THE AMERICAN NEGRO

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4422, 7 May 1941, Page 7

THE AMERICAN NEGRO

TWELVE MILLION PROBLEMS. SLOW PROGRESS AGAINST HANDICAPS. (By D.M.D.) Roughly, every tenth citizen of the United States of America is a negrg. This feature of the American census had its beginning in 1619, when twenty African negroes were brought into Jamestown, Virginia, by Dutch traders and sold to planters. In the early sixties, at the end of the Civil War, close on 4,000,000 slaves weer liberated. Their descendants now total over 12,000,000. The presence of the negro has been a problem ever since the framers of the Constitution enunciated the doctrine that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This hardly conformed to the Government’s recognition of slavery. Representation to the first Congress was on a population basis. To compute population figures it was agreed that each negro should be counted as three-fifths of a man; also, no negro was. to be allowed to vote, own property, or exercise any of the prerogatives of citizenship. The negro problem of the United States even at the present time is in the effort of the black man to become accepted as a whole man rather than three-fifths, of a man. Since the Civil War the negro has had the constitutional right to voteIn the northern States negroes take due advantage of the franchise. There is a negro member of Congress, and many negroes are members of State Legislatures. Brigadier-General B. O. Davis, a negro, with white officers under him, commands a brigade comprising the negro complement of the 9th and 10th United States cavalry. DISCRIMINATION BY CONSENT. Four-fifths of the negro population are in thf southern States, where, in spite of their constitutional rights, they are generally prevented from voting. In some parts of the south they meet with threats of violence if they attempt to exercise theii- right to vote. The use of so-called Jim Crow cars, reserved for negroes on railway and tram lines, is another example of the practice of segregation in the southern States. They may use only the gallery (“ Nigger Heaven ”) in southern theatres, and they may not pass through theatre doorways used by whites. Such are a few of the many every-day experiences tending to make the negro feel he is a member of an inferior race. However, many negroes, when given the opportunity, have proved their ability to attain and hold distinguished positions. One of the greatest of American negroes, Booker T. Washington, was bom in 1859, a feW years before slavery was abolished. The child, as a free negro, obtained work in a coal mine owned by General Lewis Ruffner, who organised a night school for his negro employees. From this night school Booker (a name having its origin in the child’s constant book reading) eventually entered Hampton Institute, established by General S. E. Armstrong, who at the close of the Civil War said: “ The war- has just begun. The real enemies—ignorance, superstition, and incompetence—have not been subdued.” He sensed the pathos of four million human beings suddenly granted freedom which meant only another kind of slavery. This was the man who gave to Booker Washington and many other negroes opportunities the outcome of which has had far-reaching effects in bettering the position of the black race in the United States. His Hampton Institute was the genesis of Tuskegee, America’s great school for negroes, where nearly 4000 students are taught by over 150 teachers. Booker Washington collected £2,000,000 for the development of this very practical institution. Back in the early eighties be believed that politically there was little hope for his race. He therefore concentrated on training negroes to serve society as skilled artisans. Since then other intellectual negroes have not been in agreement with that point of view. POETS AND’ ORATORS. Among distinguished negroes Booker T. Washington, Frederick 'Douglass, and J. C. Price, for years president of Livingstone College in North Carolina, stand" out as three of America’s most gifted orators. Of poets and authors there is no end. Paul Laurence Dunbar and William SBraithwaite are two of the most distinguished writers of verse, while Charles W. Chestnut and W. E. Burghardt du Bois rank high as authors. The present-day negro novelist Richard Wright has sprung into fame through the publication of “ Native Son,” of which Dorothy Caulfield Fraser has written: “It is not surprising that this novel plumbs blacker depths of human experience than

American literature has yet had, comparable only to Dostoievski’s revelation of human misery in wrong-do-ing.”

The delightful short stories by Roark Bradford (not a negro) formed the basis of the most remarkable play (“Green Pastures,” by Mark Connelly) produced in recent years in America. It Was censored in England, and rightly so, since it Would have been hardly possible for a non-American audience to appreciate the true character of this beautiful play. Biblical stqries form the basis of the drama, the cast comprising negroes exclusively. To any audience not knowing the American negro the play would appear to be sacrilegious. The negro accepts every Biblical incident literally, and in “ Green Pastures ” his simplicity and sincerity are expressed in a form understood only by those who know the negro in America.

His simplicity is always a delight. When on a visit to Tennessee to witness the trials of a mechanical cotton packer, I heard a negro worker ask; “ If dat thing’s goin’ to do ma work, den whose wark am ah goin’ to do ? ” In this instance the simplicity of the remark was tinged with pathos, and it was not without significance in its relation to a serious issue in American economics. To negro labour is due the establishment of 'America’s cotton-growing industry. To-day, ostensibly Working on the halves share system, many negroes in the cottongrowing States are hopelessly in debt to the landowners. NEGRO SONGSTERS. Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Roland Hayes, and Harry T. Burleigh are outstanding names in the development of music in America, and the beauty of the negro spirituals was known to Australians and New Zea-

landers as far back as the eighties, when the Fisk Jubilee Singers first visited these countries. To-day two of the greatest living singers—Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson—are desdendants of America’s negro slaves. To the latter artist Toscanini, the great orchestral conductor, once said: “ A voice like yours is heard only once in a century.” It was Marian Anderson who, when denied the platform in Constitution Hall in Washington, sang from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an open-air audience of 75,000 people. Name after name (not to mention Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and others in less intellectual fields) might be recorded. There is -an endless list of American negroes who have attained distinction as poets, authors, orators, lawyers, doctors, singers, musicians, actors, painters, and sculptors. One of the greatest negro orators, Frederick Douglass, born a slave in 1817, once said:— “Taught by the Declaration of Independence, sustained by the Constitution of the United States, enlightened by the education of our schools, this nation can no more resist the advancing tread of the hosts of the incoming black than it can bind the stars or halt the restless motion of the tides.”