 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. Music and Text, recorded by Toria's uncle. To Burkhart and Yolanda. The Lost and the Found. The Forethought. Herein, I buried many things, which, if read with patience, may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the twentieth century. This meaning is not without interest to you, gentle reader. For the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. I pray you then receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there. I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First in two chapters I have tried to show what emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race today. Then in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outlines the two worlds within and without the veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving then the white world I have stepped within the veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses, the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song. Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guys, for kindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and extended form. I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, the World's Work, the Dial, the New World, and the annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter as now printed stands a bar of the sorrow songs, some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the veil? W. E. B. Du Bois. Atlanta, Georgia. February 1st, 1903 Chapter 1 Of our spiritual strivings O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand, all night long crying with a mournful cry, as I lie and listen and cannot understand the voice of my heart in my side, or the voice of the sea. O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I? All night long, the water is crying to me. On resting water there shall never be rest till the last moon's roof, and the last tide fail, and the fire of the end begin to burn in the west, and the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea. All life long crying without a veil, as the water all night long is crying to me. Arthur Simmons. Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question, unasked by some through feelings of delicacy, by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it, all nevertheless flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way. I am me curiously or compassionately, and then instead of saying directly, how does it feel to be a problem, they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town, or I fought at Mechanicsville, or do not these southern outrages make your blood boil at these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer as the occasion may require? To the real question, how does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word, and yet being a problem is a strange experience, peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day as it were. I remember well when the shadows swept across me. I was a little thing, a way up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Housic and Taconic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting cards, ten cents a package, and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, refused it peremptorily with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others. Poor like may happen heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil to creep through. I held all beyond it in common contempt and lived above it in a region of blue sky with great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination time, or beat them at a foot race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade, for the words I longed for and all their dazzling opportunities were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said. Some, all, I would rest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny, their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white, or wasted itself in a bitter cry, why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? The shades of the prison house closed round about us all, walls straight and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall and unscalable to the sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above. After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Tutan and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation. This double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his tuness, an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face. This then is the end of his striving to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since emancipation, the black man's turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness. It is the contradiction of double aims. The double aimed struggle of the black artisan, on the one hand, to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plow and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde, could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy, and by the criticism of the other world toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the rudor souls of his people a dancing and a singing, raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist, for the beauty revealed to him was the soul beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people, has sent them often wooing false gods, and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves. Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment. Few men ever worshipped freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice. Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain, liberty. In his tears and curses, the God he implored had freedom in his right hand. At last it came, suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences, shout, O children, shout your free, for God has bought your liberty. Years have passed away since then. Ten, twenty, forty. Forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy specter sits in its accustomed seat at the nation's feast. In vain do we cry to this, our vastest social problem. Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble. The nation has not yet found peace from its sins. The freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change. The shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people. A disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded, saved by the simple ignorance of the lowly people. The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp like a tantalizing will of the wisp maddening and misleading the headless host, the holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku Klux Klan, the lies of the carpetbaggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the fifteenth amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom, so the decade flew away. The men left the half free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily in the following years a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power, a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of book learning, the curiosity born of compulsory ignorance to know the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan, longer than the highway of emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life. Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly. Only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or someone had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination. It changed the child of emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect, in those somber forests of his striving, his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself darkly as through a veil, and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that to attain his place in the world he must be himself and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty without ascent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, of letters but of life, of business, of the humanities. The accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home. A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas, while sociologists gleefully count his bastard and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the higher against the lower races to which the Negro cries amen, and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But, before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this, he stands helpless, dismayed, and well my speechless. Before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all being desire to inculcate disdain for everything, black, from Toussaint to the devil. Before this there arises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom discouragement is an unwritten word. But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self questioning, self disparagement, and lowering of ideals, whichever a company repression, and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whispering's importance came home upon the four winds. Lo, we are diseased and dying," cried the dark hosts. We cannot write. Our voting is vain. What need of education since we must always cook and serve? And the nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying, I intend to be servants and nothing more. What need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man's ballot by force or fraud. And behold, the suicide of a race. Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good, the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negro's social responsibilities, and so dawned the time of Sturm und Drang, storm and stress today rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world sea, there is within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul. Inspiration strives with doubt and faith with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the past, physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands, all these, just and waned. Until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong? All false? No. Not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete. The dreams of a credulous race childhood or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need today more than ever. The training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all, the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense. Else what shall save us from a second's slavery? Freedom too, the long sought, we still seek. The freedom of life and work and think. The freedom to love and aspire. Work. Culture. Liberty. All these we need. Not singly, but together. Not successively, but together. Each growing and aiding each and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people. The ideal of human brotherhood gained through the unifying ideal of race. The ideal of fostering and developing the traits and the Negro. Not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic. In order that someday, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. We, the darker ones, come even now not altogether empty-handed. There are today no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence of Negroes. There is no true American music, but the wild, sweet melodies of the Negro slave. The American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African. And, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal, dyspeptic blundering with lighthearted, but determined Negro humility? Or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good humor? Or her vulgar music with the soul of the sorrow songs? Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the Great Republic is the Negro problem. And the spiritual striving of the freedmen's sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength. But who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their father's fathers, and in the name of human opportunity? And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways with loving emphasis and deeper detail that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk. End of Chapter 1. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois Music and Text Recorded by Toria's Uncle Chapter 2 Of the Dawn of Freedom Careless seems the great Avenger. History's lessons but record one death struggle in the darkness. Twixed old systems and the word. Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own. Lowell. The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. The relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War and however much they who marched south and north in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points of union and local autonomy as a chivaleth. Nevertheless new, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced itself to the surface, despite effort and disclaimer. No sooner had northern armies touched southern soil than this old question newly guised sprang from the earth What shall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands this way and that could not answer the query. The Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties. And the war amendments made the Negro problems of today. It is the aim of this essay to study the period of history from 1861 to 1872 so far as it relates to the American Negro. In effect, this tale of the dawn of freedom is an account of that government of men called the Freedmen's Bureau, one of the most singular and interesting events made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition. The war has not to do with slaves, cried Congress, the president in the nation. And yet no sooner had the armies east and west penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves appeared within their lines. They came at night when the flickering campfires shone like vast, unsteady stars along the black horizon. Old men and thin with gray women with frightened eyes dragging, whimpering, hungry children men and girls stalwart and gaunt a horde of starving vagabonds homeless, helpless, and pitiable in their dark distress. Two methods of treating these newcomers seemed equally logical to opposite sorts of minds. Ben Butler in Virginia quickly declared slave property, contraband of war, and put the fugitives to work. While Fremont in Missouri declared the slaves free under martial law, Butler's action was approved, but Fremont was hastily countermanded and his successor, Halleck, saw things differently. Hereafter, he commended, no slaves should be allowed to come into your lines at all. If any come without your knowledge when owners call for them, deliver them. Such a policy was difficult to enforce. Some of the black refugees declared themselves freemen. Others showed that their masters had deserted them, and still others were captured with forts and plantations. Evidently, too, slaves were a source of strength to the Confederacy and were being used as laborers and producers. They constitute a military resource, wrote Secretary Cameron, late in 1861, and being such that they should not be turned over to the enemy is too plain to discuss. So gradually the tone of the army chiefs changed. Congress forbade the rendition of fugitives and Butler's contraband were welcomed as military laborers. This complicated rather than solved the problem for now the scattering fugitives became a steady stream which flowed faster as the armies marched. Then the long-headed man with care-chiseled face who sat in the White House saw the inevitable and emancipated the slaves of rebels on New Year's 1863. A month later, Congress called earnestly for the Negro soldiers whom the act of July 1862 had half grudgingly allowed to enlist. Thus the barriers were leveled and the deed was done. The stream of fugitives swelled to a flood and anxious army officers kept inquiring what must be done with slaves arriving almost daily? Are we to find food and shelter for women and children? It was a pierce of Boston who pointed out the way and thus became in a sense the founder of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was a firm friend of secretary Chase and when in 1861 the care of slaves and abandoned lands devolved upon the treasury officials Pierce was specially detained from the ranks to study the conditions. First he cared for the refugees at Fortress Monroe and then after Sherman had captured Hilton Head Pierce was sent there to found his Port Royal experiment Before his experiment was barely started however the problem of the fugitives had assumed such proportions that it was taken from the hands of the overburden treasury department and given to the army officials. Already centers of massed freedmen were forming at Fortress Monroe Washington, New Orleans, Vicksburg and Corinth, Columbus, Kentucky and Carrow, Illinois as well as at Port Royal. Army chaplains found here new and fruitful fields superintendents of contraband multiplied and some attempt at systematic work was made by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work to the others. Then came the Freedmen's Aid Societies born of the touching appeals from Pierce and from these other centers of distress there was the American Missionary Association sprung from the Amistad and now full grown for work the various church organizations the National Freedmen's Relief Association the American Freedmen's Union the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission in all 50 or more active organizations which sent clothes, money, school books and teachers southward all they did was needed where the destitution of the freedmen was often reported as too appalling for belief and the situation was daily growing worse rather than better and daily too it seemed more plain that this was no ordinary matter of temporary relief but a national crisis for here loomed a labor problem masses of Negroes stood idle or if they worked spasmodically were never sure of pay and if perchance they received pay squandered the new thing thoughtlessly in these and other ways were camp life and the new liberty demoralizing the freedmen the broader economic organization thus clearly demanded sprang up here and there as accident and local conditions determined here it was that Pierce's Port Royal Plan of leashed plantations and guided workmen pointed out the rough way in Washington the military governor at the urgent appeal of the superintendent opened confiscated estates to the cultivation of the fugitives and there in the shadow of the dome gathered black farm villages general Dix gave over estates to the freedmen of Fortress Monroe and so on south and west the government and benevolent societies furnished the means of cultivation and the Negro turned again slowly to work the systems of control thus started rapidly grew here and there into strange little governments like that of general banks in Louisiana with its 90,000 black subjects its 50,000 guided laborers and its annual budget of $100,000 and more it made out 4,000 payrolls a year registered all freedmen inquired into grievances and redressed them laid and collected taxes and established a system of public schools so too Colonel Eaton the superintendent of Tennessee and Arkansas ruled over 100,000 freedmen leased and cultivated 7,000 acres of cotton land and fed 10,000 paupers a year in South Carolina was general Saxton with his deep interest in black folk he succeeded Pierce and the treasury officials and sold forfeited estates leased abandoned plantations, encouraged schools and received from Sherman after that terribly picturesque march to the sea thousands of the wretched camp followers three characteristic things one might have seen in Sherman's raid through Georgia which through the new situation in shadowy relief the conqueror, the conquered and the Negro some see all significance in the grim front of the destroyer and some in the bitter sufferers of the lost cause but to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns swelling at times to half their size almost engulfing and choking them in vain were they ordered back in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet all they trudged and writhed and surged until they rolled into savannah a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands there too came the characteristic military remedy the islands from Charleston south the abandoned rice fields along the river for 30 miles back from the sea and the country bordering the St. John's river Florida are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by active war so read the celebrated field order number 15 all these experiments, orders and systems were bound to attract and perplex the government and the nation directly after the emancipation proclamation representative Elliott had introduced a bill creating a bureau of emancipation but it was never reported the following June a committee of inquiry appointed by the secretary of war reported in favor of a temporary bureau for the improvement, protection and employment of refugee freedmen on much the same lines as were afterward followed petitions came into president Lincoln from distinguished citizens and organizations strongly urging a comprehensive and unified plan of dealing with the freedmen under a bureau which should be charged with the study of plans and execution of measures for easily guiding and in every way judiciously and humanely aiding the passage of our emancipated and yet to be emancipated blacks from the old condition of forced labor to their new state of voluntary industry some half-hearted steps were taken to accomplish this in part by putting the whole matter again in charge of the special treasury agents laws of 1863 and 1864 directed them to take charge of and lease abandoned lands for periods not exceeding 12 months and to provide in such leases or otherwise for the employment and general welfare of the freedmen most of the army officers greeted this as a welcome relief from perplexing Negro affairs and secretary Fezenden, July 29, 1864 issued an excellent system of regulations which were afterward closely followed by general Howard under treasury agents large quantities of land were leased in the Mississippi valley and many Negroes were employed but in August 1864 the new regulations were suspended for reasons of public policy and the army was again in control meanwhile Congress had turned its attention to the subject and in March the house passed a bill by a majority of two establishing a bureau for freedmen in the war department Charles Sumner who had charge of the bill in the Senate argued that freedmen and abandoned lands ought to be under the same department and reported a substitute for the house bill attaching the bureau to the treasury department this bill passed but too late for action by the house the debates wandered over the whole policy of the administration and the general question of slavery without touching very closely the specific merits of the measure in hand then the national election took place and the administration with a vote of renewed confidence from the country addressed itself to the matter more seriously a conference between the two branches of Congress agreed upon a carefully drawn measure which contained the chief provisions of Sumner's bill but made the proposed organization a department independent of both the war and the treasury officials the bill was conservative giving the new department general superintendents of all freedmen its purpose was to establish regulations for them protect them, lease them lands, adjust their wages and appear in civil and military courts as their next friend there were many limitations attached to the power thus granted and the organization was made permanent nevertheless the Senate defeated the bill and a new conference committee was appointed this committee reported a new bill, February 28th which was whirled through just as the session closed and became the act of 1865 establishing in the war department a bureau of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands this last compromise was a hasty bit of legislation vague and uncertain in outline a bureau was created to continue during the present war of rebellion and for one year thereafter to which was given the supervision and management of all lands and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen under such rules and regulations as may be presented by the head of the bureau and approved by the president a commissioner appointed by the president and the senate was to control the bureau with an office force not exceeding ten clerks the president might also appoint assistant commissioners in the seceded states and to all these offices, military officials might be detailed at regular pay the secretary of war could issue rations, clothing and fuel to the destitute and all abandoned property was placed in the hands of the bureau for eventual lease and sale to ex-slaves in 40 acre parcels thus did the United States government definitely assume charge of the emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation it was a tremendous undertaking near at a stroke of the pen was erected a government of millions of men and not ordinary men either but black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery centuries old and now suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright at a time of war and passion in the midst of the stricken and embittered population of their former masters any man might well have hesitated to assume charge of such a work for responsibilities, indefinite powers and limited resources probably no one but a soldier would have answered such a call promptly and indeed no one but a soldier could be called for Congress had appropriated no money for salaries and expenses less than a month after the weary emancipator passed to his rest his successor assigned major general Oliver O. Howard to duty as commissioner of the new bureau was a main man then only 35 years of age he had marched with Sherman to the sea had fought well at Gettysburg and but the year before had been assigned to the command of the department of Tennessee an honest man with too much faith in human nature little aptitude for business and intricate detail he had had large opportunity of becoming acquainted at first hand with much of the work before him and of that work it has been truly said that no approximately correct history of civilization can ever be written which does not throw out in bold relief as one of the great landmarks of political and social progress the organization at administration of the Freedman's Bureau on May 12, 1865 Howard was appointed and he assumed the duties of his office promptly on the 15th and began examining the field of work a curious mess he looked upon little despotisms, communistic experiments slavery, peonage, business speculations organized charity, unorganized almsgiving all reeling on under the guise of helping the Freedman and all enshrined in the smoke and blood of the war and the cursing and silence of angry men on May 19, the new government for a government it really was issued its constitution commissioners were to be appointed in each of the seceded states who were to take charge of all subjects relating to refugees and Freedmen and all relief and rations were to be given by their consent alone the bureau invited continued cooperation with benevolent societies and declared it will be the object of all commissioners to introduce practicable systems of compensated labor and to establish schools forthwith nine assistant commissioners were appointed they were to hasten to their fields of work seek gradually to close relief establishments and make the destitute self-supporting act as courts of law where there were no courts or where Negroes were not recognized in them as free establish the institution of marriage among ex-slaves and keep records see that Freedmen were free to choose their employers and help in making fair contract for them and finally the circular said simple good faith for which we hope on all hands for those concerned in the passing away of slavery will especially relieve the assistant commissioners in the discharge of their duties toward the Freedmen as well as promote the general welfare no sooner was the work thus started and the general system and local organization in some measure begun than two grave difficulties appeared which changed largely the theory and outcome of bureau work first there were the abandoned lands of the south it had long been the more or less definitely expressed theory of the north that all the chief problems of emancipation might be settled by establishing the slaves on the forfeited lands of their masters a sort of poetic justice said some but this poetry done into solemn prose meant either a wholesale confiscation of private property in the south or vast appropriations now Congress had not appropriated ascent and no sooner did the proclamations of general amnesty appear than the 800,000 acres of abandoned lands in the hands of the Freedmen's bureau melted quickly away the second difficulty lay in perfecting the local organization of the bureau throughout the wide field of work making a new machine and sending out officials of duly ascertained fitness for a great work of social reform is no child's task but this task was even harder for a new central organization had to be fitted on a heterogeneous and confused but already existing system of relief and control of ex slaves and the agents available for this work must be sought for in an army still busy with war operations men in the very nature of the case ill fitted for delicate social work or among the questionable camp followers of an invading host thus after a year's work vigorously as it was pushed the problem looked even more difficult to grasp and solve than at the beginning nevertheless three things that year's work did well worth the doing it relieved a vast amount of physical suffering it transported 7,000 fugitives from congested centers back to the farm and best of all it inaugurated the crusade of the New England school ma'am the annals of this ninth crusade are yet to be written the tale of a mission that seemed to our age far more quixotic than the quest of St. Louis seemed to his behind the mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico dresses of women who dared and after the horse mouthings of the field guns rang the rhythm of the alphabet rich and poor they were serious and curious bereaved now of a father now of a brother now of more than these they came seeking a life work in planting New England school houses among the white and black of the south they did their work well in that first year they taught 100,000 souls and more evidently congress must soon legislate again on the hastily organized bureau which had grown so quickly into wide significance and vast possibilities an institution such as that was well nigh as difficult to end as to begin early in 1866 congress took up the matter when senator Trumbull of Illinois introduced a bill to extend the bureau and enlarge its powers this measure received at the hands of congress far more thorough discussion and attention than its predecessor the war cloud had thinned enough to allow clearer conception of the work of emancipation the champions of the bill argued that the strengthening of the freedmen's bureau was still a military necessity that it was needed for the proper carrying out of the 13th amendment and was a work of sheer justice to the ex-slave at a trifling cost to the government the opponents of the measure declared that the war was over and the necessity for war measures passed that the bureau by reason of its extraordinary powers was clearly unconstitutional in time of peace and was destined to irritate the self and pauperize the freedmen at a final cost of possibly hundreds of millions these two arguments were unanswered and indeed unanswerable the one that the extraordinary powers of the bureau threatened the civil rights of all citizens and the other that the government must have power to do what manifestly must be done and that present abandonment of the freedmen meant their practical re-enslavement the bill which finally passed enlarged and made permanent the freedmen's bureau it was promptly vetoed by president johnson as unconstitutional, unnecessary and extrajudicial and failed of passage over the veto meantime however the breach between congress and the president began to broaden and a modified form of the lost bill was finally passed over the president's second veto, july 16th the act of 1866 gave the freedmen's bureau its final form the form by which it will be known to posterity and judged of men it extended the existence of the bureau to july 1868 it authorized additional assistant commissioners the retention of army officers mustered out of regular service the sale of certain forfeited lands to freedmen on nominal terms the sale of confederate public property for negro schools and a wider field of judicial interpretation and cognizance the government of the unreconstructed south was thus put very largely in the hands of the freedmen's bureau especially as in many cases the departmental military commander was now made also assistant commissioner it was thus that the freedmen's bureau became a full-fledged government of men it made laws, executed them and interpreted them it laid and collected taxes, defined and punished crime, maintained and used military force and dictated such measures as it thought necessary and proper for the accomplishment of its varied ends naturally all these powers were not exercised continuously nor to their fullest extent and yet as general howard has said scarcely any subject that has to be legislated upon in civil society failed at one time or another to demand the action of this singular bureau end of chapter 2 part 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois music and text recorded by Toria's uncle chapter 2 part 2 to understand and criticize intelligently so vast a work one must not forget an instant the drift of things in the later 60s Lee had surrendered Lincoln was dead and Johnson and Congress were at loggerheads the 13th amendment was adopted the 14th pending and the 15th declared in force in 1870 guerrilla raiding the ever-present flickering afterflame of war was spending its forces against the Negroes and all the southern land was awakening as from some wild dream to poverty and social revolution in a time of perfect calm amid willing neighbors and streaming wealth the social uplifting of 4 million slaves to an assured and self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have been a herculean task but when to the inherent difficulties of so delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of conflict the hell of war when suspicion and cruelty were rife and gaunt hunger wept beside bereavement in such a case the work of any instrument of social regeneration was in large part fordoomed to failure the very name of the bureau stood for a thing in the south which for two centuries and better men had refused even to argue that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable the maddest of experiments the agents that the bureau could command varied all the way from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busybodies and thieves and even though it be true that the average was far better than the worst it was the occasional fly that helped spoil the ointment then amid all crouched the freed slave bewildered between friend and foe he had emerged from slavery not the worst slavery in the world not a slavery that made all life unbearable rather a slavery that had here and there something of kindliness fidelity and happiness but with all slavery which so far as human aspiration and dessert were concerned clasped the black man and the ox together and the Negro knew full well that whatever their deeper convictions may have been southern men had fought with desperate energy to perpetuate this slavery under which the black masses with half-articulate thought had writhed and shivered they welcomed freedom with a cry they shrank from the master who still strove for their chains they fled to the friends that had freed them even though those friends stood ready to use them as a club for driving the recalcitrant south back into loyalty so the cleft between the white and black south grew vital to say it never should have been it was as inevitable as its results were pitiable curiously incongruous elements were left arrayed against each other the north the government the carpetbagger and the slave here and there all the south that was white whether gentlemen or vagabond honest man or rascal lawless murderer or martyr to duty thus it is doubly difficult to write of this period calmly so intense was the feeling so mighty the human passions that swayed and blinded men amid it all two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming ages the one a gray haired gentleman whose father said quit themselves like men whose sons lay in nameless graves who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill to all who stood at last in the evening of life a blighted ruined form with hate in his eyes and the other a form hovering dark and motherlike her awful face black with the mists of centuries had a four-time quelled at that white master's command had bent in love over the cradles of his sons and daughters and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife I too at his behest had laid herself low to his lust and born a tawny man child to the world only to see her dark boys limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after damned niggas these were the saddest sites of that woeful day and no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures of the present past but hating they went to their long home and hating their children's children live today here then was the field of work for the Freedman's Bureau and since with some hesitation it was continued by the act of 1868 until 1869 let us look upon four years of its work as a whole there were in 1868 900 Bureau officials scattered from Washington to Texas ruling directly and indirectly many millions of men the deeds of these rulers fall mainly under seven heads the relief of physical suffering the overseeing of the beginnings of free labor the buying and selling of land the establishment of schools the paying of bounties the administration of justice and the financiering of all these activities up to June 1869 over half a million patients had been treated by Bureau of Physicians and Surgeons and 60 hospitals and asylums had been in operation in 50 months 21 million free rations were distributed at a cost of over 4 million dollars next came the difficult question of labor first 30,000 black men were transported from the refuges and relief stations back to the farms back to the critical trial of a new way of working plain instructions went out from Washington the laborers must be free to choose their employers no fixed rate of wages was prescribed and there was to be no peonage or forced labor so far so good but where local agents differed toto silo in capacity and character where the personnel was continually changing the outcome was necessarily varied the largest element of success lay in the fact that the majority of the freedmen were willing even eager to work so labor contracts were written 50,000 in a single state laborers advised wages guaranteed and employers supplied in truth the organization became a vast labor bureau not perfect indeed notably defective here and there but on the whole successful beyond the dreams of thoughtful men the two great obstacles which confronted the officials were the tyrant and the idler the slave holder who was determined to perpetuate slavery under another name and the freedmen who regarded freedom as perpetual rest the devil and the deep sea in the work of establishing the negroes as peasant proprietors the bureau was from the first handicapped and at last absolutely checked something was done and larger things were planned abandoned lands were leased so long as they remained in the hands of the bureau and a total revenue of nearly half a million dollars derived from black tenants some other lands to which the nation had gained title were sold on easy terms and public lands were opened for settlement to the very few freedmen who had tools and capital but the vision of 40 acres and a mule the righteous and reasonable ambition to become a landholder which the nation had all but categorically promised the freedmen was destined in most cases to bitter disappointment and those men of marvelous hindsight who are today seeking to preach the negroes back to the present peonage of the soil know well or ought to know that the opportunity of binding the negro peasant willingly to the soil was lost on that day when the commissioner of the freedmen's bureau had to go to South Carolina and tell the weeping freedmen after their years of toil that their land was not theirs that there was a mistake somewhere if by 1874 the Georgia negro alone owned 350,000 acres of land it was by grace of his thrift rather than by bounty of the government the greatest success of the freedmen's bureau lay in the planting of the free school among negroes and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the south it's not only called the school mistresses through the benevolent agencies and built them schoolhouses but it helped discover and support such apostles of human culture as Edmund Ware, Samuel Armstrong, and Erastus Cravath the opposition to negro education in the south was at first bitter and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood for the south believed in educated negro to be a dangerous negro and the south was not wholly wrong for education among all kinds of men always has had and always will have an element of danger and revolution of dissatisfaction and discontent nevertheless, men strive to know perhaps some inkling of this paradox even in the unquiet days of the bureau helped the bayonets allay an opposition to human training which still today lies smoldering in the south but not flaming Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and Hampton were founded in these days and six million dollars were expended for educational work 750,000 dollars of which the freedmen themselves gave of their poverty such contributions together with the buying of land and various other enterprises showed that the ex-slave was handling some free capital already the chief initial source of this was labor in the army and his pay and bounty as a soldier payments to negro soldiers were at first complicated by the ignorance of the recipients and the fact that the quotas of colored regiments from northern states were largely filled by recruits from the south unknown to their fellow soldiers consequently payments were accompanied by such frauds that congress by joint resolution in 1867 put the whole matter in the hands of the freedmen's bureau in two years six million dollars was thus distributed to 5,000 claimants and in the end the sum exceeded eight million dollars even in this system fraud was frequent but still the work put needed capital in the hands of practical paupers and some at least was well spent the most perplexing and least successful part of the bureau's work lay in the exercise of its judicial functions the regular bureau court consisted of one representative of the employer one of the negro and one of the bureau if the bureau could have maintained a perfectly judicial attitude this arrangement would have been ideal and must in time have gained confidence but the nature of its other activities and the character of its personnel prejudiced the bureau in favor of the black litigants and led without doubt to much injustice and annoyance on the other hand to leave the negro in the hands of southern courts was impossible in a distracted land where slavery had hardly fallen to keep the strong from wanton abuse of the weak and the weak from gloating insolently over the half shorn strength of the strong was a thankless hopeless task the former masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about seized and imprisoned and punished over and again with scant courtesy from army officers the former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped and butchered by angry and revengeful men bureau courts tended to become centers simply for punishing whites while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks almost every law and method ingenuity could devise was employed by the legislatures to reduce the negroes to serfdom to make them the slaves of the state if not of individual owners while the bureau officials too often were found striving to put the bottom rail on top and gave the freedmen a power and independence which they could not yet use it is all well enough for us of another generation to wax wise with advice to those who bore the burden in the heat of the day it is full easy now to see that the man who lost home, fortune and family at a stroke and saw his land ruled by mules and niggers was really benefited by the passing of slavery it is not difficult now to say to the young freedmen cheated and cuffed about who has seen his father's head beaten to a jelly and his own mother namelessly assaulted that the meek shall inherit the earth above all nothing is more convenient than to heap on the freedmen's bureau all the evils of that evil day and damn it utterly for every mistaken blunder that was made all this is easy but it is neither sensible nor just someone had blundered but that was long before Oliver Howard was born there was criminal aggression and needless neglect but without some system of control there would have been far more than there was had that control been from within the Negro would have been re-enslaved to all intents and purposes coming as the control did from without perfect men and methods would have bettered all things and even within perfect agents and questionable methods the work accomplished was not undeserving of commendation such was the dawn of freedom such was the work of the freedmen's bureau which summed up in brief may be epitomized thus for some fifteen million dollars beside the sums spent before 1865 and the dole of benevolent societies this bureau set going a system of free labor established a beginning of peasant proprietorship secured the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law and founded the free common school in the south on the other hand it failed to begin the establishment of goodwill between ex-masters and freedmen to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods which discouraged self-reliance and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land its successes were the result of hard work supplemented by the aid of philanthropist and the eager striving of black men its failures were the result of bad local agents the inherent difficulties of the work and national neglect such an institution from its wide powers, great responsibilities large control of monies and generally conspicuous position was naturally open to repeated and bitter attack it sustained a searching congressional investigation at the insistence of Fernando Wood in 1870 its archives and few remaining functions were with blunt discurty transferred from Howard's control in his absence to the supervision of secretary of war Belknap in 1872 on the secretary's recommendation finally in consequence of grave intimations of wrongdoing made by the secretary and his subordinates general Howard was court-martialed in 1874 in both of these trials the commissioner of the freedmen's bureau was officially exonerated from any willful misdoing and his work commended nevertheless many unpleasant things were brought to light the methods of transacting the business of the bureau were faulty several cases of defulcation were proved and other frauds strongly suspected there were some business transactions which savored a dangerous speculation if not dishonesty and around it all lay the smirch of the freedmen's bank morally and practically the freedmen's bank was part of the freedmen's bureau although it had no legal connection with it with the prestige of the government back of it and a directing board of unusual respectability and national reputation this banking institution had made a remarkable start in the development of that thrift among black folk which slavery had kept them from knowing then in one sad day came the crash all the hard-earned dollars of the freedmen disappeared but that was the least of the loss all the faith in saving went to and much of the faith in men and that was a loss that a nation which today sneers at negro shiftlessness has never yet made good not even ten additional years of slavery could have done so much to throttle the thrift of the freedmen as the mismanagement and bankruptcy of the series of savings banks chartered by the nation for their especial aid where all the blame should rest it is hard to say whether the bureau and the bank died chiefly by reason of the blows of its selfish friends or the dark machinations of its foes perhaps even time will never reveal for here lies unwritten history of the foes without the bureau the bitterest were those who attacked not so much its conduct or policy under the law as the necessity for any such institution at all such attacks came primarily from the border states and the south and they were summed up by senator Davis of Kentucky when he moved to entitle the act of 1866 a bill to promote strife and conflict between the white and black races by a grant of unconstitutional power the argument gathered tremendous strength south and north but its very strength was its weakness for argued the plain common sense of the nation if it is unconstitutional unpractical and futile for the nation to stand guardian over its helpless wards then there is left but one alternative to make those wards their own guardians by arming them with the ballot moreover the path of the practical politician pointed the same way four argued this opportunist if we cannot peacefully reconstruct the south with white votes we certainly can with black votes so justice and force joined hands the alternative thus offered the nation was not between full and restricted Negro suffrage else every sensible man black and white would have easily chosen the latter it was rather a choice between suffrage and slavery after endless blood and gold had flowed to sweep human bondage away not a single southern legislature stood ready to admit a Negro under any conditions to the polls not a single southern legislature believed free Negro labor was possible without a system of restrictions that took all its freedom away there was scarcely a white man in the south who did not honestly regard emancipation as a crime and its practical nullification as a duty in such a situation the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race and the only method of compelling the south to accept the results of the war thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud and some felt gratitude toward the race thus sacrificed in its swaddling clothes on the altar of national integrity and some felt and feel only indifferent and contempt had political exigencies been less pressing the opposition to government guardianship of Negroes less bitter and the attachment to the slave system less strong the social seer can well imagine a far better policy a permanent freedmen's bureau with a national system of Negro schools a carefully supervised employment and labor office a system of impartial protection before the regular courts and such institutions for social betterment as savings banks land and building associations and social settlements all this vast expenditure of money and brains might have formed a great school of prospective citizenship and solved in a way we have not yet solved the most perplexing and persistent of the Negro problems that such an institution was unthinkable in 1870 was due in part to certain acts of the freedmen's bureau itself it came to regard its work as merely temporary and Negro suffrage as a final answer to all present perplexities the political ambition of many of its agents and protégés led it far afield into questionable activities until the south, nursing its own deep prejudices came easily to ignore all the good deeds of the bureau and hate its very name with perfect hatred so the freedmen's bureau died and its child was the 15th amendment the passing of a great human institution before its work is done like the untimely passing of a single soul but leaves a legacy of striving for other men the legacy of the freedmen's bureau is the heavy heritage of this generation today when new and vaster problems are destined to strain every fiber of the national mind and soul would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? for this much all men know despite compromise, war and struggle the Negro is not free in the backwoods of the Gulf states for miles and miles he may not leave the plantation of his birth in well nigh the whole rural south the black farmers are peons bound by law and custom to an economic slavery from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary in the most cultured sections and cities of the south the Negroes are a segregated servile caste with restricted rights and privileges before the courts, both in law and custom they stand on a different and peculiar basis taxation without representation is the rule of their political life and the result of all this is, and in nature must have been lawlessness and crime that is the large legacy of the freedmen's bureau the work it did not do because it could not I have seen a land right merry with the sun where children sing and rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with harvest and there in the king's highway sat and sits a figure veiled and bowed by which the travelers footsteps hasten as they go on the tainted air broods fear three centuries thought has been the raising and unveiling of that bowed human heart and now behold a century new for the duty and the deed the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line end of chapter 2 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Dubois Music and Text recorded by Toria's uncle Chapter 3 of Mr. Booker T. Washington and others from birth till death enslaved in word and deed on manned hereditary bondsmen no ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow Byron easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington it began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons then it was that his leading began Mr. Washington came with a simple definite program at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes and was concentrating its energies on dollars his program of industrial education conciliation of the self and submission and silence as to civil and political rights was not wholly original free Negroes from 1830 up to wartime had striven to build industrial schools and the American Missionary Association had from the first taught various trades and price and others had sought a way of honorable alliance with the best of the Southerners but Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked these things he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy and perfect faith into his program and changed it from a bypass into a veritable way of life and the tale of the methods by which he did this is a fascinating study of human life it startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a program after many decades of bitter complaint it startled and won the applause of the self it interested and won the admiration of the North and after a confused murmur of protest it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves to gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising the white self was Mr. Washington's first task and this at the time Tuskegee was founded seemed for a black man well nigh impossible and yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta in all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress this Atlanta compromise is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington's career the South interpreted it in different ways the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality the conservatives as a generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding so both approved it and today its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis and the one with the largest personal following next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington's work in gaining place and consideration in the North others less shrewd and tactful had formally essayed to sit on these two stools and had fallen between them but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and training so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the North and so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism and the ideals of material prosperity that the picture of a lone black boy pouring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurdities one wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this and yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the successful man it is as though nature must needs make man narrow in order to give them force so Mr. Washington's cult has gained on questioning followers his work has wonderfully prospered his friends are legion and his enemies are confounded today he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions one hesitates therefore to criticize a life beginning with so little has done so much and yet the time has come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career as well as of his triumphs without being thought captious or envious and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world the criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad character South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments and naturally so for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness to that section twice once when at the Chicago celebration of the Spanish-American war he alluded to the color prejudice that is eating away the vitals of the South and once when he dined with President Roosevelt has the resulting Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten seriously his popularity in the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words that Mr. Washington's councils of submissions overlooked certain elements of true manhood and that his educational program was unnecessarily narrow usually however such criticism has not found open expression although too the spiritual sons of the abolitionists have not been prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee by man of broad ideals and self-sacrificing spirit were holy failures or worthy of ridicule well then criticism has not failed to follow Mr. Washington yet the prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too willing to deliver the solution of a wearisome problem into his hands and say if that is all you and your race ask take it among his own people however Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most lasting opposition amounting at times to bitterness and even today continuing strong and insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation some of this opposition is of course mere envy the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds but aside from this there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret sorrow and apprehension a wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington's theories have gained these same men admire his sincerity of purpose and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is doing something worth the doing they cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can and indeed it is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power that steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions he so largely retains the respect of all but the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing it leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched criticism of writers by readers this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society if the best of the American Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain yet there is also irreparable loss a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders the way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social growth history is but the record of such group leadership and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character and of all types and kinds what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group that curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression all this is the social students inspiration and despair now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing of group leaders founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions is worthwhile studying when sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a people their attitude is largely one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural forces but when to earth and brute is added an environment of men and ideas then the attitude of the imprisoned group may take three main forms a feeling of revolt and revenge an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater group or finally a determined effort at self-realization and self-development despite environing opinion the influence of all these attitudes at various times can be traced in the history of the American Negro and in the evolution of his successive leaders before 1750 while the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves there was an all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge typified in the terrible maroons the Danish blacks and Cato of Stono unveiling all the Americas in fear of insurrection finalizing tendencies of the latter half of the 18th century brought along with kindlier relations between black and white thoughts of ultimate adjustment and assimilation such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest songs of Phyllis in the martyrdom of Attucks the fighting of Salem and poor the intellectual accomplishments of Bannaker and Durham and the political demands of the Cuffees stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the previous humanitarian order the disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the persistence of slavery and serfdom voiced itself in two movements the slaves in the south aroused undoubtedly by a vague rumors of the Haitian revolt made three fierce attempts at insurrection in 1800 under Gabriel in Virginia in 1822 under Vacey in Carolina and in 1831 again in Virginia a terrible Nat Turner in the free states on the other hand a new and curious attempt at self-development was made in Philadelphia and New York color prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro communicans from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious institution among the Negroes known as the African Church an organization still living and controlling in its various branches over a million of men walkers wild appeal against the trend and the the free Negroes of the north inspired by the Milado immigrants from the West Indies began to change the basis of their demands they recognized the slavery of slaves but insisted that they themselves were freemen and sought assimilation and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men thus fortune and purpose of Philadelphia Shad of Wilmington Dubois of New Haven Barbados of Boston and others strove singly and together as men they said not as slaves as people of color not as Negroes the trend of the times however refused them recognition save in individual and exceptional cases considered them as one with all the despised blacks and they soon found themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting and working and moving as freemen schemes of migration and colonization arose among them but these they refused to entertain and they eventually turned to the abolition movement as a final refuge here led by Ramond, Nell, Wells Brown and Douglas a new period of self-assertion and self-development dawned to be sure ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the leaders but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance and John Brown's raid was the extreme of its logic after the war and emancipation the great former Frederick Douglas the greatest of American Negro leaders still led the host self-assertion especially in political lines was the main program and behind Douglas came the great Bruce and Langston and the reconstruction politicians and less conspicuous but of greater social significance Alexander Kreml and Bishop Daniel Payne then came the revolution of 1876 the suppression of the Negro votes the changing and shifting of ideals and the seeking of new lights in the great night Douglas in his old age still bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood assimilation through self-assertion and on no other terms for a time price arose as a new leader destined it seemed not to give up but to restate the old ideals in a form less repugnant to the white self but he passed away in his prime then came the new leader nearly all the former ones had become leaders by the silent suffrage of their fellows had sought to lead their own people alone and were usually save Douglas, little known outside their race but Booker T. Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of two a compromiser between the south, the north and the Negro naturally the Negroes resented at first bitterly signs of compromise which surrendered their civil and political rights even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic development the rich and dominating north however was not only weary of the race problem but was investing largely in southern enterprises and welcomed any method of peaceful cooperation thus by national opinion the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington's leadership and the voice of criticism was hushed Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment at submission but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his program unique this is an age of unusual economic development and Mr. Washington's program naturally takes an economic cast becoming a gospel of work and money to such an extent has apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life moreover this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races and the race feeling is therefore intensified and Mr. Washington's program practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races again in our own land the reaction from the sentiment of wartime has given impetus to race prejudice against Negroes and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens in other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negroes' tendency to self assertion has been called forth at this period a policy of submission is advocated in the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crisis has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect or cease striving for it are not worth civilizing in answer to this it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up at least for the present three things first political power second insistence on civil rights third higher education of Negro youth and concentrate all their energies on industrial education and accumulation of wealth and the conciliation of the self this policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over 15 years and has been triumphant for perhaps 10 years as a result of this tender of the palm branch what has been the return in these years there have occurred one the disfranchisement of the Negro two the legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro three the steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro these movements are not to be sure direct result of Mr. Washington's teachings but his propaganda has without a shadow of doubt helped their speedier accomplishment the question then comes is it possible and probable that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights made a servile cast and allowed only the most meager chance for developing their exceptional men if history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions it is an emphatic no and Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career one he is striving nobly to make Negro artisans businessmen and property owners but it is utterly impossible under modern competitive methods for working men and property owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage two he insists on thrift and self-respect but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run three he advocates common school and industrial training and depreciates institutions of higher learning but neither the Negro common schools nor Tuskegee itself could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges or trained by their graduates this triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of colored Americans one class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior through Gabriel, Vacey, and Turner and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge they hate the White South blindly and distrust the White race generally and so far as they agree on definite action think that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United States and yet by the irony of fate nothing has more effectually made this program seem hopeless than the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii, and the Philippines for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying and brute force the other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said little aloud they deprecate the sight of scattered counsels of internal disagreement and especially they dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a general discharge of venom from small-minded opponents nevertheless the questions involved are so fundamental and serious that it is difficult to see how men like the Grimkeys, Kelly Miller, J.W.E. Bowen and other representatives of this group can much longer be silent such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things one, the right to vote two, civic equality three, the education of youth according to ability they acknowledge Mr. Washington's invaluable service in counseling patients and courtesy in such demands they do not ask that ignorant black men vote when ignorant whites are debarred or that any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage should not be applied they know that the low social level of the mass of the race is responsible for much discrimination against it but they also know and the nation knows that relentless color prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro's degradation they seek the abatement of this relic of barbarism and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies of social power they advocate with Mr. Washington a broad system of Negro common schools supplemented by thorough industrial training but they are surprised that a man of Mr. Washington's insight cannot see that no such educational system ever has rested or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college and university and they insist that there is demand for a few such institutions throughout the south to train the best of the Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and leaders this group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward the white south they accept the Atlanta compromise in its broadest interpretation they recognize with him many signs of promise many men of high purpose and fair judgment in this section they know that no easy task has been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens but nevertheless they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty not in indiscriminate flattery in praising those of the south who do well and criticizing uncompromisingly those who do ill in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging their fellows to do the same but at the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility they do not expect that the free right to vote to enjoy civic rights and to be educated will come in a moment they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves that on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually in season and out of season that voting is necessary to modern manhood that color discrimination is barbarism and that black boys need education as well as white boys in failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally that the sentiment demands of their people even at the cost of opposing an honored leader the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a heavy responsibility a responsibility to themselves a responsibility to the struggling masses a responsibility to the darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American experiment but especially a responsibility to this nation this common fatherland it is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil doing it is wrong to aid and to bet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so the growing spirit of kindness and reconciliation between the North and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority then those black men, if they are really men are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington we have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white first it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly the present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South the South is not solid it is a land in the ferment of social change where enforcers of all kinds are fighting for supremacy and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters and for the insurance of robust, healthy, mental and moral development today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not as so many assume in all cases the same the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro the working men fear his competition the money makers wish to use him as a laborer some of the educated see a menace in his upward development while others, usually the sons of the masters wish to help him to rise national opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools and to protect the Negro partially in property, life and limb through the pressure of the money makers the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery especially in the country districts the working men and those of the educated who fear the Negro have united to disfranchise him and some have urged his deportation while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man to praise this intricate world of thought and prejudice is nonsense to invade indiscriminately against the South is unjust but to use the same breath in praising Governor Acock exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nielsen Page and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman is not only sane but the imperative duty of thinking black men it would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro he sent memorials to the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions he has spoken against lynching and in other ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate happenings notwithstanding this it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington's propaganda is first that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro's degradation secondly that the prime cause of the Negro's failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past and thirdly that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth the supplementary truths must never be lost sight of first slavery and race prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro's position second industrial and common school training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was possible and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880 and third while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded but rather aroused and encouraged by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group he cannot hope for great success in his failure to realize and impress this last point Mr. Washington is especially to be criticized his doctrine has tended to make the whites north and south shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators when in fact the burden belongs to the nation and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to writing these great wrongs the south ought to be led by candid and honest criticism to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging the north her co-partner in guilt cannot save her conscience by plastering it with gold we cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness by policy alone if worse come to worst can the moral fiber of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men the black man of America have a duty to perform a duty stern and delicate a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader so far as Mr. Washington preaches thrift patience and industrial training for the masses we must hold up his hand and strive with him rejoicing in his honors and glorifying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and man to lead the headless host but so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice north or south does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds so far as he the south or the nation does this we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them by every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the fathers would feign forget we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness