Following the Color Line Part 18

One of the first things that struck me when I began studying race conditions in the North was the position of the better cla.s.s of white people with regard to the Negro. In the South every white man and woman has a vigorous and vital opinion on the race question. You have only to apply the match, the explosion is sure to follow. It is not so in the North. A few of the older people still preserve something of the war-time sentiment for the Negro; but the people one ordinarily meets don't know anything about the Negro, don't discuss him, and don't care about him. In Indianapolis, and indeed in other cities, the only white people I could find who were much interested in the Negroes were a few politicians, mostly of the lower sort, the charity workers and the police. But that, of course, is equally true of the Russian Jews or the Italians. One of the first white men with whom I talked (at Indianapolis) said to me with some impatience:

"There are too many Negroes up here; they hurt the city."

Another told me of the increasing presence of Negroes in the parks, on the streets, and in the street cars. He said:

"I suppose sooner or later we shall have to adopt some of the restrictions of the South."

He said it without heat, but as a sort of tentative conclusion, he hadn't fully made up his mind.

_Race Prejudice in Boston_

In Boston, of all places, I expected to find much of the old sentiment. It does exist among some of the older men and women, but I was surprised at the general att.i.tude which I encountered. It was one of hesitation and withdrawal. Summed up, I think the feeling of the better cla.s.s of people in Boston (and elsewhere in Northern cities) might be thus stated:

We have helped the Negro to liberty; we have helped to educate him; we have encouraged him to stand on his own feet. Now let's see what he can do for himself. After all, he must survive or perish by his own efforts.

In short, they have "cast the bantling on the rocks."

Though they still preserve the form of encouraging the Negro, the spirit seems to have fled. Not long ago the Negroes of Boston organised a concert at which Theodore Drury, a coloured musician of really notable accomplishments, was to appear. Aristocratic white people were appealed to and bought a considerable number of tickets; but on the evening of the concert the large block of seats purchased by white people was conspicuously vacant. Northern white people would seem to be more interested in the distant Southern Negro than in the Negro at their doors.

Before I take up the cruder and more violent expressions of prejudice on the part of the lower cla.s.s of white men in the North I want to show the beginnings of cold-shouldering as it exists in varying degrees in Northern cities, and especially in Boston, the old centre of abolitionism.

Superficially, at least, the Negro in Boston still enjoys the widest freedom; but after one gets down to real conditions he finds much complaint and alarm on the part of Negroes over growing restrictions.

Boston exercises no discrimination on the street cars, on railroads, or in theatres or other places of public gathering. The schools are absolutely free. A coloured woman, Miss Maria Baldwin, is the princ.i.p.al of the Aga.s.siz school, of Cambridge, attended by 600 white children. I heard her spoken of in the highest terms by the white people. Eight Negro teachers, chosen through the ordinary channels of compet.i.tive examination, teach in the public schools. There are Negro policemen, Negro firemen, Negro officeholders--fully as many of them as the proportion of Negro population in Boston would warrant. A Negro has served as commander of a white post of the Grand Army.

_Prosperous Negroes in Boston_

Several prosperous Negro business men have won a large white patronage.

One of the chief merchant-tailoring stores of Boston, with a location on Washington Street which rents for $10,000 a year, is owned by J. H. Lewis.

He has been in business many years. He employs both white and Negro workmen and clerks and he has some of the best white trade in Boston. Not long ago he went to North Carolina and bought the old plantation where his father was a slave, and he even talks of going there to spend his old age.

Another Negro, Gilbert H. Harris, conducts the largest wig-making establishment in New England. I visited his place. He employs coloured girls and his trade is exclusively white. Another Negro has a school of pharmacy in which all the students are white; another, George Hamm, has a prosperous news and stationery store. A dentist, Dr. Grant, who has a reputation in his profession for a cement which he invented, was formerly in the faculty of the Harvard dentistry school and now enjoys a good practice among white people. The real estate dealer who has the most extensive business in Cambridge, T. H. Raymond, is a Negro. He employs white clerks and his business is chiefly with white people. Two or three Negro lawyers, Butler Wilson in particular, have many white clients. Dr.

Courtney, a coloured physician from the Harvard Medical School, was for a time house physician of the Boston Lying-in-Hospital, in which the patients were practically all white, and has now a practice which includes both white and coloured patients. Dr. Courtney has also served on the School Board of Boston, an important elective office. The Negro poet, William Stanley Braithwaite, whose father took a degree at Oxford (England), is a member of the Authors' Club of Boston. His poems have appeared in various magazines, he has written a volume of poems, a standard anthology of Elizabethan verse, and he is about to publish a critical study of the works of William Dean Howells. Several of these men meet white people socially more or less.

I give these examples to show the place occupied by the better and older cla.s.s of Boston Negroes. Most of those I have mentioned are mulattoes, some very light. It shows what intelligent Negroes can do for themselves in a community where there has been little or no prejudice against them.

But with crowding new immigration, and incited by all the other causes I have mentioned, these conditions are rapidly changing.

A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston refused Negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionery stores, will not serve Negroes, even the best of them. The discrimination is not made openly, but a Negro who goes to such places is informed that there are no accommodations, or he is overlooked and otherwise slighted, so that he does not come again. A strong prejudice exists against renting flats and houses in many white neighbourhoods to coloured people. The Negro in Boston, as in other cities, is building up "quarters," which he occupies to the increasing exclusion of other cla.s.ses of people. The great Negro centre is now in the South End, a locality once occupied by some of the most aristocratic families of Boston. And yet, as elsewhere, they struggle for the right to live where they please. A case in point is that of Mrs.

Mattie A. McAdoo, an educated coloured woman, almost white, who has travelled abroad, and is a woman of refinement. She had a flat in an apartment house among white friends. One of the renters, a Southern woman, finding out that Mrs. McAdoo had coloured blood, objected. The landlord refused to cancel Mrs. McAdoo's lease and the white woman left, but the next year Mrs. McAdoo found that she could not re-rent her apartment. The landlord in this instance was the son of an abolitionist. He said to her:

"You know I have no prejudice against coloured people. I will rent you an apartment in the building where I myself live if you want it, but I can't let you into my other buildings, because the tenants object."

An attempt was even made a year or so ago by white women to force Miss Baldwin, the coloured school princ.i.p.al to whom I have referred, and who is almost one of the inst.i.tutions of Boston, to leave Franklin House, where she was living. No one incident, perhaps, awakened Boston to the existence of race prejudice more sharply than this.

_Churches Draw the Colour Line_

One would think that the last harbour of prejudice would be the churches, and yet I found strange things in Boston. There are, and have been for a long time, numerous coloured churches in Boston, but many Negroes, especially those of the old families, have belonged to the white churches.

In the last two years increased Negro attendance, especially at the Episcopal churches, has become a serious problem. A quarter of the congregation of the Church of the Ascension is coloured and the vicar has had to refuse any further coloured attendance at the Sunday School. St.

Peter's and St. Philip's Churches in Cambridge have also been confronted with the colour problem.

A proposition is now afoot to establish a Negro mission which shall gradually grow into a separate coloured Episcopal Church, a movement which causes much bitterness among the coloured people. I shall not soon forget the expression of hopelessness in the face of a prominent white church leader as he exclaimed:

"What _shall_ we do with these Negroes! I for one would like to have them stay. I believe it is in accordance with the doctrine of Christ, but the proportion is growing so large that white people are drifting away from us. Strangers avoid us. Our organisation is expensive to keep up and the Negroes are able to contribute very little in proportion to their numbers. Think about it yourself: What shall we do? If we allow the Negroes to attend freely it means that eventually all the white people will leave and we shall have a Negro church whether we want it or not."

In no other city are there any considerable number of Negroes who attend white churches--except a few Catholic churches. At New Orleans, I have seen white and coloured people worshipping together at the cathedrals.

White ministers sometimes have spasms of conscience that they are not doing all they should for the Negro.

Let me tell two significant incidents from Philadelphia. The worst Negro slum in that city is completely surrounded by business houses and the homes of wealthy white people. Within a few blocks of it stand several of the most aristocratic churches of Philadelphia. Miss Bartholomew conducts a neighbourhood settlement in the very centre of this social bog. Twice during the many years she has been there white ministers have ventured down from their churches. One of them said he had been troubled by the growing ma.s.ses of ignorant coloured people.

"Can't I do something to help?"

Miss Bartholomew was greatly pleased and cheered.

"Of course you can," she said heartily. "We're trying to keep some of the Negro children off the streets. There is plenty of opportunity for helping with our boys' and girls' clubs and cla.s.ses."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," said the minister; "I thought, in cases of death in their families, we might offer to read the burial service."

And he went away and did not see the humour of it!

Another minister made a similar proposition: he wanted to establish a Sunday School for coloured people. He asked Miss Bartholomew anxiously where he could hold it.

"Why not in your church in the afternoon?"

"Why, we couldn't do that!" he exclaimed; "we should have to air all the cushions afterward!"

But to return to Boston. A proposition was recently made to organise for coloured people a separate Y. M. C. A., but the white members voted against any such discrimination. Yet a coloured man said to me hopelessly:

"It's only delayed. Next time we shall be put off with a separate inst.i.tution."

_Colour Line at Harvard_

Even at Harvard where the Negro has always enjoyed exceptional opportunities, conditions are undergoing a marked change. A few years ago a large cla.s.s of white students voluntarily chose a brilliant Negro student, R. C. Bruce, as valedictorian. But last year a Negro baseball player was the cause of so much discussion and embarra.s.sment to the athletic a.s.sociation that there will probably never be another coloured boy on the university teams. The line has already been drawn, indeed, in the medical department. Although a coloured doctor only a few years ago was house physician at the Boston Lying-in-Hospital, coloured students are no longer admitted to that inst.i.tution. One of them, Dr. Welker (an Iowa coloured man), cannot secure his degree because he hasn't had six obstetrical cases, and he can't get the six cases because he isn't admitted with his white cla.s.smates to the Lying-in-Hospital. It is a curious fact that not only the white patients but some Negro patients object to the coloured doctors. In a recent address which has awakened much sharp comment among Boston Negroes, President Eliot of Harvard indicated his sympathy with the general policy of separate education in the South by remarking that if Negro students were in the majority at Harvard, or formed a large proportion of the total number, some separation of the races might follow.

And this feeling is growing, notwithstanding the fact that no Negro student has ever disgraced Harvard and that no students are more orderly or law-abiding than the Negroes. On the other hand, Negro students have frequently made distinguished records for scholarship: last year one of them, Alain Leroy Locke, who took the course in three years, won the first of the three Bowdoin prizes (the most important bestowed at Harvard) for a literary essay, and pa.s.sed for his degree with a _magna c.u.m laude_. Since then he has been accepted, after a brilliant compet.i.tive examination, for the Rhodes scholarship from the state of Pennsylvania.

Such feeling as that which is developing in the North comes hard, indeed, upon the intelligent, educated, ambitious Negro--especially if he happens to have, as a large proportion of these Negroes do have, no little white blood. Many coloured people in Boston are so white that they cannot be told from white people, yet they are cla.s.sed as Negroes.

Accompanying this change of att.i.tude, this hesitation and withdrawal of the better cla.s.s of white men, one finds crude sporadic outbreaks on the part of the rougher element of white men--who have merely a different way of expressing themselves.

_White Gangs Attack Negroes_

In Indianapolis the Negro comes in contact with the "bungaloo gangs,"

crowds of rough and lawless white boys who set upon Negroes and beat them frightfully, often wholly without provocation. Although no law prevents Negroes from entering any park in Indianapolis, they are practically excluded from at least one of them by the danger of being a.s.saulted by these gangs.