New England Magazine (March 1904) Vol 30, new series. pp. 14-21. Accessed via HathiTrust: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015023262580

Darkest America

Kelly Miller

There is much speculation as to the ultimate destiny of the Negro population in the United States. History furnishes no exact or approximate parallel. When widely dissimilar races are thrown in intimate contact, it is inevitable that either extermination, expulsion, amalgamation, or the continuance of separate racial types will be the outcome. So far as the present problem is concerned, extermination and expulsion have few serious advocates, while amalgamation has no courageous ones. The consensus of opinion seems to be that the two races will preserve their separate identity as co- inhabitants of the same territory. The main contention is as to the mode of adjustment, whether it shall be the co- ordination or subordination of the African.

All profitable speculation upon sociological problems must be based upon definitely ascertained social tendencies. It is impossible to forecast coming events unless we stand within the pale of their shadow. The Weather Bureau at Washington, discerning the signs of air and cloud and sky, makes probable predictions of sunshine or storm. Such predictions are not for the purpose of enabling us to affect or modify approaching events, but to put ourselves and our affairs in harmony with them. Sociological events have the inevitableness of natural law, against which speculations and prophecies are as unavailing as against the coming of wind and tide. Prescient wisdom is serviceable only in so far as it enables us to put ourselves in harmony with foreknown conditions. Plans and policies for the solution of the race problem should be based upon as full a knowledge of the facts and factors of the situation as it is possible to gain, and should be in line with the trend of forces which it is impossible to subvert. Social tendencies, like natural laws, are not affected by quackery and patent nostrums. Certain of our sociological statesmen are assuming intimate knowledge of the eternal decrees, and are graciously volunteering their assistance to Providence. They are telling us, with the assurance of inspiration, of the destiny which lies in store for the black man. It is noticeable, however, that those who affect such familiarity with the plans and purposes of Providence are not usually men of deep knowledge or devout spirit. The prophets of evil seem to derive their inspiration from hate rather than love. In olden times when God communicated with man from burning bush and on mountain top, He selected men of lowly, loving, loyal souls as the chosen channel of revelation. To believe that those who breathe out slaughter and hatred against their fellow- men are now his chosen mouth- piece is to assume that Providence, in these latter days, has grown less particular than aforetime in the choice of spokesmen.

The most gifted of men possess very feeble clairvoyant power. We do not know the changes that even a generation may bring forth. To say that the Negro will never attain to this or that destiny, requires no superior knowledge or foresight except audacity of spirit and recklessness of utterance. History has so often changed the "never" of the orator into accomplished results, that the too frequent use of that term is of itself an indication of heedlessness and incaution. It is safe to follow the lead of Dr. Lyman Abbott, and limit the duration of the oratorical "never" to the present generation. When, therefore, we say that the Negro will never be expelled or amalgamated, or that he will forever maintain his peculiar type of race, the prediction, however emphatically put forth, does not outrun the time which we have the present means of foreseeing. The fortune of the Negro rises and falls in the scale of public regard with the fluctuation of mercury in the bulb of a thermometer ranging alternately from blood heat to freezing point. In 1860, he would have been considered a rash prophet who should have predicted that within the next fifteen years colored men would constitute a potent factor in state legislatures and in the national Congress. On the other hand, who, in 1875, would have hazarded his prophetic reputation by predicting that during the following quarter of a century the last Negro representative would be driven from places of local and national authority, and that the opening of a new century would find the last two amendments to the Constitution effectually annulled? No more can we predict what change in public feeling and policy the remote or near future may have in store. But of one thing we may rest assured, the coming generations will be better able than we are, to cope with their own problems. They will have more light and knowledge, and, let us hope, a larger measure of patience and tolerance. Our little plans of solution that we are putting forth with so much assurance and satisfaction will doubtless afford ample amusement in years to come.

"We call our fathers fools,

So wise we grow

Our wiser sons, no doubt will

Call us so."

The late Professor Freeman, in his "Impressions of the United States" suggests a unique solution of the race problem: viz.— let each Irishman kill a Negro and get hanged for it. In this way America would be speedily rid of its race problems, both Ethiopic and Celtic. We read this suggestion and smile, as no doubt the author intended we should. And so we smile at the panaceas and nostrums that are being put forth with so much ardor of feeling. Many such theories might be laughed out of existence if one only possessed the power of comic portrayal. While we muse, the fire is burning. But alas, we lack the discernment to read aright the signs of the times.

Physical population contains all the potential elements of society, and the careful student relies upon its movement and expansion as the controlling factor in social evolution. It is for this reason that the federal census is so eagerly awaited by those who seek careful knowledge upon the race problem in America. There are certain definitely ascertainable tendencies in the Negro population that seem clearly to indicate the immediate, if not the ultimate destiny of that race. Amid all the conflicting and contradictory showings of the several censuses since emancipation, there is one tendency that stands out clear and pronounced: viz.— the mass center of the Negro population is moving steadily toward the Gulf of Mexico. Notwithstanding the proffer of more liberal political and civil inducements of the old abolition states of the North and West, the mass movement is in the Southerly direction. The industrial exclusion and social indifference of the old free states are not inviting to the African immigrant, nor is the severe climate congenial to his tropical nature. The Negro population in the higher latitudes is not a self- sustaining quantity. It would languish and gradually disappear unless constantly reinforced by fresh blood from the South. Although there has been a steady stream of immigration for the past forty years, yet 92 per cent of the race is found in the states which fostered the institution of slavery at the time of the Civil War. The thirty- one free states of the North and West do not contain as many Negroes as Alabama. There is no likelihood that the Negro population will scatter itself equally throughout the different sections of the country. We should not be misled by the considerable Northern movement of the last census decade. This period was marked by unusual unrest in the South, and many of the more vigorous or more adventurous Negroes sought refuge in the cities of the North. But evidently this tendency is subject to sharp self- limitation.

In the lower tier of the Southern States, comprising Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, there has been a steady relative gain in the Negro population, rising from 39 per cent of the entire race in 1850 to 53 per cent in 1900. On the other hand the upper tier including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, showed a decline from 54 to 37 per cent during the same interval. The census shows an unmistakable movement from the upper South to the Coast and Gulf States. The Negro constitutes the majority of the population in South Carolina and Mississippi, and also in Louisiana, outside of the City of New Orleans. The colored race forms the more numerous element in the group of States comprising South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, a contiguous territory of 290,000 square miles. Within this region the two races seem to be growing at about the same pace. During the last decade the Negro rate of increase exceeded the white in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, but fell below in South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana.

But the State as the unit of area, gives us a very imperfect idea of the relative and general spread and tendency of the Negro element. The movement of this population is controlled almost wholly by economic and social motives, and is very faintly affected by State boundaries or political action. The Negro is segregating in the fertile regions and along the river courses where the race was most thickly planted by the institution of slavery. This shaded area extends from the head of the Chesapeake Bay through Eastern Virginia and North Carolina, thence through South Carolina, middle Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi to the Mississippi River. Leading off from the main track, there are darkened strips of various width, along the Atlantic Ocean through Eastern Georgia and Northern Florida and along the banks of the Chattahoochee, Alabama, Mississippi, Sabine, and Brazos Rivers leading to the Gulf of Mexico. The South is dotted with white belts as well as with black ones. Western Virginia and North Carolina, the Southern and Northern extremes of Georgia and Alabama, and the peninsula part of Florida are predominantly white sections. There are scores of counties in which the Negro does not constitute ten per cent of the population. The Negro element not only does not tend to scatter equally throughout the country at large, but even in the South it is gathering more and more thickly into separate spaces. The black belts and white belts in the South are so interwoven as to frustrate any plan of solution looking to political and territorial solidarity. The measures intended to disfranchise the Negro in Eastern Virginia operate against the ignorant whites in the Western end of the State. The coming political contest in the South will not be between whites and blacks, but it will be over the undue power of a white vote based upon the black majority. The black counties are the more populous, and therefore have greater political weight. The few white voters in such counties are thus enabled to counterbalance many times their own number in the white districts. This gives rise to the same dissatisfaction that comes from the North be cause the Southerners vote is given added weight by reason of the black man whose representative power he usurps. A closer study of the black belts reveals the fact that they include the more fertile portions of the South. The master settled his slaves upon the rich, productive lands, and banished the poor whites to the thin and barren regions. These belts are best adapted to the culture of cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar cane, the staple productions in which the South has advantage over other sections of the country. The Negro by virtue of his geographical distribution holds the key to the agricultural development of the South.

A clearer idea of the distribution of the Negro population can be gotten by taking the county as the unit of area. The number of counties in which the Negroes out- numbers the whites has risen from 237 in 1860 to 279 in 1900. This would make a section as large as the North Atlantic division of States. Within these counties there are, on the average, 130 Negroes to every 100 whites. In 1860 there were 71 counties in which the Negroes were more than twice as numerous as the whites, which number had swollen to 108 in 1900. The region of total eclipse shows a tendency to spread much more rapidly than the penumbra surrounding it. The average number of Negroes in these densely black counties is about three to one. In some counties there are from ten to fifteen Negroes to every white person. The future of such counties, so far as the population is concerned, is too plainly foregrounded to leave the slightest room for doubt.

There seems to be some concert of action on the part of the afflicted States. The Revised Constitutions have followed with almost mathematical exactness, the relative density of the colored element. The historic order has been Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama and Virginia. Georgia and Florida have not followed suit, for the simple reason that they do not have to. But political action does not affect the spread of population. The Negro finds the South a congenial habitat. Like Flora and Fauna, that race variety will ultimately survive in any region that is best adapted to its environment. We can no more stop the momentum of this population than we can stop the oncoming of wind and wave. To the most casual observer, it is clearly apparent that the white race cannot compete with the Negro industrially in a hot climate and along the miasmatic low lands. Where the white man has to work in the burning sun, the cadaverous, emaciated body, drooping spirit, and thin, nasal voice bespeak the rapid decline of his breed. On the other hand the Negro multiplies and makes merry. His body is vigorous and his spirit buoyant. There can be no doubt that in many sections the Negro element is gradually driving out the whites. In the struggle for existence the fittest will survive. Fitness in this case consists in adaptability to climatic and industrial environment. In the West Indian archipelago the Negro race has practically expelled the proud Caucasian, not, to be sure, vi et armis, but by the much more invincible force of race momentum. This seems to be the inevitable destiny of the black belts in the South. For example; in the State of Georgia the number of counties in which the Negro population more than doubles the whites, was 13 in 1860, 14 in 1870, 18 in 1880, 23 in 1890, and 27 in 1900. In the same interval the counties in which the Negro constitutes the majority had risen from 43 to 67. This does not imply that the white population in the Southern States is not holding its own, but the growth of the two races seems to be toward fixed bounds of habitation.

Numerous causes are co- operating towards this end. The white man avoids open competition with the black workman and will hardly condescend to compete with him on equal terms. Wherever white men and women have to work for their living, they arrogantly avoid those sections where they are placed on a par with Negro competitors, and if indigenous to such localities, they often migrate to regions where the black rival is less numerous. For this reason European immigration avoids the black belts as an infected region. The spectacle of black and white artisans working side by side at the same trade, of which we used to hear so much, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The line of industrial cleavage is almost as sharp as social separation. The white man does not desire to bring his family amidst a Negro environment. The lynchings and outrages and the rumors of crime and cruelty have the effect of intimidating the white residents in the midst of black surroundings, who move away as rapidly as they find it expedient to do so. Only a few Jewish merchants and large planters are left. The large plantations are becoming less and less profitable, and are being broken up and let out to colored tenants, to enable the landlord to move to the city, where he finds more congenial social environment for himself and children.

The rise and development of manufacturing industries in the South also adds emphasis to the same tendency. The poor whites are being drawn off in considerable numbers from the rural districts as operatives and workmen along lines of higher mechanical skill. In the black belts the Negro is protected by the masses around him. One may ride for hours in many portions of the South without meeting a white face. The great influx of Negroes into the large cities comes from regions where the Negro is thinly scattered among the whites, rather than from the regions of greatest density. These factors, operating separately and cooperating conjointly, will perpetuate these black belts of the South. The bulk of the Negroes seems destined to be gathered into these dark and dense areas.

If, therefore, we are accorded so large a measure of prevision, it is the part of wisdom to arrange our plans in harmony with the social movement which we have not the power to subvert. The first essential of a well ordered society is good government, which affords satisfaction to the people living under it. The Negroes in the South are not satisfied with the present mode of government, not only because it was not formulated in harmony with their sensibilities, but because of its lamentable failure to protect life and property. Perhaps there is no other government of European type which so ruthlessly disregards the rights and feelings of the governed since the effacement of the Boer republics in South Africa. The first need of the South is a brand of statesmanship with capacity to formulate a scheme of government which will command the hearty good will and cheerful co- operation of all the citizens, and at the same time leave the controlling power in the hands of those best qualified to wield it. This is the desideratum devoutly to be wished. The amiable African can be ruled much more effectively by the wand of kindness than by a rod of iron. Strange to say, Southern statesmanship has never seriously tested this policy. European powers in control of tropical races have found that reconciliation is essential to effective control. The inferior element must feel that they are a constituent part of the governmental order and are responsible for the maintenance, authority and discipline. But Southern statesmanship has been characterized by broken pledges and bad faith and open avowal to humiliate a third of the population. The democratic party claimed to have won the election in 1876, upon a platform which, in clearly avowed terms, accepted the amendments to the Constitution of the United States. But the democratic states forthwith proceeded to revise their Constitutions with the undisguised purpose of defeating the plain intendment of these amendments. This on the plea that if the Negro were eliminated from politics, the government should be equitable and just, guaranteeing to all, equality before the law. But, as soon as these plans are adopted, the very statesmen who were most instrumental in bringing them to pass are urging more drastic and dreadful measures. They are demanding the repeal of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which, by indirect tactics, they have already annulled. Has the Negro any reason to feel that the demanded appeal would stop this reactionary movement? There can never be peace and security and permanent prosperity for whites or blacks until the South develops a brand of statesmanship that rises above the pitchfork variety.

The next great need of these black belts is moral and industrial regeneration. This can be effected only through the quickening touch of education. Outside help is absolutely necessary. These people unaided can no more lift themselves from a lower to a higher level than one can sustain the weight of his body by pulling against his own boot straps. The problem belongs to the nation. Ignorance and degradation are moral blights upon the national life and character. It is wasteful of the national resource. The cotton area is limited, and this fabric will become more and more an important factor in our national, industrial and economic scheme. And yet thousands of acres of these valuable lands are being washed away and wasted annually by ignorant and unskilled tillage. The nation is contemplating the expenditure of millions of dollars to irrigate the arid regions of the West. But would it not be a wiser economic measure to save the cotton area of the South through the enlightenment of the peasant farmers? The educational facilities in the black counties outside of the cities are almost useless. The reactionary current against the education of the Negro in the South is deep and strong. Unless the nation, either through statemanship or philanthropy, lends a helping hand, these shade places will form a continuing blot upon the national escutcheon. There should be better school facilities and social opportunities, not only as a means of their own better ment, but in order that contentment with the rural environment to which they are well suited may prevent them from flocking into the cities, North and South, thus forming a national municipal menace.

The Negro's industrial opportunities lie in the black belts. He occupies the best cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar lands of the South. The climate shields him from the crushing weight of Aryan competition. Agriculture lies at the base of the life of any undeveloped race. The manufacturing stage is a later development. The exclusion of the Negro from the factories is perhaps a blessing in disguise. The agricultural industries of the South are bound to become of greater and greater national importance and the Negro is to become a larger and larger industrial factor. The cotton area is limited, but the demand for cotton stuffs increases not only with the growth of our own national population, but with the expansion of our trade in both hemispheres. A shrewd observer has suggested that the time seems sure to come when a pound of cotton will be worth a bushel of wheat. When cotton regains its ancient place and again becomes king, the Negro will be the power behind the throne.

It is interesting to notice from the last census the extent to which Negroes are owning and managing their own farms. The large estates are being broken up into small farms and let out to Negro tenants at a higher rate of annual rental. This is but the first step toward Negro proprietorship. There is a double field for philanthropy. First, to furnish school facilities so that the small farmer may become intelligent and skilled in the conduct of his affairs; and second, to

make it possible for him to buy small tracts of land. The holders of the old estates do not care to atomize their plantations, but would gladly dispose of their entire holdings. There is a vast field for philanthropy with the additional inducement of five per cent. Already such attempts have been made. Hon. George W. Murray, the last Negro Congressman from South Carolina, has disposed of 60,000 acres of land in South Carolina in small holdings to Negro farmers, and is equally enthusiastic over the commercial and philanthropic aspect of the enterprise. Some Northern capitalists have undertaken a similar movement in the neighborhood of Tuskegee Institute, which promises to have far- reaching effect upon the betterment of black belt conditions. There are also indications of Negro villages and industrial settlements to afford better social and business opportunities. Colored men of ambition and educa

tion will be glad to seek such communities as a field to exploit their powers. The secret and method of New England may thus be transplanted in these darksome places by the sons of Ethiopia. Thus those that now grope in darkness may yet receive the light.

Mr. John Temple Graves has, in a recent, notable utterance, advocated the separation of the races, and has elaborated his doctrine with great rhetorical pains. But mass movement of the Negro race seems clearly to indicate immediate, if not the ultimate outcome to be separateness rather than separation.

No one can tell what the ultimate future of the Negro is to be; whether it is to be worked out in this land or on some distant continent. We may, however, be permitted to foretell the logical outcome of forces now at work, without assuming the prophet's prerogative.