CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON SHOULD EXTEND TO LIBERIA.

Among the 1,666,799 people of mixed blood there is only one Booker T. Washington. Several others have risen to some degree of fame, for which they deserve credit, but none of them have ever approached him in genius, skill, or practical knowledge. This he has inherited from his white father. Compared to some of the presidents of our leading universities, such as Charles Eliot of Harvard, Woodrow Wilson of Princeton, J. G. Schurman of Cornell, Cyrus Northrop of Minnesota, E. Benjamin Andrews of Nebraska, and David Starr Jordon of Leland Stanford, he is at the foot of the list.

He is, however, an exception to his race. He established and maintains the best negro school in the world. Unfortunately, he cannot reach the masses of his people. Great men may be picked from almost every race. An example of this was illustrated by Mr. V. K. Wellington Koo, a Chinese student of Columbia University, who on February 28, 1908, debated with the Columbia team against Cornell and was instrumental in winning the debate.

Mr. Washington is shrewd enough to employ as instructors in his school only those who have a large proportion of white blood. His secretary, Emmett J. Scott; treasurer, Warren Logan, and other members of the faculty possess apparently only a trace of negro blood. These men Mr. Washington has selected from the best of the negro race in America, and they are doing all in their power to uplift the remainder of their race. In their best efforts, however, they are obviously far below the standard of the whites in education, as in other things. I will give two examples to illustrate this fact.

At the Nebraska State University, where I attended from 1900 to 1904, I became acquainted with a negro who recited in one of my classes three days of the week for one semister. He was one of the most polite boys I ever met, and was highly respected. But he failed in many of his examinations, and was a poor student in every branch of work. He went to Tuskegee and taught there for a time and with apparent success. In answer to my inquiry regarding his work, Mr. Washington wrote: "Mr. of Nebraska, did very creditable work in

our English department."

At the Kansas State Agricultural College, where I was instructing in 1905 and 1906, I was obliged to flunk a colored boy who simply couldn't grasp enough of the subject to get a passing mark. Three months after this examination he had charge of a branch of the same work at Tuskegee Institute. These boys, although below the average white student, are capable of teaching the average of their race as much as the latter are capable of learning, and we will not discredit the good work they are doing.

Booker T. Washington, as the leader of his race, has more influence upon the negroes than any other man. The educated class of his race in the United States look to him for advice on all matters of importance. In almost every respect his advice and instruction is of a high order. On one topic, however, he differs from many other students of the race question. He tells them: "We are here to stay; we are not going to colonize in Cuba, Liberia, or any place else, but we'll stay right here." Mr. Washington's work is one of noble aims and should not be limited to the United States. A branch of it should be established in Liberia.

He could induce hundreds of his graduates and those of other negro schools to go over there and teach their relatives who have never had the advantages of civilization.

Henry M. Stanley says there is space enough in one section of the Upper Congo basin to locate double the number of negroes of the United States, without disturbing a single tribe of the aborigines now inhabiting it.

George W. Williams, an educated mulatto, has written a very commendable history of the negro, in which he states: "The negroes with whom the slavers were supplied represent the dangerous, the destitute, the diseased classes of African society. Pathologically he is weak, sickly, and short-lived. His legs are slender almost to calfless; the head is developed in the direction of passion, while the whole form is destitute of symmetry. He spends his days in sloth and his nights in debauchery. He smokes hashish until he stupefies his senses or falls into convulsions; he drinks palm wine till he brings on a loathsome disease; he abuses his children; stabs his poor brute of a wife, whose hands keep him from starvation, and makes a trade of his offspring; he swallows up his youth in premature vice; he lingers through a manhood of disease, and his tardy death is hastened by those who no longer care to find him food."

With such conditions existing in his native country, where so much missionary work is needed, America would like to see Booker T. Washington plant a colony and start a school ever there.

Occasionally he has a few native Africans in school at Tuskegee who are being educated to go back as missionaries, but the American-born negro he retains within the borders of Continental United States.

I never saw a negro who showed any patriotism for his fatherland, however, and but few who display much patriotism to the United States. We have seen from the degree of patriotism they displayed in the reconstruction days in the South that as a race they are entirely incapable of executive ability in Anglo-Saxon governmental affairs. They may be capable after all these years of contact with the latter race to govern themselves if colonized with mulattoes as their leaders, for it must be remembered that the darkest American negro is far superior to the native African.

Then those who are complaining about ill-treatment at the polls may vote without being molested.

The subject of increase in crime among negroes has been discussed under previous heads. Suffice it to say, however, that when a race of people in their stage of development are placed by law on a social and legal equality with another race so far in advance of them as is the Anglo-Saxon, and then suppressed by the superior race in opposition to that law, their vicious traits are naturally brought out. As long as this social condition exists we can expect nothing else.

CHAPTER XI.

TWO FACTIONS AMONG THE Negroes oF THE UNITED STATES.

In the South the most intelligent and most educated negroes are, generally speaking, the leaders of their race, but in northern cities some of the ablest negroes will have nothing to do with the masses of their own people or with racial movements; they hold themselves aloof, asserting that there is no color line, and if there is, there should not be. Their business and their associations are largely with white people, and they cling passionately to the maintenance of such relationship.

In the South a general setting apart of negroes as such is being effected on an immeasurably wider scale. By disfranchisement they are being separated politically, the "Jim Crow" laws set them apart socially and physically, and the hostility of white labor in some callings pushes them aside in industrial activities. But the South presents no such striking contrasts as the North, because no southern negroes were ever accorded a high degree of citizenship by the whites of that section.

Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, is not a leader of men, as is Booker T. Washington. He is rather a promulgator of ideas. While Washington is building a great educational institution and organizing the practical activities of the race, DuBois is the lonely critic holding up ideals. DuBois is the foremost of an dement in the negro race who claim equal rights socially, politically, and in every other respect. Booker T. Washington is the leader of the more progressive element who are following the advice of the southern whites and allowing industry to take precedence of politics and discrimination.

Mr. William M. Trotter, the mulatto editor of the Boston Guardian, and a follower of the DuBois doctrine, violently denounces Booker T. Washington, and President Roosevelt. This paper advises the North to again take up arms against the South to punish them for their position on the negro question. It breathes a spirit of prejudice. He denounces Washington as a "Jim Crowist," and President Roosevelt on account of his action regarding the Brownsville riot.

Three years ago Mr. Washington went to Boston to address a colored audience in Zion Church of that city. Mr. Trotter and his friends scattered cayenne pepper on the rostrum and created such a disturbance that the meeting broke up. Mr. Trotter went to jail for the offense.

The majority of the negro newspapers of the country, chief of which is the New York Age, are supporters of Booker T. Washington and his ideals.

The Astor House, a negro hotel, which is operated by negroes for negro guests, has 200 rooms, with a telephone in each, a restaurant, and other accommodations. Many of the colored people of the city are opposed to this, because they think, as one negro expressed it, "The colored man must not draw the line himself if he don't want the white man to."

A white woman sought to establish a help and rescue mission in Boston for colored girls similar to those conducted for Jews, Italians, and other nationalities in various cities of the country, and was violently opposed on the ground that it set up a precedent for color discrimination.

A colored cigar manufacturer of St. Louis says he has the hardest time to get a few dealers of his own race to handle his goods.

There are also several very good negro restaurants in St. Louis, but twice as many negroes patronize white restaurants and lunch counters of those vicinities to avoid color discrimination.

Everything that tends to separate the negro from the white is opposed by this element among the colored people.

They fought the Jamestown Exposition because it had a Negro Building, which they called the "Jim Crow Annex." They fought the National Christian Endeavor Convention because the leaders could not assure negro delegates exactly equal facilities in the hotels and res

taurants.

This element seems to be growing, although there are in mixed schools in the North occasional requests by negroes for separate schools. With the increasing number of negro students, prejudice has increased in the Chicago medical schools, until recently some of them. have, by agreement, been closed to colored graduate students.