title: Half a man; the status of the Negro in New York,
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THE • PLIMPTON • PRESS [W • D • O] NOHWOOD MASS • U • S • A ©CI./ 100 TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER THEODORE TWEEDY OVINGTON FOREWORD Miss Ovington's description of the status of the Negro in New York City is based on a most painstaking inquiry into his social and economic conditions, and brings out in the most forceful way the difficulties under which the race is laboring, even in the large cosmopolitan population of New York. It is a refutation of the claims that the Negro has equal opportunity with the whites, and that his failure to advance more rapidly than he has, is due to innate inability. Many students of anthropology recognize that no proof can be given of any material inferiority of the Negro race; that without doubt the bulk of the individuals composing the race are equal in mental aptitude to the bulk of our own people; that, although their hereditary aptitudes may lie in slightly different directions, it is very improbable that the majority of individuals composing vii viii FOREWORD the white race should possess greater ability than the Negro race. The anthropological argument is invari- ably met by the objection that the achieve- ments of the two races are unequal, while their opportunities are the same. Every demonstration of the inequality of oppor- tunity will therefore help to dissipate prejudices that prevent the best possible development of a large number of our citizens. The Negro of our times carries even more heavily the burden of his racial descent than did the Jew of an earlier period; and the intellectual and moral qualities required to insure success to the Negro are infinitely greater than those demanded from the white, and will be the greater, the stricter the segregation of the Negro community. The strong development of racial con- sciousness, which has been increasing during the last century and is just beginning to show the first signs of waning, is the gravest obstacle to the progress of the Negro race, as it is an obstacle to the progress of all strongly individualized social groups. The FOREWORD ix simple presentation of observations, like those given by Miss Ovington, may help us to overcome more quickly that self-centred attitude which can see progress only in the domination of a single type. This investigation was carried on by Miss Ovington under the auspices of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations, of which she was a Fellow. 1 Franz Boas. 1 The Greenwich House Committee on Social Investiga- tions is composed of Edwin R. A. Seligman, Chairman, Franz Boas, Edward T. Devine, Livingston Farrand, Franklin H. Giddings, Henry R. Seager, Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, Secretary. Miss Ovington's is the second publication of the Com- mittee, the first being Mrs. Louise Bolard More's " Wage- Earners' Budgets," published by Henry Holt & Co. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I "Up from Slavery" 5 II Where the Negro Lives .... 31 III The Child of the Tenement ... 52 IV Earning a Living — Manual Labor and the Trades 75 V Earning a Living — Business and the Professions 106 VI The Colored Woman as a Bread Winner 138 VII Rich and Poor 170 VIII The Negro and the Municipality . 195 IX Conclusion 218 Appendix 229 Index 233 XI HALF A MAN HALF A MAN INTRODUCTION Six years ago I met a young colored man, a college student recently returned from Germany where he had been engaged in graduate work. He was born, he told me, in one of the Gulf States, and I questioned him as to whether he intended going back to the South to teach. His answer was in the negative. "My father has attained suc- cess in his native state," he said, "but when I ceased to be a boy, he advised me to live in the North where my manhood would be respected. He himself cannot continually endure the position in which he is placed, and in the summer he comes North to be a man. No," correcting himself, "to be half a man. A Negro is wholly a man only in Europe." Half a man! During the six years that I have been in touch with the problem of the Negro in New York this characterization has 3 4 INTRODUCTION grown in significance to me. I have endeav- ored to know the life of the Negro as I know the life of the white American, and I have learned that while New York at times gives full recognition to his manhood, again, its race prejudice arrests his development as certainly as severe poverty arrests the de- velopment of the tenement child. Perhaps a study of this shifting attitude on the part of the dominant race, and of the Negro's reaction under it, may not be unimportant; for the color question cannot be ignored in America, nor should the position taken by her largest city be overlooked. And those who love their fellows may be glad, among New York's four millions — its Slavs and Italians, its Russians and Asiatics — to meet these dark people who speak our language and who for many generations have made this country their home. CHAPTER I "Up from Slavery" The status of the Negro in New Amster- dam, a slave in a pioneer community, dif- fered fundamentally from his position today in New York. His history from the seven- teenth to the twentieth century contains many exciting incidents, but those only need be considered here that show a prog- ress or a retardation in his attainment to manhood. What were his struggles in the past to secure his rights as a man? Slavery in the early days of the colonies was more brutal than at the time of final emancipation. Savages recently arrived from Africa lacked the docility of blacks reared in bondage, and burning and tortur- ing, as well as whipping, were recognized modes of punishment. Masters looked upon their Negroes, bought at the Wall Street 6 HALF A MAN market from among the cargo of a recently arrived slaver, with some suspicion and fear. Nor were their apprehensions en- tirely without reason. In 1712 some of the discontented among the New York slaves met in an orchard in Maiden Lane and set fire to an outhouse. Defending themselves against the citizens who ran to put out the flames, they fired, killing nine men and wounding six. Retribution soon followed. They were pursued when they attempted flight, captured and executed — some hanged, some burned at the stake, some left suspended in chains to starve to death. Perhaps it was the memory of this small revolt that caused the people of New York in 1741 to lay the blame for a series of con- flagrations upon their slaves. Nine fires that seemed to be incendiary came one upon another, and a robbery was committed. To escape death herself, a worthless white servant girl gave testimony against the Negroes who frequented a tavern where she was employed, declaring that a plot had been conceived whereby the slaves would "UP FROM SLAVERY" 7 kill all the white men and take control of the city. New York was aflame with fear, and evidence that at another time would have been rejected, was listened to by the judges with grave attention. The slaves were allowed no defence, and before the city had recovered from its fright, it had burned fourteen Negroes, hanged eigh- teen, and transported seventy-one. 1 Historians today think that the slaves were in no way concerned in this so-called "plot." The two thousand blacks in the city might have done much mischief to the ten thousand whites, but their servile con- dition made an organized movement among them impossible. We may infer, however, from the fear which they provoked, that they were not all docile servants. In a letter written at the port of New York in 1756, an English naval officer says of the city, "The laborious people in general are Guinea Negroes who lie under particular restraints from the attempts they have made to massacre the inhabitants for their 1 Daniel Horsmanden, " New York Conspiracy, or a His- tory of the Negro Plot." 8 HALF A MAN liberty." 1 Janvier in his "Old New York" thinks, "that the alarm bred by the so- called Negro plot of 1741 was most effective in checking the growth of slavery in that city." Probably the restlessness of the slaves, their efforts toward manhood, in a community where there was little economic justification for slavery, contributed to the movement for emancipation that began in 1777. Emancipation came gradually to the New York Negro. Gouverneur Morris at the state constitutional convention of 1776-1777 recommended that "the future legislature of the state of New York take the most effectual measures consistent with the public safety and the private property of individ- uals for abolishing domestic slavery within the same, so that in future ages every human being who breathes the air of this state shall enjoy the privileges of a freeman." The postponement of action to a future legis- lature was keenly regretted by John Jay, who was absent from the convention when the slavery question arose, but who had Barnes Grant Wilson, "History of New York," Vol. II, p. 314. "UP FROM SLAVERY" 9 hoped that New York might be a leader in emancipation. The state's initial measure for abolishing slavery was in 1785, when it prohibited the sale of slaves in New York. This was followed in 1799 by an act giving freedom to the children of slaves, and in 1817 by a further act providing for the abo- lition of slavery throughout the sjtate in 1827. This law went into effect July 4, 1827, the emancipation day of the Negroes in New York. With gradual emancipation and the cessa- tion of the sale of slaves, the Negroes numer- ically became unimportant in the city. In 1800 they constituted ten and a half per cent of the population. Half a century later, while they had doubled their numbers, the immense influx of foreign immigrants brought their proportion down to two and seven-tenths per cent. In 1850 and 1860 their positive as well as there relative num- ber decreased, and it was not until twenty years ago that they began to show some gain. The last census returns of 1900 give Greater New York (including Brooklyn) 60,666 Negroes in a population of 3,437,202, 10 HALF A MAN one and eight-tenths per cent. It seems prob- able that the census of 1910 will show a large positive and a slight relative Negro increase. * The relative decrease in the number of Negroes did not, however, produce a de- crease in the agitation upon their presence and position in the city. Their political status was a subject for heated discussion even before their complete emancipation. 1 Population of New York from 1800 to 1900: Total and Negro. borough of manhattan Percentage Total Negro of Negroes 1800 60,515 6,382 10.5 1810 96,373 9,823 10.2 1820 123,706 10,886 8.8 1830 202,589 13,976 6.9 1840 312,710 16,358 5.2 1850 515,547 13,815 2.7 1860 805,658 12,574 1.6 1870 942,292 13,072 1.5 BOROUGHS OF MANHATTAN AND BRONX 1880 1,206,299 19,663 1.6 1890 1,515,301 23,601 1.6 1900 2,050,600 38,616 1.9 GREATER NEW YORK 1900 3,437,202 60,666 1.8 "UP FROM SLAVERY" 11 The first state constitution, drafted in 1777, was without color discrimination, since it based the suffrage upon a property quali- fication requiring voters for governor and senators to be freeholders owning property worth £100. A Negro with such a holding was a phenomenon, a curiosity. But by 1821, when the framing of the second con- stitution was in progress, Negroes of some education were an appreciable element in the population, and with them ignorant, recently emancipated slaves. Should they be admitted to the full manhood suffrage contemplated for the whites? Those who favored the new democratic movement were doubtful of its applicability to colored people. Livingston, a champion of universal white manhood suffrage, was against giving the black man the vote. On the other hand, the conservative Chancellor Kent, appre- hending in the new constitution "a disposi- tion to encroach on private rights, — to disturb chartered privileges and to weaken, degrade, and overawe the administration of justice," would yet have made no color discrimination, and Peter A. Jay, who did 12 HALF A MAN not believe in universal white manhood suffrage, urged that colored men, natives of the country, should derive from its institu- tions the same privileges as white persons. The second constitution when adopted en- franchised practically all white men, but gave the Negroes a property qualification of $250. The issue of the revolution, however, was not far from men's thoughts, and "tax- ation without representation" was not per- mitted; for while no colored man might vote without a freehold estate valued at 250 dol- lars, no person of color was subject to direct taxation unless he should be possessed of such real estate. In 1846 a third constitutional convention was held, and the same matter came up for debate. John L. Russell of St. Lawrence declared that "the Almighty had created the black man inferior to the white man," while Daniel S. Waterbury of Delaware County believed that "the argument that because a race of men is marked by a pecu- liarity of color and crooked hair they are not endowed with a mind equal to another class who have other peculiarities is unworthy "UP FROM SLAVERY" 13 of men of sense." John H. Hunt of New York City proclaimed that "We want no masters, least of all no Negro masters. . .. Negroes are aliens." And he predicted that the practical effect of their admission to the suffrage would be their exclusion from Man- hattan Island. A delegation of colored men appeared at Albany before the suffrage com- mittee, but their arguments and those of their friends produced no effect. The new constitution contained the same Negro prop- erty qualification, and it was not until 1874, after the passage of the fifteenth amend- ment to the Constitution of the United States, that legislation placed the Negro voter of New York upon the same footing as the white. 1 Had New York sincerely desired to keep the Negro in an inferior position, it could have accomplished this by refusing him an education. This it never did, though it suffered much tribulation regarding the place and manner of his instruction. Before the 1 For a full account of the Negro's political status in New York consult Charles Z. Lincoln's "Constitutional History of New York." 14 HALF A MAN establishment of a public school system, the Manumission society, an association com- posed largely of Friends, though including in its membership John Jay, De Witt Clin- ton, and Alexander Hamilton, undertook the education of the Negro. In 1787 it opened a school for Africans on Cliff Street. One of the early teachers was Charles C. Andrews, whose little book on "The Afri- can Free Schools," published in 1830, shows a kindly tolerance for the black race. "As a result of forty years' experience," he writes, "the idea respecting the capacity of the African race to receive a respectable and even a liberal education has not been vision- ary." And he recites the names of some of his pupils: "Rev. Theodore S. Wright, graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary; John B. Russworm, graduate of Bowdoin; Edward Jones, graduate of Amherst; Wil- liam Brown and William G. Smith, students of the medical department, Columbia Col- lege: all of them persons of color." Describ- ing an annual exhibition of his school on May 12, 1824, he quotes from the Commer- cial Advertiser of the same date: "We never "UP FROM SLAVERY" 15 beheld a white school, of the same age (of and under the age of fifteen), in which, with- out exception, there was more order and neatness of dress and cleanliness of person. And the exercises were performed with a degree of promptness and accuracy which was surprising." In 1834 the public school association took over the schools of the Manumission so- ciety, but before this time the Negroes had begun to assert themselves regarding the method and place of instruction for their children. They clamored for colored teachers and succeeded in displacing Charles Andrews himself. In 1838, at their desire, the word African was changed to colored in describing the race; but of chief importance to their educational future, they began a protest, only to end in 1900, against segre- gation. Removed from the care of the Manumis- sion society, the colored schools deteriorated. Their grade was reduced, 1 and owing to the growth of the city, their attendance was 1 Thomas Boese's " Public Education in the City of New York," p. 227. 16 HALF A MAN very irregular, the severe winter weather often keeping children who lived at a dis- tance at home. A Brooklyn man tells me that, when a boy, he used to walk from his home at East New York to Fulton Ferry, passing inferior Brooklyn colored schools, and after crossing the river, on up to Mul- berry Street to be instructed by the popular colored teacher, John Peterson. Here he received a good education; but few boys would have endured a daily trip of fourteen miles. Increasingly parents, if the colored school of their neighborhood was not of the best, sent their boys and girls to be instructed with the white boys and girls of their district. The state law declared that any city or incorporated village might establish sepa- rate schools for the instruction of African youths, provided the facilities were equal to those of white schools, and when, in 1862, a colored parent brought a case against the city for forcing her child to go to a colored school, the case was lost. 1 Nevertheless, during the nineteenth century Negroes in 1 King v . Gallagher, 1882. "UP FROM SLAVERY" 17 some numbers attended white schools in both Brooklyn and New York, and Negro parents continued in their quiet but persist- ent efforts against segregation. Then again, New York grew too rapidly to segregate any race. The Negro boys and girls were scattered through many districts, and the at- tendance at colored schools fell off; in 1879 it was less than in 1878, and in 1880 less than in 1879; so that the Board of Educa- tion in 1883 decided to disestablish three colored schools. But this involved another factor. If the colored schools were disestablished, what would become of the colored teachers? The Negroes met this issue by delaying dis- establishment for a year, while the teachers went about among the parents of the ward, making friends and urging that children, white or colored, be sent to their schools. Numbers of new pupils of both races were brought in within the year, and at the end of the time, after a hearing before the governor, then Grover Cleveland, a bill was passed prohibiting the abolition of two of the three colored schools, but also making 18 HALF A MAN them open to all children regardless of color. 1 Occasionally a colored girl graduated from the normal college of the city, but if there was no vacancy for her in the four colored schools she received no appointment. In 1896, however, a normal graduate, Miss S. E. Frazier, insisted upon her right to be appointed as teacher in any school in which there was a vacancy. She visited the ward trustees and the members of the Board of Education, and represented to them the injustice done her and her race in refusing her the chance to prove her ability as a teacher in the first school that should need a normal graduate. She was finally ap- pointed to a position in a white school. Her success with her pupils was immediate, and since then the question of race or color has not been considered in the appointment of teachers in New York. Until 1900, the state law permitted the establishment of separate colored schools. In that year, however, on the initiative of Theodore Roosevelt, then governor, the 1 A. Emerson Palmer, "The New York Public School." "UP FROM SLAVERY" 19 legislature passed a bill providing that no person should be refused admission or be excluded from any public school in the state on account of race or color. 1 This closed the question of compulsory segregation in the state, though before this it had ceased in New York. Public education was thus democratized for the New York Negroes, their persistent efforts bringing at the end complete success. While the colored people in New York started with segregated schools and attained to mixed schools, the movement in the churches was the reverse. At first the Negroes were attendants of white churches, sitting in the gallery or on the rear seats, and waiting until the white people were through before partaking of the communion; but as their number increased they chafed under their position. Why should they be placed apart to hear the doctrine of Christ, and why, too, should they not have full opportunity to preach that doctrine? The desire for self-expression was perhaps the greatest factor in leading them to separate - Laws of New York, Chapter 492. 20 HALF A MAN from the white church. In 1796 about thirty Negroes, under the leadership of James Varick, 1 withdrew from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and formed the first colored church of New York. Varick had been denied a license to preach, but now as pastor of his own people, he was recognized by the whites and helped by some of them. He was the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The Abyssinian Baptist Church was organ- ized in 1800 by a few colored members who withdrew from the First Baptist Church, then in Gold Street, to establish themselves on Worth Street, 2 and in 1818 the colored Episcopalians organized St. Philip's Church. In 1820 one of their race, Peter Williams, for six years deacon, became their preacher. Another prominent church was the col- ored Congregational, situated, in 1854, on Sixth Street; and it was the determined effort of its woman organist to reach the church in time to perform her part in the 1 B. F. Wheeler. D.D., "The Varick Family." 2 Geo. H. Hansell, "Reminiscences of New York Baptists." "UP FROM SLAVERY" 21 Sunday morning service that led to an im- portant Negro advance in citizenship. In the middle of the last century the right of the Negro to ride in car or omnibus depended on the sufferance of driver, con- ductor, and passenger. Sometimes a car stopped at a Negro's signal, again the driver whipped up his horses, while the conductor yelled to the "nigger" to wait for the next car. Entrance might always be effected if in the company of a white person, and the small child of a kindly white household would be delegated to accompany the home- ward bound black visitor into her car where, after a few minutes, conductor and pas- sengers having become accustomed to her presence, the young protector might slip away. Such a situation was very galling to the self-respecting negro. In July, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings, a col- ored school-teacher and organist at the Con- gregational Church, attempted to board a Third Avenue car at Pearl and Chatham Streets. She was hurrying to reach the church to perform her part in the service. The conductor stopped, but as Miss Jen- 22 HALF A MAN nings mounted the platform, he told her that she must wait for the next car, which was reserved for her people. "I have no people," Miss Jennings said. "I wish to go to church as I have for six months past, and I do not wish to be detained." The altercation con- tinued until the car behind came up, and the driver there declaring that he had less room than the car in front, the woman was grudg- ingly allowed to enter the car. "Remem- ber," the conductor said, "if any passenger objects, you shall go out, whether or no, or I'll put you out." "I am a respectable person, born and brought up in New York," said Miss Jen- nings, "and I was never insulted so before." This again aroused the conductor. "I was born in Ireland," he said, "and you've got to get out of this car." He attempted to drag her out. The woman clung to the window, the conductor called in the driver to help him, and together they dragged and pulled and at last threw her into the street. Badly hurt, she neverthe- less jumped back into the car. The driver galloped his horses down the street, passing "UP FROM SLAVERY" 23 every one until a policeman was found who pushed the woman out, not, however, until she had taken the number of the car. She then made her way home. Elizabeth Jennings took the case into court, and it came before the Supreme Court of the State in February, 1855, Chester A. Arthur, afterwards President of the United States, being one of the lawyers for the plaintiff. The judge's charge was clear on the point that common carriers were bound to carry all respectable people, white or colored, and the plaintiff was given $225 damages, to which the court added ten per cent and costs; and to quote the New York Tribune's comment on the case, 1 "Railroads, steamboats, omnibuses, and ferryboats will be admonished from this as to the rights of respectable colored people." 2 When you talk with the elderly educated colored people of New York today, they tell you that before the War were "dark days." The responsibility felt by the thoughtful 1 New York Tribune, February 23, 1855. 2 "The Story of an Old Wrong," in The American Woman's Journal, July, 1895. 24 HALF A MAN Negroes was very great. They had not only their own battles to wage, but there were the fugitives who were entering the city by the Underground Railroad, whom they must assist though it cost them their own liberty. In 1835 a Vigilance Committee was formed in New York City to take charge of all escaping slaves, and also to prevent the arrest and return to slavery of free men of color. Colored men served on this Com- mittee, and its secretary was the minister of the church to which Elizabeth Jennings was endeavoring to make her way that Sunday morning, the Reverend Charles B. Ray. In 1850 the New York State Vigi- lance Committee was formed with Gerritt Smith as President and Ray as Secretary. Ray's home was frequently used to shelter fugitives. 1 Once a young man, stepping up to the door and learning that it was Charles Ray's house, whistled to his companions in the darkness, and fourteen black men made their appearance and received shelter. There would also come the task of negotiating for the purchase of a slave, or this proving 1 Life of the Reverend Charles B. Ray. "UP FROM SLAVERY" 25 impossible, for the careful working out of a means for his escape. Dark days, indeed, but made memorable to the Negro by heroic work and the friendship of great men. Perhaps the two races have never worked together in such fine companionship as at the unlawful and thrilling task of protect- ing and aiding the fugitive. The hardest year of the century for the Negro was 1863, when the draft riot im- perilled every dark face. Many Negroes fled from the city. Colored homes were fired, the Orphan Asylum for colored chil- dren on Fifth Avenue was burned, and even the dead might not be buried save at the peril of undertaker and priest. Elizabeth Jennings, now Mrs. Graham, lost a child when the rioting was at its height. An undertaker named Winterbottom, a white man, was brave enough to give his services, winning the lasting gratitude and patron- age of the colored people. With the dan- ger of violence about them, the father and mother went to Greenwood Cemetery, where the Reverend Morgan Dix of Trinity Church read the burial service at the grave. 26 HALF A MAN With the end of the War and the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments came a revulsion of feeling for the race. "I remember," an old time friend of the Negro tells me, "when the fifteenth amend- ment was passed. The colored people stood in great numbers on the streets, and on their faces was a look of gratitude and thanks- giving that I shall never forget." Follow- ing the amendment came the State Civil Rights Bill in 1873, declaring that all per- sons should be entitled to full and equal accommodations in all public places; and discrimination for a time largely ceased. While the colored people were winning citizenship, their progress in industry was also considerable. Until 1860 the race was infrequently segregated, and black and white were neighbors, not only in their homes, but in business. Samuel R. Scottron, a careful Negro writer, compiled a long list of the trades in which Negroes engaged before the War. Besides the various lines of do- mestic service, in which they were more frequently seen than today — coachmen, cooks, waitresses, seamstresses, barbers — "UP FROM SLAVERY" 27 there were many craftsmen, ship-builders, trimmers, riggers, coopers, caulkers, printers, tailors, carpenters. "Second-hand clothing shops were everywhere kept by colored men. All the caterers and restaurant keepers of the high order, as well as small places, were kept by colored men. . . . Varick and Peters kept about the most pretentious bar- ber shop in the city. Patrick Reason was one of the most capable engravers. The greatest among the restaurateurs was Thomas Downing, who kept a restaurant under what is now the Drexel Building, corner of Wall and Broad Streets. The drug stores of Dr. James McCune Smith on West Broadway, and Dr. Philip A. White on Frankfort Street, were not outclassed by any kept by white men in their day." l And so the list goes on. It is perhaps somewhat exaggerated in the importance in the city's business life which it gives to the colored race. Charles Andrews, in 1837, says of the pupil who graduates from his school, "He leaves with every avenue closed against him — doomed to encounter as much 1 Colored American Magazine, October, 1907. 28 HALF A MAN prejudice and contempt as if he were not only destitute of that education which dis- tinguishes the civilized from the savage, but as if he were incapable of receiving it." And he goes on to tell of those few who have been able to learn trades, and their subse- quent difficulties in finding employment in good shops. White journeymen object to working in the same shop with them, and many of the best lads go to sea or become waiters, barbers, coachmen, servants, la- borers. But he is writing of an early date, and the opinion of the colored people seems to be that, before our large foreign immi- gration, the Negro was more needed in New York than today and received a large share of satisfactory employment. His chief com- petitor was the Irish immigrant, like him- self an agricultural laborer, without previous training in business, and he was frequently able to hold his own in his shop. His long experience in domestic service, moreover, made him a better caterer than the repre- sentatives of any other nationality that had yet entered the city. His churches were flourishing, thus securing a profession for "UP FROM SLAVERY" 29 which he had natural ability, and as we have seen, colored men and women taught in the New York schools. The city grew rapidly after 1875, and the colored society, the little group that had attained to modest means and education, bought homes, chiefly in Brooklyn, where land was easier to secure than in Manhattan, and strove to enlarge the opportunities for those who were to come after them. Color prejudice had waned, and they often met with especial consideration because of their race. Had they been white they would have slipped into the population and been lost, as happened to the Germans and the Irish, who had been their competitors. As it was, they formed a society apart from the rest of the city, meeting it occasionally in work or through the friendship of children, who, left to themselves, know no race. They had battled against prejudice and had won their rights as citizens. As we look at the life of a segregated people, however, we see that we tend always to regard not the individual but the group. The Negro is a man in Europe, because 30 HALF A MAN there he is an individual, standing or fall- ing by his own merits. But in America, even in so cosmopolitan a city as New York, he is judged, not by his own achievements, but by the achievements of every other New York black man. So we will leave these able colored Americans, who won much both for themselves and for their race, and turn to the mass of the Negroes, the toiling poor, who dwell in our tenements today. CHAPTER II Where the Negro Lives It is thirty-five years since, in his Sym- phony, Sidney Lanier told of "The poor That stand by the inward opening door Trade's hand doth tighten evermore, And sigh their monstrous foul air sigh For the outside hills of liberty." Were Lanier writing this today, we should wonder whether New York's crowded tene- ments had not served as inspiration for his figure. The island of Manhattan, about eight miles long by two miles wide, with an additional slender triangle of five miles at the north end, in 1905, housed two million one hundred and twelve thousand people. These men and women and children were not scattered uniformly throughout the island, but were placed in selected corners, one thou- sand to the acre, while a mile or so away large comfortable homes held families of two 31 32 HALF A MAN or three. This was Manhattan's condition in 1905, and with each succeeding year more congestion takes place, and more pressure is felt upon the inward opening door. 1 The Negro with the rest of the poor of New York has his part in this excessive overcrowding. The slaver in which he made his entrance to this land provided in floor space six feet by one-foot-four for a man, five feet by one-foot-four for a woman, and four feet by one-foot-four for a child. 2 This outdoes any overcrowding New York can produce, but an ever increasing cost in food and rent is bringing into her interior bed- rooms a mass of humanity approximating that of the slaver's ship. These new-comers, however, are not unwilling occupants, since unlike the slaves they may spend their day and much of their night amid an ocean of changing and exciting incidents. If you are young and strong, you care less where you sleep than where you may spend your waking hours. 1 Harold M. Finley in Federation, May, 1908. 2 Thomas Clarkson, "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade," p. 378. WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 33 From among the millions of New York's poor, can we pick out the Negroes in their tenements? This is not so difficult a task as it would have proved fifty years ago when the colored were scattered throughout the city; today we find them confined to fairly definite quarters. A black face on the lower East Side is viewed with astonishment, while on the middle West Side it is no more noticeable than it would be in Atlanta or New Orleans. Roughly we may count five Negro neighborhoods in Manhattan: Green- wich Village, the middle West Side, San Juan Hill, the upper East, and the upper West sides. Brooklyn has a large Negro population, but it is more widely distrib- uted and less easily located than that of Manhattan. Of the five Manhattan neighborhoods the oldest is Greenwich Village, according to Janvier once the most attractive part of New York, where the streets "have a ten- dency to sidle away from each other and to take sudden and unreasonable turns." Here one finds such fascinating names as Minetta Lane and Carmine and Cornelia Streets. 34 HALF A MAN These and neighboring thoroughfares grow daily more grimy, however, and no longer merit Janvier's praise for cleanliness, moral and physical. The picturesque, friendly old houses are giving way to factories with high, monotonous fronts, where foreigners work who crowd the ward and destroy its former American aspect. Among the old time aristocracy bearing Knickerbocker names there are a few colored people who delight in talking of the fine families and past wealth of old Greenwich Village. Scornful of the gibberish-speaking Italians, they sigh, too, at their own race as they see it, for the ambitious Negro has moved uptown, leaving this section largely to widowed and deserted women and degen- erates. The once handsome houses, altered to accommodate many families, are rotten and unwholesome, while the newer tenements of West Third Street are darkened by the elevated road, and shelter vice that knows no race. Altogether, this is not a neighbor- hood to attract the new-comer. Here alone in New York I have found the majority of the adults northern born, men and women WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 35 who, unsuccessful in their struggle with city life, have been left behind in these old for- gotten streets. 1 The second section, north of the first, lies between West Fourteenth and West Fifty- ninth Streets, and Sixth Avenue and the Hudson River. In 1880 this was the centre of the Negro population, but business has entered some of the streets, the Pennsyl- vania Railroad has scooped out acres for its terminal, and while the colored houses do 1 Place of birth of 1036 New York Negro tenement dwellers. These figures were obtained chiefly from personal visits: New England West New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Maryland District of Columbia. Virginia Carolinas Gulf States Canada West Indies Europe Totals 18 11 157 18 19 37 26 375 217 65 2 87 4 103G East Side 1 1 6 1 1 8 6 1 25 Green- wich Village Middle West Side 4 47 4 3 1 15 16 2 1 6 1 100 7 5 42 3 3 6 5 71 64 23 1 13 243 San Juan Hill 5 4 55 9 12 27 16 244 127 39 67 3 608 Upper West Side 1 1 7 1 1 3 4 37 4 1 60 36 HALF A MAN not diminish in number, they show no de- cided increase. No one street is given over to the Negro, but a row of two or three or six or even eight tenements shelter the black man. The shelter afforded is poorer than that given the white resident whose dwelling touches the black, the rents are a little higher, and the landlord fails to pay atten- tion to ragged paper, or to a ceiling which scatters plaster flakes upon the floor. In the Thirties there are rear tenements reached by narrow alley- ways. Crimes are com- mitted by black neighbor against black neighbor, and the entrance to the rear yard offers a tempting place for a girl to linger at night. A rear tenement is New York's only approach to the alley of cities farther south. There are startling and happy surprises in all tenement neighborhoods, and I recall turning one afternoon from a dark yard into a large beautiful room. Muslin cur- tains concealed the windows, the brass bed was covered with a thick white counterpane, and on either side of the fireplace, where coal burned brightly in an open grate, were two rare engravings. It was a workroom, WHERE THE NEGRO LIVES 37 and the mistress of the house, steady, capable, and very black, was at her ironing-board. By her sat the colored mammy of the story book rocking lazily in her chair. She ex- plained to me that her daughter had found her down south, two years ago, and brought her to this northern home, where she had nothing to do, for her daughter could make fifty dollars a month. This home picture was made lastingly memorable by the younger woman's telling me softly as she went with me to the door, "I was sold from my mother, down in Georgia, when I was two years old. I ain't sure she's my mother. She thinks so; but I can't ever be sure." Homes beautiful both in appearance and in spirit can rarely occur where people must dwell in great poverty, but there are many efforts at attractive family life on these streets. A few of the blocks are orderly and quiet. Thirty-seventh Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, is largely given over to the colored and is rough and noisy. Here and down by the river at Hell's Kitchen the rioting in 1900 between the Irish and the Negro took place. Men are ready for a 38 HALF A MAN fight today, and the children see much of hard drinking and quick blows. 