The Souls of Black Folk
educated Negroes dangerous and insolent. Moreover, in a land where the
tyranny of public opinion and the intolerance of criticism is for
obvious historical reasons so strong as in the South, such a situation
is extremely difficult to correct. The white man, as well as the Negro,
is bound and barred by the color-line, and many a scheme of
friendliness and philanthropy, of broad-minded sympathy and generous
fellowship between the two has dropped still-born because some busybody
has forced the color-question to the front and brought the tremendous
force of unwritten law against the innovators.
It is hardly necessary for me to add very much in regard to the social
contact between the races. Nothing has come to replace that finer
sympathy and love between some masters and house servants which the
radical and more uncompromising drawing of the color-line in recent
years has caused almost completely to disappear. In a world where it
means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look
frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a
world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than
legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches,—one can imagine
the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities
between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and
streetcars.
Here there can be none of that social going down to the people,—the
opening of heart and hand of the best to the worst, in generous
acknowledgment of a common humanity and a common destiny. On the other
hand, in matters of simple almsgiving, where there can be no question
of social contact, and in the succor of the aged and sick, the South,
as if stirred by a feeling of its unfortunate limitations, is generous
to a fault. The black beggar is never turned away without a good deal
more than a crust, and a call for help for the unfortunate meets quick
response. I remember, one cold winter, in Atlanta, when I refrained
from contributing to a public relief fund lest Negroes should be
discriminated against, I afterward inquired of a friend: “Were any
black people receiving aid?” “Why,” said he, “they were _all_ black.”
And yet this does not touch the kernel of the problem. Human
advancement is not a mere question of almsgiving, but rather of
sympathy and cooperation among classes who would scorn charity. And
here is a land where, in the higher walks of life, in all the higher
striving for the good and noble and true, the color-line comes to
separate natural friends and coworkers; while at the bottom of the
social group, in the saloon, the gambling-hell, and the brothel, that
same line wavers and disappears.
I have sought to paint an average picture of real relations between the
sons of master and man in the South. I have not glossed over matters
for policy’s sake, for I fear we have already gone too far in that sort
of thing. On the other hand, I have sincerely sought to let no unfair
exaggerations creep in. I do not doubt that in some Southern
communities conditions are better than those I have indicated; while I
am no less certain that in other communities they are far worse.
Nor does the paradox and danger of this situation fail to interest and
perplex the best conscience of the South. Deeply religious and
intensely democratic as are the mass of the whites, they feel acutely
the false position in which the Negro problems place them. Such an
essentially honest-hearted and generous people cannot cite the
caste-levelling precepts of Christianity, or believe in equality of
opportunity for all men, without coming to feel more and more with each
generation that the present drawing of the color-line is a flat
contradiction to their beliefs and professions. But just as often as
they come to this point, the present social condition of the Negro
stands as a menace and a portent before even the most open-minded: if
there were nothing to charge against the Negro but his blackness or
other physical peculiarities, they argue, the problem would be
comparatively simple; but what can we say to his ignorance,
shiftlessness, poverty, and crime? can a self-respecting group hold
anything but the least possible fellowship with such persons and
survive? and shall we let a mawkish sentiment sweep away the culture of
our fathers or the hope of our children? The argument so put is of
great strength, but it is not a whit stronger than the argument of
thinking Negroes: granted, they reply, that the condition of our masses
is bad; there is certainly on the one hand adequate historical cause
for this, and unmistakable evidence that no small number have, in spite
of tremendous disadvantages, risen to the level of American
civilization. And when, by proscription and prejudice, these same
Negroes are classed with and treated like the lowest of their people,
simply because they are Negroes, such a policy not only discourages
thrift and intelligence among black men, but puts a direct premium on
the very things you complain of,—inefficiency and crime. Draw lines of
crime, of incompetency, of vice, as tightly and uncompromisingly as you
will, for these things must be proscribed; but a color-line not only
does not accomplish this purpose, but thwarts it.
In the face of two such arguments, the future of the South depends on
the ability of the representatives of these opposing views to see and
appreciate and sympathize with each other’s position,—for the Negro to
realize more deeply than he does at present the need of uplifting the
masses of his people, for the white people to realize more vividly than
they have yet done the deadening and disastrous effect of a
color-prejudice that classes Phillis Wheatley and Sam Hose in the same
despised class.
It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the
sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply
that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both
act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will
bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to
any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary
tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely
without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the
Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only by a union of
intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period
of the Republic shall justice and right triumph,
“That mind and soul according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.”
X.
Of the Faith of the Fathers
Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,
Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see,
Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,—
There, there alone for thee
May white peace be.
Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,
What are these dreams to foolish babbling men
Who cry with little noises ’neath the thunder
Of Ages ground to sand,
To a little sand.
FIONA MACLEOD.
It was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home, on a
dark Sunday night. The road wandered from our rambling log-house up the
stony bed of a creek, past wheat and corn, until we could hear dimly
across the fields a rhythmic cadence of song,—soft, thrilling,
powerful, that swelled and died sorrowfully in our ears. I was a
country schoolteacher then, fresh from the East, and had never seen a
Southern Negro revival. To be sure, we in Berkshire were not perhaps as
stiff and formal as they in Suffolk of olden time; yet we were very
quiet and subdued, and I know not what would have happened those clear
Sabbath mornings had some one punctuated the sermon with a wild scream,
or interrupted the long prayer with a loud Amen! And so most striking
to me, as I approached the village and the little plain church perched
aloft, was the air of intense excitement that possessed that mass of
black folk. A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to
seize us,—a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible
reality to song and word. The black and massive form of the preacher
swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in
singular eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the
gaunt-cheeked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into the
air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round about came wail and
groan and outcry, and a scene of human passion such as I had never
conceived before.
Those who have not thus witnessed the frenzy of a Negro revival in the
untouched backwoods of the South can but dimly realize the religious
feeling of the slave; as described, such scenes appear grotesque and
funny, but as seen they are awful. Three things characterized this
religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy. The
Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on
American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a “boss,” an
intriguer, an idealist,—all these he is, and ever, too, the centre of a
group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination of
a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnestness, of tact with
consummate ability, gave him his preeminence, and helps him maintain
it. The type, of course, varies according to time and place, from the
West Indies in the sixteenth century to New England in the nineteenth,
and from the Mississippi bottoms to cities like New Orleans or New
York.
The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its
touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement,
still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life
and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African forests,
where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted, changed, and
intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the
stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people’s
sorrow, despair, and hope.
Finally the Frenzy of “Shouting,” when the Spirit of the Lord passed
by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was
the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed
in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the silent rapt
countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad abandon of physical
fervor,—the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro
and wild waving of arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision and the
trance. All this is nothing new in the world, but old as religion, as
Delphi and Endor. And so firm a hold did it have on the Negro, that
many generations firmly believed that without this visible
manifestation of the God there could be no true communion with the
Invisible.
These were the characteristics of Negro religious life as developed up
to the time of Emancipation. Since under the peculiar circumstances of
the black man’s environment they were the one expression of his higher
life, they are of deep interest to the student of his development, both
socially and psychologically. Numerous are the attractive lines of
inquiry that here group themselves. What did slavery mean to the
African savage? What was his attitude toward the World and Life? What
seemed to him good and evil,—God and Devil? Whither went his longings
and strivings, and wherefore were his heart-burnings and
disappointments? Answers to such questions can come only from a study
of Negro religion as a development, through its gradual changes from
the heathenism of the Gold Coast to the institutional Negro church of
Chicago.
Moreover, the religious growth of millions of men, even though they be
slaves, cannot be without potent influence upon their contemporaries.