Following the Color Line Part 7

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

So I went down--the first of many visits I made to police and justice courts. I chose a Monday morning that I might see to the best advantage the acc.u.mulation of the arrests of Sat.u.r.day and Sunday.

The police station stands in Decatur Street, in the midst of the very worst section of the city, surrounded by low saloons, dives, and p.a.w.n-shops. The court occupies a great room upstairs, and it was crowded that morning to its capacity. Besides the police, lawyers, court officers, and white witnesses, at least one hundred and fifty spectators filled the seats behind the rail, nearly all of them Negroes. The ordinary Negro loves nothing better than to sit and watch the proceedings of a court.

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

_In a Southern Police Court_

It was a profoundly interesting and significant spectacle. In the first place the very number of cases was staggering. The docket that morning carried over one hundred names--men, women, and children, white and black; the court worked hard, but it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon before the room was cleared. Atlanta, as I showed in a former chapter, has the largest number of arrests, considering the population, of any important city in the United States. I found that 13,511 of the total of 21,702 persons arrested in 1906 were Negroes, or 62 per cent., whereas the coloured population of the city is only 40 per cent. of the total.[2]

A very large proportion of the arrests that Monday morning were Negroes, with a surprising proportion of women and of mere children. In 1906 3,194 Negro women were arrested in Atlanta. It was altogether a pitiful and disheartening exhibition, a spectacle of sodden ignorance, reckless vice, dissipation. Most of the cases, ravelled out, led back to the saloon.

"Where's your home?" the judge would ask, and in a number of cases the answer was:

"Ah come here fum de country."

Over and over again it was the story of the country Negro, or the Negro who had been working on the railroad, in the cotton fields or in the sawmills, who had entered upon the more complex life of the city. Most of the country districts of the South prohibit the sale of liquor; and Negroes, especially, have comparatively little temptation of this nature, nor are they subjected to the many other glittering pitfalls of city life.

But of late years the opportunities of the city have attracted the black people, just as they have the whites, in large numbers. Atlanta had many saloons and other places of vice; and the results are to be seen in Judge Broyles's court any morning. And not only Negroes, but the "poor whites"

who have come in from the mountains and the small farms to work in the mills: they, too, suffer fully as much as the Negroes.

_Negro Cocaine Victims_

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF A NEGRO WORKINGMAN'S HOME, ATLANTA, GEORGIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF A NEGRO HOME OF THE POOREST SORT IN INDIANAPOLIS]

"What's the trouble here?" asked the judge.

"c.o.ke," said the officer.

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

They buy the "c.o.ke" in the form of a powder and snuff it up the nose; a certain patent catarrh medicine which is nearly all cocaine is sometimes used; ten cents will purchase enough to make a man wholly irresponsible for his acts, and capable of any crime. The cocaine habit, which seems to be spreading, for there are always druggists who will break the law, has been a curse to the Negro and has resulted, directly, as the police told me, in much crime. I was told of two cases in particular, of offences against women, in which the Negro was a victim of the drug habit.

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

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

"What's the trouble here?" inquires the judge.

The white complainant--a boy--says:

"This n.i.g.g.e.r insulted me!" and he tells the epithet the Negro applied.

"Did you call him that?"

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

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

And here is the report of the case of a six-year-old Negro boy from the _Georgian_:

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

The case was heard in the juvenile court before Judge Broyles. It was shown that the little Negro had made an insulting remark to the little girl.

_Story of a Negro Arrest_

The very suspicion and fear that exist give rise to many difficulties. One illuminating case came up that morning. A strapping Negro man was brought before the judge. He showed no marks of dissipation and was respectably dressed. Confronting him were two plain-clothes policemen, one with his neck wrapped up, one with a bandage around his arm. Both said they had been stabbed by the Negro with a jack-knife. The Negro said he was a hotel porter and he had the white manager of the hotel in court to testify to his good character, sobriety, and industry. It seems that he was going home from work at nine o'clock in the evening, and it was dark. He said he was afraid and had been afraid since the riot. At the same time the two policemen were looking for a burglar. They saw the Negro porter and ordered him to stop. Not being in uniform the Negro said he thought the officers were "jes' plain white men" who were going to attack him. When he started to run the officers tried to arrest him, and he drew his jack-knife and began to fight. And here he was in court! The judge said:

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

_A White Man and a Negro Woman_

Another case shows one of the strange relationships which grow out of Southern conditions. An old white man, much agitated and very pale, was brought before the judge. With him came a much younger, comely appearing woman. Both were well dressed and looked respectable--so much so, indeed, that there was a stir of interest and curiosity among the spectators. Why had they been arrested? As they stood in front of the judge's desk, the old man hung his head, but the woman looked up with such an expression, tearless and tragic, as I hope I shall not have to see again.

"What's the charge?" asked the judge.

"Adultery," said the officer.

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

The judge glanced from one to the other in surprise.

"Why don't you get married?" he asked.

"The woman," said the officer, "is a n.i.g.g.e.r."

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

"Is that so?" asked the judge.

The man continued to hang his head, the woman looked up; neither said a word. It then came out that they had lived together as man and wife for many years and that they had children nearly grown. One of the girls--and a very bright, ambitious girl--as I learned later, was a student in Atlanta University, a Negro college, where she was supported by her father, who made good wages as a telegraph operator. Some neighbour had complained and the man and woman were arrested.

"Is this all true?" asked the judge.

Neither said a word.

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