Part 1 (1/2)
The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments.
by Archibald H. Grimke.
The legal status of the Negro in the United States is difficult to define or describe, because on paper he is an American citizen, ent.i.tled to the rights of an American citizen, but in practice he does not get what he is ent.i.tled to or anything like it in certain parts of the Republic. His life is safe-guarded by written law, and so is his liberty and his activities in pursuit of happiness and to better his condition. Moreover in order that he may protect himself against the predatory aggression and greed of other citizens he is invested by the supreme law of the land with the right to vote, with a voice in the Government, to enable him to defend himself against the enactment of bad and unequal laws and against their bad and unequal administration. Certainly the Negro seems to be the equal in rights of any other American. That he is on paper there is not a doubt, but that he is not in reality there is not a doubt either. What he is ent.i.tled to does not anywhere in the South and in some states of the North square itself with what he actually enjoys. There is an enormous discrepancy in his case between National promise or guarantees and National performance or possessions. He is an American citizen under the National Const.i.tution. To be sure he is, but with a big qualification. He has the right to reach up and out and to grow in every direction like other American citizens whose race and color are different from his own.
Not a doubt of it in legal theory but when he puts his theoretical rights to the test of fact he finds that he is different, that he may not do many of the things which white men all about him are doing all the time. He finds that even the Chinese who are denied citizens.h.i.+p in the Republic, receive better treatment, are accorded larger liberties as men than are allowed him in the South.
Why is this? Why does the Negro occupy this very anomalous position in his country? Is it because he is an alien? It cannot really be that, because he is not an alien. But perhaps it is because the whites choose to make believe that he is an alien, which comes nearer the real reason.
Nevertheless no alien is he any more than are the whites themselves, if duration of occupancy of the soil has anything to do with making a race native and to the manner born. Is it because the Negro has proved himself an undesirable citizen? Certainly not if past services to the country of the greatest value are any proof to the contrary. In the Revolutionary War he was no insignificant factor in achieving American independence; and in the War of 1812 which defended this independence against British aggression; and in the Civil War which saved the Union and abolished slavery; and in the Spanish-American War which removed a chronic peril to the National peace and added immensely to the National domain. Nor has he failed as a laborer, for he does annually his share of the work of the Nation, and in the production of its wealth. Without Negro labor how much less cotton would the South produce annually, or sugar or rice or tobacco, think you? His labor besides is very much in evidence in southern mines and mills and trades. Then, has he ever plotted against the Government, state or national, was he ever as a cla.s.s a menace to law and order, or an enemy to property, or a breeder of industrial unrest and violence? On the contrary has he not been patient and peaceful and cheerful under wrongs which would have made any other cla.s.s of Americans sullen and dangerous and lawless? No, he is not an undesirable citizen for these sufficient reasons, but there is yet another good answer on this head. Negro labor could not in any considerable numbers leave the South voluntarily because Southern capital and landed interests would not let it, would resist by force if found necessary its migration to other parts.
This sounds singular in this land of the free and it is singular, for of no other cla.s.s of American labor could it be said that its right to migrate from one state to another is actually obstructed by law and would be resisted by force. It is singular but it is nevertheless true. If a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand agricultural laborers in the West were to make up their minds to move to the cotton belt of the South, they would be free to do so, regardless of the injury which Western farmers might suffer in consequence of their migration. But if one hundred thousand, or ten thousand, or even one thousand Negro cotton pickers desired to quit picking cotton and to seek their fortune in other states, does anyone imagine that they would be allowed to depart in peace, that they would not find rather by violent experience that they are not at liberty to make the change? The South does not regard the Negro laborer then as undesirable but quite the contrary--only it wants to retain possession of it on its own terms, not on those advantageous to that labor.
As an American citizen then the Negro has a paper right to move freely from one place to another, but in the South were he to attempt to realize on this right he would in all probability find himself realizing on a totally different proposition--maybe the chain gang at the hands of a prejudiced court on some trumped up charge of an employer, or death at the hands of a mob. This sounds amazing and it is amazing because it fits the Negro's case so exactly, because it is an accurate description of his condition as an agricultural laborer in many of the Southern states.
On every hand over against his paper rights as a citizen, the Negro faces facts which make his citizens.h.i.+p seem like a snare and a delusion. Let us suppose that a member of the American Negro Academy wishes with wife or daughter to visit Florida for his health. He cannot make the journey there like a white man, whether citizen or foreigner, or like any other traveller to that section whatever his race since he be not a Negro. And it makes no difference how refined or educated or wealthy or infirm or aged a colored pa.s.senger may be, whether man, woman or child, he encounters the same unjust and unequal treatment at the hands of the railroads. What though he has paid for himself and wife or daughter the same fare which pa.s.sengers of the favored cla.s.s pay, he finds that there is a vast difference between what he gets and what they get for precisely the same money. They get always the best accommodations for themselves and families, while he gets the worst. There is not a restaurant along the route where he may get a meal, and not a hotel which would give him a bed over night. If he can afford it he may procure a seat in a Pullman, and then again he may not be able to do so, and in this case as in the event of his not being able to afford to buy a seat in a Pullman, he must make the journey in a ”Jim Crow” car, without separate toilet arrangements for the s.e.xes, deficient in soap and towels, in water and in general and particular cleanliness, exposed constantly to the intrusions and the fumes, alcoholic and tobacco, of white men pa.s.sing to and from their smoker, which is one-half of the ”Jim Crow” coach and divided from it only by an inadequate part.i.tion.
The colored pa.s.senger is, to be sure, an American citizen on paper, but what is it worth to him under the circ.u.mstances? Can it compel railroads to furnish him decent accommodations, which federal law provides shall be equal to those furnished to white pa.s.sengers, and for which the colored pa.s.senger pays the same fare as the white one? It is notorious that the accommodations furnished by the railroads in interstate commerce to their colored pa.s.sengers are inferior to those which they furnish white pa.s.sengers for the same fare. The Interstate Commerce Commission knows this and knows it well, yet it makes no determined and persistent attempt to compel railroads to give to their colored pa.s.sengers accommodations equal to those which they furnish their white ones. It is too busy attending to the more important business relating to the property rights and interests of s.h.i.+ppers and capitalists to spare the time to break up an evil which makes the existence of colored interstate pa.s.sengers an unbroken experience of bitter hards.h.i.+ps and humiliations. Surely there are American citizens and American citizens--citizens whom Government protects and enables to make good their claim to equality before the law, and other citizens whom Government does not protect or enable to make good their claim to equality before the law. And to this latter cla.s.s belongs the Negro nearly every time and almost everywhere.
The Negro is the great American anomaly. Judged by his rights on paper his citizens.h.i.+p is indisputable, but judged by his rights in fact it is full of mutilations and amputations which disfigure it almost beyond recognition. One-half of it appears in the light clothed with fragments of his rights, and the other half is in eclipse, exposed naked to biting cold and bitter wrong. He appeals to good men and true in the South and in the North and in the Government too, to give him what he is ent.i.tled to. He does not get it or anything like it. There does not appear to be common honesty and decency enough in the railroads to give him what he pays for as an interstate traveller, human compa.s.sion to say nothing of common justice enough in the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce against the railroads the law made by the Government to conciliate the race prejudice of the South. The separate car feature of the Railroad Rate Bill was inserted in deference to the demand of the South, and the equal accommodation feature as an act of plain commercial justice to the Negro.
The South has never failed to get its separate cars, while the Negro has never failed either to receive the most unequal accommodations in open violation of the provisions of that bill.
But this is not all or anything like all that mars almost beyond recognition the citizens.h.i.+p of the Negro. If one doubts this, let him go into the South and let him venture to incite the Negroes there to an a.s.sertion of their rights. Freedom of the press is theirs under the Const.i.tution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to say publicly what they think about the un-Christian and undemocratic way in which they are treated? Let them try it and see what will happen to them, that is, if they be wholly reckless of consequences. Freedom of the press is another of their rights, one of the boasted bulwarks of the Const.i.tution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to write as freely or anything like as freely about white men and women, especially the latter, as white men write about colored men and women? Let some colored editor make the experiment and tell afterward what happened to him hot on the heels of his article. He may not be able to enlighten the public but the a.s.sociated press dispatch will give the grim facts relating to the end of that editor, who undertook to monkey with the buzz saw of the freedom of the press in a Southern community.
Another of the sacred rights which appertain to the Negro's American citizens.h.i.+p is the right of public a.s.sembly to consider his grievances and discuss measures for their redress. Well, if any group of Negroes in almost any part of the South are hunting for trouble, let them get up a public meeting for such a purpose, and give vent to the righteous indignation against oppressions which ought to stir the blood of any man who is not a slave, and then watch results. A flaming spirit will presently appear in the midst of that meeting, and it will not be the flaming spirit of liberty, but of a Southern mob on arson and murder bent. Negro property will be burned and Negro blood will be shed, and that without stint or mercy. The Negro's Const.i.tutional right to a.s.semble to consider his wrongs is in reality too weak to resist the murderous violence of a Southern mob. The mob burns Negroes and their property almost everywhere in the South with absolute impunity. Nothing is done by the authorities to punish the mob or to protect their victims. And yet both the mob and its victims are American citizens, ent.i.tled alike on paper to the law's protection and amenable alike to its penalties. The white man enjoys a monopoly of the first and the Negro gets the lion's share of the second. The colored man who has the temerity to agitate for his rights in the South may find himself agitating speedily at the end of a rope, unless he more speedily finds some hole in the ground to give him the protection which Government refuses him. He would in that event be surer of the thing which he seeks if the hole in the ground were a hole in some grave yard, for then the hole might be pulled in after him, when he would find rest at last--surcease from all the cruel perplexities and inequalities of his American citizens.h.i.+p.
Again I ask why is all this thus? It is not because the Negro is an alien or because he is an undesirable citizen. For he is not that at all, as we have seen, but quite the contrary. But how explain this enormous contradiction between the rights which he is legally ent.i.tled to and those which he actually possesses? Here he is fifty years after emanc.i.p.ation, forty-four years after his invest.i.ture with American citizens.h.i.+p, and forty-two years after the adoption of the great Amendment to the Const.i.tution which gave him the right to vote, a voice in making the laws, not more than half free, than half a citizen in many States of the Union.
Why is this so, I ask again? Is it not because he is the ballotless victim in those states of one-party governments in which he is denied a voice? In 1866 Governor John A. Andrew foresaw clearly what would be the fate of the Negro in the old slave states without the ballot. The condition which the great War Governor foresaw then fits remarkably well the Negro's actual condition to-day in certain sections of the nation. ”Meanwhile,” he said, ”the disfranchised freedmen, hated by some because he is black, contemned by some because he has been a slave, feared by some because of the antagonisms of society, is condemned to the condition of a hopeless pariah of a merciless civilization. In the community he is not of it. He neither belongs to a master nor to society.” The thing which John A. Andrew foresaw in 1866 as likely to come to pa.s.s in case of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the blacks, has been coming to pa.s.s ever since. And the cause which has reduced the Negro to his present anomalous position in the Republic of which he is a citizen, is his lack of the right to vote, which makes its possessor a part of the community in which he lives, and enables him to make that community respond to his needs as a vital part of its body social and politic.
The Negro in the ma.s.s is a disfranchised man. His political influence in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia is practically at the zero point. The ma.s.s of the disfranchised in those seven Southern States is so great that by the law of gravitation its very weight and number affect more or less adversely the status of the rest of the race in other states. The disfranchised Negro operates in many ways to depreciate the rights of the enfranchised Negro, and to draw him by the invisible threads of race kins.h.i.+p and of race prejudice toward if not quite within the zone of his own limitations and disabilities. A disfranchised cla.s.s in an industrial republic like ours is as much at the mercy of an enfranchised cla.s.s as is a flock of shepherdless sheep at the mercy of a pack of wolves. The wolves will devour the sheep and the enfranchised cla.s.s will prey on the disfranchised cla.s.s. To the wall the weak will be driven and harried and destroyed whether they be sheep or men, and this the strong will do every time whether they be men or wolves. The shepherd protects the sheep from the depredations of the wolves, and the ballot protects poverty against property, a weak race or cla.s.s against the hate and aggressions of stronger ones within the same country.
A citizen without the ballot in America is in fact, whatever he may be in law, a de-citizenized man--exposed in consequence to the enmities, the jealousies, the insults and the violence of other citizens who are more fortunate in this regard. He is, whatever may be his legal status on paper, a proscribed man, subject to unmerited and unmeasured ignominies and injustices at the hands of his country, its society, its pa.s.sions and prejudices. Governor Andrew was right, a disfranchised man, a disfranchised cla.s.s must become ultimately, ”The hopeless pariah of a merciless civilization.” This is the peril, the fate which hangs over the colored race at the close of the first fifty years of its emanc.i.p.ation.
Governor Andrew's scheme for the reconstruction of the rebel states included not only the extension of the suffrage to the blacks but the re-admission to their full citizens.h.i.+p of the cla.s.s of old slaveholders who had carried those states out of the Union. They were needed as leaders in the work of restoration and reconstruction, he shrewdly argued. And he was right. They were indeed the natural leaders of the South, and had they turned their backs upon the past and faced patriotically the new problems and the new posture of their affairs they might have led both races into the promised land of freedom and peace and Southern industrial expansion and greatness. Had they seized their golden opportunity for progressive and constructive statesmans.h.i.+p, the sceptre of their ascendency in the governments of their section could not have been wrested from them by another cla.s.s of whites, risen since the war, who distrust and hate them, but they might instead have transmitted their ascendency undiminished to their descendants, who ought to be today the leaders of the new South.
The course laid down by Governor Andrew was not followed either by the South or by the North. The Southern leaders taking advantage of the opportunity given them by Andrew Johnson reconstructed their section along the lines of their old social system, reducing its changes to a minimum.
They emerged out of their reconstruction operation with a Negro serf system to take the place of their old slave system. The Negro as a serf was just about as valuable as an industrial a.s.set to the great landlords and to the small ones too for that matter, as had been the Negro as a slave. Just about as much unpaid and involuntary labor could be got out of the first as out of the last. Thus did the old master cla.s.s perform their task without changing materially their old social system. But they likewise issued from their labors not less fortunate in another respect.
Their old political power would not suffer any radical change in consequence of the abolition of slavery either. For whereas five slaves had counted for them in the ante bellum apportionment of representatives as three freemen, five serfs would count in the post-bellum apportionment as five free men--a pretty large gain for the new power over the old one in federal numbers. But in achieving this double success the old master cla.s.s overreached itself. The return of the South into the newly restored Union stronger as a serf power than it had been as a slave power aroused the instant fear of the North and set Congress in motion to thwart such reappearance of that section into the arena of national politics.
Congress thereupon took upon itself the work of Southern reconstruction.
The extreme gravity of the situation as it affected the Negro lay in the political solidity of that section with its one-party governments in which he was denied a voice. His freedom could not long survive such a combination of Southern race prejudice and pa.s.sion and political power as const.i.tuted at that time the solid South and its one-party governments.
They were then and they continue to be the greatest obstacle to the freedom and advancement of the Negro as an American citizen. They signalized their first entrance upon the stage of national affairs by an attempt to create a serf cla.s.s out of their former slaves. When I say that they const.i.tute the greatest obstacle to the freedom and advancement of the Negro, I mean, of course, the greatest obstacle outside of the Negro himself. For I take it that no race that possesses intelligence, industry and character, coupled with unity of purpose and action can be kept forever out of its rights and in a backward state even by the American white people, accomplished as they are in this species of national wickedness, unless they intend to reverse the wheel of their progress and to retrograde in free inst.i.tutions and civilization.
Against Southern political solidity and its one-party governments Congress directed its reconstruction measures. With the dissolution of this solidity and the introduction of bi-party in place of one-party governments the Republican leaders looked for the pa.s.sing of the danger to Northern sectional supremacy and the freedom of the Negro. The freedmen were utilized at this juncture to effect the necessary changes in the Southern situation which the exigency demanded. He was first raised to citizens.h.i.+p, and when that proved inadequate to meet the emergency, he was invested with the right to vote on equal terms with the whites. This great const.i.tutional revolution in the status of the Negro laid the basis for a political revolution in the old slave states also. The solid South was dissolved for the nonce and two-party governments made their re-entrance upon the stage of Southern affairs. There followed prompt repeal of the reactionary legislation hostile to the Negro, which had signalized the rise to power of the solid South and its one-party governments. The North received its share likewise of the gains incident to this revolution in the increase of its partisan strength in both branches of the National Legislature, and which in turn confirmed its political domination in the Union.