VIII THE NEGRO AND HIS SOCIAL STATUS "Within the veil," "half a man," surrounded by unseen barriers, ruled by inexorable laws, the Negro lives. The white man in the United States, born to a wider freedom, equality, justice, political power, with a long heritage of leadership, finds it difficult to understand the feelings of the colored man, born to half freedom, inequality, insecure justice, little political power, with slavery only a few generations away. FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM When the United States was but a group of colonies, the institution of slavery flourished. The Negro was brought here from a country backward in civilization and government. He was unversed in the ways of an advanced people. He had no education. He was a savage. It was comparatively easy to keep the backward Negro people in slavery. They were an asset to the white man. In general physically strong, tractable, and without intellectual training, the race performed the hard, disagreeable work. It answered the demand for unskilled labor. The agricultural south, with its great plantations, its warm climate, its large leisure class, demanded and received the greatest number of Negroes. Slavery did not end with our advent as a nation. Though civil liberty and self-government were written into the Constitution, they were for white men only. Few citizens realized the inevitable results of forcibly bringing to the United States large numbers of an alien and colored race and keeping them in ignorance and subjection. At first the white man, his dominance assured, could afford to share his world with his dark servant. To be sure, he gave him but a little corner. In return for home, livelihood, care, varying with his disposition and property, he expected service and obedience. As the number of Negroes multiplied the master was constrained to give them an ever larger corner, a corner with quavering outlines in which jutting problems, demanding an answer, began to appear. Was the United States a free country, did we have democracy when large numbers of human beings were completely subject to the will of other human beings? White men divided on their answers to these questions. Many people, particularly in the north, voluntarily freed their slaves. Others looked askance at slave owners. In general, the division of opinion was between the northern and southern states; between those who owned the smallest number of slaves and needed them least and those who owned the largest number and needed them most. The controversy between these groups grew with the agitation against slavery, with the stories of cruelties circulated abroad. Along with these stories went tales of contentment, faith, affection between the two races. But the scandals spread more rapidly, grew with repetition. And then, it was a strange thing to see so many light-colored Negroes among the black. Where did they come from? Had the white man forgotten his proud heritage and by taking advantage of a people held in bondage disgraced his race? The mulattoes had no legal father. Born out of wedlock, an inexcusable offense had been committed against them and their black mothers. The lighter members of the Negro race sometimes inherited the qualities of their masters, were less patient, less tractable. Nor were many of the darker people satisfied with their status. The division in the white race over slavery was reflected in the Negro race. A slave could escape to Canada and live there in freedom. He could lose himself in the northern states with little fear of apprehension. Public opinion became more and more crystallized either for or against slavery. Finally a great war was fought, a war to determine the unity of the United States and the status of its peoples. The north emerged victorious. The United States remained one nation. The Negro was freed, given citizenship and the franchise. What did this freedom bring the Negro? Did it make him the equal of the white? Did it solve the race problem? RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD The south, devastated and disorganized by the Civil War, punished by the loss of political privileges, found white supremacy threatened. The Fourteenth Amendment made Negroes citizens and declared that any state which denied to its male inhabitants the right to vote should have its representation reduced accordingly. It also penalized those southerners who had participated in the rebellion against the Union by removing many of their political privileges until such a time as Congress should see fit to give them back. The amendment was rejected by most of the southern states. The rejection angered Congress and paved the way for a rigid congressional reconstruction policy in the south. Military rule, the requirement that Negroes be granted the suffrage and that the Fourteenth Amendment be accepted, were part of the program. For a time the Negro voted and held office. Without education, experience, or training for his new status, he fell an easy prey to unscrupulous white men. The Republican Party, composed in the main of the poorer class of southern whites, of northerners who had emigrated south largely for economic reasons, and of Negroes, dominated the new governments set up after the war. The result was theft, extravagance, incompetency. Congress foresaw the necessity of its ultimate withdrawal from supervision of internal affairs in the southern states and was desirous of making Negro suffrage more secure. It therefore passed the Fifteenth Amendment which was ratified by the states in 1870. This amendment declared that the right to vote should not be "denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In spite of the congressional program, the south, by intimidation, gradually reduced the number of Negro voters and the amount of outside interference. When the north, weary of continued intervention in southern affairs, withdrew, the white south took legal measures to keep the Negro in his place. Segregation, Jim Crow cars, separate schools, and disfranchisement of the majority of Negroes freed the south of the fear of Negro domination. But its freedom was secured at a price. Every injustice and wrong perpetrated against the Negro had its effect on the white race, tended to make it tolerant of brutality, of force rather than reason, of legislation favoring one race at the expense of the other. NEGRO IN POLITICS IN SOUTH The practical disfranchisement of the Negro was obtained by the passage of amendments to the state constitutions which, based on other grounds than race, legally and effectually prevented the Negro from voting. Tax, property, and educational qualifications were imposed by the various states which few Negroes could meet. For instance the state of Georgia required a voter to have 40 acres of land or $500 worth of property in the state. NEGRO DISFRANCHISEMENT 115 Unless physically incapacitated, he must be able to read and write the Federal Constitution. If physically incapacitated, he must give a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution of the United States or of the state of Georgia. The board which determined his ability to pass these tests was composed of white men. Conceivably it would be a simple matter to reject the prospective Negro voter. As many white persons might be disfranchised under the property and educational test, another provision was made. Any impecunious or uneducated person who was of good character, able to understand the obligations and duties of citizenship under a republican form of government, might vote. To still further protect the white man's vote, Georgia and several other states adopted the grandfather clause, later declared unconstitutional. This clause provided in general that no person who was entitled to vote on or prior to January 1, 1867 under any form of government, or who resided at that time in some foreign nation, or no lineal descendant of such person, should be denied the right to vote because he could not meet the educational or property qualification. The various provisions adopted by the states effected the desired result. The white voter was assured his right to vote, the Negro was disfranchised. He was apt to belong to at least one of the unfit classes-to possess too little property, to be in tax arrears or without sufficient education to qualify. Even when the Negro could qualify under the state law, some pretext was found to rule him out. During the presidential election of 1920, it was asserted by interested Negroes that efforts were made to prevent the newly enfranchised colored women from voting. It was feared that white women would not come to the polls in sufficient numbers to neutralize the vote of those colored women who might qualify. Several southern states were accused of asking Negro women impossibly difficult questions. When they were unable to answer these questions they were disqualified. It was further stated that they were frustrated and delayed in their attempt to register so that the polls were closed before they had an opportunity to do so. They were also threatened with arrest if they made erroneous statements in registering. It was asserted that in a certain southern city colored women who were college graduates and had taken pains to prepare themselves to read and interpret the United States Constitution, as required by law, were given sections of state, civil, and criminal code to read. These they refused to interpret, as outside the requirements, and were then declared ineligible to vote.1 Effect of the Race Question on the South. The result of these methods, and of the absorption of the south in the race question is to make it solid in politics and to reduce greatly the number of voters. Political contests are waged over the characteristics of candidates for office rather than questions of public policy. The south fears to arouse discussion of real problems lest the Democratic Party split and the Negro obtain some power. The people are not interested in struggles for control between cliques within the party and only a small vote is polled. Statistics compiled by W. E. B. DuBois show that in the presidential election of 1920 only eight per cent of the potential voters cast ballots in South Carolina, nine per cent in Mississippi, 11 per cent in Georgia, 14 per cent in Louisiana, 18 per cent in Texas, 19 per cent in Virginia, 21 per cent in Arkansas and Alabama, and 28 per cent in Florida. Some of the northern and border states showed less than half the potential number of voters casting ballots; but the worst results were in the southern states, with their strict suffrage requirements, practical Negro disfranchisement, and rather general popular lack of interest in politics.2 Such a condition gives to these states a representation out of all proportion to the number of voters. It leads to charges that the Fourteenth Amendment is unenforced and nullified. It results in periodic attempts to have it enforced by reduction in the number of congressional representatives to correspond with the actual number of voters in those states which rigidly restrict the suffrage. It means that political power in the south rests in the hands of a small group of men and is largely controlled by the dominant Democratic Party. The Republican Party exists but has comparatively little power or life. At first it recruited its members mainly from the newly enfranchised Negro. Now it seeks to subordinate the small Negro body which participates in southern politics, that it may break through the solid ranks of the Democratic Party and secure a portion of the conservative south ern vote. President Harding, speaking in Alabama, October 26, 1921, said: "I wish that both the tradition of a solidly Democratic South and the tradition of a solidly Republican black race might be broken up. Neither political sectionalism nor any system of rigid groupings of the people will in the long run prosper our country. . . . We cannot go on, as we have gone for more 1 Survey, December 4, 1920; New York Call, February 27, 1921. 2 The New Republic, January 3, 1923. |