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W B Chl'“, ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION— October 22, 1932 waiw* fiction“,9 To,Tnd cvr**
THE FEATURE SECTION
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“REMINISCENCES”
By MARY WHITE OVlNGTON
CHAPTER III
I Begin My Investigation
_The summer after I left Greenpoint I had my one
serious illness, typhoid. It took nearly a year for recov
ery. A trip to Italy came in the spring, and it was not
until the following autumn, 1904, that I was at work
again.
The desire to have a settlement among the Negroes
had been mulling in my mind for these months. I felt
that a settlement in a Negro section would not only help
the poor but would be an excellent meeting-place for the
well-to-do of each race.
Here, on the equality that I knew could exist in a
settlement, white and colored could live together, and
race questions would not be the only matters under dis
cussion. But 1 had never had to raise money and I was
at a loss how to begin to interest people. So I went to
one of my wisest settlement friends, Mary Kingsbury
Simkhovitch, head of Greenwich House, and asked her
advice. She in her turn asked me what I knew of Negro
conditions.
I confessed that I knew nothing. Whereupon she
advised that I study the Negro in New York and made
this practical by securing a fellowship for me from
Greenwich House. This resulted in the publication of
my book, in 1911, by Longmans, Greene, “Half a Man:
the Status of the Negro in New York.”
I wanted first to meet the edu
cated Negro. But I had not a single
acquaintance. Once, on revisiting
Radcliffe, I was disappointed at
seeing a colored girl in the library
and realizing that I had lost this
natural way of meeting the oolored
world. However, I didn’t know
even one college girl, so I had to
use letters of introduction from
Washington and DuBcis. I mailed
ten to prominent business men,
asking for interviews.
I learned the meaning of C. P. T.!
Fred Moore, editor of the New York
Age, answered by return mail. The
others took their time. One tcok
two weeks, another six weeks. Four
never answered at all. All were cor
dial when later I met them one by
one. But as business men, accord
ing to the standard of the white
world around them, they failed on
the first count. They did not
promptly attend to their morning
mail.
Mr. Moore was helpful and I was
glad to get the viewpoint of an en
thusiastic Washingtonian. I was
already a Du Bois enthusiast, hav
ing read his articles in the Atlantic
M nthly that were later incorporat
ed in “The Souls of Black Folk.”
Business proved one of the least in
teresting phases to stuck'.
The N.egro had been steadily los
ing out since the days when he
constituted ten per cent of the
city's population,—a few men in real
estate, a few caterers, some small
shops, seemed all. One man did
impress me, Wallace of Virginia, la
bor leader and head of the Asphalt
Workers’ Union. I saw him at the
Sunday afternoon labor gathering, a
dark man, -speaking to the point,
business-like. He handled mere
Italians than Negroes. His trade,
however, was soon to be doomed.
My efforts to meet the profes
sional class were more successful.
As a social worker I at once studied
the social service work for the Ne
groes. There was the Friends’ Mis
sion, under white guidance, down in
the West Thirties. Mrs. Kimber, calm,
benignant, was at the head, and
with her a young girl, Kate Sher
man, as enthusiastic as ever I could
hope to be. I remember her say
ing once. “My heart is black even
though my face may be white.” She
showed me some shocking condi
tions, but she knew few Negroes of
her own calibre.
Soon I became acquainted with
the colored nffrses connected with
Answered by Return
Mail
FRED MOORE.
editor, New York Age. A recent
photograph.
the Henry Street Settlement and
the Bureau of Charities, and also
with the members of the mixed
Boards of the Walton Free Kinder
garten and the Hope Day Nursery.
The colored churches gave me wel
come. I became familiar with the
all too small group of philanthropic
workers. To mention names wculd
take too long and would be inter
esting only to old New Yorkers. But
I want my readers to understand
that I earnestly tried to Icok at New
York’s Negro problem from the va
rious angles that the Negroes them
selves looked at it. I have met
many white people. North as well as
South, who, knowing one Negro
whom they like, base their philan
thropy upon his advice.
I met a New York man not so
long ago who had raised nearly a
hundred thousand dollars for a Ne
gro without inquiring how he stood
with his own group. I was blamed
for not endorsing him and not using
my influence to get the Negroes to
endorse him. I was to take the Ne
gro on this white man's evaluation.
All very pleasant for the white man,
but there are Mussolinis enough of
the Negro’s making without the
white man’s manufacturing more.
Through the social workers I met
He Wrote for the
Atlantic Monthly
it_C-*J.- - - '-MM
DR. W. E. B. DuBOIS,
and his contributions gathered into
book form became “The Souls of
Black Folk.” (From a photograph
made nearly 25 years ago).
the professional people. They were
a pleasant, friendly group with
nothing to distinguish them from
their neighbors but their color.
Most of them lived in houses in
Brooklyn which they owned and
which were a little more ugly in a
solid, mid-Victorian way than the
whites. Whether Northerners or
Southerners, they were usually de
scendants of free men and had been
well educated by their parents.
What most impressed me was
their conservatism—not on the race
question but on everything else.
They saw the white man given op
portunities denied them and they
wanted the status of the white man.
to be able to go where their money
would take them. Engrossed by their
own problem, they did not take up
the problems of others. In politics
they weep Republican.
Maritcha Lyons, since deceased,
was one of the most attractive of
this group. She had won the right
of colored graduates from the nor
mal college to teach in the public
schools. Pew outside of New York
know that there is no discrimina
tion in the placing cf colored normal
graduates and that they frequently
teach in schools where there are no
Negroes. I went to Superintendent
Maxwell when I began my investi
gations and asked him for a list of
colored teachers. He gave me to un
derstand from his manner that my
question was an impertinence.
Teachers were put into schools with
out regard to their color. He did
not know how many colored teach
ers he had nor where they were
teaching.
wnue superintendent, Maxwell
held rigidly to this rule. But before
his time, the colored women had
gained tfce point he emphasized.
Tthe Negjo has worked and suffered
to gain what he has in New York
City.
As I look through the mass of let
ters that I have kept I see hew un
endingly kind my new acquaintances
were to me. Busy ministers gave me
interviews and helped me to meet
people who could tell me more. I
have had the privilege of the Rev
erend Hutchins Bishop’s friend
ship for over thirty years. I went
from one denomination to another
in my quest for knowledge.
The late William T. Brooks of St.
Mark’s told me that his study door
was always open. We had a dis
agreement on the R:osevelt-Wash
mgton dinner, I believing Washing
on was right in accepting the hos- <
oitality.
Dr. Brooks wrote me his idea j
on the matter: "Mr. Roosevelt had
a right to invite Mr. Washington,
Mr. Washington had the right to
accept. But is it the best and high
est wisdom or the finest taste to
make our friends suffer because it
is in our power to do so?”
Reading these lines after
twenty-seven years, I appreciate
how many times my friends
have shown the finest taste in
not letting me suffer/ I had a
sense of adventure in going
where my race did not go,
where I was warned not to go.
But I was not allowed to be in
discreet. I was quietly taken
care of, ther. and always.
At the end of a Negro meeting,
I went home alone or with a col
ored woman. Once this did not
happen. I was walking in the eve
ning with a college student. We
went by a hack stand in charge
of an elderly Negro. “You stop
this,” he said sternly to-the young
man. “Stop it.” I had too little
knowledge then to see the lynch
ing back in his imagination, but I
saw the place in which he put me.
While the professional class was
on the whole conservative, there
were some with a wide outlook on
conditions, and before long we had
a group, meeting for the most part
in Brookljn, of colored and white,
called the Cosmopolitan Club. An
dre Tridon, Frenchman. psychiat-J
rist, was the president. Dr. Owen
M. Waller, an able physician, an
ardent admirer of Dr. DuBois, was
vice-president. Dr. Verina Morton
Jones was in the club, and one of
its best members was the Reverend
Frazier Miller, soon to join the
Socialist cause. Among the whites
were single taxers and, of course,
Socialists. We expected to discuss
many topics, but before the eve
ning was over we always got around
to the problem of race.
I recall one evening when we
examined photographs of families
that lived, some in the white, some
in the colored world. I had heard
of these things but it wa„ a differ
ent matter to see pictures of Ne
groes who had gone white, especial
ly when a brother, still in the col
ored world, exhibited them.
Southern legislatures were at that
time passing laws to make a person
with a drop of Negro blood a mem
ber of the Negro race. Tragic con
ditions were resulting.
South Carolina had refused
to pass this law, a member of
the legislature (I give this story
as it was told me) rising and
saying that they could not pos
sibly have such legislation In
that state. “We are all of us
niggers, more or less,” was
printed from his speech in the
next morning’s paper.
The club was small and con
genial. Later it achieved sudden
fame and as suddenly oblivion.
While I was making social con
tacts I was reading continually on
the Negro question. Such reading
as it was! The newspapers and
magazines, with a few exceptions,
had no use for any educated Negro
except Booker T. Washington. He
knew that the Negro should receive
an industrial education and his re
marks were always welcome. As
the South had formerly been sen
sitive to Northern criticism, so now
the North was ready to atone for
its reconstruction policy. The South
knew all about the Negro and the
North nothing.
Tourgee’s “Fool’s Errand” was su
perceded by Dixon’s “The Leopard's
Spots.” The best publishers seemed
?ager to print rabid criticism of the
American Negro.
Thomas, a renegade Negro, pub-j
ished as nasty a book as can be
:ound about his race, and Macmil-j
an published it. Back in the minds
>f the white critics Was the fear of
fegro domination, and the old slav-i
t
“Helped Unstintingly”
“Gave Correct Report”
OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD7
Garrison’s grandson—(Prom an old
photograph of 20 years ago).
ery arguments were continually
used. Biologically, the Negro was
inferior.
Smith of Tulane University wrote
a book to show the horrible danger
of amalgamation, or rather of inter
marriage. He assured his readers
that craniologically and by six
thousand years of planet-wide ex
perimentation (a good fundamental
ist, Professor Smith) the Negro is
proved to be markedly inferior to
the Caucasian. He added that if
the best Negro was shown to be
equal to the best Caucasian, then
it would be hard to prove that the
lowest white was higher than the
lowest black.
A doctor Bean of Baltimore
showed to his own satisfaction
that the Negro brain was small
er than the white brain, and
gave minute particulars regard
ing the different classes of
American Negroes and where
they came from in Africa. I
sent him two pages of eager
but ironic questions that asked
the number of years he had
spent in Africa, how long a pe
riod he had given to detailed
study of the American Negro,
etc., etc. He had not sallied far
from Baltimore. His researches
on the brain were in a few years
proved incorrect. But the pub
lication of derogatory articles
went steadily on. The public
wanted them.
i jumped into this world of writ
ing and tried to get my favorable
material published. The popular
magazines turned it down, but
[Charities (now the Survey), the In
dependent, then under Ward, and
the Evening Post published it. A
number of ieligious journals also *
occasionally put in a kind word for
the educated Negro. I remember,
too, when the Century gave me a
page in which I explained that the
colored “mammy” existed now as al
ways, but that today she was moth
ering her own race.
I dropped into an exciting, busy
world. The race question afforded
me interesting contacts among
whites as well as colored. Oswald
Garrison Villard, Garrison's grand
son, helped me unstintingly. The
first time I went to him, I was hor
rified at the way an evening meet
ing I had just attended had been
reported. It had been a quiet, dig
nified affair, but the reporter de
scribed cruel vituperation against
Washington, loud cries of wrath
from his supporters, and a riot.
I didn't know meetings could be
reported like that, but Mr. Villard
Continued on Page 4
