Part 4

The lunch hour was remarkable for the swarms of men belched forth by the works. A twenty-cent lunch was ready for all. Wives and mothers also were allowed to come and bring food to supplement what was served at the stands. Lunch over, the men formed into groups, and in some places there were Bible discussions, in others sporting competitions. Despite high wages, I noticed some Negroes going about picking up crusts and putting them into paper bags, presumably to feed the chickens with when they got home. My guide said this was due to the “Save” propaganda which had been carried on. Y. M. C. A. work was very much to the fore, an industrial “Y” having been financed by the owners of the yard. I was told that a little while ago the company found it difficult to keep the young Negro boys—the heaters and passers, on whose work the rivetter depends, for one boy heats the rivet and another passes it, and the rivetter strikes it home. They found so little in the place to interest them that they drifted away from the works. It was this that had determined the firm to embark on a program of physical culture and games. There was also a Y. M. C. A. hut and its usual appurtenances. A long list of evening classes was being arranged. A large building had been promised to the “Y” if it made good.

I could not find any man who belonged to a genuine trade-union affiliated to the American Federation of Labor, though most belonged to “Colored People’s Brotherhoods.” The Whites with whom they worked, and with whom they have upon occasion great rivetting competitions, were presumably non-union also, but that is common; labor in America is poorly organized, compared with labor in Great Britain. Almost the whole of Negro labor is at present outside the recognized unions, and for that reason can almost always be used to break strikes. This is, of course, unfortunate for the Negro, who is thus branded as a “blackleg” in addition to being black by nature, which was reproach enough.

I met a strange character in the evening, one of the colored organizers, a friend of the white men, and _in_ with the bosses of the yards. He was possibly a descendant of the type of Negro who in slavery days acted as agent for the slave merchants, and was to be found on the West African shore lording it over the batches of poor savages who with hands tied up were being hustled on to the slave ships. It used to be a recognizable type. When they themselves were brought over to America they became overseers or field drivers, and brutal enough they were to their fellow men of color. To-day they are foremen or speeders up of Negro gangs, or you find them under the auspices of “Welfare.”

This was a lazy Negro, fat and heavy, with a confused non-thinking mind, great sooty lips, and bloodshot eyes. He told me he put on a wig at night and prowled about the town, spying on vice. The great numbers of black soldiers embarking or disembarking had attracted sharps and bad women of all kinds. The streets were infested with sin, and he knew which boarding houses were disreputable and which were properly kept. He knew where there was drink, and who was organizing the “bootlegging” business, and what graft the police took. Though sluggish by nature, this gloomy soul evidently got full of life at night—spying on the people.

He told me the richest colored man in Newport News was a dentist who charged as much as six dollars an hour for stopping teeth. The example of this dentist’s success had caused several fathers to educate their children for dentistry rather than the Church or the Law. “But we Negroes don’t want to rise,” said he. “We want to show off. We are great imitators of swagger. They’ll come wearing a forty-dollar suit and a clean collar, and brandish a cigar in your face when that is all they have in the world. We’re a crude people, sir.”

There was on the one hand in Newport News a nucleus of prosperous Negro families, and on the other hand the many gambling places and dancing dens where health and ambition and money, and everything else which can help a man to rise could be squandered. In time to come, when society takes root, Newport News should become a Negro stronghold. Already there are so many Negroes no white man dare start a riot.

Not far from Newport News is Hampton Institute, the “Negro Eton,” which produces the Curzons and the Cecils of the colored race, as someone amusingly expressed it. It is the crown of Northern effort to educate the Negro. Endowment and instruction are mostly by Whites. Everyone is engaged in vital self-support, and the students plough the fields, make boots, build wagons, print books, and learn all manner of practical lessons in life. Above all, they are made ready to teach and help others of their race. It is the show place of the Negro world, and rightly so, as most of those who lead Negrodom hail as yet from Hampton.

I did not myself visit Hampton, because it has been adequately described in books, and generally speaking I would rather study the Negro in his unperfumed haunts, where he is less disguised with Northern culture. Perhaps one learns more of the needs and requirements of the Negroes by visiting a poor school where the ordinary routine of teaching is going on. I visited a high school named after Booker T. Washington, and talked to the students in the classes. The young lady who took me to the head master wore a low-cut, white blouse from which her dainty neck and her head of kinky hair grew like a palm tree. She had dog’s teeth for eardrops hanging from her ears, and large, kind, questioning eyes. The head master was a quiet young man from some Negro university, full of pent-up enthusiasm for his race and for learning. He had boundless enthusiasm for the Negro people and their possibilities. Was not the greatest French writer a colored man, and the greatest Russian poet of Negro blood? We went into the composition class. They were doing “Argumentation,” which is perhaps a trifle dull, but we discussed brevity and the principle of suspense. In the English class each child had read “Silas Marner” and was taking it in turn to re-tell the story when called upon by the teacher. This was pretty well done, though Americanisms were frequent, and the two brothers were said to be “disagreeable” when it was meant that they disagreed. In French the whole class was standing around the walls of the room, writing French sentences on the blackboards fitted into the panelling. French was very popular. Every child wanted to go to France by and by. In the Latin class we discussed the merits of Cæsar, in the cookery class whether they ate what they cooked, in the needlework, invisible mending—when suddenly the fire bell sounded. Each class at once got up and filed out in orderly manner. In one minute the whole school of seven hundred black children was cleared. Then they marched back in twos, shoulder to shoulder, in fine style, to the rub-a-dub-dub of a kettledrum. It was a surprise alarm, called by a visiting fire inspector. None, even of the teachers, had known whether the alarm was real.

The teachers here were all black, and possessed of the greatest enthusiasm; the children presented some hopeless types, but they were mostly very eager and intelligent. The methods of teaching seemed to be advanced, but there were many deficiencies, notably that of the chemistry class, where all the apparatus was in a tiny cupboard, and consisted of some bits of tubing, a few old test tubes, and some empty bottles.

It was a grievance, and I thought a legitimate one, that whereas the white schools were given good buildings with every latest convenience, less was thought good enough for the Negro children. Though white sympathizers with the ex-slave had been very generous in endowing Negro education, their good work was more than neutralized by the Southern local authorities, who held the point of view that education spoiled the “nigger.” If it were not for the enthusiasm of the Negro teachers, who carry on in any circumstances, it might easily have happened that the colored people had a whole series of well-endowed universities and colleges like Fisk and Hampton, but no elementary or secondary school education worth the name.

Lack of good will toward the Negro thus expresses itself in many ways; the failure to repair his roads, the failure to give him equal facilities for education and self-improvement, and his exclusion from the public libraries. The white man will not say “No” to grants of money which give him handsome Carnegie library buildings for nothing or will raise universities, even Negro universities, but he will not fulfill his part of the unwritten contract—and honor all philanthropy by indiscriminate good will.

After visiting the school I saw glimpses of Negro women at work in characteristic places of earning a living. The management was always very sensitive about strangers being present, so it was possible to find out little about the conditions. One shop was full of girls sewing ready-cut trousers on machines run by electricity. The trousers were cut in Baltimore and sent down here to be sewn cheaply by local colored labor. A Jew was in charge. A Negro woman was looking after the “welfare” of the girls. Another was a tobacco factory, where girls earned eleven dollars a week, working from 7:30 a. m. to 5:30 p. m., stripping tobacco leaf in airy and fragrant rooms. At piecework they earned from six cents a pound.

I visited the publishing office of the _Journal and Guide_, where the Negroes not only edit a paper but manufacture their own type and do everything themselves—one of a hundred Negro newspapers published in the United States. The average number of spelling errors in many of these sheets seemed to be about three a paragraph, but that in no wise renders them ridiculous or deters the pen of the ready writers. Negroes have a passion for journalism which is out of proportion to their present development and capacity.

As I came out of the publishing office with the editor we saw a hearse. It was drawn by a motor, and it was a new idea to me, that of being motored to one’s grave. The editor made a sign and the hearse stopped. “Just a moment,” said he, and a lugubriously cloaked Ethiopian with large, shining teeth stepped down.

“This is Undertaker Brown,” said the editor.

“Always at yo’ seyvice, sar,” said the undertaker. “Is yo’ thinking of taking a ride with me?”

I said I was not meditating on that sad course yet.

“It’s a fine hearse,” said Brown—“and look, they is steel clamps to keep the coffin steady (he swung open the rear doors) and speshal receppacles fo’ the flowers.”

I thanked him, and we shook hands effusively.

All the Negroes took charge of me. It was no difficult task to see their ways of life. It was impossible not to feel happy in the midst of their childish vivacity and enthusiasm and make-believe. Their grievances were almost lost sight of in the sunshine of prosperity in Eastern Virginia. Miss M—— told me how in the Red Cross drives during the war she “led the cullud folk over the top” and the vividness of her story of Negro vying with Negro as to who should subscribe most money, and how she defied the white “crackers” to continue lynching and persecuting them in the face of such patriotism as they had shown was not only instructive but extraordinarily amusing, and also touching; how a large audience of white people was listening to a combined “platform” of black and white orators, and Negro choirs were singing “spirituals” while the collection plates rolled round, and Miss M—— when she arrived at the hall was so dead-beat with rushing round the town all day that she fell in a faint and she prayed, “Lord, if I gain strength I’ll take it for a sign that I am to speak.” And she came to herself and went on to the platform and told the white folk straight—what she felt—how nine-tenths of her people could not spell the word _Democracy_ and had indeed only just heard of it, and yet they sent their children to wounds and death, and they themselves subscribed their last dimes for patriotic causes. But what did America give in return? And at the end she overheard one of the worst “crackers” remark that he could not help admiring her, she was “so durned sincere.”

The last evening I spent in this corner of Virginia was at a resort of colored soldiers and sailors, and I had a talk with a boy who had held a commission in the Ninety-second Division, a black unit which had covered itself with glory in France. He was a lieutenant, and was at the taking of St. Mihiel. The Negro marines were also very interesting—eager, serious, and sober fellows. They were proud of being in Uncle Sam’s navy, but wanted a chance of advancement there, did not wish to remain twenty years in the same grade, but hoped desperately for a gold stripe in time, and the chance to become petty officer. Soldiers and sailors surged in and out of the hall, smoked cigarettes, drank soda, and chatted. I heard no foul talk, and I took much pleasure in their appearance. I felt what a fine body of guardians of their country could be made of them if once prejudice were finally overcome. In this part of Eastern Virginia, the apex of the South, the new black world seemed very promising and had gone far in its fifty-seven years of freedom.

The way from Norfolk to Richmond is up the James River, and I continued my journey on a boat that had evidently come from New York—redolent as it was of long-distance passengers. There was a seat, however, just under the captain’s lookout, and there was nothing before me but the progressing prow and the silver expanse of the river. A classical voyage this—for it was up the James River, named after James the First, that the first pioneers of Raleigh’s virgin land made their way. It is felt to be romantic, because they were not Roundheads nor Quakers nor Plymouth Brethren nor other sober-liveried folk, but gentlemen of sword and ruff, courtier-sailors who upon occasion would be ready to throw their cloaks in the mud for a Queen to tread upon. The tradition of courtier survives, and a rich man of Virginia is to-day a Virginian gentleman, though there is scarcely another State in America where the landed proprietors claim to be gentry. The James River is significant for another reason. At little Jamestown, which never came to anything as a city, the first Negro slaves were landed in America in 1618, and from the small beginning of one shipload three hundred years ago nation-wide Negrodom, with all its black millions, has arisen.

Virginia grew prosperous in the cultivation of tobacco, which remains to-day the staple production of a comparatively poor State. It is too far north for the cultivation of cotton, and though doubtless possessing great mineral wealth, industrial research has not gone so far as in Pennsylvania. It is essentially a conservative State. Slavery is said to have depressed its economic life so that neighboring Northern States, whose development began much later, easily overtook it. A somewhat patriarchal settled state of life took possession of Virginia, a new feudalism which was out of keeping with hustling and radical America. It is remarkable, however, how many lawmakers, administrators, soldiers, and Presidents Virginia has given to the United States. Starting with gentry, it has bred gentry.

And with regard to the Negro, the State has a good record. Despite the various inequalities of treatment and Jim-Crowism noticeable by anyone who is observant, there is little or no brutality or nigger-baiting. Lynching is rare, and it must be supposed the alleged Negro attacks upon white women must be rare also. Such relatively good conditions prevail in Virginia that the whole South takes shelter behind her. And as the proud Virginian reckons himself _par excellence_ the Southerner, he is often annoyed when he reads of the worse treatment of the Negroes further south. Virginia should remember she is not the whole South, and she does not exert even a moral influence upon Georgia and Mississippi. In that respect she seems to be as helpless as New England and the Puritans, to whom politically she has generally been in opposition.

The old Virginian families bound the Negroes to them with undying devotion. They became part of the family, with all the license of pet children. They fought for them and assisted them in the Civil War with the creature-like devotion of clansmen for their chief. The “veterans” who still survive, Negroes like Robert E. Lee’s cook, who was one of many picturesque personalities at the Atlanta reunion, are of a different type from the Negroes of to-day. They identified themselves with their master and mistress’s estate and person in a way that is truly touching. Surely of all beings the Negro is capable of the strongest and most pathetic human attachments.

Freedom, however, and the new ideas blew autumnly over the Virginian summer. All changed. The family retinues broke up. The affections were alienated. The new race of Negro individualists arose. The old “mammies” and “uncles” were a people apart, and are dying out fast now. The new Negroes are with and for themselves. They make shift to be happy and to amuse themselves without the white man. And they have now their schools, their churches which are like religious clubs, their political societies, theatres, and other segregated interests.

These segregated interests have produced and tend to produce an ever-increasing Negro culture, and though that culture may be somewhat despised because of its humble beginnings, there seems no reason why it should not have a future which will compare with that of white America. But south of Richmond and south of Virginia there is progressively less of this Negro culture to be found. There are the oases of Tuskegee Institute and Atlanta and Fisk Universities, but white opinion is adverse to Negro education, and the black masses have been unable to over-crow their neighbors. In Richmond and north of it, however, the black man has leave to breathe awhile, and there are interesting developments.

Richmond, which in 1853 reminded Olmsted of Edinburgh in its picturesqueness, has now quintupled its population, and spread greatly. It is still a handsome city, and its center of Grecian Capitol and public gardens is very pleasant. It is the third blackest city in the United States, between thirty-five and forty per cent of its population being colored. A certain General Gabriel led an insurrection of Negro slaves against Richmond in 1801, and the city has always adopted itself as self-constituted warden of the white man’s safety. The city has, however, been free enough from disturbance since the Civil War. It has its well-endowed Negro colleges, and on the other hand its less satisfactorily placed elementary and secondary schools. As in Norfolk, Negro business is thriving, though it has deeper roots.

It is less promising west of Richmond. A duller economic life prevails, and conditions are more normal, less affected by the prosperity of war industrialism. I traveled by train to Lynchburg. As this was my first experience of trains south of the Mason-Dixon line, I was interested to observe the Jim Crow arrangements. The Negroes are kept to separate waiting rooms, and book their tickets at other booking windows, and they are put into separate carriages in the trains, and not allowed promiscuously with white people, as in the North. They have not quite so good accommodation, though they pay the same fare; sometimes there is less space, sometimes there is no separate smoking compartment. Drawing-room cars and “sleepers” are generally unavailable. Colored people consider it a great grievance, but it is probably the insult implied in their segregation that affects them most. There is not an enormous disparity in the comfort. Inability to obtain food on long-distance trains was often mentioned to me as the chief injustice, but the personal aspect of the matter was always to the fore: “We don’t want to mix in with white people, or with those who don’t want us. We can get on very well by ourselves ...” they were always protesting.

In the North, promiscuously seated black and white passengers all seem quite happy and at ease. Mixing them works well. There is never any hitch. In the South, however, segregation seems to be for the Negro’s good. The less personal contact he has with the white man the safer he is from sudden outbursts of racial feeling. Of course, the railway companies ought to give the Negro equal accommodation for equal fare, but that is another matter.

Lynchburg is a beautifully situated little city beside the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is a great market for dark tobacco. It manufactures iron pipes, ploughs, boots and shoes, and a number of other articles, and boasts of “ideal labor conditions and no strikes.” It is named after the original planter, Charles Lynch, an Irish boy, who ran from home and married a Quaker. It lapsed from Quakerism to a very sinful state, and then is said to have been reformed by the Methodists. Now there is nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly at Lynchburg.

The public library seemed to have paused sick in 1905. It is called the Jones Memorial Library, an impressive white building with an array of white steps leading up to it. Jones himself, who was a business man and served a very short while in the war of North and South, is shown in full martial attire drawing his sword, halfway up the stone steps—as it were in act of driving readers away. A cold cloister-like air pervaded the building. Negroes were not permitted in, and white people did not enter much. The librarian, however, was unusually kind and obliging, and lent me a book without taking a deposit. This lady said she would rather sit next to a decent black woman in a train than to the average White.

“We all had our black mammies—they treated us as if we were their own babies. Can you blame us if sometimes we love them as our own flesh and blood? All the trouble we have is due to Northerners coming South. And if a Negro gets lynched, what a fuss is made of it!”

I met the manager of a tobacco warehouse. He was not willing that I should see his Negroes at work and talk to them, but he assured me in a bland way, cigar in hand, that his pickers were a jolly crowd who knew they were well paid and would never go on strike. He paid thirty to thirty-five cents the hour for Negro labor.

“The war has played the devil with the niggers,” said he. “It has spread about the idea of high wages. The North has been especially to blame, luring the niggers up there with the bait of big money. It has caused a rise in wages all over the South.”