THE NEGRO PROBLEM.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 78

THE NEGRO PROBLEM.

THE RISE OF THE RACE FROM SLAVERY. There is no problem in the United States which at certain moments seems so hopeless as that of the negro. At certain moments you are told by pessimists that it is an insoluble problem ; at others the optimist, who is usually from the Southern States, protests that the problem is settling itself, and that there is nothing but mischief v the attempts of Northerners to interfere with it, or even to discuss it. During my recent visit to the city of New York I was present at the first performance of a play called "The Nigger." It was the work of quite a young man, who had just graduated in Harvard University. ] was pleased to be present, and yet the performance had not gone on for more than a few minutes when J wished myself a thousand miles away from the theatre. There are scenes so poignant sometimes on the stage that they are painful to witness. The very first scene was a lynching. You saw the cowering negro fugitive who had been guilty of an odious attack on % white girl, and in his dark, big eyeballs, in his crouching form, in the whole expression of face and body you saw the abject terror of the man flying from immediate and violent death, and outside you heard the savage cries of men thirsting for "lis blood. In a few moments you heard the exultant yell of those who had caught the wretch and were stringing him up. It was a ghastly moment. The other parts of the play were almost as painful. The central figure of the play is a noble young Southern man who nas been elected to the high office of Governor of his State by the acclamation of all good citizens, and who is in political life because he wants to do good to his fellow-man. And one of the things he wants to accomplish is the passing of a Prohibition Bill. Hk chief object is to remove the temptation of drink from the negroes, for it is dr.ink which is the chief cause of those odious crimes which bring about the lynchings; but as he is about to sign the decree which makes the bill law he is approached by a relative, who is the owner of the chief distillery in the town, and whose interests are threatened with destruction by the passing of the prohibition law. The young Governor rejects with scorn the demand that he shall veto the bill, and at last hie relative tries his final argument. He produces evidence to prove that the Governor, who has hitherto passed for a pure white, is in reality of mixed negro blood: his mother was a riegress, who had in the days of slavery been associated with the Governor's grandfather, and had by him been sold in the hope of covering, perhaps, the awful secret of the child's mixed origin. And in a moment the young Governor finds himself reduced from the pride and the glorj of a member of the dominant race to the degradation of the social outlawry of the despised coloured man. The whole white world at once turns away ; from him. The white girl to whom he : is engaged, and who has loved him for years, turns from his embraces with loathing, and, in short, the 'hell of downfall and l contempt opens up before him. He accepts the consequences heroically, and the curtain descends on the scene where he is about to avow his dreadful secret, and to devote the rest of his maimed life to the elevation jf the unhappy race to which he finds he belongs. ■— Mr Booker Washington.— One of the men who have devoted their lives to this same purpose is the author of the book before me—" The Stcry of the Nigger: the Rise of the Race from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington (T. Fisher Unwin). In America Booker Washington is a household name, and he is everywhere viewed with profound respect. He has founded a college for the education of men and women of his race, has pleaded their cause, and has done enormous service to them. He is a man of learning, of intelligence, and of high purpose. Yet it shows what a terrible thing colour prejudice is that Mr Roosevelt, when he was President, sent all the South into a frenzy of rage when he asked Mr Booker Washington tc remain at the White House and share his luncheon. The luncheon, I believe, as a matter of fact, consisted of a few sandwiches taken upstanding—Mr Roosevelt had not the time for a nore ordered meal in the whirl of his work and of his tempestuous and active temperament,—but i* was enough. The South rose in revolt against any admission of the despised coloured man to the companionship of the white man at a meal. The problem, nevertheless, is, I think, solving itself, though very slowly, and amid hideous interruptions. Let me say, however, that the lynchings are not confined to the South, nor even to the negro. During my stay in America I read one i morning the account ->i two lynchj ings. They took place not in the South, I but in the great State of Illinois. One i of the men lynched was a negro, the other I was a white man, and the murder of a woman was in both cases the cause. But ' the problem is solving itself largely because of the growth of the negro in intelligence, in education, and in wealth. The negro certainly has some very remarkable gifts, and though, on the whole, he may •be described as intellectually inferior to '"the white man, there are certain sides of life in which he is superior. He has an instinctive love and knowledge of music, for instance, and his folk-lore and popular songs are among the most precious possessions of the world of human song and human inspiration. I quote on this point the book of Mr Booker Washington : I have heard musical critics whose judgment the world respects say that the old plantation hymns and songs were [ among the most original contributions I that America has made, not only to

music, but to any one of the so-called fine arts, and this not merely for their intrinsic charm and beauty, but for their qualities, Avhich make it possible for the trained musician to develop out of them more elaborate and refined musical forms, such as have been given to them recentlv by the negro composer, Coleridge-Taylor. For myself, though it has been my privilege to hear some of the best music both in Europe and America, I would rather hear the jubilee or plantation songs of my race than the finest chorus from the works of Handel or any other of the great composers that I have heard. Besides, this music is the form in which the sorrows and aspirations of the negro people, all that they suffered, loved, and hoped for—in short, their whole spiritual life—found its first adequate and satisfying expression. Human Emotion.— This capacity for expressing human emotion in popular language seems, indeed, to have belonged to the coloured race lone before so many million of them found a home in the United States. Here, for instance, is a scene in the life of Mungo Park during his travels in the centre of Africa: As night came on the wind arose and a heavy storm threatened. To the other dangers of the situation Was added the fear that he might be devoured by the numerous wild beasts that roamed about in that region. Just as he was preparing to climb a tree, however, a woman passed by, and, perceiving his weary and dejected appearance, spoke to him and inquired why he was there. On receiving his explanation she told" him to follow her to her house. Here he was given food, and a- mat was spread, on which he lay down to sleep. The women of the house were, meanwhile employed in spinning cotton, and as they worked they lightened and enlivened their labour by songs. _ One of these songs was extemporised in honour of their guest. Park described this music, in the story of his travels, as sweet and plaintive. The words were: The wind roared and the rain fell. The poor white man, faint and weaory, Came and sat under our tree; He has no mother to bring him milk, No wife to grind his corn. Let us pity the white man; No mother has he to bring him milk, No wife to grind his corn. This scene, apart from the music and the poetry, is a good specimen of that charity and quickness of sympathy which are characteristic of the coloured race—qualities probably ingrained in them, and also reinforced by their own sad history. Let me pass to other songs —the songs which, they sang while they were still in captivity. There is a haunting music about them which is undeniable. Colonel Wentworth Higginson is well known to students of the Civil War as one of the great Abolitionists who helped the cause of negro emancipation, and who also was one of the men who organised and commanded a negro regiment after Lincoln had allowed the enrolment of negro troops. He has written his reminiscences as a soldier in the great war under the title, " Army Life in a Black Regiment," and ■ I quote from it the following passage : I had been a faithful student of the Scottish ballads, and had always envied Sir Walter Scott the delight of tracing them out among their own heather, and of writing them down piecemeal from the lips of ancient crones. It was a strange enjoyment, therefore, to be suddenly brought into the midst of a kindred" world of unwritten songs as simple and indigenous as the Border minstrelsy, more uniformly plaintive, almost always more quaint, and often as essentially poetic. . . . Almost all their songs were thoroughly religious in their tones, however quaint their expression, and were in a minor key, both as to words and music. The attitude is always the same, and as a commentary on the life of the race is infinitely pathetic. Nothing but patience for this j life—nothing but triumph in the next. A song that Mr Higginson quotes, and which he regards as one of the" most expressive he hea.rd while he was in the South, is the following : i I know moon rise. I know star rise, Lay dis body down; I'll walk in dc graveyard, To lay dis body down. I lis in de grave and stretch out my arms, Lay dis body down; I'll go to de Judgment in de evenin' of de day, • When I lay dis body down. And my s-oul and your soul will meet in de day, When I lay dis body down. " Never, it seems to me," says Mr Higginson, " since man first lived and suffered was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively than in that line, ' I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms.' " Education. — It was not till after the Civil War that the negroes began to have any chance of educating themselves; but when the opportunity came they showed themselves remarkably ready to take full advantage of it. There is no page in Mr Booker Washington's book which I have found more touching than his account of the methods the emancipated slave took to undo the wrong which the white race had done him in refusing him education. " I recall vividly the picture," writes Mr Booker Washington, " not only of children, but of men and women, some of whom had reached the age of 60 or 70, tramping along the country roads with a spelling-book or a Bible in their hands." It did not jeem to occur to anyone that age was any obstacle to learning in books. With weak and unaccustomed eyes old men and old women would struggle in their effort to master the primer in order to get, if possible, a little knowledge of the Bible. Some of them succeeded; many of them failed. To these latter the thought of passing

from earth without being able to read the Bible was a source of deep sorrow. The places for holding school were anywhere and everywhere; the freedmen could not wait for schoolhouses to be built or for teachers to be provided. They got up before day and studied in their cabins by the light of pine knots. They sat up until late at night, drooping over their -books, trying to master the secrets they contained. More than once I have seen a fire in the woods at night, with a dozen or more people of both sexes and of all ages sitting about with book in hands studying their lessons. Sometimes they would fasten their primers between the ploughshares so that they could read as they ploughed. I have seen negro coal-miners trying to spell out the words of a little reading book by the dim light of a miner's lamp hundreds of feet below the earth. In the early days of freedom public schools were not infrequently organised and taught under a large tree. Some of the early schoolhouses consisted of four pieces of timber driven into the ground a.nd brush spread overhead as a covering to keep out the sun and rain. It was a simple and inexpensive echoolhouse, but I am sure that the students were more earnest than many who have since had much greater advantages. Two little pictures, finally, I may put side by side. They help to show the big gulf that separates the old world of negro slavery from the new world of his emancipation. The first describes the means which were taken for helping the negro to reach freedom and safety by the noble enthusiasts who made war upon the hideous institution: Sometimes these fugitives reached free soil packed in boxes, shipped as merchandise by rail or by steamship, from some of the near-by Southern ports. This was the case of Henry Box Brown, who was shipped from Richmond, Va., by James A. Smith, a shoedealer, to William H. Johnson, Arch street, Philadelphia. He was 26: hours on the road from Richmond to Philadelphia. Though the box was marked " This side up," in the course of his journey Mr Brown was compelled to ride many miles standing on his head. When the box arrived at the anti-slavery office there was the greatest apprehension lest, in the course of the journey, the fugitive had perished, and the society would find itself with a corpse upon its hands. The second story belongs to the present day. Here it *s : I was travelling with one of our students at Tuskegee, who was very light in colour, when we had some distance to go in a carriage. At the end of our journey the owner of the carriage, who was a white man, collected 50 cents from me, but called upon the student who was with me for a dollar. After considerable argument and some inquiry we discovered that it was the rule to charge white men a dollar for the same service for which negroes paid only 50 cents, and my companion had been taken for a white man. But even after this the student was not inclined to pay the extra price. He seemed to think 50 cents was too much pay for being a white man—at least, for so short .a time. I have been able to give only a glimpse here and there of these two large volumes. I recommend them to my readers who want to study this terribly difficult and painful problem. They will find astonishing records of the progress of the negro, pages which give the "names of men and women who have grown out of their bondage to the respect of their fellow-men of all colours, and altogether one rises from the book with hopefulness, amid many conditions that still suggest the labour and pains through which all great efforts at human emancination come to their being. —T. P.'s Weeklv.