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LYNCHING

Within the last thirty-five years 3,200 Negro men and women have been lynched within the boundaries of the United States, an average of just a little less than 100 a year. While there has been some decrease within recent years, the figures between 1890 and 1900 were so extraordinary that the average is still high. Nor can one find much comfort in the fact that there has been some decrease within recent years, for some of the most recent cases were those of the most revolting torture. The year 1917 moreover was marked by the greatest outbreak of mob violence that the race has ever suffered, considerably more than one hundred Negro men, women, and children losing their lives in East St. Louis.

Fifteen years ago, in Mississippi, a Negro became involved in a quarrel with a white man who was just about to shoot him when the Negro himself fired, fatally wounding the man. He then fled to the woods and his wife accompanied him. Bloodhounds were sent after them, and after a long chase they were captured. Then followed such torture as is without parallel even in the history of lynching. The man and his wife were both tied to trees, one after another their fingers were cut off, then their ears, both fingers and ears being distributed as souvenirs among the members of the mob. The supreme stroke, however, was still to come. A large corkscrew was bored into the more fleshy parts of the two writhing bodies, and so jerked out as to tear out large pieces of flesh. Both the man and his wife were then burned alive. And the sun still shone in heaven!

Such is the story that with necessary differences of situation and detail has disgraced our country for forty years. Within eight months recently the state of Tennessee has been distinguished by three separate burnings. At Dyersburg a red-hot poker was rammed down the throat of the victim, and he was further mutilated in ways indecent and unmentionable. At Estill Springs all the colored people in the vicinity were made to walk around the scene of the burning as an object-lesson. Of Henry Smith in Texas some years ago we are told that "he was taken from his guards, red-hot irons were thrust into his eyes, down his throat, and on his abdomen, and he was then burned." In the case of Jesse Washington, a Negro boy of seventeen, in Waco, Texas, in May, 1916, we read: "On the way to the scene of the burning, people on every hand took a hand in showing their feelings in the matter by striking the Negro with anything obtainable; some struck him with shovels, bricks, clubs, and others stabbed him and cut him until when he was strung up his body was a solid color of red." It was estimated that the boy had twenty-five stab wounds. "Fingers, ears, pieces of clothing, toes and other parts of the Negro's body were cut off by members of the mob."

It will be argued, however, that only in extreme cases is burning resorted to; but to this it might be replied that sometimes there is a burning when rape is not even alleged, as in the case of the man and woman in Mississippi. Indeed, it may be remarked in passing that in only a third or a fourth of the cases enumerated each year is rape even alleged as a cause. The theft of seventy-five cents, a small debt, a fight, relationship to an offender, have all been considered sufficient cause for lynching within recent years. Moreover, even where there is not a burning, but a hanging, the circumstances are often such as to disgrace our civilization. Thus, early in 1915, at Monticello, Ga., because an officer was resisted, a father, his young son, and his two grown daughters were all lynched.

What must inevitably be the result of all this? Such an incident as the following: Very recently, at Gadsden, Ala., four little white boys at play, all twelve or thirteen years of age, decided that they would play "lynching." One of the four accordingly had a rope tied around his neck and was slowly strangling to death when a passer-by relieved him. The result of the incident was that the three playmates of the boy were all placed in jail under the charge of assault such as might have resulted in murder.

What is the remedy? Respect for the law of course, with proper enforcement of the same. All too frequently, however, the law is simply a subterfuge behind which officials take refuge; and this is a condition that applies to many things in our American life besides lynching. Asked a Georgia judge, however, in despair at the conditions that surrounded him: "If the grand jury won't indict lynchers, if the petit juries won't convict, and if soldiers won't shoot, what are we coming to?"

Meanwhile these outrages injure us abroad. We look upon Russia as benighted and chaotic; yet this was the country that hurled at a distinguished Baptist minister, Dr. R.S. MacArthur, the charge that his was the only civilized country in the world that tolerated lynching. We speak of Pan-Americanism and the Monroe Doctrine; but Professor Bingham informs us of a hostile paper in Lima, the government organ, that printed the following headlines to a two-column article: "NORTH AMERICAN EXCESSES--THE TERRIBLE LYNCHINGS--AND THEY TALK OF THE PUTEMAYO!" And the Peruvian editor says: "Do you realize that in the full twentieth century, when there is not a single country in the world whose inhabitants are permitted to supersede justice by summary punishment, there are repeatedly taking place, almost daily, in the United States, lynchings like that of which we are told in the telegraphic dispatch?" The natural result is to unite Latin America against us, especially when the United States draws a color-line offensive to South American sensibilities.

We call upon our country for a new consecration--to law, to order, to justice. Too long has the crime of lynching disgraced us in the eyes of the world. Too long have we eased our conscience with a specious thought of necessity or irresponsibility. What concerns our country's honor concerns every one of us; and as our Negro soldiers take up arms and embark for France, let them not think that their loved ones left behind are not protected. Let them rather feel that from our national escutcheon shall be washed away every stain, that justice shall yet be triumphant, and that democracy shall indeed find its true place in the world.

ASPECTS OF NEGRO EDUCATION

All such things denote progress. And yet, when all consideration is given to the advance that has been made, there are those who feel that with the opportunity still more should have been done. They feel that the past is irrevocable, but that it is not too late to correct certain errors and tendencies for the future.

What is the situation as we actually find it to-day? Go to any one of the most representative institutions, and what do we find? Efficient teachers struggling against most enormous disadvantages and frequently dealing with the crudest possible material. The wonder is that so much has been accomplished in the face of the handicap. It is not enough to reply that in all the schools and colleges of the country the teaching is irregular and the systems too lenient--that there is no human perfection in fact; these Negro colleges are crying for a better chance and they ought to have it. Go into any one of their high school departments , and the actual attainment of many of the students exhibits more and more the appalling shortcomings of the common schools. How could it be otherwise with a system that operates schools for only four or five months a year and that pays teachers twenty or thirty-five dollars a month? "It was this way, you see," said one young man who presented himself for entrance upon the work of the academy, "we had only a three months' school at my home, and I went one winter and my brother went the next." Said another, "I had a good teacher in arithmetic, but we didn't do much in grammar"; and the grammar may be said to embrace every subject in the common school in which precision is required except arithmetic. Penmanship is completely lacking in neatness and finish, and in nineteen cases out of twenty the students from the country can not spell. Nor can they read. Take them as you come to them, at the supposed completion of the eighth grade, and ask them to read aloud a single paragraph from Irving, or Cooper, or the morning paper, and very few indeed will be able to get through without an apology or serious errors in pronunciation or interpretation.

Grammar and reading and spelling, however, are apparent. Little by little the teacher becomes aware of something more fundamental--the lack of any adequate background for appreciation and culture. No time had the mother at the washtub or in the field for Cinderella or Mother Goose, and the childhood that should have been enriched by lines from Longfellow or Tennyson or the Bible was nodded away by the fire. Youth that craved adventure and inspiration found relief from the deadening routine of the week only in the coarse pleasure of the railroad on Sundays, or the big-meeting that came once a year. A gymnasium, a library, or an art museum the young man coming up to the academy in the city never saw in his life.

Such a background makes neither for accuracy in technical training nor for the foundation of the larger reaches of culture. Within recent years the problem has been even more complicated by the inadequate school facilities in the cities. As the population has shifted from the rural districts to the larger towns, congestion in the schools has resulted, and the lack of an adequate number of seats and the system of half-day sessions have frequently resulted only in the semblance of thorough and efficient training. Nor has the matter been made any better by the tendency in some places still further to degrade the schools.

There is yet a larger question, however, and that is the extent to which the higher schools and colleges themselves are fulfilling their function. We do not forget the work of Atlanta University in the training of common school teachers, nor that of Morehouse College for the Negro Baptists of Georgia, nor that of Spelman Seminary for the homes and Sunday Schools and rural schools of Georgia, when we raise the question if such institutions are really doing all that they should for their respective communities. We do not believe that they are, and we do not believe that the fault is wholly theirs.

Now hardly any one will be found to object to this principle, though when education in the large is considered many distinguished educators feel that in arriving at its large aim the "Modern School" is not altogether fair to some of the more traditional subjects in the curriculum. So far as higher education for the Negro is concerned, however, there is one point at which the utilitarians persistently misunderstand those who do not wholly agree with them. No one better appreciates the value of genuine industrial education than the teachers in the Southern colleges. What they do oppose, however, is that sort of large legislation which says that because the Negro is mainly an agricultural race, his children as a whole should have that sort of education which will make of them good farmers and domestics. Such a program offers no outlet at all for the boy of unusual talent and would ultimately irrevocably bind the whole race in the chains of serfs.

In Negro schools accordingly we ask first of all for that education which will understand that all individuals are not alike and that will so plan the course of study for each student as to enable him ultimately to be of most service to his fellowmen. Logically no set program of study can do this. The student's playtime as well as his work time should be most carefully supervised. Here is a budding machinist. His true bent should, by some scientific test, be manifest to his principal or dean after just a few months of acquaintance. A special course of study should be built up for him. His reading should be so studied as to vary articles on mechanics with such fiction as would awaken his imagination. He should be taken to visit great industrial plants so as to see how they are operated, and any inventive faculty that he possesses should be encouraged. Here again is a bookish lad, one who seems to study always and who never wants to play. One instructor would inspire him along the line of history or literature or art, as the case might require, while the physical director would seek until he found some form of exercise into which the boy would enter with enthusiasm and which would save him from undue introspection and generally look to his physical well-being. Whatever may be the special field, the training should be absolutely thorough. We should rather see a boy plane a board correctly than have him work a problem in trigonometry incorrectly; and on the other hand we should rather see a student construe Homer with precision than keep a dairy that is not perfectly clean.

The third matter is a large and subtle one. It has to do with the whole moral and spiritual import of the schools in question. One of the amazing things about Negro education in the large in America is that one hears so much about boards and units and courses of study and so little about deeper essentials. Aside from the curriculum, what is the atmosphere that a boy breathes as soon as he sets foot on a college campus? Is he trained in honesty, in politeness, in high ideals of speech, in lofty conceptions of character? Does he have to obey orders? Is he taught to be neat, prompt, and industrious? Such questions are of things too often taken for granted, and too often lacking. We need new emphasis on the whole missionary impulse in education. In the providence of God, but through no effort of his own, the freedman in the decades after the Civil War had the benefit of the labors of consecrated men and women who served, sometimes even without pay, for his salvation. Cravath at Fisk, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, and Packard and Giles at Spelman are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving and praise. These men and women were not people of means. They labored often with the most inadequate facilities. And yet somehow they had the key to the eternal verities. They were earnest, efficient, and true, and to them a human soul was worth more than the kingdoms of this world.

Such consecrated workers, however, have now become rarer and rarer. Materialism and commercialism are abroad in the land. Segregation and proscription and injustice abound. We plead now that in all the disappointments and distractions of the new day our teachers shall at least remember the faith and high ideals of the pioneers, and remain close to God.

To train our boys in the virtues of citizenship and at the same time in knowledge of the rights of others; to teach them respect for others at the same time that they cultivate their own self-respect; to teach them the value of scholarship and also to let them know when scholarship must become dynamic; to teach them to work, to love, to sing, to have faith, even when they see wrong all around them--this is a task calling for all one has of Christianity, of scholarship, and of delicacy.

A GREAT MISSIONARY: JOANNA P. MOORE

In the fall of 1862 a young woman who was destined to be a great missionary entered the Seminary at Rockford, Illinois. There was little to distinguish her from the other students except that she was exceedingly plainly dressed, and seemed forced to spend most of her spare time at work. Yes, there was one other difference. She was older than most of the girls--already thirty, and rich in experience. When not yet fifteen she had taught a country school in Pennsylvania. At twenty she was considered capable of managing an unusually turbulent crowd of boys and girls. When she was twenty-seven her father had died, leaving upon her very largely the care of her mother. At twenty-eight she already looked back upon a career of fourteen years as a teacher, of some work for Christ incidentally accomplished, but also upon a fading youth of wasted hopes and unfulfilled desires.

Then came a great decision--not the first, but one of the most important that marked her long career. Her education was by no means complete, and at whatever cost she was determined to go to school. That she had no money, that her clothes were shabby, that her mother needed her, made no difference; now or never she would realize her ambition. She would do anything, however menial, if it was honest and would give her food while she attended school. For one long day she walked the streets of Belvidere looking for a home. Could any one use a young woman who wanted to work for her board? Always the same reply. Nightfall brought her to a farmhouse in the suburbs of the town. She timidly knocked on the door. "No, we do not need any one," said the woman who greeted her, "but wait until I see my husband." The man of the house was very unwilling, but decided to give her shelter for the night. The next morning he thought differently about the matter; and a few days afterward the young woman entered school. The work was hard; fires were to be made, breakfasts on cold mornings had to be prepared, and sometimes the washing was heavy. In the midst of it all, the time for lessons was frequently cut short or extended far into the night. But the woman of the house was kind, and her daughter a helpful fellow-student.

The next summer came another season at school-teaching, and then the term at Rockford. 1862! a great year that in American history, one fraught with great events, and more famous for the defeat of the Union arms than for their success. But in September came Antietam, and the heart of the North took courage. Lincoln now issued a preliminary proclamation, "That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free."

The girls at Rockford, like the people everywhere, were interested in the great events shaking the nation. A new note of seriousness crept into their work. Embroidery was laid aside; instead, socks were knit and bandages prepared. On the night of January 1 a jubilee meeting was held in the town. At last the black man was free and everywhere throughout the North there were shouts of joy.

To Joanna P. Moore, however, the news bore a strange undertone of sadness. She was, as we have said, much more mature than her schoolmates, and to her, somehow, the problem of the spiritual and intellectual freedom of the bondsmen presented itself. Strange that she should be so possessed by this problem! She had of course thought of the possibility of working in China, or India, or Africa--but of this, never!

In February a man who had been on Island No. 10 came to the Seminary and told the girls of the hundreds of women and children there in distress. Cabins and tents were everywhere. As many as three families, with eight or ten children each, cooked their food in the same pot on the same fire. Sometimes the women were peevish or quarrelsome; always the children were ignorant and dirty. "What can a man do to help such a suffering mass of humanity?" asked the speaker. "Nothing. A woman is needed; nobody else will do." For the student listening so intently, the cheery schoolrooms with their sweet associations faded; the vision of foreign missions also vanished; and in their stead stood only a pitiful black woman with a baby in her arms.

She reached Island No. 10 in November. The outlook was dismal enough. The Sunday School at Belvidere of which she was a member pledged four dollars a month toward her support; and this was all the salary in sight. The Government had provided transportation and soldiers' rations. That was in 1863, more than fifty years ago; but every year since then, until 1916, in summer and winter, in sunshine and rain, in the home and the church, with teaching and praying, feeding and clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, Joanna P. Moore in one way or another ministered to the needs of the Negro people of the South.

In April, 1864, her whole colony was removed to Helena, Arkansas. The Home Farm was three miles from Helena. Here was gathered a great crowd of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a company of soldiers in a fort near by. Thither went the missionary, alone, except for her faith in God. She made an arbor with some rude seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four divisions, and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the Bible was read and explained, prayers were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted, and then the service was over.

Some Quaker workers were her friends in Helena, and in 1868 she went to Lauderdale, Mississippi, to help the Friends in an orphan asylum. Six weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and the parents left to take their child back to their Indiana home to rest. Miss Moore was left in charge of the asylum. Cholera broke out. Eleven children died within one week. She stood by her post. Often, as she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere the daylight came were in the cold grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night after night the lone woman prayed to God in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated.

From time to time the failing health of her mother called her home, and from 1870 to 1873 she once more taught school in the vicinity of Belvidere. The first winter the school was in the country. "You can never have a Sunday School in the winter," she was told. But she did; in spite of the snow the house was crowded every Sunday; whole families came in sleighs. Even at that the real work of the missionary was still with the Negroes of the South. In her prayers and in her public addresses they were always with her; and in 1873 friends in Chicago made it possible for her to return to the work of her choice. In 1877 the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society honored itself by giving to her its first commission.

Nine years she spent in the vicinity of New Orleans. Near Leland University she found a small, one-room house. After buying a bed, a table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping. Often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark. Most frequently she read the Bible to those who could not read. Sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. Sometimes she would teach the children to read or to sew. Often she would write letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in the dark days. She wrote hundreds and hundreds of such letters; and once in a while, a very long while, came some response.

Most pitiful of all the objects she found in New Orleans were the old women worn out with years of slavery. They were usually ragpickers who ate at night old scraps for which they had begged during the day. There was in the city an Old Ladies' Home; but this was not for Negroes. A house was secured and the women taken in, Miss Moore and her associates moving into the second story. Sometimes, very often, there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was not known who sent them; money or boxes came from Northern friends who had never seen the workers; and the little Negro children in the Sunday Schools in New Orleans gave their pennies.

In 1878 Miss Moore started on a journey of exploration. In Atlanta Dr. Robert at Atlanta Baptist Seminary gave her cheer; so did President Ware at Atlanta University. At Benedict in Columbia she saw Dr. Goodspeed, President Tupper at Shaw in Raleigh, and Dr. Corey in Richmond. In May she appeared at the Baptist anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already behind her.

But each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments. She wanted her Society to establish a training school for women; but the objection was raised to this on the score that such an institution would overlap the educational work of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Down in Louisiana of course it was not without danger that a white woman attended a Negro Baptist Association in 1877; and there were always sneers and jeers. At length, however, a training school for mothers was opened in Baton Rouge. All went well for two years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the gate. The woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm; but the students had gone. Sick at heart and worn out with waiting, she left Baton Rouge and the state in which so many of her best years had been spent.

What wisdom has been gathered from the passing of fourscore years! On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations that for proverbial pith may be equaled only by the words of Franklin or Lincoln or Booker Washington:--

The love of God gave me courage for myself and the rest of mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls. They surely are worth more than anything else in the world.

Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. God cannot use discouraged people.

I am very thankful to-day that there has always been some one weaker than myself along some line, some one that I could really help and comfort.

The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do, but by praising God for what had been done.

So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for the Bible lesson. Do not misunderstand me. I do love music that impresses the meaning of words. But no one climbs to heaven on musical scales.

I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it into your every thought and prayer.

You must love before you can comfort and help.

There is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light that we carry from the Cross.

How shall we measure such a life? Who can weigh love and hope and service, and the joy of answered prayer? "An annual report of what?" she once asked the secretary of her organization. "Report of tears shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken, cheering words, warning words--tender, patient words for the little ones, stern but loving tones for the wayward--songs of hope and songs of sorrow, wounded hearts healed, light and love poured into dark sad homes? Oh, Miss Burdette, you might as well ask me to gather up the raindrops of last year or the petals that fall from the flowers that bloomed. It is true I can send you a little stagnant water from the cistern, and a few dried flowers; but if you want to know the freshness, the sweetness, the glory, the grandeur, of our God-given work, then you must come and keep step with us from early morn to night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year."

Until the very last she was on the roll of the active missionaries of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society. In the fall of 1915 she decided that she must once more see the schools in the South that meant so much to her. In December she came again to her beloved Spelman. While in Atlanta she met with an accident that still further weakened her. After a few weeks, however, she went on to Jacksonville, and then to Selma. There she passed.

"When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.... Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

SOME CRITICS AND THEIR FALLACIES

It is the purpose of the present chapter to reply to some of the more common of the arguments brought forward against the Negro. We shall by no means attempt to cover the whole ground, or even pretend that in every case we have summoned the most representative critics. At the same time we feel that those that are adduced are fairly typical of those of harsher view.

The Negro element is daily becoming more potent in American society.

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