SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE "The Handicap" Written by Mary Church Terrell, 1615 S St. N.W. The Handicap. "Why don't you write some of the experiences through which you have passed and relate the incidents which you have told me this afternoon and call the article 'The Handicap'? It would make a corking good story. It is your duty to give some of these facts to the public. Many people would be amazed if they knew how high and how huge are the obstacles which confront a colored woman who has studied and achieved as much as you have in spite of the disadvantages under which you have labored." Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart, the gifted playwright and popular novelist, thus expressed herself to me not long ago while I was standing in a beautifully and artistically furnished room of her well-appointed home on Massachusetts Avenue in the National Capital. Mrs. Rinehart has been interested in me for several years, because she read some of my articles which appear-ed in the North American Review and in the Nineteenth Century and After. During a great bereavement through which I was recently passing Mrs. Rinehart came in person to my home to tell me how deeply she sympathized with me. And on the afternoon when she suggested this article, I had called at her home to tell her how her visit had revived my spirits and had given me a new lease on life. Mrs. Rinehart never spoke a truer word than when she said many people would be amazed, if they knew how much colored people who are well-educated and aspiring have to overcome, if they achieve success. It is surprising how little some very intelligent people who pride themselves upon keeping abreast of the times know about conditions which confront a large racial group in their own land. I was greatly impressed with this fact a few years ago when I was invited by a large national, religious organization to deliver an address on The Progress of Colored Women in a meeting at Beverly Massachusetts. During my remarks I happened to refer casually to the Convict Lease System. The presiding officer stopped me and asked me to explain what I meant by the Convict Lease System, as it related to colored people in this country. "I should be glad to do so, " I replied, "but you have allotted me only 2 thirty minutes in which to discuss this big and important subject, and if I turn aside to to explain the Convict Lease Ssystem, I shall be unable to tell you many things which I want good women like you to know, while I have the chance." "Wait a minute," said the presiding officer, as she stepped to the front of the platform. "How many in this audience know anything about the Convict Lease System as it affects colored people in this country? Please taise your hands. I wont call upon you to explain or describe it, but I am interested to see how many women know anything at all about it." Not a single hand was raised. Then the presiding officer requested me to tell all I could about the Convict Lease System in ten minutes and she would extend my time that much. The women who formed this organization represented the intelligence and culture of New England. Many of them held degrees from the leading colleges of this country and were chairmen or members of important committees I have cited this case to prove that some of the most highly educated people in the United States know practically nothing about the injustices perpetrated upon a large group here, not to mention the almost insurmountable obstacles confronting them in their effort to achieve along various lines of human endeavor as well as in their struggle to earn their daily bread. I can not resist the temptation to cite another case. Once upon a time I was talking to a Harvard graduate who lives in Boston. He took issue with me because I said that in certain sections of the South colored men could not vote. At that time the elective franchise had not been extended to women. The Harvard graduate had stated that he had once thought he would like to go to Congress. "In that case", I said, "you should go to one of the southern States and be a Democrat. It will be much easier for you to be elected to Congress from some of the southern States than from the North, where everybody can vote without regard to race or sex. Senator W, for instance, was sent to the Senate with only a few thousand votes, because colored men in his State are practically disfranchised. Owing to this fact," I continued, in some of the southern States the vote of one which man, whether he be illiterate or educated, is equal to that of from 8 to 10 or even more votes of men in 5 frequently than many people interested in the colored woman's welfare suppose. One day an intelligent, refined and beautiful young woman came to me in great distress and urged me to intercede immediately with her employer for her. She had just been discharged, she said, because the proprietor of the store had discovered that she was colored. "When I went to secure the position" she explained, "I did not say anything about the race with which I am identi- fied, because I knew I would not have a ghost of a chance to get it, if I did. I knew I could give satisfaction, and I hoped Mr. L would not discharge me even if he discovered that I am colored." This young woman had served a long and successful apprenticeship in one of the largest and best department stores in New York City. But her family lived in Washington and she wanted to come home. Armed with most complimentary letters of recommendation she had no difficulty in securing the position for which she applied. When I went to see the proprietor of the store in the young woman's be- half he expressed great regret at being forced to dispense with her services. "When I employed Miss B," he said, "I had no idea that she was colored. There was nothing whatever to indicate such a thing. She is as fair as a lily in the first place. She is very well-educated and she is refined. She had been in the store about two months when one of the saleswomen came to me and com-plained that I had employed a colored girl. I denied this, of course, 'Yes you have,' insisted my informant, Miss B is certainly colored. But I assured the saleswoman she was greatly mistaken for I was certain she was wrong. Less than a week after this conversation took place my informant brought me in disputable proof of the fact that Miss B was colored and urged me to discharge her at once. I told her I would do nothing of the kind. 'Well, all the sales- women in your store will leave you,' she threatened, 'for we wont work with a colored girl.' All right, you may leave." I said. "It will not be hard to fil your places. There's just as good fish in the sea, you know. A short time after that, however, my customers came to me to protest against my employing a colored girl in my store. Delgation after delegation of them came to demand that I dismiss Miss B immediately and they threatened to boycott my store if 2 en of race as well of that of sex. The long and determined struggle for suffrage in this country and the desperate methods to which English women resorted to obtain it prove how indomitable is the white woman's courage and how great is her power [*If Charles Dickens' immortal Mark Tapley had been a colored woman and had lived in the United States, how happy he might have been and what a roy royal good time he might have had.*] of endurance when she is fighting for recognition and right. Ther is no doubt I remember distinctly the first time it came upon me with irresistible, [therefore, that if white women had to bear the burden of race as well as th] crushing force that something was radically wrong with me somehow and in [that of sex, if they had these two huge handicaps staring them in the face,] some way. After that it was borne in upon my young brain more and more that [they would grimly grin and cary them along just as colored women are trying] this difference from the strong, white [xxxxxx] group would cause me a great to do. deal of trouble and had a mortgage on the devil], if I didn't watch out. [There is no doubt that such anmo- awakening comes into the life of every colored child born in the United States,] My rude awakening came when colored when My father who was quite young, handsome and as fair in complexion as whether he the averagd white man, altho he had been a slave took me on a trip from a Southern city to Cincinnati Ohio. This incident agitated my young mind considerably. I plied my father with questions. Why had the conductor wanted to take me out of a nice, clean car and put me into an old dirty one? What had I done? I thought of all the sins of omission and commission against which my moter had warned me before I left home. My My hands were clean and so was my face. My hair was nicely combed and smooth. I hadn't soiled my dress. I was sitting up straight and proper. I was not looking out of the window with my feet on the seat. I was not talking loud. In short I was behaving myself "like a nice little lady" as my mother had I had obeyed [all] my mother's injunction[s], to behave myself and act like a lit- tle lady. wanted to drag a nice little girl out of the car. But my father told me not to talk about it and he would explain it to me, after we got home. There is no doubt that an experience similar to my own comes into the life of every colored child born in the United States. 31 12 372 6 I refused. Then it became a matter of bread and butter with me and I was forced to let her go. I wish I had been able to keep her," he continued, "for she was one of the best saleswomen in the cloak department I have ever had." The proprietor's frank admission that the colored girl whom he had dismissed had given perfect satisfaction was something new under the sun and surprised me greatly. For it is the custom among those who discharge colored people solely on account of their race to allege other reasons. They usually claim that they are unreliable and unskilled. I myself had an experience similar to Miss B's. During the World War when women of all ages, classes, colors and kinds were engaged in some kind of work, so as to help make the world safe for Democracy, I decided to join their ranks. Accodingly, I took an examination which made it necessary for me to answer a questionnaire. In replying to the questions I stated that I had an A.B. and an A.M. degree from Oberlin College, that I had studied abroad three years, I could speak, read and write both German and French and had once spoken Italian fairly well. I handed in samples of my typewriting also and passed a creditable examination. Shortly after that my door bell rand about two or three o'clock one morning, and a messenger boy brought me a telegram directing me to report at a certain building immediately. The next morning bright and early I fared forth, certain that I would secure a fine position. I was ushered into the presence of an officer of high rank. At first he received me most cordially and seemed on the point of assigning me immediately. But there was evidently something about my appearance which puzzled him, to say the least. I knew the exact second when a great light dawned upon him and he reached the conclusion that the swarthiness of my face placed me upon the list of undesirables. After asking me a few questions which I had already answered on my questionnaire, he told me curtly that he would send for me, if he needed me. But I knew when I left his office that he would never send for me. There is no doubt whatever that I was sent for, because my questionnaire indicated that I could render important service. There is little doubt that if I had been a white woman, I 3 the North, East or West, where everybody not a criminal or an idiot, is permitted to cast his ballot." "Now Mr. Terrell," replied the Harvard graduate indignantly, "do you mean to say that the 15th amendment to the Constitution of the United States is openly, flagrantly violated like that? Walk so softly, Mrs. Terrell, walk softly, when you make a statement like that," he admonished. I am sure the gentleman did not believe a word I said. I have cited 8 the building, ordered to get their belongings together, paraded out of the section in which they had worked and marched down to the one set aside exclusively for colored people, to the "Jim Crow Section," as it is sometimes called. It is amazing how many ways and means are devised to wound the sensibilities of self-respecting colored people. Humiliating them seems to be an obsession with a large group of the dominant race. An experience through which I passed several years ago well illustrates this point. -An automobile truck on the Washington Baltimore Boulevard ran into my car, smashed it and shattered my knee cap. As I was being carried on a stretcher from the room in which I had received first aid treatment in a Washington hospital, the beautiful, head night nurse said to me, "You cant have a private room." I was dazed and made no reply, for I did not understand the significance of the remark. The nurse repeated the remark louder and more emphatically, as I was being wheeled along the corridor. Thinking she meant that I could not be taken to a private room, because it was so late, I said as cheerfully as I could, "That's all right. It must be nearly midnight. It wont hurt me to stay in a public ward for a few hours." But later on I was informed that no colored person was permitted to have a private room in that hospital. Nothing better than this could illustrate how much worse race-prejudice in the National Capital is to day than it used to be. About twenty years ago I engaged a private room for my mother at that same hospital without the slightest difficulty. The morning after my accident I found myself in a ward occupied exclusively by colored women. Then the head night nurse came to my bed, she said, "Good morning, Mary." I could not elieve my years. Never since I have been a woman, has a stranger called me by my Christian name. When I had recovered sufficiently to speak, I said, "Did you call me Mary?" The nurse flushed, but did not reply. I repeated my question. Then I realized that she had intentionally called me "Mary", because I am a colored woman. "You must not call me by my first name," I said. "There is no more reason why you should call me by my first name than there is that I should call you by yours." The beautiful night nurse did not said a word and left. Shortly after she had gone, the student day nurses came on duty and addressed each one of the 9 seventeen colored women by her Christian name. "Good morning Sallie; Good morning Jennie" and so on down the line. When the little nurse who took charge of the patients in my quarter of the room came to my bed, she looked at my card and said "Good morning, Mary." Again I protested against being addressed in that way. Shortly after that the head day nurse came to my bed and called me Mary. "Please treat me with the respect due me. Please dont call me Mary," I pleaded. "I am not accustomed to being called Mary by strangers." "We'll see about that," she said angrily, "I will get the superintendent and he'll attend to you." In a few minutes a tall man appeared with fire in his eye. "The nurse tells me that you have been making trouble in this ward," he began. "What's the matter with you?" "I haven't been making any trouble," I explained. "I am simply objecting to having the nurses call me by my Christian name. I want them to address me by my family name, as they do other self-respecting women." "When the nurses call you by your first name," he said emphatically, "they are simply obeying the instructions which they have received." "But they dont call women of other races by their first names, no matter how ignorant or depraved they may be." "Well," interrupted the Superintendent, "there's a big different between white women and colored women." "I wont be treated with disrespect and indignity simply because I am a colored woman." I replied. "I was a member of the Board of Education in this city for eleven years and I have tried to promote the welfare of this city in every way I could and I wont allow anybody to humiliate me , because I am not white." "I dont care who you are," countered the superintendent, "I dont care if you were the President of the Board of Education, we are going to address you as we do all colored women by your first name. And if you give any further trouble we wont let you stay in this hospital. I'll send you to Freedman's Hospital where you belong." "I am in a very embarrassing position," I said. "My knee is in a plaster cast. The bones of my knee cap have been shattered, I have been told that if one of the little bones penetrates the flesh, 9 too early for breakfast, before the train started. On that occasion I went into the Jim Crow Car and I was unable to get any food all day long. The train did not stop long enough at any station for the porter to buy me anything. For, by the time he had attended to the wants of the white passengers who were getting on or off the train it was too late for him to buy me any thing to eat. Consequently, when I reached my destination about ten o'clock that night, I had gone without food for more than twenty four hours. I had not had a meal since I had eaten my dinner about six o'clock the night before. After that I resolved never to enter the Jim Crow Car, if I had to travel all day. And so it happened that when I knew I had to take an all day trip the following year on the occasion to which I now refer I remembered that unpleasant experience and took a seat in the white coach. When the conductor saw how upset I was on learning that I had to remain all night in T, he was very much amused. "All you've got to do," he said reassuringly, is to go to the H-House, eat a good dinner, get a comfortable room go to sleep and take the train to N, tomorrow morning and you'll get there about noon. "But I cant stop at that hotel," I said distractedly, for it had never occurred to me that I could muster up enough courage to fly in the face of Providence by stopping at a white hotel, in the South no matter what the emergency might be. "Why cant you stop at that hotel?" asked the conductor. "As much as you have traveled, have you never stopped all night?" he teased. Then I realized that I was caught like a rat in a trap, so to speak, and I resigned myself to my fate. Just as the train stopped at the station the conductor beckoned to a colored porter and said "Take this lady's suit case to the H House." I was almost paralyzed with surprise and fear, but I dared not refuse to go. The porter looked at me hard and I am sure he knew I was colored. By some it is claimed that southern white people can always detect a colored person, no matter how fair he or she may be. But that is a great mistake. Hundreds of colored people are "passing for white" in the South to day and their friends have no idea they have a drop of colored blood in their veins. But that is true all over the United States. One colored person can detect another much 10 more quickly than a white man or woman, no matter from what section they may come. But the porter obeyed the conductor and took me to the hotel. With fear and trembling I entered the door and registered. I had been sitting by an open window all day and the train smoke plus the dust had made me at least three shades darker than I really am. Since then I have wondered if the clerk did not attribute the swarthiness of my complexion entirely to the soot and grime from the train, so that dirt on this one occasion, at least, was not a handicap but a help. "Dinner is nearly over," said the clerk, "and if you want anything you had better go to the table immediately." The colored waiter seated me at a table, just as I was, with a man and his wife. I was too nervous and wretched to order anything, so I told the waiter to bring me a good dinner and let it go at that. I was taken to a frontroom on the second floor. From the window I coul walk out on a little balcony which overlooked the street. The bell boy had scarcely deposited my suit case and closed the door, before I thought of the risk I had run by signing my name in full on the register. I had been filling lecture engagements for several weeks in that section and some of the waiters might easily have seen accounts of them in the colored newspapers. If one of them should recognize my name and inadvertantly mention the fact that I was stopping at the H- House in the presence of white people I did not know what would be done with a colored woman who had so deliberately defied the time-honored customs and traditions and laws. My heart beat faster and faster, as I thought of the various kinds of punishments which might be meted out to a colored woman in a case like that. I decided then and there what I should do if the Klan or any other group came to get me. I would jump out of the window and if I did not actually kill myself, I argued that there would be so little life left in me that it would not matter much what happened. As I lay making these plans, I heard a loud knock at the door. I was sure the blow had fallen and that I would soon be paying for the penalty for this rash act. I lay perfectly still and scarcely breathed. The secod knock was louder that the first, but I did not utter a sound. 11 The third knock was so loud and prolonged that I dared not remain silent. "What is it?" I asked as calmly as I could. "Lady," said a boy, "did you ring for a pitcher of ice water? Here it is." The humor of an experience like that is much more apparent ten years after it has happened than it was when it was occurring. Practically the same thing happened on another occasion in another state When I bought my ticket in the morning I was told by the ticket agent that I would reach my destination that night. Again the conductor told me the schedule had been changed and I would be obliged to remain in a little winter resort settled by Northern people all night. I had talked with a very agreeable lady from Chicago in the white coach nearly all day. Each of us had swapped tales about her travels with the other. This lady insisted that I stop at the hotel which had been her home for five or six winters and secured me a room. I had been in my room but a short time before my new friend sent a maid to invite me to come down stairs in the reception all to meet some of the quests. I sent word that I was about to retire and asked her to excuse me till the next morning. But the new friend came herself and urged me to come, saying that she had told the guests how interesting I was and they were eager to meet me. But I again begged to be excused. The next morning while I was at breakfast I saw a lady approaching me from another table. "How do you do, Mrs. Terrell," said she, "When did you arrive?" And when I hesitated a second, she said, "Dont you know me? We have spoken on the Women Suffrage platform many a time together. She was the president of a large women's organization and we had been acquainted a long time. After breakfast I took a seat on the balcony for a few minutes. When my Chicago friend came out and I looked up to speak to her, she turned her head and cut me dead. The president of the woman's organization had probably told her who I was and my new friend was undoubtedly angry with me, because I had not disclosed my race. I was informed afterward that there were no colored people in that small resort at all 8 the building, ordered to get their belongings together, paraded out of the section in which they had worked and marched down to the one set aside exclusively for colored people- to the "Jim Crow Section", as it is sometimes called. Perhaps the difficulty experienced by colored women in securing hotel accommodations, when they travel, is one of the greatest hardships they have to endure. Several times While filling lecture engagements I have been refused accommodations at hotels several times. Once when I went to a hotel in New York at which I had always stopped, when I was going further East, the clerk told me he had no room. I discovered afterwards that the policy of the hotel had changed and that th most distinguished colored man who was living at that time had been refused accommodations too. But in New York to day there are excellent hotels operated by colored people, so that in that particular city strangers are reasonably sure of finding a room. But it frequently happens that owing to conditions which she could not foresee and for which she could not provide a colored woman is obliged to remain over night in a city or town where [there] she is acquainted with no one and where there may be no hotel accommodations for her race at all. Several experiences which I myself have had will illustrate what I man. Once when I was filling lecture engagements in southern states I was suddenly told that the train would stop at the next station and would go no further that night. But when I bought my ticket that morning I had been assured that I was taking an express train and that I would reach my destination that night at eleven o'clock. I was horror stricken when the conductor told me the news. I was not acquainted with anybody in the place. I did not know whether there was a hotel or a boarding house for colored people or not. Even if there had been I felt that spending the night at a house recommended to me by anybody I chanced to see at the station was running a fearful risk. Fortunately for me I had gone into the coach for white people, when I boarded the train early that morning instead of into the Jim Crow Car as the law of the State commands. An experience which I had had a year before had taught me the wisdom of [playing that trick] taking this precaution . On that occasion I had left a certain city one morning about four o(clock 13 many other cities from which colored people are excluded altogether. If I want to send my daughter to a good Academy even in the North, I am very fortunate indeed, if I succeed. Some years ago I entered the daughter of a friend in an Eastern Academy. It seemed to me unnecessary to mention-that she was colored. After she had attended the school several months somebody informed the principal that she was colored. I was sent for and questioned and when I frankly admitted that a few drops of African blood coursed through her veins, she was promptly dismissed. On another occasion I arranged to have a girl enter a famous academy near Boston. Remembering my unpleasant experience a few years previous I wrote the principal that the young girl was colored. She wrote me immediately that the girl could not be admitted and rebuked me severely for not stating that fact. Since then the daughters of several prominent colored men have attended that same Academy, but it was the influence of strong white friends of their fathers who brought this about. Almost everybody, when ????? finds huge obstacles having to be removed towering in his path. But when a woman who tries to accomplish something worth while butts her head against the stone wall of race prejudices every time she turns around it is maddening indeed. However, most of us avail ourselves of the opportunities presented to us with grim determination and grateful hearts. If philosophy did not come to our rescue to that extent at least, some of us would lose our minds. The women of the dominant race have one one burden to carry- the burden of sex. Colored women have two heavy loads to "tote", the burden of race as well as sex. But in spite of opposition relentless and obstacles almost insurmountable the progress made by colored women in the United States is a veritable miracle of modern times. Along all lines of human endeavor we have been forging ahead, until there is no pursuit or profession in which we have been allowed to enter in which we have not at least one brilliant representative. Naturally enough intelligent, thoughtful colored women are deeply con- Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.