Part 5

His employees were unskilled. In his opinion no Negroes were ever used for skilled work. What I had to tell him of Newport News and its shipyards was beyond his comprehension. As for Hampton Institute, he averred that he had never heard that it produced capable artisans. In his opinion there had been some good Negro carpenters and wheelwrights in slavery, but none since. Freedom had been very bad for the Negro. Yes, he utterly approved of lynching. It was always justified, and mistakes were never made. He had a water-tight mind.

A mile or so away was Virginia College, a red-brick structure in the woods, where in happy seclusion a few hundred colored men and women were being enfranchised of civilization and culture. A student took me to his study-bedroom, hung with portraits of John Brown and Booker T. Washington. The Bible was still the most important book, and it occupied the pride of place, though it was interleaved with pages of the Negro radical monthly, _The Crisis_. The student was an intense and earnest boy with all the extra seriousness of persecuted race consciousness. He said, in a low voice, that he would do anything at any cost for his people. He said the present leaders of the Negro world would fail, because of narrow outlook, but the next leaders would win great victories for color. And he would be ready to follow the new leaders. What a contrast they were!—the boss of the tobacco factory, cigar in hand, “talking wise” on the nigger, and the quiet Negro intellectual in his college, whetting daily the sword of learning and ambition.

III

ORATORS AND ACTORS, PREACHERS AND SINGERS

The aspirations and convictions of the Negroes of to-day were well voiced in a speech I heard at Harlem. I had been warned that I ought to hear the “red-hot orator of the Afro-American race,” and so I went to hear him. The orator was Dean Pickens, of Morgan College, Baltimore. When he came to the platform the colored audience not only cheered him by clapping, but stood up and cried aloud three times:

“_Yea, Pickens!_”

The chairman had said he would have to leave about half after five, but the speaker must not allow himself to be disturbed by that, but go right on. Pickens, who was one of the very black and very cheerful types of his race, turned to the chairman and said:

“You won’t disturb _me_, brother! But if you’re going at half after five, let’s shake hands right now, and then I can go straight ahead.”

And they shook hands with great gusto, and everyone laughed and felt at ease. Pickens was going to speak; nothing could disturb Pickens; they relaxed themselves to a joyful, anticipatory calm.

Just before the turn of Pickens to speak a white lady journalist had rushed on to the platform and rushed off between two pressing engagements, and had given the audience a “heart-to-heart” talk on Bolsheviks and agitators, and had told them how thankful they ought to be that they were in America and not in the Congo still. She gained a good deal of applause because she was a woman, and a White, and was glib, but the thinking Negroes did not care for her doctrine, and were sorry she could not wait to hear it debated.

“Brothers, they’re always telling us what we ought to be,” said the orator, with an engaging smile. “But there are many different opinions about what ought to be; it’s what we are that matters. As a colored pastor said to his flock one day—’Brothers and sisters, it’s not the _oughtness_ of this problem that we have to consider, but the _isness_!’ I am going to speak about the _is_ness. Sister S——, who has just spoken, has had to go to make a hurry call elsewhere, but I am sorry she could not stay. I think she might perhaps have heard something worth while this afternoon. Sister S—— warned us against agitators and radicals. Now, I am not against or for agitators. The question is: ’What are they agitating about?’ ‘Show me the agitator,’ I say. President Wilson is a great agitator; he is agitating a League of Nations. Jesus Christ was a great agitator; He agitated Christianity. The Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t like His agitating, and they fixed Him. But He was a good agitator, and we’re not against Him. Then, again, the Irish are great agitators; the Jews are great agitators; there are good and bad agitators. (_Applause_.) But, brothers, I’ll tell you who is the greatest agitator in this country ... the greatest agitator is injustice. (_Sensation_.) When injustice disappears, I’ll be against agitators, or I’ll be ready to see them put in a lunatic asylum. (_Applause_.)

“Sister S—— was very hard on the radicals. There, again, show me the radical, I say. A man may be radically wrong, yes, but he may also be radically _right_. (_Laughter_.)

“As for the Bolsheviks, it’s injustice is making Bolshevism. It’s injustice that changes quiet, inoffensive school teachers and workingmen into Bolsheviks, just as it is injustice is stirring up the colored people. Not that we are Bolsheviks. I am not going to say anything against Bolsheviks, either. Show me the Bolshevik first, I say, and then I’ll know whether I’m against him. People are alarmed because the number of Bolsheviks is increasing. But what is making them increase? If America is such a blessed country, why is she making all these Bolsheviks? You know a tree by its fruits, and so you may know a country by what it produces. These Bolsheviks that we read of being deported in the Soviet Ark weren’t Bolshevik when they came to this country. It comes to this: that we’ve raised a crop of Bolshevism in this country and are exporting it to Europe, and now we’re busy sowing another crop. Stop sowing injustice, and Bolshevism will cease growing. (_Applause again._)

“But there is less Bolshevism among the colored people than among the white, because the colored are more humble, more subservient, more used to inequalities. We are always being told that we are backward, and we believe it; bad, and we believe it; untrustworthy, and we believe it; immoral, and we believe it. We are always being told what we ought to be. But I’ll come back to what we are.

“We may be immoral; we may be a danger to the white women. But has anyone ever honestly compared the morality of Whites and Blacks? They will tell you there is not sufficient evidence to make a comparison, or they will bring you pamphlets and paragraphs out of newspapers, records of disgusting crimes; and we know very well that in twelve million Negroes there are bound to be some half-wits and criminals capable of terrible breaches of morality. But at best it is a paper evidence against the Negro, while there is flesh-and-blood evidence against the White. The moral standard of the Whites is written visibly in the flesh and blood of three million of our race. (_Another sensation._) Brothers, there’s one standard for the white man, and another for the colored man. (_Sensation redoubled._) A colored man’s actions are not judged in the same light as those of a white man.

“Well, I’m not against that. It is giving us a higher ideal. A colored man has got to be much more careful in this country than a white man. He’ll be more heavily punished for the same crime. If he gets into a dispute with a white man he’s bound to lose his case. So he won’t get into the dispute. (_Laughter._) Where a white man gets five years’ imprisonment, the Negro gets put in the electric chair. Where the white man gets six days, he gets two years. If a white man seduces a colored girl, she never gets redress. If the other thing occurs, the Negro is legally executed, or lynched. What is the result of all that inequality? Why, it is making us a more moral, less criminal, less violent people than the Whites. Once at a mixed school they were teaching the black and white boys to jump. The white boys jumped and the black boys jumped. But when it was the black boy’s turn the teacher always lifted the jumping stick a few inches. What was the consequence? Why, after a while every colored boy in that school could jump at least a foot higher than any white boy. (Renewed sensation, in which Pickens attempted several times to resume.)

“That is what is happening to the Negro race in America. We are being taught to jump a foot higher than the Whites. We will jump it, or we will break our necks. (_Laughter._)

“Of course a great difference separates the Black from the White still. And I don’t say that the white man hasn’t given us a chance. If our positions had been transposed, and we had been masters and the white folks had been the slaves, I’m not sure that we wouldn’t have treated them worse than they have treated us. But the white folk make a mistake when they think we’re not taking the chances they give us. We are taking them. We are covering the ground that separates Black from White. The white man is not outstripping us in the race. We are nearer to him than we were—not farther away. We haven’t caught up, but we’re touching. We are always doing things we never did before. (_Applause._)

“We shall not have cause to regret the time of persecution and injustice and the higher standard of morality that has been set us. Brothers, it’s all worth while. Our boys here have been to France and bled and suffered for white civilization and white justice. We didn’t want to go. We didn’t know anything about it. But it’s been good for us. We’ve made the cause of universal justice our cause. We have taken a share in world sufferings and world politics. It’s going to help raise us out of our obscurity. We have discovered the French, and shall always be grateful to them. We didn’t know France before, but every colored soldier is glad now that he fought for France. If there is to be a League of Nations, we know France will stand by us. And we shall have a share in the councils of Humanity—with our colored brethren in all parts of the world.” (_Sensation again._)

The orator spoke for two hours, and the above is only a personal remembrance put down afterwards. His actual speech is therefore much shortened. But that was the sense and the flavor of it. It was given in a voice of humor and challenge, resonant, and yet everlastingly whimsical. Laughter rippled the whole time. I shook hands with him afterwards; for he was warm and eloquent and moving as few speakers I have heard. He was utterly exhausted, for he had drawn his words from his audience, and two thousand people had been pulling at his spirit for two hours.

It was delightful to listen to a race propagandist so devoid of hatred, malice, and uncharitableness. Some regard humor as the greatest concomitant of wisdom, and this representative Negro certainly had both. He never touched on the tragedy of race hatred and racial injustice, but he saw the humor of them also. And the colored audience saw the humor also. With the English there would have been anger, with the French spontaneous insurrection, with the Jews gnashing of teeth, but with the Negroes it was humor. There was no collective hate or spite, but, manifest always, a desire to be happy, even in the worst circumstances.

It is curious, however, that the Negro has a livelier sense of the humor of tragedy than the white man. For two months I visited a Negro theatre every week, and I was much struck by the fact that where there was most cause to weep or feel melancholy, the colored audience was most provoked to mirth. Negro companies, such as the Lafayette Players, play “Broadway successes,” melodramas, classical dramas, musical comedies, and indeed anything that would be staged in a white man’s theatre. But the result is nearly always comedy. As upon occasion white men burn cork and make up as Negroes, so the Negroes paint themselves white and make up as white men and women. Watching them is an entrancing study, because there is not only the original drama and its interest, but superadded the interpretation by Africans of what they think the white man is and does and says. Some of it is like the servants’ hall dressed up as master and mistress and their friends, but has remarkable felicity in acting. A large party, all in full evening dress, is very striking—only the Negro women are on the average so huge that when painted white and exposing vast fronts of bosoms, they are somewhat incredible. A typical evening party on the stage, with villain and hero, looks very handsome, but not in any way Anglo-Saxon, if conceivably foreign American. The hero may have a perfectly villainous expression. One’s mind is taken away from America to the Mediterranean. Even when painted, it is impossible to look other than children of the sun. The drama is played with a great deal of noise. When the moments of passion arrive, everyone lets himself go, and the stage is swallowed up in a hurly-burly of violent word and

## action. There is never any difficulty in hearing what is being said.

But even the minor characters, such as butler and waiter, who should be practically mute, insist on whistling and singing as they go about, and serve the guests in a _pas de danse_. In one serious melodrama the butler never appeared but he hummed resonantly the popular air: “Yakky, Yekky, Yikky, Yokky Doola.” The villain or villainess is likely to act the part with great verve, and generally I remarked a true aptitude for

## acting, an ability which noise and violence could not hide. A white

drama is literally transformed on the Negro stage. The Negroes catch hold of any childishness or piece of make-believe and give it a sort of poetry. Thus, for instance, Miss Elenor Porter’s “Polyanna,” with its gospel of “_Be glad_,” is a cloying sentimentalism in the hands of the ordinary white company. But the Negroes make it into a sort of “Alice in Wonderland,” very amusing, very sweet, and very touching—something entirely delightful. The consciousness of the white person sitting in the colored theater is, however, continually disturbed by ripples of tittering whenever on the stage there is a suggestion of calamity. When it is melodrama that is being played, the audience laughs all the time like a collection of intellectuals who have visited a popular theatre to watch “The Silver King” or “The Girl’s Crossroads.” The very suggestion of disaster is funny.

This is an indication of difference in soul. There are many who would see in these white-painted Negroes another instance of a passion for the imitation of white people. But one could hardly point to anything that shows more readily the sheer difference of black and white people than the Negro stage such as it is to-day.

There is not as yet a Negro drama, but it certainly will arise. Ridgely Torrence’s “Plays for a Negro Theatre” is perhaps the nearest approach so far to a genuine Negro drama, but the author is white. The great success of these plays when acted by Negroes only shows the glory that awaits the awakening of a true Negro dramatist. Every large city in America has its Negro theatre or music hall or cinema shows. The drama could become an organ of racial self-expression, and could give voice to the hopes and aspirations and sorrows of the colored people in a very moving way. I think such a drama would prove highly original. Comedy would be conceived in a different spirit. So far from the Negro imitating the white man, we should all be found imitating him—as we already imitate him in our dances and music. The new Negro humor would infect the whole Western world.

It is generally called “the blues.” We say we have a fit of the blues when we are feeling depressed. It is not at all a laughing matter, but the Negro finds that state of mind to be always humorous. A hundred new comic songs tell the humor of sorrows. All the gloomy formulas of everyday life have been set to music. Telling one’s hard fortune and howling over it and drawing it out and infinitely bewailing it, and adding circumstantial minor sorrows as one goes along and infinitely bewailing them—this is distinctively Negro humor.

I visited one evening a Negro theatre where a musical comedy was going on—words and music both by Negroes. It opened with the usual singing and dancing chorus of Negro girls. They were clad in yellow and crimson and mauve combinations with white tapes on one side from the lace edge of the knicker to their dusky arms. They danced from the thigh rather than from the knee, moving waist and bosom in unrestrained undulation, girls with large, startled seeming eyes and uncontrollable masses of dark hair. A dance of physical joy and abandon, with no restraint in the toes or the knees, no veiling of the eyes, no half shutting of the lips, no holding in of the hair. Accustomed to the very æsthetic presentment of the Bacchanalia in the Russian Ballet, it might be difficult to call one of those Negro dancers a Bacchante, and yet there was one whom I remarked again and again, a Queen of Sheba in her looks, a face like starry night, and she was clad slightly in mauve, and went into such ecstasies during the many encores that her hair fell down about her bare shoulders, and her cheeks and knees, glistening with perspiration, outshone her eyes. Following this chorus a love story begins to be developed—a humorous mother-in-law of tremendous proportions and deep bass voice, her black face blackened further to the color of boots, reprimands and pets her scapegrace son, who is the comic loafer. He confers with his “buddy” as to how to win “Baby,” the belle of Dark City. The “buddy” is the lugubriously stupid and faithful and above all comic Negro friend who in trying to help you always does you an ill turn. “Baby” is the beautiful doll of the piece—“Honey baby, sugar baby!” She is courted also by the villain, who is plausible and well dressed and polite, but still provocative of mirth. The hero and the villain do a competitive cake walk for the girl, posturizing, showing off, approaching and retiring, almost squatting and dancing, leaping and dancing, swimming through the air, throwing everything away from them and falling forward, and yet never falling, blowing out their cheeks and dilating their eyes, and, as it were, hoo-dooing and out-hoo-dooing one another, pseudo-enragement, monkey-mocking of one another, feigned stage-fright and pretended escapes. Seeing this done on a first night, the whole theatre was jammed and packed with Negro people, and they recalled the couple nine times, and still they gave encores. One of them, the villain, gave up, but the other, the hero, went on as if still matched, his mouth open and panting, and perspiration streaming through the black grease on his face—for he also had blackened himself further for fun. The wedding service was danced and sung in a “scena” which would have enravished even a Russian audience. I had seen nothing so pretty or so amusing, so bewilderingly full of life and color, since Sanine’s production of the “Fair of Sorochinsky,” in Moscow.

The most characteristic parts of the comedy, however, were to come. It was very lengthy, for Negroes do not observe white conventions regarding time. It would be tedious to describe in words what was wholly delightful to see. But there were two crises when the audience roared with joy excessively. First, when the young husband suspects his wife of flirting with the villain, and second, when he wants to make it up and every imaginable calamity descends upon his head. He arrives at his home about midnight, wearing a terribly tight pair of boots and a suit of old, dusty clothes. There is a party at the house; everyone is in evening dress. He won’t go in to the dance room. He has to sit down and take his boots off, and henceforth walks about holding them in his hands. He sees his wife dancing with the villain, makes a scene, and then dramatically leaves his wife for ever. Left behind, she stares a moment in silence, and then throws herself full length on a low table, kicks up her heels, and vents her unhappiness in a series of prolonged howls and paroxysms which put the audience into a heaven of delight. The tight boots and the limp they cause are _blues_; the wife’s grief is a _blue_; and for the rest of the drama the melancholy husband is seen tramping about in his socks, carrying his wretched boots in his hands. His unhappiness is long-drawn-out, but when at last he decides to forgive and comes back home, he is met by the lugubrious “buddy” outside his house, who tells him all his wife has suffered in his absence. The repentant husband looks very miserable.

“And then a little baby boy was born,” says Buddy.

The repentant husband cheers up.

“So like you, such a beauty.”

The husband waxes excited and happy, and asks a flood of questions.

“But the baby died,” says his lugubrious companion.

The poor hero yells with sorrow.

“How Baby wished you were there to see little baby,” says Buddy. “How she talked of you!”

“The little darling—and she has quite forgiven me?”

“She forgave you, all right. Ah, she was a fine woman. You never deserved such a woman as she was, so beautiful, so loving, so tender, so devoted—always saying your name, counting the days you had been away from her and moping and sighing. Ah, it ate into her heart!”

“Yes, Buddy, I am a worthless, miserable nigger, that’s what I am. I didn’t deserve to have her.”

“She said: ‘Oh, for one kiss; oh, for one hug—— ‘”

“I’ll go in to her at once.”

“Stop!” says Buddy impressively.

“Wha’s the matter?”

“She died day after baby was born.”

“No?”

“Yassir. Stone dead. Sure’s I live.”

The poor hero breaks down and sobs and wails and howls and blubbers, distraction in his aspect, his knees knock together, he throws his hat in the dust—and all the while the audience is convulsed with laughter. The Negro women in the stalls find their chairs too small for them and all but fall on to the floor; the smartly dressed Negro youths in the boxes are guffawing from wide-opened mouths and laughing as much with their bodies as with their faces.

“Mother and I went to town to buy the coffin,” says Buddy. “Poor old Mother!”

“Did Mother forgive me?”

“Oh, yes, she forgave you all right. Such a mother as she was. She knew you were bad and wrong and a disgrace, but she loved you. Ah, how she loved you!”

“I am glad there’s poor old Mother.”

“Mother and I arranged for the funerals, but we had to sell up the home. Yes, every stick.”

More and more grief on the part of husband.

“I’ll go in and see her anyway,” says he, moving toward the door.

“Stop!” says Buddy.

“Wha’s the matter?”