aV 


















O* rtV n N G K^ 



'^ G 



^ 



■ • • " ■» ' 



'bV 



^j* <^ 



.0 ^^ • ^ 



X. 



^* ^^ 



^ -,^ 



:( 






V " • o. 



o 















A^* ;>V/b;-. V..'^'" ; 



H' 






^?5^/ 



-% 









0^ 




> ^ 










• 


■<x. 




* 0. 





:^; 



v\ 



V 



o > 












'^'^ . 



• : ^^^-^^ 



'' ysM^ 

















r 



& / 












.0 









'' j:;^, vVr * 






^\l o 

V c ' * °- C" 






,^' 



" u 









.«^i^V 






: -^v^* 






^ ^^^ 















^ z;^:^ 










-^^0^ 



C" 



" o 





<5v^ .... 



.0 



^^ « » o "V_ - • • ' ^V ' ^ ^ ^^ ^1^ ^ ^ ^ ^_ 






'^^^^-^^- \/ /^v %,^ ;^|fc \/ : 



.0 



-J,' -■/^'''"'-'^',', '-f. ^^ 0^^^=^^;%'"- ^, <-J^ 






*A0' 














o -a? %<^ 







" c . ''^ A .1'". '<^^ .0^' °_" " » . C 




.^ 



-?-- 




-^^ c 

'^^o^ :%_.^j?^^.". 



^*^°x. 



^• 



ii^i-'-"^ 






, ^ J> A 



^^ 



v-^. 



->-.. 







^v*^ v^ii^'; A:^'■■'^ 



K-^ \^ 



,* 



'M'^*, 









I. 






ij 






i 









i 
I 

D I 






^'-^i 



HALF A MAN 



THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO 
IN NEW YORK 



V 

BY 



MARY WHITE OVINGTON 



WITH A FOREWORD BY DR. FRANZ BOAS 
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 

LONDON, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA 

1911 






Copyright, 1911, by 
Longmans, Green, and Co. 



/I 






THE ■ PI.IMl'I'ON • PRESS 

[\V U ■ o] 
NORWOOD • MASS • U • S • A 



C' CI. A 2020 






TO 

THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 

THEODORE TWEEDY 

OVINGTON 



I 



I 



FOREWORD 

Miss Ovington's description of the status 
of the Negro in New York City is based on 
a most painstaking inquiry into his social 
and economic conditions, and brings out in 
the most forceful way the difficulties under 
which the race is laboring, even in the large 
cosmopolitan population of New York. It 
is a refutation of the claims that the Negro 
has equal opportunity with the whites, and 
that his failure to advance more rapidly 
than he has, is due to innate inability. 

Many students of anthropology recognize 
that no proof can be given of any material 
inferiority of the Negro race; that without 
doubt the bulk of the individuals composing 
the race are equal in mental aptitude to 
the bulk of our own people; that, although 
their hereditary aptitudes may lie in slightly 
different directions, it is very improbable 
that the majority of individuals composing 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

the white race should possess greater ability 
than the Negro race. 

The anthropological argument is invari- 
ably met by the objection that the achieve- 
ments of the two races are unequal, while 
their opportunities are the same. Every 
demonstration of the inequality of oppor- 
tunity will therefore help to dissipate 
prejudices that prevent the best possible 
development of a large number of our 
citizens. 

The Negro of our times carries even more 
heavily the burden of his racial descent 
than did the Jew of an earlier period; and 
the intellectual and moral qualities required 
to insure success to the Negro are infinitely 
greater than those demanded from the white, 
and will be the greater, the stricter the 
segregation of the Negro community. 

The strong development of racial con- 
sciousness, which has been increasing during 
the last century and is just beginning to 
show the first signs of waning, is the gravest 
obstacle to the progress of the Negro race, 
as it is an obstacle to the progress of all 
strongly individualized social groups. The 



I 



FOREWORD ix 

simple presentation of observations, like 
those given by Miss Ovington, may help us 
to overcome more quickly that self-centred 
attitude which can see progress only in the 
domination of a single type. 

This investigation was carried on by 
Miss Ovington under the auspices of the 
Greenwich House Committee on Social 
Investigations, of which she was a Fellow.^ 

Franz Boas. 



iThe Greenwich House Committee on Social Investiga- 
tions is composed of Edwin R. A. Seligman, Chairman, 
Franz Boas, Edward T. Devine, Livingston Farrand, 
Franklin H. Giddings, Henry R. Seager. Vladimir G. 
Simkhovitch, Secretary. 

Miss Ovington's is the second publication of the Com- 
mittee, the first being Mrs. Louise Bolard More's " Wage- 
Earners' Budgets," published by Henry Holt & Co. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I "Up feom Slavery" 5 

II Where the Negro Lives .... 31 

III The Child of the Tenement ... 52 

IV Earning a Living — IVIanual Labor 

AND THE Trades 75 

V Earning a Living — Business and the 

Professions 106 

VI The Colored Woman as a Bread 

Winner 138 

VII Rich and Poor 170 

VIII The Negro and the Municipality . 195 

IX Conclusion 218 

Appendix 229 

Index 233 



XI 



I 



HALF A MAN 



HALF A MAN 

INTRODUCTION 

Six years ago I met a young colored man, 
a college student recently returned from 
Germany where he had been engaged in 
graduate work. He was born, he told me, 
in one of the Gulf States, and I questioned 
him as to whether he intended going back 
to the South to teach. His answer was in 
the negative. "My father has attained suc- 
cess in his native state," he said, "but when 
I ceased to be a boy, he advised me to live 
in the North where my manhood would be 
respected. He himself cannot continually 
endure the position in which he is placed, 
and in the summer he comes North to be a 
man. No," correcting himself, "to be half 
a man. A Negro is wholly a man only in 
Europe." 

Half a man! During the six years that I 
have been in touch with the problem of the 
Negro in New York this characterization has 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

grown in significance to me. I have endeav- 
ored to know the Hfe of the Negro as I know 
the hfe of the white American, and I have 
learned that while New York at times gives 
full recognition to his manhood, again, its 
race prejudice arrests his development as 
certainly as severe poverty arrests the de- 
velopment of the tenement child. Perhaps 
a study of this shifting attitude on the part 
of the dominant race, and of the Negro's 
reaction under it, may not be unimportant; 
for the color question cannot be ignored in 
America, nor should the position taken by 
her largest city be overlooked. And those 
who love their fellows may be glad, among 
New York's four millions — its Slavs and 
Italians, its Russians and Asiatics — to meet 
these dark people who speak our language 
and who for many generations have made 
this country their home. 



CHAPTER I 

"Up from Slavery" 

The status of the Negro in New Amster- 
dam, a slave in a pioneer community, dif- 
fered fundamentally from his position today 
in New York. His history from the seven- 
teenth to the twentieth century contains 
many exciting incidents, but those only 
need be considered here that show a prog- 
ress or a retardation in his attainment to 
manhood. What were his struggles in the 
past to secure his rights as a man? 

Slavery in the early days of the colonies 
was more brutal than at the time of final 
emancipation. Savages recently arrived 
from Africa lacked the docility of blacks 
reared in bondage, and burning and tortur- 
ing, as well as whipping, were recognized 
modes of punishment. Masters looked upon 
their Negroes, bought at the Wall Street 



6 HALF A MAN 

market from among the cargo of a recently 
arrived slaver, with some suspicion and 
fear. Nor were their apprehensions en- 
tirely without reason. In 1712 some of 
the discontented among the New York 
slaves met in an orchard in Maiden Lane 
and set fire to an outhouse. Defending 
themselves against the citizens who ran to 
put out the flames, they fired, killing nine 
men and wounding six. Retribution soon 
followed. They were pursued when they 
attempted flight, captured and executed — 
some hanged, some burned at the stake, 
some left suspended in chains to starve to 
death. 

Perhaps it was the memory of this small 
revolt that caused the people of New York 
in 1741 to lay the blame for a series of con- 
flagrations upon their slaves. Nine fires 
that seemed to be incendiary came one upon 
another, and a robbery was committed. 
To escape death herself, a worthless white 
servant girl gave testimony against the 
Negroes who frequented a tavern where she 
was employed, declaring that a plot had 
been conceived whereby the slaves would 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 7 

kill all the white men and take control 
of the city. New York was aflame with 
fear, and evidence that at another time 
would have been rejected, was listened to 
by the judges with grave attention. The 
slaves were allowed no defence, and before 
the city had recovered from its fright, it 
had burned fourteen Negroes, hanged eigh- 
teen, and transported seventy-one.^ 

Historians today think that the slaves 
were in no way concerned in this so-called 
"plot." The two thousand blacks in the 
city might have done much mischief to the 
ten thousand whites, but their servile con- 
dition made an organized movement among 
them impossible. We may infer, however, 
from the fear which they provoked, that 
they were not all docile servants. In a 
letter written at the port of New York in 
1756, an English naval oflBcer says of the 
city, "The laborious people in general are 
Guinea Negroes who lie under particular 
restraints from the attempts they have 
made to massacre the inhabitants for their 

•Daniel Horsmanden, "New York Conspiracy, or a His- 
tory of the Negro Plot." 



8 HALF A MAN 

liberty."^ Janvier in his "Old New York" 
thinks, "that the alarm bred by the so- 
called Negro plot of 1741 was most effective 
in checking the growth of slavery in that 
city." Probably the restlessness of the slaves, 
their efforts toward manhood, in a community 
where there was little economic justification 
for slavery, contributed to the movement 
for emancipation that began in 1777. 

Emancipation came gradually to the New 
York Negro. Gouverneur Morris at the 
state constitutional convention of 1776-1777 
recommended that "the future legislature 
of the state of New York take the most 
effectual measures consistent with the public 
safety and the private property of individ- 
uals for abolishing domestic slavery within 
the same, so that in future ages every human 
being who breathes the air of this state shall 
enjoy the privileges of a freeman." The 
postponement of action to a future legis- 
lature was keenly regretted by John Jay, 
who was absent from the convention when 
the slavery question arose, but who had 

•James Grant Wilson, "History of New York," Vol. II. 
p. 314. 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 9 

hoped that New York might be a leader in 
emancipation. The state's initial measure 
for abolishing slavery was in 1785, when it 
prohibited the sale of slaves in New York. 
This was followed in 1799 by an act giving 
freedom to the children of slaves, and in 
1817 by a further act providing for the abo- 
lition of slavery throughout the state in 
1827. This law went into effect July 4, 
1827, the emancipation day of the Negroes 
in New York. 

With gradual emancipation and the cessa- 
tion of the sale of slaves, the Negroes numer- 
ically became unimportant in the city. In 
1800 they constituted ten and a half per 
cent of the population. Half a century 
later, while they had doubled their numbers, 
the immense influx of foreign immigrants 
brought their proportion down to two and 
seven-tenths per cent. In 1850 and 1860 
their positive as well as there relative num- 
ber decreased, and it was not until twenty 
years ago that they began to show some 
gain. The last census returns of 1900 give 
Greater New York (including Brooklyn) 
60,666 Negroes in a population of 3,437,202, 



u- 



10 HALF A MAN 

one and eight-tenths per cent. It seems prob- 
able that the census of 1910 will show a large 
positive and a slight relative Negro increase. ^ 
The relative decrease in the number of 
Negroes did not, however, produce a de- 
crease in the agitation upon their presence 
and position in the city. Their political 
status was a subject for heated discussion 
even before their complete emancipation. 

'Population of New York from 1800 to 1900: 
Total and Negro. 

borough of manhattan 

Percentage 
Total Negro of Negroes 

1800 60,515 6,382 10.5 

1810 96,373 9,823 10.2 

1820 123,706 10,886 8.8 

1830 202,589 13,976 6.9 

1840 312,710 16,358 5.2 

1850 515,547 13,815 2.7 

18G0 805,658 12,574 1.6 

1870 942,292 13,072 1.5 

BOROUGHS OF MANHATTAN AND BRONX 

1880 1,206,209 19,663 1.6 

1890 1,515,301 23,601 1.6 

1900 2,050,600 38,616 1.9 

GREATER NEW YORK 

1900 3,437,202 60,666 1.8 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 11 

The first state constitution, drafted in 1777, 
was without color discrimination, since it 
based the suffrage upon a property quali- 
fication requiring voters for governor and 
senators to be freeholders owning property 
worth £100. A Negro with such a holding 
was a phenomenon, a curiosity. But by 
1821, when the framing of the second con- 
stitution was in progress, Negroes of some 
education were an appreciable element in 
the population, and with them ignorant, 
recently emancipated slaves. Should they 
be admitted to the full manhood suffrage 
contemplated for the whites.? Those who 
favored the new democratic movement were 
doubtful of its applicability to colored people. 
Livingston, a champion of universal white 
manhood suffrage, was against giving the 
black man the vote. On the other hand, 
the conservative Chancellor Kent, appre- 
hending in the new constitution "a disposi- 
tion to encroach on private rights, — to 
disturb chartered privileges and to weaken, 
degrade, and overawe the administration of 
justice," would yet have made no color 
discrimination, and Peter A. Jay, who did 



n HALF A MAN 

not believe in universal white manhood 
suffrage, urged that colored men, natives of 
the country, should derive from its institu- 
tions the same privileges as white persons. 
The second constitution when adopted en- 
franchised practically all white men, but 
gave the Negroes a property qualification of 
$250. The issue of the revolution, however, 
was not far from men's thoughts, and "tax- 
ation without representation" was not per- 
mitted ; for while no colored man might vote 
without a freehold estate valued at 250 dol- 
lars, no person of color was subject to direct 
taxation unless he should he possessed of such 
real estate. 

In 1846 a third constitutional convention 
was held, and the same matter came up for 
debate. John L. Russell of St. Lawrence 
declared that "the Almighty had created 
the black man inferior to the white man," 
while Daniel S. Waterbury of Delaware 
County believed that "the argument that 
because a race of men is marked by a pecu- 
liarity of color and crooked hair they are not 
endowed with a mind equal to another class 
who have other peculiarities is unworthy 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 13 

of men of sense." John H. Hunt of New 
York City proclaimed that "We want no 
masters, least of all no Negro masters. . . . 
Negroes are aliens." And he predicted that 
the practical effect of their admission to the 
suffrage would be their exclusion from Man- 
hattan Island. A delegation of colored men 
appeared at Albany before the suffrage com- 
mittee, but their arguments and those of 
their friends produced no effect. The new 
constitution contained the same Negro prop- 
erty qualification, and it was not until 1874, 
after the passage of the fifteenth amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United 
States, that legislation placed the Negro 
voter of New York upon the same footing 
as the white. ^ 

Had New York sincerely desired to keep 
the Negro in an inferior position, it could 
have accomplished this by refusing him an 
education. This it never did, though it 
suffered much tribulation regarding the place 
and manner of his instruction. Before the 

^ For a full account of the Negro's political status in New 
York consult Charles Z. Lincoln's "Constitutional History of 
New York." 



14 HALF A MAN 

establishment of a public school system, the 
Manumission society, an association com- 
posed largely of Friends, though including 
in its membership John Jay, De Witt Clin- 
ton, and Alexander Hamilton, undertook 
the education of the Negro. In 1787 it 
opened a school for Africans on Cliff Street. 
One of the early teachers was Charles C. 
Andrews, whose little book on "The Afri- 
can Free Schools," published in 1830, shows 
a kindly tolerance for the black race. "As 
a result of forty years' experience," he writes, 
"the idea respecting the capacity of the 
African race to receive a respectable and 
even a liberal education has not been vision- 
ary." And he recites the names of some 
of his pupils: "Rev. Theodore S. Wright, 
graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary; 
John B. Russworm, graduate of Bowdoin; 
Edward Jones, graduate of Amherst; Wil- 
liam Brown and William G. Smith, students 
of the medical department, Columbia Col- 
lege: all of them persons of color." Describ- 
ing an annual exhibition of his school on 
May 12, 1824, he quotes from the Commer- 
cial Advertiser of the same date: "We never 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 15 

beheld a white school, of the same age (of 
and under the age of fifteen), in which, with- 
out exception, there was more order and 
neatness of dress and cleanliness of person. 
And the exercises were performed with a 
degree of promptness and accuracy which 
was surprising." 

In 1834 the public school association took 
over the schools of the Manumission so- 
ciety, but before this time the Negroes 
had begun to assert themselves regarding 
the method and place of instruction for 
their children. They clamored for colored 
teachers and succeeded in displacing Charles 
Andrews himself. In 1838, at their desire, 
the word African was changed to colored in 
describing the race; but of chief importance 
to their educational future, they began a 
protest, only to end in 1900, against segre- 
gation. 

Removed from the care of the Manumis- 
sion society, the colored schools deteriorated. 
Their grade was reduced,^ and owing to 
the growth of the city, their attendance was 

1 Thomas Bocae's " Public Education in the City of New 
York," p. 227. 



16 HALF A MAN 

very irregular, the severe winter weather 
often keeping children who lived at a dis- 
tance at home. A Brooklyn man tells me 
that, when a boy, he used to walk from his 
home at East New York to Fulton Ferry, 
passing inferior Brooklyn colored schools, 
and after crossing the river, on up to Mul- 
berry Street to be instructed by the popular 
colored teacher, John Peterson. Here he 
received a good education; but few boys 
would have endured a daily trip of fourteen 
miles. Increasingly parents, if the colored 
school of their neighborhood was not of 
the best, sent their boys and girls to be 
instructed with the white boys and girls of 
their district. 

The state law declared that any city or 
incorporated village might establish sepa- 
rate schools for the instruction of African 
youths, provided the facilities were equal to 
those of white schools, and when, in 1862, 
a colored parent brought a case against the 
city for forcing her child to go to a colored 
school, the case was lost.^ Nevertheless, 
during the nineteenth century Negroes in 

1 King V. Gallagher, 1882. 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 17 

some numbers attended white schools in 
both Brooklyn and New York, and Negro 
parents continued in their quiet but persist- 
ent efforts against segregation. Then again, 
New York grew too rapidly to segregate 
any race. The Negro boys and girls were 
scattered through many districts, and the at- 
tendance at colored schools fell off; in 1879 
it was less than in 1878, and in 1880 less 
than in 1879; so that the Board of Educa- 
tion in 1883 decided to disestablish three 
colored schools. 

But this involved another factor. If the 
colored schools were disestablished, what 
would become of the colored teachers.'^ The 
Negroes met this issue by delaying dis- 
establishment for a year, while the teachers 
went about among the parents of the ward, 
making friends and urging that children, 
white or colored, be sent to their schools. 
Numbers of new pupils of both races were 
brought in within the year, and at the end 
of the time, after a hearing before the 
governor, then Grover Cleveland, a bill was 
passed prohibiting the abolition of two of 
. the three colored schools, but also making 



18 HALF A MAN 

them open to all children regardless of 
color. ^ 

Occasionally a colored girl graduated from 
the normal college of the city, but if there 
was no vacancy for her in the four colored 
schools she received no appointment. In 
1896, however, a normal graduate, Miss 
S. E. Frazier, insisted upon her right to be 
appointed as teacher in any school in which 
there was a vacancy. She visited the ward 
trustees and the members of the Board of 
Education, and represented to them the 
injustice done her and her race in refusing 
her the chance to prove her ability as a 
teacher in the first school that should need 
a normal graduate. She was finally ap- 
pointed to a position in a white school. 
Her success with her pupils was immediate, 
and since then the question of race or color 
has not been considered in the appointment 
of teachers in New York. 

Until 1900, the state law permitted the 
establishment of separate colored schools. 
In that year, however, on the initiative 
of Theodore Roosevelt, then governor, the 

1 A. Emerson Palmer, "The New York Public School." 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 19 

legislature passed a bill providing that no 
person should be refused admission or be 
excluded from any public school in the state 
on account of race or color. ^ This closed 
the question of compulsory segregation in 
the state, though before this it had ceased 
in New York. Public education was thus 
democratized for the New York Negroes, 
their persistent efforts bringing at the end 
complete success. 

While the colored people in New York 
started with segregated schools and attained 
to mixed schools, the movement in the 
churches was the reverse. At first the 
Negroes were attendants of white churches, 
sitting in the gallery or on the rear seats, 
and waiting until the white people were 
through before partaking of the communion; 
but as their number increased they chafed 
under their position. Why should they be 
placed apart to hear the doctrine of Christ, 
and why, too, should they not have full 
opportunity to preach that doctrine.'* The 
desire for self-expression was perhaps the 
greatest factor in leading them to separate 

■■ Laws of New York, Chapter 492. 



I 



20 HALF A MAN 

from the white church. In 1796 about 
thirty Negroes, under the leadership of 
James Varick,^ withdrew from the John 
Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and 
formed the first colored church of New York. 
Varick had been denied a license to preach, 
but now as pastor of his own people, he 
was recognized by the whites and helped 
by some of them. He was the founder 
of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion 
Church. 

The Abyssinian Baptist Church was organ- 
ized in 1800 by a few colored members who 
withdrew from the First Baptist Church, 
then in Gold Street, to establish themselves 
on Worth Street,- and in 1818 the colored 
Episcopalians organized St. Philip's Church. 
In 1820 one of their race, Peter Williams, 
for six years deacon, became their preacher. 

Another prominent church was the col- 
ored Congregational, situated, in 1854, on 
Sixth Street; and it was the determined 
effort of its woman organist to reach the 
church in time to perform her part in the 

» B. F. TMieeler, D.D., "The Varick Family." 

* Geo. H. Hansell, "Reminiscences of New York Baptists." 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 21 

Sunday morning service that led to an im- 
portant Negro advance in citizenship. 

In the middle of the last century the right 
of the Negro to ride in car or omnibus 
depended on the sufferance of driver, con- 
ductor, and passenger. Sometimes a car 
stopped at a Negro's signal, again the driver 
whipped up his horses, while the conductor 
yelled to the "nigger" to wait for the next 
car. Entrance might always be effected if 
in the company of a white person, and the 
small child of a kindly white household 
would be delegated to accompany the home- 
ward bound black visitor into her car where, 
after a few minutes, conductor and pas- 
sengers having become accustomed to her 
presence, the young protector might slip 
away. Such a situation was very galling 
to the self-respecting negro. 

In July, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings, a col- 
ored school-teacher and organist at the Con- 
gregational Church, attempted to board a 
Third Avenue car at Pearl and Chatham 
Streets. She was hurrying to reach the 
church to perform her part in the service. 
The conductor stopped, but as Miss Jen- 



22 HALF A MAN 

nings mounted the platform, he told her that 
she must wait for the next car, which was 
reserved for her people. "I have no people," 
Miss Jennings said. "I wish to go to church 
as I have for six months past, and I do not 
wish to be detained." The altercation con- 
tinued until the car behind came up, and the 
driver there declaring that he had less room 
than the car in front, the woman was grudg- 
ingly allowed to enter the car. "Remem- 
ber," the conductor said, "if any passenger 
objects, you shall go out, whether or no, or 
I'll put you out." 

"I am a respectable person, born and 
brought up in New York," said Miss Jen- 
nings, "and I was never insulted so before." 

This again aroused the conductor. "I 
was born in Ireland," he said, "and you've 
got to get out of this car." 

He attempted to drag her out. The woman 
clung to the window, the conductor called 
in the driver to help him, and together they 
dragged and pulled and at last threw her 
into the street. Badly hurt, she neverthe- 
less jumped back into the car. The driver 
galloped his horses down the street, passing 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 23 

every one until a policeman was found who 
pushed the woman out, not, however, until 
she had taken the number of the car. She 
then made her way home. 

Elizabeth Jennings took the case into court, 
and it came before the Supreme Court of 
the State in February, 1855, Chester A. 
Arthur, afterwards President of the United 
States, being one of the lawyers for the 
plaintiff. The judge's charge was clear 
on the point that common carriers were 
bound to carry all respectable people, white 
or colored, and the plaintiff was given $225 
damages, to which the court added ten per 
cent and costs; and to quote the New York 
Tribune s comment on the case,^ "Railroads, 
steamboats, omnibuses, and ferryboats will 
be admonished from this as to the rights of 
respectable colored people." ^ 

When you talk with the elderly educated 
colored people of New York today, they tell 
you that before the War were "dark days." 
The responsibility felt by the thoughtful 

* New York Tribune, February 23, 1855. 
^ "The Story of an Old Wrong," in The American Ti'oi7}ans 
Journal, July, 1895. 



24 HALF A MAN 

Negroes was very great. They had not only 
their own battles to wage, but there were 
the fugitives who were entering the city 
by the Underground Raih-oad, whom they 
must assist though it cost them their own 
Hberty. In 1835 a Vigilance Committee 
was formed in New York City to take charge 
of all escaping slaves, and also to prevent 
the arrest and return to slavery of free men 
of color. Colored men served on this Com- 
mittee, and its secretary was the minister 
of the church to which Elizabeth Jennings 
was endeavoring to make her way that 
Sunday morning, the Reverend Charles B. 
Ray. In 1850 the New York State Vigi- 
lance Committee was formed with Gerritt 
Smith as President and Ray as Secretary. 
Ray's home was frequently used to shelter 
fugitives.^ Once a young man, stepping up 
to the door and learning that it was Charles 
Ray's house, whistled to his companions in 
the darkness, and fourteen black men made 
their appearance and received shelter. There 
would also come the task of negotiating for 
the purchase of a slave, or this proving 

' Life of the Reverend Charles B. Ray. 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 25 

impossible, for the careful working out of a 
means for his escape. Dark days, indeed, 
but made memorable to the Negro by heroic 
work and the friendship of great men. 
Perhaps the two races have never worked 
together in such fine companionship as at 
the unlawful and thrilling task of protect- 
ing and aiding the fugitive. 

The hardest year of the century for the 
Negro was 1863, when the draft riot im- 
perilled every dark face. Many Negroes 
fled from the city. Colored homes were 
fired, the Orphan Asylum for colored chil- 
dren on Fifth Avenue was burned, and even 
the dead might not be buried save at the 
peril of undertaker and priest. Elizabeth 
Jennings, now Mrs. Graham, lost a child 
when the rioting was at its height. An 
undertaker named Winterbottom, a white 
man, was brave enough to give his services, 
winning the lasting gratitude and patron- 
age of the colored people. With the dan- 
ger of violence about them, the father and 
mother went to Greenwood Cemetery, where 
the Reverend Morgan Dix of Trinity Church 
read the burial service at the grave. 



26 HALF A MAN 

With the end of the War and the passage 
of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments 
came a revulsion of feeHng for the race. 
"I remember," an old time friend of the 
Negro tells me, "when the fifteenth amend- 
ment was passed. The colored people stood 
in great numbers on the streets, and on their 
faces was a look of gratitude and thanks- 
giving that I shall never forget." Follow- 
ing the amendment came the State Civil 
Rights Bill in 1873, declaring that all per- 
sons should be entitled to full and equal 
accommodations in all public places; and 
discrimination for a time largely ceased. 

While the colored people were winning 
citizenship, their progress in industry was 
also considerable. Until 1860 the race was 
infrequently segregated, and black and white 
were neighbors, not only in their homes, but 
in business. Samuel R. Scottron, a careful 
Negro writer, compiled a long list of the 
trades in which Negroes engaged before 
the War. Besides the various lines of do- 
mestic service, in which they were more 
V frequently seen than today — coachmen, 
cooks, waitresses, seamstresses, barbers — 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 27 

there were many craftsmen, ship-builders, 
trimmers, riggers, coopers, caulkers, printers, 
tailors, carpenters. "Second-hand clothing 
shops were everywhere kept by colored men. 
All the caterers and restaurant keepers of 
the high order, as well as small places, were 
kept by colored men. . . . Varick and 
Peters kept about the most pretentious bar- 
ber shop in the city. Patrick Reason was 
one of the most capable engravers. The 
greatest among the restaurateurs was 
Thomas Downing, who kept a restaurant 
under what is now the Drexel Building, 
corner of Wall and Broad Streets. The 
drug stores of Dr. James McCune Smith on 
West Broadway, and Dr. Philip A. White 
on Frankfort Street, were not outclassed by 
any kept by white men in their day." ^ 

And so the list goes on. It is perhaps 
somewhat exaggerated in the importance 
in the city's business life which it gives to 
the colored race. Charles Andrews, in 1837, 
says of the pupil who graduates from his 
school, "He leaves with every avenue closed 
against him — doomed to encounter as much 

^ Colored American Magazine, October, 1907. 



28 HALF A MAN 

prejudice and contempt as if he were not 
only destitute of that education which dis- 
tinguishes the civilized from the savage, but 
as if he were incapable of receiving it." 
And he goes on to tell of those few who have 
been able to learn trades, and their subse- 
quent difficulties in finding employment in 
good shops. White journeymen object to 
working in the same shop with them, and 
many of the best lads go to sea or become 
waiters, barbers, coachmen, servants, la- 
borers. But he is writing of an early date, 
and the opinion of the colored people seems 
to be that, before our large foreign immi- 
gration, the Negro was more needed in New 
York than today and received a large share 
of satisfactory employment. His chief com- 
petitor was the Irish immigrant, like him- 
self an agricultural laborer, without previous 
training in business, and he was frequently 
able to hold his own in his shop. His long 
experience in domestic service, moreover, 
made him a better caterer than the repre- 
sentatives of any other nationality that had 
yet entered the city. His churches were 
flourishing, thus securing a profession for 



"UP FROM SLAVERY" 29 

ll' which he had natural ability, and as we have 
seen, colored men and women taught in the 
New York schools. 

The city grew rapidly after 1875, and the 
colored society, the little group that had 
attained to modest means and education, 
bought homes, chiefly in Brooklyn, where 
land was easier to secure than in Manhattan, 
and strove to enlarge the opportunities for 
those who were to come after them. Color 
prejudice had waned, and they often met 
with especial consideration because of their 
race. Had they been white they would 
have slipped into the population and been 
lost, as happened to the Germans and the 
Irish, who had been their competitors. As 
it was, they formed a society apart from the 
rest of the city, meeting it occasionally in 
work or through the friendship of children, 
who, left to themselves, know no race. 
They had battled against prejudice and had 
won their rights as citizens. 

As we look at the life of a segregated 
people, however, we see that we tend always 
to regard not the individual but the group. 
The Negro is a man in Europe, because 



30 HALF A MAN 

there he is an individual, standing or fall- 
ing by his own merits. But in America, 
even in so cosmopolitan a city as New York, 
he is judged, not by his own achievements, 
but by the achievements of every other 
New York black man. So we will leave 
these able colored Americans, who won much 
both for themselves and for their race, and 
turn to the mass of the Negroes, the toiling 
poor, who dwell in our tenements today. 



CHAPTER II 

Where the Negro Lives 

It is thirty-five years since, in his Sym- 
phony, Sidney Lanier told of 

"The poor 
That stand by the inward opening door 
Trade's hand doth tighten evermore. 
And sigh their monstrous foul air sigh 
For the outside hills of liberty." 

Were Lanier writing this today, we should 
wonder whether New York's crowded tene- 
ments had not served as inspiration for his 
figure. The island of Manhattan, about 
eight miles long by two miles wide, with an 
additional slender triangle of five miles at 
the north end, in 1905, housed two million 
one hundred and twelve thousand people. 
These men and women and children were not 
scattered uniformly throughout the island, 
but were placed in selected corners, one thou- 
sand to the acre, while a mile or so away 
large comfortable homes held families of two 

31 



32 HALF A MAN 

or three. This was Manhattan's condition 
in 1905, and with each succeeding year more 
congestion takes place, and more pressure is 
felt upon the inward opening door.^ 

The Negro with the rest of the poor of 
New York has his part in this excessive 
overcrowding. The slaver in which he made 
his entrance to this land provided in floor 
space six feet by one-foot-four for a man, 
five feet by one-foot-four for a woman, and 
four feet by one-foot-four for a child.^ This 
outdoes any overcrowding New York can 
produce, but an ever increasing cost in food 
and rent is bringing into her interior bed- 
rooms a mass of humanity approximating 
that of the slaver's ship. These new-comers, 
however, are not unwilling occupants, since 
unlike the slaves they may spend their day 
and much of their night amid an ocean of 
changing and exciting incidents. If you are 
young and strong, you care less where you 
sleep than where you may spend your 
waking hours. 

» Harold M. Finley in Federation, May, 1908. 
* Thomas Clarkson, "History of the Abolition of the Slave 
Trade," p. 378. 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 33 

From among the millions of New York's 
poor, can we pick out the Negroes in their 
tenements? This is not so difficult a task 
as it would have proved fifty years ago when 
the colored were scattered throughout the 
city; today we find them confined to fairly 
definite quarters. A black face on the lower 
East Side is viewed with astonishment, while 
on the middle West Side it is no more 
noticeable than it would be in Atlanta or 
New Orleans. Roughly we may count five 
Negro neighborhoods in Manhattan: Green- 
wich Village, the middle West Side, San 
Juan Hill, the upper East, and the upper 
West sides. Brooklyn has a large Negro 
population, but it is more widely distrib- 
uted and less easily located than that of 
Manhattan. 

Of the five Manhattan neighborhoods the 
oldest is Greenwich Village, according to 
Janvier once the most attractive part of 
New York, where the streets "have a ten- 
dency to sidle away from each other and to 
take sudden and unreasonable turns." Here 
one finds such fascinating names as Minetta 
Lane and Carmine and Cornelia Streets. 



34 HALF A MAN 

These and neighboring thoroughfares grow 
daily more grimy, however, and no longer 
merit Janvier's praise for cleanhness, moral 
and physical. The picturesque, friendly old 
houses are giving way to factories with high, 
monotonous fronts, where foreigners work 
who crowd the ward and destroy its former 
American aspect. 

Among the old time aristocracy bearing 
Knickerbocker names there are a few colored 
people who delight in talking of the fine 
families and past wealth of old Greenwich 
Village. Scornful of the gibberish-speaking 
Italians, they sigh, too, at their own race as 
they see it, for the ambitious Negro has 
moved uptown, leaving this section largely 
to widowed and deserted women and degen- 
erates. The once handsome houses, altered 
to accommodate manj^ families, are rotten 
and unwholesome, while the newer tenements 
of West Third Street are darkened by the 
elevated road, and shelter vice that knows 
no race. Altogether, this is not a neighbor- 
hood to attract the new-comer. Here alone 
in New York I have found the majority of 
the adults northern born, men and women 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 35 



who, unsuccessful in tlieir struggle with city 
life, have been left behind in these old for- 
gotten streets.^ 

The second section, north of the first, lies 
between West Fourteenth and West Fifty- 
ninth Streets, and Sixth Avenue and the 
Hudson River. In 1880 this was the centre 
of the Negro population, but business has 
entered some of the streets, the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad has scooped out acres for its 
terminal, and while the colored houses do 

^ Place of birth of 1036 New York Negro tenement dwellers. 
These figures were obtained chiefly from personal visits: 





Totals 


East 
Side 


Green- 
wich 
Village 


Middle 
West 
Side 


San 
Juan 
HiU 


Upper 

West 
Side 


New England 

West 


18 
11 

157 

18 

19 

37 

26 

375 

217 

65 

2 

87 

4 


1 
1 
6 
1 

1 

8 
6 


1 



4 



47 

4 

3 



1 

15 

16 

2 

1 

6 

1 


7 

5 

42 

S 

3 

6 

5 

71 

64 

23 

1 

13 




5 

4 

55 

9 

12 

27 

16 

244 

127 

39 



67 

3 


1 
1 


New York 

New Jersey 


7 
1 


Pennsylvania 


1 


Maryland 


3 


District of Columbia . . . 
Virginia 


4 

37 


Carolinas 


4 


Gulf States 


1 


Canada 





West Indies 





Europe 







1036 


25 


100 


243 


608 


60 



36 HALF A MAN 

not diminish in number, they show no de- 
cided increase. No one street is given over 
to the Negro, but a row of two or three or 
six or even eight tenements shelter the black 
man. The shelter afforded is poorer than 
that given the white resident whose dwelling 
touches the black, the rents are a little 
higher, and the landlord fails to pay atten- 
tion to ragged paper, or to a ceiling which 
scatters plaster flakes upon the floor. In 
the Thirties there are rear tenements reached 
by narrow alley- ways. Crimes are com- 
mitted by black neighbor against black 
neighbor, and the entrance to the rear yard 
offers a tempting place for a girl to linger at 
night. A rear tenement is New York's only 
approach to the alley of cities farther south. 
There are startling and happy surprises in 
all tenement neighborhoods, and I recall 
turning one afternoon from a dark yard 
into a large beautiful room. Muslin cur- 
tains concealed the windows, the brass bed 
was covered with a thick white counterpane, 
and on either side of the fireplace, where 
coal burned brightly in an open grate, were 
two rare engravings. It was a workroom, 



! 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 37 

and the mistress of the house, steady, capable, 
and very black, was at her ironing-board. 
By her sat the colored mammy of the story 
book rocking lazily in her chair. She ex- 
plained to me that her daughter had found 
her down south, two years ago, and brought 
her to this northern home, where she had 
nothing to do, for her daughter could make 
fifty dollars a month. This home picture 
was made lastingly memorable by the younger 
woman's telling me softly as she went with 
me to the door, "I was sold from my mother, 
down in Georgia, when I was two years old. 
I ain't sure she's my mother. She thinks so; 
but I can't ever be sure." 

Homes beautiful both in appearance and 
in spirit can rarely occur where people must 
dwell in great poverty, but there are many 
efforts at attractive family life on these 
streets. A few of the blocks are orderly 
and quiet. Thirty-seventh Street, between 
Eighth and Ninth Avenues, is largely given 
over to the colored and is rough and noisy. 
Here and down by the river at Hell's Kitchen 
the rioting in 1900 between the Irish and the 
Negro took place. Men are ready for a 



38 HALF A MAN 

fight today, and the children see much of 
hard drinking and quick blows. 

"The poorer the family, the lower is the 
quarter in which it must live, and the more 
enviable appears the fortune of the anti- 
social class." ^ A vicious world dwells in 
these streets and makes notorious this section 
of New York. For this is a part of the 
Tenderloin district, and at night, after the 
children's cries have ceased, and the fathers 
and mothers who have worked hard during 
the day have put out their lights, the auto- 
mobiles rush swiftly past, bearing the men 
of the "superior race." Temptation is con- 
tinuous, and the child that grows up pure 
in thought and deed does so in spite of his 
surroundings. 

Before reaching West Fifty-ninth Street, 
the beginning of our third district, we come 
upon a Negro block at West Fifty-third 
Street. When years ago the elevated rail- 
road was erected on this fashionable street, 
white people began to sell out and rent to 
Negroes; and today you find here three 
colored hotels, the colored Young Men's and 

1 S. N. Patten, "New Basis of Civilization," p. 52. 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 39 

Young Women's Christian Associations, the 
offices of many colored doctors and lawyers, 
and three large beautiful colored churches. 
The din of the elevated drowns alike the 
doctor's voice and his patient's, the client's 
and the preacher's. 

From Fifty-ninth Street, walking north on 
Tenth Avenue, we begin to ascend a hill 
that grows in steepness until we reach Sixty- 
second Street. The avenue is lined with 
small stores kept by Italians and Germans, 
but to the left the streets, sloping rapidly to 
the Hudson River, are filled with tenements, 
huge double deckers, built to within ten feet 
of the rear of the twenty-five foot lot, accom- 
modating four families on each of the five 
floors. We can count four hundred and 
seventy-nine homes on one side of the street 
alone ! 

This is our third district, San Juan Hill, so 
called by an on-looker who saw the police- 
men charging up during one of the once 
common race fights. It is a bit of Africa, as 
Negroid in aspect as any district you are 
likely to visit in the South. A large ma- 
jority of its residents are Southerners and 



40 HALF A MAN 

West Indians, and it presents an interesting 
study of the Negro poor in a large northern 
city. The block on Sixtieth Street has some 
white residents, but the blocks on Sixty- 
first, Sixty-second, and Sixty-third are given 
over entirely to colored. On the square 
made by the north side of Sixty-first, the 
south side of Sixty-second Streets, and Tenth 
and West End Avenues, 5.4 acres, the state 
census of 1905 showed 6173 inhabitants.^ 
All but a few of these must have been Ne- 
groes, as the avenue sides of the block, occu- 
pied by whites, are short and with low houses. 
It is the long line of five-story tenements, 
running eight hundred feet down the two 
streets, that brings up the enumeration. 
The dwellings on Sixty-first and Sixty-second 
Streets are human hives, honeycombed with 
little rooms thick with human beings. Bed- 
rooms open into air shafts that admit no 

* Some doubt is cast upon this figure. The New York 
Health Department in an enumeration of its own, in 1905, 
found a popuhition of 383.3. There is no question, however, 
of the great congestion of this block and the one north and 
south of it. The erection of new tenements has gone on 
rapiiily since 1905, sweejjing away the children's playgrounds, 
and making this one of the most crowded centres of New 
York. 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 41 

fresh breezes, only foul air carrying too often 
the germs of disease. 

The people on the hill are known for their 
rough behavior, their readiness to fight, their 
coarse talk. Vice is abroad, not in insidious 
form as in the more well-to-do neighborhood 
farther north, but open and cheap. Boys 
play at craps unmolested, gambling is preva- 
lent, and Negro loafers hang about the street 
corners and largely support the Tenth Avenue 
saloons. 

But San Juan Hill has many respectable 
families, and within the past five years it has 
taken a decided turn for the better. The 
improvement has been chiefly upon Sixty- 
third Street where two model tenements, one 
holding one hundred, the other one hundred 
and sixty-one families, have been opened 
under the management of the City and 
Suburban Homes Company, the larger one 
having been erected by Mr. Henry Phipps. 
Planning for a four per cent return on their 
investment, these landlords have rented only 
to respectable families, and their rule has 
changed the character of the block. ^ Old 

^ Too much cannot be said of the beneficial effect of good 



42 HALF A MAN 

houses have been remodelled to compete with 
the newer dwellings, street rows have ceased, 
and the police captain of the district, we are 
told, now counts this as one of the peaceful 
and law-abiding blocks of the city. When 
its other blocks show a like improvement, 
San Juan Hill will no longer merit its bel- 
ligerent name. 

The lower East Side of Manhattan, a many- 
storied mass of tenements and workshops, 
where immigrants labor and sleep in their 
tiny crowded rooms, was once a fashionable 
American district. At that time Negroes 
dwelt near the whites as barbers, caterers, 
and coachmen, as laundresses and waiting- 
maids. But with the removal of the people 
whom they served, the colored men and 

housing in a colored neighborhood, when under such able 
management as the City and Suburban Homes Company. 
Decent homes under competent management are absolutely 
necessary to an improvement in the Negro quarters of Man- 
hattan and of Brooklyn as well. I can speak with some 
authority of the good done by the Phipps houses on West 
Sixty-third Street, as I lived, for eight months, the only white 
tenant in the one hundred and sixty-one apartments. Church 
and philanthropy had done and are doing excellent work on 
these blocks, but a sudden and marked improvement came 
from good housing, from the building of clean, healthful 
homes for law-abiding people. 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 43 

women left also, and it is difficult to find an 
African face among the hundreds of thou- 
sands of Europeans south of Fourteenth 
Street. On Pell Street, in the Chinese quar- 
ter, there used to be two colored families on 
friendly terms with their neighbors, who, 
however, went uptown for their pleasures 
and their church. 

It is not until we reach Third Avenue and 
Forty-third Street that we come to the East 
Side Negro tenement. From this point, 
such houses run, a straggling line, chiefly 
between Second and Third Avenues, to the 
Bronx where the more well-to-do among the 
colored live. At Ninety-seventh Street, and 
on up to One Hundredth Street, dark faces 
are numerous. About six hundred and fifty 
Negro families live on these four streets and 
around the corner on Third Avenue. Occa- 
sionally they live in houses occupied by 
Jews or Italians. Above this section there 
are a number of Negro tenements in the One 
Hundred and Thirties, between Madison 
and Fifth Avenues — almost a West Side 
neighborhood, since it adjoins the large 
colored quarter to the west of Fifth Avenue. 



44 HALF A MAN 

On the whole, the East Side is not often 
sought by the colored as a place of residence. 
Their important churches are in another part 
of the city, and every New Yorker knows the 
difficulty in making a way across Central 
Park. Yet, the neighborhood is not uncivil 
to them, and one rarely reads here of race 
friction. Doubtless this is in part owing to 
the smallness of the population, all of Man- 
hattan east of Fifth Avenue containing but 
fourteen per cent of the apartments occupied 
by colored in the city; but it is partly, too, 
that Jews and Italians prove less belligerent 
tenement neighbors than Irish. 

Five years ago, those of us who were inter- 
ested in the Negro poor continually heard of 
their difficulty in securing a place to live. 
Not only were they unable to rent in neigh- 
borhoods suitable for respectable men and 
women, but dispossession, caused perhaps by 
the inroad of business, meant a despairing 
hunt for any home at all. People clung to 
miserable dwellings, where no improvements 
had been made for years, thankful to have a 
roof to shelter them. Yet all the time new- 
law tenements were being built, and Gentile 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 45 

and Jew were leaving their former apartments 
in haste to get into these more attractive 
dwellings. At length the Negro got his 
chance; not a very good one, but something 
better than New York had yet offered him 
— a chance to follow into the houses left 
vacant by the white tenants. Owing in part 
to the energy of Negro real estate agents, in 
part to rapid building operations, desirable 
streets, near the subway and the elevated 
railroad, were thrown open to the colored. 
This Negro quarter, the last we have to note 
and the newest, has been created in the past 
eight years. When the Tenement House 
Department tabulated the 1900 census fig- 
ures for the Borough of Manhattan, and 
showed the nationalities and races on each 
block, it found only 300 colored families in 
a neighborhood that today accommodates 
4473 colored families.^ This large increase 
is on six streets, West Ninety-ninth, between 
Eighth and Ninth Avenues, West One Hun- 
dred and Nineteenth, between Seventh and 
Eighth Avenues, and West One Hundred and 

^ The Tenement House Department tabulated the number 
of Negro families living in tenements on these streets. I have 
counted the number of flats rented to colored people. 



46 HALF A MAN 

Thirty-third to One Hundred and Thirty- 
sixth Streets, between Fifth and Seventh 
Avenues, with a few houses between Seventh 
and Eighth, and on Lenox Avenues. There 
are colored tenements north and south of 
this; and while these figures are correct 
today ,^ they may be wrong tomorrow, for 
new tenements are continually given over to 
the Negro people. Moreover, on all of these 
streets are colored boarding and lodging 
houses, crowded with humanity. Houses 
today fall into the hands of the Negro as a 
child's blocks, placed on end, tumble when 
a push is given to the first in the line. The 
New York Times, in August, 1905, gives a 
graphic account of the entrance of the 
colored tenant on West Ninety-ninth Street. 
Two houses had been opened for a short time 
to Negroes when the other house-owners 
capitulated, and the colored influx came: 
"The street was so choked with vehicles 
Saturday that some of the drivers had to 
wait with their teams around the corners for 
an opportunity to get into it. A constant 
stream of furniture trucks loaded with the 

iJuly 15, 1910. 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 47 

household effects of a new colony of colored 
people who are invading the choice locality 
is pouring into the street. Another equally 
long procession, moving in the other direc- 
tion, is carrying away the household goods 
of the whites from their homes of years." 
The movement is not always so swift as this, 
but it is continuous. 

This last colored neighborhood perhaps 
ought not to be spoken of as belonging to the 
poor; not to Lanier's poor whose door pressed 
so tighteningly inward. Here are homes 
where it is possible, with sufficient money, 
to live in privacy, and with the comforts of 
steam heat and a private bath. But rents 
are high, and if money is scarce, the apart- 
ment must be crowded and privacy lost. 
Moreover, vice has made its way into these 
newly acquired streets. The sporting class 
will always pay more and demand fewer 
improvements than the workers, and, unable 
to protect himself, the respectable tenant 
finds his children forced to live in close 
propinquity to viciousness. Each of these 
new streets has this objectionable element in 
its population, for while some agents make 



48 HALF A MAN 

earnest efforts to keep the property they 
handle respectable, they find the owner wants 
money more than respectability. 

In our walk up and down Manhattan, 
turning aside and searching for Negro- 
tenanted streets, we ought to see one thing 
with clearness — that the majority of the 
colored population live on a comparatively 
few blocks. This is a new and important 
feature of their New York life, and in certain 
parts of the city it develops a color problem, 
for while you seem an inappreciable quantity 
when you constitute two per cent of the 
population in the borough, you are of impor- 
tance when you form one hundred per cent 
of the population of your street. This con- 
gestion is accompanied by a segregation of 
the race. The dwellers in these tenements 
are largely new-comers, men and women 
from the South and the West Indies,^ seek- 
ing the North for greater freedom and 
for economic opportunity. Like any other 

^ The yearly arrivals of " African blacks " at the port of 
New York, secured from the Immigration Commissioner, 
are as follows: 1902-03, 110; 1903-04, 547; 1904-05, 1189; 
1905-06, 1757; 1906-07, 2054; 1907-08, 1820; 1908-09, 
2119. The year runs from July 1 to June 30. 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 49 

strangers they are glad to make their home 
among famihar faces, and they settle in the 
already crowded places on the West Side. 
Freedom to live on the East Side next door 
to a Bohemian family may be very well, but 
sociability is better. The housewife who tim- 
idly hangs her clothes on the roof her first 
Monday morning in New York is pleased 
to find the next line swinging with the laun- 
dry of a Richmond acquaintance, who in- 
structs her in the perplexing housekeeping 
devices of her flat. No chattering foreigner 
could do that. And while to be welcome in 
a white church is inspiring, to find the girl 
you knew at home, in the next pew to you, is 
still more delightful when you have arrived, 
tired and homesick, at the great city of New 
York. So the colored working people, like 
the Italians and Jews and other nationalities, 
have their quarter in which they live very 
much by themselves, paying little attention 
to their white neighbors. If the white 
people of the city have forced this upon 
them, they have easily accepted it. Should 
this two per cent of the population be com- 
pelled to distribute itself mathematically 



50 HALF A MAN 

over the city, each ward and street having its 
correct quota, it would evince dissatisfac- 
tion. This is not true of the well-to-do 
element, but of the mass of the Negro 
workers whose homes we have been visiting. 
Loving sociability, these new-comers to the 
city — and it is in the most segregated dis- 
tricts that the greater number of southern 
and British born Negroes are found — keep 
to their own streets and live to themselves. 
If they occupy all the sidewalk as they talk 
over important matters in front of their 
church, the outsider passing should recognize 
that he is an intruder and take to the curb. 
He would leave the sidewalk entirely were 
he on Hester Street or Mulberry Bend. 
New-comers to New York usually segregate, 
and the Negro is no exception. 

While congestion and segregation seem 
important to us as we look at these colored 
quarters, I suspect that the matter most 
pertinent to the Negro new-comer is, not 
where he will live nor how he will live, but 
whether he will be able to live in New York 
at all, whether he can meet the landlord's 
agent the day he comes to the door. For 



WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 51 

New York rents have mounted upwards as 
have her tenements. The Phipps model 
houses, built especially to benefit the poor, 
charge twenty-five dollars a month for four 
tiny rooms and bath; and while this is a 
little more than the dark old time rooms 
would bring, it takes about all of the twenty- 
five dollars you make running an elevator, to 
get a flat in New York. What wonder that, 
once secured, it is overrun with lodgers, or 
that, if privacy is maintained, there is not 
enough money left to feed and clothe the 
growing household. The once familiar song 
of the colored comedian still rings true in 
New York: 

"Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown, 
What you gwine ter do when de rent comes roun'?" 



CHAPTER III 

The Child of the Tenement 

Within the last few years white Ameri- 
cans, many of whom were formerly ignorant 
of their condition, have been taught that 
they are possessed of a racial antipathy for 
human beings whose color is not their own. 
They have a "natural contrariety," "a dis- 
like that seems constitutional" toward the 
dark tint that they see on another's face. 
But however well they may have conned 
their lesson, it breaks down or is likely to be 
forgotten in the presence of a Negro baby; 
for a healthy colored baby is a subject, not 
for natural contrariety, but for sympathetic 
cuddling. They are most engaging new- 
comers, these "delicate bronze statuettes," ^ 
only warm with life, and smiling good will 
upon their world. 

Not many colored babies are born in New 
York, at least not enough to keep pace with 

1 Dudley Kidd's, "Savage Childhood," a delightful book. 

52 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 53 

the deaths. The year 1908 saw in all the 
boroughs 1973 bh'ths as against 2212 deaths 
at all ages.^ 

In this same year the colored births for 
Manhattan and the Bronx were 1459, and 
the deaths under one year of age 424, an 
infant mortality rate of 290 to every thou- 
sand.2 That is, two babies in every seven 
died under one year of age. The white 
infant mortality rate was 127.7, a little less 
than half that of the colored. 

Why should we have in New York this 
enormous colored infant death rate ? Many 
physicians believe it indicates a lack of 
physical stamina in the Negro, an inability 
to resist disease. This may be so, but before 
falling back upon race as an explanation of 
high infant mortality, we need to exhaust 
other possible causes. We do not question 
the vitality of the white race when we read 

1 Report of the Department of Health, City of New York, 
1908, pp. 844, 849. The returns for births, the report states, 
are incomplete. 

^ This per cent is obtained from two sources, the births from 
the Department of Health report, and the deaths from the 
Mortality Statistics of the United States Census, 1908. 
"Colored" includes Chinese, a negligible quantity in the infant 
population. 



54 HALF A MAN 

that in parts of Russia 500 babies out of 
every thousand die within the year; nor do 
we beheve the people of Fall River, a fac- 
tory town in Massachusetts, have an inher- 
ent inability to resist disease, though their 
infant mortality rate in 1900 was 260 in 
one thousand births. We look in these 
latter cases, as we should in the former, to 
see if we find those conditions which careful 
students of the subject tell us accompany 
a high infant death rate. 

Among the first of the accepted causes 
of infant mortality is the overcrowding of 
cities. We have viewed overcrowding as 
a usual condition among the Negroes of 
New York, and have seen the small, ill- 
ventilated bedroom where the baby spends 
much of its life. Heat, with its accompany- 
ing growth of bacteria and swift process 
of decomposition, is a second cause. New 
York's high infant mortality comes in the 
summer months when in the poorest quar- 
ters it has been known to reach four hundred 
in the thousand.^ In the hot, crowded 

' Third Annual Report of the New York Milk Committee, 
1909. 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 55 

tenements, and no place can be so hot as 
New York in one of its July record-break- 
ing weeks, the babies die like flies, and yet 
not like flies, for the flies buzz in hundreds 
about the little hot faces. Excitement, 
late hours, constant restlessness, these, too, 
cause infant mortality. On a city block 
tenanted by hundreds of men and women 
and little children, no hour of the night is 
free from some disturbance. Children whim- 
per as they wake from the heat, babies cry 
shrilly, and the brightly-lighted streets are 
rarely without the sound of human foot- 
steps. The sensitive new-born organism 
knows nothing of the quiet and restful dark- 
ness of nature's night. 

But the most important cause of infant 
mortality ^ is improper infant feeding. And 
here we meet with a condition that confronts 
the Negro babies of New York far more 
than it confronts the white. For a properly 
fed baby is a breast fed baby, or else one 
whose food has been prepared with great 
care, and mothers forced by necessity to go 

^ See G. Newman, " Infant Mortality," for a careful study 
of this whole subject. 



56 HALF A MAN 

out to work, cannot themselves give their 
babies this proper food. It is among the 
infants of mothers at work that mortahty is 
high. Mr. G. Newman, an EngHsh author- 
ity on this! subject, gives an interesting ex- 
ample of this in Lancashire, where, during 
the American civil war, many of the cot- 
ton operatives were out of employment and 
many more worked only half time. Priva- 
tion was great. A quarter of the mill hands 
were in receipt of poor relief, the general 
death rate increased, but the infant mortality 
rate decreased. The mothers, forced by cir- 
cumstances to remain away from the fac- 
tory, though in a state of semi-starvation, by 
their nursing and by their care of the home 
preserved the lives of their infants. Negro 
mothers, owing to the low wage earned by 
their husbands, for the general welfare of the 
family and to avoid semi-starvation, like the 
Lancashire women, leave their homes, but 
they thereby sacrifice the lives of many of 
their babies. The percentage for 1900 of 
Negro married women in New York engag- 
ing in self-supporting work was 31.4 in every 
hundred; of white married women 4.2 in 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 57 

every hundred, seven times as many in pro- 
portion among the Negroes as among the 
whites.^ The Negro also shows a large per- 
centage of widows, a quarter of all the female 
population over ten years of age. Some of 
these, we have no means of knowing how 
many, are widows only in name, and have 
babies for whom they must in some way pro- 
vide support. The colored mother who has 
no husband often takes a position in domestic 
service and boards her baby, paying usually 
by the month, and finding the opportunity 
to visit her infant perhaps once a week. 
Sometimes she secures a "baby tender" who 
can give kindly, intelligent care; but under 
the best conditions her child will be bottle 
fed and in tenement surroundings inimical 
to health, while sometimes the woman to 
whom she intrusts her infant will be igno- 
rant of the simplest matters of hygiene. 

I remember an old colored woman, she 
must be dead by this time, who kept a baby 
farm. Her health was poor, and when I 
saw her, she had taken to her bed and lay 

^ Census, 1900, combination of Population table and 
Women at Work. 



I 



58 HALF A MAN 

in a dark room with two infants at her side. 
They were indescribably puny, with sunken 
cheeks and skinny arms and hands, weigh- 
ing what a normal child should weigh at 
birth, and yet six and seven months old. 
The woman talked to me enthusiastically 
of salvation and gave filthy bottles to her 
charges. She was exceptionally incompe- 
tent, but there are others doing her work, 
too old or too ignorant properly to attend 
to the babies under their care. 

Mothers who go out to day's-work are 
also unable to nurse their babies or to pre- 
pare all their food. The infant is placed 
in the care of some neighbor or of a growing 
daughter, who may be the impatient "little 
mother" of a number of charges. When the 
hot summer comes, such a baby is likely to 
fall the victim of epidemic diarrhoea, caused 
by pollution of the milk. Newman has a 
striking chart of infant death rates in Paris 
in which he pictures a rate mounting in 
one week as high as ^56 in the thousand 
among the artificially fed infants, while for 
the same week, among the breast fed babies, 
the mortality is 32. The Negro mother. 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 59 

seeking self-support by keeping clean an- 
other's house or caring for another's chil- 
dren, finds her own offspring swiftly taken 
from her by a disease that only her nourish- 
ing care could forestall.^ 

Remedial measures have for some time 
been taken in New York to check infant 
mortality, and they have met with some 
success. The distribution of pasteurized 
milk by Mr. Nathan Straus, the establish- 
ment of milk stations during the summer 
months in New York and Brooklyn where 
mothers at slight cost may secure proper 
infant food, and where much educative 
work is done by the visiting nurse, the mul- 
tiplication of day nurseries, all these have 
helped to decrease the death rate. The 
Negroes have been benefited by these re- 
medial agencies, but their percentage of 290 
is still a matter for grave attention. 

Two out of seven of New York's Negro 
babies die in the first year, but the other 
five grow up, some with puny arms and 

* It is interesting to see that the married women of Fall 
River, where we found a very high infant death rate, show 
a percentage of married women at work of twenty in a 
hundred. 



60 HALF A MAN 

ricketty legs, others again too hardy for 
bad food or bad air to harm. 

Like the babies these children suffer from 
their mother's absence at work. Family 
ties are loose, and more than other children 
they are handicapped by lack of proper 
home care. In an examination of the rec- 
ords of the Children's Court for three years 
I found that out of 717 arraignments of 
colored children, 221 were for improper 
guardianship, 30.8 per cent of the whole. 
Among the Russian children of the East 
Side, Tenth and Eleventh Wards, only 
15 per cent of arraignments were on this 
complaint, indicating twice as many children 
without parental care among the colored 
as among the children of the Tenth and 
Eleventh Wards. Rough colored girls, also, 
whose habits were too depraved to permit of 
their remaining without restraint, were fre- 
quently committed to reformatories. 

Truancy is not uncommon in colored 
neighborhoods, though few cases come before 
the courts. Sometimes the boy or girl is 
kept at home to care for the younger chil- 
dren, but again, lacking the mother's over- 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 61 

sight, he remains on the street when he 
should be in school, or arrives late with ill 
prepared lessons, y 

Asking a teacher of long experience among 
colored and white children concerning their 
respective scholarship, he assured me that 
the colored child could do as well as the 
white, but didn't. "From 20 to 50 per 
cent of the mothers of my colored chil- 
dren," he said, "go out to work. There is 
no one to oversee the child's tasks, and 
consequently little conscientious study." 

One can scarcely blame the children; and 
certainly one cannot blame the mothers for 
toiling for their support. And the fathers, 
though they work faithfully, are rarely 
able to earn enough unaided to support their 
families. Perhaps in time the city may im- 
prove matters by opening its school-rooms 
for a study period in the afternoon. 

But meanwhile the children are without 
proper care. This is not hard to endure in 
the summer, but in winter it is very trying 
to be without a home. Poor little cold 
boys and girls, some of them mere babies! 
You see them in the late afternoon sitting 



62 HALF A MAN 

on the tenement stairs, waiting for the long 
day to be done. It seems a week since 
they were inside eating their breakfast. 
The city has not pauperized them with a 
luncheon, and they have had only cold food 
since morning. Sometimes they have been 
all day without nourishment. When the 
door is opened at last, there are many help- 
ful things for them to do for their mother, 
and reading and arithmetic are relegated 
to so late an hour that their problem is 
only temporarily solved by sleep. 

Not all the colored working women, how- 
ever, go out for employment. Laundry 
work is an important home industry, and 
one may watch many mothers at their 
tubs or ironing-boards from Monday morn- 
ing until Saturday night. This makes the 
tenement rooms, tiny enough at best, sadly 
cluttered, but it does not deprive the chil- 
dren of the presence of their mother, who 
accepts a smaller income to remain at home 
with them. For after we have made full 
allowance for the lessening of family ties 
among the Negroes by social and economic 
pressure, we find that the majority of the 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 63 

colored boys and girls receive a due share 
of proper parental oversight. They are 
fed on appetizing food, cleanly and pret- 
tily dressed, they are encouraged to study 
and to improve their position, and they 
are given all the advantages that it is pos- 
sible for their mothers and fathers to 
secure. 

Jack London tells in the "Children of 
the Abyss" of the East Side of London, 
where "they have dens and lairs into which 
to crawl for sleeping purposes, and that is 
all. One can not travesty the word by 
calling such dens and lairs * homes.'" I 
have seen thousands of Negro dwelling- 
places, but I cannot think of half a dozen, 
however great their poverty, where this 
description would be correct. No matter 
how dingy the tenement, or how long the 
hours of work, the mother, and the father, 
too, try to make the "four walls and a 
ceiling" to which they return, home. Vis- 
itors among the New York poor, in the past 
and in the present, testify that given the 
same income or lack of income, the colored 
do not allow their surroundings to become 



64 HALF A MAN 

so cheerless or so filthy as the white, and 
that when there is an opportunity for the 
mother to spend some time in the house, 
the rooms take on an air of pleasant refine- 
ment. Pictures decorate the walls, the side- 
board contains many pretty dishes, and the 
table is set three times a day. Meals are not 
eaten out of the paper bag common on New 
York's East Side, but there is something of 
formality about the dinner, and good table 
manners are taught the children. The ten- 
ement dwelling becomes a home, and the 
boys and girls pass a happy childhood in 
it. 

Watching the colored children for many 
months in their play and work, I have 
looked for possible distinctive traits. The 
second generation of New Yorkers greatly 
resembles the "Young America" of all na- 
tionalities of the city, shrill-voiced, dis- 
respectful, easily diverted, whether at work 
or at play, shrewd, alert, and mischievous 
— the New York street child. I remember 
once helping with a club of eight boys where 
seven nationalities were represented, and 
where no one could have distinguished Irish 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 65 

from German or Jew from Italian, with his 
eyes shut. Had a Negro been brought up 
among them he would quickly have taken 
on their ways. Of the colored children who 
model their lives after their mischievous 
young white neighbors, many outdo the 
whites in depravity and lawlessness; but 
among the boys and girls who live by them- 
selves, as on San Juan Hill, one sees occa- 
sional interesting traits. 

The records of the Children's Court of 
New York (Boroughs of Manhattan and 
the Bronx) throw a little light on this mat- 
ter, and are sufficiently important to quote 
with some fulness. For the three years 
studied, 1904, 1905, 1906, I tabulated the 
cases of the colored children brought before 
the court, and also the cases of the children 
of the Tenth and Eleventh Wards, chiefly 
Hungarians and Russian Jews, expecting to 
find, in two such dissimilar groups, inter- 
esting comparisons. The following table 
shows the result of this study. The court 
in its annual report gives the figures for the 
total number of arrests which I have incor- 
porated in my table: 



66 



HALF A MAN 



Record of Arrests in Children's Court of Manhattan 
AND THE Bronx for 1904, 1905. 1906 



Negro Arrests 



10th and 11th 
Wards Arrests 



No. of 
children 



Petit larceny 

Grand larceny 

Burglary — Robbery 

Assault 

Improper guardianship 

Disorderly child — un- 
governable child . . . 

Depraved girl 

Violation of labor law . 

Unlicensed peddling ^ . 

Truancy 

Malicious mischief. . . . 

Violation of Park Cor- 
poration ordinances. 

Mischief, including 
craps, throwing 
stones, building bon- 
fires, fighting, etc. . . . 

Unclassified felonies, 
misdemeanors 

All others 



56 

27 

27 

27 

221 

90 
33 


5 
1 





214 

13 
3 



Arrests 
per 
cent 



717 



7.8 
3.8 
3.8 
3.8 
30.8 

12.6 

4.6 





.7 

.1 





29.8 

1.8 
.4 



No. of 
children 



Arrests 
per 
cent 



139 
108 
116 
61 
305 

124 

21 

73 

130 

23 

9 



100.0 



896 

16 
3 



2049 



6.8 
5.3 
5.7 
3.0 
15.0 

6.1 
1.1 
3.5 
6.4 
1.0 
.4 



25 1.2 



43.7 

.7 
.1 



100.0 



Total arrests for 

all children in 

Manhattan and 

Bronx 



No. of 
children 



2,697 
878 

1,383 
669 

6,386 

1,980 
312 
592 

298 
179 

175 



10,267 

799 
90 



Arrests 
per 
cent 



26,705 



10.1 
3.3 
5.2 
2.5 

23.9 

7.4 
1.2 
2.1 

.0 
1.1 

.7 

.7 



38.4 

3.0 
.4 



100.0 



Percentage of Negro to total, 1904-1907 2.7 

Percentage of Negro to total, 1907-1910 1.9 

1 My tabulations of the Negro and Tenth and Eleventh 
Ward Children are from the Court's unpublished records to 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 67 

Our table shows us that which we have 
already noted, the high percentage of im- 
proper guardianship among the Negroes and 
the grave number of depraved Negro girls. 
For the sins of petit larceny, grand larceny, 
and burglary, putting the three together, 
the colored child shows a slightly smaller 
percentage than the East Side white, a 
noticeably smaller percentage than the total 
number of children. The sin of theft is 
often swiftly attributed to a black face, but 
this percentage indicates that the colored 
child has no "innate tendency" to steal. 
Ten per cent of the arrests among the East 
Side children are for unlicensed peddling 
and violation of the labor law, but no little 
Negro boys plunge into the business world 
before their time. They have no keen com- 
mercial sense to lead them to undertake 
transactions on their own account, and they 
are not desired by purchasers of boy labor 
in the city. 

The most important heading, numerically, 

which I was allowed access. The absence of any figures for 
Unlicensed Peddling in the Total indicates that in its printed 
reports the Court has included Unlicensed Peddling with 
Unclassified Misdemeanors. 



68 HALF A MAN 

is that of mischief, and here the Negro falls 
far behind the Eastsider, behind the aver- 
age for the whole. While depravity among 
the girls and improper guardianship are the 
race's most serious defects, as shown by the 
arrests among its children in New York, 
trac lability and a decent regard for law are 
among its merits. The colored child, espe- 
cially if he is in a segregated neighborhood, 
is not greatly inclined to mischief. My own 
experience has shown me that life in a tene- 
ment on San Juan Hill is devoid of the in- 
genious, exasperating deviltry of an Irish or 
German -American neighborhood. No daily 
summons calls one to the door only to hear 
wildly scurrying footsteps on the stairs. 
Mail boxes are left solely for the postman's 
use, and hallways are not defaced by obscene 
writing. There is plenty of crap shooting, 
rarely interfered with by the police, but there 
is little impertinent annoyance or destruc- 
tiveness. 

An observer, watching the little colored 
boys and girls as they play on the city streets, 
finds much that is attractive and pleasant. 
They sing their songs, learned at school and 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 69 

on the playground, fly their kites, spin their 
tops, run their races. They usually finish 
what they begin, not turning at the first 
interruption to take up something else. 
They move more deliberately than most 
children, and their voices are slower to adopt 
the New York screech than those of their 
Irish neighbors on the block above them. 
Altogether they are attractive children, 
particularly the smaller ones, who are more 
energetic than their big brothers and sis- 
ters. Good manners are often evident. 
While receiving an afternoon call from two 
girls, aged four and five, I was invited by 
the older to partake of half a peanut, the 
other half of which she split in two and gen- 
erously shared with her companion. *'Gim' 
me five cents," I once heard a Negro boy of 
twelve say to his mother who walked past 
him on the street. She did not seem to 
hear, but the boy's companion, a youth of 
the same age, reproved him severely for 
his rude speech. When walking with an 
Irish friend, who had worked among the 
children of her own race, I saw a colored 
boy run swiftly up the block to meet his 



70 HALF A MAN 

mother. He kissed her, took her bundle 
from her, and carrying it under his arm, 
walked quietly by her side to their home. 
"There are many boys here," I said, "who 
are just as courteous as that." "Is that 
so.f^" she retorted quickly, "Then you 
needn't be explaining to me any further 
the reason for the high death rate." 

The gentle, chivalrous affection of the 
child for its mother is daily to be seen among 
these boys and girls. "Your African," said 
Mary Kingsley, "is little better than a 
slave to his mother, whom he loves with a 
love he gives to none other. This love of 
his mother is so dominant a factor in his 
life that it must be taken into considera- 
tion in attempting to understand the true 
Negro." ^ And if the child lavishes affec- 
tion upon its parent, the mother in turn 
gives untiringly to her child. She is the 
"mammy" of whom we have so often heard, 
but with her loving care bestowed, as it 
should be, upon her own offspring. She 
tries to keep her child clean in body and spirit 
and to train it to be gentle and good; and 

1 Mary Kingsley, "West African Studies," p. 319. 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 71 

in return usually she receives a stanch 
devotion. I once found fault with a col- 
ored girl of ten years for her rude behavior 
with her girl companions, adding that per- 
haps she did not know any better, at which 
she turned on me almost fiercely and said, 
"It's our fault; we know better. Our 
mothers learn us. It's we that's bold." 
As one watches the boys and girls walking 
quietly up the street of a Sunday afternoon 
to their Sunday-school, neatly and cleanly 
dressed, one appreciates the anxious, mater- 
nal care that strives as best it knows how, 
to rear honest and God-fearing men and 
women. 

Paul Lawrence Dunbar has painted the 
Negro father, his "little brown baby wif 
sparklin' eyes," nestling close in his arms. 
Working at unusual hours, the colored man 
often has a part of the day to give to his 
family, and one sees him wheeling the baby 
in its carriage, or playing with the older 
boys and girls. 

Negroes seem naturally a gentle, loving 
people. As you live with them and watch 
them in their homes, you find some coarse- 



72 HALF A MAN 

ness, but little real brutality. Rarely does 
a father or mother strike a child. Travel- 
lers in Central and West Africa describe 
them as the most friendly of savage folk, 
and where, as in our city, they live largely 
to themselves, they keep something of these 
characteristics. But it is only a step in 
New York from Africa into Italy or Ireland; 
and the step may bring a sad jostling to 
native friendliness. To hold his own with 
his white companions on the street or in 
school, the Negro must become pugnacious, 
callous to insult, ready to hit back when 
affronted. Many are like the little girl who 
told me that she did not care to play with 
white children, "because," she explained, 
"my mother tells me to smack any one 
who calls me nigger, and I ain't looking for 
trouble." The colored children aren't look- 
ing for trouble. They have a tendency to 
run away from it if they see it in the form of 
a gang of boys coming to them around the 
corner. They believe if they had a fight, it 
wouldn't be a fair one, and that if the police- 
man came, he would arrest them and not 
their Irish enemies. So they grow up on 



■I 



CHILD OF THE TENEMENT 73 

streets through which few white men pass, 
leading their own hves with their own people 
and thinking not overmuch of the other race 
that surrounds them. But the day comes 
when school is over, and the outside world, 
however indifferent they may be to it, must 
be met. They must go out and grapple 
with it for the means to hire a cooking 
stove and a dark bedroom of their own; they 
must think of making money. So they stand 
at the corner of their street, looking out, 
and then move slowly on to find what oppor- 
tunity is theirs to come to a full manhood. 
The way ahead does not seem very bright, 
and some move so timidly that failure is 
sure to meet them at the first turning. But 
some have the courage of the little colored 
girl, aged four, who led a line of kinder- 
garten children up their street and then on 
to the unknown country that lay between 
them and Central Park. At the first block 
a mob of Irish boys fell upon them, run- 
ning between the lines, throwing sticks, and 
calling "nigger" with screams and jeers. 
I The leader held her head high, paying no 
attention to her persecutors. She neither 



74 HALF A MAN 

quickened nor slowed her pace, and when 
the child at her side fell back, she pulled her 
hand and said, "Don't notice them. Walk 
straight ahead." 






'D f 



CHAPTER IV 

Earning a Living — Manual Labor and 
THE Trades 

In "The American Race Problem," one of 
our recent important books upon the Negro, 
the author, Mr. Alfred Holt Stone of Missis- 
sippi, after a survey of the world, declares 
that "to me, it seems the plainest fact con- 
fronting the Negro is that there is but one 
area of any size wherein his race may obey 
the command to eat its bread in the sweat of 
its face side by side with the white man. 
That area is composed of the Southern 
United States." ^ 

On examination we find that only men of 
English and North European stock are 
"white" to Mr. Stone, and that his state- 
ment is too sweeping by a continent or two, 
but as applying to the United States, it will 

' Alfred Holt Stone, "Studies in the American Race Prob- 
lem," p. 164. 

75 



76 HALF A MAN 



I 



usually meet with unqualified approval. It , 
is generally believed that discrimination con- 
tinually retards the Negro in his search for 
employment in the North, while in the South 
" he is given a man's chance in the commer- 
cial world." Northern men visiting southern 
colored industrial schools advise the pupils 
to remain where they are, and restless spirits 
among the race are assured that it is better 
to submit to some personal oppression than 
to go to a land of uncertain employment. 
The past glory of the North is dwelt upon, 
its days of black waiters, and barbers, and 
coachmen, but the present is painted in 
harsh colors. 

There is some truth in this comparison of 
economic conditions among the Negroes in 
the North and in the South, but it must not 
be taken too literally. Today's tendency 
to minimize southern and maximize northern 
race difiiculties, while strengthening the 
bonds between white Americans, sometimes 
obscures the real issues regarding colored 
labor in this country. We need to look care- 
fully at conditions in numbers of selected 
localities, and we can find no northern 



EARNING A LIVING 77 

city more worthy of our study than New 
York. 

The New York Negro constitutes today 
but two per cent of the population of Man- 
hattan, one and eight-tenths per cent of that 
of Greater New York; and, as many workers 
in Manhattan Hve in Brooklyn, the larger 
area is the better one to consider. In 1900, 
the census volume on occupations gives the 
number of males over ten years of age en- 
gaged in gainful occupations in Greater New 
York at 1,102,471, and of that number 
20,395 or 1.8 per cent, eighteen in every 
thousand, are Negroes. In Atlanta, to take 
a southern commercial centre, 351 out of 
every thousand male workers are Negroes. 
This enormous difference in the proportion 
of colored workers to white must never be 
forgotten in considering the labor situation 
North and South. We cannot expect in the 
North to see the Negro monopolizing an 
industry which demands a larger share of 
workers than he can produce, nor need we 
admit that he has lost an occupation when 
he does not control it. 

We often come upon such a statement as 



78 HALF A MAN 

that of Samuel R. Scottron, a colored busi- 
ness man, who, writing in 1905, said, "The 
Italian, Sicilian, Greek, occupy quite every 
industry that was confessedly the Negro's 
forty years ago. They have the bootblack 
stands, the news stands, barbers' shops, 
waiters' situations, restaurants, janitorships, 
catering business, stevedoring, steamboat 
work, and other situations occupied by 
Negroes."^ Did the colored men have all 
this forty years ago when they were only one 
and a half per cent of the population? If 
so, there were giants in those days, or New 
York was much simpler in its habits than 
now. At present the control by the colored 
people of any such an array of industries 
would be quite impossible. To take four 
out of the nine occupations enumerated: the 
census of 1900 gives the number of waiters 
at 31,211; barbers, 12,022; janitors, 6184; 
bootblacks, 2648; a total of 52,065. But in 
1900 there were only 20,395 Negro males 
engaged in gainful occupations in New York. 
Without a vigorous astral body the 20,000- 
odd colored men could not occupy half these 

* New York Age, August 24, 1905. 



EARNING A LIVING 



79 



jobs. If they dominated in the field of 
waiters they must abandon handhng the 
razor, and not all the colored boys could 
muster 2684 strong to black the boots of 
Greater New York. We must at the outset 
recognize that as a labor factor the Negro in 
New York is insignificant. 

The volume of the federal census for 1900 
on occupations shows us how the Negroes 
are employed in New York City. There are 
five occupational divisions, and the Negroes 
and whites are divided among them as 
follows : 



Agricultural pursuits 

Professional service 

Domestic and personal service 
Trade and transportation .... 
Manufacturing and mechani- 
cal pursuits 

Total 



White 


Per 
cent 


Negro 


9,853 

60,037 

189,282 

398,997 

417,634 


.9 

5.6 

17.6 

37.1 

38.8 


251 

729 

11,843 

5,798 

1,774 


1,075,803 


100.0 


20,395 



Per 
cent 



1.2 

3.6 
58.1 
28.4 

8.7 
100.0 



But in examining in detail the occupations 
under these different headings, we get a 
clearer view of the place the Negro main- 
tains as a laborer by finding out how many 



80 



HALF A MAN 



workers he supplies to every thousand work- 
ers in a given occupation. He should average 
eighteen if he is to occupy the same economic 
status as the white man. Taking the first 
(numerically) important division, Domestic 
and Personal Service, we get the following 
table: 

Domestic and Personal Service 



Barbers and hairdressers . . . 

Bootblacks 

Launderers 

Servants and waiters 

Stewards 

Nurses 

Boarding and lodging house 
keepers 

Hotel keepers 

Restaurant keepers 

Saloon keepers and bartenders . . 

Janitors and sextons 

Watchmen, firemen, policemen . . 

Soldiers, sailors, marines 

Laborers (including elevator 
tenders, laborers in coal yards, 
longshoremen, and stevedores) 

Total, including some occupa- 
tions not specified 



Total num- 
ber of males 
in each oc- 
cupation. 


Number of 
Negroes in 
each occu- 
pation. 


12,022 


215 


2,648 


51 


6,881 


70 


31,211 


6,280 


1,366 


140 


1,342 


22 


474 


10 


3,139 


23 


2,869 


116 


17,656 


111 


6,184 


800 


16,093 


116 


3,707 


56 


98,531 


3,719 


206,215 


11,843 



Number of 
Negroes to 
each 1000 
workers io 
occupation. 



18 
20 
10 
201 
103 
16 

21 

7 

40 

6 

129 

7 

15 



38 



57 






EARNING A LIVING 81 

The most important of these groups, not 
only in absolute numbers, but in propor- 
tion to the whole working population, is the 
servants and waiters. Two hundred out of 
every thousand (we must remember that the 
proportion to the population would be eigh- 
teen out of every thousand) are holding 
positions with which they have long been 
identified in America. We cannot tell from 
the census how many "live out," or how 
many are able to go nightly to their homes, 
how many have good jobs, and how many 
are in second and third rate places. A 
study of my own of 716 colored men helps 
to answer one of these questions. Out of 
176 men coming under the servants' and 
waiters' classification, I found 5 caterers, 
24 cooks, 26 butlers, 30 general utility men, 
41 hotel men, and 50 waiters. Sixty per 
cent of the 176 lived in their own homes, not 
in their masters'. Some of the cooks and 
waiters were on Pullman trains or on river 
boats or steamers; only a few were in first- 
class positions in New York. In the summer 
many of these men are likely to go to country 
hotels, and with the winter, if New York 



82 



HALF A MAN 



offers nothing, migrate to Palm Beach or 
stand on the street corner while their wives 
go out to wash and scrub. ^ "An' it don't 
do fer me ter complain," one of them tells 
me, "else he gits 'high' an' goes off fer good." 
Waiters in restaurants sometimes do not 
make more than six dollars a week, to be 
supplemented by tips, bringing the sum up 
to nine or ten dollars. Hall men make about 

1 Occupations in 1907 of 716 colored men (secured from 
records of the Young Men's Christian Association and per- 
sonal visits) compared with census figures of occupations in 
1900. 





716 Men 


Census 


Agricultural pursuits . . 


_ 


1.2 


Professional service, 27 men 


3.8 
50.6 


3.6 


Domestic and personal service, 363 men 


58.1 


5 barbers, 5 caterers, 24 cooks, 30 general util- 






ity men, 41 hotel men, 76 waiters and butlers, 






8 valets, 35 janitors and sextons, 29 long- 






shoremen, 5 laborers in tunnels, 7 asphalt 






workers, 57 elevator men, 41 laborers. 






Trade and transoortation. 279 men 


39.0 


28.4 


10 chauffeurs, 35 drivers, 13 expressmen, 8 






hostlers, 12 messengers, 14 municipal em- 






ployees, 127 porters in stores, 15 porters on 






trains, 24 clerks, 21 merchants. 






Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 47 






men 


6.6 


8.7 




100.0 


100.0 



I 



EARNING A LIVING 83 

the same, but both waiters and hall men in 
clubs and hotels receive large sums in tips 
or in Christmas money. The Pullman car 
waiters have small wages but large fees. 

Looking again at the census, we see that 
129 out of every thousand janitors and 
sextons are colored. The janitor's position 
varies from the impecunious place in a tene- 
ment, where the only wage is the rent, to the 
charge of a large office or apartment building. 
Then come the laborers, nearly four thousand 
strong, with the elevator boy as a familiar 
figure. Forty per cent of the 139 laborers in 
my own tabulation were elevator boys, for, 
except in office buildings and large stores 
and hotels, this occupation is given over to 
the Negro, who spends twelve hours a day 
drowsing in a corner or standing to turn a 
wheel. Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote poetry 
while he ran an elevator, and ambitious if 
less talented colored boys today study civil 
service examinations in their unoccupied 
time; but the situation as a life job is not 
alluring. Twenty-five dollars a month for 
wage, with perhaps a half this sum in tips, 
twelve hours on duty, one week in the night 



84 HALF A MAN 

time and the next in the day — no wonder 
the personnel of this staff changes frequently 
in an apartment house. A bright boy will 
be taken by some business man for a better 
job, and a lazy one drifts away to look for 
an easier task, or is dismissed by an irate 
janitor. 

Quite another group of laborers are the 
longshoremen who, far from lounging indo- 
lently in a hallway, are straining every 
muscle as they heave some great crate into 
a ship's hold. The work of the New York 
dockers has been admirably described by 
Mr. Ernest Poole, who says of the thirty 
thousand longshoremen on the wharves of 
New York — Italians, Germans, Negroes, 
and Swedes, "Far from being the drunkards 
and bums that some people think them, they 
are like the men of the lumber camps come 
to town — huge of limb and tough of muscle, 
hard-swearing, quick-fisted, big of heart." 
Their tasks are heavy and irregular. When 
the ship comes in, the average stretch of 
work for a gang is from twelve to twenty 
hours, and sometimes men go to a second 
gang and labor thirty-five hours without 



EARNING A LIVING 85 

sleep. Their pay for this dangerous, exhaust- 
ing toil averages eleven dollars a week. 
"There are thousands of Negroes on the 
docks of New York," Mr. Poole writes me, 
"and they must be able to work long hours 
at a stretch or they would not have their 
jobs." At dusk, Brooklynites see these 
black, huge-muscled men, many of them 
West Indians, walking up the hill at Mon- 
tague Street. In New York they live among 
the Irish in "Hell's Kitchen" and on San 
Juan Hill. They are usually steady sup- 
porters of families. 

New York demands strong, unskilled la- 
borers. To some she pays a large wage, 
and Negroes have gone in numbers into the 
excavations under the rivers, though a lin- 
gering death may prove the end of their two 
and a half or perhaps six or seven dollar a 
day job. Many colored men worked in the 
subway during its construction. One sees 
them often employed at rock-drilling or 
clearing land for new buildings. About a 
third of the asphalt workers, making their 
two dollars and a half a day, are colored. 
Some educated, refined Negroes choose the 



86 HALF A MAN 

laborer's work rather than pleasanter but 
poorly paid occupations. A highly trained 
colored man, a shipping clerk, making seven 
dollars a week, left his employer to take a 
job of concreting in the subway at $1.80 a 
day. His decision was in favor of dirty, 
severe labor, but a living wage. 

When the next census is published, those 
of us who are carefully watching the economic 
condition of the Negro expect to find a move- 
ment from domestic service into the posi- 
tions of laborers, including the porters in 
stores, who belong in our second census 
division. 

Kelly Miller^ describes the massive build- 
ings and sky-seeking structures of our north- 
ern city, and finds no status for the Negro 
above the cellar floor. One can see the 
colored youth gazing wistfully through the 
office window at the clerk, whose business 
reaches across the ocean to bewilderingly 
wonderful continents, knowing as he does 
that the employment he may find in that 
office will be emptying the white man's waste 
paper basket. 

1 Kelly Miller's "Race Adjustment," p. 129. 



EARNING A LIVING 



87 



Trade and Transportation 





Total num- 
ber of males 
in each oc- 
cupation. 


Number of 
Negroes in 
each occu- 
pation. 


Number of 
Negroes to 
each 1000 
workers in 
occupation. 


Agents — commercial travellers 

Bankers, brokers, and officials of 
banks and companies 

Bookkeepers — accountants . . . 

Clerks, copyists (including ship- 
ping clerks, letter and mail car- 
riers) 


27,456 

11,472 
22,613 

80,564 

72,684 

45,740 

3,225 

8,188 

3,111 

51,063 

5,891 

967 

11,831 

7,375 

2,430 
12,635 

13,451 

11,322 
1,572 

405,675 


67 

7 
33 

423 

162 
94 
36 

145 

18 

1439 

633 

9 

70 

11 

6 

69 

335 

2143 
15 

5798 


2 



1 

5 


Merchants (wholesale and retail) 
Salesmen 


2 
2 


TvDewriters 


11 


Boatmen and sailors 


18 


Foremen and overseers 

Draymen, hackmen, teamsters. . 
Hostlers 


6 

28 
107 


Liverv stable keeoers 


9 


Steam railway employees 

Street railway employees 

Telegraph and telephone opera- 
tors 


6 

1 

2 


Hucksters and peddlers 

Messengers, errand and office 
bovs 


5 

25 


Porters and helpers (in stores, 
etc.) 


188 


Undertakers 


9 


TotaL including some occupa- 


14 



88 HALF A MAN 

This, however, does not apply to govern- 
ment positions, and a large number of the 
423 colored clerks in 1900 were probably in 
United States and municipal service. The 
latter we shall consider later as we study the 
Negro and the municipality. Of the former, 
in 1909 there were about 176 in the New 
York post-offices.^ Ambitious boys work 
industriously at civil service examinations, 
and a British West Indian will even become 
an American citizen for the chance of a con- 
genial occupation. The clerkship, that to a 
white man is only a stepping-stone, to a 
Negro is a highly coveted position. 

I have made two divisions of this census 
list; the first includes those occupations re- 
quiring intellectual skill and carrying with 
them some social position, the second, those 
demanding only manual work. It is in the 
second that the colored man finds a place, 
and as a porter he numbers 2143, and reaches 
almost as high a percentage as the waiter 
and servant. Porters' positions are paid 
from five to fifteen dollars a week, the man 

' It is diflScult to get accurate figures as no official record 
is kept of color. 



EARNING A LIVING 89 

receiving the latter wage performing also the 
duties of shipping clerk. There is some 
opportunity for advance, always within the 
basement, and there are regular hours and a 
fairly steady job. 

The heading of draymen, hackmen, and 
teamsters, with 28 colored in every thousand, 
shows that the Negro has not lost his place 
as a driver. The chauffeur does not appear 
in the census, but the Negro is steadily 
increasing in numbers in this occupation, and 
conducts three garages of his own. 

The last census division to be considered 
in this chapter is that of Manufacturing and 
Mechanical Pursuits. 

When Mr. Stone wrote of the Southern 
States as the only place in which the Negro 
could "earn his bread in the sweat of his 
face," side by side with the white man, he 
must especially have been thinking of work- 
ers in the skilled trades. Unskilled laborers 
in New York are drenched in a common 
grimy fellowship. But in this last division 
the Negro is conspicuous by his absence. 
Only four in every thousand where there 
should be eighteen! In Atlanta, under this 



90 HALF A MAN 

Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits 



Engineers, firemen (not locomo- 
tive) 

Masons (brick and stone) . . . 

Painters, glaziers, and varnishers 

Plasterers 

Blacksmiths 

Butchers 

Carpenters and joiners 

Iron and steel workers 

Paper hangers 

Photographers 

Plumbers, gas and steam fitters. 

Printers, lithographers, and press- 
men 

Tailors 

Tobacco and cigar factory opera- 
tors 

Fishermen and oystermen 

Miners and quarrymen 

Machinists 

Total, including some occupa- 
tions not specified 



Total num- 
ber of males 
in each oc- 
cupation. 


Number of 
Negroes in 
each occu- 
pation. 


16,579 


227 


12,913 


94 


27,135 


177 


4,019 


51 


7,289 


29 


12,643 


31 


29,904 


94 


10,372 


40 


962 


18 


1,590 


22 


16,614 


31 


21,521 


53 


56,094 


69 


11,689 


189 


1,439 


65 


326 


21 


17,241 


47 


419,594 


1774 



Number of 
Negroes to 
each 1000 
workers in 
occupation. 



14 

7 

6 

12 

4 

2 

3 

4 

19 

14 

2 

2 
1 

16 

45 

64 

3 



Bakers, boot and shoe makers, gold and silver workers, 
brass workers, tin plate and tin ware makers, box makers, 
cabinet makers, marble and stone cutters, book-binders, 
clock and watch makers, confectioners, engravers, glass 
workers, hat and cap makers, and others — not more than 
nineteen in any one occupation, nor a higher per cent than 
four in a thousand. 



EARNING A LIVING 91 

division, the race reaches almost its due 
proportion, 279 in a thousand instead of 351. 
The largest number in any trade in New 
York is 189 men among the Cuban tobacco 
workers. Seventy-five per cent of all the 
masons in Atlanta are colored men, while in 
New York the colored are less than one 
per cent. Looking down the list we see that 
the figures are small and the percentage insig- 
nificant. The highly skilled and best paid 
trades are seemingly as far removed from 
the Negro as the positions of floor-walkers 
or cashiers of banks. 

Omitting for the present the professional 
class, we have reviewed the Negro as a 
worker, and neither in wages nor choice of 
occupation has he risen far to success. In 
domestic service he has gone a little down 
the ladder, serving in less desirable positions 
than in former years. Why has this hap- 
pened? What good reasons are there for 
these conditions .f^ 

The first and most obvious reason is race 
prejudice. No display of talent, however 
prodigious, will open certain occupations to 
the colored race. As a salesman he could 



92 HALF A MAN 

teach courteous manners to some of our 
white salesmen in New York, but he is never 
given a chance. There are a few Negroes, 
digging in the tunnels or sweeping down the 
subway stairs, who are capable of filling the 
clerkships that are counted the perquisites 
of the whites; but clerkships are only acces- 
sible as they are associated with municipal or 
federal service. Of course there are excep- 
tions, and though they do not affect the rule, 
they show the existence of a few employers 
who ignore the color line, and a few Negroes 
of inexhaustible perseverance. 

Mr. Stone argues that the Negro in the 
South profits by the strict drawing of the 
color line, since the white man, always con- 
sidered the superior, is not lowered in the 
eyes of the community by working with the 
black man. The Southern white may lay 
bricks on the same wall with the Southern 
black, secure in his superior social position. 
But this seems fanciful as an explanation of 
labor conditions. The black doctor, for in- 
stance, in those localities where the color 
line is most rigid, may not ask the white 
doctor to consult with him; or if he does, his 



EARNING A LIVING 93 

prompt removal from the community is 
requested. Colored postal clerks are in dis- 
favor in the South, though not colored post- 
men. North or South, the Negro gets an 
opportunity to work where he is imperatively 
needed. Constituting one-third of the work- 
ing population, he can make a place for him- 
self in the laboring world of Atlanta as he 
cannot in New York. Pick up the 20,000 
New York Negroes and drop them in Liberia, 
and in two or three weeks Ellis Island could 
empty out sufficient men to fill their places; 
but remove a third of the male workers from 
Atlanta, and the city for years would suffer 
from the calamity. If they are the only 
available source of labor, colored men can 
work by the side of white men; but where 
the white man strongly dominates the labor 
situation, he tries to push his black brother 
into the jobs for which he does not care to 
compete. 

We have seen, however, that in some occu- 
pations in New York the Negroes appear in 
such proportion as should be suflScient to 
secure them excellent positions; the most 
Conspicuous instance being that of the 200 



94 HALF A MAN 

colored waiters out of every thousand. Why, 
then, do we not see Negroes serving in the 
best hotels the city affords? 

It has been an ideal of American democ- 
racy, a part of its strenuous individualism, 
that each member of the community should 
have full liberty in the pursuit of wealth. 
The ambitious, capable boy who walks bare- 
footed into the city, and at the end of twenty 
years has outdistanced his country school- 
mates, becoming a multi-millionaire while 
they are still farm drudges, is the example of 
American opportunity. But this ability to 
separate one's self from the rest of one's 
fellows and attain individual greatness is 
rarely possible to a segregated race. In 
domestic service individual colored men have 
shown ambition and high capability, but 
they have never been able to get away from 
their fellows like the country boy — to leave 
the farm drudges and take a place among the 
most proficient of their profession. They 
must always work in a race group. And this 
Negro group is like the small college that 
tries to win at football against a competitor 
with four times the number of students and 



EARNING A LIVING 95 

a better coach. The two hundred colored 
waiters, competing against the eight hundred 
white ones, lose in the game and are given a 
second place, which the best must accept 
with the worst. When, then, we criticize a 
capable colored man for failing to keep a 
superior position we must remember that 
he is tied to his group and has little chance 
of advancement on his individual merit. 

The census division of mechanical pur- 
suits shows only a few colored men working at 
trades, and the paucity of the numbers is often 
attributed by the Negro to a third obstacle 
in the way of his progress, the trade-union. 

To the colored man who has overcome race 
prejudice sufficiently to be taken into a shop 
with white workmen, the walking delegate 
who appears and asks for his union card 
seems little short of diabolical; and all the 
advantages that collective bargaining has 
secured, the higher wage and shorter working- 
day, are forgotten by him. I have beared 
the most distinguished of Negro educators, 
hstenmg to such an incident as this, declare 
that he should like to see every labor union 
m America destroyed. But unionism has 



96 HALF A MAN 

come to stay, and the colored man who is 
asked for his card had better at once get to 
work and endeavor to secure it. Many have 
done this already, and organized labor in 
New York, its leaders tell us, receives an 
increasing number of colored workmen. Miss 
Helen Tucker, in a careful study of Negro 
craftsmen in the West Sixties,^ found among 
121 men who had worked at their trades in 
the city, 32, or 26 per cent in organized labor. 
The majority of these had joined in New 
York. Eight men, out of the 121, had 
applied for entrance to unions and not been 
admitted. This does not seem a discourag- 
ing number, though we do not know whether 
the other 81 could have been organized or 
not. Many, probably, were not sufficiently 
competent workmen. In 1910, according to 
the best information that I could secure, 
there were 1358 colored men in the New 
York unions. Eighty of these were in the 
building trades, 165 were cigar makers, 400 
were teamsters, 350 asphalt workers, and 
240 rock-drillers and tool sharpeners. ^ 

* Southern Workman, October, 1907, to March, 1908. 

* See foot-note on opposite page. 



EARNING A LIVING 97 

Entrance to some of the local organiza- 
tions is more easily secured than to others, 
for the trade-union, while part of a federa- 
tion, is autonomous, or nearly so. In some 

^ In 1900, and again in 1910, I secured a counting of the 

New York colored men in organized labor. The lists run as 
follows: 

1906 1910 

Asphalt workers 320 350 

Teamsters 300 400 

Rock-drillers and tool sharpeners. 250 240 

Cigar makers 121 165 

Bricklayers 90 21 

Waiters 90 not obtainable 

Carpenters 60 40 

Plasterers 45 19 

Double drum bolsters 30 37 

Safety and portable engineers ... 26 35 

Eccentric firemen 15 

Letter carriers 10 80 

Pressmen 10 not obtainable 

Printers 6 8 

Butchers 3 3 

Lathers 3 7 

Painters 3 not obtainable 

Coopers 1 2 

Sheet metal workers 1 1 

Rockmen 1 not obtainable 

Total 1385 1358 

The large number of bricklayers in 1906 is questioned by 

the man, himself a bricklayer, who made the second counting. 

However, the number greatly decreased in 1908 when the 

stagnation in business compelled many men to seek work in 

• other cities. 



98 HALF A MAN 

of the highly skilled trades, to which few 
colored men have the necessary ability to 
demand access, the Negro is likely to be 
refused, while the less intelligent and well- 
paid forms of labor press a union card upon 
him. Again, strong organizations in the 
South, as the bricklayers, send men North 
with union membership, who easily transfer 
to New York locals. Miss Tucker finds the 
carpenters', masons', and plasterers' organi- 
zations easy for the Negro to enter. There 
is in New York a colored local, the only 
colored local in the city, among a few of the 
carpenters, with regular representation in 
the Central Federated Union, The Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor in 1881 declared 
that "the working people must unite irre- | 
spective of creed, color, sex, nationality, or 
politics," This cry is for self-protection, and 
where the Negroes have numbers and ability 
in a trade, their organization becomes im- 
portant to the white. It may be fairly said 
of labor organization in New York that it 
finds and is at times unable to destroy race 
prejudice, but that it does not create it.^ 

' The comment of the Negro bricklayer who secured my 



EARNING A LIVING 99 

A fourth obstacle, and a very important 
one, is the lack of opportunity for the colored 
boy. The only trade that he can easily learn 
is that of stationary engineer, an occupation 
at which the Negroes do very well. Colored 
boys in small numbers are attending evening 
trade schools, but their chance of securing 
positions on graduation will be small. The 
Negro youth who is not talented enough to 
enter a profession, and who cannot get into 

figures is important. "A Negro," he says, "has to be extra 
fit in his trade to retain his membership, as the eyes of all the 
other workers are watching every opportunity to disqualify 
him, thereby compelling a superefEciency. Yet at all times 
he is the last to come and the first to go on the job, necessi- 
tating his seeking other work for a living, and keeping up his 
card being but a matter of sentiment. While all the skilled 
trades seem willing to accept the Negro with his travelling 
card, yet there are some which utterly refuse him; for instance, 
the house smiths and bridge men who will not recognize him 
at all. While membership in the union is necessary to work, 
yet the hardest part of the battle is to secure employment. 
In some instances intercession has been made by various 
organizations interested in his industrial progress for employ- 
ment at the offices of various companies, and favorable 
answers are given, but hostile foremen with discretionary 
power carry out their instructions in such a manner as to 
render his employment of such short duration that he is very 
little benefited. Of course, there are some contractors who 
are very friendly to a few men, and whenever any work is 
done by them, they are certain of employment. Unfortu- 
nately, these are too few." 



100 HALF A MAN 

the city or government service, has shght 
opportunity. Nothing is so discouraging in 
the outlook in New York as the crowding 
out of colored boys from congenial remuner- 
ative work. 

The last obstacle in the way of the Negro's 
advancement into higher occupations is his 
ineflHciency. Race prejudice denies him the 
opportunity to prove his ability in many 
occupations, and the same spirit forces him 
to work in a race group; but the colored men 
themselves are often unfitted for any labor 
other than that they undertake. 

The picture that is sometimes drawn of 
many thousands of highly skilled Southern 
colored men forced in New York to give up 
their trades and to turn to menial labor 
is not a correct one. Richard R. Wright, 
Jr., who has made a careful study of the 
Negro in Philadelphia,^ finds that the ma- 
jority of colored men who come to that city 
are from the class of unskilled city laborers 
and country hands; the minority are the 
more skilful artisans and farmers and domes- 

1 R. R. Wright, Jr.'s " Migration of Negroes to the North," 
Annals of the American Academy, May, 1906. 



EARNING A LIVING 101 

tic servants, with a number also of the 
vagrant and criminal classes. 

In New York the untrained Negroes not 
only form a very large class, but coming in 
contact, as they do, with foreigners who for 
generations have been forced to severe, un- 
remitting toil, they suffer by comparison. 
The South in the days of slavery demanded 
chiefly routine work in the fields from its 
Negroes.^ The work was under the direc- 
tion either of the master, the overseer, or a 
foreman; and there has been no general 
advance in training for the colored men of 
the South since that time. Contrast the 
intensive cultivation of Italy or Switzerland 
with the farms of Georgia or Alabama, or 
the hotels of France with those of Virginia, 
and you will see the disadvantages from 
which the Negro suffers. America is young 
and crude, but opportunity has brought to 
her great cities workmen from all over the 
world. In New York these men are driven 
at a pace that at the outset distracts the 
colored man who prefers his leisurely way. 

1 See Ulrich B. Phillips' "Origin and Growth of the South- 
em Black Belts," American Historical Review, July, 1906. 



102 HALF A MAN 

Moreover, the foreign workmen have learned 
persistence; they are punctual and appear 
regularly each morning at their tasks. "The 
Italians are better laborers than any other 
people we have, are they not?" I asked a 
man familiar with many races and national- 
ities. "No," was his answer, "they do not 
work better than others, but when the 
whistle blows, they are always there." Mr. 
Stone, whose book I have already quoted a 
number of times, shows the irresponsible, 
fanciful wanderings of his Mississippi tenants, 
whom he endeavored, unsuccessfully, to es- 
tablish in a permanent tenantry. The colored 
men in New York are far in advance of these 
farm hands, who are described as moving 
about simply because they desire a change, 
but they are also far from the steady, un- 
swerving attitude of their foreign competi- 
tors. Inadequately educated, too often they 
come to New York with little equipment for 
tasks they must undertake successfully or 
starve — unless, puerile, they hve by the 
labor of some industrious woman. 

I have tried to depict the New York colored 
wage earners as they labor in the city today. 



EARNING A LIVING 103 

They are not a remarkable group, and were 
they white men, distinguished by some mark 
of nationahty, they would pass without 
comment. But the Negro is on trial, and 
witnesses are continually called to tell of 
his failures and successes. We have seen 
that both in the attitude of the world about 
him, and in his own untutored self, there 
are many obstacles to prevent his advance; 
and his natural sensitiveness adds to these 
difficulties. He minds the coarse but often 
good-natured joke of his fellow laborer, and 
he remembers with a lasting pain the morti- 
fication of an employer's curt refusal of 
work. Had he the obtuseness of some 
Americans he would prosper better. As we 
have seen, many positions are completely 
closed to him, leading him to idleness and 
consequent crime. Just as not every able- 
bodied white man, who is out of work and 
impoverished, will go to the charities wood- 
yard and saw wood, so not every colored 
man will accept the menial labor which may 
be the only work open to him. Instead, he 
may gamble or drift into a vagabond life. 
A well-known Philadelphia judge has said 



104 HALF A MAN 

that "The moral and intellectual advance 
of a race is governed by the degree of its 
industrial freedom. When that freedom is 
restricted there is unbounded tendency to 
drive the race discriminated against into the 
ranks of the criminal." Discrimination in 
New York has led many Negroes into these 
ranks. But as we look back at the occupa- 
tions of our colored men we see a large num- 
ber who secure regular hours, and if a poor, 
yet a fairly steady pay. For the mass of the 
Negroes coming into the city these positions 
are an advance over their former work. 
Employment in a great mercantile establish- 
ment, though it be in the basement, carries 
dignity with it, and educating demands of 
punctuality, sobriety, and swiftness. Rich- 
ard R. Wright, Jr., whose right to speak with 
authority we have already noted, believes 
that the "North has taught the Negro the 
value of money; of economy; it has taught 
more sustained effort in work, punctuality, 
and regularity." It has also, I believe, in 
its more regular hours of work, aided in the 
upbuilding of the home. 

I remember once waiting in the harbor of 



EARNING A LIVING 105 

Genoa while our ship was taking on a cargo. 
The captain walked the deck impatiently, 
and, as the Italians went in leisurely fashion 
about their task, declared, "If I had those 
men in New York I could get twice the 
amount of work out of them." That is what 
New York does; it works men hard and fast; 
sometimes it mars them; but it pays a better 
wage than Genoa, and there is an excitement 
and dash about it that attracts laborers from 
all parts of the earth. The black men come, 
insignificant in numbers, ready to do their 
part. They work and play and marry and 
bring up children, and as we watch them 
moving to and from their tasks the North 
seems to have brought to the majority of 
them something of liberty and happiness. 



CHAPTER V 

Earning a Living — Business and 
THE Professions 

If we walk west on Fifty-ninth Street, 
at Eighth Avenue, we come upon one of the 
colored business sections of New York. 
Here, for a block's length, are employment 
and real estate agents, restaurant keepers, 
grocers, tailors, barbers, printers, express- 
men, and undertakers, all small establish- 
ments occupying the first floor or basement 
of some tenement or lodging house, and with 
the exception of the employment agency all 
patronized chiefly by the colored race. 
Another such section and a more prosperous 
one is in Harlem, on West One Hundred 
and Thirty-third, One Hundred and Thirty- 
fourth, and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth 
Streets. From the point of view of the whole 
business of the city such concerns are insig- 
nificant, but they are important from the 

106 



li 



EARNING A LIVING 107 

viewpoint of Negro progress, since they 
represent the accumulation of capital, ex- 
perience in business methods, and hard 
work. Very slowly the New York Negro 
is meeting the demanding power of his 
people and is securing neighborhood trade 
that has formerly gone to the Italian and 
the Jew. Husband and wife, father and son, 
work in their little establishments and make 
a beginning in the mercantile world. 

The Negro, as we have seen, has con- 
ducted businesses in New York in the past, 
businesses patronized chiefly by whites. 
Barbering and catering were his successes, 
and in both of these he has lost, despite the 
fact that one of the city's wealthiest colored 
men is a caterer. But if he has lost here, 
he has gained along other lines. Among a 
number of photographers he has one who is 
well-known for his excellent architectural 
work. Two manufacturers have brought 
out popular goods, the Haynes's razor strop, 
and the Howard shoe polish. These men, 
one a barber and one a Pullman car porter, 
improved upon implements used in their 
daily work and then turned to manufac- 



108 HALF A MAN 

ture. The headquarters of the Howard 
shoe polish is in Chicago, where the firm 
employs thirty people, the New York branch 
giving employment to twelve. 

A wise utilization of labor already trained 
and at hand is seen in the Manhattan House 
Cleaning and Renovating Bureau. This 
firm contracts for the cleaning of houses 
and places of business and has also been 
successful in securing work on new buildings, 
entering as the builders leave and arranging 
everything for occupancy. In one week the 
Bureau has given employment to sixty men. 

In those businesses in which he comes in 
contact with the white, the most pronounced 
success of the colored man has been real es- 
tate brokerage. The New York Negro busi- 
ness directory names twenty-two real estate 
brokers, and though a dozen of them prob- 
ably handle altogether no more business 
than one white firm, a few put through im- 
portant operations. The ablest of these 
brokers, recently clearing twenty thousand 
dollars at a single transaction, turned his 
operations to Liberia, where he went for 
a few months to look into land concessions. 



EARNING A LIVING 109 

This broker has aided the Negroes materi- 
ally in their efforts to rent apartments on 
better streets. His energy, and that of many 
more like him, is also needed to open up 
places for colored businesses^ better office 
and workroom facilities for the able pro- 
fessional and business men and women. In 

I New York as in the South the Negro needs 
to obtain a hold upon the land. In this he 
is aided not only by his brokers, but by 

! realty companies. The largest of these, the 
Metropolitan Realty Company, in opera- 
tion since 1900, is capitalized at a million 
dollars, and had in 1910 $400,000 paid in 
stock, and $400,000 subscribed and being 
paid for on instalment. This company oper- 

I ates in the suburban towns, and has quite 
a colony in Plainfield, New Jersey, where it 
owns 150 lots. It has built eighty cottages 
for its members, and has bought eighteen. 
Among the businesses that cater directly 
to the colored, probably none is more suc- 
cessful than undertaking. The Negroes of 
the city die in great numbers, and the fu- 
neral is all too common a function. Formerly 
•this business went to white men, but in- 



no HALF A MAN 

creasingly it is coming into the hands of the 
colored. The Negro business directory gives 
twenty-two undertakers, one of them, by 
common report, the richest colored man in 
New York. Profitable real estate invest- 
ment, combined with one of the largest 
undertaking establishments in the city, has 
given him a comfortable fortune. Another 
large and increasingly important Negro busi- 
ness is the hotel and boarding-house. As 
the colored men of the South and West ac- 
cumulate wealth, they will come in increas- 
ing numbers to visit in New York, and the 
colored hotel, now little more than a board- 
ing-house, may become a spacious building, 
with private baths, elevator service, and a 
well-equipped restaurant. In today's mod- 
estly equipped buildings the catering is often 
excellent, and good, well-cooked food is sold 
at reasonable prices. Occasionally the Hotel 
Maceo advertises a southern dinner, and its 
guests sit down to Virginia sugar-cured ham, 
sweet potato pie, and perhaps even opossum. 
Printing establishments, tailors' shops, ^ 

1 On West 133d Street two former Hampton students have 
a prosperous little tailor and upholstering shop. 



EARNING A LIVING 111 

express and van companies, and many other 
small enterprises help to make up the Negro 
business world. One colored printer brings 
out an important white magazine. There 
are seven weekly colored newspapers, of 
which the New York Age is the most impor- 
tant, and two musical publishing companies. 
All these enterprises are useful, not only to 
the proprietor and his patrons, but especially 
to the clerks and assistants who thus are 
able to secure some training in mercantile 
work. In the white man's office, white and 
colored boys start out together, but as their 
trousers lengthen and their ambitions quicken, 
the former secures promotion while the lat- 
ter is still given the letters to put into the 
mail box. If the Negro lad, discouraged at 
lack of advancement, leaves the white man 
and ventures with a tiny capital into some 
business of his own, his ignorance is almost 
certain to lead to his disaster. He is indeed 
fortunate if he can first work in the office 
of a successful colored man.^ 

^ Those interested in the Negro in business should look 
for an intensive study, shortly to be published, on the wage- 
earners and business enterprises among Negroes in New York. 
"It is entitled " The Negro at Work in New York City," and 



112 



HALF A MAN 



We have one more census division to 
consider, Professional Service. The table 
runs as follows: 

Professional Service 



Actors, professional showmen, etc. 
Architects, designers, draftsmen . . 

Artists, teachers of art 

Clergymen 

Dentists 

Physicians and surgeons 

Veterinary surgeons 

Electricians 

Engineers (civil) and surveyors . . . 

Journalists 

Lawyers 

Literary and scientific 

Musicians 

Officials (government) 

Teachers and professors in colleges 
Total including some occupa- 
tions not specified 



Total 
number 
of males 
in each 
occupa- 
tion. 



Number 
of negroes 
in each 
occupa- 
tion. 



4,733 
3,966 
2,924 
2,833 
1,509 
6,577 
320 
8,131 
3,321 
2,833 
7,811 
1,709 
6,429 
3,934 
3,409 

60,853 



254 

2 

13 

90 

25 

32 

2 

18 

7 

7 

26 

10 

195 

9 

32 

729 



Number of 
Negroes to 
each 1000 
workers in 
occupa- 
tion. 



54 

4 

32 

16 
5 
6 
2 
2 
2 
3 
5 

30 
2 
9 

12 



Examining these figures we find few col- 
ored architects^ or engineers, and a very 

has been made by George E. Haynes, imder the direction of 
the Bureau of Social Research of the New York School of 
Philanthropy. 

1 Since going to press the new and very beautiful building 



EARNING A LIVING 113 

small proportion of electricians, though 
among the latter there is a highly skilled 
workman. The New York Negro has no 
position in the mechanical arts. It may be 
that, as we so often hear, the African does 
not possess mechanical ability.^ You do 
not see Negro boys pottering over machin- 
ery or making toy inventions of their own. 
But another and powerful reason for the 
colored youth's failing to take up engi- 
neering or kindred studies is the slight 
chance he would later have in securing 
work. No group of men in America have 
opposed his progress more persistently than 
skilled mechanics, and, should he graduate 
from some school of technology, he would 
be refused in office or workshop. So he 

of St. Philips' Episcopal Church, on W. 13-lth Street, has been 
opened. This is a fine example of English Gothic and its 
architects are two young colored men, one of whom was for 
years in the office of a white firm. 

• Mary Kingsley has some interesting generalizations on 
this point. She speaks of the African mind approaching all 
things from a spiritual point of view while the English mind 
approaches them from a material point of view, and of 
"the high perception of justice you will find in the Af- 
rican, combined with the inability to think out a pulley or 
a lever except under white tuition." — West African Studies, 
.p. 330. 



114 HALF A MAN 

turns to those professions in which he sees 
a likelihood of advancement. 

Colored physicians and dentists are increas- 
ing in number in New York and throughout 
the country. The Negro is sympathetic, quick 
to understand another's feelings, and when 
added to this he has received a thorough 
medical training he makes an excellent 
physician. New York State examinations 
prevent the practice of ignorant doctors from 
other states, and the city can count many 
able colored practitioners. These doctors 
practise among white people as well as among 
colored. As surgeons they are handicapped 
in New York by lack of hospital facilities, 
having no suitable place in which they may 
perform an operation. The colored student 
who graduates from a New York medical 
college must go for hospital training to Phil- 
adelphia or Chicago or Washington.^ 

* Lincoln Hospital in New York, while receiving white and 
colored patients, was especially designed to help the colored 
race. It has a training school for colored nurses, but neither 
accepts colored medical graduates as interns, nor allows 
colored doctors upon its staff. This is one of many cases in 
which the good white people of the city are glad to assist the 
poor and ailing Negro, but are unwilling to help the strong 
and ambitious colored man to full opportunity. 



EARNING A LIVING 115 

Colored lawyers are obtaining a firm foot- 
hold in New York. From twenty-six in 
the 1900 census they now, in 1911, number 
over fifty, though not all of these by any 
means rely entirely upon their profession 
for support. Some of our lawyers are 
descendants of old New York families, 
others have come here recently from the 
South. 

Turning to our census figures again we 
see that the three professions in which the 
colored man is conspicuous are those of 
actor, musician, and minister. Instead of 
the average eighteen, he here shows fifty- 
four in every thousand actors, thirty in 
every thousand musicians, and thirty-two 
in every thousand clergymen. And since 
the pulpit and the stage are two places in 
which the black man has found conspicu- 
ous success it may be well in this connec- 
tion to consider, not only the economic 
significance of these institutions, but their 
place in the life of the colored world. 

The Negro minister was born with the 
Negro Christian, and the colored church, 
in which he might tell of salvation, is over 



116 HALF A MAN 

a century old in New York. Today the 
Boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn have 
twenty-eight colored churches besides a 
number of missions. Some of the societies 
own valuable property, usually, however, 
encumbered with heavy mortgages, and 
yearly budgets mount up to ten, twelve, 
and sixteen thousand dollars. The Metho- 
dist churches lead in number, next come 
the Baptist, and next the Episcopalian. 
There are Methodist Episcopal, African 
Methodist Episcopal, and African Metho- 
dist Episcopal Zion. Bethel African Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, as we have seen, is 
one of the oldest and is still one of the 
largest and most useful Negro churches in 
New York. Mount Olivet, a Baptist church 
on West Fifty-third Street, has a seating 
capacity of 1600, taxed to its full on Sun- 
day evenings. St. Philip's gives the Epis- 
copal service with dignity and devoutness, 
and its choir has many sweet colored boy 
singers. At St. Benedict, the Moor, the 
black faces of the boy acolytes contrast 
with the benignant white-haired Irish priest, 
and without need of words preach good- 



EARNING A LIVING 117 

will to men. Only in this Catholic church 
does one find white and black in almost 
equal numbers worshipping side by side. 

The great majority of the colored churches 
are supported by their congregations, and 
the minister or elder, or both, twice a Sun- 
day, must call for the pennies and nickels, 
dimes and quarters, that are dropped into 
the plate at the pulpit's base. Contribu- 
tors file past the table on which they place 
their offering, emulation becoming a spur 
to generosity. These collections are sup- 
plemented by sums raised at entertainments 
and fairs, and it is in this way, by the 
constant securing of small gifts, that the 
thousands are raised. 

The church is a busy place and retains 
its members, not only by its preaching, but 
by midweek meetings. There are the class 
meetings of the Methodists, the young peo- 
ple's societies, the prayer meetings, and 
the sermons preached to the secret benefit 
organizations. Visiting sisters and brothers 
attend to relief work, and standing at a 
side table, sometimes picturesque with lighted 
lantern, ask for dole for the poor. 



118 HALF A MAN 

The Sunday-schools, while not so large 
as the church attendance would lead one 
to expect, involve much time and labor in 
their conduct. A colored church member 
finds all his or her leisure occupied in church 
work. I know a young woman engaged in 
an exacting, skilled profession who spends 
her day of rest attending morning service, 
teaching in Sunday-school, taking part in 
the young people's lyceum in the late after- 
noon, and listening to a second sermon in 
the evening. Occasionally she omits her 
dinner to hear an address at the colored 
Young Men's Christian Association. On 
hot summer afternoons you may see colored 
boys and girls and men and women crowded 
in an ill-ventilated hall, giving ear to a fer- 
vid exhortation that leads the speaker, at 
the sentence's end, to mop his swarthy face. 
The woods, the salt-smelling sea, the tamer 
prettiness of the lawns of the city's park, 
have not the impelling call of sermon or 
hymn. If the whole of the Negro's summer 
Sunday is to be given to direct religious 
teaching, one wishes that it might take 
place at the old time camp meeting, where 



EARNING A LIVING 119 

there is fresh air and space in which to 
breathe it. The first of Edward Everett 
Hale's three rules of life as he gave them 
to the Hampton students was, "Live all 
you can out in the open air." The relig- 
ious-minded New York Negro succumbs 
easily to disease, and yet elects to spend 
his day of leisure within doors. 

With the exception of the Episcopalians, 
the churches undertake little institutional 
work. Money is lacking, and there is only 
a feeble conviction of the value of the gymna- 
sium, pool table, and girls' and boys' clubs. 
The colored branches of the Young Men's 
Christian Association, however, are places 
for recreation and instruction. The lines 
that Evangelical Americans draw regarding 
amusements, prohibiting cards and wel- 
coming dominos, allowing bagatelle and 
frowning upon billiards, must be interpreted 
by some folk-lore historian to show their 
reasonableness. Doubtless the extent to 
which a game is used for gambling purposes 
has much to do with its good or bad savor, 
and pool and cards for this reason are 
tabooed. Dancing is also frowned upon 



120 HALF A MAN 

by many of the churches, while temperance 
societies make active campaign for prohi- 
bition. To New York's black folk, the 
church-goers and they who stand without 
are the sheep and the goats, and the gulf 
between them is digged deep. 

Of the five colored Episcopal churches, St. 
Philip's and St. Cyprian's have parish houses. 
St. Philip's has moved into a new parish 
house on West One Hundred and Thirty- 
Fourth Street, where with its large, well- 
arranged rooms, its gymnasium, and its corps 
of enthusiastic workers it will soon become 
a powerful force in the Harlem Negro's life. 
St. Cyprian's is under the City Episcopal 
Mission, and has unusual opportunity for 
helpfulness since it is separated only by 
Amsterdam Avenue from the San Juan Hill 
district and yet stands amid the whites. 
Its clubs and classes, its employment agency, 
its gymnasium, its luncheons for school 
children, its beautiful church, are all prima- 
rily for the Negroes; but the colored rector 
has a friendly word for his white neighbors, 
tow-headed Irish and German boys and girls 
sit upon his steps, and his ministry has 



t 



EARNING A LIVING 121 

lessened the belligerent feeling between the 
east and the west sides of Amsterdam 
Avenue. St. David's Episcopal Church in 
the Bronx has a fresh air home at White 
Plains, cared for personally by the rector 
and his wife, who spend their vacation with 
tenement mothers and their children, the 
tired but grateful recipients of their good- 
will. 

If there were ninety colored clergymen 
in New York in 1900, as the census says, a 
number must have been without churches, 
itinerant preachers or directors of small 
missions, supporting themselves by other 
labor during the day. Those men who now 
fill the pulpits of well-established churches 
have been trained in theological schools of 
good standing, for the ignorant "darky" of 
the story who leaves the hot work of the 
cotton field because he feels a "call" to 
preach does not receive another from New 
York. The colored minister in this city 
works hard and long, and finds a wearying 
number of demands upon his time. The 
wedding and the funeral, the word of coun- 
sel to the young, and of comfort to the aged. 



122 HALF A MAN 

a multiplicity of meetings, two sermons 
every Sunday, the continual strain of rais- 
ing money, these are some of his duties. 
With a day from fourteen to seventeen hours 
long he earns as few men earn the meagre 
salary put into his hand. But his position 
among his people is a commanding one, and 
carries with it respect and responsibility. 

Strangers who visit colored churches to 
be amused by the vociferations of the 
preacher and the responses of the congre- 
gation will be disappointed in New York. 
Others, however, who attend, desiring to 
understand the religious teaching of the 
thoughtful Negro, find much of interest. 
They hear sermons marked by great elo- 
quence. In the Evangelical church the 
preacher is not afraid to give his imagina- 
tion play, and in finely chosen, vivid lan- 
guage, pictures his thought to his people. 
Especially does he love to tell the story of 
a future life, of Paradise with its rapturous 
beauty of color and sound, its golden streets, 
its gates of precious stones, effulgent, radi- 
ant. He dwells not upon the harshness, 
but rather upon the mercy of God. 



EARNING A LIVING 123 

A theological library connected with a 
Calvinistic church, when recently cata- 
logued, disclosed two long shelves of books 
upon Hell and two slim volumes upon 
Heaven. No such unloving Puritanism dom- 
inates the Negro's thought. Hell's horrors 
may be portrayed at a revival to bring the 
sinner to repentance, but only as an aid to 
a clearer vision of the glories of Heaven. 

The Negro churches lay greater stress 
than formerly upon practical religion; they 
try to turn a fine frenzy into a determination 
for righteousness. This was strikingly ex- 
emplified lately in one of New York's col- 
ored Baptist churches. During the solemn 
rite of immersion the congregation began to 
grow hysterical, or "happy," as they would 
have phrased it; there were cries of "Yes, 
Jesus," "We're comin'. Lord," and swayings 
of the body backward and forward. The 
minister with loud and stirring appeal for 
a time encouraged these emotions. Then 
in a moment he brought quiet to his congre- 
gation and called them to the consecration 
of labor. Faith without works was vain. 
"Baptism was not the end, but only the begin- 



124 HALF A MAN 

ning of their salvation. "You-all bleege 
ter work," he said, "if yer gwine foller der 
Lord. Ain't Jesus work in der carpenter 
shop till he nigh on thirty year old.'^ Den 
one day he stood up (he ain't none er yer 
two-by-fo' men) an' he tak off his blue apun 
(I reckon he wore er apun like we-alls) an' 
he goes on down ter der wilderness, an' 
John der Baptist baptize him." 

From oratory one turns naturally to 
music. The feeling for rhythm, for melodi- 
ous sound, that leads the Negro to use 
majestic words of which he has not always 
mastered the meaning, leads him also to 
musical expression. He has an instinct 
for harmony, and, when within hearing dis- 
tance of any instrument, will whistle, not 
the melody, however assertive, but will 
add a part.^ Those who have visited col- 
ored schools, and especially the colored 
schools of the far South where the pupils 
are unfamiliar with other music than their 
own, can never forget the exquisite, haunt- 
ing singing. When a foreman wants to get 

iSee H. J. Wilson. "The Negro and Music," Outlook, 
Dec. 1, 1906. 



EARNING A LIVING 125 

energetic work from his black laborers he 
sets them to singing stirring tunes. The 
Negro has his labor songs as the sailor has 
his chanties, and it would be impossible to 
measure the joy coming to both through 
musical expression. 

In New York, despite their poverty, few 
Negroes fail to possess some musical instru- 
ment — a banjo perhaps, or a guitar, a 
mandolin or zither, or it may be the highly 
prized piano. Visiting of an evening in 
the Phipps model tenement, one hears a 
variety of gay tinkling sounds. And besides 
the mechanical instruments there is always 
the great natural instrument, the human 
voice. Singing, though not as common in 
the city as in the country, is still often heard, 
especially in the summer, and remains musi- 
cal, though New York's noise and cheap 
and vulgar entertainments have an unhappy 
fashion of roughening her children's voices. 

Music furnishes a means of livelihood to 
many Negroes and supplements the income 
of many others. Boys contribute to the 
family support by singing cheap songs in 
saloons or even in houses of prostitution. 



126 HALF A MAN 

A boy "nightingale" will earn the needed 
money for rent while learning, all too quickly, 
the ways of viciousness. Others, more care- 
fully reared, sing at church or secret society 
concert, perhaps receiving a little pay. 
Men form male quartettes that for five or 
ten dollars furnish a part of an evening's 
entertainment. There are many Negro 
musicians and elocutionists who largely 
support themselves by their share in the 
receipts from concerts and social gather- 
ings. 

We speak of men crossing the line when 
they intermarry with the whites, but there 
is another crossing of the line when some 
Negro by his genius makes the world for- 
get his race. Such a man is the artist, 
Henry Tanner; and New York has such 
Negro musicians. Mr. Harry Burleigh, the 
baritone at St. George's, has won high rec- 
ognition, not only as an interpreter, but as 
a composer of music; and one of the richest 
synagogues of the city has a Negro for its 
assistant organist. There are five colored 
orchestras in New York, the one conducted 
by Mr. Walter A. Craig having toured 



EARNING A LIVING 127 

successfully in New England and many other 
northern states. 

But the colored musician has usually 
found his opportunity for expression and 
for a living wage upon the stage. Probably 
many of the actors noted on the census list 
are musicians, and many of the musicians, 
actors; the writer of the topical song having 
himself sung it in vaudeville or musical 
comedy. Few New Yorkers appreciate how 
many of the tunes hummed in the street 
or ground out on the hand-organ, have orig- 
inated in Negro brains. "The Right Church 
but the Wrong Pew," "Teasing," "Nobody," 
"Under the Bamboo Tree," which Cole and 
Johnson, the composers, heard the last 
thing as they left the dock in New York, and 
the first thing when they arrived in Paris, 
these are a few of the popular favorites. 
Handsome incomes have been netted by the 
shrewder among these composers, and the 
demand for their songs is continuous. 

With a bright song and a jolly dance 
comes success. Picking up the copy of the 
New York Age, that lies on my desk, I find 
jottings of twenty-four colored troupes in 



128 HALF A MAN 

vaudeville in the larger cities of the North 
and West. Three are at Proctor's and three 
at Keith's. Their economic outlook is not 
so hilarious as their songs, for transporta- 
tion is expensive and bookings are uncer- 
tain; yet pecuniarily these actors are far 
better off than their more sober brothers 
who stick to their elevators or their porters' 
jobs. 

Twenty years ago the Negro performer 
probably had little anticipation of advancing 
beyond minstrel work, in which he sang 
loud, danced hard, and told a funny story. 
S. H. Dudley, the leading comedian in the 
"Smart Set" colored company, said in 
1909: "When I started in business I had 
no idea of getting as high as I am now. A 
minstrel company came to the little town in 
Texas where I was raised, and at once my 
ambition fired me to become a musician. 
So I bought a battered horn and began to 
toot, to the great annoyance of my neighbors. 
Then I secured an engagement with a min- 
strel company whose cornet player had 
fallen into the hands of the law; and now 
here I am with one of the best colored shows 



EARNING A LIMNG 129 

ever gotten together and a starring tour 
arranged for next season." The movement 
from the minstrel show to the musical com- 
edy, from the cheapest form of buffoonery to 
attractive farce, and even to good comedy, 
has been accomplished by a number of 
colored comedians. Williams and Walker 
may be considered the pioneers in this 
movement, and the story of their success, 
as Walker has told it, is a fine example of 
what the Negro can do along the line of 
decided natural aptitude. And it is impor- 
tant to notice this, for today, in the educa- 
tion of the race, aesthetic instincts are often 
suppressed with Puritan vigor, and labor is 
made ugly and unwelcome. 

Bert Williams and George Walker, one a 
British West Indian, the other a Westerner, 
met in California where each was hanging 
around a box manager's office, looking for a 
job. Hardly more than boys, they secured 
employment at seven dollars a week. That 
was in 1889. In 1908 they made each 
$250 a week, and in later times they have 
doubled and quadrupled this. Their first 
stage manager expected them to perform as 



130 HALF A MAN 

the blacked-up white minstrels were perform- 
ing, but the two boys soon saw that the 
Negro himself was far more entertaining than 
the buffoon portrayed by the white man. 
They wanted to show the true Negro, and 
billing themselves as the "real coons" (their 
white rivals called themselves "coons") they 
played in San Francisco with some success. 
Later they came to New York, and at Koster 
and Bial's made their first hit. 

"Long before our run terminated," Walker 
said in telling of those early days, "we dis- 
covered an important fact: that the hope of 
the colored performer must be in making a 
radical departure from the old time 'darky' 
style of singing and dancing. So we set 
ourselves the task of thinking along new 
lines. 1 

"The first move was to hire a flat in 
Fifty-third Street, furnish it, and throw our 
doors open to all colored men who possessed 
theatrical and musical ability and ambi- 
tion. The Williams and Walker flat soon 
became the headquarters of all the artistic 
young men of our race who were stage- 
struck. We entertained the late Paul Law- 



EARNING A LIVING 131 

rence Dunbar, who wrote lyrics for us. 
By having these men about us we had the 
opportunity to study the musical and theat- 
rical ability of the most talented members 
of our race." 

In 1893 the World's Fair was held at 
Chicago, and on the "Midway" the visitor 
saw races from all over the world. Here 
was a Dahomey village, with strange little 
huts, representative of the African home 
life. The Dahomeyans themselves were late 
in arriving, and American Negroes, some- 
times with an added coat of black, were 
employed to represent them. Among them 
were Williams and Walker, who played 
their parts until the real Dahomeyans arriv- 
ing, they became in turn spectators and 
studied the true African. This contact 
with the dancing and singing of the primi- 
tive people of their own race had an impor- 
tant effect upon their art. Their lyrics 
recalled African songs, their dancing took 
on African movements, especially Walker's. 
Any one who saw Walker in "Abyssinia," 
the most African and the most artistic of 
their plays, must have recognized the 



132 HALF A MAN 

savage beauty of his dancing when he was 
masquerading as an African king. 

After the Dahomey episode the success 
of the two men was continuous. "In 1902 
and 1903," Walker said, "we had all New 
York and London doing the cake walk." In 
February, 1908, they appeared in "Ban- 
danna Land," at the Majestic Theatre, and 
remained there for six months. Only those 
colored men who have made a steady, uphill 
struggle for the chance to play good comedy, 
know how important such recognition was 
for the Negro. "Bandanna Land" was 
probably the most popular light opera in 
New York that winter next to "The Merry 
Widow." The singing, especially that of 
the male chorus, was often beautiful. Mrs. 
Walker's dancing and charming acting were 
delightful, the chorus girls were above the 
average in beauty and musical expression, 
and the two men who made the piece were 
spontaneously, irresistibly funny; added 
to this, unlike its successful rival, "Ban- 
danna Land" was without a vulgar scene 
or word. 

This was the last time the two men played ' 



EARNING A LIVING 133 

together. Walker became seriously ill, and 
died in January, 1911. After their company 
disbanded, Williams went back to the one- 
piece act of vaudeville, but as a star in a 
white troupe. His position as a permanent 
actor in the "Follies of 1910" marks a new 
departure for the colored comedian, a de- 
parture won by great talent combined with 
character and tact. 

Since 1908 the Majestic has seen another 
colored company. Cole and Johnson's, pre- 
senting a half-Negro, half-Indian, musical 
comedy, the "Red Moon." These two men, 
for years in vaudeville, have written songs 
for Lillian Russell, Marie Cahill, Anna Held, 
and other popular musical comedy and 
vaudeville singers. They have played for six 
months continuously at the Palace Theatre, 
London. Accustomed to writing for white 
actors, their own plays are not so distinct- 
ively African as Williams and Walker's. 
Both Johnson and Cole are of the mulatto 
type, and neither blackens his face. Cole 
is one of the most amusing men in comedy 
in New York. He is tall and very thin, 
with a genius for finding lank and gro- 



134 HALF A MAN 

tesqiie costumes that are delightfully incon- 
gruous with his grave face. The words of 
the musical comedies are his, the music, 
Johnson's. He, too, has become seriously 
ill, and his company has disbanded. In 
three years the colored stage has suffered 
serious loss, but we see forming new and 
successful companies whose reputation will 
soon be assured. 

Comedy has always furnished a medium 
for criticism of the foibles of the times, and 
there are many sly digs at the white man 
in the colored play. Ernest Hogan, now 
deceased, better than any one else played 
the rural southern darky. In the "Oyster- 
man" we saw him in contact with a white 
scamp who was intent upon getting his re- 
cently acquired money. He was urged to 
take stock in a land company, to buy where 
watermelons grew as thick as potatoes, 
and chickens were as common as sparrows. 
The audience hated the white man heartily 
and sided with the simple, kindly, black 
youth, sitting with his dog at his side, on 
his cabin steps. Behind boisterous laughter 
and raillery the writers of these comedies 



EARNING A LIVING 135 

often gain the sympathy of their hearers 
for the black race. 

In this attempt to show the occupational 
life of the Negro, we have found that race 
prejudice often proves a bar to complete 
success, to full manhood. Something of this 
is true with the actor as well as with the 
laborer and the business man. In securing 
entrance in vaudeville, color is at first an 
advantage. The "darky" to the white man 
is grotesquely amusing, and by rolling his 
eyes, showing a glistening smile, and wear- 
ing shoes that make a monstrosity of his 
feet, the Negro may create a laugh where 
the man with a white skin would be hooted 
off the stage. And since the laugh is so 
easily won, many colored actors become 
indolent and content themselves, year after 
year, with playing the part of buffoon. 
But with the ambition to rise in his profes- 
sion comes the difficult struggle to induce 
the audience to see a new Negro in the black 
man of today. The public gives the col- 
ored man no opportunity as a tragedian, 
demanding that his comedy shall border 
always on the farcical. And what is de- 



136 HALF A MAN 

manded of the actor is also demanded of the 
musician. Writers of the scores of some 
of our musical comedies are musicians of 
superior training and ability, but rarely 
are they permitted full expression. Mr. 
Will Marion Cook, the composer of much of 
the music of "Bandanna Land," for a few 
moments gives a piece of exquisite orches- 
tration. When the colored minister rises 
and exhorts his quarrelling friends to be at 
peace with one another, one hears a beauti- 
ful harmony. I am told that Mr. Cook 
declares that the next score he writes shall 
begin with ten minutes of serious music. 
If the audience doesn't like it, they can come 
in late, but for ten minutes he will do some- 
thing worthy of his genius. 

However light-hearted a people, and how- 
ever worthy of praise the entertainment 
that brings a jolly, wholesome laugh, let 
us hope that in the near future the Negro 
will find a more complete expression for 
his musical and histrionic gifts. Some actor 
of commanding talent, whose claims cannot 
be ignored, may reveal the larger life of 
the race. The nineteenth century knew a 



EARNING A LIVING 137 

great Negro actor, Ira Aldridge, a protege 
and disciple of Edmund Kean. He played 
Othello to Kean's lago, and in the forties 
toured Europe with his own company, 
receiving high honors in Berlin and St. 
Petersburg.^ A dark-skinned African, of 
immense power, physically and emotionally, 
he made Desdemona cry out in real fear, 
and caused Bassanio instinctively to shrink 
as he demanded his pound of flesh. Today's 
actor must be more subtle in his attack, 
but it may be given to him to reveal the 
thoughts at the back of the black man's 
mind. The genius of Zangwill gave us the 
picture of the children of the Ghetto; per- 
haps from the theatre's seat the American 
will first understand the despised black race. 

1 William J. Simmons's, "Men of Mark." 



CHAPTER VI 

The Colored Woman as a Bread Winner 

The life of the Negro woman of New York, 
if she belong to the laboring class, differs in 
some important respects from the life of the 
white laboring woman. Generalizations on 
so comprehensive a subject must, of course, 
meet with many exceptions, but the observ- 
ing visitor, familiar with white and colored 
neighborhoods, quickly notes marked con- 
trasts between the two, contrasts largely the 
result of different occupational opportunities. 
These pertain both to the married woman 
and the unmarried working girl. 

The generality of white women in New 
York, wives of laboring men, infrequently 
engage in gainful occupations. In the early 
years of married life the wife relies on her 
husband's wage for support, and within her 
tiny tenement-flat bears and rears her chil- 

138 



i 



THE COLORED WOMAN 139 

dren and performs her household duties — 
the sewing, cooking, washing, and ironing, 
and the daily righting of the contracted 
rooms. She is a conscientious wife and 
mother, and rarely, either by night or by day, 
journeys far from her own home. When un- 
employment visits the family wage earner, 
she turns to laundry work and day's cleaning 
for money to meet the rent and to supply the 
household with scanty meals; but as soon as 
[ her husband resumes work she returns to 
her narrow round of domestic duties. 

After a score of these monotonous years 
more prosperous times come to the house- 
wife. Every morning two or three children 
go out to work, and their wages make heavier 
the family purse. Son and daughter, having 
entered factory or store, bring home their 
pay envelopes unbroken on Saturday nights, 
and the augmentation of the father's wage 
gives the mother an income to administer. 
After the young people's wants in clothing 
and entertainment have been in part sup- 
plied, it becomes possible to buy new furni- 
ture on the instalment plan, to hire a piano, 
even to move into a better neighborhood. 



140 HALF A MAN 

The earnings of a number of children, sup- 
plementing the wage of the head of the 
family, make life more tolerable for all. 

These days, however, do not last long. 
Sons and daughters marry and assume new 
responsibihties; the husband, his best strength 
gone, finds unemployment increasing; and 
since saving, except for wasteful industrial 
insurance, has seemed impossible without 
sacrificing the decencies and pleasures of 
the children, the end of the woman's married 
life is likely to be hard and comfortless. 

This rough description may fairly be taken 
to represent the life of the average New 
York white woman of the laboring class. It 
is not, however, the life of the average col- 
ored woman. With her, self-sustaining work 
usually begins at fifteen, and by no means 
ceases with her entrance upon marriage, 
which only entails new financial burdens. 
The wage of the husband, as we have seen, 
is usually insufficient to support a family, 
save in extreme penury, and the wife accepts 
the necessity of supplementing the husband's 
income. This she accomplishes by taking 
in washing or by entering a private family 



THE COLORED WOMAN 141 

to do housework. Sometimes she is away 
from her tenement nearly every day in the 
week; again the bulk of her earnings comes 
from home industry. Her day holds more 
diversity than that of her white neighbor; 
she meets more people, becomes familiar 
with the ways of the well-to-do, — their 
household decorations, their dress, their re- 
finements of manner; but she has but few 
hours to give to her children. With her 
husband she is ready to be friend and help- 
mate; but should he turn out a bad bar- 
gain, she has no fear of leaving him, since 
her marital relations are not welded by 
economic dependence. An industrious, com- 
petent woman, she works and spends, and in 
her scant hours of leisure takes pride in keep- 
ing her children well-dressed and clean. 

At the second period of her married life, 
when her boys and girls, few in number if 
she be a New Yorker, begin to engage in 
self-supporting work, her condition shows 
less improvement than that of the white 
woman of her class. Sometimes her chil- 
dren hand her their whole wage, far oftener 
they bring her only such part as they choose 



142 HALF A IVIAN 

to spare. The strict accounting of the minor 
to the parent, usual among Northerners in 
the past, and today common among the 
immigrant class, is not a part of the Negro's 
training. Rather, as the race has attained 
freedom it has copied the indulgent attitude 
of the once familiar "master," and regrets 
that its offspring must enter upon any work. 
Children with this tradition about them use 
the money they earn largely for the gratifica- 
tion of their vanity, not for the lessening of 
their mother's tasks. But a more potent 
factor than lack of discipline keeps the 
mother from being the administrator of the 
family's joint earnings. White boys and 
girls in New York enter work that makes it 
possible and advantageous for them to dwell 
at home; Negroes must go out to service, 
accept long and irregular hours in hotel or 
apartment, travel for days on boat or train. 
The family home is infrequently available 
to them, and money given in to it brings 
small return. Under these circumstances it 
is not strange if the mother must continue 
her round of washing and scrubbing. 

The last years of life of the Negro woman, 



THE COLORED WOMAN 143 

probably a little more than the last years of 
the white, are likely to bring happiness. 
With a mother at work a grandmother 
becomes an important factor, and elderly 
colored women are often seen bringing up 
little children or helping in the laundry — 
that great colored home industry. Accus- 
tomed all their lives to hard labor, it is easy 
for them to find work that shall repay their 
support, and in their children's households 
they are treated with respect and consider- 
ation. 

The contrast in the lives of the colored and 
white married women is not more strongly 
marked than the contrast in the lives of their 
unmarried daughters and sisters. Unable to 
enter any pursuit except housework, the 
unskilled colored girl goes out to service or 
helps at home with the laundry or sewing. 
Factory and store are closed to her, and 
rarely can she take a place among other 
working girls. Her hours are the long, irreg- 
ular hours of domestic service. She brings 
no pay envelope home to her mother, the 
two then carefully discussing how much 
belongs rightfully for board, and how much 



144 HALF A MAN 

may go for the new coat or dress, but takes 
the eighteen or twenty dollars given her at 
the end of the month, and quite by herself 
determines all her expenditures. Far oftener 
than any class of white girls in the city she 
lives away from the parental home. 

These are some of the differences found by 
the observer who looks into the Negro and 
the white tenement. They need not, how- 
ever, rest alone upon any observer's testi- 
mony. We have in the census abundant 
statistics for their verification. Scattered 
among the volumes on Population, Occupa- 
tions, and Women at Work are many facts 
concerning Negro women workers of New 
York, all of them confirmatory of the descrip- 
tion just given. We may note the most 
important. 

In 1900, whereas 4.2 per cent of the white 
married women in New York were engaged 
in gainful occupations, 31.4 per cent of the 
Negro married women were earning their 
living, over seven times as many in propor- 
tion as the whites.^ 

1 These figures are obtained by a combination of tables, 
one in Population, Vol. II, Part II, p. 332, describing the whole 



THE COLORED WOMAN 145 

Again, in the total population of New 
York's women workers, 80 per cent were 
single, 10 per cent married, and 10 per cent 
widowed and divorced; while among the 
Negroes, the single women were only 53 
per cent, the married 25 per cent, and the 
widowed 22.^ 

Statistics of the age period at which women 
are at work, show the Negro's long continuing 
wage-earning activity. Between sixteen and 
twenty is a busy time for the women of both 
races. Among the whites 59 per cent are 
in gainful occupations, among the Negroes 
66 per cent. But as the girl arrives at the 
period when she is likely to marry, the 
per cent of workers among the whites 
drops rapidly, until for white women, 
forty-five and over, it is 13.5, about one 
in seven. With the colored, among the 
women forty-five years of age and over, 53 

of Greater New York, the other in Women at Work, pp. 266 
to 275, describing Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. 
The error through the omission of Richmond and Queens is 
probably negligible. 

> Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 28, pp. 266 
to 274. Among 800 married and widowed colored women 
whom I myself visited, I found only 150, 19 per cent, who 
were not engaged in gainful occupations. 



146 HALF A MAN 

per cent, more than half, still engage in 
gainful toil.^ 

Family life can be studied in the census 
table. While 59 per cent of the unmarried 
white girls at work live at home, this is 
found to be true of but 25 per cent of the 
colored girls; that is, 75 per cent, three-quar- 
ters of all the colored unmarried working 
women, live with their employers or board. - 

The census volume on occupations reveals 
at once the narrow range of the New York 
colored woman's working life. Personal and 
domestic service absorbs 90 per cent of her 
numbers against 40 per cent among the 
white. But before considering more fully 
the colored girl at work, we need to notice 
another statistical fact, the preponderance 
in the city of Negro women over Negro 
men. 

Like the foreigner, the youth of the Negro 
race comes first to the city to seek a liveli- 
hood. The colored population shows 41 per 
cent of its number between the ages of 20 

1 Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 10, pp. 
147 to 151. 

^ Federal Census 1900: Women at Work, Table 28, pp. 
266 to 275. 



I 



THE COLORED WOMAN 147 

and 35. But unlike the foreigner, the Negro 
women find larger opportunity and come in 
greater numbers than the men. Their range 
of work is narrow, but within it they can 
command double the wages they receive at 
home, and if they are possessed of average 
ability, they are seldom long out of work. 
With the immense growth of wealth in New 
York the demand for servants continually 
increases, and finding little response from the 
white native born population, many mis- 
tresses receive readily the services of the 
English-speaking southern and West Indian 
blacks. So the boats from Charleston and 
Norfolk and the British West Indies bring 
scores and hundreds of Negro women from 
country districts, from cities where they have 
spent a short time at service, girls with and 
girls without experience, all seeking better 
wages in a new land. 

Mr. Kelly Miller was the first to call 
attention to the presence in American cities 
of surplus Negro women.^ The phenomenon 
is not peculiar to New York. Baltimore, 

' This is incorporated in a chapter in Mr. Miller's volume 
on " Race Adjustment. " 



148 HALF A MAN 

Washington, New Orleans, all show the same 
condition. In Atlanta the women number 
143 to every hundred colored men. New 
York shows 123 to every masculine one hun- 
dred. These surplus women account in part 
for the number of Negro women workers in 
New York not living at home. Some are 
with their employers, but others lodge in the 
already crowded tenements, for the southern 
servant, unaccustomed to spending the night 
at her employer's, in New York also, fre- 
quently arranges to leave her mistress when 
her work is done. In their hours of leisure 
the surplus women are known to play havoc 
with their neighbors' sons, even with their 
neighbors' husbands, for since lack of men 
makes marriage impossible for about a fifth 
of New York's colored girls, social disorder 
results. Surplus Negro women, able to se- 
cure work, support idle, able-bodied Negro 
men. The lounger at the street corner, the 
dandy in the parlor thrumming on his banjo, 
means a Malindy of the hour at the kitchen 
washboard. In a town in Germany, where 
men were sadly scarce, I was told that a 
servant girl paid as high as a mark to a 



THE COLORED WOMAN 149 

soldier to walk with her in the Hofgarten 
on a Sunday afternoon. Colored men in 
New York command their "mark," and girls 
are found who keep them in polished boots, 
fashionable coats, and well-creased trousers. 
Could the Negro country boy be as certain 
as his sister of lucrative employment in New 
York, or could he oftener persuade her to 
remain with him on the farm, he would 
better city civilization. But the demand for 
servants increases, and the colored girl con- 
tinues to be attracted to the city where she 
can earn and spend. 

The table on the following page shows in 
condensed form the occupations of the Negro 
women in New York. As we see, the Negro 
women number forty -four in every thousand 
women workers. 

Ninety per cent of all the Negro women 
workers of New York are in domestic and 
personal service. This includes a variety of 
positions. Some Negro girls work in stores, 
dusting stock, taking charge of cloak or 
toilet rooms, scrubbing floors. Their hours 
are regular, but the pay, five or six, or very 
occasionally eight dollars a week, means a 



150 



HALF A MAN 



scanty livelihood without hope of advance- 
ment. The position of maid in a theatre 
where perquisites are larger is prized, and a 
new and pleasant place is that of a maid on 

Females Ten Years of Age and over, Engaged in 
Gainful Occupations in New York 



Professional service . . 

Domestic and personal 

service 

Laundresses 

Servants and waitresses 
All others 

Trade and transportation 

Manufacturing and me- 
chanical pursuits . . . 

Dressmakers 

Seamstresses 

All others 

Total including some oc- 
cupations not specified . . 



Total 


Negro 


22,422 


281 


146,722 


14,586 


16,102 


3,224 


103,963 


10,297 


24,657 


1,065 


65,318 


106 


132,535 


1,138 


37,514 


813 


18,108 


249 


76,913 


76 


367,437 


16,114 



Number to every 
1000 workers 



12 
100 

200 

99 

43 

Between one 

and two 

7 
22 
14 

1 

44 



Federal Census 1900: Occupations, Table 43, p. 638 

a limited train. But the bulk of the girls 
are servants in boarding-houses, or are with 
private families as nurses, waitresses, cooks, 
laundresses, maids-of-all-work, earning from 



THE COLORED WOMAN 151 

sixteen and eighteen to twenty-five and even 
thirty dollars a month. Occasionally a very 
skilful cook can command as high a monthly 
wage as fifty dollars. 

The colored girl is frequently found en- 
gaged at general housework in a small apart- 
ment. Her desire to return to her lodging 
at night makes her popular with families 
living in contracted space. With the con- 
veniences of a New York flat, dumb-waiter, 
clothes-dryer, gas, and electricity, general 
housework is not severe. Work begins early, 
seven at the latest, and lasts until the dinner 
is cleared away, at half-past eight or nine. 
Released then from further tasks, the young 
girl goes to her tiny inner tenement room, 
dons a fresh dress, and then, as chance or her 
training determines, walks the streets, goes 
to the theatre, or attends the class meeting 
at her church. Entertainments among the 
Negroes are rarely under way until ten 
o'clock, and short hours of sleep in ill- 
ventilated rooms soon weaken the vitality of 
the new-comer. Housework under these 
conditions does not create much ambition; 
the mistress moves, flitting, in New York 



152 HALF A MAN 

fashion, from one flat to another, and the 
girl also flits among employers, changing 
with the whim of the moment. 

Few subjects present so fascinating a field 
for discussion as domestic service, and the 
housewife of today enters into it with energy, 
sometimes decrying the modern working girl, 
again planning household economics that 
shall lure her from factory or shop. The 
only point we need to consider now is the 
dissatisfaction that results when 64 per cent 
of the women of a race are forced by circum- 
stances into one occupation. Those with na- 
tive ability along this line succeed and make 
others and themselves happy. The faithful, 
patient, loyal Negro servant is well-known, 
the black mammy has passed into American 
literature, but not every colored woman can 
wisely be given this position. Some of the 
Negro girls who take up housework in New 
York are capable of more intelligent labor, 
and chafe under their limitations; others 
have not the ability to do good housework; 
for domestic service requires more mental 
capacity than is demanded in many facto- 
ries. In short, a great many colored girls in 



THE COLORED WOMAN 153 

New York are round pegs in square holes, 
and the community is the loser by it. 

Among these round pegs are girls who, 
determining no longer to drudge in lonely 
kitchens, contrive, as we shall see later, to 
find positions at other more attractive repu- 
table work. Others, deciding in favor of 
material betterment at whatever cost, lower 
their moral standard and secure easier and 
more renmnerative jobs. A well-paying 
place, with short hours and high tips, at once 
offers itself to the colored girl who is willing 
to work for a woman of the demi-monde. 
In the sporting house also she is preferred 
as a servant, her dark complexion separating 
her from other inmates. In 1858, Sanger 
wrote in his "History of Prostitution," "The 
servants (in these houses) are almost always 
colored women. Their wages are liberal, 
their perquisites considerable, and their 
work hght." Untrained herself, bereft of 
home influence, with an ancestry that some- 
times cries out her parent's weakness in the 
contour and color of her face, the Negro girl 
in New York, more even than the foreign 
"immigrant, is subject to degrading tempta- 



154 HALF A MAN 

tion. The good people, who are often so 
exacting, want her for her wilhngness to 
work long hours at a lower wage than the 
white; and the bad people, who are often so 
carelessly kind, offer her light labor and 
generous pay. It is small wonder that she 
sometimes chooses the latter. 

Not all the colored girls who work in 
questionable places and with questionable 
people take the jobs from choice; some are 
sent without knowing the character of the 
house they enter. A few years ago an agita- 
tion was started for the protection of helpless 
Negro immigrants who had fallen into the 
hands of unscrupulous employment agencies. 
A system existed, and still exists, by which 
employment agencies were able to advance 
the travelling expenses of southern girls, who 
on their arrival in New York were held in 
debt until the cost of the journey had been 
many times repaid. Helpless in the power 
of the agent, the new-comer was forced to 
work where he wished. Under the city's 
department of licenses some of the more 
unscrupulous of these agencies have been 
closed, and philanthropy has placed a visitor 



THE COLORED WOMAN 155 

at the docks to give aid and advice to un- 
protected girls. But the danger is by no 
means over. Those familiar with the sub- 
ject assert that there is a proportionately 
larger black slave than white slave traffic. 

There is a gainful occupation for women, 
black and white, too important to be left 
unnoticed. The census does not tabulate it. 
The best people strive to ignore it, and care- 
fully sheltered girls grow up unconscious of 
its existence. But the employment agent 
understands its commercial value, and little 
children in the red light neighborhood are as 
familiar with it as with the vending of pea- 
nuts on the street. To the poor it is always 
an open door affording at least a temporary 
respite from dispossession and starvation. 
How many of the colored turn to it, we do 
not know — certainly not a few. Some gain 
from it a meagre livelihood, but others, for 
a time at least, achieve comfort and even 
luxury. 

Among the round pegs that the square 

oles so uncomfortably chafe are colored girls 

[bf intelligence and charm who deliberately 

join the anti-social class. Probably a few 



156 HALF A MAN 

in any case would lead this life, but the his- 
tory of many shows an unsuccessful struggle 
for congenial work, ending with a choice of 
material comfort however high the moral 
cost. In One Hundred and Thirty-fourth 
and One Hundred and Thirty -fifth Streets 
are apartments where such girls live, two or 
three together, surrounded by comforts that 
their respectable neighbors who go out to 
cook, wash, and iron may fruitlessly long 
for all their lives. A colored philanthropic 
worker, stopping by chance at the door of 
one of these places, saw an old college friend. 
"How can you do it! " she cried as she recog- 
nized the life the girl was leading, "How can 
you do it! I would rather kill myself scrub- 
bing!" "There is the difference between 
us," came the answer, "I am not willing to 
die, and I cannot and will not scrub." 

It is pleasant and encouraging to turn from 
colored women who have given up the 
struggle, to ambitious, successful workers. 
Some among these are in the domestic ser- 
vice group and enjoy with heartiness their 
tasks as nurse-maid or cook. "This is my 
piano day," an expert colored washerwoman 



THE COLORED WOMAN 157 

says of a Monday morning. Among the 
domestic service workers, as classified by the 
census, is the trained nurse, filHng an increas- 
ingly important position in New York. In 
1909, Lincoln Hospital graduated twenty-one 
colored nurses, some of whom remain in 
New York to do excellent work. 

In the professions, with the women as 
with the men, the first place numerically is 
occupied by performers upon the stage. So 
much has been said of the Negro as an actor 
that there is little to add. A rather better 
class of colored than of white women join 
musical comedy chorus troupes, for fifteen or 
eighteen dollars a week that will attract a 
Negro to the stage can be made by a white 
girl in a dozen other ways. Lightness of 
color seems a requisite for a stage position, 
unless a dark skin is offset by very great 
ability, as in the case of Aida Walker, one of 
the most graceful and charming women in 
musical comedy. 

No record is kept of the number of colored 
teachers in the city's public schools, but each 
year Negro graduates from the normal col- 
lege secure positions. These are found from 



158 HALF A MAN 

the kindergarten through the primary and 
up to the highest grammar grade. The 
colored girl with intellectual ability, par- 
ticularly if she comes of an old New York 
family, is apt to turn to teaching. Her 
novitiate is long, but a permanent certifi- 
cate secured, she is sure of a good salary, 
increasing with her years of service, and 
ending in a pension. This path of security 
has perhaps tended to keep New York col- 
ored girls from going into other lines of 
work. I have not yet found one who has 
graduated from a university. Pratt Insti- 
tute and the Teachers' College have colored 
normal students, but they are usually from 
the South or West, not New Yorkers born. 

Philanthropy is opening up important lines 
of opportunity to the Negro woman in New 
York. In 1903, a colored graduate nurse 
secured an interview with the Secretary of 
the New York Charity Organization Society, 
and so ably presented to him the need of 
Negro visitors among Negroes that she was 
appointed visiting nurse for the colored sick 
who came under the notice of the Society. 
In time the position changed into that of a 



i 



THE COLORED WOMAN 159 

colored district visitor, other colored nurses 
entering in numbers into district nursing 
work. In 1910, three nurses were employed 
by the Nurses' Settlement, two by the Asso- 
ciation for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor of Manhattan, and two by the District 
Nursing Association of Brooklyn. With in- 
creased knowledge of the sickness and suffer- 
ing amid the Negro poor, and of their need 
of proper care in their homes, the number of 
these nurses will doubtless increase. Colored 
women rank high among the trained nurses 
of New York. 

Other philanthropic work lately has been 
undertaken by Negro women in New York. 
In 1910, besides the nurses of whom we have 
spoken, there were at the head of societies in 
salaried positions, two settlement workers, 
two matrons of day nurseries, two matrons of 
homes in which much social work was carried 

j on, many employees in colored orphan 
asylums, a teacher of domestic science in a 
home-keeping flat, a traveller's aid visitor, a 

I playground instructor, besides workers in 
various religious organizations. This does 
not include the many colored women doing 



160 HALF A MAN 

social and recreation work in the public 
schools and on the city's playgrounds. In- 
deed, the difficulty in New York is to secure 
trained colored women for philanthropic 
work, the Negro's attitude still being that 
of the great majority of white women a few 
years ago, that love for children and a sen- 
timental kindness constitute the requisites 
for work among the poor. But the school 
of experience is training workers, and as 
the schools of philanthropy of New York, 
Boston, and Chicago also graduate colored 
students, we shall have in the North the 
intelligent, trained workers whom we need. 
The little kindergarten girl who, with head 
erect, walked past the jeering line of boys 
to the green trees and soft grass of the 
park has her counterpart in many young 
women of New York. In 1909, a colored 
girl graduated from one of the city's dental 
colleges, the first woman of her race to take 
this degree in the state. From the first 
her success was remarkable. Colored girls 
with ability and steady purpose and dogged 
determination have won success in clerical 
and business work; but the last large and 



THE COLORED WOIVIAN 161 

efficient group is that classified in the census 
under mechanical and manufacturing pur- 
suits : the dressmakers, seamstresses, milliners. 
Colored women have always been known 
as good sewers, and recently they have 
studied at their trade in some of the best 
schools. From 1904 to 1910, the Manhattan 
Trade School graduated thirty-four colored 
girls in dressmaking, hand sewing, and nov- 
elty making. The public night school on 
West Forty-sixth Street, under its able col- 
ored principal, Dr. W. L. Bulkley, since 1907, 
has educated hundreds of women in sewing, 
dressmaking, millinery, and artificial flower- 
making. While the majority of the pupils 
have taken the courses for their private use, 
a large minority are entering the business 
world. They meet with repeated difficulties; 
white girls refuse to work in shops with them, 
private employers object to their color, but 
they have, nevertheless, made creditable pro- 
gress. The census reports the number of 
Negro dressmakers to have quadrupled in 
the United States from 1890 to 1900. Some- 
thing comparable to this increase in dress- 
making and allied trades has taken place 



1 



162 HALF A MAN 

among the Negroes of New York, and it has 
come through education and persistence, and 
the increase of trade among the colored group 
itself. Numbers of these dressmakers and 
milliners earn a livelihood, though often a 
scanty one, from the patronage of the people 
of their own race. 

But despite her efforts and occasional suc- 
cesses, the colored girl in New York meets 
with severer race prejudice than the colored 
man, and is more persistently kept from 
attractive work. She gets the job that the 
white girl does not want. It may be that the 
white girls want the wrong thing, and that 
the jute mill and tobacco shop and flower 
factory are more dangerous to health and 
right living than the mistress's kitchen, but 
she knows her mind, and follows the business 
that brings her liberty of action when the ^j 
six o'clock whistle blows. What she desires 
for herself, however, she refuses to her colored 
neighbor. Occasionally an employer objects 
to colored girls, but the Manhattan Trade 
School repeatedly, in trying to place its 
graduates, has found that opposition to the 
Negro has come largely from the working 



THE COLORED WOMAN 163 

girls. Race prejudice has even gone so far 
as to prevent a colored woman from receiving 
home work when it entailed her waiting in 
the same sitting-room with white women. 
Of course, this is not the universal attitude. 
In friendly talks with hundreds of New 
York's white women workers, I have found 
the majority ready to accept the colored 
worker. Jewish girls are especially tolerant. 
They believe that good character and decent 
manners should count, not color; but an 
aggressive, combative minority is quite sure 
that no matter how well educated or virtu- 
ous she may be, no black woman is as good 
as a white one. So the few but belligerent 
aristocrats triumph over the many half- 
ashamed, timid democrats. 

The shirtwaist makers' strike of 1910 was 
i so profoundly important in its breaking 
j down of feeling between nationalities, its 
union of all working women in a common 
cause, that the colored girl, while very 
slightly concerned in the strike itself, may 
profit by the more generous feeling it engen- 
dered. Certainly an entrance into store and 
workshop would be to her immense advan- 



164 HALF A MAN 

tage. She needs the discipHne of regular 
hours, of steady training, of order and sys- 
tem. She needs also to become part of a 
strong labor group, to share its working 
class ideal, to feel the weight of its moral 
opinion; instead of looking into the mirror 
of her wealthy mistress, she needs to reflect 
the aspirations of the strong, earnest women 
who toil. 

Before bringing the story of the life of the 
New York colored working woman to a 
close, it may not be amiss to look closely at 
the discrimination practised against her, not 
only in her work, but in her daily life. The 
Negro comes North and finds himself half a 
man. Does the woman, too, come to be 
but half a woman .f* What is her status in 
the city to which she turns for opportunity 
and larger freedom? 

Four years ago, within a few hours' time, 
two stories were told me, illustrative of the 
colored woman's status. Neither occurred 
in the city of New York, but both are indica- 
tive of its temper. The first I heard from 
a woman skilled in a difficult profession, a 
Canadian now residing in the United States, 



THE COLORED WOMAN 165 

and the descendant of a fugitive slave. 
Her youthful companions had all been white, 
and while an African in the darkness of her 
skin and her musical voice, her rearing had 
been that of an Englishwoman. "Shortly 
after coming to New York, I went for the 
first time," she told me, "to a little resort on 
the Jersey coast. A board walk flanked the 
ocean, and on the other side were shops 
and places of amusement. Going out one 
morning with two companions, a colored 
man and woman, we turned into an enclosure 
to examine a gaily painted merry-go-round. 
The place was open to the public, and a few 
nursery maids with their charges were seated 
about. The man in our party, interested in 
the mechanism of the machine, went up to 
it and began to explain it to us. Quite sud- 
denly a rough fellow, in charge of the place, 
walked over and called out, ' Get out of here ! 
We don't allow niggers.' The attack, to me 
at least, was so overwhelming that I did not 
move at once. Thereupon I was again 
called 'nigger,' and ordered out. 

"Wlien I reached the beach, I asked my 
companions to leave me, and I sat on a bench 



166 HALF A MAN 

looking upon the waves. After a time an 
old woman came to my side, and said a little 
timidly, 'What are you thinking about, 
dearie?' Looking in her face I saw that she 
feared that I would commit suicide. 'I am 
thinking,' I said turning to her, 'that I wish 
the ocean might rise up and drown every 
white person on the face of the earth.' *0h, 
you mustn't say that,' she cried horrified, 
and left me. After I cannot tell how many 
minutes or hours, I returned to my boarding- 
house, and then to my home in New York. 
I had had a great many white friends in my 
native home; I had played with them, eaten 
with them, slept with them. Now I de- 
stroyed their letters, and resolved never to 
know them again. That was my first affront 
in the United States, and while I have 
learned to feel somewhat differently, a little 
to discriminate, I can never forget that the 
white people in the North stand for the 
insult which was cast upon me." 

On the evening of the same day I had 
learned of this happening, a man from a 
prominent college in New York State told 
me of a Negro classmate. "He was a pleas- 



THE COLORED WOMAN 167 

ant, intelligent fellow from the South," he 
said, "and while I never knew him well, I 
was always glad to see him. One day, at 
commencement time, when we were all hav- 
ing our relatives about, he boarded my car 
with a young colored woman, evidently his 
sister. Without a thought I rose, lifted my 
hat, and gave her my seat. Never again 
shall I see such a look of gratitude as that 
which lighted up his face when he bowed 
in acknowledgment of my courtesy. It re- 
vealed the race question to me, and yet I 
had performed only the simplest act of a 
gentleman." 

In these two incidents we see the unde- 
cided, perplexing position of the Negro 
woman in New York. Today she may be 
turned out of a public resort as a "nigger," 
tomorrow she may receive the dues of a 
gentlewoman. And since, while I write, I 
hear the cry of a class in the community who 
adjudge the expulsion necessary since the 
other course must lead at once to social 
equality, I make haste to add that the second 
story did not end in wedlock. As far as I 
have seen, it never does. Intermarriage of 



168 HALF A MAN 

white and black in New York is so slight as 
to be a negligible quantity, but amalgama- 
tion between the two races is not uncommon. 
And this we may say with certainty, the 
man most blatant against the "nigger" in 
New York as all over the country is the 
man most ready to enter into illicit relation- 
ship with the woman whom he claims to 
despise. The raising of the hat to the 
colored woman brings a diminution in sexual 
immorality. 

If the Negro civilization of New York is 
to be lifted to a higher level, the white race 
must consistently play a finer and more 
generous part toward the colored woman. 
There are many inherent difficulties against 
which she must contend. Slavery deprived 
her of family life, set her to daily toil in the 
field, or appropriated her mother's instincts 
for the white child. She has today the 
difficult task of maintaining the integrity 
and purity of the home. Many times she 
has succeeded, often she has failed, some- 
times she has not even tried. A vicious 
environment has strengthened her passions 
and degraded her from earliest girlhood. 



THE COLORED WOMAN 169 

Beyond any people in the city she needs all 
the encouragement that philanthropy, that 
human courtesy and respect, that the fellow- 
ship of the workers can give, — she needs her 
full status as a woman. 



CHAPTER VII 



Rich and Poor 



Of the many nations and races that dwell 
in New York none, with the exception of 
the Chinese, is so aloof from us in its social 
life as the Negro. The childish recollec- 
tion of an old school friend, recently related 
to me, well illustrates this. Across the way 
from where she lived there was a house 
occupied by a family of mulattoes. They || 
were the quietest and least obtrusive people 
on the block, and the wife, who was known 
to be very beautiful, on the rare occasions 
when she left her home, was always veiled. 
The husband was little seen, and the child, 
a shy boy, never played on the street. For 
years the family lived aloof from their * 
neighbors, the subject of hushed and mysteri- 
ous questioning. 

Probably had one of the white women 

dropped in some day to say good-morning 

170 



1 



RICH AND POOR 171 

or to borrow a recipe book, the mystery 
would have been wholly dispelled, — a pity 
surely for the children. Few of New York's 
citizens are so American as the colored, few 
show so little that is unusual or picturesque. 
The educated Italian might have in his 
home some relic of his former country, the 
Jew might show some symbol of his relig- 
ion; but the Negro, to the seeker of the 
unusual, would seem commonplace. The 
colored man in New York has no associa- 
tions with his ancient African home, no 
African traditions, no folk lore. The days 
of slavery he wishes completely to forget, 
even to the loss of his exquisite plantation 
music. He is ambitious to be conventional 
in his manners, his customs, striving as far 
as possible to be like his neighbor — a dis- 
tinctly American ambition. In consequence, 
after indicating the lines along which he has 
achieved economic success, one finds little 
to describe in the lives of the well-to-do 
that will be of interest. And yet this sketch 
would be open to criticism if, after so long 
a survey of the working class, it gave no 
space to those Negroes who have achieved 



172 HALF A MAN 

a fair degree of wealth and leisure; and per- 
haps the very recital of the likeness of these 
people to those about them may be of im- 
portance, for the great mass of white Amer- 
icans are like a vivacious Kentuckian of my 
acquaintance, who, on learning something of 
a well-to-do Negro family, assured me that 
she knew less of such people than she did 
of the Esquimaux. 

Mr. William Archer, in his book, "Through 
Afro-America," describes a round of visits 
to southern Negro homes, where, with touch- 
ing pride, his hostesses show their ma- 
terial wealth, or rather the material wealth of 
their race as embodied in drawing-room, 
dining-room, and bedroom. There seemed 
to be nothing remarkable about the rooms 
unless their very existence was remarkable. 
So the interiors of colored homes in New 
York would reveal nothing to mark them 
from the homes of their neighbors, save per- 
haps the universal presence of some musical 
instrument. In Brooklyn, the Bronx, and 
in the Jersey suburbs, Negroes buy and rent 
houses, sometimes with a few of their race in 
close proximity, sometimes with white neigh- 



RICH AND POOR 173 

bors only on the block. Brooklyn seems 
always to have shown less race antagonism 
than Manhattan (where, indeed, anything 
but the apartment is beyond the pocket- 
book of people of modest means), and it 
has been in Brooklyn for the past three 
generations that the well-to-do colored fam- 
ilies with their children have chiefly been 
found. 

Much pleasant hospitality and entertain- 
ment take place behind these modest doors. 
Visitors are common, relatives from the east 
and west and south, and little dinner and 
supper parties are numerous. If church dis- 
cipline does not interfere, the women have 
their afternoons of whist, and despite church 
discipline, dancing is very common, few en- 
tertainments proving successful without it. 
To play well upon some musical instrument 
is almost a universal accomplishment, and, 
as with the Germans, families and friends 
meet the oftener for this harmonious bond. 

The social life of the well-to-do colored 
family generally centres about the church, 
and with a regularity unusual among the 
white people, father and mother and chil- 



174 HALF A MAN 

dren attend the Sunday and week-day meet- 
ings. Colored society is also at the period 
of the bazaar and fair, the concert and 
dramatic entertainment. Money is raised 
by this means for the church, the private 
charity, or to supplement the dues of the 
mutual benefit society. There are a number 
of Negroes in the different large cities who 
support themselves by concerts and readings, 
appearing at benefits in the North and 
South, where they receive a third or a half of 
the receipts. Amateur performances are also 
common. A young New York college man, 
one winter evening, saw two refined, remark- 
ably well-dressed colored women turn in at 
the entrance of the Grand Central Palace. 
Purchasing a ticket for the benefit, as it 
proved, of a colored day nursery (the enter- 
tainment netted $2300), he followed them 
to find himself in the Afro-American social 
world. For while the amateur dancing 
and singing upon the stage were pretty 
and attractive, the young man was far more 
interested in the audience. "And the dis- 
appointing thing about it," he remarked 
in telling of it afterwards, "was that they 



RICH AND POOR 175 

were exactly like other people." To use the 
newspaper phrase, "there was no 'story.'" 
They were a group of Americans, trained in 
the social conventions of their own land. 

There are many secret and benefit soci- 
eties among the Negroes in New York. 
The Masons have nine meeting places; the 
Elks, ten lodges. The Odd Fellows have 
twenty-two places of meeting. The United 
Order of True Reformers, a strong Negro 
organization in the South, where it con- 
ducts large business enterprises, has forty- 
four head-quarters in church and hall and 
private house, where meetings are held twice 
a month. Many benefit societies are closely 
associated with the churches. Colored men 
and women are very busy with their mul- 
titudinous church and society and benefit 
meetings. I remember once attending an 
evening service at a colored church when 
the minister preached the sermon to the 
benefit orders of St. Luke's and the Gal- 
ilean Fishermen. The oflScers, some of them 
carrying spears with blue and red and white 
trimmings, marched down the aisle and 
took their seats at the front of the pulpit. 



176 HALF A MAN 

Their leader was in purple, wearing a huge 
badge like a breastplate with yellow and 
green stones. The women, equally promi- 
nent with the men, were dressed one in 
yellow with green over it, and broad purple 
bands, two in white with golden crowns. 
The pageant was very pretty, even beauti- 
ful, but too artless in its simple enjoyment 
of color and display for the conventional 
society of New York, and the colored "four 
hundred" were not in it. 

Who are the four hundred in New York's 
colored society? An outsider would be 
very bold who should attempt to answer. 
Twenty-five years ago the New Yorker born, 
especially the descendant of some prominent 
anti-slavery worker, would have held fore- 
most social position. The taint of slavery 
was far removed from these people, who 
looked with scorn upon arrivals from the 
South. Many were proud of their Indian 
blood, and told of the freedom that came 
to their black ancestors who married Long 
Island Indians. But these old New York 
colored families, sometimes bearing historic 
Dutch and English names, have diminished 






RICH AND POOR 177 

in size and importance as have the old white 
families beside them. The younger genera- 
tion has gone west, or has died and left 
no issue. And into the city has come a 
continual stream of Southerners and more 
recently West Indians, some among them 
educated, ambitious men and women, full 
of the energy and determination of the 
immigrant who means to attain to promi- 
nence in his new home. These new-comers 
occupy many of the pulpits, are admitted 
to the bar, practise medicine, and become 
leaders in politics, and their wives are quite 
ready to take a prominent part in the social 
world. They meet the older residents, and 
the various groups intermingle, though not 
without some friction. Like a country vil- 
lage, the New York Negro social world 
knows the happenings of its neighbors, 
gossips over their shortcomings, rejoices, 
though with something of jealousy, over 
: their successes, and has its cliques, its many 
leaders, but also its broad-minded spirits 
who strive to bring the whole village life 
into harmony. 

As we have learned from a study of the 






178 HALF A MAN 

occupational life of the Negro, the majority 
of men and women of means are in the 
professional class, or in the city or federal 
service. Such positions do not carry with 
them large incomes, and remembering the 
high cost of living in New York, and the 
exorbitant rental paid by black men, we 
can see that, gauged by the white man's 
standard, the Negro with his two or three or 
four thousand dollars a year is poor. Yet 
with his very limited income the demands 
upon him are enormous. In the first place, 
he must educate his children, and this means 
a large expenditure, for only in the technical 
schools or the college can his boy or girl be 
prepared for a successful career. The white 
boy may find some business firm that will 
give him a chance of advancement, but the 
colored boy must receive such an educa- 
tion as shall fit him to start an enterprise 
by himself, unless he enters public service. 
So the trade or professional school or col- 
lege absorbs the savings of many years. 

The church is another large recipient of 
the Negro's slender means. Watching the 
dimes and quarters drop into the contribu- 



RICH AND POOR 179 

tion plate as the dark-faced congregation 
files past the pulpit on a Sunday evening, 
one wonders whether any other people in 
America willingly give so large an amount 
of their income to their religious organiza- 
tions. And not only will money be requested 
for the church's need, but special offerings 

I will be given to home and foreign mis- 

jsion work. In 1907, the African Methodist 
Church alone raised $36,000 for home and for- 

ieign missions. The Baptists raised $44,000. 

[Educational work demands a share: the Afri- 
Ican Methodists support twenty schools, the 
African Zion twelve, and the Negro Baptists 
one hundred and twenty. The other de- 
nominations do their share, and the Negroes 
lalso give to the schools conducted by white 
churches for their people. This money comes 
from all over the country, and the well-to-do 

■NTew York Negro must contribute his part. 
' Home charities also help to drain the 
Negro's purse. Manhattan and Brooklyn 
|iiave a number of colored philanthropies, 
orphan asylums, old people's homes, rescue 
nissions. Young Men's and Young Women's 
hristian Associations, and social settlements. 



180 HALF A MAN 

Some are supported entirely by white people, 
but the greater number receive some contri- 
butions from the colored, and a few are 
dependent for money upon that race alone. 
Thousands of dollars are raised yearly, 
among the well-to-do New York Negroes, 
for these institutions. 

Yet, with all these various philanthropic 
activities, one too frequently hears that the 
Negro does not support his own charities. 
As though anything of the sort could be 
expected of him! A little time ago, in 
asking for money for settlement work among 
Negroes, I was asked in turn by the exqui- 
sitely dressed woman before me, whose furs 
and gown and jewels must have represented 
a year's salary of a school-teacher, the type 
of wealthy woman among the colored, why 
the well-to-do Negroes did not support the 
settlement themselves. No such question 
is asked when we demand money for work 
among the Italians or the Jews, who have 
incomparably larger means. Indeed, one 
may question whether the Negro is not too 
generous for the materialistic city of New 
York, whether his successes would not be 



RICH AND POOR 181 

greater were be niggardly toward himself 
and others. He lives well, dresses well, 
enjoys a good play, strives to give every 
advantage to his children, helps the poor of 
his race. To hold his own today in this 
civilization, he needs to be taught to seek 
first riches, waiting until much treasure has 
been laid up before he allows philanthropy 
to draw upon his bank account. 

The traveller to the British West Indies 
finds three divisions among the inhabitants, 
white, colored, and black, each group hav- 
ing a distinct social status. In the United 
States, on the other hand, there are but two 
groups, white and colored, or as the latter 
is now more frequently designated, Negro, 
the term thus losing its original meaning, 
and becoming a designation for a race. 
But while the white race usually makes no 
social distinction between the light and the 
dark Negro, classing all alike, social lines 
are drawn within the color line. Years 
ago these were more common than they are 
now. Charles W. Chesnutt, the novelist, 
tells some amusing and pathetic stories of 
distinctions between colored and black. One 



182 HALF A MAN 

of his mulatto heroes, upon finding, as he 
thinks, that the congressman who is to call 
upon his daughter is a jet black Negro in- 
stead of the mulatto he was supposed to be, 
to prevent a breach of hospitality, invents a 
case of diphtheria in the family and quaran- 
tines the house, only to learn later, to his 
intense mortification, that he has committed 
a mistake of identification, and that the 
congressman is light after all. But this 
story belongs with the last generation. 
Black men, if they are distinguished citizens, 
can enter any colored society, and they not 
infrequently marry light wives. Success, a 
position of probity and importance, these 
are attributes that count favorably for the 
suitor, and as they are quite as often in 
the man of strong African lineage as in the 
mulatto, they gain the desired end. 

Within this little colored world of a few 
thousand souls, a drop in the city's human 
sea, there is great upheaval and turmoil. 
The North is the Negro's centre for con- 
troversy regarding his rightful position in the 
commonwealth; and in the large cities, in 
Boston and Chicago, Philadelphia and New 



: 



RICH AND POOR 183 

York, the battle rages. The little society is 
often divided into hostile camps regarding 
party politics or the acceptance of a gov- 
ernment position that brings the suspicion 
of a bribe. Political, economic, educational 
matters as they affect the black race, these 
are the subjects that fill the mind of the 
thoughtful colored man and woman. 

In his "Souls of Black Folk," Dr. Du Bois 
describes the white man's tactlessness when, 
as always, he approaches the Negro with a 
question regarding his race. But the Negro, 
apart from his personal home affairs, im- 
presses the outsider as having little else as 
subject for conversation. World politics, 
these concern him only as they affect the 
race question. Australia is a country where 
the government excludes Africans. England 
rules in South Africa and has lately recog- 
nized the right of African disfranchisement. 
Germany in Africa is cruel to black men. 
The Latin people know no color line. At 
home, the conflict of capital and labor is 
important as the Negro wins or loses in the 
economic struggle; the enfranchisement of 
woman is wise or unwise as it would affect 



184 HALF A MAN 

Negro enfranchisement, one colored thinker 
arguing against it since it would double the 
white vote in the South where the Negro has 
no political rights; literature is the poetry 
of Dunbar, the writing of Washington and 
Du Bois, the literature of the Negro ques- 
tion, and art is largely comprised in Tan- 
ner's paintings. 

This picture should not imply that the 
colored people of means are without the 
possibility of wide culture and sympathy. 
They are perhaps more sympathetic by 
nature than the white people about them. 
But each year, as the white American grows 
increasingly conscious of race, as he argues 
on racial differences, the Negro feels his 
dark face, is sensitive to every disdainful 
look, and separates himself from the people 
about him and their problems. 

There is a struggle against this. The 
majority of white people have heard, in a 
vague way, that there is a difference of 
opinion in the Negro world; and again, 
vaguely, that it takes the form of opposition 
to Dr. Booker T. Washington and industrial 
training. But the difference of opinion 



RICH AND POOR 185 

among the Negroes is a difference of ideals, 
and reaches far beyond the controversy of 
industrial or cultural training, or the ques- 
tion of individual leadership. It is difficult 
to formulate, inasmuch as few, if any, 
Negroes hold logically to one ideal wholly 
to the exclusion of the other. They cannot 
be logical and live. But their division into 
radical and conservative is too important to 
omit; especially since, as we have seen, there 
is nothing in their social life to distinguish 
them from their neighbors; only in their 
thoughts are they aloof from us — aliens 
upon whose shoulders is the problem of a 
race. 

How can one explain these two ideals.^ 
Roughly, they accept or reject segregation. 
The first looks upon the black man in Amer- 
ica, for many generations at least, as a race 
apart. Recognizing this, the race must in- 
creasingly grow in self-efficiency. It must 
run its own businesses, own its banks, its 
I groceries, its restaurants, have its dress- 
makers, milliners, tailors; it must establish 
factories where it shall employ only colored 
men and women; its children shall be brought 



186 HALF A MAN 

into the world by colored doctors, taught by 
colored teachers, buried by colored under- 
takers. Education, along industrial lines, 
shall help train the worker to this efficiency, 
and a proper race pride shall give him the 
patronage of the Negroes about him. When, 
as will of course happen in the majority of 
cases, the Negro works for the white man, 
he must consider himself and his race. He 
must not go out on strike when the white 
man strives for higher wages; he is justified, 
if he is willing to risk a broken head, in 
filling the place of the striking workman, for 
he has to look after his own concerns. 

The second point of view resists segre- 
gation. It believes that the Negro should 
never cease to struggle against being treated i 
as a race apart, that he should demand the 
privileges of a citizen, free access to all 
public institutions, full civil and political 
rights. As a workman, he should have the 
opportunity of other workmen, his training 
should be the training of his white neighbor, 
and in business and the professions he should 
strive to serve white as well as black. And 
just as in the battle-field he fights in a com- 



J 



RICH AND POOR 187 

mon cause with his white comrade, so in the 
struggle for better working class conditions 
he should stand by the side of the laborer, 
regardless of race. Believing these things 
and finding that America fails to meet his 
demands, he thinks it should be his part to 
struggle for his ideal, vigorously to protest 
against discrimination, and never, compla- 
cent, to submit to the position of inferiority. 

As I have said, few men hold logically to 
either of these ideals, and as that of acqui- 
escence to present conditions is naturally 
popular with the whites, who are themselves 
responsible for discrimination, material suc- 
cess sometimes means a departure from the 
aggressive to the submissive attitude. How- 
ever, the whole question of the Negro as a 
wage earner is yet scarcely understood by 
this small professional and business class. 
They are in turmoil, in a virile struggle, 
harsh, bewildering, baffling. 

"I cannot conceive what it would mean 
not to be a Negro," a prominent New York 
colored man once said to me. "The white 
people think and feel so little; their life 
lacks an absorbing interest." 



188 HALF A MAN 

This is the characteristic fact of the life 
of the well-to-do Negro in New York. He 
is not permitted to go through the city streets 
in easy comfort of body or mind. Some 
personal rebuff, some harsh word in news- 
paper or magazine, quickens his pulse and 
rouses him from the lethargy that often 
overtakes his comfortable white neighbor. 
Looking into the past of slavery, watching 
the coming generation, the most careless of 
heart is forced into serious questioning. A 
comfortable income and the intelligence to 
enjoy the culture of a great city do not bring 
to the Negro any smug self-satisfaction ; only 
a greater responsibility toward the problem 
that moves through the world with his dark 
face. 

Before turning to our last topic, the Negro 
and the Municipality, we ought to note two 
further characteristics of the Negro in New 
York. 

There are certain statistics quoted by 
every writer upon the Negro, statistics of 
mortality and crime. We have noted these 
for the child, but not as yet for the Negroes 
as a whole. They have been left until this 



RICH AND POOR 



189 



point in our study that we may view them 
in relation to what we have learned of the 
Negro's economic condition and his environ- 
ment. 

Looking for criminal statistics first, we 
find them difficult to obtain in New York. 
The courts' reports do not classify by color, 
but we can learn something from the census 
enumeration of 1904 of the prisoners in the 
New York County Penitentiary and the New 
York County Workhouse. These are short 
term offenders sent up from the city of New 
York. The enumeration is as follows: 

New York County Penitentiary (Blackwell's Island) 





Total 


Males 


Females 


Per cent 
Total 


Percent 
Females 


White 

Colored 


582 
52 


533 
33 


49 
19 


91.8 
8.2 


8.4 
36.5 



New York County Workhouse 



White 


1126 
41 


870 
12 


256 

29 


96.5 
3.5 


22.7 


Colored 


70.7 



In view of the proportion of Negroes to 
whites in Manhattan, two per cent, we find 



190 HALF A MAN 

the percentage of colored prisoners high, but 
no higher than we expect when we remember 
that the Negro occupies the lowest plane in 
the industrial community, "the plane which 
everywhere supplies the jail, the peniten- 
tiary, the gallows." ^ But the very large 
percentage of crime among colored women 
calls for grave consideration. In the work- 
house, imprisoned for fighting, for drunken- 
ness, for prostitution, the colored women 
more than double in number the colored 
men. Here is a condition that we noted 
in the Children's Court records: an unduly 
large percentage of disorderly and depraved 
colored female offenders. 

We have already touched upon the subject 
of morality among colored women. Various 
causes, some of which we have noted, go to 
the making up of this high percentage of 
crime. The Negroes themselves believe the 
basic cause to be their recent enslavement 
with its attendant unstable marriage and 
parental status. They point to the centuries 
of healthful home relationships among Amer- 

^ Quincy Ewing, "The Heart of the Race Problem," 
Atlantic Monthly, March, 1909. 



RICH AND POOR 191 

icans and Europeans, and contrast them with 
the thousands upon thousands of yearly 
sales of slaves that but two generations ago 
disrupted the Negro's attempts at family 
life. With this heritage they believe that 
it is inevitable that numbers of their women 
should be slow to recognize the sanctity of 
home and the importance of feminine virtue. 

The mortality figures for the New York 
Negro are more striking than the figures for 
crime. In 1908 the death rate for whites in 
the city was 16.6 in every thousand; for 
colored (including Chinese), 28.9, almost 
double the white rate. The Negroes' great- 
est excess over the white was in tuberculosis, 
congenital debility, and venereal diseases as 
the table on the following page shows. 

The Negro's inherent weakness, his in- 
ability to resist disease, is a favorite topic 
today with writers on the color question. 
A high mortality is indeed a matter for grave 
concern, but we may question whether these 
figures show inherent weakness. If a new 
disease attacks any group of people, it causes 
terrible decimation, and tuberculosis and 
venereal diseases, the white man's plagues, 






192 



HALF A MAN 



have proved terribly destructive to the black 
man. But recalling the conditions under 
which the great majority of the colored race 



New York, 1908. 


White. 


Colored. 


Number of deaths from all causes per 1000 
population 


16.6 

136. 

126 
91.8 
78.3 
76.7 
45.5 
24.5 
23.7 
19. 
7.3 
4. 

367.2 


28.9 


Number of deaths per 1000 deaths: 

Tuberculosis 


232.8 


Pneumonia 


136.3 


Diarrhoea and enteritis 


79 


Bright's disease 


56.5 


Heart disease 


83.4 


Cancer 


24.8 


Congenital debility 


34.1 


Diphtheria and croup 


15. 


Scarlet fever 


3.2 


Typhoid 


6.9 


Venereal diseases 


13.4 


All others 


314.6 








1000.0 


1000.0 



lives in New York, the long hours of labor, 
the crowded rooms, the insufficient food, we 
find abundant cause for a high death rate. 
For poverty and death go hand in hand, and 
the proportion of Negroes in New York who 
live in great poverty far exceeds the propor- 
tion of whites.^ 

* The statistician, Mr. I. B. Rubinow, in a discussion of 



RICH AND POOR 193 

The students at Hampton Institute sing 
an old plantation song that runs like this: 



<< 



If religion was a thing that money could buy. 
The rich would Hve and the poor would die. 
But my good Lord has fixed it so 
The rich and the poor together must go." 

Some of our rich men seem to have fixed 
it with religion to escape from the condition 
the poem describes, but it depicts a reality 
in the Negro's life. Rich and poor, as we 
saw when we left our old New Yorkers, 
competent and inefficient, pure and diseased, 
good and bad, all go together. Much of the 
recent literature written by Negroes, and 

high death rates (American Statistical Association, December, 
1905) quotes the rate in five agricultural districts in a province 
of Russia, districts inhabited by peasantry of a common stock. 
With almost mathematical certainty, prosperity brings longer 
hfe. He divides his peasants into six groups showing their 
death rate as follows: 

Death Rate 

Having no land 34.7 

Less than 13.5 acres 32.7 

13.5 to 40.5 acres 30.1 

40.5 to 67.5 acres 25.4 

67.5 acres to 135 acres 23.1 

More than 135 acres 19.2 

Mr. Rubinow suggests that the high Negro death rate 
may be explained by noting the poorly paid occupations in 
which the Negro engages. 



194 HALF A MAN 

especially that by Dr. Booker T. Washington, 
attempts to separate in the minds of the 
community the thrifty and prosperous col- 
ored men from the helpless and degraded; 
but the effort meets with a limited success. 
When we can have a statistical study of 
some thousands of the well-to-do Negroes 
compared with an equal number of well-to- 
do whites, we may find striking similarity. 
From my own observations I find that the 
well-to-do Negroes bear and rear children, 
refrain from committing crimes that put 
them into jail, and live to an old age with 
the same success as their white neighbors. 
But they get little credit for it. Willy- 
nilly, the strong, intellectual Negro is linked 
to his unfortunate fellow. Whether an in- 
crease in material prosperity will break this 
bond, or whether it will continue until it 
ceases to be a bond as humanity comes into 
its own, is a secret of the future. For today 
the song rings true, and the rich and the 
poor go together. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Negro and the Municipality 

A CAPRICIOUS mood, varying with the 
individual, considerate today and offensive 
tomorrow, this, as far as our observations 
have led us, has been New York's attitude 
toward the Negro. Is it possible to find any 
principle underlying this shifting position? 
The city expresses itself through the indi- 
vidual actions of its changing four millions 
of people, but also through its government, 
its courts of justice, its manifold public 
activities. Out of these various manifesta- 
tions of the community's spirit can we find a 
Negro policy .f* Has New York any principle 
of conduct toward these her colored citizens? 
This question should be worth our considera- 
tion, for New York's attitude means its 
environmental influence, and helps determine 
for the newly arrived immigrant and the 

growing generation whether justice or intol- 

195 



196 HALF A MAN 

erance shall mark their dealings with the 
black race. 

The first matter of civic importance to the 
Negro, as to every other New York resident, 
is his position in the commonwealth; is he a 
participant in the government under which 
he lives, or a subject without political rights? 
The law since 1873 has been explicit on this 
matter, wiping out former property qualifi- 
cations, and giving full manhood suffrage. 
Probably, even with a much larger influx 
of colored people, the city will never agitate 
this question again. Since the death of the 
Know-nothing Party, New York has ceased 
any organized attempt to lessen the power 
of the foreigner, and the growing cosmopoli- 
tan character of the population strengthens 
the Negro in his rights. Only in those states 
where the white population is homogeneous 
can Negro disfranchisement successfully take 
place. 

With the vote the Negro has entered into 
politics and has maintained successful polit- 
ical organizations. The necessity of paying 
for rent and food out of eight or ten dollars 
a week is the Negro's immediate issue in 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 197 

New York, and he tries to meet it by securing 
a congenial and more lucrative job. The 
city in 1910 showed some consideration for 
him in this matter. An Assistant District 
Attorney and an Assistant Corporation Coun- 
sel were colored, and scattered throughout 
the city departments were nine clerks making 
from $1200 to $1800 apiece, and a dozen 
more acting as messengers, inspectors, driv- 
ers, attendants, receiving salaries averaging 
$1275. Three doctors served the Board of 
Health, and there were six men on the police 
force (none given patrol duty), and one first 
grade fireman, while the departments of 
docks, parks, street cleaning, and water sup- 
ply employed 470 colored laborers. Alto- 
gether 511 colored men figure among the 
city's employees.^ 

In her communal gifts the city acts toward 
the Negro with a fair degree of impartiality. 
At the public schools and libraries, the parks 
and playgrounds, the baths, hospitals, and, 
last, the almshouse, the blacks have equal 
rights with the whites. Occasionally indi- 

* The total number of municipnl employees is 55,006 — 
Negro employees, 511 — Percentage of Negro to whole, 0.9. 



198 HALF A MAN 

vidual public servants show color prejudice, 
but again, occasionally, especial kindness 
attends the black child. The rude treat- 
ment awaiting them, however, from other 
visitors keeps many Negro children, and 
men and women, from enjoying the city's 
benefactions. Particularly is this true with 
the public baths and with some of the play- 
grounds. The employment by the city of 
at least one colored official in every neigh- 
borhood where the Negroes are in great 
numbers would do much to remedy this 
condition. 

One department of the city might be cited 
as having been an exception to the rule of 
reasonably fair treatment to the colored 
man. Harshness, for no cause but his black 
face, has been too frequently bestowed upon 
the Negro by the police. This has been 
especially noticeable in conflicts between 
white and colored, when the white oflScer, 
instead of deahng impartially with offenders, 
protected his own race. 

There have been two conflicts between the 
whites and Negroes in New York in recent 
years, the first in 1900, on the West Side, in 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 199 

the forties, the second in 1905, on San Juan 
Hill. Each riot was local, representing no 
wide-spread excitement comparable to the 
draft riots of 1863, and in each case the police 
might easily in the beginning have stopped all 
fighting. Instead, they showed themselves 
ready to aid, even to instigate the conflict. 

The riot of 1900 was caused by the death 
of a policeman at the hands of a Negro. 
The black man declared that he was defend- 
ing his life, but the officer was popular, and 
after his funeral riots began. Black men ran 
to the police for protection, and were thrown 
back by them into the hands of the mob.^ 

The riot of 1905 commenced on San Juan 
Hill one Friday evening in July with a 
fracas between a colored boy and a white 
peddler; both races took a hand in the matter 
until the side streets showed a rough scram- 
bling fight. Saturday and Sunday were 
comparatively quiet; men, black and white, 
stood on street corners and scowled at one 
another, but nothing further need have 
occurred, had each race been treated with 

1 " Story of the Riot," published by Citizens Protective 
League. 



200 HALF A MAN 

justice. The police, however, instead of 
keeping the peace, angered the Negroes, 
urged on their enemies, and by Monday 
night found that they had helped create a 
riot, this time bitter and dangerous. Over- 
zealous to proceed against the "niggers," 
officers rushed into places frequented by 
peaceable colored men, whom they placed 
under arrest. Dragging their victims to the 
station-house they beat them so unmerci- 
fully that before long many needed to be 
handed over to another city department — 
the hospital. Little question was made as 
to guilt or innocence, and some of the worst 
offenders, colored as well as white, were 
never brought to justice.^ " If," as a colored 
preacher whose church was the centre of the 
storm district pointed out, "the police 
would only differentiate between the good 
and the bad Negroes, and not knock on the 
head every colored man they saw in a riot, 
we should be quite satisfied. As it is, there 
is no safety for any Negro in this part of the 
city at any time."^ 

1 New York Age, July 27, 1905. 
^ New York Tribune, July 24, 1905. 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 201 

The result of these two riots was the bring- 
ing to justice of one policeman and the 
placing of a humane and tactful captain on 
San Juan Hill. But for some time the colored 
man felt little protection in the Department 
of Police, finding that he was liable to arrest 
and clubbing for a trivial offence. Often 
the ofiicer's club fell with cruel force. This, 
however, was before the administration of 
Mayor Gaynor, who has commanded humane 
treatment, and the brutal clubbing of the 
New York Negro has now ceased. 

From the police one turns naturally to the 
courts. What is their attitude toward the 
Negro offender.'^ Is there any race prejudice, 
or do black and white enjoy an impartial and 
judicial hearing? 

As the Negro comes before the magistrates 
of the city courts, he learns to know that 
judges differ greatly in their conceptions of 
justice. To the Southerner, let us say from 
Richmond, where the black man is arrested 
for small offences and treated with consider- 
able roughness and harshness, New York 
courts seem lenient.^ To the West Indian, 

^A southern student says, "The Negro in Richmond is 



202 HALF A MAN 

accustomed to British rule, justice in New 
York is noticeable for its variability, the 
likelihood that if it is severe tonight, jt will 
be generous tomorrow. 

"Three months," the listener at court 
hears given as sentence to a respectable- 
looking colored servant girl who has begged 
to be allowed to return to her place which 
she has held for five years. "I never was 
up for drinking before," she pleads; "I have 
learnt my lesson; please give me a chance; 
I will not do this again." 

"What should you two be fighting for.'*" 
another judge, another morning, says to two 
very battered women, one white and one 
colored, who come before him in court. 
And talking kindly to both, but with greater 
seriousness to the Irish offender, his own 
countrywoman, he sends them away with a 
reprimand. 

How much of this unequal treatment comes 

arrested for small offences and fined in the city courts. He is 
treated with considerable roughness and harshness in his 
punishment for these offences. It looks as though he were 
being imposed upon as an individual of the lower strata of 
society. But the Negro responds so impulsively to what 
appeals, that constant fear, dread, and impressiveness of the 
police act well as resistants to temptations." 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 203 

from color prejudice or caprice or tempera- 
ment, the Negro is unable to decide, but he 
soon learns one curious fact: while his black 
skin marks him as inheriting Republican 
politics, it is the Democratic magistrate, the 
Tammany henchman whose name is a by- 
word to the righteous, who is the more 
lenient when he has committed a trifling 
offence. 

"Didn't I play craps with the nigger boys 
when I was a kid?" one of these well-known 
politicians says, "and am I going back on 
the poor fellows now?" Of course, the 
Negro is assured such men only want his 
vote, but he believes real sympathy actuates 
the Tammany leader, who is too busy to 
bother whether the man before him is black 
or white. The reformer, on the other hand, 
big with dignity, at times makes him vastly 
uncomfortable as he lectures upon the Negro 
problem from the eminence of the superior 
race. 

But whether Republican or Democrat, the 
Negro learns that it is well to have a friend 
at court; that helplessness is the worst of all 
disabilities, worse than darkness of skin or 



204 HALF A MAN 

poverty. So he soon becomes acquainted 
with his local politician, and if his friend is 
in trouble, or his wife or son is locked up, 
pounds vigorously at the politician's door. 
It may be midnight, but the man of power 
will dress, and together they will turn from 
the dark tenement hall into the lighted street 
and on to the police-station or magistrate's 
court to seek release for the offender. That 
too often the gravity of the offence weighs 
little in the securing of lenient treatment is 
part of the muddle of New York justice. 
The Negro finds that he has taken the most 
direct way to secure relief. 

As far as we have followed, we have found 
the municipality of New York generally 
ready to treat her black citizens with the 
same justice or injustice with which she 
treats her whites. Exceptions occur, but she 
does not often draw the color line. Perhaps, 
in this connection, it might be well to stop 
a moment and see what return the black 
man makes, whether by his vote he helps 
secure to the city honest and eflScient gov- 
ernment, i 

Walking through a Negro quarter on elec- 1 



! 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 205 

tion day, the most careful search fails to re- 
veal any such far-sighted altruism. With a 
great majority of colored voters the choice of 
a municipal candidate is based on the argu- 
ment of a two-dollar bill or the promise of a 
job, combined with the sentiment, decreas- 
ing every year, for the Republican Party — 
the party that once helped the colored man 
and, he hopes, may help him again. The 
public standing of the mayoralty candidate, 
his ability to choose wise heads of depart- 
ments, the building of new subways, the 
ownership of public utilities, these are un- 
important issues. The matter of immedi- 
ate moment is what this vote is going to 
mean to the black voter himself. 

Such a selfish and unpatriotic attitude, 
not unknown perhaps to white voters, leads 
some of our writers and reformers to doubt 
the value of universal manhood suffrage. 
Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells us that the 
Negro and the poor white in New York, 
through their venality, are practically with- 
out a vote. "While the South is disfran- 
chising by legislation," he says, "the North 
is doing it by cash." "What else is the 



206 HALF A MAN 

meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss 
and machine system in other cities?"^ New 
York's noted ethical culture teacher argues 
against agitation for woman's suffrage on 
the ground that so many of those who now 
have the vote do not know how to use it. 
But looking closely at these unaltruistic citi- 
zens, we see that after all they are putting 
the ballot to its primary use, the protection 
of their own interests. The Negro in New 
York has one vital need, steady, decent work. 
He dickers and plays with politics to get as 
much of this as he can. It is very insuffi- 
cient relief for an intolerable situation, but 
it is partial relief. In another city, Atlanta 
for instance, he might find education the 
most important civic gift for which to strive. 
Atlanta is a fortunate city to choose for an 
example of the power of the suffrage, for 
since the Negro's loss of the vote in Georgia, 
educational funds have been turned chiefly 
to white schools, and 5,000 colored children 
are without opportunities for public educa- 
tion. 1885 saw the last school building 
erected for Negroes, the result of a bargain 

* Ray Stannard Baker, "Following the Color Line," p. 2G9. 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 207 

between the colored voters and the prohibi- 
tionists.^ Should a colored teacher in New 
York be refused her certificate, a colored 
consumptive be denied a place in the city's 
hospital, a colored child meet with a rebuff 
in the city park, the colored citizen would 

' The following story of Athens, Georgia, told by a North- 
erner teaching in the South, illustrates this point. "The city 
of Athens was planning to inaugurate a public school system, 
and also wished to 'go dry.' It made a proposal to the col- 
ored voters promising that if their combined vote would 
carry the city, two schools should be built, of equal size and 
similar structure for each race. I visited Athens shortly after 
the two buildings were built, and I found two beautiful brick 
buildings very similar in all their appointments. At an inter- 
val of several years I again visited the little city and again 
spent an hour in the same brick school-house of the colored 
folk. 

"At my third \'isit, I found my colored friends occupying 
a wooden structure on the edge of the city, and not only incon- 
veniently located, but much less of a building than the one 
hitherto occupied. Upon inquiry I found that in the growth 
of the school population of the whites, it was cheaper to seize 
the building formerly occupied by the colored children, and to 
build for them a cheap wooden structure on the outskirts of 
the town. 

The colored school was still occupying this inadequate 
building at my \'isit this last September, 1909. A second 
wooden structure has been added to the colored equipment 
on the east side of the town." 

This story of the Athenians well illustrates what will be 
done when the Negro counts for something politically, and 
also what may be undone if his value as a political asset is 
reduced. 



208 HALF A MAN 

find his vote an important means of redress. 
Then, too, while there are so many men to 
buy, it is important to have a vote to sell, 
lest the other citizens secure the morning's 
bargains. Venality in high and low places 
will not disappear until we are dominated 
by the ideal of social, not individual advance- 
ment. Before that time, it is well for the 
weak that they are able, at least in the 
political field, to bargain with the strong. 

The importance to the Negro of the vote 
is quickly appreciated when we consider New 
York's attitude unofficially expressed. With 
the franchise behind him the colored man 
can secure for himself and his children 
the municipality's advantages of education, 
health, amusement, philanthropy. He is 
here a citizen, a contributor to the city 
treasury, if not directly as a taxpayer, as a 
worker and renter. But as a private indi- 
vidual, seeking to use the utilities managed 
by other private individuals, he continu- 
ally encounters race discrimination. Private 
doors are closed, and were the state not so 
wealthy and generous, disabilities still graver 
than at present would follow. 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 209 

A few examples will show the condition. 
A Negro applies by letter for admission to 
an automobile school, and is accepted; but 
on appearing with his fee his color debars 
his entrance. Carrying the case to court, 
the complaint is dismissed on the ground 
that the law which forbade exclusion from 
places of education on account of race 
and color is applicable only to public 
schools. Private institutions may do as 
they desire. 

Again, a colored man tries to get a meal. 
At the first restaurant he is told that all 
the tables are engaged; at the next no one 
will serve him. Fearful of further rebuffs, 
he has to turn to the counter of a railway 
station. He wants to go to the theatre. 
Like Tommy Atkins, he is sent to the gallery 
or round the music halls. The white barber 
whose shop he enters will not shave him; 
and when night comes, he searches a long 
time before the hotel appears that will give 
him a bed. The sensitive man, still more 
the sensitive woman, often finds the city's 
attitude difficult to endure. 

American Negroes have become familiar 



210 HALF A MAN 

with racial lines, but the foreigner of African 
descent, a visitor to the city, meets with 
rebuffs that fill him with surprise as well as 
rage. Haytians and South Americans, men 
of continental education and wide culture, 
have been ordered away as "niggers" from 
restaurant doors, and at the box office of 
the theatre refused an orchestra seat. Eng- 
lish Negroes from the West Indies, men and 
women of character and means, learn that 
New York is a spot to be avoided, and cross 
the ocean when they wish to taste of city 
life. In short, the stranger of Negro descent, 
if he be rash of temper, hurls anathemas at 
the villainously mannered Americans; or, if 
he be good-natured, shrugs his shoulders and 
counts New York a provincial settlement of 
four million people. 

Northern Negroes believe this discrimina- 
tion in public places against the black man 
to be increasing in New York. One, who 
came here fifteen years ago, tells of the simple 
and adequate test by which he learned that 
he had reached the northern city. Born in 
South Carolina, as he attained manhood he 
desired larger self-expression, broader human 



i 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 211 

relations — he wanted "to be free," as he 
again and again expressed it. So leaving 
the cotton fields he started one morning 
to walk to New York. After a number of 
days he entered a large city and, uncertain 
in his geography, decided that this was his 
journey's end. "I'll be free here," he 
thought, and opening the door of a brightly 
lighted restaurant started to walk in. The 
white men at the tables looked up in 
astonishment, and the proprietor, laying his 
hand on the youth's shoulder, invited him, 
in strong southern accent, to go into the 
kitchen. "I reckon I'm not North yet," the 
Negro said, smiling a bright, boyish smile. 
Interested in his visitor's appearance, the 
proprietor took him into another room, gave 
him a good supper, and talked with him far 
into the night, urging the advantages of his 
staying in the South. But the youth shook 
his head, and the next morning trudged on. 
At length he reached a rushing city, tumult- 
uous with humanity, and entering an eating- 
house was served a meal. To him it was 
almost a sacrament. He belonged not to a 
race but to humanity. He tasted the freedom 



212 HALF A MAN 

of passing unnoticed. But it is doubtful 
if the same restaurant would serve him 
today. 

Color lines, on these matters of entertain- 
ment as on others, are not hard and fast. A 
few hotels, chiefly those frequented by Latin 
peoples, receive colored guests; and while 
the foreign Negro meets with rudeness, he 
is rebuffed less than the native. "I can't 
get into that place as a southern darky," a 
black man laughingly says, pointing to a 
fashionable restaurant, "I'll be the Prince 
of Abyssinia." But as Prince or American 
his status is shifting and uncertain; here, 
preeminently, he is half a man. 

Discrimination against any man because of 
his color is contrary to the law of the state. 
After the fifteenth amendment became a 
law, New York passed a civil rights bill, 
which as it stands, re-enacted in 1909, is 
very explicit. All persons within the juris- 
diction of the state are entitled to the accom- 
modation of hotels, restaurants, theatres, 
music halls, barbers' shops, and any person 
refusing such accommodation is subject to 
civil and penal action. The offence may 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 213 

be punished by fine or imprisonment or 
both.i 

In 1888, the attempt to exclude three 
colored men from a skating-rink at Bingham- 
ton, N. Y., led to a suit against the owner 
of the rink, and his conviction. The case^ 

^ Civil Rights Law, State of New York. Chapter 14 of 
the Laws of 1909, bllmg Chapter 6 of the Consolidated Laws. 

"Article 4. — Equal rights in places of public amusement. 

"Section 40. — All persons within the jurisdiction of this 
state shall be entitled to the full and equal accommodations, 
advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, 
hotels, eating houses, bath houses, barber shops, theatres, 
music halls, public conveyances on land and water, and aU 
other places of public accommodation or amusement, subject 
only to the conditions and limitations, established by the law 
and applicable alike to all citizens. 

"Section 41. — Penalty for violation. Any person who 
shall violate any of the provisions of the foregoing section by 
denying to any citizen, except for reasons applicable alike to 
all citizens of every race, creed and color, and regardless of 
race, creed and color, the full enjoyment of any of the accom- 
modations, advantages, facilities or privileges in said section 
enumerated, or by aiding or inciting such denial, shall, for 
every such offence, forfeit and pay a sum not less than one 
hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars to the 
person aggrieved thereby, to be recovered in a court of com- 
petent jurisdiction in the County where said offence was com- 
mitted, and shall also, for every such offence, be deemed guilty 
of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined 
not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred 
dollars, or shall be imprisoned not less than thirty days nor 
more than ninety days, or both such fine and imprisonment." 

^ People vs. King, 110 N. Y., 418, 1888. 



214 HALF A MAN 

reached the Court of Appeals, where the 
constitutionahty of the civil rights bill 
was upheld. "It is evident," said Justice 
Andrews in his decision, "that to exclude 
colored people from places of public resort 
on account of their race is to fix upon them 
a brand of inferiority, and tends to fix their 
position as a servile and dependent people." 
But despite the law and precedent, the 
civil rights bill is violated in New York. 
Occasionally colored men bring suit, but the 
magistrate dismisses the complaint. Usually 
the evidence is declared insufficient. A case 
of a colored man refused orchestra seats at 
a theatre is dismissed on the ground that 
not the proprietor but his employees turned 
the man away. A keeper of an ice-cream 
parlor, wishing to prevent the colored man 
from patronizing him, charges a Negro a 
dollar for a ten-cent plate. The customer 
pays the dollar, keeps the check, and brings 
the case to court. Ice-cream parlors are 
then declared not to come under the list of 
places of public entertainment and amuse- 
ment. A bootblack refuses to polish the 
shoes of a Negro, and the court decides that 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 215 

a bootblack-stand is not a place of public 
accommodation, and refusal to shine the 
shoes of a colored man does not subject its 
proprietor to the penalties imposed by the 
law,^ This last case was carried to the 
Court of Appeals, and the adverse judgment 
has led many of the thoughtful colored men 
of the city to doubt the value of attempting to 
push a civil rights suit. Litigation is expen- 
sive, and money spent in any personal rights 
case that attacks private business, whether 
the plaintiff be white or colored, is usually 
wasted. The civil rights law is on the books, 
and the psychological moment may arrive 
to insist successfully on its enforcement. 

If there is an increase in discrimination 
against the Negro in New York solely be- 
cause of his color, it is a serious matter to 
the city as well as to the race. Every com- 
munity has its social conscience built up of 
slowly accumulated experiences, and it can- 
not without disaster lose its ideal of justice 
or generosity. New York has never been ten- 
der to its people, but it has a rough hospital- 
ity, what Stevenson describes as "uncivil 

1 Burke vs. Bosso, 180 N. Y., 341, 1905. 



216 HALF A MAN 

kindness," and welcomes new-comers with a 
friendly shove, bidding them become good 
Americans. After the war, the Negro en- 
tered more than formerly into this general 
welcome. He was unnoticed, allowed to go 
his way without questioning word or stare, 
the position which every right-minded man 
and woman desires. But today New York 
has become conscious that he is dark-skinned, 
and her attitude affects her growing children. 
"I never noticed colored people," an old 
abolitionist said to me, "I never realized 
there were white and black until, when a boy 
of twelve, I entered a church and found 
Negroes occupying seats alone in the gal- 
lery." As New York returns to the gallery 
seats, her boys and girls return to conscious- 
ness of color and, from fisticuffs at school, 
move on to the race riots upon the streets 
with bullets among the stones. 

The municipality, as we have seen, treats 
the Negro on the whole with justice; its 
standard is higher than the standard of the 
average citizen. It cherishes the ideal of de- 
mocracy, and strives for impartiality toward 
its many nationalities and races. And the 



NEGRO AND MUNICIPALITY 217 

New York Negro in his turn does not 
allow his liberties to be tampered with with- 
out protest. But the New York citizen can 
hardly be described as friendly to the Negro. 
What catholicity he has is negative. He 
fails to give the black man a hearty welcome. 
"Do you know where I stayed the four 
weeks of my first trip abroad.'*" a colored 
clergyman once asked me. I refused to make 
a guess. "Well," he said a little shame- 
facedly, "it was in Paris. Paris may be 
a wicked city — any city has wickedness if 
you want to look for it — but I found it a 
place of kindliness and good- will. Every one 
seemed glad to be courteous, to assist me in 
my stumbling French, to show me the way 
on omnibus or boat, or through the difficult 
streets. It was so different from America; 
I was never wanted in the southern city of 
my youth. In Paris I was welcome." 

"How is it in New York.'*" I asked. 

"In New York.f*" He stopped to con- 
sider. "In New York I am tolerated." 



CHAPTER IX 

Conclusion 

A NEW little boy came two years ago into 
our story-book world. When Miss North, 
taking Ezekiel by the hand, led him into her 
school-room,^ we met a child full of what we 
call temperament; dreaming quaint stories, 
innocently friendly, anxious to please for 
affection's sake, in his queer, unconscious 
way something of a genius. We saw his 
big musing eyes looking out upon a world in 
which his teacher stood serene and reasoning, 
but a little cold like her name; his friend, 
Miss Jane, kind and very practical; his em- 
ployer, Mr. Rankin, amused and contemptu- 
ous; all watching him with the impersonal 
interest with which one might view a new 
species in the animal world. For Ezekiel, 
unlike our other story-book boys, had a 
double being, he was first Ezekiel Jordan, a 

» Lucy Pratt, "Ezekiel." 
218 



CONCLUSION 219 

little black boy, and second, a Representa- 
tive of the Negro Race. 

Ezekiel was too young to understand his 
position, but the white world about him 
never forgot it. When he arrived late to 
school, he was a dilatory representative; 
when, obliging little soul, he promised three 
people to weed their gardens all the same 
afternoon, he was a prevaricating repre- 
sentative. He never happened to steal ice- 
cream from the hoky-poky man or to play 
hookey, but if he had, he would have been 
a thieving and lazy representative. Always 
he was something remote and overwhelming, 
not a natural growing boy. 

Ezekiel's position is that of each Negro 
child and man and woman in the United 
States today. I think we have seen this as 
we have reviewed the position of the race 
in New York; indeed, the very fact of our 
attempting such a review is patent that 
we see and feel it. We white Americans 
do not generalize concerning ourselves, we 
individualize, leaving generalizations to the 
chance visitor, but we generalize continually 
concerning colored Americans; we classify 



220 HALF A MAN 

and measure and pass judgment, a little 
more with each succeeding year. 

Now if we are going to do this, let us be 
fair; let us try as much as possible to dismiss 
prejudice, and to look at the Ezekiels enter- 
ing our school of life, with the same impar- 
tiality and the same understanding sympathy 
with which we look upon our own race. 
And if we are to place them side by side with 
the whites, let us be impartial, not cheating 
them out of their hard-earned credits, or 
condemning them with undue severity. Let 
us try, if we can, to be just. 

When we begin to make this effort to 
judge fairly our colored world, we need to 
remember especially two things: First, that 
we cannot yet measure with any accuracy 
the capability of the colored man in the 
United States, because he has not yet been 
given the opportunity to show his capability. 
If we deny full expression to a race, if we 
restrict its education, stifle its intellectual 
and aesthetic impulses, we make it impossible 
fairly to gauge its ability. Under these cir- 
cumstances to measure its achievements with 
the more favored white race is unreasonable 



CONCLUSION 221 

and unjust, as unreasonable as to measure 
against a man's a disfranchised woman's 
capabilities in directing the affairs of a state. ^ 
The second thing is difficult for us to 
remember, difficult for us at first to believe; 
that we, dominant, ruling Americans, may 
not be the persons best fitted to judge the 
Negro. We feel confident that we are, since 
we have known him so long and are so 
familiar with his peculiarities; but in mo- 
ments of earnest reflection may it not occur 
to us that we have not the desire or the 
imagination to enter into the life emotions 
of others.'^ "We are the intellect and virtue 
of the airth, the cream of human natur', and 
the flower of moral force," Hannibal Chollup 

^"The world of modern intellectual life is in reality a white 
man's world. Few women and perhaps no blacks have 
entered this world in the fullest sense. To enter it in the full- 
est sense would be to be in it at every moment from the time 
of birth to the time of death, and to absorb it unconsciously 
and consciously, as the child absorbs language. When some- 
thing like this happens we shall be in a position to judge of 
the mental efficiency of women and the lower races. At 
present we seem justified in inferring that the differences in 
mental expression between the higher and lower races and 
between men and women are no greater than they should be 
in view of the existing differences in opportunity." W. I. 
. Thomas, "Sex and Society," p. 312. 



222 HALF A MAN 

still says, and glowers at the stranger who 
dares to suggest a different standard from 
his own. Hannibal Chollup and his ilk are 
ill-fitted to measure the refinements of feel- 
ing, the differences in ideals among people. 

This question of our fitness to sit in the 
judgment seat must come with grave insist- 
ence when we read carefully the literature 
published in this city of New York within 
the past two years. Our writers have as- 
sumed such pomposity, have so revelled in 
what Mr. Chesterton calls "the magnificent 
buttering of one's self all over with the same 
stale butter; the big defiance of small ene- 
mies," as to make their conclusions ridicu- 
lous. Ezekiel entering their school is at 
once pushed to the bottom of the class, while 
the white boy at the head, Hannibal Chol- 
lup's descendant, sings a jubilate of his own 
and butters himself so copiously as to be 
as shiny as his English cousin, Wackford 
Squeers. Then the writer, the judge, be- 
gins. Ezekiel is shown as the incorrigible 
boy of the school. He is a lazy, good-for- 
nothing vagabond. Favored with the chance 
to exercise his muscles twelve hours a day 



CONCLUSION 223 

for a disinterested employer, he fails to appre- 
ciate his opportunity. He is diseased, de- 
generate. His sisters are without chastity, 
every one, polluting the good, pure white 
men about them. He is a rapist, and it is 
his criminal tendencies that are degrading 
America. The pale-faced ones of his family 
steal into white society, marry, and insinu- 
ate grasping, avaricious tendencies into the 
noble, generous men of white blood, causing 
them to cheat in business and to practise 
political corruption. In short there is noth- 
ing evil that Ezekiel is not at the bottom of. 
Sometimes, poor little chap, he tries to sniffle 
out a word, to say that his family is doing 
well, that he has an uncle who is buying a 
home, and a rich cousin in the undertaking 
business, but such extenuating circumstances 
receive scant attention, and we are not sur- 
prised to find, the class dismissed, that 
Ezekiel and the millions whom he represents, 
are swiftly shuffled off the earth, victims of 
"disease, vice, and profound discourage- 
ment." 

Now this is not an exaggerated picture 
of much that has recently been printed in 



224 HALF A MAN 

newspaper and magazine, and does it not 
make us feel the paradox that if we are to 
judge the Negro fairly, we must not judge 
him at all, so little are we temperamentally 
capable of meeting the first requirement? 

"My brother Saxons," says Matthew 
Arnold, "have a terrible way with them of 
wanting to improve everything but them- 
selves off the face of the earth." And he 
adds, "I have no such passion for finding 
nothing but myself everywhere." Among 
our American writers a few, like Arnold, do 
not care to find only themselves everywhere, 
and these have told us a different story of 
the American Negro. They are poets and 
writers of fiction, men and women who are 
happy in meeting and appreciating different 
types of human beings.^ If these writers 
were to instruct us, they would say that we 
must individualize more when we think of 
the black people about us, must differentiate. 
That, too, we must remember that when we 
pass judgment, we need to know whether our 
own standard is the best, whether we may 

^ Note especially the stories of Alice MacGowan and Grace 
MacGowan Cooke, and the poems of Rosalie M. Jonas. 



CONCLUSION 225 

not have something to learn from the stand- 
ards of others. Supposing Ezekiel is dehb- 
erate and slow to make changes or to take 
risks; are we who are "acceleration mad," 
who acquire heart disease hustling to catch 
trains, who mortgate our farms to buy auto- 
mobiles, who seek continually new sensa- 
tions, really better than he? Is it not a 
matter of difference, just as we may each 
place in different order our desires, the one 
choosing struggle for power and the accumu- 
lation of wealth, the other preferring serenity 
and pleasure in the immediate present? 
And lastly, after having praised our own 
virtues and our own ideals, must we not 
beware that we do not blame the Negro 
when he adopts them, that we do not turn 
upon him and fiercely demand only servile 
virtues, the virtues that make him useful not 
to himself but to us? ^ 

^ Careful readers of economic Negro studies by white 
writers will notice this tendency to look upon the Negro as 
belonging to a servile class. Emphasis is laid upon his respon- 
sibilities to the white man, not upon the white man's respon- 
sibilities to him. Any one familiar with the sympathetic 
attitude toward the workers in such a study as the Pittsburg 
Survey will notice at once the difference in attitude in Negro 
surveys by whites, the slight emphasis laid upon the black 



226 HALF A MAN 

No one can talk for long of the Negro in 
America without propounding the all-em- 
bracing question, What will become of him, 
what will be the outcome of all this racial 
controversy? It is a daring person who 
attempts to answer. We, who have studied 
the Negro in New York, may perhaps ven- 
ture to predict a little regarding his future 
in this city, his possible status in the later 
years of the century; whether he will lose in 
opportunity and social position, or whether 
he will advance in his struggle to be a man. 

Looking upon the great population of the 
city, its varied races and nationalities, I 
confess that his outlook to me begins to be 
bright. New York is still to a quite remark- 
able extent dominated socially by its old 
American stock, its Dutch and Anglo-Saxon 
element. Few things strike the foreign 
visitor so forcibly as that despite its enor- 
mous European population, American society 

laborers' long hours and poor pay, and the failure to emphasize 
the white man's responsibility. Negro laborers are still 
studied from the \newpoint of the capitalist. There is one 
notable exception to this, the study by the governor of 
Jamaica, Sir Sidney Oli-vier, on "WTiite Capital and Coloured 
Labor." 



CONCLUSION 227 

is homogeneous. But this is not Hkely to 
continue for very long. When the present 
demand for exhausting self-supporting work 
becomes less insistent, we shall feel in a 
deeper, more vital way the influence of our 
vast foreign life. With a million Jews and 
nearly a million Latin peoples, we cannot for 
long be held in the provincialism of to-day. 
I suspect that to many Europeans New 
York seems still a great overgrown village 
in "a nation of villagers," pronouncing with 
narrow, dogmatic assurance upon the deep 
unsolved problems of life. But in the future 
it may take on a larger, more cosmopolitan 
spirit. Its Italians may bring a finer feeling 
for beauty and wholesome gayety, its Jews 
may continue to add great intellectual 
achievements, and its people of African 
descent, perhaps always few in number, may 
show with happy spontaneity their best and 
highest gifts. If New York really becomes 
a cosmopolitan city, let us believe the Negro 
will bring to it his highest genius and will 
walk through it simply, quietly, unnoticed, 
a man among men. 



APPENDIX 

The federal census in 1900 contained a 
volume on the Negro in the United States, a 
source of information quoted by nearly every 
writer on the American Negro. The tables 
in that volume, however, do not classify by 
cities, and any one desiring information re- 
garding the Negro in some especial city must 
search through other volumes. As this is a 
lengthy task, I am affixing a list of the tables 
in the census of 1900, treating of the Negro 
in New York City, believing that it may also 
be a guide to students of the new census of 
1910, who wish to find New York Negro 
statistics. 

Population. Vol. I, Part I. Published 1901. 

Page 868, Table 57. Aggregate, white, and colored 
population distributed according to native or foreign 
parentage, for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 
1900. 

Page 934, Table 81. Total males twenty-one years 
of age and over, classified by general nativity, color, 

229 



230 HALF A MAN 

and literacy, for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or 
more: 1900. 

Vol. II. Published 1902. 

Page 163, Table 19. Persons of school age, five to 
twenty years, inclusive, by general nativity and color, 
for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. Also, 
pages 165 and 167, Tables 20 and 21. 

Page 332, Table 32. Conjugal condition of the 
aggregate population, classified by sex, general nativity, 
color, and age periods, for cities having 100,000 inhabi- 
tants or more: 1900. 

Page 397, Table 54. Negro persons attending school 
during the census year, classified by sex and age periods, 
for cities having 25,000 inhabitants or more: 1900. 

Page 737, Table 111. Persons owning and hiring 
their homes, classified by color, for cities having 100,000 
inhabitants or more: 1900. 

Vital Statistics. Vol. III. Published 1902. 

Page 458, Table 19. Population, births, deaths, 
and death rates at certain ages, and deaths from cer- 
tain causes, by sex, color, general nativity, and parent 
nativity: census year 1900. 

Occupations. Published 1904. 

Pages 634 to 642, Table 43. Total males and females, 
ten years of age and over, engaged in selected groups of 
occupations, classified by general nativity, color, con- 
jugal condition, months unemployed, age periods, and 
parentage, for cities having 50,000 inhabitants or 
more: 1900. 

Supplementary Analysis. Published 1906. 
Page 262, Table 87. Per cent Negro in total popu- 
lation, 1900, 1890, and 1880, per cent male and female 



APPENDIX 231 

in Negro population, per cent illiterate in Negro popu- 
lation at least ten years of age, and among negro males 
of voting age, and per 10,000 distribution of Negro 
pupulation by age periods. 

Women at Work. Published 1907. 

Page 146, Table 9. Number and percentage of 
breadwinners in female population, sixteen years of 
age and over, classified by race and nativity, for cities 
having at least 50,000 inhabitants: 1900. 

Pages 147 to 151, Table 10. Number and percentage 
of breadwinners in the female population, sixteen years 
and over, classified by age, race, and nativity. 

Pages 266 to 275, Table 28. Female breadwinners, 
sixteen years of age and over, classified by family rela- 
tionship, and by race, nativity, marital condition, and 
occupation, for selected cities: 1900. 

Pages 354 to 365, Table 29. Female breadwinners, 
sixteen years of age and over, living at home, classified 
by the number of other breadwinners in the family, 
and by race, nativity, marital condition, and occupa- 
tion, for selected cities: 1900. 

Mortality Statistics. Published 1908. 

Page 28. Number of deaths from all causes per 
1,000 of population. 

Page 376, Table 2. Deaths in each registration area, 
by age: 1908. 

Pages 566 to 568, Table 8. Deaths in each city hav- 
ing 100,000 population or over in 1900, from certain 
causes and classes of causes, by age: 1908. 



INDEX 



Aldridge, Ira, 137. 

Amalgamation, 168. 

Andrews, Charles, ci\Tl rights 
of Negroes, 214. 

Andrews, Chas. C, on educa- 
tion, 14; on industrial op- 
portunity, 27. 

Archer, William, 172. 

Arnold, Matthew, 224. 

Arthur, Chester A., 23. 

Association for Improving the 
Condition of the Poor, 159. 

Athens, Ga., 207. 

Atlanta, Negroes in occupa- 
tions in, 77, 91, 93; propor- 
tion of Negro women to 
men in, 148; suffrage in, 
206. 

Baker, Ray Stannard, on 

suffrage, 205. 
Benefit societies, 175. 
Birthplaces, 35. 
Boese, Thomas, 15. 
Brokers, real estate, 45, 108. 
Brown, William, 14. 
Bulkley, W. L., 161. 
Burke v. Bosso, 215. 



Burleigh, Harry, 126. 
Businesses, 106-112. 

Cahill, Marie, 133. 

Charity Organization Society, 
158. 

Chesnutt, Charles W., 181. 

Chesterton, Gilbert K., 222. 

Churches: Baptist, 20, 116, 
123; Catholic, 116; Congre- 
gational, 20; Episcopal, 20, 
113, 116, 120; Methodist, 
20, 116. 

City and Submban Homes, 
41. 

Cix-il rights: state bill, 213; 
violations of, 209, 210. 

Clarkson, Thomas, 32. 

Cleveland, Grover, 17. 

Clinton, De Witt, 14. 

Cole and Johnson, 127, 133. 

Constitutional conventions, 
state, 11-13. 

Cook, Will Marion, 136. 

Cooke, Grace MacGowan, 
224. 

Court: children's, 66. 
magistrate's, 202-204. 



233 



234 



INDEX 



Craig, Walter A., 126. 
Crime: among cliildren, Q6- 
68; among adults, 189. 

Dahomeyans, 131. 

District Nursing Association 

of Broold^-n, 159. 
Dix, Morgan, 25. 
Domestic Service, 80-83, 149- 

153. 
Downing, Thomas, 27. 
Du Bois, W. E. B., 183. 
Dudley, S. H., 128. 
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 71, 

83, 131. 

East Side, 42-44. 

Education: colored teaclier, 
17, 18; private colored 
schools, 14; public colored 
schools, 15-19. 

Emancipation, 8. 

Ewing, Quincy, 190. 

Fall River, mortality among 

infants, 59. 
Finley, H. M., 32. 
Frazier, S. E., 18. 

Gaynor, William J., 201. 
Government service, Ne- 
groes in, 88. 
Greenwich Village, 33-35. 

Hale, Edward Everett, 119. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 14. 



Hampton Institute, 110, 119, 

193. 
Hansell, George H., 20. 
Haynes, George E., 112. 
Health Department, 40, 53, 

197. 
Held, Anna, 133. 
Hell's Kitchen, 37, 85. 
Hogan, Ernest, 134. 
Horsmanden, Daniel, 7. 
Housing, 34, 36, 40, 45-51. 
Hunt, John H., against Negro 

suffrage, 13. 

Janvier, Thomas, 8, 33. 

Jay, John, on emancipation, 

8; interest in education, 14. 
Jay, Peter, on Negro suffrage, 

11. 
Jennings, Elizabeth, 21. 
Jonas, Rosalie M., 224. 
Jones, Edward, 14. 

Keane, Edmund, 137. 

Kent, Chancellor, favors Negro 

suffrage, 11. 
Kidd, Dudley, 52. 
King V. Gallagher, 16. 
Kingsley, Mary, 70, 113. 

Lanier, Sidney, 31. 

Lincoln, Charles Z., 13. 

Lincoln Hospital: attitude 
towards Negro doctors, 
114; graduates of, 157. 



INDEX 



235 



Livingston, against Negro suf- 
frage, 11. 
London, Jack, 63. 

MacGowan, Alice, 224. 

Manhattan Trade School, 161, 
162. 

Manumission society, 14. 

Middle West Side, 35-38. 

Miller, Kelly, 86, 147. 

Morris, Gouvemeur, on eman- 
cipation, 8. 

Mortahty. among infants, 
53-60; death rate by dis- 
eases, 192. 

Municipal service, Negroes 
in, 197. 

Music, 125-127. 

New York Conspiracy, 7. 

New York Milk Committee, 
54. 

Newman, G., infant mortal- 
ity, 55, 58. 

Nurses' Settlement, 159. 

Olivier, Sidney, 226. 

Palmer, A. Emerson, 18. 
Patten, S. N., 38. 
People V. King, 213. 
Phillips, UWch B., 101, 
Phipps, Henry, 41. 
Phipps tenement, 42, 51, 125. 
Pittsburg Survey, 225. 
Police department, 198-201. 



Poole, Ernest, 84. 
Population, Negro, 9; total, 

31. 
Pratt, Lucy, 218, 
Prostitution, 155, 156. 

Ray, Charles B., 24. 

Reason, Patrick, 27, 
Religion (see Churches). 
Riots: draft riots, 25; riot of 

1900, 199; riot of 1905, 

199-201. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 18. 
Rubinow, I. B., relation of 

death rate to poverty, 193. 
Russell, John L., 12. 
Russell, LiUian, 133. 
Russia, infant mortality in, 

54; mortality and poverty, 

193. 
Russworm, John B., 14. 

Sanger, William W., 153, 

San Juan Hill, 39-42. 

Schools (see Education). 

Scottron, Samuel R., on in- 
dustrial opportunities, 26; 
on occupations, 78. 

Segregation: churches, 19; 
dwelling - places, 48 - 50; 
schools, 15-19. 

Shirtwaist makers' strike, 163. 

Simmons, William J., 137, 

Slave ships, 32, 

Slaves, brutality towards, 5; 
insurrections of, 6-8. 



236 



INDEX 



Smith, Gerritt, 24. 

Smith, James McC, 27. 

Smith, WiUiam G., 14. 

Stage, 127-137. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 215. 

Stone, Alfred Holt, on Negro 
in occupations in "South, 
75; color line in South, 89, 
92; irresponsibility of Ne- 
groes, 102. 

Straus, Nathan, 59. 

Street cars, discrimination, 
21-23. 

Suffrage: past, 11-13; pres- 
ent, 196; Negro's use of 
suffrage, 204-208; in Athens, 
Ga., 207. 

Tanner, Henry, 126. 
Tenements (see Housing). 
Thomas, W. I., 221. 
Trade-unions, 95-99. 
Trinity Church, 25. 
Tucker, Helen, on Negro 
craftsmen, 96, 98. 



Underground Railroad, 24. 
Upper West Side, 45^8. 

Varick, James, 20. 

Walker, Aida, 157. 
Washington, Booker T., 184, 

194 
Waterbury, Daniel S., 12. 
West Indies, arrivals from, 

48. 
Wheeler, B. R, 20. 
White, Philip A., 27. 
Williams, Peter, 20. 
Williams and Walker, 129- 

133. 
Wilson, H. J., 124. 
W^ilson, J. G., 8. 
Winterbottom, 25. 
Wright, Richard R., on the 

city Negro, 100, 104. 
Wright, Theodore S., 14. 

Zangwill, Israel, 137. 



>^ 



ed 6.af 



6 



I 



s 



^ 









<r 









t ' » 



O N 



-\ c 



•' O 



^%^,c,^^ ^l^^k^^ ^^ ^ 






" a 






;^, 






<^^ 



■l- 










^°'n^ 






-^•^ 











-*/^-. "^,/ .'«^X" 

O O^ . ' • o , ■^^ - > -^ • • 









,^..^\\jiV. -^^^^^ 






'i^^dO'^* ^^.'^ 



.^^^ 




*>*, • ■'^rs c}> 






A 



^. 




1^ 






\^ 



v<^ c ° " " < "^v 










.... . ^ v^ 



X° -TV 




-n^o^ 




^^--^^ 




-^An^ 



V . ^' 






-1 cu 




^ .^r^Rv. V /^ .^^.,^#^^ -^ A^ ^'m 






'^^-<^^ 

'<"\ 






vpc,- 



\. \*/^^-" ^^ -^* '-.^^i^,-' >* "*^ ''»i^: ^ *^ 1 



8^' 



o Ay , 



•^o 



°ff 




^ LIBRARY BINDING > ■O' -" ^J/Bj^T ■< <L*^ <*• • S^ ^ ■• ^ •' 

SEP 69^^ .^v^^ c° .v;/;^;^^ °- / ^"^ 

ST. ^AUGUSTINE o'^^^^^^^'- "^-f*^ ^ ^ ^M^/^ - '^O V 








^^ 



32084 *