EFFECT ON SOUTHERN LIFE

117

than a half century, with one great section of our people set off from real contribution to solving our national issues because of a division on race lines."

998

The problem of race has everywhere entered into the daily life of the south, its buying and selling; its labor, housing, rents, railroads, prisons, recreations; its institutions of religion and civil liberties. The laboring white man in either north or south who permits the race question to destroy the workers' solidarity finds his bargaining power weakened in those occupations in which he must compete with the colored. Sometimes when the white trade unionist is desirous of unionizing the Negro, he finds the white capitalist willing to use force to prevent his attempt.* Free speech and free thought are endangered when an unsolved problem, for which the majority of white southerners can see only one solution, white dominance and Negro subjection, is allowed to intrude itself in a variety of questions. Woman suffrage, education, labor reforms have all been retarded in the south by the eternal race problem. Negro newspapers, radical only in their demands for equal and just treatment of the colored race, have been suppressed.

White men who have ventured to sympathize or agitate too strongly for the Negro have been persecuted. Such acts give rise to the questions: Is freedom of opinion permitted in the south? Does not enforced uniformity of thought tend to stifle all original thought? While the effect of the race problem on the white is pernicious, he does not suffer in the same way as does the Negro. The one controls, with the privileges and power which accompany his position; the other is controlled, confined within limits set by his white ruler.

EFFECT OF RACE QUESTION ON THE NEGRO

Transportation. The southern Negro is subject to a degree of segregation unknown in the north, where the proportion of Negroes to whites is comparatively small. Every southern state, with the exception of Missouri, has laws separating the races in railroad cars. Similar regulations are likewise enforced in street cars, though in some states these apply only to cities or to suburban lines. While certain groups of colored people object to segregation in public conveyances, this is not the main

3 New York World, October 27, 1921.

4 Seligman, Herbert, "The Negro Faces America," pp. 311-319. 5 "Negro Year Book," 1921-1922, p. 171.

ground of contention. In trolley cars, seats in the rear are the Negro's portion. He must often put up with unsanitary, uncomfortable conditions in the station waiting room for colored. True, the accommodations for whites are not always enviable, but where the white man's are bad, the Negro's are worse. On the train the color line is drawn so strictly that, with the Negro coach crowded and the white coaches half empty, the Negro cannot Occupy the vacant seats. As Pullman and dining cars are not provided for the Negro, he cannot ride in the same comfort as the white man. On an all-night trip, with money to pay for a sleeping car berth, segregation in a Jim Crow day coach is particularly hard to bear. Even during and after the war, the Negro soldier traveling under federal auspices was not permitted to enjoy the accommodations which the government provided for him.

6

Segregation into Districts. Separation of Negro and white in public conveyances is only one form which segregation of the Negro takes. In the cities of both north and south, Negro residences are largely confined to certain districts. These districts are often the abandoned quarters of the whites. They are located in the poorest parts of the city. Sometimes they are in close proximity with centers of vice. As long as the Negro remains in his designated area, patronizes his own restaurants and places of amusement, he does not raise the ire of the whites. But in most hotels, restaurants, sometimes in public parks and in some theaters, the color line is sharply drawn. If the Negro intrudes in neighborhoods exclusively white, he is apt to meet with strenuous objections. Often his intrusion is purely involuntary. The black belt becomes too small for his growing numbers, and he is forced to seek another locality.

From 1910 to 1920 the Negro population of Chicago increased from 44,103 to 109,458 or 148.2 per cent. This enormous increase was largely due to the migration of Negroes from the south during the war. The newcomers tried to find a place to live in the Negro district. This district was located in one of the worst sections of the city and was already crowded. Negroes settling here tended to drive out the older residents. Many of them were only too ready, aided by the industrial prosperity of the war, to abandon their almost uninhabitable quarters and buy or rent better dwellings in other localities. In the expansion outward the Negroes trespassed on the preserves of the whites. • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Bulletin for 1919, p. 44.

SEGREGATION INTO DISTRICTS

119

This process had been slowly taking place for several years, but received new impetus during the war. An influx of Negroes into any locality ordinarily means a decline in the value of property. If the whites cannot prevent their coming, they sell their homes at a sacrifice and move away. White property owners, aside from any race prejudice they may feel, realize that Negro neighbors cost money. The two things together tended to make the whites use every effort to keep the Negroes out. In Chicago the relentless pressure of numbers, impelling the Negroes to seek homes outside the black belt, met the opposition of the whites into whose neighborhoods they went.

7

This opposition was regulated in a measure by the numerical extent of the Negro intrusion. One or two respectable Negro families living among whites were often tolerated and respected. It was the potential possibilities which they represented or the settlement of Negroes in greater numbers which created the animosity responsible for the fifty-eight bombings occurring between July, 1917, and March, 1921. Negro homes and the property of the white landlords, responsible for the acquisition by Negroes of sites in territory hitherto occupied by whites, were destroyed. The destruction involved a loss of over $100,000, two Negro lives, and bodily injury to members of both races. The hostility of the whites, coupled with the natural reaction of the Negroes, created a situation full of potential danger. The Negroes lacked confidence in the practically white police force, which was able to arrest only two suspects in the entire period of time covered by the bombings. They were dissatisfied with the bad living conditions in the black belt and angered by the opposition they met when they sought homes elsewhere. All these factors were causes behind the serious Chicago race riot of 1919. The situation in Chicago can be considered typical of most of our great cities.

8

Education in the North. Segregation into residential districts in the north is seldom paralleled by segregation into separate schools as it is in the south. The northern Negro's children ordinarily attend the same schools, receive the same grade of instruction as do white children. Race discrimination is seldom shown in the apportionment of public educational funds. The Negro child, because of poverty or unsatisfactory home conditions, may be unable to remain in school as long as the white, but 7 The Chicago Commission on Race Riots, "The Negro in Chicago," pp.

112-123.

8 Ibid., p. 132.

that is the only barrier to his acquiring the same amount of public education. Indirect ways of excluding Negroes from certain colleges are occasionally resorted to, but generally Negroes can enter a northern college on the same educational and financial terms as whites. In these higher institutions of learning the color line is drawn more tightly. In the lower grades, during childhood, no radical distinctions are made. Gradually as the child approaches adolescence the difference is felt. The barrier of color steps between the Negro and his aspirations. His white friends do not meet him on an equal basis. He is barred their social gatherings. The line is drawn ever more tightly. When he reaches college, if he be one of the few fortunates of his race to have this privilege, the line is taut. Sometimes the instructor feels an instinctive prejudice. Sometimes the attitude of the students speaks their racial antagonism. merit does not bring the same reward.

Sometimes scholastic Discrimination occurs

only in sporadic cases. It is instinctive rather than premeditated. But social ostracism is the usual fate of the Negro.

9

Among the many instances of this, two might be mentioned. At a certain middle western college four colored girls drew numbers which enabled them to secure choice rooms in the dormitories. Attempts were made to exclude them from this privilege and pressure was brought to bear which would induce them to resign the rooms voluntarily. Upon their refusal to do so, fourteen white girls left the dormitories to live in smaller houses. Their social prejudice against the Negro was too strong to permit them to live in the same house with representatives of the race. Another well-known university felt constrained to bar members of the Negro race from the freshman dormitory. They were allowed free access to other dormitories, but as residence in the freshman dormitory was compulsory for all white freshmen, the college authorities felt it advisable to exclude Negroes.

Education in the South. The Negro then receives approximately the same educational opportunities in the north as the white. These opportunities are tempered with social prejudice which extends even to the most worthy members of the race. In the south the Negro meets with even more drastic social discrimination and the educational facilities open to him rank below those of the white. He cannot attend the white man's schools and colleges but is segregated in institutions of his own. These are usually inferior in construction and often deficient in sanitary • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Bulletin for 1919, pp. 44-45.

SEGREGATION IN SCHOOLS

121

arrangements. The grade of instruction is apt to be poor, the school term broken and brief.10

In 1920-1921 the annual per capita expenditure for whites and Negroes in the sixteen former slave states, the District of Columbia, and Oklahoma ranged from $2.06 for each Negro child and $19.33 for each white child in South Carolina to $62.75 for the Negro and $74 for the white child in the District of Columbia. In every state a considerably larger sum was spent for every white child's education than was spent for every Negro child's. In the majority of instances the amount was several times as great.

11

Those states having the largest Negro population spent the smallest proportionate sums annually for Negro education. They comprised Mississippi and South Carolina with over 50 per cent colored, Georgia with over 40 per cent, Alabama and Louisiana with just under 40 per cent. The amounts spent ranged from the $2.06 for the Negro and the $19.33 for the white in South Carolina to $3.91 for the Negro and $18.12 for the white in Mississippi.1

12

The double school system maintained in the south is a great drain on the funds set aside for education. This, together with the poverty of rural conditions and an ineffective system of taxation, reduces the amount most of the southern states can afford to spend, even on white children, to less than that spent in other parts of the country.18 Negro teachers are generally poorly paid and inadequately trained. Figures for the years 1911-1912 and 1912-1913 showed that Negro teachers were paid from two-thirds to one-half less than white teachers and both groups of teachers were receiving totally inadequate compensation.14 Figures for 1920-1921 indicated that the salaries of Negro teachers had been advanced. But this advance was scarcely more than commensurate with the increased cost of living. The amounts paid remained insufficient to obtain a satisfactory grade of instruction. This was particularly true in those states having the largest Negro population. In Alabama male teachers received an annual wage of $253, female, $212. In Georgia male teachers were paid $43.88 a month, female, $33.70. In Louisiana males received annually $369, females, $374. In Mississippi both sexes were paid $33.81 a month in rural schools and $46.16 in city schools.

10 "Negro Education," Bulletin, 1916, Vol. I, passim.

11 "Negro Year Book," p. 240.

12 Ibid.

13 "Negro Education," Vol. I, pp. 23-24.

14 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 34.