RACE HATRED IN THE UNITED STATES.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 October 1919, Page 12

RACE HATRED IN THE UNITED STATES.

BAFFLING PROBLEM OF "BLACK AND WHITE." (By Ignatius Phayre) Once again the strange, instinctive loathing of the white man for the Ethiop has blazed out, and human beings l»ave been burned—not in the Africas, but in lavish Chicago, the seat and centre of America's "Big Business"; a city devoted to culture and the arts (all sneers to the contrary notwithstanding), and with a population as "great as that of Paris. How shall we explain this flame of brutish savagery in the Land of Liberty? How account for the murderous onslaughts, a few months back, in East St. Louis—a city own State? A typical lynching was that of Lloyd Clay, a nineteen-year-old iiegro, in the beautiful city of Vickaburg, Miss. The blacks outnumber the whites in this State.

The usual mob meeting was held outside the gaol. The customary attack on the gaol itself was made—this time with steel railway tracks. The alleged culprit was dragged out and beaten. At First North Street a crowd of 1500 citizens, including women and little children, strung the wretched creature up on a tree. He was stark naked.

"Shoot him!" yelled some. "No," eried others, "let him die slow." With head twisted, the negro dangled limply, and men below hauled oh his legs. Kerosene was now brushed upon the body. A bonfire was got ready and saturated with petrol There was a roaring shoot of flame. The man's flesh hissed %nd blistered and crinkled; His face was hideously distorted, and he raised frenzied arms in prayer. The legs curled back gruesomely And American ladies looked upon this sight for an how and a half in the serene light of a Southern moon! . ,

When the body was cut down there was a rush for bits of rope as souvenirs; tile tree itself was held to be a reverend monument. This in America of 1919! Truly, as Mr. Lloyd George reminds ufl, in an era of plain speaking, "Man. is a savage animal"—the "eternal brute" oE Heinrich von Treitschke, and not "the two-legged god" whom Hegel impressed upon Heine.

What started the razor and pistol orgie in the great city of Chicago? A little .nigger strayed over the "black line" on I the lake beach reserved for whites, and was driven back with' a shower of. stones from outraged dignity. Tlierc has been bad feeling in the North ever since th« blacks came migrating from the South in hundreds of thousands, allured by high wages due to war work and the absence of millions of men' "over there" in Prance. Now, this color question is a fascinating problem for the statesman and the psychologist. It concerns Great Britain vitally, for its seeds of lire are ever present in South Africa, in British Columbia, in India, and the Austraiias, who impressed their "All White" policy upon Mr. W. M. Hughes in j. J aris, and that unmistakably. The black man is a serious factor of disunion between Boer and Briton in South Africa. Your typical Dutchman is not unkind, but he views the natives as "gchepsels," or mere "creatures," no better than cattle; useful enough in field or mine, but on no account to be educated or enfranchised, or admitted to any sort of equality with the white man. Aristotle's "slaves by nature" is precisely the Boer's view of the black man;„so the traditional British policy of progress and citizenship for the negro rouses a profound mistrust. It is the same in America, where impatient Southerners maintain that the "Yankees" (of the North) know little or nothing of "the nigger," who" must always be "kept in . his place." This racial aversion is dangerously inconsistent. "Australia accepts her aboriginal "blackfellows," but absolutely excludes the yellow man. As Governor of New South Wales, Lord Carrington reported as follows to the Secretary of State: "I am positive that this is not a cry got up for political purposes. It is a deeplyfounded feeling and belief of the. vast majority of the colonists."

So far bb America is concerned, this matter is shelved by the Root-Takahira "Gentlemen's Agreement" of 1907 —a precarious enough instrument in a scrap-of-paper age. This question of race hatred and the color bar eludes and transcends all statesmanship. There is no gainsaying the fact that the whites regard the non-whites as inferior animate where the two.races dwell together. Pink-thinking humanitarians deplore these periodic waves of violence; but their accusers, the white rioters, retort: "You. don't live with the black man." And when perfect equality is urged, the reformer is crushed with, "Would you let your daughter marry a nigger?" Abe Lincoln's 4,000,000 email icipated slaves have multiplied to 12,000,000, and nothing that the blacks can ever do will make them anything but an incubus and a curse to the white race. For fifty years every known solution has been mooted, 'deportation, segregation in some Western enclave—even "miscegnation," as in Brazil. But America abhors the "tar brush" taint. Theoretically "equal" as a citizen, the black man is utterly ostracised, and any commerce with a white woman—even legal marriage—is a social tragedy of life-long penalty. Very few Americans are keen on the uplift of the negro. The typical Southerner is an excellent master, often with a real fondness for the "good nigger"—the fondess which a man has for ia loyal and faithful dog. There is a third class who favor the harshest restrictions for the black man, and cherish savage memories of the Reconstruction Period, when 4,000,000 i-mancipated slaves —only a few generations removed from downright savagery, and even cannibalism—were oven given political power of the whites.

It is a mistake to suppose that lynchings and race riots are exclusively due to the "protection of women." A saucy word can loose murder, both above and below the Mason and Db.'on Line. Georgia, with over a millions black, has a very bad record. In one morning recently, five negro ohurshes, two schools, and a lodge hall were burned in Putnam County, and the "black trash" were severely beaten.

Governor Blease, of South Carolina, declared that the negroes "belonged to the order of lower animals, wjtn absolutely no standard of morality" They are treated accordingly. A criminal who ventured to speak to the Governor without the guard's permission in the State gaol, was put in the stocks- given fr.Ttv-five lashes, aut thttn tortured for half an hour with a strong electric battery. "Confessions" are exhorted from black men with hot irons. And the system of hiring out convict labor to contractors, unquestionably puts a premium uipon "blackbii'din,""'on the smallest provocation, ojc- >aoae at

"Give us the nigger, or we'll Jiang the judge," screamed the mob at Murray, Kentucky. Here the Governor of the State, Mr. A. 0. Stanley, had to risk his life for justice's sake. In another case, five blacks were lynched to death in Georgia, and afterwards found wholly innocent. Since 1889 well over 3000 colored men and women have ljecn savagely killed in this way by American mobs. A negro's life goes for nothing, when race-hatred flames in this .mysterious way.

, He is regarded as a mere traveaty of humanity; a necessary evil in the land, and bis growing -wenches roiling down the Southern street, an abiding temptation to white young men. Long ago, when Mason of Virginia, was Minister in Paris under the Second Km. pire. his Haytian colleague—a pure negro—astonished the Diplomatic Corps by a display of glib courtesy and address. "What do you think" of him?" the slave owner was asked, when the black #Minister withdrew. "I reckon that fellow is worth a thousand dollars," was how Mason assessed his colored confrere.

And that is th 6 spirit, not only of America, but of all lands where the white man dwells with 'the black. "Now is your chance to settle the negro problem," said the German Emperor to Mr. James W. Gerard in Berlin. "If America insists »n coming into the war, why doesn't she send her negroes across and let us shoot them down?"

As a fact, 900,000 black troopers were available, and nearly 200,000 were sent to France I cannot pretend that they fought well, though the "Buffaloes" (367 th Infantry) made a fair show; and negroes like Needham Roberts and Harry Johnson received the French Croix de Guerre.

The return of 200,000 black "heroes," trained in the use of lethal weapons, aroused no enthusiasm in cither North or South. Meanwhile, "Jim Crowism" —special cars and trams, waiting-rooms, schools, churches, and residential quarters—is rigidly enforced against the colored folks.

As for political "equality," I once asked a former State official of Alabama how the black vote was suppressed. "At first we killed thcra," he said, calmly. "Then we stole their ballots. But now the thing is legally fixed." And my friend explained how 531 negro votes lent decent color in electoral returns, as "jiepresenting" a dusky population of 800,000! Y*t these blacks produce many a freakish genius, of whom the late Booker T. Washington was perhaps the most notable. I know negroe3 worth! £40,000; in Virginia, the blacks own property worth over £8,000,000. Tanner, the painter; Cook, the composer of Broadway revues; Paul Dunbar and W. Braithwaite, the poets—here are a few lights of the colored proletariat. Tukegee and Hampton are the technological Universities of negrodom. But wlicn all is asid, the black man remains an abhorred pariah in the United States; and self pity is the dominant note of his music and song. The Bed Indians are dying out, herded on State Reservations; but the black race, prolific and robust, presents white America with a problem which can never he solved(ieneral Smuts alluded to this in the South African dinner at the Savoy, "Our problem," he said, "is a very difficult one, and quite unique in a way." It reversed America's conditions, "I do not know that we have gone very far in solving it hitherto." But there were certain axioms." .... "One is that there must he no inter-mixture of blood."

America is equally resolved; and I have seen perfectly "white" children, With blonde hair and blue eyes, in the negro schools side by side with woolly piofcaninnies that might have come straight from the' Congo. Only the inspection of the finger nails showed the -tar-brush taint'in these tragic cases. AH blacks, of whatever shade, are segregated; and periodically, race hatred blazes out unaccountably—to the wrath and real distress of President Wilson,' whose lofty idealism is so well known.

Beating, shooting, hanging and burning alive—these crimes of the crowd hypnosis fill the President with horrer. "How," he asked, after the East St. Louis orgies, "are we to recommend democracy to the acceptance of other peoples, if we disgrace our own by proving that it is, afjer all, no protection to the weak?"

Chicago was the scene of serjous riots between whites and blacks at the end of July. Some 200,000 people- took part in street battles, in which the casualties were 2S killed and 500 wounded.

It is agreed, that the beginning of all the trouble was an incident which occurred at the bathing beach, \vhen a black boy wandered over "the black line" on to a part of the beach reserved for whites, and was driven back with stones by a white man. This was the spark which ignited the blaze of race hatred, which had been ready to burst forth for many weeks. The police state that the trouble began with the blacks who came from the South during the war to fill gaps in the labor market. In the South they are used to restrictions, but they thought that in the North they would have much more freedom, and consequently in many cases behaved insolently towards the whites.

About 100,000 negroes and an equal number "of whites were in the zone of the fighting, which raged furiously at street corners and in houses. Both parties circulated exaggerated stories of the cruelties committed by the other .side. Some say that armed negroes went out into the streets at dark determined for revenge, and that some negroes dashed through the streets at motor cars firing at any whites they met. Others says that whites attacked negroes occupied by negroes, shooting through windows and doors, while the inmates returned the fire from barricades. Bands of both' races battled in the streets, ceasing only when the mounted police spurred their horses over the dead and wounded. Encounters with knives and razors added to the casualties. Scattered fights lasting five hours over a five mile "area occured between whites and blacks and policemen and negroes, the latter firing from housetops, dark alleys, and other vantage points. There were no concerted battles, but merely isolated outbreaks over a large area.

In an effort to prevent the arrival of policemen, the negroes cut the telephone and telegraph wires. The situation eventually grew so serious that tlie Mayor requested Mr. Lowden, Governor of Illinois, to mobilise the entire infantry forces of the State. By nightfall several .thousands of troops, armed with ball ammunition, were on duty in the city with orders to shoot to kill if necessary, but to prevent further street battles. More than fifty persons were shot during an attack by the mob on the barracks of the Bth Regiment with the object of obtaining possessi&i of arms and ammunition stored there.

A number of white women were shot and stabbed when the tramway cars in which they were riding were attacked by nobs. Similarly negresses and negroes were shot or beaten by parties of whites. After a tramcar driver had been dragged from his car and killed by a gang of itiacka and mora than a dozen cars had