The Souls of Black Folk
programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the United States
toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii, and the
Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying
and brute force?
The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has
hitherto said little aloud. They deprecate the sight of scattered
counsels, of internal disagreement; and especially they dislike making
their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a
general discharge of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless,
the questions involved are so fundamental and serious that it is
difficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E.
Bowen, and other representatives of this group, can much longer be
silent. Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three
things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to ability. They acknowledge Mr.
Washington’s invaluable service in counselling patience and courtesy in
such demands; they do not ask that ignorant black men vote when
ignorant whites are debarred, or that any reasonable restrictions in
the suffrage should not be applied; they know that the low social level
of the mass of the race is responsible for much discrimination against
it, but they also know, and the nation knows, that relentless
color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro’s
degradation; they seek the abatement of this relic of barbarism, and
not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies of
social power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ. They
advocate, with Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro common schools
supplemented by thorough industrial training; but they are surprised
that a man of Mr. Washington’s insight cannot see that no such
educational system ever has rested or can rest on any other basis than
that of the well-equipped college and university, and they insist that
there is a demand for a few such institutions throughout the South to
train the best of the Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and
leaders.
This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation
toward the white South; they accept the “Atlanta Compromise” in its
broadest interpretation; they recognize, with him, many signs of
promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment, in this section;
they know that no easy task has been laid upon a region already
tottering under heavy burdens. But, nevertheless, they insist that the
way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in
indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and
criticising uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of
the opportunities at hand and urging their fellows to do the same, but
at the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to their
higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the
realm of possibility. They do not expect that the free right to vote,
to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come in a moment; they
do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the
blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a
people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing
them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for a
people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing
themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in
season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood,
that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need
education as well as white boys.
In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate
demands of their people, even at the cost of opposing an honored
leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a heavy
responsibility,—a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the
struggling masses, a responsibility to the darker races of men whose
future depends so largely on this American experiment, but especially a
responsibility to this nation,—this common Fatherland. It is wrong to
encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to aid and abet
a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so. The
growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and
South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a
source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose
mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked
by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with
permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black
men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of
patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized
methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr.
Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the
inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children,
black and white.
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly.
The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past,
and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to
no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the
South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the
South. The South is not “solid”; it is a land in the ferment of social
change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to
praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to
condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the
South needs,—needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters,
and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.
Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is
not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner
hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers
wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace in his
upward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish
to help him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to
maintain the Negro common schools, and to protect the Negro partially
in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the money-makers,
the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in
the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who
fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged
his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused
to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of
thought and prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against
“the South” is unjust; but to use the same breath in praising Governor
Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page,
and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the
imperative duty of thinking black men.
It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several
instances he has opposed movements in the South which were unjust to
the Negro; he sent memorials to the Louisiana and Alabama
constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in
other ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister
schemes and unfortunate happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally
true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr.
Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its
present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation;
secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more
quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his
future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these
propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths must
never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if
not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second, industrial and
common-school training were necessarily slow in planting because they
had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions,—it
being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was
possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and,
third, while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and
strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his
striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by
the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope
for great success.
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington
is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the
whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the
Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic
spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the
hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting
these great wrongs.
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert
her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly
wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in guilt—cannot
salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this
problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse come to
worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling
and murder of nine millions of men?
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and
delicate,—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their
greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience,
and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and
strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength
of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But
so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does
not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the
emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher
training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South,
or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.
By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights
which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great
words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: “We hold these
truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
IV.
Of the Meaning of Progress
Willst Du Deine Macht verkünden,
Wähle sie die frei von Sünden,
Steh’n in Deinem ew’gen Haus!
Deine Geister sende aus!
Die Unsterblichen, die Reinen,
Die nicht fühlen, die nicht weinen!
Nicht die zarte Jungfrau wähle,
Nicht der Hirtin weiche Seele!
SCHILLER.
Once upon a time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where the
broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to greet
the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men thought
that Tennessee—beyond the Veil—was theirs alone, and in vacation time
they sallied forth in lusty bands to meet the county
school-commissioners. Young and happy, I too went, and I shall not soon
forget that summer, seventeen years ago.
First, there was a Teachers’ Institute at the county-seat; and there
distinguished guests of the superintendent taught the teachers
fractions and spelling and other mysteries,—white teachers in the
morning, Negroes at night. A picnic now and then, and a supper, and the