Prof. J. H. Jones, D. D.
REV. JOSHUA H. JONES.The Rev. Joshua H. Jones was born at Pine Plains, South Carolina, June 15, 1856. He professed religion at ten years of age and joined the Shady Grove A. M. E. Church of the Bull Swamp Circuit, South Carolina. At the age of fourteen he was made Sunday School teacher, and at the age of sixteen Sunday School superintendent. By the time he was eighteen he had served in all the local spiritual offices of the church, and was then licensed as a local preacher by the quarterly conference of said circuit. The pastors soon discovered his usefulness and aid to them. He was a diligent student and an ardent churchman, and acquired education rapidly. At the age of twenty-one years he entered the Normal Department of Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and in 1880 finished the Normal and College Preparatory Courses. He then taught and preached one year, after which he returned to Claflin University, and in 1885 graduated with the degree at A. B. Not daunted nor yet satisfied with his attainments he came north, studied awhile at Howard University, Washington, D. C., thence to Wilberforce University,wherein 1887 he graduated from the Theological Course with the degree of B. D. In 1893 Wilberforce University conferred upon him the degree of D. D. in recognition of his superior worth and ability. In June, 1900, he was elected President of Wilberforce University, and a year later Claflin University conferred upon him the degree of M. A.As a minister of the Gospel he has been pastor in charge of Williams Chapel, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Branchville Circuit, South Carolina; Fort Motte Circuit, South Carolina; Wheeling, West Virginia; The Holy Trinity Church, Wilberforce, Ohio; Lynn, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Columbus, Ohio; and Presiding Elder of the Columbus District, Ohio Conference; Pastor at Zanesville, Ohio. In all an unbroken period of thirty-six years of church work and twenty-eight years in the ministry he has never known a failure. His labors have been indefatigable and his ministrations clean and inspiring.In his public services he has been an inspiration to the race. For fourteen years he has been a Trustee of Wilberforce University, five years Trustee and Secretary of the Normal and Industrial Department at Wilberforce, and a constant and ardent helper in the establishment and development of the same. For six consecutive years he was elected and served as member of the Columbus Board of Education, and through his efforts six colored teachers were put into the mixed schools of Columbus, Ohio, as teachers.In private affairs he has been industrious, frugal, economical and administrative. He has accumulated a comfortable estate and stands well with the banking and business circles of Columbus, Ohio, and pays taxes on a tax valuation of $10,000.He has always been an ardent lover of his race, of his church, of his country and his God, and has always been a striking figure in the circles of men wherever his lot has fallen. Fifteen years ago he was elected Dean of Allen University, Columbia, South Carolina; eight years ago Professor of Theology in Payne Theological Seminary, neither of which he was able to accept because of heavy demands upon his energy elsewhere. In 1890 he was elected delegate to the Methodist Ecumenical Conference and has been several times delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church, and in 1900 was a strong candidate for the Bishopric, receiving fifty or more votes on the first ballot. In his present position he bids fair to give the church good service.
REV. JOSHUA H. JONES.
The Rev. Joshua H. Jones was born at Pine Plains, South Carolina, June 15, 1856. He professed religion at ten years of age and joined the Shady Grove A. M. E. Church of the Bull Swamp Circuit, South Carolina. At the age of fourteen he was made Sunday School teacher, and at the age of sixteen Sunday School superintendent. By the time he was eighteen he had served in all the local spiritual offices of the church, and was then licensed as a local preacher by the quarterly conference of said circuit. The pastors soon discovered his usefulness and aid to them. He was a diligent student and an ardent churchman, and acquired education rapidly. At the age of twenty-one years he entered the Normal Department of Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and in 1880 finished the Normal and College Preparatory Courses. He then taught and preached one year, after which he returned to Claflin University, and in 1885 graduated with the degree at A. B. Not daunted nor yet satisfied with his attainments he came north, studied awhile at Howard University, Washington, D. C., thence to Wilberforce University,wherein 1887 he graduated from the Theological Course with the degree of B. D. In 1893 Wilberforce University conferred upon him the degree of D. D. in recognition of his superior worth and ability. In June, 1900, he was elected President of Wilberforce University, and a year later Claflin University conferred upon him the degree of M. A.
As a minister of the Gospel he has been pastor in charge of Williams Chapel, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Branchville Circuit, South Carolina; Fort Motte Circuit, South Carolina; Wheeling, West Virginia; The Holy Trinity Church, Wilberforce, Ohio; Lynn, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Columbus, Ohio; and Presiding Elder of the Columbus District, Ohio Conference; Pastor at Zanesville, Ohio. In all an unbroken period of thirty-six years of church work and twenty-eight years in the ministry he has never known a failure. His labors have been indefatigable and his ministrations clean and inspiring.
In his public services he has been an inspiration to the race. For fourteen years he has been a Trustee of Wilberforce University, five years Trustee and Secretary of the Normal and Industrial Department at Wilberforce, and a constant and ardent helper in the establishment and development of the same. For six consecutive years he was elected and served as member of the Columbus Board of Education, and through his efforts six colored teachers were put into the mixed schools of Columbus, Ohio, as teachers.
In private affairs he has been industrious, frugal, economical and administrative. He has accumulated a comfortable estate and stands well with the banking and business circles of Columbus, Ohio, and pays taxes on a tax valuation of $10,000.
He has always been an ardent lover of his race, of his church, of his country and his God, and has always been a striking figure in the circles of men wherever his lot has fallen. Fifteen years ago he was elected Dean of Allen University, Columbia, South Carolina; eight years ago Professor of Theology in Payne Theological Seminary, neither of which he was able to accept because of heavy demands upon his energy elsewhere. In 1890 he was elected delegate to the Methodist Ecumenical Conference and has been several times delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church, and in 1900 was a strong candidate for the Bishopric, receiving fifty or more votes on the first ballot. In his present position he bids fair to give the church good service.
If this question is to be answered affirmatively or negatively, I emphatically say no. If the question be asked inquiringly, carrying with it the thought of race experience, race opportunity, race status and the variations growing out of these, then I would give the dubious answer,yes and no. In the first place, all things are educative and all forms of education have a definite relation to all other forms of education, and all educational processes have definite relations to all other educational processes, so all of these factors make for unity in education, and the completest education is that which embraces the greatest number of educational factors. It is perfectly true that educational processes may be varied so as to suit varying ideals or they may be varied so as to accomplish certain ends, for unvarying sequences follow definite antecedents; even so educational systems may be framed for the accomplishment of varying results or definite results as the framers of such systems may determine to suit the conditions of mankind as conceived at any given time. The end in view in an educational system is everything. What the chosen end of any system of education may be ought to depend upon the institution of the country in which a people lives and every educational system should be framed so as to utilize all of the agencies and involve all of the processes that make most rapidly for the achievement of the end in view.
If the end in view is serfdom for the Negro, then a vast amount of industrial training by rote, minus the natural sciences and mechanic arts for the generation of capacity, plus such rudiments in arithmetic, reading and writing as will enable him to be an efficient workman under the directions of others is the requisite. If it is the desire to make the Negro a useful agent in the production of wealth through the operation of the basal industries, in the largest quantity or the highest quality for the smallest amount of outlay, then a still higher class of training would be necessary, whether this production of wealth be for the good of self or for the common good of society. But if the end in view is to prepare him for the higher responsibilities of American citizenship, involving as that citizenship does the relationships, obligations and duties which devolve upon freemen and equally binding upon him as upon the whites in a democratic society or in a country of the people, for the people and by the people, it is evident that such a system must have structural affinity with such a system of education carried on by the whites and for the whites. In other words, such must be his education that his whole being is developed and in him there is the largest generation of capacity, insight, foresight, the power to think with proportions so as to give him that mastery over his environments and over the questions of common good which will enable him at all times to do the right things, the wisestthings, the best things under any given circumstances in the midst of which he may be thrown. Any educational system that has an aim short of this as its end will certainly fail to prepare the Negro for the high duties which belong to a free individual in a democratic society.
Why should the Negro be given an education different from that given to the whites? Is he not a man? Is he not a free man? Is he not a citizen? Is he not held responsible by society for the performance of duties enjoined upon him by law? Is he not a subject of government? As a subject of government, ought he not participate in the affairs of the government? I think it will be admitted by all fair-minded men that all governments are for the welfare of the governed. Now, since the Negro is more interested in his own welfare than anybody else is and since to have a thing well done you had better do it yourself, since also his welfare is shaped by any government under which he lives, it must necessarily follow that his best good requires that he participate in the affairs of that government if he is to continue to be a free man. It is argued—and that not without some degree of reason—by part of the more favored people in this country, that the gift of the high privileges of citizenship carries with it the demand that the recipients of these gifts possess the capacity to exercise them for the common good of all who belong to the body politic. They also argue that human conditions for government are grounded in intelligence, virtue and property. So good, so well. But how is the Negro to acquire intelligence, virtue and property according to the American standard if his education is to be according to an un-American system? There are four fundamental American doctrines that both experience and philosophy attest as being right: (I) The right of education is a human right. (II) That the schools furnished by the state should be open to all of the children of the state. (III) The safety of the state depends upon the intelligence of our citizens of that state. (IV) As a matter of self-defense the state should compel all of its citizens to become intelligent. These doctrines have their root in the great truth that every individual is a member of society and that therefore society has an interest in him, in his capacity, in his intelligence, in his worth, and in turn is injured by his incapacity, his lack of worth, his ignorance. The great war-cry of American leadership is "Educate, educate, educate;" yea, more, "Educate your masters." No man lives unto himself. God has made every man dependent, associative and co-operative, and hence the good of every individual is found in the common good of society and thecommon good of society is found in the good of the individual. Every man who is not at his best or not doing his best is to that extent a failure and a hurt to the common good.
To me it is perfectly clear that if the Negro is to be in this country and not of it then his education should be different from that given to the whites. But if he is to be in the country and of the country it follows without argument that he must be educated in common with all of the people of the country so that the nation may have a common ideal and a common consciousness so that our whole society may have or feel a common interest in our common country. To be more explicit, whether or not the Negro should be given the same kind of education the whites are given depends upon whether or not the whites have the proper kind of education. I should rather contend that if the whites have the proper kind of education for mankind, then that given to the Negro should be exactly like it. If the whites have not the proper kind of education for mankind, then it follows that the Negro should be given a different kind, for whether or not one man should have the same thing as another depends upon whether or not that thing is fit for mankind in general. This would naturally force upon us the inquiry as to what kind of education the whites receive. If upon proper inquiry we find that theirs is the proper kind for man, in this same finding we should discover that this is the proper kind for the Negro.
Here differentiation begins, even in the field of education itself. A careful study of the constitution of man, involving the fundamentalities that grow out of his intellectual, moral, industrial, social and political nature will lead us, I think, to see that much of the white man's education is to be regretted and repudiated; much of it is to be approved and appropriated. All training given in avarice, hatred, prejudice, passion, sensuality, sin and wickedness, growing out of self-conceit and vanity, must assuredly be repudiated. But all things embraced in their education that make for the good, the true, the beautiful, the just and the elevation of mankind should be embraced, seized upon, masticated, digested and assimilated—transmuted into the elements of Negro character, forming a part of the very sub-consciousness of his being. In short, whatever education the whites have had or do get which makes for human enlargement, for righteousness, and brings man into closer relationship with God and gives him a fuller conception of the laws of God made manifest by the operation of His laws throughout the cosmos enabling him to discoverthe relationships which he sustains to God, to his fellow-men, to the lower creatures which inhabit this earthly sphere in which man lives and the laws that govern the universe, expressing modes of existence and orders of sequence, together with the principles of industry, frugality and economy, which determine the material accumulations necessary for the maintenance of life, these the Negro should know as largely as possible, for certainly they have been fields of educational processes found necessary for the white man through many generations. It is to be noticed that for centuries the white man has studied in order to get a thorough grasp, first of all, upon the intellectual tools—so to speak; in other words, to know how to read, write and cipher in terms of his own language, and at the same time to lay a foundation broad enough to pursue useful knowledge in all other directions possible. For instance, having mastered his own language to a reasonable degree, he takes the Latin and the Greek that he might acquaint himself with the development of the institutions out of which his own was evolved as well as to make double his hold upon his own; he studies Hebrew and the cognate languages to get mastery of the great truths, philosophy and institutions of a great people, adding to his own thereby; he studies the modern languages, German, French, Spanish and Italian, that he may gather the best fruits of the achievements of these nations and add them to his own store; yea, he covers the whole field of philology that he may add to his own store the best that has been garnered by all of the nations of the earth; he studies the literature, science and philosophy of all living races of his day and time with the same end in view and when he has swept the field of historic times he delves into the mysteries of geology and archæology and follows the mute footsteps of man through Neolithic and Paleolithic times to the very zero of human beginnings and comes back laden with truths to enrich the thought of his day.
He studies natural science as God manifested in nature, by observation and experiment; he commences, with God through the discovery of the reign of law, classifying and systematizing the same and thus broadening his own vision and adding to the store of knowledge in our day and generation. As a preparation for this scientific research, he studies mathematics from the elementary principles through the largest elaborations of Euclid, Keppler, Newton and Copernicus, and their illustrious successors; he studies sociology, biology and mechanics; he studies civil and sociological laws and principles to the end that theintricacies of democratic business intercourse might be the more fully and clearly understood, mastered and applied in civilized processes. No form of industry has escaped him, no law of frugality has eluded him; whatever has in it an element of truth or virtue, he has pursued with a relentlessness that knows no failure. As a student, he has gone the rounds of the world in search of truth and has come back rich in the knowledge of the things that God would have us know.
How the Negro can live in the midst of a civilization created by such a people, drawing upon such vast resources as we have but faintly indicated and be given an education different from that of this people—and yet live among them with any degree of security—for the life of me, I cannot see. If, to keep up with the requirements of such a civilization as America furnishes to-day, a white child—notwithstanding his inheritance—has to go to school from his earliest days away into the years of his majority and be systematically trained in all of the subjects as taught in the kindergarten, the public schools, the secondary schools, the academies, the universities, and the professional schools, how much more imperatively necessary must it be that the Negro should have like training. It seems to me that he should not only have the same training but that he should have more of it than the white man has. His education should be physical, moral, intellectual, social, industrial and political, and his educational processes should have the highest structural affinity with the educational processes of the whites so that he may be brought into national and political assimilation with the white man's institutional life.
SHOULD THE IGNORANT AND NON-PROPERTY-HOLDING NEGRO BE ALLOWED TO VOTE?
BY JOHN P. GREEN.
Hon. John P. Green
HON. JOHN P. GREEN.Hon. John P. Green was born in 1845 at New Berne, N. C., of free parents. As a boy twelve years of age, he went with his widowed mother to Cleveland, Ohio. He was educated in the Cleveland public schools, graduating from the Central High School in 1869.He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1870. Returning to Cleveland, he for nine years served as justice of the peace. In 1881 he was elected member of the Ohio Legislature, serving three terms. In 1897 he was appointed to a position in the postoffice department by President McKinley.He was also delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1872, in 1884 and 1896.
HON. JOHN P. GREEN.
Hon. John P. Green was born in 1845 at New Berne, N. C., of free parents. As a boy twelve years of age, he went with his widowed mother to Cleveland, Ohio. He was educated in the Cleveland public schools, graduating from the Central High School in 1869.
He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1870. Returning to Cleveland, he for nine years served as justice of the peace. In 1881 he was elected member of the Ohio Legislature, serving three terms. In 1897 he was appointed to a position in the postoffice department by President McKinley.
He was also delegate to the National Republican Convention in 1872, in 1884 and 1896.
All citizens who are industrious, honest, brave and patriotic should vote, without regard to their color; for, a man may possess all these characteristics and yet be "ignorant." Ignorance is only relative anyway.
(a) The Negro is a citizen. See XIV Amendment to Constitution, etc.
(b) He is industrious, and by his industry has not only helped to develop the resources of the United States but he has produced much of the property which is unjustly held by many white voters, and withheld from him; especially in the South.
The property of the South is due not more to the capital invested in the agricultural and manufacturing enterprises of that section than to the labor of the Negro, who furnishes the foundation of all wealth—labor—there.
(c) The untutored Negro has shown himself to be honest; he has never betrayed a trust imposed in him. During the great Civil War he was true to the trust imposed in him by his master at the front, who confided to his care the sustenance and even life of his wife and little ones. This was the supremest test of his honesty, which he sacredly discharged. Since the war, he has faithfully adhered to and followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him from what he considers the path of gratitude and honor.
(d) He is brave; as the records of our wars will prove. His blood has stained many battlefields where, under "Old Glory," he fought for the Union and Liberty; not only on American soil, but also in foreign lands. The Negro, in contending in war, for the life and liberties of this Republic, has literally covered himself with glory.
(1) That he is patriotic goes without saying, in the light of what hasbeen written in the foregoing paragraph. With all his coarse and homely ignorance, the heart of the American Negro, when yet a slave, throbbed with patriotic love and loyalty; and this, too, at a time when his college-bred and intelligent (?) master was doing his uttermost to destroy this glorious fabric of Union.
It is only reasonable to assume that a man whose ignorance does not blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other voters, vote rightly.
(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in the hands of the Philistines.
(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them. It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance and affiliation to the Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from them and leaving them to be swayed by a set ofeducated men, many of whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.
(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the Republic is not resident altogether in thebrainsof the voters. Theheartplays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.
(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for, many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races, are"non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous—a reverse of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family—a drought or flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin," where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.
It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant, with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected in the exercise of the function.
Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would seem to be the proper one to the foregoing proposition. Under our present Constitution, yes; the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" ought to vote.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY R. S. SMITH.
Atty. R. S. Smith
ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida, April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the national capital he served as a clerk in the United States Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883, was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the practice of his profession. He has not only established a lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a life insurance company and other corporations. In November, 1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore evident that he is a man of versatility as well as ability.—Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States.The subject of this sketch also served as assistant sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations, and has been generally successful. He has also been retained in many equity, real estate and contested will cases, wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court of the District.Mr. and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street, Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.
ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.
Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida, April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the national capital he served as a clerk in the United States Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883, was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the practice of his profession. He has not only established a lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a life insurance company and other corporations. In November, 1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.
Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore evident that he is a man of versatility as well as ability.—Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States.
The subject of this sketch also served as assistant sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations, and has been generally successful. He has also been retained in many equity, real estate and contested will cases, wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court of the District.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street, Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.
At first glance the above question would seem to be fully answered with one word comprising but two letters, namely, N-o. And yet, upon second thought, it will be seen that that answer would not apply, for the reason that the alleged criminal Negro seldom reaches a court-house in the South before alleged summary justice is visited upon him by an unreasoning Judge Lynch.
The fact that the question is asked whether the criminal Negro is justly dealt with in the courts of the South, would imply that there is at least a doubt as to the genuineness of the justice meted out to him there. In legal phraseology, a criminal is one who has been duly convicted of crime. This being so, it would seem that my first inquiry should be, whether the Negro who has been legally ascertained to be a criminal is justly dealt with in the South, in the matter of his punishment therefor? This line of inquiry leads me into the investigation of the convict lease system which obtains in certain Southern states, and other unlawful abuses of colored criminals there.
It is not my purpose in the limited space allotted to consider this phase of the subject at great length, but rather to briefly point out its manifest injustice.
One of the greatest wrongs of the South is its convict lease system; and its lynch law, and its disfranchising statutes are like unto it. Although the emancipation proclamation, written and promulgated by the immortal Lincoln, has been operative for more than thirty-six years, yet a species of slavery still exists there, fostered and nurtured by the statutes authorizing the convict lease system. So vile became this evil in Anderson county, South Carolina, that the leading officials there denounced it as brutal and barbarous, a crime against nature and nature's God—a crime against civilization and humanity.
Some of the specific charges against the system were that these unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together inprison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors of a Spanish prison, and you have somewhat of an idea of the iniquitous institution of the barbarous convict lease system.
But as if compounding crime, it is asserted with many of the appearances of truth, that Negro boys and girls, upon trivial charges, are convicted and sent to the convict camp for the express purpose of securing to the lessees of convicts the benefit of their unrequited toil until they reach their majority. Thus confined among confirmed criminals they naturally partake of the character of their environments, and conceive and multiply vice and criminology. This system punishes the real criminal unjustly. The ill-gotten gain it offers furnishes the incentive to thrust the innocent into prison pens.
Then, too, it is claimed with the appearance of truth that unscrupulous white men in certain Southern localities actually trump up charges against Negro men and procure their convictions and sentence to the convict camp for the double purpose of affording the lessees the comparatively free labor of the alleged criminals and to deprive them of the right to vote. While heartily approving of such reasonable punishment as shall deter crime, I can command no language strong and severe enough to condemn in fitting terms the cruelties and deviltries heaped upon the Negro in certain sections of the South in the name and for the sake of those who profit by the convict lease system.
It is undisputed that some of those sent to the convict camp have been properly found guilty; some have been illegally convicted; some deserve proper punishment, while some, by reason of their tender years, should have been put into reformatories, where they might have been rescued from a life of crime and brought up as law-abiding citizens. Such institutions may have been intended to protect society from the dishonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.
But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in thecourts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?—it could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most diabolical crime.
The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.
In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found, his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.
In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.
The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early part of the seventeenth century. From that time to the present the slogan of every campaign, the rallying cry of every battle, has been justice in some form or other. And yet, in the alleged interest of innocence, justice, in certain localities, is often outraged, law dethroned, and mob rule exalted.
Whether or not the Negro charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts of the South can only be answered relatively, for in some localities fair trials are granted even to Negroes charged with the commission of crime. But for the most part, it must be admitted thatNegroes brought into the courts of the South accused of crime against white people are not accorded a fair trial.
The reason of this unjust dealing with the Negro in the courts of the South is not far to seek; he is looked upon as an alien; then, too, the doctrine that he has no rights which a white man is bound to respect is exploded in certain localities only in theory, for in practice it is still unmistakably prevalent.
The crying need of the times is a wholesome respect for law and order, and a righteous condemnation of mob rule everywhere. Every pulpit North and South should speak out against mob rule and lynch law. The eloquent divine in Greenville, Miss., who recently denounced with righteous indignation the damnable outrages of mob violence in that state, was as a voice crying in the wilderness. For some reason his brethren of the cloth have not seen fit to join him in a crusade against this abominable sin. If the Southern clergy could only be induced to preach against this evil occasionally, there would soon be created throughout the sin-ridden districts such a healthy public sentiment and respect for law and order that these crimes against the state would soon become things of the past; nor could there be found throughout our broad land a miscreant, who, under the influence of the spirit of lawlessness, would take the life of our Chief Magistrate; nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as would openly criticise our Chief Executive for dining a representative member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.
But let us consider the alleged crime for which lynching is attempted to be justified. L. H. Perkins, Esq., of the Kansas Bar Association, in an address to its annual meeting, in July, 1901, said:
"Lord Coke observes: 'There are crimes that are not so much as to be named among Christians.' It is difficult for us in Kansas to believe that certain crimes exist; crimes against nature, practiced by force upon defenseless childhood, disclosed in criminal records of great cities; but there is one crime in Kansas that we have learned to know. It ought not to be named, much less permitted in a Christian land. The crime and its fit punishment, can scarcely be discussed; but how else can it be expunged? Shall it be by fire? Must he who writes the story of this new-born age still further shock the world and foul the fair name of America by pictures of a howling mob, profaning every law of God and man; with every bulwark of our rights thrown down, the gates of hellunchained, and passion, loose, unbridled as hurricane, roaring above the prostrate guardians of the peace, annihilating in an hour the civilization of six thousand years?
"Death in flames! Savage, bloodthirsty vengeance! Three things this savory orgy lacks: salt and sweet herbs and a good appetite.
"There is a law that in the last extremity, in the presence of impending death, all barriers are removed, all ranks are leveled, all rights are equalized. Supreme necessity is supreme law. Can it be possible that some such overmastering impulse at times dethrones the public mind, and, while the fit is on, the latent cannibal runs riot in the land? It seems it must be so; and, if it be, 'twill be until we rise to the necessity.
"We may excoriate the cannibal, but which of us will now affirm the provocation is not great? Poor, helpless woman! Why don't she learn to shoot? This monstrous crime pursues her like a nightmare. It is an ever present peril to every woman in the land. Must she shun every alley and fly from every bush lest lascivious eyes be on her and unbridled, brutal passion block her way? Of all the hobgoblins abroad in the night, in fact or fancy or in song or story, there is none so hideous as the stealthy form of the lecherous brute that leaps forth out of darkness and drags defenseless woman to her ruin.
"And can it be that we who make the laws; we who have wives and daughters and sisters and mothers who are dearer than life itself; we who honor woman, not for her strength but for the very attributes that render her the prey of force; can it be that we can make no laws that will protect her, or satisfy the public that justice will be done?
"Concede that in the sight of God the crime of rape is worse than murder, yet is it plain that the punishment should be death? In the interest of woman herself were it not better that the brutal ravisher have somewhat more to bear if he do also murder? Else would not the motive to silence forever the most dangerous witness be complete?
"I offer the suggestion of three degrees for rape—the first to cover only ravishment by brutal violence and force; the second all the intermediate grades save statutory rape, which alone shall constitute the third degree. I am no firm believer in the justice of our age of consent, and would leave corporal punishment for statutory rape to the discretion of the trial court. The terms of imprisonment as now prescribed are doubtless long enough, but let us add to them the sting and shame of the ancient whipping post. For the third degree, in the court's discretion, not more thanseven lashes. For the second degree two floggings of twenty lashes each, soundly administered within twelve months. And for the first degree, three several floggings of forty lashes each within twelve months, and then castration. There is much reason in this ancient penalty, and the time has come when it should be revived. If, as some say, this morbid and unbridled passion is disease, then treat it like appendicitis—remove the cause."
Mr. Perkins is on the right track. I am glad that he neither endorses lynching nor takes stock in the absurd report from certain sections of the South that all Negroes are ravishers of white women. I think his suggested remedy against rape a good one for white and black.
But to return to the consideration of the other phase of the question, I desire to say that Mrs. Helen Douglass, the widow of the lamented Frederick Douglass, is accepted authority on the convict lease system, and consequently I am indebted to her for most of the data used in this article touching that subject. In a well prepared lecture on convict leases, Mrs. Douglass introduces her theme as follows:
"We know what happens when manufactories are shut down and a vast amount of accumulated material is suddenly thrown upon the market. For 250 years the South had been manufacturing a peculiar article; had been literally stamping this article with its own lineaments and putting it upon a market created especially for it. The war came! The manufactories were closed; the material was on hand; what should be done with it? Never in the world, perhaps, has there been a clearer demonstration of the irrevocable nature of law, as affecting society, and the awful power of habit as the sum of reiterated choice."
At the Prison Reform Convention, held in Atlanta in 1888, Dr. P. D. Sims of Chattanooga, Tenn., said that, the impoverished condition of the South succeeding the War of the Rebellion, caused it to drift into the convict lease system, for which there were many excuses, but no justification. The lessee buys from the State the discipline of prisoners solely for gain; that neither the State nor the lessee had regard to the element of reform or consideration of a philanthropic character; that although many good men were engaged in it, the system was wrong. He presented the statistics of thirty-nine State prisons, showing that in the non-leasing prisons, the annual mortality was fifteen per thousand, while in the leasing, it was sixty-four per thousand, and that in the former, escapes werebut five per thousand, and in the latter, they were fifty-one per thousand. He appealed to the South to change the system.
The lease system was adopted in Georgia in 1869, both Democrats and Republicans favoring it. The first year there were 350 convicts to be hired, and the second year the number doubled. An investigation showed that one company paid nothing to the State for the labor of its convicts, and that although the law provided for a chaplain, the State had none; that convicts were worked on Sundays contrary to law, and in some instances whipped to death. The evils of the system became so flagrant that a Senator on the floor of the Senate Chamber declared that the rich and powerful were allowed to go free, while the poor white person and the ignorant Negro were shown no mercy. It was proved that even a governor of the State was himself a lessee, working State convicts for private gain, under a $37,000 bond in force until 1899, although he was the convict's only protection against the wrongs of the lessee.
The ease and facility with which colored persons were sent to the penitentiary kept a goodly supply of prisoners on hand. While it was burdensome to taxpayers to keep them within walls, it was unjust to mechanics to allow them to learn trades; ergo, they were leased out to grade streets, to work on railroads, in mines and the like, where their physical powers might be availed of, but where they could learn nothing, save yes and no, axe and hoe.
By an act passed in 1876, by the legislature, the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad Company was leased 250 convicts for three years, to grade its road where the people were too poor to pay for it. The rest of the convicts the governor was authorized to lease to three penitentiary companies for twenty years for $500,000, to be paid in annual installments of $25,000. In a test case by two of these companies, in the Supreme Court of Georgia it was decided that the lessees acquired a vested right of property in the labor of these convicts, which the legislature could not disregard unless their labor was required by the State, in which case the lessee demanded compensation. The Supreme Court consequently granted an injunction restraining the keeper from delivering said convicts to said railroad company, thereby securing to the lessees a legal right of property in the labor of the convicts till the contract is legally terminated.
In an investigation of 1896, presided over by Governor Atkinson, Capt. Lowe, a lessee, testified:
"We do not think ourselves liable for the conduct of whipping bosses. They are given their commissions by the State, and we insist that they are answerable to the State alone. We cannot direct the whipping of convicts; it must be done by the bosses. If all the convicts were disabled by whipping, we think the State would be liable to us for loss of time, because the whipping bosses are the agents of the State."
Lessee Lowe admitted he was a close corporation, being president, secretary, treasurer, boss and everything else of the company, which held no meetings, had no stock, and declared no dividends.
Attorney-General Terrell held that the convicts were under the care of the lessees, whose duty it was to see that they were treated humanely, citing the order of 1887 by Governor Gordon, to prove that while the whipping bosses were appointed by the governor, they were under the control of the lessees. Governor Atkinson said that he did not dream for a moment that the lessees did not consider it their duty to see that the convicts were properly treated.
Mr. Huff, addressing the legislature, said, that "any attempt at reformation of the present system is an absurdity, a swindle and a fraud. It is a damnable outrage. The lessee contract would not stand fifteen minutes before a petit jury. I could hang any of the lessees before a petit jury in two and a half hours," said he.
One convict testified that in his case the skin came off with every blow inflicted by a soaked strap drawn through sand; that twenty bastard children were in one camp. A female convict testified that during her prison life of fourteen years she had borne seven children. A lessee testified that such irregularities as bastard children would occasionally occur as long as women were guarded by men.
Dr. Felton, addressing the Georgia Legislature, said:
"I stated ten years ago that the State was acting as a procuress for convict camps; the legislature is keeping up the supply in accordance with the demand. I repeat the accusation here and now."
In 1895 a number of convicts had their feet so frozen that the flesh and toes rotted off. Governor Atkinson enlightened the legislature of the deplorable condition existing in the convicts' camps through the report thereon by Hon. R. F. Wright, showing nearly fifty misdemeanor camps. In the chain-gangs were twenty-seven white and 768 colored convicts; generally both races and sexes being together day and night. Among these were eleven children under fourteen years of age. Someslept in rude floorless houses; some in tents on the bare ground, and a few in bunks. The bedding was scant and filthy, and full of vermin. The camps were poorly ventilated, the sleeping quarters being generally sweat-boxes, constructed to prevent escapes. There were no hospitals and no preparations for comfort or medical treatment. Female prisoners dressed in male attire, worked side by side with men.
A member of the legislature declared:
"Most lessees would rather see the devil in their camps than a Methodist or Baptist preacher. I do not urge the bill for the Negro, but for the safety of homes and property. Crime has increased in the United States more than in any other country on the globe. I plead for the orphan boys and girls of the State. Better send them to a bottomless hell than to James' camp."
Said the lamented Colonel Alston:
"The public knows how hard it is to get testimony in a case like the lease question. If a guard kills a man, he is not going to tell of it. If a lessee chooses to whip one to death, who is to know it? If he starves them, who is the wiser? I never expect to give up the agitation of this question till I can point to my native State redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled from this great sin, and the finger of shame shall no longer be lifted at her, as a State that is banking on the crimes and misfortunes of her defenseless and ignorant population."
Three months after this Colonel Alston was shot dead in the State Capitol of Georgia, by a sub-lessee during a controversy arising from the leasing of some convicts; whereupon Governor Atkinson declared that, under heaven and by God's help, he meant to lift up the administration of the laws of the State to that high plane that will put an end to these things.
Mr. Byrd of Rome, Ga., by authority of Governor Atkinson, inspected the misdemeanor camps in 1897, and reported that private chain-gangs were being operated against law, and in spite of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and that the average penal camp of the State penitentiary is a heaven, compared to the agony and torture endured by the misdemeanor convicts in many of these joints. He said that Mr. Wright did valiant service for humanity by showing that a bondage worse than slavery was being inflicted upon the convicts, who were confined in these "hells upon earth."
In one camp, he said, an ante-bellum residence had been convertedinto a prison by removing every window, and closing up every aperture, leaving not even an auger hole for light or air. In the center of a room only 18 feet by 20, was an open can, the reeking cesspool of this dungeon in which sat a sick Negro convict confined in this dark sweat-box, perishing.
In another camp, after the visit of Mr. Wright, the guards took turns at beating a convict to death and buried him in his shackles. A respectable citizen asserted that they caught the convict by the shackles and ran through the woods dragging him feet foremost, and that when these facts were sworn to before the Grand Jury of Pulaski County, it was thought best to hush them up and keep the matter out of the newspapers, and out of court, as the superintendent of the prison camp had friends on the jury.
Another case sworn to before the coroner's jury was that of a guard who had whipped nearly all the life out of an old Negro, who said: "Boss, is ye gwine to kill me?" The guard replied with an oath in the affirmative, whereupon the convict begged to be shot and thus freed from his sufferings. He was chained up to a tree where he died in thirty minutes.
In another camp a white convict was being boarded at a hotel ten miles away, and doing a prosperous business at painting, while another white convict who had been made night guard and given a gun and the keys to the camp, had it so free and easy that he threw up his job and decamped.
Mr. Boies of Pennsylvania, in his instructive work, discusses the convict lease system, and shows that the sentences of Negroes in the South are double those of white men for the same offenses; that for petty larceny a Negro may be condemned to the criminal class for life, albeit he had to steal or starve. He shows that the criminal machinery of the South is frequently used to nullify the Negro's right of suffrage; that no hand is extended to lift him up when he falls, and no effort is put forth for his reformation, and for this reason the South turns out one-third of the criminals of the whole country; that Massachusetts expends $20 per capita upon the children of her public schools, while Mississippi with a heavier tax, expends but $2 per capita.
In the Evening Star of Washington, D. C., of November 16, 1901, an exhaustive article on the prison camps of Florida appeared. Although guardedly, it favored the effort to make the criminal self-supporting, arguing that as he lives on the public when at large, he should not bepermitted to continue to live on the public when in confinement. But it admits that the convict lease system is faulty. It says:
"At present, offenders of all grades and ages are thrown together, and the younger ones learn more evil than they knew at the time of their arrest, growing daily more depraved and vicious so long as they remain in bad company. It may be possible, however, to employ most of the convicts at tasks which will not require their close association, either at work or in quarters, and if that desideratum can be reached, the last argument against the leasing of prisoners will be met, and the system will be continued indefinitely, such minor matters as the corruption of inspectors, of which Alabama has complained, being capable of rebuke through legislation.
"There are now thirteen camps in Florida, each one of which is technically a State prison, and they are under the watch of a supervisor, who must visit them at least once in sixty days, examine the buildings, food, clothes, and bedding, question keepers and convicts as to work, punishment and health, enforce compliance with the laws and report to the governor every month. All leases are for four years, and the only cost of its criminals to the State are the salaries of supervisors and a sum of $300 a year for chaplain service.
"The country expends at least $200,000,000 per annum in maintaining its convicts. In the city of New York alone, the annual assessment for that purpose is $6 per citizen.
"Where the labor unions have not prevented it, society has made the criminal pay his own bills. In the South where the people are beginning to show a keenness for money that is not surpassed in the North, but where, as yet, capital is not gathered into such immense and usable sums as in the central and eastern States, a new policy has been adopted with regard to the offender. He is generally a Negro, hence he is sent back to slavery. He is sold to a farmer, a distiller, a phosphate miner, or a manufacturer, for a term of years, and his employer pays considerably less to the State than he would otherwise lay out in wages.
"In Alabama, if a State prisoner or long-termer escapes from his employer, he must pay into the public treasury $200, and $100 if a county prisoner or short-termer escapes.
"When an inspector is present at a whipping, the turbulent convict may be given twenty-one lashes on his bare back; in the absence of the inspector, the whipping boss is limited to fifteen lashes.
"The guards are of the poor white class, dull and illiterate, and receive from $20 to $30 per month and their 'keep.'
"In Florida shackling is seldom practiced except as a punishment for running away, as it interferes with the work of the convict. Guns and bloodhounds are much in evidence in the convict camps. Nothing is done for the betterment of the convicts intellectually or otherwise. Missionaries are graciously permitted to distribute tracts among them.
"White convicts are generally assigned to offices and cook shops, or become gang foremen. For the white prisoner, whatever his offense, there is always a hope of pardon, but the Negro prisoner, unless he be a crap-shooter or chicken thief, congratulates himself on being consigned to open air work in the convict's camps, for he remembers how dreadfully easy in Florida it is for a Negro to be lynched."
Judge M. W. Gibbs of Arkansas said he had known white employers in the South to be in collusion with magistrates to have colored men committed on the flimsiest pretext, simply that they might obtain more free labor on their plantations by means of the convict lease system.
The eleventh census shows that in the United States there were 2,468 county jails and only 44 reformatories. There were no reformatories in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Great Britain supports over 400 reformatories and inebriate schools, and they have closed 56 out of 113 prisons and jails in ten years, and thereby reduced to that extent the amount of material for the manufacture of criminals.
Said Judge Calhoun, of a recorder's court in Georgia:
"I tremble when I contemplate the future of little boys who come before me for the first time, and are sentenced to the chain-gang. Some of them are bright-faced and intelligent; some are orphans; many thoroughly penitent; and, I believe, nearly all could be reclaimed, could they be sent to a reform school and surrounded with an atmosphere that would benefit instead of contaminate."
Mrs. Helen Cook, wife of Hon. John F. Cook, of Washington, D. C., has established an organization in the District of Columbia, known as "The Woman's League," which is doing a wonderful work in reducing the number of those who are brought into the courts to be justly or unjustly dealt with. Let the good women of the race throughout the country follow her example and do something to rescue the perishing.
In conclusion, let us hope and believe with the widow of the Sage of Anacostia, that "Meanwhile Hampton and Wilberforce, Howard and Shaw and Fiske and Atlanta and Tuskegee and other like institutions are silently setting the seal of manhood and womanhood upon a race whose face, with ours, is set toward a higher and better civilization."
SECOND PAPER.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY I. L. PURCELL.