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Characteristics of the southern negro
by Randle, Edwin Henderson, 1830-
Publication date 1910
It is strange how knowingly people who have but a glancing acquaintance with the negroes of the South, can write up their character. Various prominent writers from the North occasionally come South, visit Booker T. Washington, Bishop Cottrell, a colored bishop, and a few others, and then write glowing accounts of the progress and development of the negroes. Their reports remind me of some of the reports of our early missionaries to Africa, who, in their zeal, gave most encouraging statements of the spread of the Gospel amongst the benighted negroes, and afterward the results of their labors could no more be traced than could their tracks in the desert sands.
In the North American Review of June, 1908, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, one of America's strongest thinkers, wrote most knowingly and unlearnedly about the wonderful progress of the Southern negroes. Such writers of judgment do the South a great injury without being aware of it. It is like learned preachers, who, without a knowledge of science, try to discredit the teachings of geology by the Scriptures; or like Haeckel, Huxley and others trying to prove by chemistry that the Christian religion is false—that Christ was a man and not a god. If Mr. Carnegie will come South, lease a large plantation in the Delta and try farming a few years with free negro labor, it will knock all his philosophy and preconceived notions into invisible vapor, and will send his philanthropy for the negro beyond the perpetual snow line. Our Northern friends know as little how to make allowance for the negro after they have tried him, as they know how to write up his character before they try him.
The Southern planters who have had long acquaintance and dealings with all kinds and varieties of negroes,—no picked few or specialized class,—both before the war and since, certainly ought to be the best judges of negro character.
All that I shall write about the character and habits of the negro has been gathered from these planters, with a few of my own observations thrown in. As to my own qualifications, I will add that I was raised among negroes, in a section where the two races were about equally divided; inherited negroes, was brought up among them; I played with them, fought with them, worked with them, but never slept or ate with them.
In my boyhood I often spent a day or night with some neighbor boy, and as white boys in those days were fond of going out to the cabins to hear the negroes talk. I, like the others, saw into a great many negro cabins and had good opportunities for studying negro character and habits. In those days most of the negroes had more liberty without freedom than they now have with freedom.
In studying the race question we must not forget some psychical and physical differences. The mind of the white man does not attain its full growth till about five to ten years after the full growth of the body, while the mind of the negro matures several years sooner than his body. There seems to be much less difference in the mental capacity of the children of the two races than there is in the adults; but, before the twenties are reached, the breach begins to widen, and continues to widen fifteen or more years, and then continues after maturity of capacity to widen by training and in information. By maturity we mean the cessation of the growth of capacity for improvement. But the mind and body both may be greatly strengthened by training after maturity, as the scholar improves his mind, and the athlete, his body.
Mr. Winwood Read, a distinguished African traveler, gives the following physical description of the negro:
"His skin is very black, excepting the palms and soles of his feet, which are of a dirty yellow. In them the coloring matter has been removed by friction; it can, however, be always traced in the deep lines of the hand. It appears to be most abundant on the knuckles, the knees, and the elbow joints.
"The skin is very thick, especially on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. Touch these, and they feel like wood. A negro will take up a live coal in his hand and light his pipe with it without suffering pain. But, with the exception of these parts, the skin of the negro is peculiarly smooth. It can only be compared to fine black velvet.
"The hair of the typical negro is short and crisp, and closely resembles wool.
"The forehead is low and compressed; the nose flat; the lips thick and brutal; the mouth projecting, presents the appearance of a muzzle. As in the lower animals, the brain retreats to the back of the head, and the organ of gluttony becomes the character of the face.
"The heel is flat and long; the ankle is raised only from one and one-eighth to one and one-half inches above the ground. The toes are small, and, as in the apes, the great toe is separated from the others by a wide space.
"The foot is often used by the negro as a hand. The natives of equatorial Africa do not climb a tree, as we do, by 'swarming,' but by clasping them with their feet. The natives of the Gambia, when fishing, hold their line between the great toe and the next. When a Kru-man is sewing anything he holds his work between his toes. And the Wollofs will frequently steal articles with their feet.
"The virile member is much larger than is found in Europeans, excepting in those who are idiotic. It is one of the chief seats of color. When the negro child is born it has a black ring around the virile member; a reddish mark on the nail, and another in the corner of the eye. These are the last signs also by which a negro descendant can be distinguished.
"According to some writers, the same secretion forms the beard and propagates the human species. The negro seldom has any hair upon his face; it is rarely abundant, and he rarely has a great number of children. There is also a peculiarity in his voice by which it can be distinguished. It is not unlike that of a eunuch.
"The stature of the negro is stunted; the knees are bent; the calves weak; the upper part of the thigh is thin; the head large and sunk between the shoulders; and the whole form angular and badly shaped.
"The skull is extremely thick. If a negro wishes to break a thick stick, he does not break it across his knee, as we do, but across his head. The power of his skull in resisting a blow is something marvelous. When I was in the Senegal, I saw a most remarkable case at the military hospital, St. Louis. A Wollof soldier, in the French service, had been shot at from a distance of fifteen yards. The ball struck the os frontis and had flattened against it as if it had struck a stone wall.[1] ...
"It has been discovered by Iruner Beaj, Gratiold, Waitz, and other eminent anatomists that there exist internal differences equally as significant; that the blood and bile, and, according to some, the semen, is different from that of the Europeans; that in the skeleton, the bones are larger, whiter and thicker; that the growth of the brain in the negro, as in the ape, is sooner arrested than in those of our race;[2] that its convolutions are less numerous and more massive; that its gray substance is of a darker color; that the brain itself is of a smoky tint, and that the pia mater contains brown spots, which are never found in the brain of the European.
"Therefore, in the muzzle-like extension of the jaws, in the manual application of the foot, and in the early cessation of the brain-growth, the negro, speaking physically, approaches the ape.
"In his flattened nose, elongated cranium, simplicity of cerebral convolutions, rounded larynx, and less strongly marked curves of the vertical column, the negro approaches the child; for all these are found in the foetus of the child of the Aryan race in its different periods of development.
"And in the curvature of his arteries, in the flatness of his cornea, in the fulness of his muscles, in his general lack of enthusiasm, and love of repose, the negro presents the characteristics of old age.
"Thus it has been proven by measurements, by microscopes, by analysis, that the negro is something between a child, a dotard, and a beast. I cannot struggle against the sacred facts of science. But I contend that it is only degradation; that it is a disease; that it is not characteristic of the African continent, and that it is confined only to a small geographical area."[3]
These statements have not been denied by the ethnologists and biologists of the scientific world, but have been generally assented to.
To be fair with Mr. Read, I must say he did not describe the typical negro, but a class below the highest type of the negro race. As to the extent of the area, it is no small portion of the west coast of Africa. Fully half of Africa, the northern half, is inhabited by the Aryan race, or of races whose blood is mixed with a strong infusion of Aryan blood. Mr. Read believes in the unity of the human race.
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[1] I am able to vouch for the truth of the story.
[2] This is in accordance with what I have said about the maturity of the mind.
[3] "Savage Africa," by Winwood Read, p. 397.
That we may better understand the Southern negro, we will give a short chapter on a few of the leading tribes of Africa, from the highest to the lowest.
We now approach a singular phase in ethnology, or rather in the relational appearance of the negro to the white man—a fact which denies that the negro and the Aryan are of the same original or Adamic origin.
If the Ovambos, the Damaras, the Fans, the Hottentots are degenerate Zulus, it is singular, that in proportion as they are degenerate they are found of lighter color and of a greater resemblance to the white man. In all domestic species, as I have shown in another work, loss of color is one of the first signs of degenerate variation, so these lower tribes must have lost color in their evolution downward from the Zulu. The tribes below the Zulus occupy largely more than nine-tenths of negro Africa. We must judge from this that the negro race in Africa is traveling to extinction.
The Zulus or Kaffirs "are darker than these lighter colored tribes, but not so black as the negroes of the West Coast. Their hair is crisp, short and curled, but not so woolly as that of the negro (of the West Coast); their lips, though large when compared with those of the Europeans, are small when compared with those of the negro.[4] Their form is finely modeled, their stature tall, their limbs straight, their forehead high, their expression intelligent, and altogether this group of mankind affords as fine examples of the human form as can be found anywhere on the earth."
The Zulus seem to be of a less variable type than the other tribes. Great variations among individuals of any species, whether in form, color, or habits, is a sign of degeneracy.
The Tonga, the Bechuana, the Ovambo, the Namequa, and some others, are classified by some with the Zulus; but they are lighter in color and resemble the European much more than the Zulus do.
The Bechuanas: "The Bechuana character is frank and sociable, which, however, does not arise from a benevolent disposition. They are exceedingly vindictive and revengeful, but easily propitiated with gifts. From the king to the slave, theft is a peculiar vice. The women are tenacious of their toilet, appearing to prefer the garb of Mother Eve. They are masculine, short, stout, and clumsy. They have little regard for human life. A husband may kill his wife if he likes, without any particular notice being taken of it."[5]
The Bechuanas have no notion of a superior being. "I have often wished," says Mr. Moffat, "I could find something by which I could lay hold on the minds of the natives; an altar to the unknown God, the faith of their ancestors, the immortality of any association, but nothing of the kind ever floated through their minds. They looked upon the sun with the eye of an ox."[6]
These stand about next to the Zulus. We have descriptive evidence from many reliable authors that the following tribes differ in appearance from the Zulus in an approach to the Europeans, though none of these authors noted this fact. They are all lighter in color; some, the color nearly of a ripe plum, some a sort of dark milk-and-coffee color, etc., those of the smallest hands and feet being lighter in color and of less vigor. They are the Ovambos, the Demaras, the Makololos, the Wagogos, the Neam Nams, the Fans, and some others. The lighter colored ones are generally nearer the equator. Not many of any of these tribes, I think, were brought to America, yet we see some representatives of them. We sometimes are mistaken when we judge a negro to have a tinge of white blood. It is one from some of these tribes.
The Hottentots: Having now come to such low grades, near the bottom, we must note more closely.
Neither in color nor in general aspects do the Hottentots resemble the dark races around them. Their complexion is sallow and much like that of a very dark person suffering from jaundice. Indeed the complexion of the Hottentot much resembles that of the Chinese.
In shape, the Hottentots alter strangely according to age. When children they are not agreeable objects; if tolerably well fed, they lose their strange shape when they approach the period of youth; and as young men and girls they are almost perfect in form, though thin faces are not entitled to as much praise. But they do not retain this beauty of form for any long period, some few years generally comprehending the beginning and the end. "In five or six years after their arrival at womanhood," writes Burchell, "the fresh plumpness of youth gives way to the wrinkles of age, and unless viewed with an eye of commiseration and philanthropy, we would be inclined to pronounce them the most disgusting of human beings." The existence of this light-colored race in such a locality affords proof that complexion is not entirely by climate. These and other pale-skinned tribes live close to the tropics, while the Esquimaux, who live amid eternal ice, are often so dark they might almost be mistaken for negroes.
"Unlike the Kaffirs, who are the most superstitious of mankind, the Hottentots are entirely free from superstition, as they have not the least conception whatever of any religious sentiment. The world forms the limit of all their ideas, and they seem, so far as is known, equally ignorant of a creator and the immortality of the soul" (Wood). In this respect they are on a level with the beast, sunken too low even to be superstitious.
The Bosjemens: The Bosjemens, or Bushmen, have no language to express God, spirit, immortality, a life beyond the grave, or any superstitious belief. They have no traces of a lost civilization—nor have any of the negro tribes of Africa. They abandon their parents when old, and instruction and moralizing to them is as ineffectual as teaching monkeys to draw portraits. Haeckel of Jena uses them as a connecting link between the apes and man.
I will not describe the Obongos or Pigmies, as the slave stealers would not have them.
The West Coast Africans: These are the ones Mr. Winwood Read described as the typical negro, so we will have little else to say of them. They are the blackest of all negroes, large, strong, and capable of great endurance, and the most indifferent to suffering of human beings, hence they are cruel in proportion; this is as much because they are but little sensitive to suffering themselves; sympathy of any kind is almost as absent from their nature as color is from their skin.
Mr. Read, I think, degrades their strength and endurance a little lower than others do. We see frequent specimens of these West Coast negroes in America. We can distinguish them by their coal blackness, stout frames, and coarse features.
Graded in the scale of negroes they are below the Zulus, Ovambos, Bechuanas and the Damaras, and perhaps some others we have mentioned, but scarcely below some of these, and they are farther above the Hottentots than they are below the Zulus. They much less resemble the Europeans than the Zulus do, while the other degenerate tribes resemble the Europeans more than do the Zulus.
We have now given most of the tribes from which the American slaves derive their origin. They are so mixed up that we can now definitely trace but few individuals. We oftener see examples of the West Coast African than of the others. The characteristics of these African negroes will help us to understand the American negro.
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[4] Mr. Read does not class the Zulus with the negro. He strangely considers the inhabitants of the West Coast alone as true negroes.
[5] Anderson, p. 450.
[6] Anderson, p. 339.
We are of the opinion that the negro consumes more than he earns, and that the difference is increasing.
For a few years after the war the farmers made some money, for the negroes were, at that time, not far from their training and habits; and while they did not work so well as they did in slavery, they worked better than they have at any time since. In the nineties I asked numerous planters who had had much to do with negro farm laborers, both before emancipation and after, the following question: Have the negroes in the upland counties produced as much as they have consumed since the war? The uniform answer was, "They have not." But the answers varied as to how much they lacked. A few planters said they had not made enough, upon an average, to pay land rents. The average answer was, "They have made a living and paid half rents for their lands." To make a living with rents half free, is consuming more than they produce. As an evidence of this, the value of uplands fell to about half price.
Another evidence of this: The sections where there are the most negroes are the least prosperous. Compare Marshall County, Mississippi, with Henry County, Tennessee. Before the war, the people of Marshall were prosperous and were rapidly accumulating, and the negro population was, I judge, about double the white inhabitants. The people of Henry County were industrious and slowly accumulating property. Both were early settled counties. Marshall County was worth, I judge, about five times what Henry was. Now, Marshall is left far in the rear, and Henry has shot out well in advance. We cannot account for this in any other way than that negro labor is consuming more than it is producing. I could give many other illustrations, showing the fewer the negroes, the greater the prosperity. Making, of course, proper allowance for the difference in the quality of the lands.
We must not compare the rich alluvial lands of the Yazoo Delta, where there are ten negroes to one white person, with the impoverished ridges along the Tennessee River in Tennessee, where there are fifty white men to one negro, and where poverty reigns in log cabins. Wherever there are few negroes in good upland counties there is enterprise and progress; and where there are many negroes in such counties, there is retrogress.
The farmers will tell you that a very large majority of the colored race is in debt to the white race and that with not the slightest prospects of ever paying. The white people would be well off if they only had what is due them from the negroes. I know many large farms that were entirely consumed by the tenants during the first twenty or thirty years and were sold out and left destitute.
Many of the most successful farmers before the sixties, found themselves unable, after the war, to make a living with free labor on large plantations, but the laborers on the farm got their living. I will narrate a single case well known. Mr. H. tried to farm on a large and well-ordered plantation of his own, a farm on which he had formerly realized handsome profits. The first year he came out in debt, the second year, still deeper in debt. He then called up his oldest son, a young man of energy and good habits, and said to him, "If I run the farm a few more years it will require the sale of the farm to pay our debts. I now turn over the entire management of the farm to you; I have made a failure. I have no advice to give. Trust your own judgment." The young man took the lead and did well. He is now an old man and is still prosperous.
I have often heard the remark that the owners of negroes before the war were usually unsuccessful farmers with free negro laborers, and the saying seems to be true. The chief cause of it was that they trusted the negroes too much. In crop gathering time, when a hand would foresee that he would have nothing at the end—that he had already consumed all that would be due him, he would leave and hire out to some other man. In this way the planter would not only lose the labor, but sometimes the part of the crop the hand had deserted. For hands in crop gathering are scarce and it is often a question with a planter how to secure enough labor to gather his cotton.
I am aware that statistics show that wealth, in large quantities, is acquired by negroes, and I know a few scattered negroes—mostly mulattos—commenced accumulating from the beginning. It would be a sad comment, indeed, if none of them had acquired property. Great wonder is made that the negroes of Georgia now own fifty million dollars' worth of property. Doubtless half of this belongs to men whose blood is tinged with a Caucasian streak, but we cannot attribute such wealth to negro energy any more than to the energy infused by his Caucasian blood.
Wholesale numbers look large. There are about one million of negroes in Mississippi. Suppose one in one hundred of these had saved five thousand dollars, that would make fifty million for the negroes of Mississippi. The fact is the great body of the negroes have little or nothing, and are getting less reliable as laborers every year. Within the last decade, or rather since the country recovered from the shock of '93, negroes have shown a tendency to buy homes, and a larger per cent. are now self-sustaining and prosperous than at any previous time, and a larger per cent. are utterly worthless.
Before the war an able-bodied negro in north Mississippi would hire out for $200 to $250 a year, and his board and clothes. Now he does well to get half that and his board. This is the difference between slave labor and free colored labor.
The colored women usually make their own living, but, like the men, only at about half the wages paid before the war. For some years they did full half work; now they rarely perform more than one-fourth the amount of labor that they did in slavery. For a family of two or three persons, the wages range in the country villages from four to seven dollars a month and table board. The cooks and housemaids greatly prefer to live in their own rented cabin off to themselves, and occasionally they own the cabin. As they generally refuse to do any work outside of the kitchen and dining-room, with a small family they have several hours in the forenoon and nearly all the afternoon to themselves. A brisk white cook in a Northern city performs fully five times the labor that one of these dusky ones does in the South. The cook knows that if she is turned off she can get another job in twenty-four hours, and if a little extra work is put on her, she will quit and try another place. A majority of the white women in the South do their own work, even many of the wealthy women, but there are numbers of delicate or invalid women unequal to the task, and this keeps up the demand for house servants.
A little farther north, in Tennessee and Kentucky, where there are not so many negroes, very few ladies have house servants of any kind. Some of our nicest ladies refuse to employ colored house servants at all because they can not train them away from filth—can not train them to be decent. Twenty years ago there were quite a number of old well-trained house servants, well qualified in decency and gentility, but this class is now very small and its members have few successors.
During the cotton hoeing season in the spring, and the cotton picking season, many of the house servants go to the field for better wages, and because they like the work better, and this adds to their inefficiency in the house. The chief reason, however, why the domestic servants get so little training is this: they change so often and are occasionally employed by women who themselves are untidy housekeepers; and then, no woman cares to train a servant when she expects that servant to leave in a few months. The housekeepers say it does not pay to train their domestics for some other housekeeper's benefit. The domestic servants are awkward and bungling in their work, untidy, often filthy, have no management, are wasteful, and have little care to please their employers.
We come now to what every one of these colored cooks is an adept in. She understands remarkably well how to feed several other negroes from her employer's table. No matter how carefully the mistress of the house carries the keys, the cook will feed her husband, or children, or neighbors. It seems to be a part of her social duty; she carries off everything from the table that is not locked up. When much care is taken to put away the leavings, the table will become a little scarce in provisions, the coffee weak, and there will be barely enough to go round. But the employers are usually very liberal in allowing all the leavings to disappear, and after every meal the cook will be seen going off with a large pan or basket covered with a napkin.
Some house servants are addicted to enriching, by slow degrees, their own tableware from their employer's, but this is not very common, and still less common is the habit of stealing other valuables from the house, such as jewelry, clothing, and so on. In fact, I will say such theft is rare.
After all, there is a clever feeling usually between the housewife and her servants with all their faults. No other class of delinquents in the world is looked on with so much kind indulgence as these colored domestics.
But we must face the facts, and the fact is that in another twenty years colored domestics will be scarce and as worthless as scarce.
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by Randle, Edwin Henderson, 1830-
Publication date 1910
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CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE SOUTHERN NEGRO
By
E. H. RANDLE, A. M., LL. D.
New York and Washington
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1910
+ + + + + + + + +
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
To Mrs. Ella Roberts Randle, my wife, who has been
a present help and an inspiration to me, this
volume is affectionately dedicated
+ + + + + + + + +
CONTENTS
+ + + + + + + + +
CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE SOUTHERN NEGRO
By
E. H. RANDLE, A. M., LL. D.
New York and Washington
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1910
+ + + + + + + + +
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
To Mrs. Ella Roberts Randle, my wife, who has been
a present help and an inspiration to me, this
volume is affectionately dedicated
+ + + + + + + + +
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. CONDITIONS AND CHANGES IN FREEDOM
II. SOME AFRICAN TRIBES
III. THE NEGRO CONSUMES MORE THAN HE EARNS
IV. THE IMPROVIDENCE OF THE NEGRO
V. THE HISTORIC NEGRO
VI. CHANGES WROUGHT IN THE NEGRO BY HIS FREEDOM
VII. WANT OF INVENTIVE POWERS AND MECHANICAL SKILL THE CROWDING-OUT PROCESS
VIII. THE NEGRO THE MOST CONTENTED OF ALL RACES
IX. THE NEGRO LIVES IN THE PRESENT
X. THE ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE FOLLY
XI. THE CARPETBAGGERS AND RIOTS
XII. A NEGRO AUDIENCE
XIII. SINGING, CORNSHUCKINGS, AND RELIGIOUS REVIVALS
XIV. PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE
XV. MISCEGENATION AND MIXED RACES
+ + + + + + + + +
THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO
CHAPTER I
CONDITIONS AND CHANGES IN FREEDOM
THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO
CHAPTER I
CONDITIONS AND CHANGES IN FREEDOM
It is strange how knowingly people who have but a glancing acquaintance with the negroes of the South, can write up their character. Various prominent writers from the North occasionally come South, visit Booker T. Washington, Bishop Cottrell, a colored bishop, and a few others, and then write glowing accounts of the progress and development of the negroes. Their reports remind me of some of the reports of our early missionaries to Africa, who, in their zeal, gave most encouraging statements of the spread of the Gospel amongst the benighted negroes, and afterward the results of their labors could no more be traced than could their tracks in the desert sands.
In the North American Review of June, 1908, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, one of America's strongest thinkers, wrote most knowingly and unlearnedly about the wonderful progress of the Southern negroes. Such writers of judgment do the South a great injury without being aware of it. It is like learned preachers, who, without a knowledge of science, try to discredit the teachings of geology by the Scriptures; or like Haeckel, Huxley and others trying to prove by chemistry that the Christian religion is false—that Christ was a man and not a god. If Mr. Carnegie will come South, lease a large plantation in the Delta and try farming a few years with free negro labor, it will knock all his philosophy and preconceived notions into invisible vapor, and will send his philanthropy for the negro beyond the perpetual snow line. Our Northern friends know as little how to make allowance for the negro after they have tried him, as they know how to write up his character before they try him.
The Southern planters who have had long acquaintance and dealings with all kinds and varieties of negroes,—no picked few or specialized class,—both before the war and since, certainly ought to be the best judges of negro character.
All that I shall write about the character and habits of the negro has been gathered from these planters, with a few of my own observations thrown in. As to my own qualifications, I will add that I was raised among negroes, in a section where the two races were about equally divided; inherited negroes, was brought up among them; I played with them, fought with them, worked with them, but never slept or ate with them.
In my boyhood I often spent a day or night with some neighbor boy, and as white boys in those days were fond of going out to the cabins to hear the negroes talk. I, like the others, saw into a great many negro cabins and had good opportunities for studying negro character and habits. In those days most of the negroes had more liberty without freedom than they now have with freedom.
In studying the race question we must not forget some psychical and physical differences. The mind of the white man does not attain its full growth till about five to ten years after the full growth of the body, while the mind of the negro matures several years sooner than his body. There seems to be much less difference in the mental capacity of the children of the two races than there is in the adults; but, before the twenties are reached, the breach begins to widen, and continues to widen fifteen or more years, and then continues after maturity of capacity to widen by training and in information. By maturity we mean the cessation of the growth of capacity for improvement. But the mind and body both may be greatly strengthened by training after maturity, as the scholar improves his mind, and the athlete, his body.
Mr. Winwood Read, a distinguished African traveler, gives the following physical description of the negro:
"His skin is very black, excepting the palms and soles of his feet, which are of a dirty yellow. In them the coloring matter has been removed by friction; it can, however, be always traced in the deep lines of the hand. It appears to be most abundant on the knuckles, the knees, and the elbow joints.
"The skin is very thick, especially on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. Touch these, and they feel like wood. A negro will take up a live coal in his hand and light his pipe with it without suffering pain. But, with the exception of these parts, the skin of the negro is peculiarly smooth. It can only be compared to fine black velvet.
"The hair of the typical negro is short and crisp, and closely resembles wool.
"The forehead is low and compressed; the nose flat; the lips thick and brutal; the mouth projecting, presents the appearance of a muzzle. As in the lower animals, the brain retreats to the back of the head, and the organ of gluttony becomes the character of the face.
"The heel is flat and long; the ankle is raised only from one and one-eighth to one and one-half inches above the ground. The toes are small, and, as in the apes, the great toe is separated from the others by a wide space.
"The foot is often used by the negro as a hand. The natives of equatorial Africa do not climb a tree, as we do, by 'swarming,' but by clasping them with their feet. The natives of the Gambia, when fishing, hold their line between the great toe and the next. When a Kru-man is sewing anything he holds his work between his toes. And the Wollofs will frequently steal articles with their feet.
"The virile member is much larger than is found in Europeans, excepting in those who are idiotic. It is one of the chief seats of color. When the negro child is born it has a black ring around the virile member; a reddish mark on the nail, and another in the corner of the eye. These are the last signs also by which a negro descendant can be distinguished.
"According to some writers, the same secretion forms the beard and propagates the human species. The negro seldom has any hair upon his face; it is rarely abundant, and he rarely has a great number of children. There is also a peculiarity in his voice by which it can be distinguished. It is not unlike that of a eunuch.
"The stature of the negro is stunted; the knees are bent; the calves weak; the upper part of the thigh is thin; the head large and sunk between the shoulders; and the whole form angular and badly shaped.
"The skull is extremely thick. If a negro wishes to break a thick stick, he does not break it across his knee, as we do, but across his head. The power of his skull in resisting a blow is something marvelous. When I was in the Senegal, I saw a most remarkable case at the military hospital, St. Louis. A Wollof soldier, in the French service, had been shot at from a distance of fifteen yards. The ball struck the os frontis and had flattened against it as if it had struck a stone wall.[1] ...
"It has been discovered by Iruner Beaj, Gratiold, Waitz, and other eminent anatomists that there exist internal differences equally as significant; that the blood and bile, and, according to some, the semen, is different from that of the Europeans; that in the skeleton, the bones are larger, whiter and thicker; that the growth of the brain in the negro, as in the ape, is sooner arrested than in those of our race;[2] that its convolutions are less numerous and more massive; that its gray substance is of a darker color; that the brain itself is of a smoky tint, and that the pia mater contains brown spots, which are never found in the brain of the European.
"Therefore, in the muzzle-like extension of the jaws, in the manual application of the foot, and in the early cessation of the brain-growth, the negro, speaking physically, approaches the ape.
"In his flattened nose, elongated cranium, simplicity of cerebral convolutions, rounded larynx, and less strongly marked curves of the vertical column, the negro approaches the child; for all these are found in the foetus of the child of the Aryan race in its different periods of development.
"And in the curvature of his arteries, in the flatness of his cornea, in the fulness of his muscles, in his general lack of enthusiasm, and love of repose, the negro presents the characteristics of old age.
"Thus it has been proven by measurements, by microscopes, by analysis, that the negro is something between a child, a dotard, and a beast. I cannot struggle against the sacred facts of science. But I contend that it is only degradation; that it is a disease; that it is not characteristic of the African continent, and that it is confined only to a small geographical area."[3]
These statements have not been denied by the ethnologists and biologists of the scientific world, but have been generally assented to.
To be fair with Mr. Read, I must say he did not describe the typical negro, but a class below the highest type of the negro race. As to the extent of the area, it is no small portion of the west coast of Africa. Fully half of Africa, the northern half, is inhabited by the Aryan race, or of races whose blood is mixed with a strong infusion of Aryan blood. Mr. Read believes in the unity of the human race.
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[1] I am able to vouch for the truth of the story.
[2] This is in accordance with what I have said about the maturity of the mind.
[3] "Savage Africa," by Winwood Read, p. 397.
CHAPTER II
SOME AFRICAN TRIBES
SOME AFRICAN TRIBES
That we may better understand the Southern negro, we will give a short chapter on a few of the leading tribes of Africa, from the highest to the lowest.
We now approach a singular phase in ethnology, or rather in the relational appearance of the negro to the white man—a fact which denies that the negro and the Aryan are of the same original or Adamic origin.
If the Ovambos, the Damaras, the Fans, the Hottentots are degenerate Zulus, it is singular, that in proportion as they are degenerate they are found of lighter color and of a greater resemblance to the white man. In all domestic species, as I have shown in another work, loss of color is one of the first signs of degenerate variation, so these lower tribes must have lost color in their evolution downward from the Zulu. The tribes below the Zulus occupy largely more than nine-tenths of negro Africa. We must judge from this that the negro race in Africa is traveling to extinction.
The Zulus or Kaffirs "are darker than these lighter colored tribes, but not so black as the negroes of the West Coast. Their hair is crisp, short and curled, but not so woolly as that of the negro (of the West Coast); their lips, though large when compared with those of the Europeans, are small when compared with those of the negro.[4] Their form is finely modeled, their stature tall, their limbs straight, their forehead high, their expression intelligent, and altogether this group of mankind affords as fine examples of the human form as can be found anywhere on the earth."
The Zulus seem to be of a less variable type than the other tribes. Great variations among individuals of any species, whether in form, color, or habits, is a sign of degeneracy.
The Tonga, the Bechuana, the Ovambo, the Namequa, and some others, are classified by some with the Zulus; but they are lighter in color and resemble the European much more than the Zulus do.
The Bechuanas: "The Bechuana character is frank and sociable, which, however, does not arise from a benevolent disposition. They are exceedingly vindictive and revengeful, but easily propitiated with gifts. From the king to the slave, theft is a peculiar vice. The women are tenacious of their toilet, appearing to prefer the garb of Mother Eve. They are masculine, short, stout, and clumsy. They have little regard for human life. A husband may kill his wife if he likes, without any particular notice being taken of it."[5]
The Bechuanas have no notion of a superior being. "I have often wished," says Mr. Moffat, "I could find something by which I could lay hold on the minds of the natives; an altar to the unknown God, the faith of their ancestors, the immortality of any association, but nothing of the kind ever floated through their minds. They looked upon the sun with the eye of an ox."[6]
These stand about next to the Zulus. We have descriptive evidence from many reliable authors that the following tribes differ in appearance from the Zulus in an approach to the Europeans, though none of these authors noted this fact. They are all lighter in color; some, the color nearly of a ripe plum, some a sort of dark milk-and-coffee color, etc., those of the smallest hands and feet being lighter in color and of less vigor. They are the Ovambos, the Demaras, the Makololos, the Wagogos, the Neam Nams, the Fans, and some others. The lighter colored ones are generally nearer the equator. Not many of any of these tribes, I think, were brought to America, yet we see some representatives of them. We sometimes are mistaken when we judge a negro to have a tinge of white blood. It is one from some of these tribes.
The Hottentots: Having now come to such low grades, near the bottom, we must note more closely.
Neither in color nor in general aspects do the Hottentots resemble the dark races around them. Their complexion is sallow and much like that of a very dark person suffering from jaundice. Indeed the complexion of the Hottentot much resembles that of the Chinese.
In shape, the Hottentots alter strangely according to age. When children they are not agreeable objects; if tolerably well fed, they lose their strange shape when they approach the period of youth; and as young men and girls they are almost perfect in form, though thin faces are not entitled to as much praise. But they do not retain this beauty of form for any long period, some few years generally comprehending the beginning and the end. "In five or six years after their arrival at womanhood," writes Burchell, "the fresh plumpness of youth gives way to the wrinkles of age, and unless viewed with an eye of commiseration and philanthropy, we would be inclined to pronounce them the most disgusting of human beings." The existence of this light-colored race in such a locality affords proof that complexion is not entirely by climate. These and other pale-skinned tribes live close to the tropics, while the Esquimaux, who live amid eternal ice, are often so dark they might almost be mistaken for negroes.
"Unlike the Kaffirs, who are the most superstitious of mankind, the Hottentots are entirely free from superstition, as they have not the least conception whatever of any religious sentiment. The world forms the limit of all their ideas, and they seem, so far as is known, equally ignorant of a creator and the immortality of the soul" (Wood). In this respect they are on a level with the beast, sunken too low even to be superstitious.
The Bosjemens: The Bosjemens, or Bushmen, have no language to express God, spirit, immortality, a life beyond the grave, or any superstitious belief. They have no traces of a lost civilization—nor have any of the negro tribes of Africa. They abandon their parents when old, and instruction and moralizing to them is as ineffectual as teaching monkeys to draw portraits. Haeckel of Jena uses them as a connecting link between the apes and man.
I will not describe the Obongos or Pigmies, as the slave stealers would not have them.
The West Coast Africans: These are the ones Mr. Winwood Read described as the typical negro, so we will have little else to say of them. They are the blackest of all negroes, large, strong, and capable of great endurance, and the most indifferent to suffering of human beings, hence they are cruel in proportion; this is as much because they are but little sensitive to suffering themselves; sympathy of any kind is almost as absent from their nature as color is from their skin.
Mr. Read, I think, degrades their strength and endurance a little lower than others do. We see frequent specimens of these West Coast negroes in America. We can distinguish them by their coal blackness, stout frames, and coarse features.
Graded in the scale of negroes they are below the Zulus, Ovambos, Bechuanas and the Damaras, and perhaps some others we have mentioned, but scarcely below some of these, and they are farther above the Hottentots than they are below the Zulus. They much less resemble the Europeans than the Zulus do, while the other degenerate tribes resemble the Europeans more than do the Zulus.
We have now given most of the tribes from which the American slaves derive their origin. They are so mixed up that we can now definitely trace but few individuals. We oftener see examples of the West Coast African than of the others. The characteristics of these African negroes will help us to understand the American negro.
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[4] Mr. Read does not class the Zulus with the negro. He strangely considers the inhabitants of the West Coast alone as true negroes.
[5] Anderson, p. 450.
[6] Anderson, p. 339.
CHAPTER III
THE NEGRO CONSUMES MORE THAN HE EARNS
THE NEGRO CONSUMES MORE THAN HE EARNS
We are of the opinion that the negro consumes more than he earns, and that the difference is increasing.
For a few years after the war the farmers made some money, for the negroes were, at that time, not far from their training and habits; and while they did not work so well as they did in slavery, they worked better than they have at any time since. In the nineties I asked numerous planters who had had much to do with negro farm laborers, both before emancipation and after, the following question: Have the negroes in the upland counties produced as much as they have consumed since the war? The uniform answer was, "They have not." But the answers varied as to how much they lacked. A few planters said they had not made enough, upon an average, to pay land rents. The average answer was, "They have made a living and paid half rents for their lands." To make a living with rents half free, is consuming more than they produce. As an evidence of this, the value of uplands fell to about half price.
Another evidence of this: The sections where there are the most negroes are the least prosperous. Compare Marshall County, Mississippi, with Henry County, Tennessee. Before the war, the people of Marshall were prosperous and were rapidly accumulating, and the negro population was, I judge, about double the white inhabitants. The people of Henry County were industrious and slowly accumulating property. Both were early settled counties. Marshall County was worth, I judge, about five times what Henry was. Now, Marshall is left far in the rear, and Henry has shot out well in advance. We cannot account for this in any other way than that negro labor is consuming more than it is producing. I could give many other illustrations, showing the fewer the negroes, the greater the prosperity. Making, of course, proper allowance for the difference in the quality of the lands.
We must not compare the rich alluvial lands of the Yazoo Delta, where there are ten negroes to one white person, with the impoverished ridges along the Tennessee River in Tennessee, where there are fifty white men to one negro, and where poverty reigns in log cabins. Wherever there are few negroes in good upland counties there is enterprise and progress; and where there are many negroes in such counties, there is retrogress.
The farmers will tell you that a very large majority of the colored race is in debt to the white race and that with not the slightest prospects of ever paying. The white people would be well off if they only had what is due them from the negroes. I know many large farms that were entirely consumed by the tenants during the first twenty or thirty years and were sold out and left destitute.
Many of the most successful farmers before the sixties, found themselves unable, after the war, to make a living with free labor on large plantations, but the laborers on the farm got their living. I will narrate a single case well known. Mr. H. tried to farm on a large and well-ordered plantation of his own, a farm on which he had formerly realized handsome profits. The first year he came out in debt, the second year, still deeper in debt. He then called up his oldest son, a young man of energy and good habits, and said to him, "If I run the farm a few more years it will require the sale of the farm to pay our debts. I now turn over the entire management of the farm to you; I have made a failure. I have no advice to give. Trust your own judgment." The young man took the lead and did well. He is now an old man and is still prosperous.
I have often heard the remark that the owners of negroes before the war were usually unsuccessful farmers with free negro laborers, and the saying seems to be true. The chief cause of it was that they trusted the negroes too much. In crop gathering time, when a hand would foresee that he would have nothing at the end—that he had already consumed all that would be due him, he would leave and hire out to some other man. In this way the planter would not only lose the labor, but sometimes the part of the crop the hand had deserted. For hands in crop gathering are scarce and it is often a question with a planter how to secure enough labor to gather his cotton.
I am aware that statistics show that wealth, in large quantities, is acquired by negroes, and I know a few scattered negroes—mostly mulattos—commenced accumulating from the beginning. It would be a sad comment, indeed, if none of them had acquired property. Great wonder is made that the negroes of Georgia now own fifty million dollars' worth of property. Doubtless half of this belongs to men whose blood is tinged with a Caucasian streak, but we cannot attribute such wealth to negro energy any more than to the energy infused by his Caucasian blood.
Wholesale numbers look large. There are about one million of negroes in Mississippi. Suppose one in one hundred of these had saved five thousand dollars, that would make fifty million for the negroes of Mississippi. The fact is the great body of the negroes have little or nothing, and are getting less reliable as laborers every year. Within the last decade, or rather since the country recovered from the shock of '93, negroes have shown a tendency to buy homes, and a larger per cent. are now self-sustaining and prosperous than at any previous time, and a larger per cent. are utterly worthless.
Before the war an able-bodied negro in north Mississippi would hire out for $200 to $250 a year, and his board and clothes. Now he does well to get half that and his board. This is the difference between slave labor and free colored labor.
The colored women usually make their own living, but, like the men, only at about half the wages paid before the war. For some years they did full half work; now they rarely perform more than one-fourth the amount of labor that they did in slavery. For a family of two or three persons, the wages range in the country villages from four to seven dollars a month and table board. The cooks and housemaids greatly prefer to live in their own rented cabin off to themselves, and occasionally they own the cabin. As they generally refuse to do any work outside of the kitchen and dining-room, with a small family they have several hours in the forenoon and nearly all the afternoon to themselves. A brisk white cook in a Northern city performs fully five times the labor that one of these dusky ones does in the South. The cook knows that if she is turned off she can get another job in twenty-four hours, and if a little extra work is put on her, she will quit and try another place. A majority of the white women in the South do their own work, even many of the wealthy women, but there are numbers of delicate or invalid women unequal to the task, and this keeps up the demand for house servants.
A little farther north, in Tennessee and Kentucky, where there are not so many negroes, very few ladies have house servants of any kind. Some of our nicest ladies refuse to employ colored house servants at all because they can not train them away from filth—can not train them to be decent. Twenty years ago there were quite a number of old well-trained house servants, well qualified in decency and gentility, but this class is now very small and its members have few successors.
During the cotton hoeing season in the spring, and the cotton picking season, many of the house servants go to the field for better wages, and because they like the work better, and this adds to their inefficiency in the house. The chief reason, however, why the domestic servants get so little training is this: they change so often and are occasionally employed by women who themselves are untidy housekeepers; and then, no woman cares to train a servant when she expects that servant to leave in a few months. The housekeepers say it does not pay to train their domestics for some other housekeeper's benefit. The domestic servants are awkward and bungling in their work, untidy, often filthy, have no management, are wasteful, and have little care to please their employers.
We come now to what every one of these colored cooks is an adept in. She understands remarkably well how to feed several other negroes from her employer's table. No matter how carefully the mistress of the house carries the keys, the cook will feed her husband, or children, or neighbors. It seems to be a part of her social duty; she carries off everything from the table that is not locked up. When much care is taken to put away the leavings, the table will become a little scarce in provisions, the coffee weak, and there will be barely enough to go round. But the employers are usually very liberal in allowing all the leavings to disappear, and after every meal the cook will be seen going off with a large pan or basket covered with a napkin.
Some house servants are addicted to enriching, by slow degrees, their own tableware from their employer's, but this is not very common, and still less common is the habit of stealing other valuables from the house, such as jewelry, clothing, and so on. In fact, I will say such theft is rare.
After all, there is a clever feeling usually between the housewife and her servants with all their faults. No other class of delinquents in the world is looked on with so much kind indulgence as these colored domestics.
But we must face the facts, and the fact is that in another twenty years colored domestics will be scarce and as worthless as scarce.
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