NEGROES AT CAMP MEETING

“Gettysburg,Pa.,Sept.11.—Clara Brown, of Baltimore, colored, was shot in a brawl here in the course of an excursion and picnic. Her condition is critical. Three other persons were also injured. The picnickers had a gay frolic. It ischarged that fifty of them attacked a policeman, and one of them robbed Robert King of Hunterstown of $35. There were about 7240 excursionists. Gettysburg has made a protest.”[90:18]

“Roanoke,Va., March 29.—Drunken Negroes took charge of an excursion train between this city and Winston-Salem last night and as a consequence Sidney Wood of Winston-Salem is dead at Martinsville, and two-score other Negroes are more or less wounded. Knives, razors, and pistols played prominent parts in the melee. . . . The train was stopped several times by Negroes pulling the bell cord, and the train was cut in two several times, leaving a number of coaches behind with a second section following. . . . The three coaches which were cut off were filled with white people. . . . When the train reached Bassetts, in Henry County, every Negro in two coaches was apparently in a fight. The screams of the terror-stricken women added to the excitement.”[90:19]

“Smyrna,Del.,Aug.9.—As has been the case yearly for a dozen years there was a fatal shooting affray at the Negro camp meeting at Friendshiplast night. Howard Hollis, a Negro of Clayton,Del., was shot in both legs during the fight. . . . It is not known who shot Hollis as bullets were flying thick and fast during the melee.”[91:20]

“Federalsburg,Md.,Sept.6.—Officers are scouring lower Caroline County to-day for four Negroes who last night shot up a Negro campmeeting at Mount Hope, near this town.”[91:21]

“Deputy Sheriff Bruce C. Dean, yesterday afternoon shot and killed a Negro named Smith at what is known as Henry’s Cross Roads [near Cambridge,Md., negro] campmeeting. . . . There has always been more or less disorder; in fact, it is generally known that fights, cutting affrays, and a general disregard for the law exists.”[91:22]The Negro who was killed shot at the deputy Sheriff when he tried to arrest him.

“Salisbury,Md.,Aug.23.—A riot occurred last night at the Negro campmeeting, on the west side of the county, and Asbury Waters, 19 years old, was killed, and Clinton Gosless was shot through his jaw-bone and his chin carried away by a bullet.“Just at the height of the services one of the local preachers, was raising his hands in prayer, a colored woman slipped into the kneeling crowd and pulled a pistol from her dress folds and fired a bullet into his heart. Waters pitched forward and died instantly. . . . Immediately after, Sallie Milburn whipped a pistol from her pocket and blazed away at Clinton Gosless, the bullet entering his jaw. Gosless is in a very serious condition with little hope of his recovery.”

“Just at the height of the services one of the local preachers, was raising his hands in prayer, a colored woman slipped into the kneeling crowd and pulled a pistol from her dress folds and fired a bullet into his heart. Waters pitched forward and died instantly. . . . Immediately after, Sallie Milburn whipped a pistol from her pocket and blazed away at Clinton Gosless, the bullet entering his jaw. Gosless is in a very serious condition with little hope of his recovery.”

Both these accounts were in the same issue of theCambridge(Md.)Record, but the camps were in adjoining counties.

Indeed, Negro camp meetings and bush meetings had become so numerous,—occupied such a large part of the Negroes’ time during summer, caused so much lawlessness among them; and consequently so much expense to the whites, that the Maryland Legislature in 1916 passed a law evidently directed against them, which in part is as follows:

“It shall be unlawful for any person, persons, association or organization of any kind whatever to hold any camp meeting or bush meeting within the limits of Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester, Somerset,Kent, and Worcester Counties without first making application in writing at least fifteen days prior to the date of such camp meeting or bush meeting therein. That such application for a permit as aforesaid, shall be accompanied by a petition in writing signed by at least twenty-five tax payers, each of whom shall reside within three miles of the place where such camp meeting is to be held, and each petition shall have annexed thereto as a part thereof an affidavit to the effect that each of the said petitioners are bona fide tax payers and of their residences within three miles of said place of such proposed meeting. And whenever the County Commissioners of any of the respective counties shall have any reasonable grounds that any lawlessness or disorder will occur, at said camp meeting or bush meeting, they shall refuse to grant such permit, and if, after issuing any permit to hold any camp meeting or bush meeting there shall be lawlessness or disorder reported to said County Commissioners, it shall be the duty of said officials to investigate or have investigated by the Sheriff or other officer of said county, the matter, and upon proof of said lawlessness or disorder they shall forthwith revoke said permit and it shall be the duty of the Sheriff, or other officer of the respective Counties to enforce the provisions of this act.”

In about the same spirit and for the same purpose, the reduction of Negro crime, a few years ago, the city of Mobile, Alabama, passed an ordinance, an account of which is taken from a Baltimore periodical:[94:23]

“The police department of Mobile,Ala., has established a curfew law for Negroes. Commencing on the night of July 21, the law provides that all Negroes must be in bed at their homes by ten o’clock or be subject to arrest. Any caught wandering at large after that hour will be locked up. This action is taken because there is said to be an epidemic of hold-ups perpetrated by the Negroes. If such a law was enforced in Baltimore it would decrease the alley fights ninety-five per cent.”

In connection with Negro criminality it seems pertinent to say something of Negro immorality. Two of the Negro’s most prominent characteristics are the utter lack of chastity and complete ignorance of veracity.

The Negro’s sexual laxity, considered so immoral or even criminal in the white man’s civilization, may have been all but a virtue in thehabitat of his origin. There nature developed in him intense sexual passions to offset his high death rate. Then, too, the economic influences which fostered a family life among other peoples were mostly lacking in tropical Africa as nature provided abundantly without effort on the part of man.

Although the regulations adopted by masters for the control of the Negroes during slavery times may have served as a check upon their natural sexual propensities, however, since emancipation they have been under no such restraint and as a consequence they have possibly almost reverted to what must have been their primitive promiscuity. Huffman says that in 1894 more than one-fourth of the colored births in the city of Washington were illegitimate. Many prominent Negroes admit that above ninety per cent of both sexes are unchaste. A negro may be a pillar in the church and at the same time the father of a dozen illegitimate children by as many mothers.

Another Negro failing is lying. One can believe neither layman nor minister, neither criminal nor saint among them. One may occasionally find a truthful Negro,—just as he may find a virtuous or an honest one. Undoubtedly both honest and truthful was the Negro,—an elder in the church,—who refused to partake of the Lord’s Supper,because, as he said, the flour the bread was made of had been stolen.

Some benevolently-inclined men and many religious zealots thought that religion and education was the “Open Sesame” by means of which the “salvation” of the Negro was to come. So they sent him money to build churches and to found great schools. Many, however, are now finding that though the Negro may have religion he has no morality; and that too often his education makes him unwilling to do what he can do and wish to do that for which he is unfitted or for which there is no demand. At present who can tell whether he is going forward or backward. Some one has said that there is going on side by side in the Negro people a minimum of progress with a maximum of regress.

However, the Negro takes great pride in his church, and in his way is intensely religious. The late BookerT.Washington said:

“Of these millions of black people there is only a very small percentage that does not have formal or informal connection with some church.”

It is, indeed, likely that more than one-half of the male Negro adults are actual members of church, while not more thanonein four or fivewhite male adults have such connection. Notwithstanding such a showing, religion does not seem to have any controlling influence over the life and character of the Negro.

Nevertheless, the Negro enjoys his religion, for he is an emotional animal. It is the emotional element in religion that appeals to him and makes his face to shine. The promise of never-ending pleasure in a world to come may be but faintly comprehended by him, but the fear of a far off punishment deters him but little from crime. He is the optimist of the human race, and lives in the eternal present. He has no sorrows from the past, and no care except for the immediate future. He keeps without effort or intention two injunctions of Scripture: “Visit the sick,” and “have no care for to-morrow.”

He goes to camp meetings or revivals, sings, prays, and shouts until the small hours of the night. He may think he thus pays the Lord His due, even though the next day, if he works at all, he sleeps on the plow-handle, or with half-closed eyes cuts up the tobacco or the cotton.

However, he may be free from the painful necessity to work the next day, if his wife or mother should have just returned from a white neighbor with an “apronful,” even if he did not visit sometempting smoke-house or hen-roost on the way home from his religious revelry.

How can Negro criminality and immorality be lessened? The answer is not easy, and what follows is merely suggestive. Up to the present, what little the Negro has accomplished, in most part has been due to the white blood he has received, or to white direction and sympathy. The Negro is woefully lacking in initiative and persistence. He would be greatly benefited by some sort of probationary oversight. If the Filipinos are not fit for self-government collectively, much less the Negro individually. A great part of them are no more fit to profit by their freedom than so many children. Nothing so promotes health of body and strength of character as regular and persistent industry. To the Negro should be preached the “gospel of salvation” through work. Somehow get him to work six days in the week, instead of working two and loafing four, as many now do. Industrial schools such as Hampton and Tuskegee meet a great need but they touch but few.

If the States had the power to train or even to enforce habits of industry and thrift upon the shiftless, idle, and vicious Negroes it would undoubtedly result in measureless benefit to both white and black. Liberty should not be madea “fetish.” If the Negro has rights that should not be abridged, so have the white people rights andlivesthat should not be endangered. The law-abiding many have the right to protection from the criminal few—actual or incipient. With the adoption of some such scheme the Negro might gradually cease to be a menace to the white race.

Again, so often the Negro leaders of the Negro race are merely blind leaders of the blind,—entirely lacking in breadth of view, often discouraging in their race what they should encourage and encouraging what they should discourage as the following quotation may indicate:

“‘Make lynching a Federal crime, and stop turning the murderers over to local authorities who are in sympathy with them,’ demandedDr.W. T. Vernon, of Memphis,Tenn., before 15,000 Negroes, who were celebrating the twenty-fifth quadrennial Conference of the AfricanM. E.Church in Convention Hall, Broad street and Allegheny Avenue, yesterday.”[99:24]

Such talk as this serves to promote Negro crime. If instead of Negro leaders writing articles for magazines and Negro papers, in sermons in Negro churches, and in addresses beforeNegro conventions denouncing the whites for protecting themselves against Negro crime in their own way, could realize that it is not so much the black skin as what sort of man the black skin covers, that counts, would demonstrate to their black brothers that they themselves are the sinners rather than the sinned against, that they are the transgressors rather than otherwise, they might accomplish much toward lessening Negro crime. If such leaders would use their influence to the utmost to make their race as law-abiding as the whites, and should bring it about, it is hardly likely that then they would need to complain that their race is imposed upon. But if they were, at least, there would be more force in their complaint. But so long as the Negro race commits its present amount of crime, the complaint against unfair treatment is more than childish.

FOOTNOTES:

[76:1]Both TablesIandIIhave reference to penetentiaries, no account being taken of other penal institutions. The calculations are based upon the census of 1910 and penitentiary reports of the same year, or thereabouts, but some prison statistics for other years are also given.

[77:2]Some State penitentiary reports give the number of prisoners on hand at a certain time, others simply those committed during a period of time, while a few reports give both items.

[81:3]My statistics are based on the census of 1910. The Special Report of the Prison Inspector of Alabama for the year ending September 30, 1914, and the returns of the county jails of Connecticut for the same period. As the white population of Connecticut increased about 225,000 during the previous decade, while the Negroes slightly decreased, I added 70,000 to the white population of 1910 to offset the increase of whites during the three or four years between 1910 and 1914. But as both races increased in Alabama I use the 1910 census for that State.

[81:4]In proportion to their respective population, of course.

[81:5]In order to avoid repetition, unless otherwise indicated, when one white to four Negroes or any such ratio is mentioned, the meaning is this: I divide the white population of the state by the white prisoners for the number of white people to each white prisoner, and divide the Negro population of the State for the number of Negroes to each Negro prisoner, and then divide the white prisoners by the Negro to get the ratio of Negro prisoners to the white.

[85:7]I made no effort to find these. I give here only a few of those taken fromBaltimore Sun,Baltimore American, and refer mainly to Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. What may be true in these States as regards Negro criminality, is likely to be found intensified farther south.

[86:8]Baltimore Sun,Jan.6, 1910.

[86:9]Baltimore News,Oct.20, 1916.

[87:10]Baltimore Sun,Aug.4, 1915.

[87:11]Ibid., April 8, 1910.

[87:12]Ibid.,Sept.12, 1917.

[88:13]Baltimore American,Feb.18, 1913.

[88:14]Baltimore Sun,Jan.8, 1917.

[88:15]Ibid., Feb. 21, 1917.

[89:16]Baltimore Weekly Herald, July 8, 1909.

[89:17]Baltimore Sun,Aug.15, 1914.

[90:18]Cambridge(Md.)Record,Sept.12, 1913.

[90:19]Baltimore Sun, March 30, 1910.

[91:20]Baltimore Sun,Aug.10, 1915.

[91:21]Ibid.,Sept.7, 1915.

[91:22]Cambridge(Md.)Record,Aug.25, 1913.

[94:23]Methodist Protestant, July 28, 1909.

[99:24]Philadelphia Record, May 8, 1916.

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