If you graduated from St. Augustine’s School in Raleigh or
were in the audience on May 26, 1920, here’s the commencement address you would
have heard. Commencement addresses sure were long back then! The picture of Walter Clark, commencement speaker, is from the North Carolina Supreme Court Historical Society online at http://www.ncschs.net/Clark_Walter.aspx. The
speech is from The Negro in North Carolina and the
South... by Walter Clark. St. Augustine's was founded in 1867 in Raleigh by prominent Episcopal clergy for the education of freed slaves.
THE NEGRO IN NORTH CAROLINA AND THE SOUTH
His Fifty-five Years of Freedom and What He Has Done
(Commencement Address at St. Augustine's School, Raleigh, N.
C., May 26, 1920, by Chief Justice Walter Clark, of North Carolina)
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Faculty, and Board of
Trustees and Friends:
At the close
of the great Civil War the colored people were like those lost at sea, without
chart or compass by which to steer their way. There were nearly 4,000,000
throughout the south, without education, without property, without experience,
with an uncharted and unknowable future before them. In this time of stress and
uncertainty there were broad-minded men in the south who understood the
situation and felt that the first need of the colored people was education. Religious
instruction you already had. Your labor could command a support, but there was
need of education that you might walk understandingly. This institution is a
foundation created in 1867 by an historic church, and the Board of Trustees
with which this institution was organized was a noble body of men with a broad
outlook. They were Kemp P. Battle, afterwards president of our State University
and State Treasurer, Gen. William R. Cox, a gallant soldier of the Confederacy,
later a member of Congress from this district, and Secretary of the United
States Senate, both of whom have but recently passed from among us, full of
years and of honors; then there was Bishop Atkinson of this Diocese, of loved
and honored memory; Rev. Dr. Mason, the Rector of Christ Church; Rev. Dr.
Joseph B. Cheshire, Rector of Calvary Church at Tarboro, N. C., and father of
the beloved Bishop of this Diocese; Rev. Dr. Aldert Smedes, founder and Rector
of St. Mary's School; the Rev. Mr. Forbes of New Bern and Beaufort; Dr. A. J.
DeRossett, an honored layman in Wilmington; and Richard H. Smith, a wealthy
planter, and formerly a large slave owner, of Halifax. These men saw well into
the future and did that which was right and their works do follow them. Among
the many acts which they did that were of service to their State there was
probably none in their lives which in the long course of the years will be of
more enduring benefit to their State and its people than that which they did
here. They builded wiser than they knew.
Your institution
beginning at that time was probably the pioneer in the great work of education
of the colored race in the South. It was a light in great darkness. It has kept
its lamps burning and trimmed. It has educated many thousands who have been a
benefit to their State and their race and today your institution has a well
equipped plant and more than 500 students.
PROGRESS OF COLORED PEOPLE
When
requested by the authorities here to address you I felt unequal to the task of
filling your expectations after these walls have heard the learned,
entertaining and instructive addresses from Governor Bickett and other orators.
But at the request of my good friend and yours, Bishop Cheshire, I consented to
undertake it, with the understanding that I would make a plain, simple talk,
giving some idea of the progress that the colored people have made, especially
in education, in attaining higher standards of living and morals, in the
acquirement of property, in short a brief summary of what you have done for
yourselves and for your State, in these fifty-odd years, and what the State has
done for you.
In looking
into the subject I was amazed to find, and ashamed to learn, how little I
really knew on the subject. I applied to the State Tax Commission and the State
Department of Education and to the Department of the Interior, and to the
Agricultural Department, at Washington, also to the War Department for the
record of the colored people in War, and to the authorities of this
institution. Each and all kindly and promptly replied with authentic
information and with such abundance of literature that my embarrassment now is
not lack of material, but how to condense it. A most interesting volume could
be written on the subject of the progress of the colored people during the
eventful past half century.
The
necessity of condensing renders almost necessary a statement of facts and
figures which are usually dry and very uninteresting to an audience, but on
this occasion they are really eloquent, if I could properly present them, as a
picture of the marvelous progress of a great body of 10,000,000 people in their
onward march in civilization and to a higher plane in life amid inconceivable
difficulties and despite many discouragements.
INTEREST IN NEGRO
Nearly 2,000
years ago Terence awakened thunders of applause in the Roman Forum when he said
in the sonorous tongue of old Rome: "Homo
sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto," that is "I am a man and
therefore nothing that concerns the welfare of the human race is indifferent to
me." It was a great and noble sentiment which has brought the name of this
great poet and writer down through the ages. It is a coincidence that may be of
some interest to you that he was born in Africa and though of the white race he
was brought as a slave to Rome, for throughout Roman and Grecian, and earlier
times prisoners taken in war, if not slain, became slaves, and their children
after them, and throughout the Roman Empire its millions of slaves, many of
them highly educated men, were white people.
I was born
and reared on a large farm, and my earliest friends, whom I still remember with
affection, were among the colored people around me. I feel a deep and genuine interest in your welfare, in the great progress you have
made, in the steady advance in education and in well being, in the great
service which you have rendered to your State in peace and in war, and the
assurance which the world feels that your progress and advancement will be
accelerated as the years go by.
It is
absolutely impossible for any man, much less any race or large body of people,
to live solely for and to themselves. None are above the need of sympathy nor
can they withdraw themselves from their duty to others. What affects one race will
as surely affect others. If ignorance is permitted to abound the security of
property is shaken. If slums are permitted to exist the diseases there bred
will invade the palaces of the rich. If injustice is perpetrated and those in
power and authority do not punish and repress it, the foundation of government
is impaired. Truly in this world we are "our brother's keeper." The
query made of old, "Who is my neighbor," and why should I take any
interest in his welfare, was never better exemplified than by an incident which
is said to have taken place in Raleigh not long since. A lady had two beautiful
children, the idols of her heart.
They were stricken with that terrible
disease, scarlet fever. They had been guarded from exposure to every evil, and
in her terror she was unable to recall where they could possibly have
contracted the contagion. When her cook came the next morning the lady was
considerate enough to tell her that she had better not come in, as her two
children had been stricken with scarlet fever. The cook replied that she did
not mind it at all, for her own children were just getting over an attack and
that one of them had died. The lady had taken no interest in the surroundings
or troubles of her servant, had made no inquiries and offered no aid, but on the
viewless winds the disease had traveled and the germs which might have been
destroyed by medical attention rendered in time to the children of her
neighbor--though that neighbor was a cook--made her own home the abode of
death.
In making a
brief statement of the most striking incidents of the wonderful progress you
have made, I shall restrict myself to a consideration of the subject as a
business and humanitarian proposition and your development as a matter of
history, without any reference to the political standpoint.
To get a
fairer and fuller idea of the subject and contrast the status of your people
when this institution was founded and at present it may aid us to consider the
location of the colored people in this State and their relative numbers in
proportion to total population.
DISTRIBUTION IN NORTH CAROLINA
In North
Carolina, in 20 counties, beginning with Rowan and then Burke, and in nearly
all the counties north and west of Burke, there is less than one person in ten
who is colored. In some counties in the extreme west there are practically none
at all. In one county, I believe, the census shows only 3 colored people, and
in others but the merest handful. On the other hand there are only 14 counties
in the State in which the colored people are in the majority, and in most of
them barely a majority. Contrary to the general opinion these 14 counties are
not located in the east, or in a group on our southern border. Ten of these 14
counties in which the colored people predominate in numbers are in one compact
group on the northeastern border of our State--Vance, Warren, Halifax,
Edgecombe, Northampton, Hertford, Bertie, Chowan, Perquimans, and
Pasquotank--the other 4 counties are isolated. One is on our northern or
Virginia border--Caswell. One only is in the east--Craven. The other two are on
our southern border, but not contiguous--Scotland and Anson. On the other hand
over the border in Virginia there are 30 counties in which the colored people
are in the majority. To the south of us the colored people are in the majority
in the whole State of South Carolina, and indeed in most of the counties. In
none of them is there as low a ratio as ten per cent colored, and in four
counties they are over 75 per cent. There are 17 so-called Southern States,
including Oklahoma, and the ratio of colored people to the whites throughout
the whole of this great territory is about 30 per cent, ranging very low in
Kentucky, West Virginia, East Tennessee, Maryland, and Delaware. In only two
States, South Carolina and Mississippi, the colored people are in a small
majority.
In North
Carolina at the close of the Civil War the colored people were about 36 per
cent of the population. This ratio has dwindled till by the census of 1910 it
was something over 31 per cent considerably under one-third--and at the present
time they probably number a little under 30 per cent, for the census Department
informs me that they have not yet complete returns. The ratio therefore of
colored people in this State is about the average of the South as a whole.
CHANGE IN POPULATION
In 1865,
when by Emancipation your future was placed in your own hands, the number of
colored people in the Union was in round numbers 5,000,000, of whom about
4,500,000 were in the south. Those at the north were all free. The last slaves
in New Jersey had been emancipated in 1850, and I believe there were a few
slaves in New York and other northern states till about 1820.
Of the 4,500,000
in the south there were probably 200,000 previously free, and among these,
according to the census, were 6,275 colored people who were themselves the
owners of slaves. During the War many also had been taken in the Federal lines
or had gone north, so according to the best estimates the number of colored
people in the South who were emancipated were around 4,000,000. The government
publications on this subject are necessarily in round numbers, by taking an
average for 1865, the date of emancipation, between the figures of the census
of 1860 and that of 1870. In North Carolina the estimate is that at the
surrender there were 400,000 colored people.
Today in the
United States, exclusive of the Philippines, there are in round numbers
110,000,000 people. Of these about one-tenth--11 millions--are colored people.
There are probably nine millions in the Southern States and something under two
millions in the northern and western States.
At our first
census in 1790 the colored people in the whole Union were nearly one fifth (to
be exact 19 3-10) of the entire population of the Union, which was slightly
under 4,000,000 at that time, and there were slaves in every State of the Union
except one. There has been a steady decrease in the proportion of colored
people to the whites, the colored people being now only about one-tenth in the
Union, though they have increased from 750,000 at the first census to
11,000,000 at present. This has been due almost entirely to the immense
immigration from foreign countries of white people, there being almost no accession
to the colored race from that source. Beginning slowly this immigration from
Europe took on enormous proportions until between 1904 and 1914 the average
increase of whites by immigration was a million per year, some years largely
more than that.
NEGRO AND IMMIGRANT
It is
estimated that in this country today between thirty and thirty-five millions of
people are either foreign-born or their children. These have furnished the
labor and the population to a very great extent which have given the North and
the West their gigantic growth. A large number of these, however, still speak
only their own language and are not yet fully assimilated to our customs and
habits and institutions, and form a far more serious problem than the colored
race, who are 100 per cent American by birth, are 100 per cent loyal, who all
speak our language, are devoted to our institutions and are professors of the
same religious faith with the people among whom they live. Notwithstanding some
deplorable conflicts there has been therefore far less racial conflict than in
those sections where there are vast bodies of people of other races not
speaking our tongue and alien to us in religious faith and political ideas.
RELATIVE LOSS IN POPULATION
In North
Carolina, while accurate figures can not yet be given by the Census Bureau, the
best estimate is that we have now a total population of about 2,750,000, of
whom 900,000, or about 30 per cent, are colored. The status and well being, the
continued progress and contentment and the effectiveness of their labor, are of
serious interest, both from a business and a humanitarian standpoint, to the
entire State.
While there
has been an increase in the number of colored people in this and other Southern
States their ratio to the whites has, however, steadily dwindled from causes
that are worthy of consideration. The enormous white immigration at the north
has reduced the national ratio. At the South, while in most parts there has
been small immigration from Europe, or from the north, there has been more or
less a steady emigration of colored people to the north, most largely due to
better wages, but to some extent to dissatisfaction with conditions in certain
parts of the south. In North Carolina some years ago there was a very
considerable emigration of colored people to the southwestern states, under the
impulse of labor agents, who offered large increases in wages. This became so
serious a menace to our farmers in the loss of labor that stringent acts were
passed by our Legislature requiring a license fee of $1,000 and imposing other
restrictions.
The
emigration to the North in the last few years of colored people is estimated by
the government authorities to have been, after deductions for those returning,
a permanent loss of considerably over a million. These have been largely
able-bodied young men or skilled cooks and other domestics.
Another
causes for the relative loss in numbers of the colored people in this State is
the fact, as shown by the Bureau of Health, that the mortality among the
colored people in North Carolina and the South is almost double that among the
whites. Among the whites the average mortality is 13 to 15 per thousand, while
among the colored it averages from 25 to 29 per thousand. The government
authorities looking into this matter were first of opinion that this was due to
the fact that the colored race, physically, were of less stamina and less able
to resist disease, but when the great draft was made for the war the records of
the War Department show that while 75 per cent of the colored people were
accepted as sound, only about 70 per cent of the whites could pass the physical
test. This was due to the fact, doubtless, that the large majority of colored
men were engaged in agriculture, in healthy and outdoor life and accustomed to
exercise.
Judge
Tourgee, well known in this State, some years ago created a sensation in the
South by articles in northern magazines demonstrating that by the greater
relative increase of the colored people they would soon overwhelm the south. He
did this by taking the statistics of the higher birth rate among the colored
people and not adverting to the fact that their average mortality was nearly
double. This latter has now been shown to be due not to inferior physique, but
mostly to the terrific ratio of deaths among the very young children, which
writers ascribe to the lack of knowledge among their mothers and the fact that
so many of them are engaged in field work or in domestic service, and can not
give proper attention to their children.
ECONOMIC BASIS OF SOCIETY
These
matters as to population are of great importance, not only to historians, but
to those who consider that the prosperity and progress of a State depend almost
entirely upon the welfare and characteristics of its labor element upon whom in
the last analysis rests the structure of society and the welfare of the whole
people.
All
historians now recognize that the rise and fall of empires and of government
have not depended upon kings or political parties, but have been due to
economic conditions. The spread of malaria in Rome was more fatal than the
irruption of the barbarians, and the pestilence of the Black Plague, which
destroyed so large a portion of the working people in Europe, doubled wages and
changed the whole economic basis of society. A shrewd historian has said that
it was this that overthrew the Feudal system.
The basis of
all progress and indeed of human existence is labor. The Creator of all things
made only the earth, the water, the air. The forests that have grown were a
part of the soil and the animals have been dependent upon man whose function
has been to destroy the harmful and to improve and increase in number those
which serve for food or otherwise contribute to the wants of the human race.
Outside of
these elemental matters everything on this earth is the creation of labor. It
is to labor that we owe the food which we eat, the clothes that we wear, the
houses that we live in and everything which renders possible the continuance of
the human race. Thought and genius have created labor-saving devices, by which
one man may do the work formerly done by ten, or a hundred, and in some cases
of a thousand men, but all these would be in vain if the human machine was not
there to operate the other machine. The gigantic engine on its narrow ribbons
of steel that rushes across the continent with its long train of cars has
movement only because human muscle and human intelligence have brought out the
coal and the ore, transformed them into iron and steel and now moves the lever
of the engine. The hills have been leveled, the trees have been made into
cross-ties, the depots have been built from brick and lumber shaped by human
hands. Without these workers the human race would disappear, as they have
departed from the once populous Sahara.
VALUE OF NEGRO LABOR
It is
therefore of the utmost importance to every country to consider whether the
supply of labor is decreasing or increasing, whether by education and proper
support it is becoming more efficient. In North Carolina we have some years
made as high as 1,100,000 bales of cotton. Last year we made over 875,000
bales, which, with its seed, is worth at present prices $200,000,000. Adding
the tobacco and other crops the total agricultural products in the State last
year were worth $683,000,000, according to the United States Agricultural
Department, making us the fourth State in agricultural products in the Union.
The colored
people, as I have said, are about 30 per cent of our population, but as they
are more largely engaged in agricultural pursuits, and on the richest lands in
the State, it is a fair estimate that one-half of our immense agricultural
production, in which we now stand fourth in the entire list of 48 states, has
been made by colored labor. That is to say $340,000,000 in agricultural
products, exclusive of the value of their labor as domestics, as workers on the
railroads, in factories and in other pursuits.
Strike from
our products this immense sum of $340,000,000 annually and the other services
rendered by colored labor, the State would be paralyzed. From fourth in the
Union in the value of our products we would sink to near the bottom. The banks
would no longer be full of money. The railroads could neither be supported or
kept in operation, at least to the same extent. The basis of civilization is
wealth, and wealth comes from production and production is derived, in the last
analysis, solely from labor. We have a large and prosperous element of white
labor, which, man for man, may be more productive than the same number of
colored men, but white labor could not supply their places unless brought
hither from Europe in competition with northern employers and their foreign
customs and alien tongues and ideas would here, as at the North, be a cause of
greater race conflicts than that which we have with the colored people, who,
despite exaggerated statements, are living on the whole in peace with their
white neighbors and in contentment. Without a sufficiency of labor no country
can progress, and where it is diminished in number or efficiency it is a public
calamity. North Carolina is dependent upon and interested in the growth in
numbers and their greater efficiency by better education and better sanitary
conditions and maintenance in their physical and moral well being of all its
laborers, white or black, and in the continued kindly relations between the
races.
EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
We have not
done enough for the education of either white or colored children. In
educational matters this State stands nearly at the bottom in the length of the
school term, in the salaries to its teachers and the appropriation to schools
and in illiteracy. On an average, the State through, we pay only $5.27 per
annum for the education of each white child and only $2.40 for the education of
the colored children. In this county (Wake) it is $7.89 for each white child
and $2.64 for each colored child. Fortunately there has been supplementary aid
by donations or devises from philanthropic northern people to the education of
the colored people, particularly by the five great funds known as the Jeanes
Foundation, the Slater Fund, the Rosenwald Fund, the Phelps Stokes Fund, and
the General Education Fund. And besides, the colored people themselves have
contributed by voluntary donations large sums for the support of education.
The loss to
the State in not increasing efficiency by the support of education was shown by
Aycock, Alderman, McIver, and Joyner, and their co-laborers in their apostolic
campaigns to arouse our people to proper efforts in this respect. Yet it is
said that there is $70,000,000 invested in automobiles in this State, while the
entire cost of our school buildings and equipments of all kinds for education,
from the State University down, is less than $14,000,000.
GROWTH IN WEALTH
In the first
few years of freedom the growth in wealth of the colored people was slow. As
late as 1902 they listed in North Carolina for taxation only about $11,000,000.
In 1917 they were on the tax list for $37,000,000. In 1918 this had grown to
$48,000,000. Doubtless this year, at the same rate, the property owned by
colored people on the tax list would be $65,000,000. If it is true, as
generally estimated, that property is listed in this State at one-third its
value, the colored people of the State must own around $200,000,000. Among the
colored people of this country there are several well known millionaires. One
colored woman who died recently in New York disposed by her will of more than
$1,000,000, of which she left $100,000 to charitable purposes. In North
Carolina there is more than one colored man who is believed to have passed the
$100,000 mark.
It is to the
interest of the entire people of the State that the colored people should be
educated and aspire to obtain a higher standard of living and well being and to
become owners of property, and especially of real estate. Educated men owning a
stake in the country, living in their own homes, whether in country or town and
on good terms with their neighbors, can never be a dangerous element to the
stability of government, but will be a strong support to the maintenance of law
and order.
As a brief
summary of the financial condition to which the colored people have attained I
give the following fragmentary statement taken from the United States
government reports.
It is stated
therein that the colored people in the late war aided the government by buying
$225,000,000 of Liberty Bonds, and made other large contributions to war
activities. In the United States colored men own over 700,000 homes, and
seventy-five per cent of them can read and write. The percentage would be
larger but for the illiteracy of the older negroes in the South who had no
school advantages. The colored people have 500 colleges or other high
institutions of learning, worth in equipments and endowments $22,000,000 and
supported by themselves with aid from the states and some assistance from the funds
spoken of and other contributions. In the whole Union there are 1,800,000
colored students in the public schools. The expenditures for education of the
colored race in the South is annually $15,000,000, of which $500,000 is
contributed by themselves, besides their share of the taxes. They own 45,000
churches with 4,500,000 members, and the value of their church property is
$90,000,000. Throughout the South, especially in Texas, there are colored men
owning 500 to 5,000 acres each.
In one
county in Georgia there are three times as many colored men owning farms as
white men, and this is not an exceptional case. In another county four-fifths
of all the farms cultivated by their owners were cultivated by colored men and
there was no mortgage whatever recorded on the farms owned by the negroes.
From a tax
list furnished me by the State Tax Commission I find that in 1919 the colored
people listed in North Carolina over $51,000,000 property, the highest in this
respect being Halifax County, with nearly two and one-half millions property
listed by colored men, the next highest being Wake with $2,377,000, and Warren
being third with $1,622,000. By the census of 1910 there were 21,443 colored
men owning the farms on which they lived and 44,139 operating farms as tenants.
These numbers have been greatly increased since.
GOVERNMENT REPORTS
In a
publication issued by the United States Department of the Interior in 1916 it
is said that "No other racial group in the United States shows a better adjustment
in their relations with the white natives than the 10,000,000 of negroes (now
11,000,000. . . . (In the fifty years since freedom, illiteracy among them has
decreased from 90 per cent to 30 per cent. One million colored men are now
farmers, either as renters or owners; over a quarter of a million of them being
owners, and the total amount of land owned by them aggregates over 20,000,000
acres." It is further said that they are "capable of progress and
their white neighbors have not only looked with favor upon their struggles but
in many cases have given substantial aid, outside of that furnished by the
State governments, and that it is clear that the masses of the colored people
are just beginning to appreciate the possibilities of their gaining an independence
financially and improving their moral standards and attaining a higher grade in
the comforts and conveniences of life. But that they are still retarded by the
lingering ignorance and poverty of a portion of the race and the still
unfavorable conditions in which a large part of them are compelled to
live." The report comments upon the fact that the death rate among them in
the South was nearly double that of the whites and that there are five times as
many of them in the prisons in the south as whites, but adds that "The
decrease of illiteracy and the increasing ownership of land and other property
are sure evidences of the inherent worth of the colored people and of the
genuine friendship of their white neighbors." It also said that the gifts
of the colored people to the public schools in the South over and above the
support given by State aid and the charitable funds already mentioned would
aggregate over half a million dollars a year over and above their share of the
public taxes. This was said four years ago, and doubtless today these figures
as to the ownership of property and the decrease of illiteracy have been very
largely bettered.
Among the
later statistics it appears that there are in the South more than 50,000
colored men engaged in business as bankers, lawyers, doctors, and in various
other business other than farming. There are now in the South 100 banks owned
and operated entirely by colored men, having an aggregate capital of three and
one-half million dollars and doing more than $50,000,000 business annually. The
center of colored population, which at the first census in 1790 was near
Petersburg, is now in Northern Alabama. Much more information could be given
from the official reports, of the almost marvelous progress which the colored
race has made along these lines, but it would take too much of your time. The
race has furnished, and from the South, orators, painters, sculptors, authors,
poets, musicians, lawyers, doctors, and bankers prominent in their professions.
For music and poetry the colored people seem to have an especial talent.
I will give
only two quotations from the many interesting letters which I have received
from public officials in sending the literature requested. A chief of bureau in
the United States Department of Agriculture writes: "The negroes as a rule
are ready and willing to take advice and have followed it even more closely
than the average white farmer." The latest official report shows that the
colored people in the South own 35,000 square miles of land, a territory nearly
a fifth larger than the entire State of South Carolina.
INTERRACIAL HARMONY
Dr. James H.
Dillard, in a recent address says: "Never in the history of the world has
any race in the same length of time made such progress in physical,
intellectual, and moral improvements as the colored race has done in the last
sixty years. There are still thousands who are uneducated, thousands who are
very poor and in need of moral advancement." And he added, "Never
before in history, during the short period of sixty years have two
races--thrown together as these two races--been known to make such approach
towards satisfactory adjustment. . . . We forget that a period of 56 years is a
short time in history; that habits of thought and habits of feeling are not
changed overnight. It takes time for individual habits of thought and
individual habits of feeling to change. It takes even longer for the habits and
morals and customs of a whole people to change, and we have got to be patient,
as Carlyle said, 'yet a while,' " and adds: "We are here in the South
together, we are going to stay together, and the sensible people of both races
know and feel and believe more and more that it is much better for us to stay
here in good fellowship and cooperation than in hostility."
FARM OWNERSHIP
Mr. C. R.
Hudson of our State official demonstration work, writes a most interesting
letter, from which I would be glad to quote largely, but from which I would
take this only: "The average yield of corn in the State last year was
about 20 bushels per acre. The yield of negro farmers was probably not over 12
bushels per acre. Over 500 farmers who were following our teachings on 4,500
acres produced an average of 40 6/10 bushels per acre, or twice the average
yield of the State. Results were similar in the growing of cotton and other
crops. The important fact in this connection is that these high yields were
made without a corresponding increase in the cost of production, but in most
cases with a reduction in the cost per acre." Besides further interesting
details as to their purchase of 154 dairy cows of improved strains and of hogs
and poultry and planting of orchards and in cooperative buying and selling and
the preparation of food and in sanitation and canning and other details he says
of our State along these lines: "Negroes are taught to make their farms
self-supporting rather than to depend on the buying of home supplies at high
rate time prices or the borrowing of money at exorbitant rates. We believe that
since the negro is with us to stay, anything that can be done to help him help
himself is beneficial for the white race and the country as a whole. . . . The
attitude of negro farmers towards the bettering of their condition shows they
are intensely interested in these matters. They are calling for help; they are
teachable; they respond readily to suggestions and follow the methods given
very satisfactorily. We believe that the outlook for the negro race for the
future is very bright. The better methods which they are rapidly getting will
give them funds with which to better their condition. Civilization can rise no
higher than the earning capacity of the masses of its people to support."
This is a very statesmanlike conclusion in which the ablest minds of the
country will concur.
Dr. E. C.
Branson of the State University, in an address made some two years ago on
"The Negro Working Out His Own Salvation," says: "During the
last 30 years the negroes of the South have come to feel that bank books and
bonds are more important than ballot boxes." And he adds that one-fourth
of all the negro farmers in the South (not including laborers) own their
farms--in Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Maryland, and Virginia, more than half
of them; in West Virginia, four-fifths; and that while they have increased 10
per cent in population they have increased 17 per cent in ownership of farms as
against 12 per cent increase of white farm owners throughout the South. In
Georgia the white farm owners increased 7 per cent and the negro farm owners 38
per cent. In North Carolina there was an increase of only 9 per cent white farm
owners and 22 per cent colored, and in Arkansas about the same.
Along this
line the "University News Letter" states that the census shows that
in the counties of Warren and Halifax there are more colored men working on
land which they own than white men. This does not mean, of course, that they
own a larger number of acres, for their holdings generally must be smaller than
many of the holdings among the whites.
EDUCATION IN NORTH CAROLINA
While North
Carolina has not done what she should as to education for either colored or
white, this State has a larger percentage of colored children in the public
schools (over 75 per cent) than any other southern State, except Oklahoma. In
this State there is for the colored people, maintained by the State, an A. and
M. College, an Insane Asylum, a Deaf and Dumb and Blind Institute; 10 county
training schools; 3 Normal Schools, and 38 separate county superintendents of
education for the colored people.
NO NEGRO PROBLEM
A northern
man not long since told me that the greatest drawback at the South was what he
called the "Negro Problem." I told him that frankly there was no
"Negro Problem." I pointed him to the fact that the north, where the immigration from the least advanced states in Europe for several years
prior to the war had average over a million a year, they had millions speaking
all languages, advocating all kinds of isms, and professing all kinds of
religion, and many of them ignorant of our customs and our forms of government,
there was perpetual hostility between the different races and towards the
government, whereas down here the colored people were all native born, there
was no diversity of languages, for they all spoke our own speech and they were
100 per cent loyal to the government. I told him that in no country that I knew
of was there better feeling between the races. In Ireland the immense majority
are Catholics and Celts, while the English are mostly Protestants and arrogant,
with the result that Ireland is in perpetual rebellion. In Austria there were
ten or twelve different races, ignorant of each others' language, antagonistic
to each others' religious views and in perpetual turmoil and there was not a
state in Europe scarcely which did not have its problems of one or more
"subject races." At the South we all speak the same tongue and
practically there is no hostility on account of religion, which is ever the
cause of the bitterest antagonism wherever it exists.
It is true
that our colored people wear "the shadowed livery of the burnished
sun" and there is no social equality between the races, but the latter
condition exists in every country where there are two or more distinct races of
people. The colored people do not wish social equality, and the white people
would not tolerate it, and there the matter ends. It is not a matter of debate,
but is settled and not a cause of strife like the divergence in language, in religion,
in national aspirations which exists in nearly every other country.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
As to the
administration of justice with which in some capacity I have been associated
all my life, I told my friend that there was absolute equality. A colored man
may have differences with a white man, as will happen between any two men, but
when they go into the courthouse to have it settled every man knows that
colored men are at no disadvantage. The white men on the jury, with the pride
of the Anglo-Saxon race, will see that equal and exact justice is done, and if
ever I have seen any partiality shown it is that if the juries and the judges
have tipped the scales at all, it has been in favor of the colored men upon the
innate belief that if any advantage has been taken it has been by the white man
by reason of his advantages.
WAR RECORD OF NEGRO
I have
spoken of the loyalty of the colored man. No sedition laws have ever been
needed for him. At all times he has stood by his country and its institutions.
His good humor and cheerfulness, patience and endurance make him a good
soldier. The record of the colored man in war has been as loyal and patriotic
as in times of peace. During the Revolutionary War there were thousands of
colored men who served in the Patriot Army under Washington. The first Patriot
killed in that struggle was a negro, Crispus Attucks, whose monument in bronze
stands on Boston Commons. At Bunker Hill, Major Pitcairn of the British Army
was killed by Peter Salem, a colored soldier. Amid the dark days of Valley
Forge one-seventh of Washington's army was colored men. In those crude times
they served in the same companies with the whites, and many thousands of them
won their freedom from their owners by service in the Patriot armies. In the
War of 1812 there were many colored troops, but they usually served in separate
regiments under white officers. There were several regiments of these under
Jackson in the battle of New Orleans when he broke forever the British power on
this Continent. After the battle General Andrew Jackson issued a special
general order thanking the colored troops for their patriotism and valor. In the great Civil War on the Northern side
178,000 colored men served as soldiers. Many of these were, of course, from the
North, where they lived. On the Southern side, while there were no colored
troops in our army until very late in the war there were many thousands of them
who were most efficient help to the Southern army, as much so as if they had
borne arms. They made the roads over which our armies marched. They threw up
most of the breastworks and forts behind which the Southern soldiers fought,
and more than all, they made the crops, the food and the cotton for clothing,
necessary to the very existence of the Southern army. And during those four
eventful years, though knowing that their freedom was at stake, and that the
able-bodied white men were at the front, be it said to their everlasting
credit, no harm came from them to any white woman or white child throughout the
wide border of the Confederacy. They were loyal to the people among whom they
lived, and to the government. In the Southern Army there were thousands of
colored men as cooks and body servants. There were many instances in which the
latter carried their wounded masters off the field under fire and took them or
their dead bodies home. I never heard of a single instance in which any of
these men deserted.
Later in our
War with Spain the colored troops went to the front in proportion to their numbers
equally with the whites. That is about one-tenth of our 300,000 troops in that
war were colored. North Carolina sent two white regiments of 12 companies each
and one colored regiment of 10 companies, officered by colored men and
commanded by Col. James H. Young of this city. And there is no complaint on
record as to their conduct in camp or in the field. They were native-born North
Carolinians and conducted themselves as such. At Santiago, at San Juan Hill,
where Mr. Roosevelt won his promotion to the presidency, the two colored
calvary regiments in the regular army (9th and 10th Cavalry) bore the brunt of
the fight. They were commanded by white officers and at the head of one of
these companies Capt. William E. Shipp, of this State, met a soldier's death
along with men he led.
NEGRO IN WORLD WAR
In the late
World War of the four and one-half million men drawn as soldiers 458,000, just
about one-tenth, were colored men. On the fields of France they proved again
their capacity and their courage in the service of their country and on more
than one occasion. Of the 80,000 soldiers furnished by North Carolina over
25,000 were colored. These colored troops distinguished themselves and helped
to save the day. At Chateau Thierry, when the dense columns of the Germans had
driven out the French and were bending back the second line, the colored troops
from North Carolina, and other Southern States, came up and held the line. Just
here I will say that the officers who commanded these colored troops must have
been Southerners, or at least they understood negro psychology, for on every
critical occasion when they were thrown in, they went in singing.
AFTER THE WAR
I remember
seeing in northern magazines the statement that when the war was over and these
colored soldiers should be disbanded then would come the strain; that they
would not go back into the places from which they came, but would assert new
rights and privileges and claim equality. We southern men knew them, and they
knew us, better. When these regiments and companies were disbanded it was done
quietly and without disturbance. The colored soldiers who did their duty in
France are now, as they were before the war, helping in the industries of civil
life and undistinguishable from their fellows, who were not in the war. Only
one disturbance throughout the country has been reported and that at Washington
City. I will not discuss the conflicting accounts as to the cause of that, but
certainly there has been no such trouble in North Carolina, nor so far as I
remember anywhere else in the South, from disbanded men.
It is but
justice to the colored people of North Carolina, and to ourselves, to say that
in the more than half century of freedom the vast body of them have been
industrious, law-abiding, and on good terms with their white neighbors. They
have not been assuming, but have patiently borne hardships and poverty, hoping
for a better day. It is to the interest and duty of the white people to
recognize this and encourage them not only by doing them equal and exact
justice but by aiding them in all their legitimate aspirations for obtaining
education and a better and higher standard of living.
LYNCHING IS LAWLESSNESS
There has
been no complaint by the colored people as to partiality in the courts, and I
think there has been none as to any inequality in the laws. There has been
complaint as to lynchings, but that is not a matter of law, but lawlessness,
which officials have endeavored to prevent and have done so whenever they
could. There have been lynchings of white people as well as of colored. This is
not a matter of race but of the lawless passions of men who believe that prompt
action is necessary because the processes of the courts, often uncertain, are
often too long delayed. Personally I believe that the true cure for lynching is
in the promptest and most efficient execution of the laws.
REMEDY FOR DISCRIMINATION
There has
been some times complaint as to what is known as the "Jim Crow cars,"
which are established by law. At the North, where there are few colored people
in proportion to the population, the railroads cannot afford to furnish
separate cars for them. With us, where nearly one-third of the people are
colored, and probably one-fourth of the travelers by rail, it is better for
them and the whites that separate cars should be furnished for them. The real
objection is that sometimes these cars are inferior to those furnished the
whites. This is contrary to the law, which requires the same rate to be charged
for fare and the same and equally good accommodations furnished for both races.
When this is not done it is not because of the law, but in violation of it, and
the remedy is by application to the Corporation Commission to require better
accommodations.
SUFFRAGE
As to
suffrage, which I do not intend to discuss in any way, I think that the wiser
heads among the colored people have discouraged any attempt to intermeddle in
politics and that the colored race has lost nothing but gained much by
abstaining from doing so against the wishes of the white people,
notwithstanding the decision of the United States Supreme Court that the
"Grandfather Clause" is void.
BEST WHITE PEOPLE IN SOUTH WISH NEGRO WELL
Being
Southern-born and having lived here all my life, and having traveled somewhat
in foreign countries, I believe there is no other county or locality in which
there is more than one race, where they live on as friendly relations with each
other as in North Carolina, and that there is no large body of labor of another
race that is more efficient and less assuming or troublesome than the colored
people of the South.
The Southern
people as a rule take an interest in your welfare and if they have not done
more for the education of your children it is because they have not done as
much as they should for the white children. When the Civil War ended the South
was devastated, its property destroyed, a large proportion of its best and
noblest young men dead on the battlefield. Our people had to start life anew,
without capital and with their labor system disorganzed. Then there came upon us the trouble of Reconstruction,
which left some bitterness behind, but since then there has been a steady
increase in prosperity and at all times friendly cooperation between the races.
Your growth
in education, in the acquirement of property, in the attainment of better
standards of living, have been almost marvelous. Your prosperity makes for the
prosperity of the whole people. Any man who would willfully create prejudice
between the races is an enemy to both.
In
conclusion, it is very clear that the colored people have become masters of
their own destinies and are working out their own salvation along their own
lines. Intelligent men, good men, who desire the good of the whole people, must
view with pleasure and with pride the success of these people, natives of our
own State, subject to our laws, adding to our prosperity, living peaceful,
industrial lives, and should, and I believe will, give them every encouragement
and aid in their power.
Colored
friends, I believe I speak the sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the
white people of North Carolina when I say that we have appreciation of your
fidelity to our institutions, your loyalty to our State, the great
contributions you are making to the wealth of the country and of your laudable
ambition to better your condition, and that we wish you a continuance of your
success and the good reputation as a people which you have so well and nobly
earned.
If you would like more information on Walter Clarke, you can
read a brief biography in http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/clarkw/bio.html
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