league for colored people. In Uniontown, Alabama, the Presbyterian white women have been visiting Negro homes and reading the Bible to the colored sick and aged.*

The Southern Baptist women have carried on a number of industrial schools for colored children in Baltimore." In Texas and other states. they cooperate with the colored people in missionary programs.

The women of the Episcopal Church aid, in various ways, the work of the General Board of Missions of their church in the support of parish schools for Negroes."

Student conferences attended by both white and colored women are held annually in the South under the auspices of the Y. W. C. A.'

The Southern club women concern themselves with nearly every phase of social welfare and their work has brought them into frequent contact and coöperation with the colored people. In their programs of civic betterment they have found the colored women ever ready to cooperate. The women of the two races have often worked jointly in campaigns for cleaning streets and alleys, for removing resorts of vice, and for other civic improvements.

The club women of Baltimore have a committee on work for colored people, and employ as secretary a trained colored woman who is a graduate of Hampton. The committee concerns itself with health, housing, school attendance, and other interests of the Negro population. Among other things it supports a day nursery. In Mississippi the white club women frequently go to Negro schools and give health talks. In Alabama the federated club women support a colored farm demonstrator and a colored woman to organize canning clubs. In Georgia the club women support moonlight schools to eradicate illiteracy among both races,10 and pay the salary of an organizer of Junior Leagues in the public schools of both races. In Jacksonville, Florida, the club women employ four public nurses for the colored districts."1

11

The club women of Atlanta have conducted a cooking school for colored women and girls, intended for colored home-makers, and not for training cooks for white people.

4

Hammond, Southern Women and Racial Adjustment, p. 13.

In Augusta, Georgia, the club women have interested themselves in a reformatory for colored children, playgrounds, sanitation, etcetera.

Several years ago the women of Birmingham put on a campaign to clean up the Negro slums and the public interest aroused in the matter led the city to erect there a $60,000 industrial school which has transformed the entire neighborhood.

CHAPTER 69

RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

Necessity for Effective Coöperation of Inter-Racial Understanding on the Social Question-Variations of the Color Line under Different Conditions of Race Contact The Natural Tendency of Unlike Races to Live Apart-Contrast Between the Northern and Southern Negroes on the Social QuestionTighter Drawing of the Color Line Resulting from Agitation against ItHope of Mutual Understanding on the Social Question and of Increasing Inter-Racial Coöperation.

THE

HE first step in the direction of effective coöperation is to arrive at a mutual understanding upon the fundamental question of racial relationships about which there is at present a great amount of confusion and misunderstanding.

The extent of racial contact varies with the varying ratio of Negroes to whites in each state. In consequence of these varying extents of contact the customs and conventions governing race relations are more or less different in each locality. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that whites and blacks in different sections of our country have different ideas as to what the race relationships should be.

Let us now analyze these different customs and conventions in the different geographical areas and see if we can discover in them some underlying principle which the whites and blacks might agree upon as a basis of racial adjustment for all localities.

To begin with let us take an example of a community of white people where there is no color line in public places.

Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor, a colored man, while living in Atlanta, Georgia, went on a trip to the Holy Land and, in writing an account of this trip, said: "I was again surprised when I found difficulty in securing passage with touring parties on account of race prejudice, although I applied to companies in Boston as well as in New York. The problem was solved by the purchase of an independent ticket...

"After the difficulty in securing my passage I presumed I would be ill-treated on shipboard. Contrary to this I was treated with the highest courtesy from the captain to the humblest steward on ship

board during the twenty-nine days I sailed on the Franconia. I sat at the captain's table, and a French woman sat on one side of me and a German on the other.

"I wondered before leaving if I should not get lonely for people of my own color. To my surprise I saw colored people everywhere. I saw a young colored man playing on the gambling tables at Monte Carlo. One sees people of all colors in Cairo. The man who drove my carriage to the Jordan was jet black. The priest presiding at the Greek church in Tiberias was of pure ebony. I met a colored man from Virginia in Geneva. There were many colored people in Belgium. Tall black men stood at the doors of the beer gardens in Berlin. Colored people are plentiful in Paris. They seem to be at home in London. Since three-fourths of mankind belong to the colored races it ought not to be surprising to find colored people all over the world. As a matter of fact I was often taken for an American Indian, an East Indian, an Egyptian, and what not.

"Although I did find colored people everywhere, I found the color line nowhere. As the skyline of New York faded out the color line faded with it. I traveled for fifteen thousand miles in the Old World and I saw nothing of racial discrimination during that time. On the other hand my color was an attraction, instead of a detraction. At Corfu, Greece, I was mistaken for a king, being the only colored man on board." 1

Now, since the Rev. Mr. Proctor found no color line in England, should he conclude that the Englishman is a superior type of white man who has risen above color prejudice? On a moment's reflection he would be obliged to answer in the negative, for he would recall the fact that where native Englishmen came in contact with large masses of colored people as in Australia, South Africa, or Jamaica, the color line is drawn there just as it is in Georgia. By inquiry he would learn that a Chinaman boarding a British liner for his native country would have to pay double price, for the reason that the state-rooms accommodate two persons and no Englishman will occupy a room with a Chinaman.

If colored men were as rare in the Southern United States as in England or Continental Europe, and if Reverend Mr. Proctor were touring the South, would he not be able to write back to his people in New York and tell them that he found no color line in public places and that his color was an attraction instead of a detraction?

1 Proctor, Between Black and White, pp. 145-6.

In New York, where Reverend Mr. Proctor now lives, he finds that the colored people are not segregated to the same extent as in Georgia, that there are no separate schools, or jim-crow railway or street cars. Yet he is too intelligent a man to suppose that this difference is due to anything more than the fact that the Negro population in New York is relatively smaller than in Georgia.

If he were acquainted with the history of New York he would know that the color line was drawn in New York city as in any Southern community when in 1740 the Negroes constituted a considerable proportion of the population.

These facts ought to suggest the truth that the reaction of the white man to the colored man is about the same everywhere under similar conditions of contact.

Everywhere in the United States the white people draw the color line to whatever extent is practicable to avoid an undesirable frequency or intimacy of contact, and nowhere is there any free intermingling of whites and blacks except in dens of vice.

A general recognition of the fact that the attitude of the white people toward racial intermingling is substantially the same in all of the states would go a long way toward terminating a discussion which serves only to inflame the passions of both races.

The second step in the direction of effective inter-racial coöperation is to arrive at an understanding as to why there is a color line between the whites and blacks in the United States or elsewhere.

I think the colored people generally have a very wrong idea of the reason for this color line. They are aware of the fact that their race as a whole is yet backward in culture, and that many white people display a contempt for any man with a dark skin. They, therefore, conclude that the white people draw the color line only because they believe the Negro race to be an inferior one. In Chapter 54 I have tried to make plain that the extent of social intermingling between races depends primarily upon their degree of visible likeness, and not upon their natural capacity or their culture.

Races in contact which differ in any marked degree tend to keep themselves socially apart for reasons which are no discredit to them, and which grow out of their consciousness of kind and their natural and ineradicable preference for intimate association with their own kind. The feeling of likeness which draws the members of a race together results in a racial tradition and a pride of achievement which