BY STEPHEN GRAHAM New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 All Rights Reserved Copyright , 1920, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY —— Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1920. The Negro slaves were released in 1863. They and their children number twelve millions out of a total of a hundred millions of all races blending in America. Where do the children of the slaves stand to-day?...

THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY Although Charles Lynch of Virginia used to suspend British farmers by their thumbs until they cried out Liberty for ever! and lynching has continued ever since, America is nevertheless at bottom free, or at least was intended to be so by the idealists and politicians who brought her forth. America is a living reproof of Europe, and it has been generally conceived of as a land where men should suffer no encroachment upon their personal liberty, where they should reap duly the

The children of the slaves also inherit evil from their slavery. The worst of these are resentment and a desire for revenge. Doubtless, slavery sensualized the Negro. He was the passive receptacle for the white man’s lusts. Most of the Negroes arrived in America more morally pure than they are to-day. As savages, they were nearer to nature. Mentally and spiritually they are much higher now, but they have learned more about sin, and sin is written in most of their bodies. It is sharpest in the mu

“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

IN TENNESSEE The South, they tell me, never alters. It is said to be the least characteristic and most uninteresting part of the United States. “You will not care for it,” I was told. “It has not changed in fifty years.” It is certainly little visited. It does not exemplify the hustle and efficiency of the North. And then you cannot lecture down there. It is not a literary domain. The consequence is that in Great Britain many people confound the “Southern States” with the Republics of South Amer

So North and South they fled, the people of Atlanta, but mostly South, for they were bitter; and the roads filled with the pitiful array of thousands of men and women and children with their old-fashioned coaches, with their barrows, with their servants, with those faithful Blacks who still heeded not the fact that “the day of liberation had arrived.” All under safe-conduct to Hood’s army. What complaints, what laments, as the proud Southern population took the road. A lamentation that is heard

TRAMPING TO THE SEA I passed through two ancient capitals of Georgia, first Milledgeville, and then Louisville. The relationship which Milledgeville bore to Atlanta reminded me of the relationship of the old Cossack capital of the Don country to the modern industrial wilderness of South Russia called Rostof-na-Donu. But business is business, and there is only business in this land. Even along the way to the old capital it is always so many miles to Goldstein’s on the mile-posts instead of so man

In viewing the whole situation one is apt to underestimate the unhappiness of slavery and to magnify the unhappiness of the present era of freedom. It is blessed to be free. Even to be the worst possible peon is far removed from slavery. The great significance of the Emancipation is that the Negro slaves were set free—free for anything and everything in the wide world. In the prison house of a national institution of slavery there was no hope, no sense of the ultimate possibilities latent in a m

IN ALABAMA: COLOR AND COLOR PREJUDICE I made an expedition into Alabama from Atlanta, and again saw something of that State when I got down to the Gulf of Mexico. In the matter of Negro life it is first of all important because of Tuskegee Institute, which, like the college at Hampton, is sometimes called the Mecca of the American Negro. It was founded by Booker T. Washington, and is the visible expression of the self-help idea. There, as at Hampton, the ex-slave is taught to do something as the

THE SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW The Southern point of view can be gathered together in a very short chapter. Its expression has so crystallized that it can be set down in a series of paragraphs and phrases. Whosoever doth not believe, without doubt he shall be damned everlastingly. Wherever you meet a Southerner, be it in the remotest corner of the earth, it is the same as in native Alabama. I was talking to the Mother Superior of a convent one day in a genial English countryside. Although I did not

It is urged in the South that the North is not entirely appreciative of the influx of so many Negroes. But, on the other hand, it is alleged that the large Northern companies sent their agents into every State in the South seeking labor. It was certainly useful to the companies. And although the loose and nondescript unemployed immigrants were guilty of a number of crimes, it is generally held that those who found employment proved very steady and reliable. The Negro proved a safe man in the mun

IN NORTH FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS Lynching is more associated with the cotton-growing districts than with others. It is not a fact that the further south you go the more violent the temper of the people. Southeastern Georgia, where the main business is lumbering and rice growing, has a better record than the cotton-growing interior. The cotton planters are aware of this, and it is not uncommon to curse the cotton and wish they could turn to something else. Cotton is not a popular industry. In the

THE NEW MIND OF THE NEGRO Resentment is the main characteristic of the Negro forward movement. In endeavoring to understand the Negro mind a maximum is gained by answering the question: What does it mean to have been a slave? Analysis of racial consciousness at once brings to light in the case of the Negro a slave mentality. He has been pre-dispositioned by slavery. To have been a slave, or to be the child of a slave, means to have an old unpaid grudge in the blood; to have, in fact, resentment

“I want especially to call your attention to the intense feeling on the part of the colored people throughout the country toward white people, and the apparent revolutionary attitude of many Negroes, which shows itself in a desire to have justice at any cost. The riots in Washington and Chicago and near riots in many other cities have not surprised me in the least. I predicted in an address several months ago, at the fiftieth anniversary of the Hampton Institute, on the second of May—ex-Presiden

THE WORLD ASPECT The American Negroes are the aristocrats of the Negro world. It may be a paradox to assume that a proletariat can become an aristocracy, but an aristocracy is the best a race can produce in culture and manners. No doubt African Negrodom is made up of a great number of races, but all seem to have one common interest and to yield more homage to the name of Africa itself than to any constituent part, kingdom, or state or pasture. The American Negro is beginning to lead Africa as he

UP THE MISSISSIPPI From New Orleans I traveled up the Mississippi; calling at such characteristic points as Reserve, Vicksburg, Greenville, Mound Bayou, Memphis, accomplishing the journey partly by rail and partly by boat. Reserve is a vast sugar plantation owned by five brothers. It is only thirty miles from the great city and the Whites are mostly Creoles. The Mother of Rivers, clad in brown silk, flows toward the green humps of hundreds of levees and embankments. The shores are low and level,

The bivouac of the dead. Tiny cubes of white marble give the soldiers’ numbers and names and regiments. It reminds one now somehow of the great cemeteries of France. The mighty troop, the flashing blade, The bugle’s stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din, the shout, are past, says the next notice board. And yet, are they past? Are they not always going on—as long as the cause for which the soldiers fought remains? They fought for unity. They fought also for freedom. They had