labor is caused by her sins of omission or commis- 

89 



sion would doubtless meet from the South the most fo^ 
bust denials. And yet, any thoughtful student of econ 
omics would readily see that this lack of reliable labor 
is at least in part, due to the absence of effort on the 
part of the South to enlighten, to encourage and to ren 
der contented its laboring classes. With the exception 
of a makeshift of a school lasting for a few weeks each 
year, the South offers its farming masses absolutely no 
other inducement to a larger and better life. Little won 
der is it that there are hundreds of thousands of acres 
cultivated in the same sort of indifferent way year after 
year. 

And again, from the ranks of skilled labor, race op 
pression is driving out of the South a host of the best 
Negroes, best in culture of mind, best in sturdiness of 
character, best in skill of hand. A census of the Negroes 
in any city in the North would show that the majority 
of the most progressive of them, whether in the pro 
fessions, in business, or in the trades, were more or less 
recent arrivals from the South. Can the South afford to 
lose this class? Can any country afford to drive out 
its best? Does not the South need the influence of such 
men and women over the ignorant, the idle, or the de 
praved of our race ? Is it wise to make living conditions 
so unbearable that only the most ignorant or the most 
unworthy are contented to remain and endure with the 
characteristic grin of a sycophant? 

The desirable, the progressive, the intelligent Negroes 
who remain South are there for one of two reasons : be 
cause they can t get away ; or because they feel they 
ought to stay and suffer with their own. And all these 
heave from the depths of their hearts the despairing cry, 
"How long, O Lord, how long?" 

If only a small part of the time that is devoted to 
schemes to restrict, to humiliate, and to oppress the Ne 
groes were spent in an effort to study means by which 

90 



they might be made more intelligent, mort thrifty as 
laborers, more skillful as artisans, more contented as 
citizens, there are few spots on the globe that would show 
so great an industrial awakening during the twentieth 
century. 

Wise legislators in any community would endeavor to 
enact such laws or establish such customs as would de 
velop a contented middle and a hopeful laboring class. 
Indeed, the North and West, with their attractive wages, 
with their excellent schools, libraries, reading-rooms, 
clubs, and settlement houses, with a cordial welcome to 
full American citizenship, have beckoned invitingly the 
millions of Europeans that make the wealth of these 
great sections of our nation. During these same years 
another part of our land has spent its time in devising 
plans to keep down in dependence and hopelessness its 
millions of laborers, millions native to the soil, ready and 
willing to do whatever they are able for the development 
of the only land they know and the only land they care to 
know. 

In the second place, there is a decided economic loss 
in keeping within the bounds of unskilled labor those 
who might do credit in the ranks of skilled labor; and 
yet that is what the South or any part of the country does 
when it inhibits and circumscribes the vocations of a 
part of its people. There are certain classes of skilled 
labor which it is not permitted a Negro to enter. In fact, 
my observation convinces me that even certain vocations 
which belonged almost exclusively to the Negroes ever 
since the days of slavery are fast being- closed against - 
them. The present railroad strike in Georgia illustrates 
this point. Parenthetically I may say that due credit 
should be given to the papers, North and Sotfth, that 
have rung out with no uncertain sound about this strike ; 
and yet it would seem impossible to counteract in one day 
in the year all the evil that these same papers will do us in 



the other 364 days in written words or insinuations 
against us as a people. And so down the line there seems 
to be a purpose to restrict the Negroes within the limits of 
unskilled labor, to reduce them to a state which, while not 
nineteenth century slavery may be twentieth century 
peonage. 

Thirdly, as was suggested previously, the humiliating 
laws and practices are forcing out of the South thou 
sands of its best Negroes, Negroes who love their birth 
place, love its balmy air, its sunny skies, its fertile 
fields, its luxuriant forests, the comradeship of their kith 
and kin. To us there never cease to come times of yearn 
ing to revisit the old spots of our childhood and of our 
youth, to meet our brethren, to hear their tale of woe, 
to weep with them over their distresses, to rejoice with 
them in their successes, to share with them the soul-re 
freshings that only a Negro revival can give. How near 
they seem to get to the great loving heart of God in their 
deep, religious fervor, and childlike trustfulness! But 
when our yearning seizes us, there appears before us the 
spectral hand of blighting prejudice, inviting uninvit- 
ingly. 

I never cease to wonder whether far-sighted white 
men of the South see the loss in letting so many of their 
best Negroes leave ; whether they ever think that it would 
be wise to abate their prejudices to the extent of consult 
ing with us for some ground of mutual understanding 
and sympathy. It is too high a compliment to be credi 
ble that we have developed such a large class of desir 
ables that the thousands who leave are easily spared. If 
a community seeks to acquire and to retain the largest 
possible number of upright, cultured, property-holding, 
progressive people, it should inquire into the causes that 
drive out and keep out this very class. But has there 
been a single act of a southern Legislature in 35 years 
aimed to render more comfortable the lot of that class 

92 



of Negroes who, out of great tribulation, have struggled 
up and are still struggling up, and rearing their families 
into clean and commendable manhood and womanhood ? 

We are needed in the South, needed to help our 
brethren up, needed to give our white neighbors the as 
surance of our confidence, needed to join with all honest 
and earnest men for the regeneration of the land of our 
birth, scarred by slavery, blighted by the ravages of war, 
crippled by years of post-bellum misrule, hampered by 
narrow, near-sighted, selfish prejudice. There is not 
one of us who would not gladly go back home if we did 
not know that every right dear to any full man has been 
ruthlessly torn from our grasp. Gladly would we rush to 
the embrace of our loved ones in bonds, but we cannot, 
we cannot. 

In the fourth place, we do not get the full economic 
credit due to us, because of the loss of a host of mixed- 
bloods who cross the line. Even in the South this cross 
ing occasionally happens. Sometimes the white know it 
and wink at it, as was evidenced some time ago in the 
South Carolina State Constitutional Convention in a 
speech by Mr. Tillman, brother of Senator Tillman. 
There is scarcely a colored man who could not tell of 
some friend or relative who has crossed the line North 
or South, now prominent in business, professors in insti 
tutions of learning, married into good society, and rear 
ing families that have no dreams of the depths that their 
parent has escaped. We could tell the story, if we would 
but who would be the knave to disturb their peace? 

Lastly, intolerance drives the ambitious, competent, skill 
ed laborer out of the South, but in coming into the North, 
he meets an industrial competition which he had not fig 
ured on. Here he finds the field of skilled labor pre 
empted by the native white man and the foreigner. They 
guard jealously all approaches to it, whether threatened 
by Negro or Japanese or Chinaman, or what not. The 

93 



new arrival attributes to prejudice the difficulties he en 
counters. I can hardly believe that it is prejudice that 
keeps Negroes out of the industrial fields in the North 
as much as other reasons. Only to-day I was talking 
with a young man, a graduate of Hampton, who has 
worked his way up to a successful upholstery business in 
this city. He said, "I had a hard time at first because 
people didn t believe a colored man could do upholstery 
work satisfactorily. Now that I have made good, I get 
plenty of work." I could weary you with numerous in 
stances of this kind. 

There are, as I see it, three chief reasons why we are 
not working easily into the skilled trades in the North: 
(i) Skepticism as to our ability; (2) The already crowd 
ed labor market, that looks with disfavor upon inroads 
from any source; (3) A feeling, which I think is human, 
viz., the pleasure found in knocking the weaker fellow. 
Joseph Bernstein and Max Robinsky would not likely 
have any feeling against Jim Smith as a man ; but as 
Joseph and Max have just come from a kicking them 
selves there may be some comfort in finding the chance 
to try the dose on another fellow. So Pat O Flannagan 
does not have the least thing in the world against Jim 
from Dixie, but it didn t take Pat long after passing 
the Statue of Liberty to learn that it is popular to give 
Jim a whack. He would be a little more than human if 
he did not want to try on Jim what his English lord had 
so long tried on him. These people who have escaped 
the persecutions and the class-proscriptions of Europe 
feel a newly awakened consciousness that they are not 
after all at the bottom of the heap. They would strike 
in like manner against any other individual, or religion, 
or language, or race, provided that they were prompted 
to it by prevailing custom. 

Labor discriminations in the North are not deep-seated 
and inerradicable. It is impossible to educate the youth 

94 



of a land in the same schools, in the same classes, side 
by side in their recitations, united in their sports, shout 
ing the same yell, feeling the same thrill at the success 
of their colleagues, whether white or yellow or brown or 
black, without at the same time developing a better un 
derstanding with each other, a kindlier feeling toward 
each other. The thing we call race prejudice in the 
North differs from race prejudice in the South as a skin- 
affection differs from scrofula. The latter is organic, in 
the very blood, drawn in with the mother s milk, and fed 
by the virus of public sentiment. The other is superfi 
cial, readily subject to treatment, and not difficult to cure. 

But whatever may be the outcome of the people who 
leave the South, there is one thing certain the South 
is losing a class of citizens which it should wish to re 
tain. Men and women of culture and of character are 
needed in every community, and in no place more than 
in the South; but when the Southern whites, by every 
conceivable means, humiliate, proscribe, and hamper the 
best of us, there should be no surprise if we seek more 
congenial climes, where we can at least protect our wives 
and daughters from the contumely that the lowest white 
man can heap upon them with absolute impunity. 

Whither are we tending? Are we drifting with a sort 
of fatalistic indifference? Or is there a purpose behind 
all these restrictions, all these proscriptions? 

If there be a purpose what can it be? Is the purpose 
to go back to slavery ? I had hoped that it had been set 
tled, forever settled, that this country cannot exist part 
slave and part free. If there be no purpose behind it all, 
there is lacking that far-seeing statesmanship which every 
government should have. It is difficult to believe that 
the problem of ten million citizen-aliens does not merit 
the wisest statesmanship. We are forty-six years from 
the Emancipation Proclamation, and yet to-day so wide 
spread is this race-oppression that a gathering of this 

95 



kind is imperative. At the same rate of retrogression, in 
forty-six more years the then twenty millions of colored 
people will be veritable serfs. 

What would that mean to the country at large? A tu 
berculous bacillus from a black man s lung is as conta 
gious as a bacillus from a white man s lung. Black men 
of vicious lives cannot fail to affect to a greater or less 
degree the communities where they live. You cannot cir 
cumscribe vice ; it is contagious. Leave these millions 
of Negroes to battle alone with this terrible weight with 
which they are now burdened and they would prove 
themselves little better than mortals if they did not follow 
the lines of least resistance and sink lower and lower 
into indolence, vagrancy and criminality. You may de 
prive a man of the right to vote, but you cannot deprive 
him of the right to steal. 

Give them encouragement. Offer them incentives for 
intelligence, for skill, for sobriety, for character. Let 
them feel that as they push themselves out of the quag 
mire, they will be recognized on their merits. Reward 
industry. Recognize proved ability. But, if for the 
sake of argument, it be granted that they are all that 
their most virulent enemies charge them with being, so 
much greater is the need of sparing no efforts for their 
uplift, not so much for their sakes as for your sakes.. 
If it were only one man or a hundred men, there might 
be some hope of their dying or some way might be sug 
gested to get rid of them ; but here is a race of 10,000,- 
ooo, as many people as are in all British America and all 
Central America; they are not dying out; they are not 
going to die out. As I see it there are only four things 
possible: (i) Expatriate them; (2) Annihilate them: 
(3) Degrade them; (4) Elevate them. If they remain 
here and are allowed no incentives to pull upward, it 
must follow as the night the day, they will surely run 
downward. 

96 



To work in any way that one has the ability should 
be the inalienable right of every American citizen. A 
clean, attractive, honest-looking young man came to my 
office last week to see if I "could help him. He stated 
that he is a Junior in the pharmaceutical course at Colum 
bia. He desires to spend his vacation in a wholesale drug 
concern for the sake of needed information and exper 
ience. He had written to several drug establishments 
in this city. He received replies to call, intimating that 
there were opportunities for work. He stated that he 
had just come from a useless round of visits to the stores, 
for the proprietors had suddenly changed their minds on 
seeing him. Now, that young man is good enough to 
sit by the side of and work with the best in Columbia 
University; is it not presumable that he is good enough 
to work out in the world by the side of those who are 
no better than his mates in college? 

We do not ask for charity; all we ask is opportunity. 
We do not beg for alms ; we beg only for a chance. The 
right to work ; opportunity to work ; encouragement to 
work ; reward for work ; this is all we ask ; less than 
this should not be given. 



97 



THE NEGRO AND THE SOUTH 

William English Walling 

Secretary of the Committee 

The chief object of any movement in behalf of the 
American Negro must be to enlighten the public opinion 
of the whole country. In no section is it in a satis 
factory state. Yet in the East, West, and North, the 
Negro has friends in every social class, sometimes many, 
sometimes few, who are ready to treat him in every way 
as on his individual merits. As a southerner born, and 
one familiar with the southern view through family 
and friends, from infancy, I am peculiarly conscious 
that it is in the South alone that the Negro seems to 
find no true brotherly feeling in any element of the 
white community. It is my chief purpose to point out 
that the situation is not so bad as it appears, but the 
fact that the sentiment friendly to the Negro in the 
South receives at the present moment no effective pub 
lic expression. That it is disorganized, that it is only lo 
cally known in the South and never reaches the North 
is only too obvious. I shall also admit that this new 
friendliness is only slightly developed and only half- 
conscious, that it must oppose at every point the dominant 
note of prejudice and oppression that pervades and 
dominates the press, the politics, the pulpit, and even 
the universities of that section. But whether developed 
or not, whether discouraging or the reverse, whether 
we like it or not, it is southern opinion that must ulti 
mately play the chief part in the settlement of this 
question. 

98 



Now what ivS the present state of opinion in the south 
ern states? To give an intelligent answer we must 
adopt a new method, we must speak separately of the 
various .elements of the community. Doubtless there 
seems to be a solid South and there is some truth in 
the expression, perhaps more than there would have 
been a generation or two or three generations ago. Yet 
chemical substances and biological organisms were nev 
er understood until they were pulled to pieces, analyzed 
in every conceivable manner, and we shall not know 
anything whatever of southern opinion as long as we 
think of a solid South. The South never was solid. 
Economic conditions may have produced a tendency 
towards solidification for the first half of the last cen 
tury and political sectionalism both North and South 
may have strengthened this tendency for another fifty 
years, but the differences within the South on this ques 
tion during all this period remained, and still remain, 
infinitely more important and instructive than the points 
on which unity seemed to prevail. Within the last two 
decades, moreover, political and economic sectionalism 
are both decreasing, the same economic questions are 
dividing the South as divide the rest of the country, 
each of the new economic or political groups that results 
takes a new attitude on the Negro problem. 

Hitherto the Negroes themselves and their northern 
friends have placed altogether too much hope in the 
more cultivated and benevolent of the southern aristoc 
racy, the descendants largely of the wealthier and more 
humane slave owners of the past generation. But even 
when such individuals succeed in freeing themselves en 
tirely from local tradition and interests, which happens 
but rarely, even when they have the tremendous courage 
to speak out against the overwhelming power of the 
firmly seated oligarchies that govern the southern states, 
they represent only isolated individual opinions. In- 

99 



deed, all the humanitarian opinion of the country com 
bined with that of science could have little effect. 

We have been taunted by the fact that we have only 
three white southerners on our programme. Such crit 
icism ignores the fact that none can speak with such 
knowledge and even breadth on the condition of the 
Negroes as some of the enlightened colored southerners 
we have with us. But it ignores further the very crux 
of the whole problem, that liberal southerners have giv 
en up in despair before the wave of aggressive and ugly 
reaction that rules the section. 

A gentleman from the far South who has written that 
the racial discrimination had no other basis than the de 
sire to establish by law and custom a legally inferior 
caste in the place of slavery has written us the reasons 
why he does not consider it admissible for him to ad 
dress this conference. Referring to his published writ 
ing he says: "I wrote for the country at large to repel 
false statements which are constantly being made concern 
ing our Negro population, and which, I felt, were doing 
much to make the Negro obnoxious to those who would 
naturally be his friends." But he refuses to repeat this 
denunciation of false statements because he does not 
feel that most southerners are open to the truth. He 
writes further, "Should I give utterance anywhere in 
the North to what I think about the race question, I 
feel that I should convince nobody in the South that I 
was right." He then shows the hopeless isolation even 
of moderate liberals like himself in the South in the 
statement "there are doubtless other southern men who 
think as you and I do, but they are certainly not many 
enough to escape the epithets, crank and fanatic." 

What could be more ill-founded and misleading then 
than the view so widely held in the North and just ex 
pressed by President Taft at Howard University, that 
"the white men of progress were coming to appreciate 

100 



the advantage of having a class like the colored men 
that they have there." The slave-owners and all their 
successors who have secured any advantage from hav 
ing the Negroes there have always appreciated their 
presence only the poorer whites have complained of 
the competition of their cheap labor and wished them 
in Liberia. It is made a crime in some southern states 
to entice the colored laborer out of the state even for 
his benefit. The Negro is recognized as highly valuable, 
but not as having any rights. 

In other words, there are two Souths, those who em 
ploy Negro labor and those who compete with it. Those 
who employ want their labor to be cheap and skilled. 
To keep it cheap, they hold all the positions of power in 
the community and in agricultural sections make strik 
ing a crime, while they discourage the higher education 
necessary to produce Negro leaders and drive the most 
courageous and intelligent to the North. To make it 
skilled they encourage industrial education. Those who 
compete with Negro labor cannot wish it to be cheap. 
One recourse is to keep it unskilled, to exclude it from 
the unions, but another way is to make common cause 
in the organized fight for higher wages. Both courses 
are being followed, and it is right here where the in 
fluence of a powerful public sentiment could best aid 
the Negroes. The white workingmen must be persuaded 
that their only permanent welfare is co-operation with 
their colored fellow-workers and that opposition must 
inevitably lead to total demoralization of all organized 
effort of both classes. 

What is still more interesting is that these two econ 
omic Souths coincide to a very large extent with the 
two geographical Souths. In the Black Belt in the far 
southern states, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mis 
sissippi, Louisiana and Florida, the employers, especially 
of the large plantations, have no choice but to employ 

101 



Negro labor. They are therefore influenced exclusive 
ly by the desire for labor both cheap and as skilled as 
it may be without becoming discontented. On the other 
hand, the employers and manufacturers of North Caro 
lina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Ten 
nessee and Missouri employ more white than colored 
labor and recognize that it is impossible to legislate 
against white labor, and, therefore, very difficult to legis 
late against the colored. On the other hand, it is in these 
border states exclusively where the competition between 
colored and white labor assumes very important pro 
portions. In those counties where the prejudice is most 
strong as well as in the corresponding counties north of 
the Ohio there are frequent efforts to drive the Negroes 
out. On the other hand, many of the trade unions 
make a serious and often successful effort to organize. 
In other words, employing whites absolutely dominate 
the far South, whereas employed whites have a consid 
erable voice in the government of the border states. 
Geographically as well as economically there are two 
Souths. In the first, undeveloped workers are held in 
slavery while the most developed are expelled. In the 
second, the most developed may often be welcomed 
while the undeveloped or half -skilled are likely to be 
expelled. It is from the first South that the leaders of 
southern opinion are for the most part developed. It 
is they, at any rate, almost exclusively the descendants of 
slave-owners, that set the whole tone of public opinion 
of the whole section. This is why it is almost impos 
sible that a truly friendly sentiment should be devel 
oped in the South among the so-called better element. 
Not among the so-called better element, the class that 
refers to itself in the South as the aristocary, is the 
Negro to expect his friends, but from the despised 
"poor whites." It is upon these that the burden of com 
petition with cheap Negro labor chiefly falls, and it is 



102 



they that are most sorely tempted by demagogues like 
Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia to steal the Negro s 
job. Governor Smith said in 1907 that he stood for the 
elimination of all competition between blacks and whites, 
and he has shown a dozen times during the recent strike 
that he is using his power as governor to this end. He 
favors for the Negro the "natural status of his race, that 
of inferiority." Why should we be surprised, then, if 
a union asserts that the "South is a white man s coun 
try," and that therefore no Negro is to be placed above 
any white? 

But this is not what the ex-slave-owners or "those 
who appreciate the advantage of having the colored men 
there" mean by a white man s country. They mean that 
the white man is to have the Negro do his work on his 
own terms. The white laborer at his worst wants the 
Negro s job. He has nothing to gain and everything 
to lose by the establishment of any form of industrial 
slavery whether first applied exclusively to Negroes or 
not. 

The white laborer s race antagonism has an easy 
remedy. When there are plenty of jobs he works gladly 
beside the Negro and admits him in his union. Only 
when jobs are scarce is he tempted to take advantage 
of the protection of local governments to drive the 
Negroes from their jobs or in some border districts, 
North and South, to drive him from town. 

In industries where the Negroes are numerous, the 
whites necessarily organized in the same unions have 
no notion of demanding preferential treatment. On the 
contrary, they fight with the Negroes against those very 
oligarchies that maintain themselves solely by anti-Negro 
agitation. Mr. Fairley, head of the United Mine Work 
ers for the Alabama district, has written the conference, 
"I may say that the treatment accorded to the southern 
working white man by the southern oligarchy is little 

103 



if any better than accorded to. the Negro, and therefore 
I agree with you that the interest of the Negro and white 
laboring man are inseparably one. The action of the 
state government in our recent strike last summer in 
Alabama proved that beyond the possibility of a doubt." 

The effort of the laboring people to organize and 
fight collectively for better wages and better conditions, 
has in fact met with measures of coercion such as have 
prevailed in no other part of the country unless we ex 
cept some of the Rocky Mountain states. Leaders of 
powerful labor unions which have branches in the 
South are agreed that the southern white laborer can 
scarcely expect greater justice from the present state 
governments than the Negro himself. A very import 
ant union official (whose name I am not able to dis 
close), a man widely respected through the country, was 
ordered to leave the state by one of the governors of a 
large southern commonwealth. 

If justice is to be done to the Negro in this demo 
cratic country, it must be done through the enlightened 
and active interest of some important element or ele 
ments of the population. Already a certain part of the 
people of the South have learned that the disfranchise- 
ment and civil discriminations must necessarily affect 
at the same time the poorer elements of the white pop 
ulation. This has happened largely as follows : Econ 
omically considered, the Negroes constitute (with im 
portant exceptions), the lowest third of the population, 
the poor whites the middle third, and the descendants of 
the former slave-owning aristocracy and gentry and 
their direct dependents, together with the well-to-do 
classes with which they are politically allied, the third 
on top. When the Negroes or a large part of them, were 
allowed to vote, the "poor whites" held the balance of 
power, and it was through this balance of power that 
the Populists at one time obtained such a wide hold 

104 



on this section and that such men as Governor Varda-^ 
man of Mississippi were able to overthrow the old aris 
tocracy. Now that the overwhelming part of the Ne 
groes are prevented from voting (by legal or illegal 
means), the poorer whites are forced to share their 
power with their former rivals, or rather, the political 
power has passed into the hands of a social group plac 
ed somewhere between the poorer whites, properly 
speaking, and the so-called aristocracy. 

As a result of this loss of political power by the 
"poor whites" we see in various parts of the South the 
economic system of peonage and the political system of 
government by terror, invented originally for use against 
the Negroes turned against certain elements of the 
white population, especially foreigners. It was even 
proposed recently in certain Mississippi towns to segre 
gate the Italians in the public schools. In Biloxi, Mis 
sissippi, the disregard for the propertyless classes has 
gone so far that an effort has been made recently to 
force those who could not pay their municipal taxes to 
work on the streets. Innumerable examples of a grow 
ing despotism can be collected from all the southern 
states. Let us mention only the convict labor system 
applied in some places to whites as well as, blacks, by 
which a shortage of labor is supplied by the loan of 
prisoners, and judges friendly to employers are placed 
tinder the temptation of increasing this supply. 

All this in the far South. As is well known, all of 
the border states have been more or less evenly divided 
politically for many years and among these states we 
may soon be able to include both North Carolina and 
Tennessee. This condition of comparative political 
health has already led to a very rapid and most encour 
aging increase of true democracy in government, and 
there is every reason for belief that if the other sec 
tions of the country took a stand for the Negro s rights 

105 



at the same time that they assumed a friendly attitude 
to the true democracy of the South and ceased to view 
the Negro situation as a sectional question, all the bor 
der states would begin to assume a fairer attitude to 
wards the persecuted race. 

This leaves only to be considered the eight states of 
the far South and Virginia. As we have pointed out 
the white laboring element of the section is already wav 
ering. Only twelve or fourteen years ago a large ele 
ment of the white farming population in several states 
was co-operating with a similar Negro element. The 
object of any promising movement, first, last, and all 
the time, must be to find in behalf of the Negro means 
to encourage these small beginnings of the feeling of 
friendliness. 

With these facts and this possibility in view, why 
can we not hope that a few years of the right policy 
may secure an increasing measure of justice for the 
Negro in the border states and that a generation of na 
tional co-operation and education, national organizations 
of farmers and workingmen, may even convert the 
white masses of the far South to a correct attitude? 
The more numerous elements of the population are 
those who will finally decide, and they are almost cer 
tain to decide justly since it is precisely these poor far 
mers and laboring people that are economically most 
nearly related to the Negro. 

This policy does not imply that an appeal should not 
be made at the same time to the descendants of slave 
owners, in their own interests and those of the South, 
as -well as in the interest of justice and humanity; nor 
on the other hand that the rest of the nation should re 
lent in any way its demand for the enforcement of the 
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, for they bring 
to bear that very form of pressure, just and gentle, that 
conscience does not allow us to dispense with, and that 

106 



is the only way one brother may really hope to prevent 
even the worst errors of another. But as long as the 
solid South resists we can hardly expect a very thor 
ough enforcement. To accomplish this, we must first 
break the solid South. The effort that has been made 
in the name of imperialism and a prohibitive tariff must 
be made in the name of democracy. 

The masses of the southern population must be shown 
that their interests lie in a gradual extension of the suf 
frage to the Negroes as fast at least as the latter can 
receive a moderate school education. They must real 
ize that it is to their interest to provide for this educa 
tion as rapidly as possible, and in spite of their poverty 
they must show the widest liberality in this respect. 
The northern democracy, on the other hand, would be 
tremendously strengthened, if Senators Tillman and 
Bailey and their like were replaced in the national coun 
cils by true Democrats representing the educated white 
laborers and farmers as well as the educated Negroes of 
those or other economic classes. Such an accession to 
the national legislature would immensely strengthen the 
popular cause throughout the whole nation. In return, 
a body of true southern representatives could demand 
effectually from the nation a fair treatment not only 
for the southern farmers and workingmen but of the 
whole South a fairer treatment than has ever been re 
ceived or ever could be through any alliance based upon 
any other principle than that of democracy itself. 

As some Negroes have expressed it, it is now pro 
posed by certain parties, to cement the friendship of the 
whites of the North with the whites of the South over 
the prostrate body of the Negro. On the contrary, it is 
to the direct economic and political interest of the true 
southern democracy, whether white or colored, whether 
of the Republican or Democratic parties, to join hands 
with the corresponding democracy of the North. Im- 

107 



perialism or the cause of a prohibitive tariff could unite 
only certain restricted elements of the two sections, how 
ever powerful socially and economically these elements 
may be. Only by the nationalization of our existing 
democracy, by its extension into the South through the 
better organization and representation of the masses of 
the southern people, can sectionalism be eliminated. Any 
other method must first leave the masses of the country 
divided on geographical lines as before, and then by 
forcing the Negro backward, endanger the very founda 
tion of their power. For if the class that rules the 
South at the present moment, with its anti-Negro propa 
ganda, once succeeds in making a permanent alliance 
with the corrupt corporations and politicians of the 
North, now fortunately segregated in another party, a 
far more dangerous system of class rule will be evolved 
in America than we had before the Civil War; and this 
unholy alliance is impending this very moment. The 
class that stands for persecution of the Negro once giv 
en a share in our national government will stand for 
any and every other form of attack on free and demo 
cratic institutions, every form of reaction known to 
eastern Europe. 

No greater peril stands before democrats of every 
race in this country than the permanent participation of 
the southern reactionary element in our national legis 
lature, no greater hope than that the true democracy of 
the South shall be properly presented in our national 
counsels, no matter through what party. The Negro s 
only hope is at the same time the sole safeguard of the 
nation. This is the thought and the hope of the farmers 
and workingmen of the whole nation to their southern 
brethren : By lowering the political and economic status 
of the colored population which furnishes half your co- 
workers in agriculture and industry, you inevitably cut 
in half your own ability to resist greedy employers, or 

108 



those economic forces against which farmers have to 
contend. You gain nothing from cheapened labor in the 
towns and cheapened prices on the farms that inevitably 
result from the crushing of the colored population. 
Many of you have already learned what you suffer at 
the hands of the present oligarchies and have frequent 
ly found yourselves forced to unite with the Negroes 
against them. Now join yourselves once for all with 
us your brother farmers and workingmen from other 
sections of the country. Do not allow yourselves to be 
longer divided from us by the false fear of Negro dom 
ination. By so doing you not only rivet your own chains 
but you hold back the whole country. Join us, bring 
with you the best elements of the colored population, 
whose aid you will find indispensable for your own 
emancipation in the South, and we will see to it that 
your interests and welfare are advanced in the national 
government as never before for a hundred years. 

Remain divided from us and we are helpless to aid 
you or protect ourselves. Join us and victory of the 
cause of progress and democracy is assured. 



IOQ 



DISCUSSION 

MR. WALDRON : There are many things that I would 
like to say, but I want to emphasize that I believe we 
have not laid enough stress on the white side of this 
thing. The Negro side is bad, but unless something is 
done to change things, the poor white man not only of 
the South, but particularly in the South, is going to feel 
the pinch of the shoe just as much as the Negro. 

MR. BANNON: We are very much encouraged that 
we are permitted to have the privilege and opportunity 
of meeting with white men and white women and con 
verse about these matters. I think my Negro friends, 
that if the Negro will show a little more spirit, and 
stand up on his feet, the white man will stand by him. 

MR. STEMMONS: The man must be dull indeed who 
does not realize the crisis reached in the race situation 
in this country. I believe that no better opportunity has 
ever been presented and that no better ever will be 
presented again for starting the flood of influence which 
controls the situation flowing in the right direction. But 
let us not be deceived. Unless we meet this situation 
with dignity, wisdom and foresight, we will merely add 
fuel to flames already raging in this country, and make 
it more difficult than ever before to overcome the same. 
Everybody in this presence very likely has the same idea 
of the race situation in this country. For a few indi 
viduals to hold an ideal, to create an ideal which they 
are willing to live up to, and which they believe the gen 
eral public ought to live up to, is a noble thing; but for 
them to produce a line of action that will override op 
position and make this ideal part of the public life, is 
quite another thing. If mere conferences and talks and 

no 



resolutions and protests and appeals were all that are 
needed, we have already enough of these to settle a dozen 
such questions instead of making it worse and worse, 
as has been the case with the race situation in this coun 
try for thi? past forty-five years. The trouble has been, 
I think, oar failure to recognize and act upon the in 
fluences that control this situation and keep it alive, fail 
ure to recognize and appreciate the basic conditions upon 
which depend the development of the race. 

Give us an economic opportunity, that is what the 
race asks. The physical conditions of the race depend 
upon it. For example, a good many people say to me 
that the conditions of the Negro are gradually improv 
ing throughout the country. Ask them for their basis 
for such an assertion, and they say the colored people 
are owning better houses, building bigger churches, en 
gaging in more businesses and in more diversified 
branches of labor than ever before. We admit this, but 
I refuse to admit it without ample qualifications. 

I refuse to accept that point, because while a few 
Negroes are successful in this way, in business and in 
professional lines, at least eighty per cent, of the col 
ored people are engaged in domestic and personal labors, 
and the lines against them in these avenues of labor are 
being drawn closer and closer each succeeding year. 
Why, the most important field that we have had in the 
North for colored men has been working at the hotels. 
But now, with very few exceptions, none of the first- 
class hotels will employ a colored waiter. There is not 
a first-class hotel in any northern city that will employ 
colored men. Furthermore, on the menus of these hotels 
you will find a statement: "Nothing but white help em 
ployed in this establishment." Ten years ago in reading 
in the help wanted columns of any daily newspaper, you 
would find a large percentage of domestic situations 
specifying Negroes. To-day there are comparatively 

in 



no calls for a Negro domestic, while an increasing per 
centage of the calls foi Domestics specify that none but 
white are needed. 

But notwithstanding the extent to whidi they are 
being excluded along lines of these domestic and per 
sonal services, we all know that it is almost impossible 
for them to find lucrative employment in any other line. 
I say, and I challenge anyone to refute my contention, 
that the opportunities of the colored people are growing 
fewer and fewer throughout all parts of this country. 
And I believe there is not another race of people who 
will so placidly and indifferently permit themselves to 
be pushed aside in the industrial enterprises of this 
country, as will the Negro. 

MR. STEMMONS : Did you ever sit down and se 
riously ask yourself the question, why the colored people 
stay in the South and submit to the indignities and in 
sults heaped upon them? I will tell you why. It is 
because of their knowledge that they cannot make an 
honest living in any other part of the country. That 
is the sum and substance of the matter, to make it pos 
sible for the Negroes to live in the South, to so adjust 
and regulate industrial opportunities throughout the 
country that no man more than any other may have an 
advantage. 

MR. J. MORGAN, of Brooklyn: The question is sim 
ply one of bread and butter. If there be not suffi 
cient bread and butter to go around, the white man cer 
tainly has every reason to think that he has a right to 
attack the Negro as he has attacked him to-day. 

The problem confronting us to-day is simply that the 
Negro is placed in a position where he is losing his 
political rights. As Professor DuBois has well said, 
as he loses his political rights, he naturally loses those 
economic rights that he is heir to. He is just as much 
an heir to his economic rights, I say, as the whitest man 

112 



or the blackest man is heir to Milton, or is heir to 
Galileo, or whatever the world has done ; to all these 
the Negro is just as much heir as any other member of 
you here. 

MR. WILLIAM M. TROTTER, of Boston: The exist 
ence of color lines in industrial matters is calamitous 
the industrial and civil differentiation of political mat 
ters, as has been so well described to-day. But to my 
mind that which is the grossest calamity and the most 
telling, and 1 must say the grossest outrage, seems to 
me the attitude of the federal government, which is 
guilty of standing in the position of giving its authority 
to color proscription. Now, I think the strike in Geor 
gia has opened our eyes. It has been the boast of the 
South that while they have denied the colored man 
political rights, they give him industrial freedom and 
liberty. And what do we find ? We find that in the 
South the right of the colored man to work is being 
denied. When they can do it, they can turn a colored 
man out of any line of work for which they can secure 
a white. And why is this? Because he is disfranchised. 
We know that Congress refused to take hold of this 
political situation, either to stop this disfranchisement 
or punish it, although in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
Amendments Congress specifically has this power, and 
it is its duty to do so. We know the Supreme Court 
dodges the issue, and when it is finally face to face with 
it, asserts that it is not for the Supreme Court, it is 
for Congress. And with reference to the declaration 
of the President of the United States, I think that is 
most serious. I have read and re-read it, and it seems 
to me that it is the most insidious and skilful, and there 
fore the most dangerous attitude ever taken by a Presi 
dent. He admits that a man is not disfranchised on 
account of color, and he calls that a step in the right 
direction. Now he goes on to discuss these revised 



statutes under which he admits we have a franchise, and 
finally he comes down to a statement something like 
this: That as long as these laws stand, it is neither the 
disposition nor is it within the province of the federal 
government to interfere with the southern states in the 
handling of their domestic affairs. 

Now, my friends, that reads to me like a justification 
of colored disfranchisement. As a matter of fact, it is. 
And I have come to this conference to say that we have 
to face the facts that are before us, and the conditions 
that are before us, no matter in how high places. Some 
one has said here that we have too much agitation ; that 
what we want is to get industrial opportunity. We do 
want to get industrial opportunity, but if we are not 
to have our franchise, it certainly has been shown that 
we will lose industrial opportunity. Mr. Taft goes one 
step further. He says something which it seems to me 
absolutely indefensible, and which is in line with our 
talk. He has announced, and you all know it, that col 
ored men should be given office by the colored people, 
not as a right of citizenship, and that the government 
should see to it whether or not the appointment is going 
to help the race. Now, my friends, if the President of 
the United States is going to openly announce as Pres 
ident of this country, that the colored citizens or the 
white citizens are to be consulted about the positions to 
be held by colored men, you have the authority and 
seal of our highest official behind the idea that the col 
ored people cannot hold positions that other people do 
not want them to have, because it will do the colored 
people more harm than good. 

MR. CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL: I don t believe my 
self, as a matter of fact, that we are going to help the 
situation very much by moving our colored brethren 
from the South to the North, or from the North to the 
South. I don t believe it is going to help very much to 

114 



assist him if he is a good workman; but I do believe 
that the remedy, if you want one, lies only in an appeal 
to the innate conscience of the American people. I can t 
think that we have had too much agitation. I can t 
think that we have had enough agitation. I have been 
following my colored brother with my sympathy, with 
all my heart, because my father was an abolitionist, and 
I am bound to say that I have had more education on 
this question since ten o clock this morning, than I have 
had before in all the rest of my life, and I think I have 
been a pretty close observer. I can tell you that what 
I have heard to-day has opened up an entirely new hori 
zon to me. And I say this although I am a student more 
or less and in a position where I can see the world as 
it goes by. Now there are only a few of us here, but 
it is a beginning, and everything has to have its begin 
ning, every great movement has to. have its beginning, 
and if we will strike hands together and increase our 
numbers and look forward, we will have our remedy, if 
we faint not, believe me. 

MR. BARBER: It is because I wish to go on record, 
as regards the question which has been raised by one of 
my friends here, that I am so anxious to speak. I want 
to say that there is a great fundamental difficulty at the 
bottom of this problem, and it lies not in economics but in 
politics. On that question I am with William Lloyd Gar 
rison, Mr. Russell, and the other men that have taken the 
stand here. If you will give a man the right to vote, 
if you will put the ballot in his hands, if you will give 
him the right to protect himself, and if he will see that 
the proper man goes to Congress, a man who will see 
that American citizens are protected in their rights, then 
you will get these other things. If you want to solve the 
race problem, you have to get men who have the right to 
vote, to say who shall be the governor or the judge, with 
the right to sit on juries to protect themselves, the right 



to punish sheriffs for doing what they have done in 
office. And when you come to this place and tell me 
that economics and industry are going to solve this prob 
lem, I think you are radically wrong. Industry should 
be just merely a stepping stone to higher things in 
this republic, and I wish to say the thing that is 
needed more particularly in this problem is more back 
bone. If you are going to solve the race problem, you 
must have men of the William Lloyd Garrison stripe. . 
You must have men that will be willing to stand up for 
humanity, and for their convictions on this question. 

MR. BENSON : I did not expect to have anything to 
say until some one spoke about moving the Negroes from 
the South to the North. I believe that if we are going 
to settle this problem that it is the white who must set 
tle it, and not the other, and I hope that whatever meth 
ods are determined upon by this conference, they will 
be planned upon methods that are natural to us natural 
to us in the South, and natural to us in the North. I 
am only going to speak for one particular section of 
the country, and that is the South, and I am only going 
to speak for one particular section of the South, and that 
is the rural district, because that is where my exper 
ience has been, and I don t know very much about any 
thing else. What arc we going to do to keep the Ne 
groes from going to the north? It is to make labor 
remunerative so that he can exist in the South. 

I was born and reared in a little rural community in 
Alabama to which I returned after graduating from 
college, and to which I have devoted my life, and I 
want to say that there is probably not a community in 
the South where the relations between the two races 
have been so pleasant, and where the people are so well 
satisfied as they are there. Why? Because they have 
something to do, and you can t ride through that com 
munity and look at the schools and tell which is the 

1 16 



white man s school, or which is the black man s school. 
I only mention this to tell you that we are not dissat 
isfied down there. We will welcome all that you can 
do for us in the way of bringing us our rights to vote, 
but we can t sit down and argue while you are bringing 
us this right. And the most healthful thing that we all 
can do, is to bring into the communities those influences 
which are going not only to help to make a revenue, 
but are going to help make life as pleasant and attractive 
there as any other place in the world. 

MR. MILLER: We are fully convinced, from the ad 
dress delivered by Mr. DuBois this afternoon, that the 
millennium has not come as yet. But in seeking 
the solution of these questions we are confront 
ed by the question as to whether Mr. Barber 
is correct in saying that it is not an economic, 
but a political point of view. Well, it depends 
largely upon the point of view. I think economics is at 
the foundation of the whole thing. But we must come 
to economics through politics, so it depends upon the 
viewpoint largely as to the truth of the whole thing. 
I have studied the colored man pretty well, and I find 
the greatest difficulty with the colored man as a rule is 
that he is true to one thing. I don t find him ordinar 
ily true to his religion, I don t find him true to his 
friends, I don t find him true to his trusts. He is just 
as derelict in these things as the white man. But I find 
the one thing that the colored man is devoted to, and 
that ideal is Republicanism. That is his religion. Now 
it is not until a colored man can break away from this 
ideal, this religion of Republicanism, that he will get his 
liberty through economics. Of course Mr. Taft, or Mr. 
anybody else, can treat the colored man as Mr. Taft 
treats him, and the colored man can be treated as 
the Supreme Court treats him, he can be treated as Con 
gress treats him, as long as this colored man will 

117 



stand firmly by the Republican ticket. We know that 
in various parts of the country they rebel, they say we 
will cut the party, we will organize an independent 
party, or we will stand by some other old party, but on 
the eve of election day, the great majority of them will 
come together and say, let us trust the dear old party 
one more time and the Republicans know it. Now, 
there is the great Socialistic party which stands for 
economic independence, which is the hope of the future 
to-day. I stand for rights. There are some people who 
say they want certain rights and do not want others. 
Some people say they are not looking for social equal 
ity. I want every kind of equality I can have. By that 
I do not mean that I want to force myself upon any 
man s presence. I never sought a man socially in my 
life, and I don t expect to. I don t care whether he be 
rich as Carnegie, holy as St. John, wise as Socrates, or 
white as the Albanian fathers, but what I want is equal 
ity, and if I don t get equality, then I want superiority. 
Under Socialism we have economic independence. 
Everyone has the right to work and every man has the 
full reward of his labors. 

MRS. IDA WELLS BARNETT : I think perhaps I ought to 
say something regarding what has been said about agita 
tion, about the beginnings of things, about the small 
things. Our people of course cannot very clearly see these 
things from the scientific standpoint, they have not the 
training necessary to see abstract things as clearly as 
they see the concrete. To them, therefore, as has been 
said here this afternoon, this question of talking seems 
to be a rather small thing, and it is in a way. There is 
a kind of talking that does not accomplish anything, and 
there is a sort of talking that does, that makes for the 
beginning of great things. I have had in mind some 
thing which might be called recrimination and we will 
not hold ourselves blameless in all these matters of 

118 



which we speak. I want to say as a last word to my 
own fellow-citizens of the darker side of this house: 
Let us ask ourselves first if we ourselves have done all 
that we should do in helping to bring about the things 
so necessary, and in helping others. Fifteen years ago 
when the agitation was begun in this country, or launch 
ed in England and afterwards in this country, and the 
question of funds arose with which to do the work of 
spreading information regarding lynching, a plea was 
sent out from the Atlantic to the Pacific to get contri 
butions of nickels and pennies and dimes for our own 
people. That was the beginning of things to show the 
American white people that they did not know the facts. 
It was your duty and it was my duty to tell them these 
facts, to put them in their minds and to read them to 
them. Did we do it? How much money did we give? 
How much more did we tax ourselves in order that we 
might help in bringing about this work? Now don t 
let us discourage these friends that have come to help us. 
Let us not spend the time talking about who is to blame 
on the other side of the line, but let us close up our 
lines, and not forget that this is only the beginning of 
the thing. Let us prepare to spread the information in 
order to get these other people interested in the matter 
and we will find that with their help we will be able to 
go forward. 

MR. TRIDON : What we white people need is educa 
tion. I am sick of hearing white people talk about edu 
cating the Negro. I am sick of hearing about uplifting 
men. It seems to me when a man needs to be uplifted, 
he ir not worth bothering about., But you need to get 
the white people. You need to show that you are not 
beasts. The white people think you are beasts. They 
know it. They learned it in school. The boys should 
not doubt the words of their teachers. Why should 
those white people doubt the words of their teacher? 

119 



But they will if you give them proofs to the contrary. 
If you will distribute pamphlets and literature; if you 
will blow your own horn you will get your audience. We 
must find books and pamphlets published by the col 
ored man, and we must have some kind of a publication 
which at least shall show not only when a colored man 
assaults a white woman, but when a colored man saves 
the life of a white woman. 

MR. ROBINSON : A remedy has been asked for, and 
I would suggest that the remedy used by William Lloyd 
Garrison is a very good one. It is a very slow but a 
very effective one. When Mr. Garrison first began his 
addresses against slavery, he could not get a room in a 
house in Boston, and he had to give his first talks on 
the streets. It seems to me that we never bring about 
any desired results without a little time. It takes time 
to make men competent. Our best workmen are those 
who have suffered, who have been the men who worked 
the hardest and who became competent very slowly, 
and many of them not at all. I was born and brought 
up in Louisiana, in the rural districts, and I worked for 
five or six years for a farmer. One day I said to him, 
"Captain, what do you think of the so-called race prob 
lem? I see it in all the papers. What do you think of 
it?" He said, "I don t think there is any race problem. 
You are working for me, do I give myself any concern 
about your work?" I said, "You don t." He said, "It 
is the same thing with regard to your race. I give my 
self no concern with regard to your race. You are 
solving your own problem, aren t you?" and I said, "I 
am"; and he said, "That is just how it will be with your 
race." And I said, "I believe you." 



1 20 



Wednesday Evening Session 

Judge Wendell P. Stafford, Chairman 



Address of 

Judge Wendell P. Stafford 

of the 

Supreme Court of the District of Columbia 

I believe in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 
of man. Not the brotherhood of white men but the 
brotherhood of all men. I believe in the golden rule and 
the Declaration of Independence, and I stand by the Con 
stitution of the United States, including the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments. That is my creed and my 
platform. 

Some questions are difficult because they are so com 
plicated. Others are difficult because they are so sim 
ple. Duty is apt to be difficult, and the simplest duty 
may yet be the hardest. I assume that human nature is 
substantially the same in every climate and under every 
skin. I assume that the white people of the South are 
in themselves no better and no worse that the white 
people of the North. I assume that their opinions and 
conduct are what ours might have been if we had come 
under the same influences and conditions. But such con 
siderations do not settle the question : what is right ? 

The broad subject of our conference is the Negro and 
the nation, not the Negro and the North, not the Negro 

121 



and the South, not the Negro and the white man, but 
the Negro and the nation. The questions it brings up are 
national. They cannot be settled by any one race and 
still less by any one section. They concern the whole 
country and they must be answered by the country as a 
whole. If the Constitution is not binding in South Caro 
lina it is not binding in New York. If it cannot protect 
the black man it cannot long protect the white. If fif 
teen states can set aside the Constitution at their pleasure 
there is no Constitution worth the name. If a state can 
nullify one clause it can nullify the whole. If a state 
can, in a single congressional district, deliberately exclude 
three-fourths of its eligible voters from the polls on the 
real ground of color, and yet insist upon having them all 
counted for the purpose of holding a seat in the national 
assembly, it can perpetrate a fraud on every legally con 
stituted congressional district in the United States, and 
there is no security for representative government in any 
corner of the land. If any class or race can be perma 
nently set apart from and pushed down below the rest 
in political and civil rights, so may any other class or 
race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more pow 
erful associates, and we may say farewell at once to the 
principles on which we have counted for our safety. 

We are confronted not by a theory but by a fact. That 
fact is the deliberate and avowed exclusion of a whole 
race of our fellow citizens from their constitutional 
rights, accompanied by the announcement that that ex 
clusion must and shall be permanent. It is not that the 
Negro is ignorant, nor that, he is poor, nor that he is 
vicious, but that he is a Negro. Even when he is good 
and learned and rich, he must still be excluded because 
he is still a Negro. That is the proposition, and that 

122 



it is which makes it the duty of all who dissent from 
such a doctrine to make their dissent known and to make 
it uncompromising and clear. 

If the southern states were only taking the ground 
that all voters white and black alike must possess cer 
tain high qualifications in property and education, the 
situation would not be what it is. Such restrictions 
might result in the exclusion of the great mass of colored 
men as it would result in the exclusion of large num 
bers of the white. Yet we might well wait for the ef 
fects of time. If any indication were to be found that 
the South is looking forward to a day when the colored 
man shall exercise his political rights and that it is pro 
viding some process, no matter how slow and gradual, 
by which that result may be attained, it might be our 
patriotic duty to hold our peace. But when no such in 
dication is to be found, when no encouragement is held 
out that the Negro shall ever have any, even the slightest, 
part in the government under which he lives, patriotic 
duty forbids that we should be silent. When will there 
be any change why should there be any change as long 
as the whole country. North as well as South, acquiesces 
in the present order? 

But there is a still deeper consequence involved. If laws 
can be made and enforced which every child knows were 
intended to deprive and do in fact deprive millions of 
American citizens of the rights guaranteed them by the 
Constitution of their country, it is vain to call on men to 
reverence the law, and when we swear to the Constitu 
tion we swear to a rotten reed. "When the Son of Man 
cometh shall He find faith on the earth ?" That was the 
old prophetic question. Not faith in the mystic spirit 
ual sense but fides, good faith, common honesty. When 

123 



multitudes of men take an oath which on their own con 
fession they have no thought of keeping, the public con 
science is debased and the bond that holds society to 
gether is well nigh dissolved. The grossest barbarian 
that ever shed human blood to solemnize his oath has 
had some form of words that would bind his darkened 
conscience, and to break which he counted as damnation. 
It was left for the nineteenth Christian century to ex 
hibit the spectacle of thousands of civilized men taking 
upon their lips an oath, in the most solemn form of their 
religion, which they themselves publicly and shamelessly 
admit they never intended to observe. From such a 
position it is but a short step to verdicts on the unwritten 
law and trial and execution by the mob. When the 
Constitution is defied it can make no essential difference 
whether that defiance is expressed in Tillman s coarse 
and brutal words, "To hell with the Constitution," or is 
couched in some honeyed, euphemistic phrase that ap 
peals to Anglo-Saxon prejudice and pride. In either 
case the thing is done. 

It is a fitting day for such a subject. It has become 
the fashion of recent years to treat the Civil War as noth 
ing but a political contest, ignoring the tremendous moral 
issues that alone justified its sacrifices. But read Lin 
coln s second inaugural, where he spoke as the prophet 
of his people and uttered the deep secret of the conflict. 
It will not do to shut our eyes to the real causes and 
results of the war especially now when northern indif 
ference and southern injustice strike hands to keep the 
black race in a new bondage as helpless and hopeless as 
the old. As a member of the white race and turning for 
the moment to white men, I say that our race will deserve 
any calamity the presence of the black race may bring. 

124 



We brought it here by theft and force. We owed it 
liberty and we gave it a chain. We owe it light and 
we give it darkness. We owe it opportunity and we 
hedge it round with restraints. We owe it the court 
house and we give it the lynching tree. We owe it an 
example of order and self control; we give it an example 
of lawlessness and hate. We are sowing the wind and 
if we reap the whirlwind we shall have ourselves to 
blame. 

The strong imagine they have a mortgage upon the 
weak, but in the world of morals it is the other way. We 
complain that virtue and intelligence cannot be safe in 
the neighborhood of ignorance and vice. God means that 
it should be so. So does he take bonds from the mighty 
to do justice by the weak. Shame on the race that holds 
in its hands the wealth of the continent and carries in 
its brain the accumulated culture of the centuries and 
yet, refusing to lift ignorance and vice to the level of 
enlightenment and virtue, makes that ignorance and vice 
an excuse for the denial of human rights. Never until 
the white man has spent his last surplus dollar and ex 
hausted the last faculty of his brain in the effort to lift 
up his weaker brother never until then can he stand 
in the presence of infinite justice and complain of the 
ignorance or the criminality of the black. 

It is really a contest between caste and equality a 
contest as old as the world and possibly as permanent. 
The spirit of caste is nothing else than that self worship 
that is fostered and gratified when it can look down upon 
another. The secret of caste is inordinate self love and 
pride. It can find no welcome in the heart where the 
Son of Man is made at home. Underneath every politi 
cal or social phase of the subject lies the profounder 



phase which makes it a question of duty and of true re 
ligion. If we can do nothing else, we can at least, on 
this day of sacred memories, purify our ideals, and test 
our conduct by them. We do not make our ideals, our 
ideals make us. America did not choose the great doc 
trine of equal rights that immortal truth chose America. 
It has moulded her from the beginning ; it will mould her 
until the end ; or if it cannot it will cast her off with the 
wreckage of the past and take up some other nation that 
shall be found worthy. 

There is a power that has been working here from the 
beginning. It is the power that will be working here 
when you and I are gone. It is the power whose pur 
pose is that all men shall be free. Various races have at 
various times flattered themselves that they were a chosen 
people. But if history shows anything it shows that a 
nation is nothing but a tool in the han 1 of the Almighty. 
If it serves His purpose it is used. If it breaks in His 
hand it is thrown away, and another is chosen in its 
stead. If this nation has any mission it is to make the 
Declaration of Independence good that and the three 
great amendments to the Constitution which were the 
logical result of that sublime pledge. It is true those 
amendments were adopted in a glow of idealism. But 
so was the Declaration itself. It is true they have not 
been lived up to any more than the Declaration was lived 
up to in the first seventy years of the republic. But 
now as then and at all other times the test of our institu 
tions, both of their power to last and of their worthiness 
to last, is simply and solely this : Do they serve to keep 
the rights of men sacred and secure? 



Address of 

John T. Milholland 

of the 

Constitution League, New York 

Frankly it must be said the forces at work for the 
colored man s uplift in the South are not the prevailing 
forces. The sentiment for his just, equitable treatment, 
for the vindication of his constitutional rights as a cit 
izen and a man is neither yet strong enough nor suf 
ficiently widespread to be compared for an instant with 
the Satanic energies behind that avowed determination 
to crush him down again to the low level of physical as 
well as political slavery. To deny this is to blind one s 
self to the every day evidence that has been multiplying 
with cumulative effect since the surrender of Lee at 
Appomattox. 

Mr. Chairman, the value of the Georgia Railroad 
strike as an illuminant of the situation cannot easily be 
exaggerated. It puts the whole case in diamond light, 
revealing with the clearness of noonday the manifest 
tendency towards the utter degradation of the Negro 
about which we of the Constitution League and other 
disturbed spirits have been preaching and prophesying 
these many years. 

Deplorable as it is, 1 welcome it. Disgraceful to the 
South that permits it; disgraceful to these northern 



trades unions that have aided and directed this latest 
conspiracy against the rights of man ; a blot on the escutch 
eon of our Republic and a shame to modern civilization; 
nevertheless, I for one, am glad that it has come to 
pass. Such results were and are inevitable. Bad as 
they are, worse will follow unless this great nation 
opens its eyes to the actualities that confront it upon 
this Memorial day, this day that brings back to us those 
momentous times that tried men s souls but warmed all 
hearts, those rays of great misery but of a great hope 
that have been succeeded so soon by the days of forget- 
f ulness ! 

Conditions, I repeat, desperate as they are in the 
South must grow worse before they grow better. I 
said this years ago when the Republican traitors, leaders 
at Washington, aided by misguided zealots elsewhere, re 
fused to see anything very serious in the failure of the 
bill for honest Federal elections in the South or the de 
feat of the Blair education measure a calamity that 
has cost the South twenty years of genuine progress ; 
in the nullification by southern states of the great war 
amendments to the Constitution, those sublime declara 
tions which represent the highwater mark of American 
statesmanship, the loftiest declaration of human rights 
that has ever been promulgated by any national law- 
making assembly since the years of jubilee rang out 
among the hills of old Judea "proclaiming liberty 
throughout the land and to the inhabitants thereof." 

The Negro s condition, I contend, in this country is 
growing worse every year. He is standing on the very 
threshold of a physical slavery almost as bad and hope 
less as that from which he was emancipated by one of 
the bloodiest wars ever waged in Christendom. Practi 
cally a political serf in a dozen states, without right to 
vote or liberty to speak; trial by a jury of his peers 
denied him, and in such imminent danger of lynching 

128 



that he lives under a reign of terror as awful as that 
inspired by Ku-Klux depredations or the old Spanish 
Inquisition to talk about such a man enjoying the 
liberty that is supposed to be the normal condition of 
every American citizen is to fly in the face of truth and 
proclaim oneself incapable of observation. 

Passing the bloody massacres of the Reconstruction 
period, we have seen year after year, for nearly two 
decades, no less than three citizens every week lynched 
or burned or shot to death without the semblance of 
judicial procedure to ascertain their guilt or innocence. 
And yet these mob murders do not reveal the worst of 
it ; they only suggest the brutal tyranny, the horrible 
beatings of defenseless men and boys, girls and women; 
the humiliations of mind and hearts, sensitive by nature 
and cultivation ; the breaking of strong men s wills and 
the unspeakable degradations of mothers and daugh 
ters whose sons and husbands are powerless to afford 
them the protection that is even denied them by the law. 

Senator Tillman of South Carolina is not an author 
ity I quote but what he says on this point is so thorough 
ly in accordance with known facts as to make this tes 
timony relevant and of value. On July 20, 1907, he 
declared in the United States Senate: "Race hatred 
grows day by day. There is no man who is honest, go 
ing through the South and conversing with the white 
people and blacks, but will return and tell you this is 
true. Then I say to you of the North who are the 
rulers of the land, who can change this or do something 
to relieve conditions, what are you going to do about it? 
Are you going to sit quiet? If nothing else will cause 
you to think, I notify you, what you already 
know, that there are a billion dollars or more of 
northern capital invested in the South in railroads, in 
mines, in forests, in farm lands, and self interest, which 
fact if nothing else, ought to make you set about hunt- 

129 



ing some remedy for this terrible situation. Therefore 
we say to you it is your duty to do something. It is 
your duty to move. It is your duty to begin the discus 
sion. For the time being the South is occupying an at 
titude of constant friction, race riot, butchery, murder 
of whites by blacks and blacks by whites, the inevitable, 
irresponsible conflict." 

This is a note different from that usually sounded at 
Carnegie Hall and Tremont Temple, but every man 
familiar with the case knows that the South Carolina 
Senator, in this instance at least, speaks the truth, and 
because it is the truth, I think the raison d etre of this 
conference has been sufficiently established. 



130 



THE RACE PROBLEM 

Jenkins Lloyd Jones 

of 

Chicago 

The civilized world, with impressive unanimity and 
inspiring heartiness, has just been celebrating the cen 
tennial of the birth of him who signed the Emancipa 
tion Proclamation. When the second centennial comes 
round this document will be more prized and better 
known than now. Many things conspire in these days 
to obscure the light that should and will emanate through 
all time from this glow point in the history of the 
United States. 

The character and place of Abraham Lincoln in his 
tory can never be understood if the title of Emancipa 
tor is ignored, evaded or minimized. "Emancipator" 
is the key-word to the great President, and the Eman 
cipation Proclamation is the pivotal point not only in 
the war but in the history of the United States. We 
ought all to see it now, but it took a poet s vision to 
see it then. 

Let apologists and politicians North or South trace 
the inspirations of the civil war to petty and secondary 
causes, the only adequate explanation of the acceptance 
of war by the unwarlike people of the North is found 
in the word "Liberty," and so far as ethical questions 
can be settled by war alas, how little can be done that 



way the human theory of the Negro was vindicated. 
It was an awful price to pay, but for myself I deem the 
abolition of the human auction block cheap at any price ; 
much as I hate war, I would accept the bitter experience 
again if the end could not be attained otherwise. I 
would march every foot of the weary ground that I 
traversed from 1862 to 1865 for the sake of knowing that 
a slave-mother s child could become the guest of Eng 
lish nobility, the poet laureate of the Negro race, deserv 
ing and receiving the praise that belongs to a poet, ir 
respective of rank or color. With prophetic insight did 
the Great Emancipator say of the war: "Yet, if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondman s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether. 

But alas, by what slow processes do liberty and jus 
tice come to their own ? There has come a recrudescence 
of the ethnology of slavery under the guise of a super 
ficial science. In many quarters a painful reaction has 
come that has silenced the voice of religion, confused 
the problems at the ballot, and intimidated the one-time 
champions of the despised race. We still hear preach 
ers in the pulpit pleading for segregation; educators de 
ploring the education of the black ; legislators, by down 
right subterfuge and the tricks of circumlocution which 
only a demagogue can use, disfranchising those who 
were enfranchised by the decrees of war, the acts of 
Congress, and the signature of the great emancipator. 

All this in the face of the cold, hard facts that prove 
the colored man worthy the confidence placed in him 
by those who died for his freedom. He has justified 
the momentous signature, the holiest autograph in Amer- 

132 



lean history that attached to the Emancipation Procla 
mation. In the space of a short half-century, and that 
demoralized by war, the colored man is on his way 
towards the full justification of the Thirteenth, Four 
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. 
The story of his emancipation is outdone by the still 
more wonderful story of his education. Civilization 
offers no parallel to the rise of the enslaved race. The 
memory of Lincoln has been glorified and most splend 
idly vindicated by the triumph of the black man. 

Lincoln s work cannot be undone. There is no ground 
for despondency, but there is for vigilance. Timidity, 
racial prejudice, pride, social cowardice and inherited 
bias still combine to create lines where none exist, per 
petrate prejudices unjustified, and foster assumptions 
unwarranted by science and condemned by religion. 

The ante-bellum cry was "Do not interfere with our 
peculiar institutions. - There is a post-bellum prattle 
about southern problems being handled by southern peo 
ple. This assembly should send forth the note, far and 
clear, that there is no North or South in freedom now, 
any more than was there in 65. In times of peace, as 
in times of war, the question of justice knows no state 
limits. In the eyes of enlightened statesmanship and 
in the eyes of God, the status of the Negro in New 
Orleans is the same as that of the Negro in Chicago. 
He demands a square deal, and only a square deal, in 
the one place as in the other. The Negro is a candi 
date now as always, North, South, here, everywhere, 
for all that nature and human nature can fit him for, 
and all the legal sophistries, and legislative double-deal 
ings that breed injustice towards him are a greater men 
ace to the white perpetrators thereof than to the black 
victims of the same. 

There are no "southern problems" that are not na 
tional; no "race problems" that are not lost in human 

133 



problems. Providence is kinder to the oppressed than 
to the oppressor; the wronged than the wronger. The 
rise of the black man under the inspiration of freedom 
is surely inevitable, inspiring. The emancipation of the 
white man, his former master and his descendants, is 
perhaps a slower process; one that awakens deeper anx 
iety, and the failure of which is a far greater menace 
to the growth and prosperity of our nation. 

To talk of a "southern problem" to-day, as distin 
guished from the "northern problem" ; for any section 
of this country to ask to be let alone to adjust its own 
social affairs, is harking back to an old regime, forever 
past. So far as there is a Negro problem, whether it 
springs from the incapacity or depravity of black men 
or the narrowness, arrogance and commercial conceit 
of the white man, like Eliza in the story, it has crossed 
the Ohio River on floating ice. Mob violence, brutal 
lynchings and lawless panics appear in Illinois as in 
South Carolina; they have disgraced the records of 
courts and stained the soil with blood, in Ohio as in 
Mississippi. The supremacy of the national government 
and the urgency of national education and national leg 
islation, in social as well as commercial adjustments, are 
becoming daily more imperious. 

A limited suffrage may be good statesmanship ; we 
only demand that that limitation be honestly stated and 
impartially enforced. It may be wise under some con 
ditions to separate white and black children in the schools, 
but for the legislature of Kentucky to call upon the trus 
tees of Berea to violate their sacred trust to the dead, to 
disturb the benign traditions and precedents of decades, 
and to shut the doors of the college against diligent, law- 
abiding and self-respecting students because of a tint 
in the skin and a kink in the hair, though the tint and 
the kink be ameliorated by ninety per cent, of blood 
drawn from the veins of the Kentucky chivalry that 

134 



breeds nothing meaner than "colonels," is an indignity 
to justice, a violation of the fundamental principles of 
democracy- and the more precious decrees written in the 
blood of the heroes of 76 and of 61 to 65. 

We should demand that the race theories born of ig 
norance and prejudice be revised by the latest science; 
that no illegitimacy of parentage be allowed to interfere 
with the divine legitimacy of children; that womanhood 
be protected by statute and public sentiment, whatever 
its complexion ; that virginity be held as sacred in the 
colored as the white maiden and the violators thereof be 
held with equal severity by law and by public sentiment, 
whether they be white or black. We should call for im 
partial enforcement of statute rights of all citizens of 
any color. We protest against decreed distinctions and 
gradations of rights under the Constitution of the Uni 
ted States and declare there are no privileges according 
to the laws and constitution of the United States vouch 
safed to the black man in Minnesota that are not de 
creed in Louisiana. These demands are imperative. 
The situation is urgent. 

Out of our dire disgraces the urgent needs, the pathet 
ic cries of the victims of past tyranny and present 
prejudices, and the more pathetic fears, social anxieties 
and political confusions of the white victims of past 
wrongs, there must rise a new movement that will seize 
the fallen flag and hold it aloft once more, bearing it 
forward until the nation is awakened and liberty and 
justice find fresh endorsement, and until community life 
shall overreach sect, party, industrial, or racial lines. 
In this movement state lines must fade in the presence 
of national inspirations and obligations, and national 
boundaries will sink out of sight in the presence of in 
ternational sympathy and confidence. 

It is to help on such a movement, is it not, that we 
are here? 

135 



IS THE SOUTHERN POSITION 
ANGLO-SAXON? 

John Spencer Bassett 

Professor of History 
Smith College 

There is such a thing as the Anglo-Saxon attitude to 
ward inferiors. By observing the feelings on the sub 
ject in the places in which the English stock has ruled 
inferiors we may have the general features of this Anglo- 
Saxon attitude. And when this has been found it will 
be seen that the southerner goes somewhat further in 
repression than the Englishman, and that this surplusage 
is the part of the southern race antipathy which appears 
most artificial. It is an outgrowth of peculiar historical 
conditions, and we may hope to lessen its intensity. 

Cape Colony is that British possession in which con 
ditions with reference to the Negro are most like those 
in our southern states. In each locality the Negro strikes 
the white man in much the same way. It is the recoil 
of the superior from the inferior. But in Africa the 
aversion is not solidified as in the South. In one place 
the individual white man determines his attitude toward 
the black man, in the other the community determines it, 
and woe to him who disputes the decision. In one place, 
in spite of a large number who are antagonistic to Negro 
development there are many who seek to bring it about, 
and they are allowed to do what they choose. In the 
other there is a public opinion about the Negro, and its 
dictum is final. In one a Negro of great capacity may 

136 



rise out of the sphere of inferiority without a great shock 
to the whites around him ; in the other he may rise till 
he is esteemed great in all the rest of the world, but he 
will ever have "the place" of the most inferior member 
of his race in the eyes of his white neighbors. 

Mr. Bryce gives us some good illustrations of the feel 
ing in Cape Colony. For example, a gentleman there 
may invite an educated Negro to dinner, but before doing 
so he will ask his white guests if they object to such 
company. Nor does it happen that he loses position in 
society because he has been host to a native. He is 
eligible thereafter as a guest himself at the home of 
those who would not accept his invitation under the con 
ditions specified. The same is true as to intermarriage: 
it occurs rarely and there is no law against it. Some 
times a poor white man will work for a Negro who has 
employment for him. Generally the children of the two 
races attend separate schools; but it happens at times 
that poor white people send their children to schools 
for blacks because the fees are smaller and no one ob 
jects. White people are concerned in philanthropic work 
for blacks, acting individually and as churches, and by 
so doing they do not lose their efficiency in other work 
for and with white people. Social relations with Negroes 
are not desired by the majority of the whites but those 
who oppose such relations do not think the safety of so 
ciety demands that the advocates of other views be held 
as enemies of the public good. On this subject people 
seem to think that the best safety of the public lies in 
allowing a man to believe as he chooses without making 
him pay any penalty. 

Now, I do not say that this is a desirable thing. It 
may or may not be so ; but my present contention is that 
this is entirely unlike the position of our South. And 
since the conditions are relatively the same in Jamaica 
and in other British colonies in which whites rule blacks, 

137 



I think it fair to say that it stands for the Anglo-Saxon 
attitude toward the Negro. That is to say, the British 
are unwilling to accept the inferior as an equal, but they 
are willing to try to make him equal, and their sense of 
fair play tolerates and even applauds the successful ef 
forts to raise him above himself. It is a doctrine which 
sprang from the English instinct of liberty, and it was 
brought to America by the British founders. 

Thus it happened that the Methodist and Missionary 
Baptist churches became the strongest popular religious 
organizations in the South, and they so remained through 
out the eighteenth century. Although others labored as 
they could these two popular churches were particularly 
active in work for the Negro. In true Anglo-Saxon 
spirit they took him into the churches and in exceptional 
cases they allowed him to preach, but they did not give 
him the right to hold office. They believed, and he ac 
quiesced in it, that he was not capable of directing the 
affairs of the church. This mingling of blacks and 
whites in a field of common concern was the best guar 
antee of mutual peace and sympathy; and since religion 
was the sphere of mental activity at which the white 
man s ideals were most likely to enter the Negro s life, 
this association in the churches promised much for the 
future. When the nineteenth century began, and for 
three decades thereafter, the whites had the Anglo-Saxon 
attitude toward the Negro. They sought to develop him, 
they recognized his inferiority in the mass while they 
encouraged all efforts in the individual which seemed to 
work for his uplift. Some illustrations of this state of 
affairs will show how harmonious the situation was at 
this time. 

The position of the southern churches at this time has 
its parallel in that of some of the leading public men. 
Washington and many prominent Virginians were well 
known for their mild views of the Negro. In 1791, Jef- 

138 



ferson, secretary of state, appointed a Negro mathema 
tician to office in his department because he wanted to see 
if a Negro would succeed in that capacity. His letter 
to a gentleman in France telling of the matter shows 
that he did not disapprove of Negro office-holders. And 
it was under Andrew Jackson, the second founder of the 
Democratic party, that Negroes, so far as I can learn, 
were first received at a social function in the White 
House. 

Now these incidents do not prove everything, but they 
show that public opinion in 1791 and in 1829 was not 
like public opinion in the South at present. All that I 
claim is that in the first three decades of the nineteenth 
century the Southern whites had the typical English at 
titude toward the Negro. They recognized his inferiori 
ty, they sought to secure his development, and that pain 
fully solid opinion which demands that white hands shall 
never touch black ones had not come into existence. If 
the problem of the inferior could have been worked out 
under this gentler system, this conference, probably, 
would not have been called. But mild measures could 
not be followed. To destroy slavery was of greater im 
mediate importance than to develop the Negro. About 
1830 the storm began which was to secure emancipation 
and the blue sky has been darkened ever since. It was 
perhaps a necessary storm, but it has been unnecessarily 
prolonged. 

The controversy which was to work so much that was 
good and so much that was not good for the Negro was 
at first concerned with slavery; since 1865 it has been con 
cerned with the position of the Negro. The slavery 
problem and the Negro problem are distinct by nature, 
but in their development in America one ran into the 
other. Northern men declared that slavery wronged the 
Negro by taking from him his inalienable rights; south 
ern men replied that the Negro had no inalienable rights 



and that slavery was the condition best suited for his de 
velopment. And it happened that by a process of ac 
tion and reaction each side became more emphatic in its 
assertions until at last one was declaring for Negro suf 
frage, thus ennobling the inferior to the position of equal 
citizenship, and the other was declaring that slavery was 
a divinely appointed institution. Southern churches 
which in 1800 worked for the conversion of Negroes and 
taught that slavery was an evil were in 1850 teaching that 
the African was divinely ordained to bondage; and the 
most radical of Southerners were beginning to ask if he 
had any soul which God was bound to respect. It was 
a conviction which did not rest on failure in the efforts 
to elevate him but which grew out of a heated condition 
of the public mind in the great sectional controversy. 

Then came the war with its failures and reconstruc 
tion with its fury. Whether we condemn or approve 
Negro suffrage which the North forced on the South 
while it could, we shall see that it did not improve the 
South s opinion of the Negro. From 1830 to 1909 is 
a long period. There is not a man living in the South 
to-day who remembers the time when the Negro question 
was not associated with passion. The people there not 
only have forgotten that they ever planned and strove to 
develop the race in the old English way, but they have 
difficulty to believe the historian when he proves it from 
their own history. They have not thought it possible to 
return to the former attitude, and yet what has been done 
can be done again. 

If we could return to the attitude which existed in the 
days of saner conditions, the days of Jefferson and Wash 
ington, we should not have social intermingling of the 
races. The difference between that condition and the 
present would be in the absence of friction. A white 
man would not hate a Negro because he was a Negro. 
and a black man would not hate a white man because he 

140 



was white. We should then lose that apprehension, as 
old as slavery, that some day there will come a great 
bloody struggle between the two hostile races, a struggle 
whose -great probability lies in the habitual anticipation 
of it. 

The North and the South are jointly responsible for 
the struggle which brought race antipathy to its present 
condition; and they have joint responsibility for its re 
moval. The best thing they can do is to let the fires go 
out. But patience is not our only obligation. There 
ought also to be wise and persistent effort for Negro 
uplift. And this is a duty which ought to fall on the 
South as well as on the North. People who are striving 
to help the Negro will not hate him. If this conference 
can suggest some means of bringing the many efforts 
of the North to improve the condition of the Negro into 
touch with the southern whites, it will do the best day s 
work clone in many a month in the cause of the black 
man s progress. For example, if the missionary agencies 
in a southern state should hold a conference to consider 
their own work in which they could induce southern 
clergymen to take part, there would be laid the foundation 
of mutual understanding and good will, and it would 
result beneficially to all concerned. If such harmony can 
be obtained, we shall be in a fair way to return to the old 
Anglo-Saxon attitude, which sprang from English love 
of fair play, and which is only obscured by events which 
in their nature are transitory. 



141 



EVOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM 

W. E. B. DuBois 

Professor of Economics 
Atlanta University 

Those who complain that the Negro problem is al 
ways with us and apparently insoluble must not forget 
that under this vague and general designation are gath 
ered many social problems and many phases of the same 
problem; that these problems and phases have passed 
through a great evolutionary circle and that to-day es 
pecially one may clearly see a repetition, vaster but simi 
lar, of the great cycle of the past. 

That problem of the past, so far as the black American 
was concerned, began with caste a definite place preor 
dained in custom, law and religion where all men of black 
blood must be thrust. To be sure, this caste idea as ap 
plied to blacks was no sudden, full grown conception, for 
the enslavement of the workers was an idea which Ameri 
ca inherited from Europe and was not synonymous for 
many years with the enslavement of the blacks, although 
the blacks were the chief workers. Men came to the 
idea of exclusive black slavery by gradually enslaving 
the workers, as was the world s long custom, and then 
gradually conceiving certain sorts of work and certain 
colors of men as necessarily connected. It was, when 
once set up definitely in the southern slave system, a 

142 



logically cohering whole which the simplest social philo 
sopher could easily grasp and state. The difficulty was 
it was too simple to be either just or true. Human na 
ture is not simple and any classification that roughly di 
vides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave 
and free, is and must ever be ludicrously untrue and uni 
versally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classifica 
tion. So in the southern slave system the thing that from 
the first damned it was the free Negro the Negro legal 
ly free, the Negro economically free and the Negro spir 
itually free. 

How was the Negro to be treated and conceived of who 
was legally free? At first with perfect naturalness he was 
treated as a man he voted in Massachusetts and in South 
Carolina, in New York and Virginia ; he intermarried with 
black and white, he claimed and received his civil rights 
all this until the caste of color was so turned as to corre 
spond with the caste of work and enslave not only slaves 
but black men who were not slaves. Even this system, 
however, was unable to ensure complete economic de 
pendence on the part of all black men; there were con 
tinually artisans, foremen and skilled servants who be 
came economically too valuable to be slaves. In vain 
were laws hurled at Negro intelligence and responsibili 
ty; black men continued to hire their time and to steal 
some smattering of knowledge, and it was this fact that 
became the gravest menace to the slave system. But 
even legal and economic freedom was not so dangerous 
to slavery as the free spirit which continually cropped out 
among men fated to be slaves : they thought, they dreamed, 
they aspired, they resisted. In vain were they beaten, 
sold south and killed, the ranks were continually filled 
with others and they either led revolt at home or ran 
away to the North, and these by showing their human 
qualities continually gave the lie to the slave assumption. 
Thus it was the free Negro in these manifold phases 

143 



of his appearance who hastened the economic crisis which 
killed slavery and who made it impossible to make the 
caste of work and the caste of color correspond, and 
who became at once the promise and excuse of those 
who forced the critical revolution. 

To-day in larger cycle and more intricate detail we 
are passing through certain phases of a similar evolu 
tion. To-day we have the caste idea again not a sud 
den full grown conception but one being insidiously but 
consciously and persistently pressed upon the nation. The 
steps toward it which are being taken are: first, political 
disfranchisement, then vocational education with the dis 
tinct idea of narrowing to the uttermost the vocations 
in view, and finally a curtailment of civil freedom of 
travel, association, and entertainment, in systematic ef 
fort to instill contempt and kill self-respect. 

Here then is the new slavery of black men in America 
a new attempt to make degradation of social condition 
correspond with certain physical characteristics not to 
be sure fully realized as yet, and probably unable for 
reasons of social development ever to become as systema 
tized as the economic and physical slavery of the past 
and yet realized to an extent almost unbelievable by those 
who have not taken the pains to study the facts to an 
extent which makes the lives of thinking black men in this 
land a perpetual martyrdom. 

But right here as in the past stands in the path of this 
idea the figure of this same thinking black man this new 
freedman. This freedman again as in the past presents 
himself as free in varying phases : there is the free black 
voter of the North and border states whose power is far 
more tremendous than even he dare think so that he is 
afraid to use it; there is the black man who has accom 
plished economic freedom and who by working himself 
into the vast industrial development of the nation is to 
day accumulating property at a rate that is simply as- 

144 



tonnding. And finally tnere is the small but growing 
number of black men emerging into spiritual freedom and 
becoming participators and freemen of the kingdom of 
culture around which it is so singularly difficult to set 
metes and bounds, and who in art, science and literature 
are making their modest but ineffaceable mark. 

The question is what is the significance of this group 
of men for the future of the caste programme and for 
the future social development of America? In order to 
answer this question intelligently let us retrace our steps 
and follow more carefully the details of the proposed 
programme of renewed caste in America. This pro 
gramme when one comes to define and state it is elusive. 
There are even those who deny its existence as a defi 
nite consciously conceived plan of action. But, certain 
it is, there is growing unanimity of a peculiar sort on cer 
tain matters. And this unanimity is centering about 
three propositions : 

1. That it was a mistake to give Negroes the ballot. 

2. That Negroes are essentially an inferior race. 

3. That the only permanent settlement of the race prob 
lem will be open and legal recognition of this inferiority. 

When now a modern nation condemns ten million of 
its fellows to such a fate it would be supposed that this 
conclusion has been reluctantly forced upon them after 
a careful study and weighing of the facts. This, how 
ever, is not the case in the Negro problem. On the 
contrary there has been manifest a singular reluctance 
and indisposition carefully to study the Negro problem. 
Ask the average American : Why should the ballot have 
been withheld from the Negro, and he will answer: "Re- 
cause he wasn t fit for it." But that is not a sufficient 
answer : first, because few newly enfranchised groups of 
the most successful democracies have been fit for the 
ballot when it was first given, and secondly, because 
there were Negroes in the United States fit for the ballot 

145 



in 1870. Moreover the political philosophy that con 
demns out of hand the Fifteenth Amendment does not 
often stop to think that the problem before the American 
nation 1865-1870 was not a simple problem of fixing the 
qualifications of voters. It was, on the contrary, the im 
mensely more complicated problem of enforcing a vast 
social and economic revolution on a people determined 
not to submit to it. Whenever a moral reform is forced 
on a people from without there ensue complicated and 
tremendous problems, whether that reform is the cor 
rection of the abuse of alcohol, the abolition of child 
labor or the emancipation of slaves. The enforcement of 
such a reform will strain every nerve of the nation and 
the real question is not : Is it a good thing to strain the 
framework of the nation but rather: Is slavery so dan 
gerous a thing that sudden enfranchisement of the ex- 
slaves is too great a price to pay for its abolition? 

To be sure there are those who profess to think that 
the white South of its own initiative after the war, with 
the whole of the wealth, intelligence and law-making pow 
er in its hands, would have freely emancipated its slaves 
in obedience to a decree from Washington, just as there 
are those who would entrust the regulation of the whis 
key traffic to salo<::i keepers and the bettering of the 
conditions of child labor to the employers. It is no 
attack on the South or on saloon keepers or on employ 
ers to say that such a reform from such a source is un 
thinkable. It is simply human nature that men trained 
to a social system or condition should be the last to be 
entirely entrusted with its reformation. It was, then, not 
the Emancipation Proclamation but the Fifteenth Amend 
ment that made slavery impossible in the United States 
and those that object to the Fifteenth Amendment have 
simply this question to answer : Which was best, slavery 
or ignorant Negro voters? The answer is clear as day: 
Negro voters never did anything as bad as slavery. If 

146 



they were guilty of all the crimes charged to them by the 
wildest enemies, even then what they did was less dan 
gerous, less evil and less cruel than the system of slavery 
whose death knell they struck. And when in addition 
to this we remember that the black voters of the South 
established the public schools, gave the poor whites the 
ballot, modernized the penal code and put on the statute 
books of the South page after page of legislation that 
still stands to-day when we remember this, we have a 
right to conclude that the Fifteenth Amendment was a 
wise and far-sighted piece of statesmanship. 

But to-day the men who oppose the right of Negroes 
to vote are no longer doing so on the ground of ignor 
ance, and with good reason, for to-day a majority and an 
appreciable majority of the black men of the South twen 
ty-one years of age and over can read and write. In 
other words, the bottom has been clean knocked out of 
their ignorance argument and yet the fact has elicited 
scarcely a loud remark. 

Indeed we black men are continually puzzled by the 
easy almost unconscious way in which our detractors 
change their ground. Before emancipation it was stated 
and reiterated with bitter emphasis and absolute confi 
dence that a free Negro would prove to be a shiftless 
scamp, a barbarian and a cannibal reverting to savagery 
and doomed to death. We forget to-day that from 1830 
to 1860 there was not a statement made by the masters 
of slaves more often reiterated than this, and more dog 
matically and absolutely stated. After emancipation, for 
twenty years and more, so many people looked for the 
fulfilment of the prophecy that many actually saw it 
and we heard and kept hearing and now and then still 
hear that the Negro to-day is worse off than in slavery 
days. Then, as this statement grew less and less plausi 
ble, its place came to be taken by other assumptions. 
When a Louisiana senator saw the first Negro school he 

147 



stopped and said: "This is the climax of foolishness!" 
The Negro could not be educated he could imitate like 
a parrot but real mental development was impossible. 

Then, when Negroes did learn some things, it was said 
that education spoiled them; they can learn but it docs 
them no practical good ; the young educated Negroes be 
come criminals they neither save nor work, they are 
shiftless and lazy. Now to-day are coming uncomforta 
ble facts for this theory. The generation now working 
and saving is post-bellum and yet no sooner does it come 
on the stage than accumulated property goes on at an 
accelerated pace so far as we have measurements. In 
Georgia the increase of property among Negroes in the 
last ten years has been 83%. But no sooner do facts 
like these come to the fore than again the ground of op 
position subtly shifts and this last shifting has been so 
gradual and so insidious that the Negro and his friends 
are still answering arguments that are no longer being 
pushed. The most subtle enemies of democracy and 
the most persistent advocates of the color line admit al 
most contemptuously most that their forebears strenu 
ously denied : the Negroes have progressed since slavery, 
they are accumulating some property, some of them work 
readily and they are susceptible of elementary training; 
but, they say, all thought of treating black men like white 
men must be abandoned. They are an inferior stock of 
men, limited in attainment by nature. You cannot legis 
late against nature, and philanthropy is powerless against 
deficient cerebral development. 

To realize the full weight of this argument recall to 
mind a character like John Brown and contrast his atti 
tude with the attitude of to-day. John Brown loved his 
neighbor as himself. He could not endure, therefore, to 
see his neighbor poor, unfortunate or oppressed. This 
natural sympathy was strengthened by a saturation in 
Hebrew religion which stressed the personal respon- 

148 



sibility of every man s soul to a just God. To this re 
ligion of equality and sympathy with misfortune, was 
added the strong influence of the social doctrines of the 
French Revolution with its emphasis on freedom and 
power in political life. And on all this was built John 
Brown s own inchoate but growing belief in a juster and 
more equal distribution of property. From all this John 
Brown concluded and acted on that conclusion that all 
men were created free and equal and that the cost of 
liberty was less than the price of repression. Up to the 
time of John Brown s death this doctrine was a growing, 
conquering social thing. Since then there has come a 
change and many would rightly find reason for that 
change in the coincidence that the year John Brown 
suffered martyrdom was the year that first published the 
Origin of Species. Since that day tremendous scientific 
and economic advance has been accompanied by distinct 
signs of moral change in social philosophy; strong argu 
ments have been made for the fostering of war, the social 
utility of human degradation and disease, and the in 
evitable and known inferiority of certain classes and 
races of men. While such arguments have not stopped 
the efforts of the advocates of peace, the workers for 
social uplift and the believers in human brotherhood, they 
have, it must be confessed, often made their voices falter 
and tinged their arguments with apology. 

Why is this ? It is because the splendid scientific work 
of Darwin, Weissman, Galton and others has been wide 
ly and popularly interpreted as meaning that there is 
such essential and inevitable inequality among men and 
races of men as no philanthropy can or ought to elimi 
nate ; that civilization is a struggle for existence whereby 
the weaker nations and individuals will gradually suc 
cumb and the strong will inherit the earth. With this 
interpretation has gone the silent assumption that the 
white European stock represents the strong surviving peo- 

149 



pies and that the swarthy, yellow and black peoples are 
the ones rightly doomed to eventual extinction. 

One can easily see what influence such a doctrine would 
have on the race problem in America. It meant moral 
revolution in the attitude of the nation. Those that 
stepped into the pathway marked by the early abolition 
ists faltered and large numbers turned back. They said : 
They were good men even great, but they have no mes 
sage for us to-day John Brown was a "belated cove 
nanter," William Lloyd Garrison was an anachronism in 
the age of Darwin men who gave their lives to lift not 
the unlifted but the unlif table. We have, consequently, 
the present reaction a reaction which says in effect : Keep 
these black people in their places, and do not attempt to 
treat a Negro simply as a white man with a black face ; 
to do this would mean moral deterioration of the race 
and nation a fate against which a divine racial preju 
dice is successfully fighting. This is the attitude of the 
larger portion of the thinking nation to-day. 

It is not, however, an attitude that has brought mental 
rest or social peace. On the contrary, it is to-day involv 
ing a degree of moral strain and political and social 
anomaly that gives the wisest pause. The chief difficul 
ty has been that the natural place in which, by scientific 
law, the black race in America should stay cannot easily 
be determined. To be sure, the freedmen did not, as the 
philanthropists of the sixties apparently expected, step in 
forty years from slavery to nineteenth century civiliza 
tion. Neither, on the other hand, did they, as the ex- 
masters confidently predicted, retrograde and die. Con 
trary to both these views, they chose a third and appar 
ently quite unawaited way: from the great, sluggish, al 
most imperceptibly moving mass they sent off larger and 
larger numbers of faithful workmen and artisans, some 
merchants and professional men, and even men of educa 
tional ability and discernment. They developed in a 

150 



generation no world geniuses, no millionaires, no captains 
of industry, no artists of first rank ; but they did in forty 
years get rid of the larger part of their illiteracy, accu 
mulate a half billion of property in small homesteads and 
gained now and then respectful attention in the world s 
ears and eyes. It has been argued that this progress of 
the black man in America is due to the exceptional men 
among them and does not measure the ability of the mass. 
Such admission is, however, fatal to the whole argument. 
If the doomed races of men are going to develop excep 
tions to the rule of inferiority then no law, scientific or 
moral, should or can proscribe the race as such. 

To meet this difficulty in racial philosophy a step has 
been taken in America fraught with the gravest social 
consequences to the world and threatening not simply the 
political but the moral integrity of the nation : that step 
is to deny in the case of black men the validity of those 
evidences of culture, ability and decency which are ac 
cepted unquestioningly in the case of other people, and 
by vague assertion, improvable assumption, unjust empha 
sis, and now and then by deliberate untruth, to secure not 
only the continued proscription of these people, but by 
caste distinction to shut in the faces of their rising classes 
many of the paths to further advance. 

When a social policy based on a supposed scientific 
sanction leads to such a moral anomaly it is time to ex 
amine rather carefully the logical foundations of the 
argument. And so soon as we do this many things 
are clear. First, assuming that there are certain stocks 
of human beings whose elimination the best welfare of 
the world demands; it is certainly questionable if these 
stocks include the majority of mankind and it is inde 
fensible and monstrous to pretend that we know to-day 
with any reasonable certainty which these stocks are. 
We can point to degenerate individuals and families here 
and there among all races, but there is not the slightest 



warrant for assuming that there do not exist among 
the Chinese and Hindus, the African Bantus and Ameri 
can Indians as lofty possibilities of human culture as 
any European race has ever exhibited. It is, to be sure, 
puzzling to know why the Soudan should linger a thou 
sand years in culture behind the valley of the Seine, but 
it is no more puzzling than the fact that the valley of 
the Thames was miserably backward as compared with 
the banks of the Tiber. Climate, human contact, facili 
ties of communication, and what we call accident have 
played great part in the rise of culture among nations: 
to ignore these and to assert dogmatically that the pres 
ent distribution of culture is a fair index of the distri 
bution of human ability and desert is to make an asser 
tion for which there is not the slightest scientific war 
rant. 

What the age of Darwin has done is to add to the 
eighteenth century idea of individual worth the comple 
mentary idea of physical immortality of the human race. 
And this, far from annulling or contracting the idea of 
human freedom, rather emphasizes its necessity and eter 
nal possibility the boundlessness and endlessness of pos 
sible human achievement. Freedom has come to mean 
not individual caprice or aberration but social self-reali 
zation in an endless chain of selves, and freedom for such 
development is not the denial but the central assertion 
of the evolutionary theory. So, too, the doctrine of 
human equality passes through the fire of scientific in 
quiry not obliterated but transfigured; not equality of 
present attainment but equality of opportunity for un 
bounded future attainment is the rightful demand of 
mankind. 

What now does the present hegemony of the white 
races threaten? It threatens by the means of brute force 
a survival of some of the worst stocks of mankind. It 
attempts to people the best part of the earth and put in 

152 



absolute authority over the rest not only, and indeed 
not mainly, the culture of Europe, but its greed and de 
gradation not only some representatives of the best 
stocks of the west end of London, upper New York and 
the Champs Elysees but also, and in as large, if not lar 
ger, numbers, the worst stocks of Whitechapel, the East 
Side and Montmartre ; and it attempts to make the slums 
of white society in all cases and under all circumstances 
the superior of any colored group, no matter what its 
ability or culture; it attempts to put the intelligent, 
property holding, efficient Negroes of the South under 
the heels and at the absolute mercy of such constituencies 
as Tillman, Vardaman and Jeff Davis represent. 

To be sure, this outrageous programme of wholesale 
human degeneration is not outspoken yet save in the 
backward civilizations of the southern United States, 
South Africa and Australia. But its enunciation is lis 
tened to with respect and tolerance in England, Germany 
and the northern states and nowhere with more equani 
mity than right here in New York by those very per 
sons who accuse philanthropy with seeking to degenerate 
white blood by an infiltration of colored strains. And 
the average citizen is voting ships and guns to carry out 
this programme. 

This movement gathered force and strength during the 
latter half of the nineteenth century and reached its cul 
mination when France, Germany and England and Rus 
sia began the partition of China and the East. With 
the sudden self-assertion of Japan its wildest dreams col 
lapsed, but it is still to-day a living, virile, potent force 
and motive, and the most subtle and dangerous enemy of 
world peace and the dream of human brotherhood. It 
has a whole vocabulary of its own : the strong races, 
superior peoples, race preservation, the struggle for sur 
vival and a peculiar use of the word "white." And by 
this it means the right of white men of any kind to club 



blacks into submission, to make them surrender their 
wealth and the use of their women, and to submit to the 
dictation of white men without murmur, for the sake of 
being swept off the fairest portions of the earth or held 
there in perpetual serfdom or guardianship. Ignoring 
the fact that the era of physical struggle for survival has 
passed away among human beings and that there is plenty 
of room accessible on earth for all, this theory makes the 
possession of Krupp guns the main criterion of mental 
stamina and moral fitness. 

Even armed with this morality of the club and every 
advantage of modern culture, the white races have been 
unable to possess the earth ; many signs of degeneracy 
have appeared among them ; their birthrate is falling, their 
average ability is not increasing, their physical stamina 
is impaired, their social condition is not reassuring, and 
their religion is a growing mass of transparent and self- 
confessed hypocrisy. Lacking the physical ability to 
take possession of the world, they are to-day fencing in 
America, Australia, and South Africa and declaring that 
no dark race shall occupy or develop the land which 
they themselves are unable to use. And all this on the 
plea that their stock is threatened with deterioration from 
without, when in fact its most dangerous fate is deterior 
ation from within. We are in fact to-day repeating in 
our intercourse between races all the former evils of 
class injustice, unequal taxation and rigid caste. In 
dividual nations outgrew these fatal things by breaking 
down the horizontal barriers between classes. We are 
bringing them back by seeking to erect vertical barriers 
between races. Men were told that abolition of com 
pulsory class distinction meant leveling down, degrada 
tion, disappearance of culture and genius, and the triumph 
of the mob. As a matter of fact, it has been the salva 
tion of European civilization. Some deterioration and 
leveling there was, but it was more than balanced by the 

i54 



discovery of new reservoirs of ability and strength. So 
to-day we are told that free racial contact or "social 
equality" as southern patois has it means contamination 
of blood and lowering of ability and culture. It need 
mean nothing of the sort. Abolition of class distinction 
does not mean universal intermarriage of stocks, but 
rather the survival of the fittest by peaceful personal and 
social selection, a selection all the more effective because 
free democracy and equality of opportunity allow the 
best to rise to their rightful place. 

The same is true in racial contact. The abolition of 
the lines of vertical race distinction and their tearing away 
involves fewer chances of degradation and greater op 
portunities of human betterment than in the case of class 
lines. On the other hand, the persistence in racial dis 
tinctions spells disaster sooner or later. The earth is 
growing smaller and more accessible. Race contact will 
become in the future increasingly inevitable, not only in 
America, Asia and Africa, but even in Europe. The 
color line will mean not simply a return to the absurdi 
ties of class as exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, but even to the caste of ancient days. This, 
however, the Japanese, the Chinese, the East Indian and 
the Negroes are going to resent in just such proportion 
as they gain the power; and they are gaining the power, 
and they cannot be kept from gaining more power. The 
price of repression will then be hypocrisy and slavery and 
blood. 

This is the problem of to-day, and what is its mighty 
answer? It is this great word: The cost of liberty is 
less than the price of repression. The price of repress 
ing the world s darker races is shown in a moral retro 
gression and economic waste unparalleled since the age 
of the African slave trade. What would be the cost of 
liberty? What would be the cost of giving the great 
stocks of mankind every reasonable help and incentive 



to self-development opening the avenues of opportunity 
freely, spreading knowledge, suppressing war and cheat 
ing, and treating men and women as equals the world 
over whenever and wherever they attain equality? It 
would cost something. It would cost something in pride 
and prejudice, for eventually many a white man would 
be blacking black men s boots; but this cost we may ig 
nore its greatest cost would be the new problems of 
racial intercourse and intermarriage which would come 
to the front. Freedom and equal opportunity in this re 
spect would inevitably bring some intermarriage of 
whites and yellows and browns and blacks. If such 
marriages are proven inadvisable how could they be 
stopped? Easily. We associate with cats and cows but 
we do not fear intermarriage with them even though they 
be given all freedom of development. So, too, intelligent 
human beings can be trained to breed intelligently with 
out the degradation of such of their fellows as they may 
not wish to breed with. In the southern United States 
on the contrary it is assumed that unwise marriage can 
only be stopped by the degradation of the blacks, the 
classing of their women with prostitutes, the loading the 
whole race with every badge of public isolation, degrada 
tion and contempt and by burning offenders at the stake. 
Is this civilization? No. The civilized method of 
preventing ill-advised marriage lies in the training of 
mankind in ethics of sex and childbearing. We cannot 
ensure the survival of the best blood by the public mur 
der and degradation of unworthy suitors, but we can 
substitute a civilized human selection of husbands and 
wives which shall ensure the survival of the fittest. Not 
the methods of the jungle, not even the careless choices 
of the drawing room, but the thoughtful selection of the 
schools and laboratory is the ideal of future marriage. 
This will cost something in ingenuity, self-control, and 
toleration but it will cost less than forcible repression. 

156 



Not only is the cost of repression to-day large it is 
a continually increasing cost, because of the fact that 
furnished the fatal moral anomaly against which physical 
slavery could not stand the free Negro the Negro who 
in spite of contempt, discouragement, caste and poverty 
has put himself on a plane where it is simply impossible 
to deny that he is by every legitimate measurement the 
equal of his average white neighbor. The former argu 
ment was as I have mentioned that no such class existed. 
This assertion was persisted in until it became ludicrous. 
To-day the fashion is come to regard this class as excep 
tional so far as the logic of the Negro problem is con 
cerned, dangerous so far as social peace is concerned, 
and its existence more than offset by an abnormal num 
ber of criminals, degenerates and defectives. 

Right here, then, comes the center of the present prob 
lem, namely : What is the truth about this ? What are 
the real facts ? How far is Negro crime due to inherited 
and growing viciousness and how far to poverty, degra 
dation and systematic oppression ? 

How far is Negro labor lazy and how far is it the 
listless victim of systematic theft? 

How far is the Negro woman lewd and how far the 
helpless victim of social custom? 

How far are Negro children being educated to-day in 
the public schools of the South and how far is the effort 
to curtail that training increasingly successful? 

How far are Negroes leaving the farms and rushing 
to the cities to escape work and how far to escape slav 
ery? 

How far is this race designated as Negroes the de 
scendants of African slaves and how far is it descended 
from the most efficient white blood of the nation? 

What does actual physical and social measurement 
prove as to the status of these descendants of black men? 

All these are fundamental questions. Not a single 



valid conclusion as to the future can be absolutely insisted 
upon without definite skilful scientific answers to these 
questions and yet not a single systematic effort to an 
swer these questions on an adequate scale has been made 
in these United States from 1619 to 1909. Not only this 
but on all sides opposition ranging from indifference and 
reluctance to actual force is almost universal when any 
attempt to study the Negro problem adequately is pro 
posed. Yet in spite of this universal and deliberate ig 
norance the demand is made that one line of solution, 
which a number of good men have assumed is safe and 
sane, shall be accepted by everybody and particularly by 
thinking black men. The penalty for not accepting this 
programme is to be dubbed a radical, a busy-body, an 
impatient dreamer and a dangerous agitator. Yet this 
programme involves justification of disfranchisement, the 
personal humiliation of Jim-Crowism, a curtailed and 
purposely limited system of education and a virtual ac 
knowledgment of the inevitable and universal inferiority 
of black men. And then in the face of this we are 
asked to look pleasant and do our very best. I think 
it is the most cowardly dilemma that a strong people ever 
thrust upon the weak. And I for one have protested 
and do protest and shall protest that in my humble opin 
ion the assumption is an outrageous falsehood dictated 
by selfishness, cowardice and greed and for the righteous 
ness of my cause and the proof of my assertions, I ap 
peal to one arbitrament and one alone and that is : THE 
TRUTH. 



158 



THE PROBLEM S SOLUTION 

J. Milton Waldron 

President of 
The National Negro American Political League 

Washington, D. C. 

That fearless, able and broad-minded author of "The 
Negro and the Sunny South" a book, by the way, 
every American citizen should read Samuel Creed 
Cross, a white man of West Virginia, takes up an en 
tire chapter in his excellent work in giving with the 
briefest comments even a partial list of the crimes com 
mitted by the whites of the South against the Negroes 
during his recent residence of six months in that sec 
tion. And last year eighty or ninety colored persons, 
some of them women and children, were murdered, 
lynched or burned for "the nameless crime/ for murder 
or suspected murder, for barn burning, for insulting 
white women and "talking back" to white men, for strik 
ing an impudent white lad, for stealing a white boy s 
lunch and for no crime at all unless it be a crime for a 
black man to ask southern men for his rights. 

Within the last twelve months Georgia disfranchised 
her colored citizens by a constitutional subterfuge and 
Florida attempted the same crime, and almost every 
white secular newspaper and many of the religious jour 
nals of the South contained in every issue of their pub- 



lications abusive and malicious articles concerning the 
Negro in which they inflamed the whites against the 
brother in black and sought to justify the South 
in robbing him of his labor, his self-respect, his 
franchise, his liberty and life itself. Many of the of 
ficials of southern states, including numerous judges and 
not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these 
Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable 
onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of 
business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict 
and contract labor and the "order system." 

Not satisfied with the wrongs and outrages she has 
heaped upon the colored people in her own borders, the 
South is industriously preaching her \vicked doctrine of 
Negro inferiority, Negro suppression and Negro op 
pression in the North, East and West. And yet, in 
the face of this terrible record of crime against the 
life, liberty, manhood and political rights of the colored 
man which is being repeated in the South every day, there 
are those in high places who have the temerity to tell 
us that "the Southern people are the Negro s best 
friends," and that "the Negro problem is a southern 
problem and that the South should be allowed to solve 
it in her own way without any interference on the part 
of the North." 

The North and the South together stole the black man 
from his home in Africa and enslaved him in this land, 
and this whole nation has reaped the benefits of his 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil, and the 
whole nation must see to it that he is fully emancipated, 
enfranchised, thoroughly educated in heart, head and 
hand and allowed to exercise his rights as a citizen and 
earn, wherever and however he can, an honest and suf 
ficient living for himself, his wife and children this 
the South cannot do alone and unaided. 

Nearly three millions of the ten million Negroes in 

160 



this country live north of Mason and Dixon s line and 
thousands of others are coming North and going West 
every month; over four hundred thousand of the three 
millions mentioned above live in Washington, Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis and Chicago; if 
the Negro problem was ever a southern problem, the 
colored brother has taken it with him into the North 
and the West and made it a national problem. 

The life, liberty and happiness of the black man and 
of the white man of this country are so wrapped up 
together that it is impossible to oppress the one with 
out eventually oppressing the other. The white man 
of the South was cursed by slavery as much almost as 
the black man whom he robbed of life, liberty and vir 
tue. In many parts of the South to-day the masses of 
poor white men are no better off in any sphere of life 
than the colored people, with the single exception that 
their faces are white. The rights and liberties of the 
common people of this entire country have grown less 
secure, and their ballots have steadily diminished in 
power since the colored man has been robbed of his 
franchise by the South; the trusts of the country have 
seen the rights of millions of loyal black citizens taken 
from them by the states of the South in open violation 
of the federal constitution and that with the tacit appro 
val of the highest courts of the land, and they have come 
to feel that constitutions and laws are not binding upon 
them, and that the common people white or black 
have no rights which they are bound to respect. The 
South alone cannot right these gigantic wrongs nor re 
store to the white people (not to mention the Negroes) 
in her borders the liberties and privileges guaranteed by 
the Constitution of the United States. 

In discussing the Youth s attitude towards the colored 
man we seek only to hold up to scorn and contempt 
the spirit which predominates in that section ; and we de- 

161 



sire to condemn only the men of that section who hate 
their fellow-men, and we wish to bear testimony now and 
here to the fact that there is an under-current in the 
South, which is making for righteousness, and that 
there are a few noble and heroic souls like Rev. Quincy 
Ewing of Louisiana, and the late Dr. J. L. M. Curry of 
Virginia, in each southern state who believe that 
the Negro ought to be treated as a man and given all 
the rights and privileges accorded any other man. This 
righteous spirit must, however, be encouraged and 
strengthened and the number of noble and fair-minded 
men and women in the South must be greatly augment 
ed, or the battle for human liberty and the manhood 
and political rights of both races in that section will 
never be won. 

We beg to say that all the enemies of human rights in 
general, and of the rights of black men in particular, are 
not in the South ; the wrongs complained of by the Negro 
in that section are, for the most part, the same as those be 
wailed by the Negro in the North, with this difference: 
the northern Negro s right to protest against the wrongs 
heaped upon him is less restricted, and his means of 
protection and defense are more numerous than those 
of his southern brother. Already in at least one state 
north of Mason and Dixon s line Herculean efforts 
are being put forth to disfranchise the colored man by 
constitutional enactment; the discrimination against a 
man on account of his color, and the lynching of 
Negroes and the burning of their houses by infuriated 
mobs of white men are not unheard of things in the 
North and West. Most of the labor unions of these sec 
tions are still closed to the brother in black, and most 
white working men here are determined that the Negro 
shall not earn a living in any respectable calling if they 
can prevent it; many of the newspapers North and 
West (and a few right here in New York City) often 

162 



use their columns to misrepresent and slander the col 
ored man, and it was only last week when one of the 
highest courts in the Empire state rendered a decision 
in which it justified discrimination against a man on 
the grounds of his color and his condition of servitude. 
Verily, the Negro problem is not a southern but a 
national problem. 

The most recent solvent proposed for the race prob 
lem is the one brought forward by President Taft 
which by the way is simply Dr. Washington s prescrip 
tion revised and amended. Mr. Taft thinks that the 
Negro problem will be eventually solved if the col 
ored man will make himself useful to the business 
interests of the community and keep out of sight and 
out of public office where he is by reason of his num 
bers or prominence offensive to white people. With 
regard to the President s solution for the race problem 
it ought to be said that the reaction in public sentiment 
in the last twenty years regarding justice to the Negro 
is as much the result of what is known as the prosper 
ity of the country and the development of its resources 
as of anything else. In fact, the desire to put the Negro 
to one side, to segregate him, to assign him to a place 
at the bottom of the social scheme, has its origin in and 
receives its support from the dominant commercial and 
industrial elements of the country. We have been told, 
and are still told that agitation concerning the Negro 
hurts business, frightens prosperity and arrests the de 
velopment of material and commercial resources. 

The usual plea now heard in behalf of the Negro and 
the one which President Taft makes is that his labor 
is necessary to a section of the country, and that his 
freedom, his happiness, his morals and his education are 
to be looked after to the extent that they add to the pro 
ductiveness and efficiency of his labor and, as a conse 
quence, the enrichment of his employers. It is regarded 

163 



as good form to refer to the Negro as "an economic asset 
of the communities where he is found in large num 
bers," and the idea is spread abroad that whatever de 
cency or consideration is extended to him is for the 
profit and advantage of others and not for him as a 
man. While chattel slavery is no longer upheld by the 
supreme law of the land, the habit and practice in 
thought and speech of looking at Negroes from the 
chattel plane still persists. President Taft s advice, if 
followed, may make slipshod servants of Negroes but it 
will not train them into good citizens or noble men. 

Many solutions for the Negro problem have been pro 
posed, but to our mind there is one and only one 
practical and effective answer to the question. In the 
first place we claim that the early friends of the Negro 
grasped the true solution, which is that his needs and 
possibilities are the same as those of the other mem 
bers of the human family; that he must be educated 
not only for industrial efficiency and for private gain, 
but to share in the duties and responsibilities of a free 
democracy; that he must have equality of rights, for 
his own sake, for the sake of the human race and for the 
perpetuity of free institutions. America will not have 
learned the full lesson of her system of human slavery 
until she realizes that a rigid caste system is inimical 
to the progress of the human race and to the perpetuity 
of democratic government. 

In the second place, the Negro must make common 
cause with the working class which to-day is organ 
izing and struggling for better social and economic con 
ditions. The old slave oligarchy maintained its ascend 
ency largely by fixing a gulf between the Negro slave 
and the white free laborer, and the jealousies and ani 
mosities of the slave period have survived to keep apart 
the Negro and the laboring white man. Powerful in 
fluences are at work even to-day to impress upon the 

164 



Negro the fact that he must look to the business men 
of the South alone for protection and recognition of his 
rights, while at the same time these influences inflame 
the laboring white man with fears of social equality 
and race fusion. The Negro, being a laborer, must see 
that the cause of labor is his cause, that his elevation 
can be largely achieved by having the sympathy, sup 
port and co-operation of that growing organization of 
working men the world over which is working out the 
larger problems of human freedom and economic op 
portunity. 

In the third place, wherever in this country the Negro 
has the franchise, and where by complying with re 
quirements he can regain it, let him exercise it faithfully 
and constantly, but let him do so as an independent and 
not as a partisan, for his political salvation in the future 
depends upon his voting for men and measures, rather 
than with any particular party. 

For two hundred and fifty years the black man of 
America toiled in the South without pay and without 
thanks; he cleared her forests, tunneled her mountains, 
bridged her streams, built her cottages and palaces, cul 
tivated her fields, watered her crops with his tears, fer 
tilized her fields with his blood, nursed her children, 
protected her women and guarded her homes from the 
midnight marauder, the devouring flames and approach 
ing disease and death. The colored American willingly 
and gladly enlisted and fought in every war waged by this 
country, from the first conflict with the Indians to the last 
battle in Cuba and the Philippines ; when enfranchised he 
voted the rebellious states back into the Union, and from 
that day until this he has, as a race, never used his ballot, 
unless corrupted or intimidated by white men, to the 
detriment of any part of America. When in power in 
the South, though for the most part ignorant and just 
out of slavery and surrounded by vindictive ex-slave 

165 



owners and mercenary, corrupted and corrupting 
"carpet baggers," he did what his former masters 
had failed for centuries to do he established the free 
school system, erected asylums for the insane and in 
digent poor, purged the statute books of disgraceful 
marriage laws and oppressive and inhuman labor regu 
lations, revised and improved the penal code, and by 
many other worthy acts proved that the heart of the 
race was, and is, in the right place, and that whenever 
the American Negro has been trusted, he has proven 
himself trustworthy and manly. And when the colored 
man is educated, and is treated with fairness and justice, 
and is accorded the rights and privileges which are the 
birthright of every American citizen, he will show him 
self a man among men and the race problem will vanish 
as the mist before the rising sun. 



166 



Morning Session, June 1 

Bishop A. Walters, A.M., D.D., Chairman 



CIVIL AND POLITICAL STATUS OF 
THE NEGRO 

Bishop A. Walters, A. M., D. D. 

of 

New York City 

Through a bloody conflict and the act of the great Lin 
coln we were emancipated, and later in 1865 we were 
confirmed in our freedom by the passage of the Thir 
teenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. 

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, made us 
citizens of the United States and confirmed us in our 
civil rights. In 1872 the Fifteenth Amendment was 
ratified which was intended to confirm us in the right of 
suffrage. We plead for our constitutional rights on the 
ground that the right of suffrage, when it has been once 
conferred by the federal government, becomes the in 
violable right of every citizen of whatever color, race or 
rank in social life, and therefore suffrage is not a privi 
lege to be conferred or withheld by the states. The pow 
ers of the federal government were not conferred by a 
single state, but by all the states, therefore, the general 
government, through congress, can enforce the provisions 
of the Constitution. 

The Negro believes that he should be allowed to retain 
the franchise in all parts of this land, because of the 
military service he has rendered the nation. Side by 
side with his white brother, the Negro has fought brave- 

167 



ly in every war of the nation to save the honor of the 
flag. No one has been more loyal to its colors than he, 
and he sees no reason why it should not protect him. 

He believes that he should be allowed to retain his po 
litical rights because he is becoming educated and is being 
made a strong man; because he is a considerable tax 
payer and his wealth is increasing every day. He knows 
that the cardinal doctrine of this republic is that there 
shall be no taxation without representation. 

The Rev. Frances J. Grimke of Washington, in a re 
cent publication says : "The South does not believe in 
the civil and political equality of the colored man; does 
not believe that he should vote, and does not believe that 
he should hold office. It is not enough that it has de 
prived us of our civil and political rights within its own 
territory; it is not enough that within the South itself 
we have been reduced to a political nonentity, have been 
placed where the South thinks we belong and where we 
ought to be kept ; but it is now actively engaged in press 
ing these views upon the whole country. It is working 
just as zealously now to nationalize its views on the civil 
and political status of the Negro as it did to nationalize 
its views on the subject of slavery. Wherever southern 
men are found, with here and there an exception in nor 
thern pulpits, editorial chairs, professorships in colleges 
and universities, in places of business, they are always 
actively engaged in propagating this moral and political 
heresy in regard to the Negro s proper place in the na 
tion, in urging their views upon others." The same ar 
gument used to-day was used in the days of slavery to 
keep the slaves in bondage, but it failed and it will fail 
again. 

Mr. Quincy Ewing, of Louisiana, in an article in 
the March number of the "Atlantic Monthly," says: 
"The foundation of the problem, true or false, is the 
white man s conviction, that the Negro as a race, and as 

168 



an individual, is his inferior ; not human in the sense 
that he is human, not entitled to the exercise of human 
rights in the sense that he is entitled to the exercise of 
them. The problem itself, the essence of it, the heart of 
it, is the white man s determination to make good this 
conviction, coupled with constant anxiety lest, by some 
means, he should fail to make it good. The race prob 
lem, in other words, is not that the Negro is what he is 
in relation to the white man, the white man s inferior; 
but this, rather : How to keep him what he is in relation 
to the white man ; how to prevent his ever achieving or 
becoming that which would justify the belief on his part, 
or on the part of the other people, that he and the white 
man stand on common human ground." 

Says Dr. Grimke : "We are governed but have no part 
in the government in the making of laws, in the levy 
ing of taxes, in legislation in any shape or form ; we are 
tried and convicted but always, or so nearly always as to 
make it the rule, by a white jury, by men who from the 
start are prejudiced against us; we are permitted to tes 
tify, but our testimony counts for nothing against the 
word of a white person. Now the presumption always 
is, that the white man is innocent until he is proven guil 
ty; the presumption, in case of a colored person, is al 
ways that he is guilty until he has proved his innocence, 
which is well nigh impossible, especially if his accuser 
happens to be a white person. The disposition always 
is to accept the statement of the white man against the 
black man, and never the statement of the black man 
against the white man. The disposition always is to in 
criminate the one and to clear the other where there is 
any conflict between the two." 

Now comes the infamous decision of Judge Dugro, of 
the Supreme Court of New York, who declares that the 
Negro has no such sensibilities as the white man, for 
getting that there are Negroes and Negroes. 

169 



"In one sense," says Judge Dugro, "a colored man is 
just as good as a white man, for the law says he is, but 
he has not the same amount of injury under all circum 
stances that a white man would have. Maybe in a col 
ored community down South, where white men were 
held in great disfavor he might be more injured, but 
after all in this sort of a community I dare say the amount 
of evil that would flow to the colored man from a charge 
like this would not be as great as it probably would be 
to a white man." 

This outrageous decision is followed by the locomotive 
engineers of Georgia going on a strike to force the Negro 
firemen from the engines, a position they have held for 
years. Says the Richmond, Va., "Times-Dispatch :" "It 
would be easier to sympathize with these striking Geor 
gia railway men if it was felt that their quarrel was 
reasonable and just, but the reverse seems to be true. 
The ostensible reason for the strike was the substitution 
of some Negro fireman for some white firemen, and the 
presumable reason for these changes was that the Negroes 
would do the work equally well for less money. A deep 
er cause for the trouble is suggested by the report that 
the coming of a certain labor leader from Toronto to 
Georgia was for the purpose of helping the white firemen 
to get a raise in pay, a plan which was made difficult or 
impossible by the presence of the colored firemen. 

There is some ground for believing that the race issue 
has been deliberately emphasized a good deal more than 
was necessary with a view to enlisting popular support 
in what is otherwise a simple dispute between capital and 
labor. But in any case, the root of the trouble appears 
to lie in the willingness of the Negro to do certain labor 
for less pay than white men. 

Here is a plain economic fact which should be frankly 
faced. No one can deny that the Negro fireman would 
like to draw the same pay that goes to the white fireman. 

170 



The fact that he has to content himself with less, assum 
ing that he does the work equally well, is an economic 
discrimination against him on the ground of his color. 
To insist that the railway pay a higher price than neces 
sary for this work, in order to have it done by a white 
man, is simply to unionize race prejudice. Unions are 
supposed to represent all labor, not simply white labor. 
What they now ask, in effect, is that Negroes shall no 
longer be employed. 

This is the demand which has led to a condition of 
chaos in Georgia, to the inconvenience of thousands of 
people. But it must be evident that shoveling coal for 
an engine is entirely suitable work for a Negro, and that 
unless he is to be denied all rights, he has a full right to 
be protected in it. Georgia locomotives have long been 
stoked by colored firemen. These men have done the 
work efficiently, and there is no pretense that white en 
gineers object to associating with them in this way. It 
is all the question of a pay envelope. Georgians who 
have thoughtlessly sided with the strikers on the appeal 
to race prejudice, would do well to consider the economic 
side of this question. If the Negro cannot fire locomo 
tives, what work shall he be allowed to do? Would 
Georgia rather have her Negroes occupied at hard physi 
cal work or loafing around the street corners of At 
lanta?" 

"The whole trend of this movement among the south 
ern whites," says the "Guardian," "is to keep the Negro 
down to the same place of social and economic inferiori 
ty that he occupied during slavery and restrict them to 
work as farm laborers, mule drivers, roustabouts, por 
ters, waiters, whitewashers and general utility men." 

In view of the foregoing, it is the duty of the mem 
bers and friends of our race to labor as zealously to 
change these unfavorable conditions, as the enemy has 
labored to bring them about. To do this we must first 

171 



of all determine to make no compromise when manhood 
rights are involved, and second, as far as possible, the 
work must be done through organized effort. Every 
thing in our power should be done to encourage the race 
to continue its intellectual, moral, financial and educa 
tional progress. The black man like any other man must 
so live and act as to command respect as well as to de 
mand it. In the last analysis it is worth that tells. 

The need of the hour is the creation of a healthy pub 
lic sentiment in favor of the enforcement of the Four 
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the federal Consti 
tution. We should hold public meetings in different 
sections of the country, and have the best informed men 
in this and other countries to prepare papers and discuss 
subjects bearing on this problem. A publication bureau 
should be organized which should employ first-class 
writers, black and white, to prepare articles for such 
magazines as will accept them. In this way we can meet 
and counteract the insidious attacks which are now being 
systematically made on the race by those who pretend 
to be our friends, but who at every turn question our 
moral, intellectual and financial progress; they take ad 
vantage of false criminal statistics in order to change 
favorable public opinion in the North. We ought to 
have a lecture bureau, the duty of which should be to 
secure able and distinguished orators to go up and down 
the country and to present our cause wherever it is pos 
sible to do so. 

And, further, I believe that the division of the vote of 
the black man between the two great parties will greatly 
aid in the solution of the political problem, especially in 
the South. The ballot is the badge of political equality, 
the insignia of one s citizenship, and whenever and 
wherever there is a disposition on the part of the Demo 
cratic party to accept a Negro as an ally and treat him 
fairly, we should be willing to affiliate with that party. 

172 



It is the surest and quickest way to break down political 
prejudice and have the South permanently recognize our 
political equality. 

We are grateful to President Taft for his expressions 
of kindness and interest manifested in our welfare, but 
deeply deplore the impression made upon the South by 
the question raised in his inaugural address of the ex 
pediency of appointment of colored men to office in that 
section. I am of the opinion that the Negroes of the 
country are in hearty accord with President Taft in 
bringing about a closer union between the North and the 
South, but not at the expense of the black man. I be 
lieve them to be in favor of peace between sections, but 
peace with honor. It is not platitudes we need just now 
from the President, but the enforcement of the laws 
which he has sworn to enforce. 



173 



LYNCHING OUR NATIONAL CRIME 

Mrs. Ida Wells-Barnett 

of 

Chicago 

The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits 
the thoughtful study of the American people. It pre 
sents three salient facts: 

First : Lynching is color line murder. . 

Second: Crimes against women is the excuse, not 
the cause. 

Third : It is a national crime and requires a national 
remedy. 

Proof that lynching follows the color line is to be 
found in the statistics which have been kept for the past 
twenty-five years. During the few years preceding this 
period and while frontier lynch law existed, the execu 
tions showed a majority of white victims. Later, how 
ever, as law courts and authorized judiciary extended 
into the far West, lynch law rapidly abated and its 
white victims became few and far between. 

Just as the lynch law regime came to a close in the 
West, a new mob movement started in the South. This 
was wholly political, its purpose being to suppress the 
colored vote by intimidation and murder. Thousands of 
assassins banded together under the name of Ku Klux 
Klans, "Midnight Raiders," "Knights of the Golden Cir 
cle," etc., spread a reign of terror, by beating, shooting 

174 



and killing colored people by the thousands. In a few 
years, the purpose was accomplished and the black vote 
was suppressed. But mob murder continued. 

From 1882, in which year 52 were lynched, down to 
the present, lynching has been along the color line. Mob 
murder increased yearly until in 1892 more than 200 vic 
tims were lynched and statistics show that 3,284 men, 
women and children have been put to death in this quar 
ter of a century. During the last ten years from 1899 
to 1908 inclusive the number lynched was 959. Of this 
number 102 were white while the colored victims num 
bered 857. No other nation, civilized or savage, burns 
its criminals;, only under the stars and stripes is the 
human holocaust possible. Twenty-eight human beings 
burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of 
them children, is the awful indictment against American 
civilization the grewsome tribute which the nation pays 
to the color line. 

Why is mob murder permitted by a Christian nation? 
What is the cause of this awful slaughter? This ques 
tion is answered almost daily always the same shame 
less falsehood that "Negroes are lynched to protect wom 
anhood." Standing before a Chautauqua assemblage, 
John Temple Graves, at once champion of lynching and 
apologist for lynchers, said: "The mob stands to-day 
as the most potential bulwark between the women of the 
South and such a carnival of crime as would infuriate 
the world and precipitate the annihilation of the Negro 
race." This is the never varying answer of lynchers 
and their apologists. All know that it is untrue. The 
cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks to shield 
himself from public execration by claiming devotion to 
woman. But truth is mighty and the lynching record 
discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as his 
crime. 

The Springfield, Illinois, mob rioted for two days, the 

i75 



militia of the entire state was called out, two men were 
lynched, hundreds of people driven from their homes, all 
because a white woman said a Negro had assaulted her. A 
mad mob went to the jail, tried to lynch the victim of 
her charge and, not being able to find him, proceeded to 
pillage and burn the town and to lynch two innocent 
men. Later, after the police had found that the woman s 
charge was false, she published a retraction, the indict 
ment was dismissed and the intended victim discharged. 
But the lynched victims were dead. Hundreds were 
homeless and Illinois was disgraced. 

As a final and complete refutation of the charge that 
lynching is occasioned by crimes against women, a par 
tial record of lynchings is cited ; 285 persons were lynched 
for causes as follow : 

Unknown cause, 92; no cause, 10; race prejudice, 49; 
miscegenation, 7; informing, 12; making threats, u; 
keeping saloon, 3 ; practising fraud, 5 ; practising voo- 
dooism, 2; bad reputation, 8; unpopularity, 3; mistaken 
identity, 5 ; using improper language, 3 ; violation of con 
tract, i ; writing insulting letter, 2 ; eloping, 2 ; poisoning 
horse, I ; poisoning well, 2 ; by white caps, 9 ; vigilantes, 
14; Indians, i; moonshining, i; refusing evidence, 2; 
political causes, 5 ; disputing, i ; disobeying quarantine 
regulations, 2 ; slapping a child, i ; turning state s evi 
dence, 3 ; protecting a Negro, i ; to prevent giving evi 
dence, i ; knowledge of larceny, i ; writing letter to white 
woman, i ; asking white woman to marry, i ; jilting girl, 
i ; having smallpox, i ; concealing criminal, 2 ; threaten 
ing political exposure, i; self-defense, 6; cruelty, i; in 
sulting language to woman, 5 ; quarreling with white man, 
2 ; colonizing Negroes, i ; throwing stones, i ; quarreling, 
i ; gambling, i. 

Is there a remedy, or will the nation confess that it 
cannot protect its protectors at home as well as abroad? 
Various remedies have been suggested to abolish the 

176 



lynching infamy, but year after year, the butchery of 
men, women and children continues in spite of plea and 
protest. Education is suggested as a preventive, but it 
is as grave a crime to murder an ignorant man as it is 
a scholar. True, few educated men have been lynched, 
but the hue and cry once started stops at no bounds, as 
was clearly shown by the lynchings in Atlanta, and in 
Springfield, Illinois. 

Agitation, though helpful, will not alone stop the 
crime. Year after year statistics are published, meetings 
are held, resolutions are adopted and yet lynchings go 
on. Public sentiment does measurably decrease the 
sway of mob law, but the irresponsible blood-thirsty 
criminals who swept through the streets of Springfield, 
beating an inoffensive law-abiding citizen to death in 
one part of the town, and in another torturing and shoot 
ing to death a man who, for threescore years, had 
made a reputation for honesty, integrity and sobriety, 
had raised a family and had accumulated property, was 
not deterred from its heinous crimes by either educa 
tion or agitation. 

The only certain remedy is an appeal to law. Law 
breakers must be made to know that human life is 
sacred and that every citizen of this country is first a 
citizen of the United States and secondly a citizen of the 
state in which he belongs. This nation must assert it 
self and defend its federal citizenship at home as well as 
abroad. The strong arm of the government must reach 
across state lines whenever unbridled lawlessness de 
fies state laws and must give to the individual citizen un 
der the Stars and Stripes the same measure of protec 
tion which it gives to him when he travels in foreign 
lands. 

Federal protection of American citizenship is the 
remedy for lynching. Foreigners are rarely lynched in 
America. If, by mistake, one is lynched, the national 

177 



government quickly pays the damages. The recent agi 
tation in California against the Japanese compelled this 
nation to recognize that federal power must yet assert 
itself to protect the nation from the treason of sover 
eign states. Thousands of American citizens have been 
put to death and no President has yet raised his hand 
in effective protest, but a simple insult to a native of 
Japan was quite sufficient to stir the government at 
Washington to prevent the threatened wrong. If the 
government has power to protect a foreigner from in 
sult, certainly it has power to save a citizen s life. 

The practical remedy has been more than once sug 
gested in Congress. Senator Gallinger of New Hamp 
shire in a resolution introduced in Congress called for 
an investigation "with the view of ascertaining whether 
there is a remedy for lynching which Congress may ap 
ply." The Senate Committee has under consideration 
a bill drawn by A. E. Pillsbury, formerly Attorney-Gen 
eral of Massachusetts, providing for federal prosecution 
of lynchers in cases where the state fails to protect citi 
zens or foreigners. Both of these resolutions indicate 
that the attention of the nation has been called to this 
phase of the lynching question. 

As a final word, it would be a beginning in the 
right direction if this conference can see its way clear 
to establish a bureau for the investigation and publica 
tion of the details of every lynching, so that the pub-* 
lie could know that an influential body of citizens has 
made it a duty to give the widest publicity to the facts 
in each case ; that it will make an effort to secure expres 
sions of opinion all over the country against lynching 
for the sake of the country s fair name ; and lastly, but 
by no means least, to try to influence the daily papers 
of the country to refuse to become accessory to mobs 
either before or after the fact. Several of the greatest 
riots and most brutal burnt offerings of the mobs have 



been suggested and incited by the daily papers of the 
offending community. If the newspaper which suggests 
lynching in its accounts of an alleged crime, could be 
held legally as well as morally responsible for reporting 
that threats of lynching were heard"; or, "It is feared 
that if the guilty one is caught, he will be lynched"; or, 
There were cries of lynch him, and the only reason 
the threat was not carried out was because no leader 
appeared," a long step toward a remedy will have been 
taken. 

In a multitude of counsel there is wisdom. Upon 
the grave question presented by the slaughter of inno 
cent men, women and children there should be an hon 
est, courageous conference of patriotic, law-abiding cit 
izens anxious to punish crime promptly, impartially and 
by due process of law, also to make life, liberty, and 
property secure against mob rule. 

Time was when lynching appeared to ho sectional, 
but now it is national a blight upon our nation, mock 
ing our laws and disgracing our Christianity. "With 
malice toward none but with charity for all" let us 
undertake the work of making the "law of the land," 
effective and supreme upon every foot of American soil 
a shield to the innocent and to the guilty punishment 
swift and sure. 



170 



NEGRO DISFRANCHISEMENT AS IT 
AFFECTS THE WHITE MAN 

Hon. Albert E. Pillsbury 

Ex- Attorney-General 
Massachusetts 

The view of Negro disfranchisement and its results 
which I shall present is not new to many in this audience, 
but it has never been pressed as it ought to be upon the 
attention of the country. The indifference with which 
the people have suffered the process of disfranchisement 
to go on, without a hand and with hardly a voice raised 
against it, can be accounted for only upon the belief 
that they do not understand what it means. I object to 
it not merely because the Negro is disfranchised in cer 
tain states, but because the scheme is a fraud upon the 
whole country, directly impairing the political rights of 
every other state, and of every voter in every other 
state, the white as well as the black. 

If it stopped with fraudulent disfranchisement of the 
Negro, the case would be bad enough, and the public 
apathy would still be discreditable, though perhaps not 
unaccountable. It does not stop there. It has multi 
plied by two or more the political power, in the Federal 
government, of every white voter in the disfranchising 
states, and it has to the same extent disfranchised every 
voter in every other state. It is not merely a ques 
tion of Negro suffrage, or Negro equality. It is a ques 
tion of the equality of white men. The question now is 

180 



whether every white man, in any state, shall be politi 
cally the equal of every other white man, in any other 
state. This question does not belong to any section, 
but to the whole country. In the face of the claim that 
Negro suffrage is the affair of the South, with which 
no other people have any business to interfere, the 
course of the South has made it the affair of every 
white citizen in the other thirty-six states who wishes 
to preserve and defend his own political rights. 

Let us first dispose of one or two delusions. They 
attempt to justify the disfranchisement of the Negro 
upon various false pretenses, so often repeated and so 
little denied that they have come to be generally be 
lieved. It has been long and loudly asserted that Negro 
suffrage was forced upon the South. It is not true, and 
it was never true. The Thirteenth Amendment makes 
the Negro a freeman, and nothing more. The Four 
teenth Amendment makes him a citizen of the United 
States, with the personal rights of a citizen, and nothing 
more. The Fifteenth Amendment entitles him to be 
treated, in respect of the suffrage, only as other men 
of the same standing or character are treated, and noth 
ing more. The federal law does not make a single 
Negro a voter, in any state of the Union. The ex- 
tremest requirement of it is only that the color of his 
skin shall not disqualify him, if he is otherwise quali 
fied under such laws as any state sees fit to adopt. 

Neither is it true that Negro suffrage means Negro 
control or domination, in any state of the Union. There 
is not a state in which impartial suffrage, honestly ad 
ministered, would endanger white supremacy for a day. 
These two assertions, iterated and reiterated as they 
have been, and relied upon to justify disfranchisement 
and reconcile the country to the fraud, are equally and 
absolutely without foundation. 

This is so well known that it cannot be denied. But 

181 



when they complain that Negro suffrage was forced 
upon the South, they will tell you that they mean the 
forcing of it upon the South by the Reconstruction Acts. 
Is their case any better here? The Reconstruction Acts 
did not force Negro suffrage upon the South. They of 
fered restoration to the political rights and privileges 
forfeited by armed rebellion, on condition that suffrage 
should be impartial among all citizens of the United 
States. In view of the penalties which might have been 
exacted, these terms, unexampled in history for their 
mildness, do not seem severe. So far as the federal 
law goes, there has never been a day when any state 
of the Union could not, by impartial tests applied alike 
to all citizens, exclude from its suffrage the ignorant, 
the criminal, the depraved, or even the poor. But the 
history of the country from 1867 down to this time 
shows that even these terms, so far as accepted by the 
white South, were accepted with the fixed purpose to 
disregard them, so that the Negro should not be allowed 
to vote. The first experiments in Negro suffrage were 
met and resisted by armed violence, until it was per 
ceived that fraud is less dangerous and more politic than 
murder. Then the tissue ballot appeared, and other 
similar devices. The tissue ballot has now developed 
into the "grandfather" constitution. Fraud has done 
its perfect work. 

It all comes to this. As a Negro, they like him; in 
deed they must have him. As a man, a citizen, or a 
voter, they will have none of him. So far as the suf 
frage is concerned they have made good this determi 
nation, by open disregard and defiance of the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments. This is simply rebellion 
against the government of the United States, as in 1861, 
the instrument employed being fraud instead of force. 
In this, as in all that I say, I refer only to the states 
where the crime is flagrant, and I acknowledge, with 

182 



grateful appreciation, the attitude of a minority of the 
best citizens even in these states, who see the folly and 
the wickedness of fraudulent disfranchisement of the 
Negro and have tried to stay its mad career. 

While the Fifteenth Amendment gave the Negro noth 
ing but the right to be treated, according to his merits, 
as other men of equal merit are treated, the white South 
was even more unwilling to accord him impartial treat 
ment under the Fifteenth Amendment than it was to 
accept him as a citizen under the Fourteenth, or as a 
freeman under the Thirteenth. They have nullified, to 
a substantial extent, all three of the War Amendments. 
In most of the southern states the Negro has been de 
spoiled, by one sinister device or another, of a substan 
tial share even of the personal liberty supposed to be 
secured to him by the Thirteenth Amendment. In but 
few if any of these states is he accorded the privileges 
of a citizen or the equal protection of the laws, sup 
posed to be secured to him by the Fourteenth Amend 
ment. And now, by a series of fraudulent enactments 
which began with Mississippi in 1891 and running 
through and around the "black belt" has finally em 
braced, actually or practically, every state that seceded 
from the Union in 1861, the Negro is eliminated from 
their political system almost as completely as though he 
did not exist. 

That this is a fraud does not need to be asserted. It 
is self-evident, and is admitted. The disfranchising con 
stitutions, even of the "grandfather" type, are fair 
enough upon their face, revealing to the eye no open 
discrimination between the races. So much had to be 
conceded to the Fifteenth Amendment. But every one 
of them is calculated, intended and administered, to ex 
clude the Negro from the suffrage, whatever his char 
acter and qualifications, while admitting to it every white 
man, however ignorant, worthless or depraved. It is 

183 



common knowledge that many of the most distinguished 
personages concerned in the movement, more candid if 
less discreet than the rest, have confessed this charge 
and openly exulted in it. 

A new feature has just appeared in the disfranchis 
ing process which may be of some significance. We 
read in the newspapers the other day that the legisla 
ture of Florida is proposing to write the word "white" 
plainly into the constitutional suffrage qualification of 
that state, openly discarding even the pretense of im 
partiality between the races which thinly veils the fraud 
in other states. This looks as though the white South is 
now confident that the country has abandoned the Negro 
and that the Fifteenth Amendment may be openly 
repudiated. The Mississippi senator who appears to be 
active in the Florida movement probably knows, if the 
Florida legislature does not, that the Supreme Court has 
often declared the word "white," if found in the suf 
frage laws of a state, to be effaced and annulled by the 
Fifteenth Amendment, of its own force. In view of 
this, it is difficult to believe that they really expect to 
do this thing effectively. Whether they think they have 
discovered a new device, or what the particular pur 
pose is, I do not undertake to say. It may be nothing 
but a mere piece of bravado, but it needs watching. 

Now let us see how disfranchisement of the Negro 
affects the white man. The Fourteenth Amendment ap 
portions representatives in Congress and presidential 
electors among the states in proportion to their popula 
tion, and prescribes that if the suffrage is denied or 
abridged by a state to any male citizens of the United 
States of voting age, its representation shall be reduced 
in the same proportion. At least ten southern states, by 
fraud or intimidation, under the forms of law or other 
wise, have practically or actually disfranchised the 
Negro. These ten states had by the census of 1900 a 

184 



population of 15,926,955, of which 9,349,622 are white 
and 6,565,894 colored. They have 3,675,454 male citi 
zens of voting age, of whom 2,238,720 are white and 
1,436,734 colored. The disfranchised colored citizens, 
a million and a half in round numbers, represent a col 
ored population of six and a half millions. These ten 
states elect the full number of 82 representatives in Con 
gress, based upon their whole population, and the same 
number of presidential electors, who represent 2,238,- 
720 white voters. This is an average of 27,301 voters 
to each representative and elector. In the other thirty- 
six states of the Union, 17,122,940 voters elect 309 re 
presentatives and presidential electors, an average of 55,- 
414 voters to each representative and elector. This is 
more than double the number which exercises the same 
power in the disfranchising states. A white vote in 
these states outweighs, in the federal government, two 
votes of any color in the other states of the Union. A 
white voter in these states goes to the polls with some 
what more than double the federal power of any voter 
in the other states. 

In fact, the situation is worse than this. The actual 
voting oligarchy in the disfranchising states is but a 
small fraction even of the white electorate. I have not at 
tempted to compile any recent figures, but they have often 
been published. For example, it is said that the con 
gressional vote of a single district in Iowa exceeds the 
vote which elects the whole congressional delegation of 
Louisiana ; that the average congressional vote in each 
district in Ohio exceeds the whole congressional vote of 
Mississippi ; and that the vote cast in electing ten con 
gressmen in Wisconsin is more than three times as large 
as that cast in electing twenty congressmen in South 
Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi. Any white voter, in 
any of the thirty-six states where citizens of the Uni 
ted States are allowed to vote, may figure out for him- 

185 



self, at his leisure, what particular fraction of his own 
vote the disfranchising states allow him to cast in the 
choice of the federal government. 

One of the sorest spots in the old slave Constitution 
was the political representation of three-fifths of the 
slaves, giving the South that undue share of political 
power. The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to 
set this right, and to restore and maintain for all time 
an honest balance of political power between the states. 
We are now so much worse off than we were then, that 
whereas but three-fifths of the Negroes were then count 
ed in the basis of representation, the whole are now 
counted and represented, and the whole political power 
belonging to about sixteen millions of people is exer 
cised by a white electorate representing about nine mil 
lions. Instead of carrying us forward to political equal 
ity, the actual results of the war have carried us back 
ward to more inequality. 

All this has been done in plain and open disregard and 
violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. 
It has passed into a political truism that the three 
amendments of the Constitution were the whole fruits of 
the war. We have suffered ourselves to be robbed of 
the fruits, by a new rebellion against the federal gov 
ernment, in which the states of the late Confederacy 
have taken and hold more political power than they for 
merly had by virtue of slavery itself. In the recent bill 
of Congressman Bennet, of New York, to enforce the 
representation clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, 
based upon the figures of the census of 1900, it appears 
that the ten disfranchising states there dealt with, now 
represented on the basis of the whole population by 82 
congressmen and the same number of electors, are en 
titled to but 50 congressmen and electors, and that 32 
representatives and electors of these states are now vot 
ing in Congress and in the election of president and 

186 



vice-president without right, and in open violation of 
the federal Constitution. 

It was long. hoped, and perhaps believed, that the ju 
dicial remedy for disfranchisement in violation of the 
Fifteenth Amendment would be effective. One mistaken 
view of the judicial remedy has obtained some currency 
and ought to be corrected. Mr. Elaine seems to have 
thought, when he wrote his Twenty Years of Con 
gress, that it must be the only remedy. He there ex 
pressed the view that the Fifteenth Amendment, direct 
ly forbidding discrimination against the Negro in the 
suffrage, superseded the representation clause of the 
Fourteenth which appears to permit it at the pfrice of 
reduced representation; that as the Fifteenth wholly 
forbids denial of the suffrage on the ground of color, a 
state can no longer deny it, or be found or held to have 
denied it, on that ground; and that the only thing to 
be done upon violation of the Fifteenth Amendment is 
to appeal to the courts. In this he was plainly wrong, 
and his view has not been and is not to be accepted. 
The Fourteenth Amendment is not a permission to the 
states to deny the suffrage to any class of citizens. 
Suffrage, in general, is the affair of the states. They 
need no permission of the federal government to regu 
late it. This Amendment says to the states: If the Ne 
gro is not admitted to the suffrage, the Negro shall not 
be counted in the basis of representation. The Fifteenth 
Amendment says to the states : While you may regulate 
the suffrage to suit yourselves, you shall not deny it to 
the Negro merely because he is a Negro. This does not 
supersede the other provision, first, because there is no 
inconsistency between the two, the later being cumulative 
and supplemental, not repugnant, to the other; second, 
because to forbid an act does not repeal a penalty other 
wise laid upon it ; and third, because the judicial rem 
edy, under the Fifteenth Amendment, may be sought by 

187 



any aggrieved citizen, and perhaps only by a citizen, 
while the remedy by reduction of representation, under 
the Fourteenth Amendment, is a public remedy, enforce 
able only by Congress, which the additional private 
remedy under the Fifteenth cannot be held to supersede 
or disturb. 

And further, Congress is expressly empowered to en 
force the Fifteenth Amendment, by "appropriate" legis 
lation. No legislation can be more appropriate than to 
reduce the representation of a disfranchising state, in 
pursuance of the plain mandate of the Fourteenth 
Amendment that its representation "shall be reduced" 
in such a case. In framing the Fifteenth Amendment, it 
may have been foreseen, as the case has actually turned 
out to be, that the suffrage might be denied or abridged 
by some device which could not be brought to the 
judicial test, or that the court might hold the political 
remedy to be exclusive. It may be, in theory, that a state 
is incapable of doing what the federal Constitution for 
bids it to do, so that, abstractly, a state cannot now deny 
or be found to have denied the suffrage on the sole 
ground of color, as the attempt to do it is legally void. 
But this is mere casuistry. The law knows no such re 
finement as to assume that a forbidden act cannot be 
done because it is forbidden. Such an assumption would 
nullify all penal legislation. It is common knowledge 
that acts forbidden by law are done, and punished, every 
day. The Amendments deal with facts, not theories, and 
Congress may deal with the facts, as it finds them to be. 

The two Amendments must be read together. Taken 
together, they mean that a state shall not deny the suf 
frage to any citizen of the United States on the sole 
ground of race, color or previous servitude, but if ac 
tually denied, upon this or any other ground, it shall 
be at the cost of reduced representation. 

It is now familiar that the Supreme Court, in the few 

188 



cases which have reached it, has avoided the direct ques 
tion of the conflict of the disfranchising constitutions 
with the Fifteenth Amendment. The scheme is so cun 
ningly contrived as to make it difficult or impossible to 
present an effective case. The court has not yet been 
squarely faced with the main question, and has plainly 
shown a reluctance to meet it. The nearest approach 
was in the Alabama case,* in 1903, where the subject is 
briefly surveyed, and a majority of the judges declares 
the court incompetent to give the desired relief. If this 
declaration was extra-judicial, as it may be regarded, 
it is perhaps the more significant for that reason, what 
ever may be said of its propriety. In this and other 
cases the judges must have perceived that if the ques 
tion is forced upon the court, the result will be either 
to sustain a patent and colossal political fraud, or to 
overturn the suffrage systems of states by judicial de 
cree. Rightly or wrongly, they shrink from this alterna 
tive. I think that the Alabama case must be taken as a 
final refusal to pass upon the general validity of the 
disfranchising constitutions if the question can possibly 
be avoided. 

But this is not the whole of the Alabama case. The 
court concludes with a pregnant declaration that relief 
from such a political wrong, done by a state or its peo 
ple, must be given by them, "or by the legislative and 
political department of the government of the United 
States." That there is a complete political remedy must 
have been apparent to the court, and it cannot be with 
out significance that the court points directly to the polit 
ical remedy, in turning away from the subject. 

While the judicial remedy for disfranchisement has 
thus far proved delusive, there is complete power in 
Congress and the Executive to enforce political equality 



*Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 475. 

189 



among the citizens of the United States if disposed to 
enforce it, and this not merely under the Fourteenth but 
under Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment itself, 
which declares, as in the other war Amendments, that 
"the Congress shall have power to enforce this Article 
by appropriate legislation." 

This clause of the Amendment is of the same force and 
significance as the prohibitive clause. Plainly the Consti 
tution has not left its enforcement to the courts. Congress 
has express power to "enforce" its provisions, by "appro 
priate" legislation. This must be held a plenary and effec 
tive power, adequate to the complete enforcement of the 
prohibition of the first section. What is "appropriate" 
legislation for this purpose? I have suggested one ex 
ample of it. We have some further light upon this ques 
tion. In the Civil Rights cases, and others, the court 
has held that the similar section of the Fourteenth 
Amendment does not authorize Congress to substitute 
for unconstitutional laws of a state a new code, of its 
own making, but only to enact "corrective legislation, 
that is, such as may be necessary and proper for counter 
acting such laws as the states may adopt or enforce, 
which, by the Amendment, they are prohibited from 
making or enforcing, or such acts and proceedings as 
the states may commit or take, which, by the Amend 
ment, they are prohibited from committing or taking." 

Granting that Congress may not directly enact that the 
Negro shall be allowed to vote in any state, under this 
power as thus expounded it may at least declare void, 
for all federal purposes, any provisions of a state law or 
constitution which it finds to be in violation of the Amend 
ment. The power is a legislative power, to be exercised by 
legislation. A legislative body proceeds upon facts found 
or ascertained by itself, to its own satisfaction. It needs 
no other authority for its action, and if it acts within its 
constitutional authority, the facts upon which it proceeds 

190 



cannot be questioned or its action disturbed. All this 
must be taken as known and intended in conferring the 
power. An Act of Congress declaring a law or system 
of laws, so far as it affects the federal government, to 
be void for violation of the Amendment, is not con 
structive but is strictly corrective legislation. It would 
at once furnish sufficient ground for the House of Rep 
resentatives to purge itself of members who have no right 
to be there. It would be the plain duty of the House, 
notwithstanding it is subject to no control in dealing 
with its membership, to exclude members elected under 
a suffrage system found and declared by Congress to be 
void for violation of the federal Constitution. It would 
equally be the duty of the two Houses to refuse to count 
the votes of presidential electors chosen under such a 
system. This proceeding would compel reformation of 
the suffrage system of the disfranchising states, under 
the alternative of possible loss of their whole represen 
tation in the lower House of Congress and in the electoral 
body. Probably it has never been expected that the 
courage of Congress would rise to this level unless un 
der the stress of some future political exigency, when 
it might again be found that there is "politics" in the 
Negro. But there is always politics in the white man, 
and this is a white man s issue, to be pressed upon the 
government by white men. Here is a plain remedy, in 
the hands of Congress. If applied, it cannot justly be 
complained of. If not applied, every voter in thirty- 
six states has a right to complain. It goes directly to 
the end which the Fifteenth Amendment was intended to 
secure. It does not by any means exhaust the political 
remedies under this Amendment, but it is enough to sug 
gest the possibilities of the enforcement clause, and to 
show how formidable a weapon is here placed in the 
hands of Congress to restore political equality among the 
citizens of the United States. 

191 



Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the repre 
sentation clause, is more familiar, but even this has not 
been fully explored. It declares that if the right to vote 
is denied "or in any way abridged," except for rebellion 
r>r other crime, the basis of representation "shall be re 
duced" in the same proportion. The penalty is not lim 
ited to direct denial of the suffrage. The clause "or in 
any way abridged" is no less significant and effective 
than the other. Not merely "denied," not merely 
"abridged," but for further and complete assurance, "in 
any way abridged," is the law. No secret, covert or 
sinister scheme, however cunningly contrived, by which 
abridgement may be effected without direct denial, shall 
prevail. Nothing could meet the "grandfather" device, or 
the "understanding" device, more directly than this. It 
seems as though the framers of the Amendment, with 
prophetic foresight, had anticipated what now has actu 
ally been done, and fitted the Amendment to the facts. 
Adroitly as the disfranchising constitutions have avoid 
ed direct denial of the suffrage to the Negro, it can 
avail them nothing. Neither court nor Congress could 
hesitate in finding that the suffrage is abridged to the 
Negro in the administration of the system, if not directly 
denied by its terms, and this is violation of the Amend 
ment. 

Under this clause there is a complete remedy for dis- 
franchisement in the hands of the House of Representa 
tives by itself. It is not prescribed that Congress may 
reduce the representation of a disfranchising state. 
Upon denial or abridgement of the suffrage, its represen 
tation "shall be reduced." It is judicially declared and 
settled that the War Amendments are intended to be, 
and are, of automatic action and self-executing, so far 
as they can be without the aid of legislation. A plain 
and conceded purpose of this section is to correct the 
inequality of the old Constitution by excluding from the 

192 



basis of representation any part of the population which 
is not represented in the electorate ; in short, to forbid 
and prevent any representation of any state not based 
upon a voting population, the states having the choice 
to confer the suffrage and have the representation or 
withhold the suffrage and lose it. 

Read in its full meaning, the Amendment prescribes 
that if a state withholds the suffrage from any class of 
citizens of the United States its Representation shall 
thereby stand as reduced, ipso facto, in the same propor 
tion. A proportionate part of its right to representation 
ceases to exist, contemporaneously with denial or abridg 
ment of the suffrage, and from that moment it has no con 
stitutional right to send any representatives to Congress, 
or choose any presidential electors, except such number as 
may stand upon the reduced basis. Upon finding of the 
fact of denial or abridgment of the suffrage, the propor 
tionate reduction of representation follows as a necessary 
consequence. The House of Representatives may find 
this fact, and deal with representation accordingly, with 
out any concurrent action of the Senate or the Executive. 

Every representative sent from a disfranchising state 
since the disfranchising process began, in excess of this 
reduced number, has been sent without authority, and has 
occupied his seat without right or title. The House of 
Representatives would have been legally warranted, at 
any time since Mississippi disfranchised the Negro in 1891, 
in refusing to admit any delegation from a disfranchis 
ing state. When such a delegation appears, it is known 
that its number exceeds the number which the state has 
a constitutional right to send, and as they all stand upon 
the same ground and are alike subject to, the same in 
firmity, the House cannot distinguish between them and 
is not called upon to admit either or any of them. It is 
for any state to make the title of each of its represen 
tatives good, by sending only such number as the Con- 

193 



stitution authorizes. A suffrage system in violation of 
tljfe federal Constitution is, so far as it affects the fed 
eral government, void as an entirety, and no represen 
tative claiming to be elected under such a system can 
show a constitutional title to a seat in Congress. 

It has heretofore been assumed that reduction of rep 
resentation under the Fourteenth Amendment can be ef 
fected only by an Act of Congress in the form of which 
Congressman Bennet s bill is the latest example, declar 
ing the number of representatives which each disfranchis 
ing state is entitled to elect, and requiring the state to re 
construct its districts accordingly or to elect at large the 
proper number and no more. While this method of 
procedure is preferable, especially as it conclusively set 
tles the title of the state to presidential electors no less 
than to representatives, it is not legally necessary. The 
House of Representatives has power enough in its own 
hands. 

If these remedies for disfranchisement appear extreme, 
it is only because the people of the country at large, in 
their indifference to the fate of the Negro, have over 
looked the crime against their own political rights. They 
are directly within the terms and intent of the Consti 
tution, they are essential to the supremacy of the federal 
power, they are demanded in order to restore political 
equality among all the states and all citizens of the Uni 
ted States, and it is the plain duty of the government to 
apply them. If the power is doubted, as the Supreme 
Court once said in a similar case, "it is only because 
the Congress, through long habit and long years of for 
bearance has, in deference and respect to the states, 
refrained from the exercise of these powers, that they 
are now doubted." Action of Congress in this direc 
tion, or even a near prospect of it, would bring the 
disfranchising states to a realizing sense of the danger 
involved in their open defiance of the organic law. The 

194 



men who shaped the War Amendments, and the people 
who wrote them into the federal charter, could not have 
conceived that there should ever be any hesitation to 
enforce them under such conditions as now confront us. 

The application of this remedy will at least restore 
political equality among the states and among the white 
citizens of the United States, and it will not stop here. 
It will accomplish what the Fourteenth Amendment was 
designed to accomplish, by establishing impartial suf 
frage and equality of political rights among all citizens 
of the United States without distinction based upon race 
or color. No state will willingly pay the price of re 
duced representation for the luxury of depriving all Ne 
groes of the ballot. So long as ten states are allowed, 
without interference or remonstrance, to enjoy this priv 
ilege and at the same time to retain and exercise all the 
political power of which the disfranchised Negroes are 
despoiled, they can hardly be expected to surrender it. 
So long as we remain dumb and subservient, we cannot 
hold them alone responsible for the consequences. 

Here is a plain question, which ought to be put to the 
country and answered by the country. Are the people 
of thirty-six states willing to be defrauded of their own 
political rights in order that ten states may disfranchise 
the Negro? Have we so fallen from the estate of our 
fathers that, while they vigorously remonstrated against 
lawful representation of three-fifths of the Negroes, 
sanctioned by the Constitution, we will submit to un 
lawful representation of all the Negroes in defiance of 
the Constitution? This question, once fairly presented, 
cannot be put aside until it is settled, and it will not be 
settled until the political rights of every citizen of the 
United States are recognized and enforced. 

The effective nullification of the Fifteenth Amend 
ment is now followed by a concerted movement to pre 
pare the public mind for its formal abrogation. If 



such a movement can succeed, it will not stop with 
the Fifteenth Amendment, but the representation clause 
of the Fourteenth will be the next object of attack. 
With both of these clauses of the Constitution out of 
the way, they will have the Negro where they want to 
put him, and they will have us where they want to put 
us. The president takes notice of this in his inaugural 
address, where he declares that the Fifteenth Amendment 
will never be repealed, and that it ought to be "observed." 
It ought to be enforced. Until enforced it is virtually 
repealed. It is a part of his official duty to see that it 
is enforced. Will he do it? He owes the people of me 
United States an answer to this question. The people 
owe it to themselves to see that it is answered, and there 
is but one possible answer. 

It is not the part of -patriotism or of statesmanship 
to trifle with this subject. If the organization and con 
trol of the House of Representatives should turn upon 
the thirty-odd votes now unlawfully retained by the 
white South, the subject would be precipitated into poli 
tics in a day, not as a question of principle, or for the 
assertion of any principle, but upon the lowest level, as 
a means of perpetuating the power of the dom 
inant party. If a presidential election should turn 
upon the thirty-odd electoral votes now under the 
same unlawful control, there would be a struggle for 
possession of the government to which tne contest of 
1876 was but a passing breeze. Out of this issue, if 
forced upon us under such conditions, a storm may 
arise which will shake the federal structure to its foun 
dations. It is a plain duty to press the subject upon the 
attention of the country until public sentiment compels 
the government to act. If deaf to the disfranchised 
Negro it will hear the disfranchised white man, and the 
act which takes care of the white man will take care of 
the Negro. 

196 



Afternoon Session, June 1 

Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, Chairman 



THE NEED OF ORGANIZATION 

Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard 

of 

New York 

I beg to report on behalf of your committee on organi 
zation that it has seemed from the very inception of this 
movement desirable that some permanent body should 
grow out of this gathering. Hence your committee has 
found no difficulty in deciding that these conferences at 
least should become annual events. When music teach 
ers, dancing masters, commercial travellers, secret 
orders galore, and associations of college graduates find 
it worth their while to meet annually; when the an 
nual arbitration meetings and conferences on the status 
of the North American Indian at Mohonk have so clear 
ly demonstrated their value, it seems perfectly obvious 
that those men and women who believe that the welfare 
of the republic is bound up with fair play towards the 
Negro, with giving him exact justice and exact equality 
before the law, should come together once every twelve 
months for encouragement, for information, for inspi 
ration. Your committee recommends, therefore, that 
there be appointed by the Chair a committee of not more 
than thirty persons who shall be charged with the duty 
of calling the conference together in 1910 and with 
forming a permanent organization which shall have still 
further and vastly more important duties. Your com- 

197 



mittee bespeaks your approval of its plan to bring about 
the establishment of a permanent, incorporated national 
committee, to forward the interests of the Negro and to 
combat race prejudice in the United States. In explan 
ation of this proposal, I beg leave to say a few words. 

"The timidity of our public opinion is our disease, or, 
shall I say the publicness of opinion, the absence of pri 
vate opinion," Emerson once declared. No one who is 
to-day interested in the progress upwards of the colored 
race, the maintenance intact of all its rights and privi 
leges, can dispute the evident application, of these words 
to latter-day conditions. There is getting to be an ab 
sence of private opinion on questions concerning col 
ored men and women in certain circles of the North, 
which in itself makes clear the undertakit.-g of a system 
atic effort to place the facts in regard to our colored cit 
izens before the American nation. In the absence of an 
enlightened individual opinion, it is easy enough for the 
multitude to accept for truisms certain allegations in re 
gard to colored people which float up to us from the 
South or have their origin in equally prejudiced quar 
ters in the North. For race prejudice knows no geo 
graphical distinctions ; it is hemmed in no more by Mason 
and Dixon s line than was slavery successfully curtailed 
by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It was always to be 
found in the North in slavery days was not Prudence 
Crandall s school for colored children burned in Con 
necticut in 1834? precisely as it is to be found in Prus 
sia, Russia, and Austria to-day, though along other lines 
than those in which it manifests itself in our own coun 
try. Of late, with us, there is every evidence that a 
systematic effort is being made to win over to the exact 
view of the South the bulk of northern opinion. Sena 
tor Tillman of South Carolina did us the very great ser 
vice the other day of setting forth in the frankest of 
language the southern programme at the dinner of the 

198 



South Carolina society, in this city. "At the same time/ 
he said, "I want to speak of the great change that has 
come over the North in the last few years. One reason 
for this is- that the old abolitionists are dying out, and 
we only find the agitator in some old soldier, who is 
drawing a pension he never earned, and who never saw 
a Confederate soldier, but who has of late years become 
a great warrior. Fifteen years after the North tried to 
pass a force bill to let Negroes vote, the President of 
the United States declares that he will not appoint an 
officer to the government service who is obnoxious to us. 

"They say we must enforce the laws impartially, and 
we say we will not. We have nullified the Fourteenth 
Amendment, and in every southern state the Negro is 
disfranchised. We hear much about the grandfather 
clause in our voting qualification. The reason we put 
that in is to give the poor white men who cannot read 
a chance to vote and to disfranchise the Negro. 

"The Negro to-day is a Republican asset. He holds 
the balance of power in Philadelphia, and in Ohio, In 
diana, and Illinois. And so long as the Republicans con 
tinue to use him as a political asset it is our duty to be 
true to the civilization of our fathers and to educate the 
North, as we have been doing during the last ten years." 

Now, if there were no other reason than this speech 
of Senator Tillman for calling this conference, that 
would be enough. It affords in itself plenty of reason 
for beginning a scientifically planned and aggressive 
movement on behalf of the Negro s rights even if there 
were no such words in our language as justice, equality, 
fair pl~y, and national good faith. 

The enlightened traveller who comes to this country 
from Europe, whether it be Dr. Earth from Germany, 
or H. G. Wells or Sir Harry Johnston from England, to 
study our social and racial conditions, is usually appalled 
at the prejudice against the Negro he encounters. The 

199 



though ful foreigner soon asks what self-defence organ 
izations the colored people and their white sympathizers 
have formed. Where, he asks, is your national steer 
ing committee, like those that have constituted themselves 
in Europe to watch over and guard the interests of the 
Jewish race? He learns that there is none. "What," he 
says, "have you no group of national leaders, like those 
which have for decades fought the battles of the Irish 
people in and out of Parliament?" Again the answer 
must be no. "Surely," he gasps, "there is some militant 
committee, like that of the Prussian Poles, which has thus 
far successfully defeated the efforts of the Prussian gov 
ernment to make its Polish subjects abandon their lan 
guage, their customs, yes, even their lands?" Again the 
reply must be in the negative. Our puzzled foreign 
friend may next ask about the educational status of the 
Negroes. He learns that Congress grants no federal aid 
of any consequence, and that it does not interfere with 
the laws of any state in regard to public education. So 
he asks : "Of course, there is some national organization 
which deals solely with Negro education?" To this the 
only reply that can be given is that there are several 
funds which contribute more or less mostly less to 
colored schools, but the problem has never been ap 
proached in a thoroughgoing, systematic, or scientific 
way; that in the main the schools specially founded to 
aid the colored people rely upon haphazard contributions 
from a generous public. As a result, they are without 
proper guidance or supervision, and there flourish side 
by side with effective institutions ineffective ones, and 
even some which exist solely for the salaries they pay to 
teachers. 

When our foreigner has finished wondering at this 
state of affairs his next question is for the name of that 
militant organization which battles incessantly for the 
civil and political rights of the Negro. Here his infor- 



200 



mant is not quite as much at loss, for there exists, among 
other useful societies, the Constitution League that has 
so manfully fought the battle of the shamefully ill-treated 
Brownsville soldiers and is seeking to obtain from the 
Supreme Court of the United States decisions which 
shall fortify the Negro in his right. There is the ad 
mirable Niagara movement ; but even this and the similar 
organizations have not yet established a legal aid bureau. 
One of the best and most useful philanthropies in New 
York City is the Legal Aid Society, which gives free legal 
advice and aid to the poor. If this work has demon 
strated its usefulness in a city, would it not be a thou 
sandfold more useful when applied to a race? More than 
that, the inhabitants of the teeming East and West Sides 
of New York do not begin to need legal protection as do 
the Negroes of the South, and at times those of the 
North. We do not hear of any blind member of our 
local foreign population being tied up and flogged with 
a rawhide whip to make him confess ; we have not yet 
heard of any man s being lynched in Essex Street because 
someone accused him of a heinous crime. We have never 
heard of New Yorkers being run out of town, their 
lives endangered, their families abused, their property 
destroyed, merely because they. happened to be considered 
too prosperous, too well-to-do, to suit their neighbors of 
another race. But it is not necessary to enumerate the 
thousand and one crimes against colored people, nor to 
remind this assembly that a Negro in the South is never 
tried by his peers, but always by a jury that consists of 
men whose consciousness of their superiority would 
rouse them to bitter anger if any one remarked that 
they were but the equals of the prisoner at the bar. Nev 
er has a race needed more a strong central legal bureau 
able to employ the ablest counsel to prosecute men who 
kill and call it law ; ever ready to insist upon the punish 
ment of guilty officials, and to cure the lynching evil by 



201 



prosecuting lax authorities and bringing civil suits for 
damages against the local or county authorities. 

Realizing to the full the justice of the criticisms of 
the foreigners who come to us, your committee, whose 
interest in the colored race is nothing new, but is based 
upon experience and study of years therefore believes 
that the time has come for a committee or a board or a 
limited society which shall do for the colored people what 
the Zionist committees do for the Jews ; what the Prus 
sian Polish Committee has done for the Poles, and the 
Irish committees for their wronged people. This board 
should have a national charter and be regularly incor 
porated so as to be perpetual and to be able to seek and 
to receive large amounts of money by donations or be 
quests. If there ever was a case where millions should 
be given it is this one ; and your committee believes that 
if such a board should be well established and well-man 
ned it would have no difficulty in raising, in time, large 
sums. The colored people would contribute just as soon 
as convinced, first, of the sincerity and unselfishness of 
the enterprise ; second, of its absolute independence of 
any of the factions within the race ; third, that it was on 
a scientific and an efficient basis, and fourth, that it was 
wedded to no particular form of education, but to all 
forms of education. Mr. Richard R. Wright, jr., esti 
mates that the Negroes of the United States have paid 
in direct property and poll taxes for schools no less than 
$45,000,000 during the last forty years, besides $15,- 
000,000 through their churches. It is not leaving the 
realm of the credible, therefore, to believe that they 
could be got to contribute large sums to the endowment 
of the national board proposed. 

It would be difficult in the time allotted to me to enu 
merate all the beneficent possibilities of such a board, 
but there could be no more important duty for it than 
to spread the truth about the colored people. Every 



202 



lynching should be investigated by a competent commit 
tee; every injustice to the Negro should spread through 
out the press ; the marvellous achievements of the 
colored people set forth in their true colors, and above 
all a campaign of education of the white people carried 
on. One of the foremost leaders of the new movement 
for education in the South stated privately the other day 
that if he had a million dollars he would devote it to 
the education of the educated white people of the South, 
and it is a most encouraging fact that in this undertak 
ing he would have the aid of a growing number of white 
people, who have seen the light men like former Con 
gressman Fleming of Georgia, Prof. John Spencer Bas- 
sett, President Denny of Washington and L!ee Univer 
sity, the Rev. Quincy Ewing of Louisiana, and many 
others whose writings should go into every household of 
the South. The publicity bureau of this board should 
then comprise a research section to carry on the work of 
the kind so admirably done under Dr. Du Bois s direc 
tion, at Atlanta University, and in co-operation there 
with a press section in charge of an accomplished news 
paper man. 

The political and civil rights bureau of our national 
board would naturally be its most important undertak 
ing, for it would bend its energies to bringing about the en 
forcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, 
to obtaining court decisions upon the disfranchising laws 
and other discriminatory legislation. For this purpose 
it should have at its disposal sufficient money to employ 
the highest legal talent obtainable and to pay the heavy 
cost of carrying up to the Supreme Court case after case 
until that shifting and evasive body is compelled to de 
cide whether there shall be two degrees of citizenship in 
this country, whether there shall be separate laws for one 
class of human beings and others for different human 
beings ; whether special privilege in its most obnoxious 

203 



form shall have legal sanction, and whether the Con 
stitution of the United States shall be permanently vio 
lated. A non-partisan body like our proposed board 
could often do this with greater effectiveness than any 
organization of voters as such, for it would in no wise 
enter the political field for the purpose of electing this 
or that candidate, but confine itself battling for princi 
ples, for civic rights, for an untarnished Constitution. 

The education bureau of our board would find a broad 
field in uplifting the standards of Negro schools and col 
leges, in improving their business methods, devising less 
wasteful plans of raising funds, and, if sufficiently equip 
ped, in making donations to worthy institutions of all 
classes. Our proposed industrial bureau should deal with 
the colored man in relation to labor; it might take over 
in this city the functions of that excellent body which 
seeks to create additional industrial opportunities for 
colored workers, and could found and aid similar socie 
ties in other industrial centres. It could concern itself 
with the whole question of housing and of land owning, 
both urban and rural, and could, if it were deemed ad 
visable, make large purchases of land for re-sales to col 
ored people. In the possession of land lie enormous 
strength and defensive power. The Poles in Prussia, ow 
ing to their enormous land holdings, have successfully 
defied every effort of the government they hate to Prus 
sianize them until that tyrannical government has found 
itself compelled, as a last resort, to deprive them by 
force of their land holdings. There is surely a lesson in 
this that we cannot too rapidly acquire land for colored 
farmers and workers in all sections of our country. The 
question of emigration, of moving large bodies of col 
ored people from one section to another, is another one 
with which a national board might well concern itself, 
for therein, too, lies a weapon of great usefulness in the 
compelling of justice. 

204 



To mention only one more function of our proposed 
board, it should be equipped to aid the individual colored 
man of merit, as well as a meritorious community, by 
giving him the best education possible and then placing 
him where he can be of the greatest service to his peo 
ple. We see too many colored physicians in the cities 
and too few in the rural districts ; there are too many 
Negroes capable of earning $5,000 a year at $2,000 jobs. 
Where a splendid intellect is discovered, we want to set 
it tasks that will make it worth one hundred cents on the 
dollar to both races of this country, and not confine it to 
duties which a $1,200 man can perform just as well. 

In other words, in this era of organized publicity and 
of combinations of capital and brains in every field of 
human endeavor your committee believes that the white 
friends of the Negro and the Negro himself should fall 
in line with the times and use the very best tools for his 
defence and his advancement. Never was it truer that 
there is strength in union ; never was it plainer that the 
emergency demanded the most efficient means of appeal 
ing to the conscience and the hearts of the American 
people. At heart the great masses are sound on every 
question if one can but get the facts before them. What 
would have seemed more hopeless than an attempt to 
stir the national conscience at the time of the founding 
of the "Liberator"? Is not to-day every great crusade, 
whether on behalf of child labor, the conservation of 
our national resources, or the warfare on tuberculosis, 
conducted on precisely these lines suggested with a pub 
licity bureau and a national committee? If our plan 
seems a counsel of perfection, let us in truth hitch our 
wagon to a star and devote our lives, if necessary, to its 
realization. Some of us are willing to give freely of our 
strength and our time to it, because we are convinced 
that its infinite possibilities of usefulness to our coun 
try will be limited only by its finances, and that alliance 

205 



with such a board would mean patriotic service of the 
highest degree to all our people, white or black or yellow. 
With this feeling we ask the adoption of our resolution 
and your support for our great project. We are happy 
to add that two of the most useful of the political organ 
izations fighting for the Negroes rights are ready to co 
operate with or coalesce with our proposed board, which 
ever seems best. They are ready to join us in creating 
a body which shall bring home to the heart of every man 
whom it can reach the existence of gross injustice and 
oppression in this land of the free and home of the 
brave and shall never let the nation forget that il has a 
vital, pressing race-problem on its hands until that prob 
lem is settled in consonance with the principles of an 
exact justice. 



206 



EFFECT ON POOR WHITES OF DIS 
CRIMINATION AGAINST NEGROES 

Hon. Joseph C. Manning 

of 

Alabama 

Growing out of the attitude of the controling element 
in the South towards the Negro, as a consequence of the 
ingenious exploitation of the race problem there is no con 
stitutional or free government in any immediate south 
ern state. There is not a state in the group of the far 
southern states that is not dominated by a brutal political 
minority of the whites, without mention of the suppres 
sion of all blacks. 

This political savagery is clamped together by intrigue 
and cunning. It holds sway through written and un 
written processes made possible by as artful a system 
of strategy as could find crafty conveyance in forms of 
state constitutional law. These compacts, these state 
oligarchies, are absolutely without any political moral 
cohesive force to hold them together. It is necessary, 
therefore, to make secure their domination that this 
regime should not only beat down and oppress all blacks, 
but should extend this system of exploitation until it sub 
merges the liberties of a majority of whites. 

The next census will no doubt show that there are 
300,000 whites of voting age in Alabama. It will show 
the number of Negroes of over 21 years of age, 
males, to be about 200,000. As a result of the opera 
tions, of the swing of the Bourbon axe, as an outcome of 

207 



the machinations of the oligarchy, the election year of 
1910 will disclose the fact that the whole number of 
whites in Alabama out of the voting who do not and 
who can not vote, by reason of the workings and ag 
gressions of our peculiar southern political institutions 
will equal the entire number of male blacks of voting 
age. 

This condition is ingeniously explained away by the 
degenerate statesmanship of the South and is now very 
readily accepted by the duped political leadership of the 
North as wholly necessary to uphold white supremacy; 
whereas these regimes have swept away and submerged 
the political rights of whites just as brutally as they have 
pressed this iron heel of political despotism on all blacks. 

Those most responsible for this situation are of the 
same flesh, the same families, the same sentiments as 
what is known in our southern history as the slave own 
ing political and social aristocracy. This regime domin 
ating Alabama now is simply the progeny of the old slave- 
owning oligarchy. The attitude of these men to the Negro 
is no unknown thing to the nation, but the astounding 
way in which this aggression has been permitted to march 
forward in its brutal political despotism is not compre 
hended, in all its various and vicious aspects. 

These men who, by reason of their being born and 
bred into antipathy to the Negro, do not hesitate to with 
hold from him the political rights which the American 
Constitution says that he is entitled to are not so pure 
in heart and so unselfish and lofty in ideal as to be worthy 
to have committed to their exclusive keeping either the 
hopes and future of all blacks or the absolute, ring- 
riveted, intrigue-entrenched control of this vast majority 
of politically helpless whites. 

It is not strange, it is only what might be expected to 
follow as a result of our southern political leadership, 
that we have a vast illiterate and impoverished white pop- 

208 



illation. It will be remembered that some southern repre 
sentatives in Congress did not warm up to the Blair bill 
for national aid to education. The inference they caused 
to be drawn by their constituents was that it was be 
cause of the Negro, but there is now a well founded opin 
ion these leaders of this oligarchy felt themselves a 
bit more secure in political power without an educated, 
thinking, independent white constituency. These men 
have felt capable of subduing the blacks, but the problem 
with them, that with which they have had to deal in these 
recent years, is the suppression of the revolting masses 
of the whites. 

That these men are masters of the situation the exist 
ing conditions thoroughly demonstrate. It is to-day as 
impossible for the opposition majority of whites, without 
including the blacks, to overthrow this political despot 
ism of the minority in the state of Alabama as was it im 
possible for the Negro in that state to free himself from 
the manacles and chains of chattel slavery in 1860. This 
cruel and unjust system, interwoven to-day as it was 
before the civil war in all social and political affairs, is 
bolstered up by an intolerance that has to many the 
fierceness of the very jaws of hell and constitutes a social 
and political barbarity as heartlessly disregardful of 
whites who oppose it as were the old slave holders heart 
less to freedom s cry for enslaved blacks. 

That treacherous cry of "let the South alone" is as 
ungodly, as infamous to-day as was that anti-abolition 
and copperhead sentiment of the North detestable in 
1860. Any man, whoever he may be, however exalted 
may be his station, who palliates, excuses, or knowingly 
and willingly acquiesces in the aggressions of this sys 
tem which now insidiously seeks extension of its in 
fluence and power into the free states of the North, is, 
whether he so wills it or not, aiding and abetting a 
clique in these states of the South, who are at this hour 

209 



as much in revolt against the letter and the spirit of the 
amendments to the American Constitution as they were 
out of the Union when they trained the guns of their 
Confederacy at the flag of this Republic. 



210 V 



THE NEGRO AND THE NATION 

Dr. William A. Sinclair 

of 

Philadelphia 

That the nation should remain apathetic, supine, limp ; 
seemingly dazed in the presence of this frenzied, dashing, 
over-weening, over-bearing, over-reaching, imperialistic 
southern leadership, is not a new thing under the sun. 
It was even so in the days of slavery. The nation tem 
porized and procrastinated with slavery until the monster 
all but stung it to death. Is the lesson so soon forgotten ? 
Has the tremendous cost ceased even to be a dream ? 

I may assert that the nation is, even now, in the midst 
of the gravest complications. Already southern leader 
ship has inaugurated a condition of semi-slavery in the 
southern states. The situation is growing alarmingly 
worse. He that runs may read. And this explosive 
situation is being tempered with high sounding phrases 
about the fraternal relations between the sections, the 
obliteration of all sectional lines, the accord and concord 
between the North and South. I say, solemnly and de 
liberately, that all this talk and palaver is the merest 
twaddle. It is without foundation in reason or in fact. 

There can be no real obliteration of section lines, no 
genuine spirit of fraternity, no bona fide concord between 
the sections, so long as southern leadership draws its in 
spiration and takes its cue from the brutal traditions of 
slavery, and disregards the dictates of humanity and 

211 



justice, and tramples under foot the laws of God and 
the laws of the republic in dealing with their fellow man, 
thus putting "the South once more in a position pro- 
vokingly offensive to the moral sense and the enlightened 
spirit of the world outside." 

Among those of responsibility and great prestige who 
have made deliverances on this question, I may refer 
to President Taft. Mr. Taft has repeatedly gone out of 
his way, both by words and by deeds to placate the 
South. The people of the North trust him, not because 
they believe that he is always wise in these matters, but 
because they believe that he is always honest. 

Mr. Taft, while he was a candidate for the presiden 
tial nomination, cast his tent in the South and camped 
there. After he received the nomination, he again 
camped in the South. And after his triumphant elec 
tion he went back to the South to camp again. And it 
is only fair to say that no people can be more hospit 
able than southerners ; and it may be added that none 
know better how to use hospitality to advance their 
plans and purposes. In the history of our republic, 
northern public men have repeatedly been wrecked on 
the shoals of southern hospitality. Mr. Taft had the 
opportunity and did study conditions at first hand. 
What are his conclusions? 

In that portion of his inaugural address, his first 
state paper, in which he refers to southern conditions 
and the Negro people, he exposes, unwittingly to be 
sure, the hollow pretense and naked sham of all the 
prattle about the obliteration of section lines. 

Mr. Taft refers to the South as a distinct section ; he 
refers to the southern people as a distinct people ; he 
laments the deplorable and menacing conditions existing 
in the South; and he makes a plaintive appeal for just 
laws, for due respect for the Constitution of the United 
States, for humane treatment of the Negro people and 



212 



for recognition of their citizenship. To quote his words, 
he says : "I look forward with hope to increasing the 
already good feeling between the South and the other 
sections of the country. I look forward to an increase 
in the tolerance of political views of all kinds and their 
advocacy throughout the South. . to an in 
creased feeling on the part of all the people of the 
South that this government is their government and 
that its officers in their states are their officers. 
The Fifteenth Amendment has not been generally ob 
served in the past, it ought to be observed. . . It 
never will be repealed, and it never ought to be repealed. 
The Negroes are now Americans and this is their only 
country and their only flag. They have shown them 
selves anxious to live for it and die for it." 

After this deliverance, Mr. Taft bent his knees to the 
Baal of southern race hate and race prejudice by de 
claring that he would not, or may not, appoint colored 
men to Federal offices if the white of the community 
should protest against it. This is a burlesque on Repub 
lican institutions. White men and colored men voted 
for the nomination of Mr. Taft; white men and colored 
men supported his candidacy and voted for his election. 
And white men and colored men other things being 
equal should share in the immunities and privileges un 
der the government. The peace, prosperity and safety of 
this Republic demand that it shall be governed by law 
and justice, and not by race hate and race prejudice. 
Equal right for all the people is the only safety of all 
the people. 



213 



Address of 

Rev. C. E. Stowe 

I regret that it was known that I was in the room, but 
of course the interest is not in me or in my own per 
sonality, but in that of my mother, and that is the way I 
receive your tribute. I stand here simply to speak for 
her. Now with those self-effacing remarks, which are 
equally sincere, I wish to say that I am very glad to 
stand here as speaking for her and for her wonderful 
great love for all God s creatures. For I want to tell 
you from conviction, from observation, that the great 
power of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward 
Beecher was not an intellectual power, but a marvellous 
power of loving. There have been men of greater ge 
nius than Henry Ward Beecher in many ways, but he 
was wonderful in his power of love and that was also 
the case with my own mother. 

The writing of Uncle Tom s Cabin was the most re 
markable thing in the world. Mrs. Stowe came to Bos 
ton in 1850, and stayed with her brother Edward at the 
Park Street church. I was only a baby at the time, and 
she had six little children with her. My Uncle Edward s 
wife said to my mother, "If I could write as you do, 
I would write something to make people feel w r hat a 
curse, what an awful thing American slavery is." My 
sister, who was living at that time, told me she remem 
bered it very well, although she was only a little girl 
thirteen years of age. She told me she remembered 
looking up into my mother s face, and she heard my 

2F4 



mother say "Isabella, I will if God gives me strength/ 
My father was a helpless invalid at that time. His 
health broke down in Cincinnati in the Lane Theological 
Seminary, he was not able to be of any assistance to them 
in the seminary, and this little woman had to use her 
right hand to earn money to move her family to Bruns 
wick, Maine, where Professor Stowe had accepted a 
professorship. She had a little baby at the time (I am 
the result) and she wrote a letter afterwards to my 
Uncle Edward s wife, Isabella, "I can t write anything 
on that subject or anything else while I have to sleep 
with the baby ; but I will write it some time, God helping 
me." I will say that I rather reluctantly confess that I 
was a hindrance rather than a help to the book. 

One afternoon as she was sitting in a little church in 
Brunswick she had no conception whatever of how to 
develop any book she was sitting in that little church 
in Brunswick, and she said as she sat there, suddenly 
without anything to indicate that such a psychological 
phenomena was passing through her mind, she saw the 
whole scene of the death of Uncle Tom pass before her 
like a series of pictures. It seemed like the unrolling of 
a panorama. She saw that terrible scene where Legre 
threatens Uncle Tom. She saw him standing before 
Legree ; she saw the whole thing, picture after picture. 
She broke into uncontrollable sobbing, and what came 
to her with that series of pictures was "Inasmuch as ye 
did it unto the least of one of these, ye did it unto me." 
She saw Christ; and a voice said to her "Cry." She 
went home her husband was away and she wrote out 
what had passed before her in this vision. Her husband 
being away, she gathered her little children around her, 
three little girls and two Ijttle boys of course I was 
the infant, utterly unconscious of what was passing. 
She began to read. The children all burst into sobbing, 
and the little boy said, "Mamma, I can t hear it, slavery 

215 



is the most accursed thing on the face of this earth." 
Friends, what happened in that family, happened all 
over the country. I will not take advantage of the priv 
ilege given me to speak of it, but you must know how 
near it is in my heart. I am glad to say that I recognize 
thoroughly your appreciation of my mother, and for my 
mother I receive it. She is not able to stand here before 
you, so I simply stand here for her. 



216 



Address of 

Rev. E. W. Moore 

of 

Philadelphia 

The right of every American citizen to select his 
own society and invite whom he will to his parlor and 
table should be sacredly respected. A man s house is his 
castle, and he has the right to admit, or refuse admis 
sion, as he pleases. This right belongs to the humblest 
and the highest. The exercise of it by any of our citi 
zens toward any body or class who may presume to in 
trude, should cause no complaint, for each and all may 
exercise the same right toward whom he will. 

When he quits his home and goes upon the public 
street, enters a public car, or public house, he has no 
exclusive right of occupancy. He is only a part of the 
great public, and while he has the right to walk, ride 
and be accommodated with food and shelter in a public 
conveyance or hotel, he has no exclusive right to say 
that another citizen, tall or short, black or white, shall 
not be accorded the same civil treatment. 

The argument against equality at hotels is very im 
properly put upon the ground that the exercise of such 
rights is social equality but this ground is unreasonable. 
It is hard to say what socia? equality is, but it is certain 
that going into the same street car, hotel, or steamboat 
cabin does not make any man society for another, any 
more than flying in the air makes all birds of one feather. 

217 



The distinction between the two sorts of equality is 
broad and plain to the understanding of the most limited, 
and yet, blinded by prejudice, men never cease to con 
found one with the other, and allow themselves to in 
fringe the civil rights of their fellow-men as if those 
rights were, in some way, in violation of their social 
rights. 

That this denial of rights to us is based on our race 
only as race is a badge of condition, is manifest in the 
fact that no matter how decently dressed or well-behaved 
a colored man may be, he is denied civil treatment in the 
ways thus pointed out, unless he comes as servant. His 
race, not his character, determines the place he shall 
hold and the kind of treatment he shall receive. That 
this is due to a prejudice that has no rational principle 
under it is seen in the fact that the presence of colored 
persons in hotels and railroad cars is only offensive when 
they are there as guests and passengers. As servants 
they are welcome, but as equal citizens they are not. 

It is also seen in the fact that nowhere else on the 
globe, except in the United States are colored people 
subjected to insult and outrage on account of race. The 
colored traveller in Europe does not meet with it, and 
we denounce it here as a disgrace to American civiliza 
tion and American religion and as violation of the spirit 
and letter of the Constitution of the United States. 

From those courts which have solemnly sworn to sup 
port the Constitution and that yet treat this provision of 
it with contempt we appeal to the people, and call upon 
our friends to remember our civil rights at the ballot 
box. On the point of the two equalities we are deter 
mined to be understood. 

We leave the social equality where it should be left, 
with each individual man and woman. No law can regu 
late or control it. It is a matter in which governments 
have nothing whatever to do. Each may choose his own 

218 



friends and associates without interference or dictation 
of any. 

Terrible as have been the outrages committed upon 
us in respect to our civil rights, more shocking and scan 
dalous still have been the outrages committed upon our 
political rights which began by means of bull-dozing, 
ku-kluking, fraudulent counts, tissue ballots and like de 
vices, until in many of the southern states they have 
set aside the Constitution of the United States. This 
has been done in face of the Republican party and un 
der successive Republican administrations, So far as 
we are concerned, there is no government or Constitu 
tion of the United States. 

To my mind, this is no question of party. It is a 
question of law and government. It is a question wheth 
er the government or the mob shall rule the land ; 
whether the promises solemnly made to us in the Consti 
tution be manfully kept or flagrantly broken. 



219 



Address of 

Charles Edward Russell 

Do I raise myself in any way by depressing my fel 
low man? Believe me, the idea contained in that sug 
gestion is the heart and soul and substance of all there 
is in this race problem. There is no race problem, abso 
lutely no race problem. The only problem is the prob 
lem of snobbery. The only thing that is involved in 
the position of the colored man in the South or in the 
North either, is a pure question of caste. That is all. 
Believe me, you are not discriminated against because 
your skins are dark, the color of your skin makes abso 
lutely no difference. It is not involved in the matter at 
all. " 

Let me show you : A little while ago I was at the 
dinner table of a rich man of New York, eminent in 
society, and one of the guests was a man whose skin 
was much darker than the skins of most of you. He 
sat at that dinner table, the honored and petted guest, 
with more attention was paid to him than to anything 
else. His skin was dark, but the color of his skin had 
nothing to do with it. It is not because your skins are 
darker than ours, but because you are closer to nature, 
and the substance of caste and the substance of snobbery 
has been from the beginning that hatred of the man that 
works with his hands. It is not merely the idea of labor, 
but the idea of the lowest form of labor, which is slav 
ery ; it is the taint of slavery about you that makes you 
hateful to the snobbish man and nothing else. Low 



220 



labor has always been detestable to the snobbish organ 
ization, and the most detestable of all labor, is the un 
paid labor, the labor that is stolen. It is because you 
represent the unthinking man, that you are discriminated 
against. 

I would like to issue a word of warning to two classes 
of my white fellow citizens, as to just exactly what this 
thing means that they have done to you. They have 
nullified two articles of the Constitution in order to get 
at you. I would like to tell two classes of my white 
fellow men what that means. First to the white work 
ing man : They have nullified that part of the Con 
stitution that guarantees the franchise, irrespective of 
color. That has been done at the, demand of a dominant 
class. Under conceivable conditions it would be just 
exactly as feasible, just as easy, to deprive the white 
working man of the franchise, as it has been to deprive 
the colored man. The next warning is that if they can 
nullify the Constitution with regard to franchise, they 
can nullify it with regard to anything else. Look out ! 
Look out ! Under conceivable circumstances it will be 
just exactly as easy to nullify that clause of the Consti 
tution which guarantees property against confiscation 
without due process of law just as easy. Because, as a 
matter of fact, if there is any part of the constitution 
that is not valid, there is no part of it that is valid. If 
there is one thing in that Constitution that cannot be 
enforced, there is nothing in it that can be enforced. 



RESOLUTIONS 

The Conference, after considerable discussion, then 
adopted the following resolutions : 

"We denounce the ever-growing oppression of our 
10,000,000 colored fellow citizens as the greatest 
menace that threatens the country. Often plundered 
of their just share of the public funds, robbed of 
nearly all part in the government, segregated by 
common carriers,* some murdered with impunity, 
and all treated with open contempt by officials, they 
are held in some States in practical slavery to the 
white community. The systematic persecution of 
law-abiding citizens and their disfranchisement on 
account of their race alone is a crime that will 
ultimately drag down to an infamous end any nation 
that allows it to be practised, and it bears most 
heavily on those poor white farmers and laborers 
whose economic position is most similar to that of 
the persecuted race." 

"The nearest hope lies in the immediate and pa 
tiently continued enlightenment of the people who 
have been inveigled into a campaign of oppression. 
The spoils of persecution should not go to enrich any 
class or classes of the population. Indeed persecu 
tion of organized workers, peonage, enslavement of 
prisoners, and even disfranchisement already threaten 
large bodies of whites in many Southern States." 



*The insertion of the phrase "segregated by common carriers" 
was moved as an amendment by Mr. William M. Trotter. 



222 



"We agree fully with the prevailing opinion that 
the transformation of the unskilled colored laborers 
in industry and agriculture into skilled workers is 
of vital importance* to that race and to the nation, 
but we demand for the Negroes, as for all others, 
a free and complete education, whether by city, 
State, or nation, a grammar school and industrial 
training for all, and technical, professional, and 
academic education for the most gifted." 

"But the public schools assigned to the Negro of 
whatever kind or grade will never receive a fair and 
equal treatment until he is given equal treatment in 
the Legislature and before the law. Nor will the 
practically educated Negro, no matter how valuable 
to the community he may prove, be given a fair 
return for his labor or encouraged to put forth his 
best efforts or given the chance to develop that 
efficiency that comes only outside the school until he 
is respected in his legal rights as a man and a 
citizen." 

"We regard with grave concern the attempt mani 
fest South and North to deny to black men the 
right to work and to enforce this demand by vio 
lence and bloodshed. Such a question is too funda 
mental and clear even to be submitted to arbitration. 
The late strike in Georgia is not simply a demand 
that Negroes be displaced, but that proven and 
efficient men be made to surrender their long fol 
lowed means of livelihood to white competitors." 

"As first and immediate steps toward remedying 



*The phrase originally read "of great importance to that race." 
Mr. Ransome moved as an amendment that it be altered to "of 
first importance." Bishop Walters moved as an amendment 
to the amendment that the words should read "of vital import 
ance." This amendment was carried. Mr. Ransome s amend 
ment was then unanimously carried. 

223 



these national wrongs, so full of peril for the whites 
as well as the blacks of all sections, we demand* of 
Congress and the Executive : 

(i.) That the Constitution be strictly enforced 
and the civil rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth 
Amendment be secured impartially to all. 

(2.) That there be equal educational opportunities 
for all and in all the States, and that public school 
expenditure be the same for the Negro and white 
child. 

(3.) That in accordance with the Fifteenth 
Amendment the right of the Negro to the ballot on 
the same terms as other citizens be recognized in 
every part of the country." 

The committee on permanent organization in its re 
port proposed a resolution providing for "the incorpora 
tion of a national committee to be known as a Commit 
tee for the Advancement of the Negro Race, to aid their 
progress and make their citizenship a reality, with all 
the rights and privileges pertaining thereto." It pre 
sented also a resolution calling for a committee of forty 
charged with the organization of a national committee 
with power to call the convention in 1910. 

The resolution proposed by Mr. Trotter was referred 
to the committee on resolutions and was reported back 
and adopted in the following form: 

"We deplore any recognition of, or concession to, 
prejudice or color by the federal government in any 
officer or branch thereof, as well as the presidential 
declaration on the appointment of colored men to 
office in the South, contradicting as it does the Presi 
dent s just and admirable utterance against the pro- 



*The words "we demanded" were inserted on the motion of 
Mr. Greener. This amendment was unanimously carried. 

224 



posed disfranchisement of the colored voters of 
Maryland. 

Mr. Trotter proposed a resolution demanding that 
lynching be made a federal crime. The resolution was 
referred to the committee on resolutions which reported 
that it held the question of lynching to be covered in the 
main resolution by the words "murdered with impunity. 
Mr. Trotter s resolution was lost by a vote of fifty-three 
to twenty-one. 

The following Committee of Forty was then named : 
William English Walling, chairman, New York ; 
Rev. W. H. Brooks, New York; Prof. John Dewey, 
New York; Paul Kennedy, New York; Jacob W. 
Mack, New York ; Mrs. Mary MacLean, New York ; 
Dr. Henry Moskowitz, New York; John E. Mil- 
holland, New York ; Miss Leonora O Reilly, New York ; 
Charles Edward Russell, New York; Prof. Edwin R. A. 
Seligman, New York ; Oswald G. Villard, New York ; 
Miss Lillian D. Wald, New York; Bishop Alexander 
\Valters, New York ; Dr. Stephen S. Wise, New York ; 
Miss Mary W. Ovington, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Dr. O. M. 
Waller, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Rev. J. H. Holmes, Yonkers, 
N. Y.; Prof. W. L. Bulkley, Ridgefield Park, N. J. ; 
Miss Maria Baldwin, Boston, Mass. ; Archibald H. 
Grimke, Boston, Mass. ; Albert E. Pillsbury, Boston, 
Mass. ; Moorfield Storey, Boston, Mass. ; Pres. Chas. 
P. Thwing, Cleveland, O. ; Pres. W. S. Scarborough. 
Wilberforce, O. ; Miss Jane Addams, Chicago, 111. ; Mrs. 
Ida Wells Barnett, Chicago, III; Dr. C. E. Bentley, 
Chicago, 111. ; Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley, Chicago, 
III; Dr. William Sinclair, Philadelphia, Pa.; Miss 
Susan Wharton, Philadelphia, Pa.; R. R. Wright, 
Jr., Philadelphia, Pa. ; L. M. Hershaw, Washington, D. 
C. ; Judge Wendell P. Stafford, Washington, D. C. ; Mrs. 
^Mary Church Terrell, Washington, D. C. ; Rev. J. Mil 
ton Waldron, Washington, D. C. ; Prof. W. E. B. 
DuBois, Atlanta, Ga. ; Leslie Pinckney Hill, Manassas, 
Va. 

225 



LETTER FROM MR. WILLIAM LLOYD 
GARRISON, BOSTON 

I regret my inability to be present at the Conference and 
record my protest against the rising tide of race prejudice 
and caste. Every step in that direction needs to be un 
flinchingly met, regardless of the eminent respectability 
that now lends countenance to this resurgent spirit of 
slavery. As in former days, the most insidious betrayal 
of freedom comes from its professed friends. 

The Vardamans and Tillmans are harmless in compar 
ison. Their brutal avowal of a purpose to reduce the 
Negro to a state of permanent vassalage, through evasion 
or defiance of the Constitution and law, repels humane 
souls and makes lor justice. It is men of so-called light 
and leading, solicitous regarding social problems, arro 
gating to themselves the character of friendly advisers 
of the colored people, yet viewing the question from the 
summit of race pride and birth, who are most to be 
feared. 

From these come easy acquiescence in the abrogation 
of the Fifteenth Amendment, the approval of separate 
schools based on complexion, and an affected horror of 
racial intermarriage for fear of white deterioration- 
while contemplating without disturbance the unabated 
illicit connections so flagrantly in evidence. The creed 
leads to servitude, in another form, of the people liber 
ated by Lincoln s proclamation ; compassing by force or 
fraud the end for which the Southern Confederacy fought 
and failed. Now, as then, democracy is in the balance 
The issue will determine whether self-government can 
survive in a land where material interests long over- 

226 



shadow the principles and enthusiasms of liberty. It is 
the fair-weather soothsayers who drug the public con 
science and weaken resistance to privilege. 

I trust that the Conference will utter no uncertain 
sound on any point affecting the vital subject. No part 
of it is too delicate for plain speech. The republican 
experiment is at stake, every tolerated wrong to the 
Xegro reacting with double force upon white citizens 
guilty of faithlessness to their brothers. The rampant 
antipathy to the Oriental races is part and parcel of the 
domestic question. Safety lies in an absolute refusal to 
differentiate the rights of human beings. Each has 
equal claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 
no outworn formula, in spite of the fashion of the mighty 
to deride it. 

I put political rights before educational. Universities 
have no difficulty in rearing despots, and the wicked laws 
of all nations are the handiwork of men taught in the 
schools. Let ignorance, blunder, and bad laws result. 
Under impartial self-gpvernment the blunderers reap the 
punishment and learn wisdom and self-restraint. No 
college compares with this primary school of civilization 
in educating a people. Learning never yet guaranteed 
rights ; rights universally secured are the sure guaranty 
of learning. Let the unanimous voice of the Conference 
be lifted for justice and opportunity to all races, colors, 
and sexes without distinction, in face of the casuistry all 
abounding in this darkened day. 

Yours, for a united humanity, 

WM. LLOYD GARRISON. 



227 



LETTER FROM MR. BRAND WHITLOCK 
MAYOR OF TOLEDO, OHIO 

No one who loves the ideals of America and believes 
fundamentally in democracy, in the equality and brother 
hood of men, as I do, can regard the present temper of a 
large portion of our people toward the Negro with any 
emotion other than sadness. 

The problem which this condition presents is profound 
and difficult, and the solution will demand our best 
thought and most enlightened sympathies. The nation 
went through a dreadful war to give the Negro political 
freedom, and yet even that has not been accomplished, 
except in a formal, legal sense; and even in that depart 
ment there are so many proposals and even achievements 
in retrogression, that to-day the Negro is ostracized and 
by many proscribed and hated. The question is no 
longer what we once considered it, namely, a sectional 
one ; it has become a national one. The Negro is treated 
as contemptuously and used as hardly in the North as 
in the South. There is even arising among us a kind of 
snobbery, the most detestable that can be imagined 
namely, an affected dislike of the Negro, considered as 
an evidence of superiority and aristocracy. 

The problem is not only social or political; it has its 
economic side, and more mysterious and baffling than 
any of these, its psychological and ethnic side. It must 
be studied in all these various phases. Many profound 
and learned articles have been written by the eminent 
and the learned, in which it is insisted that we study the 
Negro. But it seems to me that we need quite as much 
to study ourselves. The white race has been two cen 
turies in creating this problem, and according to the law 

228 



of moral action and reaction, the law of moral equiva 
lents and balances, we cannot in forty-five years solve a 
problem which we were two hundred years in creating. 
I do not think the problem is insoluble; I do not think 
any problem is insoluble, and I think we shall solve this 
problem only as we recognize and believe devoutly in the 
ideals and principles of America, which, if they mean 
anything at all, mean that all men without distinction, are 
to be free and equal, at least, in opportunity. That is 
what America is for, and the true American spirit can 
not exist until America is for all men on equal terms, 
no matter who or what they are, or who or what they 
were, or where they came from, or what they believe, 
or what their race or color. We can solve this problem, 
we can solve any problem in politics and economics prop 
erly only by adhering to these fundamental principles of 
our America, only by keeping in mind that truth so well 
expressed by Mr. Howells : 

"The first thing you have to learn here below is that 
in essentials you are just like everyone else, and that 
you are different from others only in what is not so 
much worth while. If you have anything in common 
with your fellow-creatures, it is something that God gave 
you ; if you have anything that seems quite your own, 
it is from your silly self, and is a sort of perversion of 
what came to you from the Creator who made you out 
of himself, and had nothing else to make any one out 
of. There is not really any difference between you and 
your fellow-creatures ; but only a seeming difference that 
flatters and cheats you with a sense of your strangeness 
and makes you think you are a remarkable fellow." 



229 



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