The Journal of Negro History Volume III Part 11

In the discussion of a program for educational development, it is pointed out that the public school authorities are responsible for elementary education and that so long as the elementary school facilities are insufficient, every phase of education above the elementary grades is seriously handicapped. With reference to secondary schools and teacher training, it is suggested that their chief effort should be to supply trained teachers for the public elementary schools. More than fifty per cent. of the teachers now in these schools have an education less than the equivalent of six elementary grades.

In the discussion of the importance of industrial education, it is pointed out that in spite of the striking progress made in the acc.u.mulation of property, the Negroes are "still a poor people." The large percentage of women and children who have to earn a living indicates the need of elevating their economic status so that more children may attend school, and the women have a better opportunity to care for the morals and hygiene of the home. Because three fourths of the Negroes live in rural districts, instruction along agricultural lines is one of the most important phases of Negro education.

"Preparation for rural life," says the report, "is the greatest problem of the white and colored people of the South."

The most radical recommendations made in the report are those relating to higher education. These recommendations are along the line of improving the facilities and raising the standards of Negro college work. The schools teaching subjects of college grade, 33 in number, are cla.s.sified according to the amount of college work done, into three groups: first, colleges; second, those doing secondary and college work; and third, those schools in which some college work is offered. "Only three inst.i.tutions, Howard, Fisk, and Meharry Medical, have a student body, a teaching force and equipment, and an income sufficient to warrant the characterization of college. Nearly half of the college students and practically all of the professional students are in these three inst.i.tutions." It is suggested that there should be concentration on the development for Negroes of two inst.i.tutions of university grade. Howard and Fisk are suggested as these two inst.i.tutions. It is recommended that three inst.i.tutions be developed and maintained as first cla.s.s colleges. One such inst.i.tution would be located at Richmond, Virginia; one at Atlanta, Georgia, and one at Marshall, Texas. A number of other inst.i.tutions would be developed into junior colleges or schools doing two years of college work. In these junior colleges, large provision would be made for the training of teachers.

M. N. WORK

_Los Negros Esclavos, Estudio Sociologico Y de Derecho Publico._ By FERNANDO ORTIZ, Professor in the University of Havana. Revista Bimestere Cubana, Havana, 1916. Pp. 536.

This work, as its t.i.tle signifies, is a monograph intended to show the working out of the problems of enslaving the blacks in Cuba. The study begins with a description of the life of Cuba as conducive to the introduction of slavery and then that of the blacks themselves.

Although acknowledging the difficulty of making an ethnographic study of the imported Africans, the author endeavors to trace the origin of these slaves to their native regions in Africa to determine the traits which entered into the formation of the character of the Cuban slaves.

He then connects the inst.i.tution with the sugar industry, which increased the demand for slaves, gave the inst.i.tution an economic aspect and made the slave trade an international concern of great moment. The movement for the amelioration of the condition of the slave and the early efforts at abolition are noted only to show that these efforts proved to be insignificant when the traffic became universal and the inst.i.tution reached the economic stage in the sugar colonies. The atrocities incident to the methods of the victors in the tribal wars of Africa supplying the traders frequenting the coast are duly treated. The author even gives in detail the procedure, prices and numbers.

A considerable portion of the book is concerned with the real life of the slave. Professor Ortiz believes that the punishments inflicted in Cuba were not so severe as in some other countries. He discusses the work done by the men, women and children, their habitations, food, dress and diversions. The diseases of the slave arising in adjusting themselves to the new world are also noted. Going further into the details of the life of the slaves, the author describes the urban Negroes and distinguishes this cla.s.s of the bondmen from those of the plantation. He then discusses the free Negroes, who even from an early period const.i.tuted a considerable element of the black population and explains why some of them returned to Africa. The rights of all of the elements of the black population at law are mentioned so as to give the reader an idea of the black code as enforced in that island. How these cla.s.ses thus kept down were moved from time to time to organize insurrections to secure their freedom, const.i.tutes one of the chapters of the book.

On the whole it cannot be said that Professor Ortiz has shown that slavery in Cuba differed widely from what it was in some other large islands of the West Indies. He has, however, made a contribution to scholarship in showing exactly how this inst.i.tution affected the life and the development of Cuba. The work is well ill.u.s.trated and has an appendix of valuable doc.u.ments bearing on slavery in Cuba.

C. G. WOODSON.

_A Social History of the American Family, from Colonial Times to the Present._ By ARTHUR W. CALHOUN, PH.D. Volume I, Colonial Period. The Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, U. S. A., 1917. Pp. 348.

This work is a study in genetic sociology to be completed in three volumes. The purpose of it is to develop an understanding of the forces that have been operative in the evolution of the family inst.i.tution in the United States. The author will endeavor to set forth the influences that have shaped marriage, controlled fecundity, determined the respective status of father, mother, child, attracted relative and servant, influenced s.e.xual morality and governed the function of the family as an educational, economic, moral, and spiritual inst.i.tution as also its relation to state, industry, and society in general in the matter of social control.

In this first volume of the series the effort is to show that the American family is a product of European folkways, of the economic transition to modern capitalism, and of the distinctive environment of a virgin continent. How European customs brought to America underwent modification in the new environment and how differences of population in this country may be traced to geographical differences, const.i.tute an important part of this treatise. The reader is finally directed to see the colonial family as a property inst.i.tution dominated by middle cla.s.s standards and operating as an agency of social control in the midst of the social order governed by the interests of a forceful aristocracy, which shaped religion, education, politics, and all else to its own profit.

On the whole this is a valuable work. When one has finished reading this volume, however, he must get the impression that the life of the slave attached to the colonial family has not been adequately treated.

Among the early colonists the African slave was connected with the family after the manner of the bondmen of families in ancient countries. The slaves, being few in number, maintained this relation until the industrial revolution throughout the modern world changed the inst.i.tution from a patriarchal to an economic one. Prior to this time the slaves were treated almost as well as the children of the family. They lived under the same roof, worshipped at the same altar and in some cases were taught in the same school. Care was taken so to elevate the slave and keep him above corrupting influences as to make him not merely a tool for exploitation but a decided a.s.set in the family economy of life. That the slave of this type had much to do with the development of the colonial family no one will doubt.

In the chapter on servitude and s.e.xuality in the South, the Negro slave gets negative mention. The author says that the presence of African slaves and Indians early gave rise to the problem of miscegenation. He concedes that it took some time to develop in the whites the att.i.tude of race integrity and that the intercourse between men and women of the inferior race was never eliminated. During this period white women of the indentured servant cla.s.s often yielded to miscegenation with the African male slaves and, as the author states, planters sometimes married white women servants to Negroes in order to transform the women and their offspring into slaves. The author might have added that this was especially true of Maryland.

_The Readjuster Movement in Virginia._ By CHARLES CHILTON PEARSON, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science in Wake Forest College. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1917. Pp. 191.

The author undertakes here to describe one of the developments in Virginia politics during the period between the Civil War and the first administration of Grover Cleveland. He considers the last fifty years of the history of Virginia the _Dark Age_ during which there has been a period of radicalism followed by reaction. The Readjuster Movement was one of the independent waves of thought which characterized the reactionary period. It centered around William Mahone as the leader of an efficient machine endeavoring to readjust the State debt by compelling its creditors to share in the loss caused by the expensive internal improvement policy, the misfortunes of the Civil War and the extravagance of the Reconstruction period. It was in line with the general effort to readjust the economic and social policies of the entire country. It appealed to the people for the reason that unlike radicalism it was not obstructive of "democratic advance" in that it did not alienate the western section of the state through its att.i.tude towards the Negro. Native in its origin, the democracy of the party was primarily intended for the whites, though the Negroes were accepted as desirable supporters. Such an independent movement was impossible until the continued defeat of the Republican party sufficiently removed the fears of the whites as to conduce to development of independent thinking. Citizens were thereafter more easily won to the cause of thus elevating the ruined and indebted cla.s.ses by transferring to the government their will that the burdens of the State should be shifted to other shoulders. The author believes that this party found ready support also for the reason that it was not only a party but a social code and a state of mind which bound the whites to united and temperate action. He does not take the position that the work of the party was accomplished without conflict between the aristocratic and democratic forces. It required a long time to remove the differences between the aristocrats composed of the leaders of the old regime and the "soldier cult" on one hand and, on the other, the democratic element composed of the westerners and upstarts whom the Civil War and Reconstruction brought to power in the east, the poor whites and the freedmen.

It is interesting to note how he accounts for the fate of the Negro voter. He says that the Negro rising with the tide of democracy was about to be incorporated into the body politic, but that the habit of implicit obedience to overseers and a boss proved too strong. "These results," says he, "seemed to necessitate and to antic.i.p.ate the elimination of the Negro as a voter." The decline of the political power of the Negro in Virginia is unfortunately considered by many as due to this cause. The author is wrong to leave the reader to infer that the Negro's incapacity to partic.i.p.ate intelligently in the affairs of the government actually led to his elimination. The demands of race prejudice impelled all southern States to reduce the Negro to a lower status just as soon as the North loosed its hold on the South.

NOTES

The local club of the a.s.sociation for the Study of Negro Life and History is now making a serious study of Negro American History under the direction of Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The work was begun in November and will be completed in February. The phases of history to be considered are: _The Negro in Africa_, _The Enslavement of the Negro_, _Patriarchal Slavery in America_, _Slavery and the Rights of Man_, _The Reaction against the Negro_, _Slavery as an Economic Inst.i.tution_, _The Free Negro in the United States_, _The Abolition Movement_, _The Colonization Project_, _Slavery and the Const.i.tution_, _The Negro in the Civil War_, _The Reconstruction of the Southern States_, _The Negro in Freedom_, _The Negro and Social Justice_.

Dodd, Mead and Company will soon publish for Professor Benjamin G.

Brawley a work ent.i.tled _The Genius of the Negro_. The aim of the book will be to set forth what the Negro has done in literature, art and the like.

Longmans, Green and Company have published _The Education of the African Native_. This will throw light on the much mooted question as to what the Europeans have done to promote the mental development of the native of the dark continent.

In the seventh volume of the _Doc.u.mentos para la Historia Argentina_ are found materials bearing on the _Comercio de Indias, Consualdo, Comercio de Negros y Extranjeros_, 1791-1809.

The June number of the _Political Science Quarterly_ contained an article _The Negro Vote in Old New York_ by D. E. Fox.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. III--APRIL, 1918--NO. 2

BENJAMIN BANNEKER, THE NEGRO MATHEMATICIAN AND ASTRONOMER

The city of Washington very recently celebrated the 125th anniversary of the completion of the survey and laying out of the Federal Territory const.i.tuting the District of Columbia. This was executed under the supervision of the famous French civil engineer, Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, as the head of a commission appointed by George Washington, then president of the United States. Serving as one of the commissioners, sitting in conference with them and performing an important part in the mathematical calculations involved in the survey, was the Negro mathematician and astronomer, Benjamin Banneker.

As there did not appear to be during this celebration any disposition to give proper recognition to the scientific work done by Banneker, the writer has thought it opportune to present in this form a brief review of Banneker's life so as to revive an interest in him and point out some of this useful man's important achievements.

On a previous occasion the writer undertook to collect some data with the same object in view, and at that time he addressed a letter to the postmaster at Ellicott City, Maryland, asking to be put in touch with some one of the Ellicott family, who might furnish reliable data on the subject. In this way, correspondence was established with the family of Mrs. Martha Ellicott Tyson, of Baltimore. One of her descendants, Mrs. Tyson Manly, kindly came over from Baltimore, and, calling on the writer at the United States Patent Office, presented him with a copy of the life of Banneker, published in Philadelphia in 1884, and compiled from the papers of Martha Ellicott Tyson, who was the daughter of George Ellicott, a member of the noted Maryland family, who established the business that developed the town of Ellicott City.

Between George Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker, Mrs. Tyson says, there existed "a special sympathy,"[144] and she further refers to her father as "the warmest friend of that extraordinary man."[145] Her father had many of Banneker's ma.n.u.scripts, from which he intended to compile a biography of his friend, but his unusually busy commercial life afforded him no leisure in which to carry out this much cherished plan. Mrs. Tyson's account, therefore, can be relied upon as coming directly from those who, personally knowing Banneker, and living in the same community in frequent contact with him, had preserved accurate data from which to publish the true record of his life.

On a farm located near the Patapsco Eiver, within about ten miles of the city of Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, on the 9th day of November, 1731, Benjamin Banneker was born. Various accounts are given of his ancestry. One of his biographers states that "there was not a drop of white blood in his veins," another a.s.serts with positiveness that his parents and grandparents were all native Africans.[146] In still another sketch of Banneker's life, read before the Maryland Historical Society, on May 1, 1845, it is stated that "Banneker's mother was the child of _natives_ of Africa so that to no admixture of the blood of the white man was he indebted for his peculiar and extraordinary abilities."[147] Thomas Jefferson said that Banneker was the "son of a black man born in Africa and a black woman born in the United States."[148]

According to Mrs. Tyson's account Banneker's mother and father were Negroes, but his maternal grandmother was a white woman of English birth, who had been legally married to a native African. The antecedent circ.u.mstances of this marriage were so unusual as to justify special mention. Mollie Welsh was an English woman of the servant cla.s.s, employed on a cattle farm in England where a part of her daily duty was the milking of the cows. She was one day charged with having stolen a pail of milk that had, in fact, been kicked over by a cow. The charge seems to have been taken as proved, and in lieu of a severer punishment she was sentenced to be shipped to America.

Being unable to pay for her pa.s.sage she was sold, on her arrival in America, to a tobacco planter on the Patapsco Eiver to serve a term of seven years to pay the cost of her pa.s.sage from England. At the end of her period of service, this Mollie Welsh, who is described as "a person of exceedingly fair complexion and moderate mental powers," was able to buy a portion of the farm on which she had worked.[149] In 1692, she purchased two African slaves from a ship in the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis. One of these slaves named Bannaky, subsequently Anglicized as Banneker, was the son of an African king, and was stolen by slave dealers on the coast of Africa.[150] With these two slaves as her a.s.sistants, Mollie Welsh industriously cultivated her farm for a number of years with such gratifying success that she felt impelled afterwards to release her two slaves from bondage. The slave Banneker had gained such favor in the eyes of his owner that she married him directly after releasing him from bondage, notwithstanding the fact that his record for sustained industry had not equalled that of his fellow slave, while serving their owner on her farm--a fact that was perhaps due to Banneker's natural inclination to indulge his royal prerogatives. This Banneker is described as "a man of much intelligence and fine temper, with a very agreeable presence, dignified manner and contemplative habits."[151]

There were born of this marriage four children of whom the eldest daughter, Mary, married a native African who had been purchased from a slave ship by another planter in her neighborhood. This slave was of a devout nature, and early became a member of the Church of England, receiving at his baptism the name of Robert. After baptism, Robert's master set him free. It was, therefore, as a free man that he became the husband of Mary Banneker, whose surname he adopted for his own.

Four children were born to Robert and Mary Banneker, one boy and three girls, the eldest being Benjamin, the subject of this sketch.

Robert Banneker had evidently formed some of the habits of thrift evinced by his mother-in-law, Mollie Welsh, for it is on record that in 1737 within a few years after receiving his freedom he purchased a farm of 120 acres from Richard Gist, paying for it 17,000[152] pounds of tobacco, which in those days served as a legal medium of exchange.

This farm, located on the Patapsco Eiver, within about ten miles of the town of Baltimore, thus became the Banneker homestead. Here it was that young Benjamin spent his early years and grew to manhood, a.s.sisting his father with the general work of the farm.

Banneker very early showed signs of precocity, which made him the special favorite of his maternal grandmother who took delight in teaching him to the extent of her own limited mental endowment. She taught him to study the Bible, and had him read it to her at regular intervals for the purpose of training him along religious lines of thought. He attended a small school in his neighborhood where a few white and colored children were taught by the same white schoolmaster.

Until the cotton gin and other mechanical appliances made Negroes too valuable as tools of exploitation to be allowed anything so dangerous as education, there were to be found here and there in the South pioneer educators at the feet of whom even Negroes might sit and learn.[153]