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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31299-h.zip b/31299-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4740557 --- /dev/null +++ b/31299-h.zip diff --git a/31299-h/31299-h.htm b/31299-h/31299-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d6f7583 --- /dev/null +++ b/31299-h/31299-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1029 @@ + +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ultimate Criminal, by Archibald H. Grimke. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .spacer {padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ultimate Criminal, by Archibald H. Grimke + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ultimate Criminal + The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 + +Author: Archibald H. Grimke + +Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31299] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ULTIMATE CRIMINAL *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h3>OCCASIONAL PAPERS, NO. 17.</h3> +<h3><span class="smcap">The American Negro Academy.</span></h3> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h1><span class="smcap">The Ultimate Criminal</span></h1> +<h3>ANNUAL ADDRESS</h3> +<h3>ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE</h3> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h4>PRICE<span class="spacer"> </span>:<span class="spacer"> </span>:<span class="spacer"> </span>15 CTS.</h4> +<h4>WASHINGTON, D. C.:<br />PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY<br />1915</h4> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE ULTIMATE CRIMINAL.</h2> + +<p>It is the fashion nowadays for every one with a stone in his hand to take +a shy at the poor Negro on account of his sins of commission and omission. +It is enough that some member of the race is caught <i>flagrante delicto</i> or +merely on suspicion of evil doing to get himself into the public pillory +and the rest of the colored people into our national rogues’ gallery, +where they evoke instantly the loud lamentation of white saints and +sinners alike, and the statistical and sophistical conclusions of a lot of +fools and hypocrites. Now do not misunderstand me. I do not deny that +Negroes commit crimes. Not at all, for I know full well that they +do—altogether too many for their own good. But what I object to among +other things is that America, because of the crimes of individual Negroes +or because of the suspected crimes of individual Negroes, draws an omnibus +indictment against the moral character of the whole race, which is +monstrously unjust and wicked.</p> + +<p>Who cares to inquire into the origin of Negro crime, or into the causes +which have contributed mightily to produce the Negro criminal? The book of +the Genesis of this man’s crimes awaits to be written by an impartial and +sympathetic seeker after truth. The causes which have operated for fifty +years to produce Negro criminals will some day, I trust, be traced without +fear or bias to their source. I do not pretend to possess any scientific +qualification for such a task, but I do intend in these imperfect remarks +to try to indicate in outline merely the dismal stream of these causes +during the last half century, hoping thereby to cast a little light on a +dark and difficult subject: namely, how out of hostile and unequal social, +industrial and political conditions Negro crime emerged and why Negro +criminals abound.</p> + +<p>To say that individuals and races are the creatures of circumstances—that +they are the products of their social heredity and environment—is to +state a commonplace in the accepted doctrines of science to-day. It is +therefore perfectly safe to postulate that the greatest circumstance in +the life of the Negro before emancipation was the institution of slavery. +For it furnished for two and a half centuries both his social heredity and +his environment, and so shaped his growth and character along moral, +religious and industrial lines. Chattel slaves had no rights, the most +rudimentary, which their southern masters were bound to respect. They did +not, for example, possess that most elementary of rights, the ownership of +self and of the products of their labor. They were the legal property of +others and so were the products of their labor. They did not own the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>cabins they slept in or the clothes they wore or the food they ate or the +tools they worked with or the air they breathed or the water they drank or +the bit of ground that they were buried in at last, any more than did the +cattle of those self same masters. The slave system owned the minds and +bodies of its victims, who loved but had no legal title to their mates, or +to the offspring who were born to them any more than did the cattle of the +masters own their mates or the young which were born to them. The slaves +were rated as so many human machines by the masters for the production of +wealth for themselves and to add to their liberty and leisure and pursuit +of happiness. Amid such evil conditions ignorance necessarily abounded and +moral degradation deposited its slime, generation after generation, over +the souls of masters and slaves alike. And in this moral mud there bred +apace bestiality and cruelty, superstition and sensuality, tyranny and +fear—the black brood of man’s inhumanity to man.</p> + +<p>At the close of the war which destroyed slavery the two races emerged +together into the midst of vast changes. The old social structure had been +disrupted in the civil convulsion, and the old political order likewise. +The slave half of the national house had tumbled about former masters and +slaves. The slave race possessed no more and knew no more as freedmen than +they had possessed or known as slaves. Yes, they possessed themselves and +the hard hands which God had given them for their support. But being +landless and moneyless they were dependent for employment on the old +master class. This put them at an immense economic disadvantage as a labor +class on the threshold of their new life of freedom, and in the power of +the old master class. The outlook for the new freedmen under these +circumstances was not propitious. All the same these people, poor and +ignorant and at the mercy of a ruthless employer class, were happy as +children in the delight of their newfound freedom. The sound of their +childlike joy was heard in the land amid the grim desolations of war and +the sullen faces of their old masters. Care free and fear free, in spite +of unfriendly conditions and a threatening outlook, they gave themselves +up to such joy as God has rarely given in the history of the world to four +millions of people. Now no race can pass through such a spiritual +experience without being the better for it. For great happiness like great +suffering operates oftentimes as a moral purifier. Before the overwhelming +fact that they could no longer be bought and sold—that they could no +longer be separated from their loved ones, these simple black folk fell in +transports of gratitude before God, their mighty deliverer, their +everlasting Father. Love was in their mouths and love was in their hearts. +Cheerful they were by nature and hopeful, and gifted withal with an +extraordinary amount of the milk of human kindness. Service was natural +and easy for them, and the cherishing of friends and foes in their need; +but resentfulness and revenge moved them hardly at all during their long +years of bondage. Comparatively few crimes against persons or property had +been recorded against them before emancipation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> The few slave +insurrections or attempted slave insurrections were exceptions to the +general tenor of their peaceable disposition and conduct, to the uniform +and singular absence of ill-will, of a spirit of revenge in them as a +race.</p> + +<p>This gentle trait was strikingly illustrated during the war of the +rebellion. They had opportunity enough and provocation enough, God knows, +to attack the property and the lives of the defenseless families of their +hard task-masters during those four dreadful years of sectional strife. +But in their beautiful simplicity and kindness of heart and fidelity to +the sacred and amazing trust reposed in them—the most sacred and amazing +ever reposed in a slave race by a master race in the history of the +world—they let their terrible opportunity for revenge pass them by and +seized instead the noble one to feed and cherish the helpless women and +children of masters who were fighting to rivet the chains of slavery on +them and on their children forever. This behavior of the slaves is the +supreme example which American Christianity has yet given of the vital +presence of the spirit of its divine founder in its midst. No other act in +its whole history approaches it in simple grandeur of forgiveness and +service. And it came literally out of the humble lives of a much oppressed +and long suffering race.</p> + +<p>This simple and kindly black folk issued then out of their two and a half +centuries of bondage without malice toward the whites, without any of the +violent emotions which lead to the commission of great crimes. The only +violent emotion which stirred their child-like minds, which filled almost +to bursting their kindly hearts was deep thankfulness to God and to Mr. +Lincoln for their deliverance—an emotion which no pen can describe and no +tongue can put into words. Out of such kindly hearts, out of such deep and +holy emotions crime does not come and it would not have come had there +been no injection into the race soul of the Negro of new and bitter +experiences of wrong at the hands of the whites. But this is exactly what +actually took place. On the simple and kindly hearts of the new freedmen +the old master class might have graven large the law of peace and +goodwill. All that this child-like race needed at this initial stage of +their education and forming character were wise and sympathetic guidance +and treatment on the part of the whites in order to convert all their deep +and holy emotions into moral and civic values, into social and industrial +service to the South and to the nation at one and the same time. Did the +blacks get this wise and sympathetic guidance and treatment at the hands +of the whites? To answer this question is to open up the whole subject of +the causation of Negro crime during the last fifty years. And this I will +try to do as concisely and clearly as possible.</p> + +<p>The first act of the South after the war was most unfriendly to the +blacks. For it was state legislation which remanded them to a new species +of bondage. Southern slaves they had been but by the new labor legislation +they were transformed into Southern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> serfs, chained to the soil by +cunningly devised laws to regulate their labor and movement. Force and +violence toward the blacks were relied upon to put through this +legislative and administrative program. This program was the cause of +Northern interference in the Southern situation at this juncture. But when +Congress intervened by its reconstruction measures to defeat the +reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a +crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their +purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern +into a secret society known as the “Ku Klux Klan,” which was nothing else +than a gigantic conspiracy for the commission of crime. Lawlessness and +violence filled the land, and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The +“Ku Klux Klan” burned and murdered by day, and it burned and murdered by +night. The Southern states had actually relapsed into barbarism. During +that period a new generation was conceived and born to the South by both +races—a generation that was literally conceived in lawlessness and born +into crime-producing conditions. Lawlessness was its inheritance and the +red splotch of violence its birthmark.</p> + +<p>The period covered by this crime-storm was a bad way to begin the +education of the Negroes in respect for law, in self control and in +civilization. For they found no law strong enough to protect them in their +lives or property or freedom from the murderous attacks of that terrible +secret organization. Education in self-control, and in respect for +constituted authority became impossible where the dominating feeling of +the Negroes was one of terror. And as for civilization it was beaten down +by the red hand of violence. The blacks during these years were crushed +between two irreconcilable forces, two antagonistic governments which were +locked in a death grapple for possession of that section. The one +government was open and regular, while the other was secret and lawless. +The first was supported by a few native and Northern whites and by the +great body of the blacks, and the second was upheld by the great body of +the native whites under the trained and ruthless leadership of the old +master class, who would have no government, no social order which was not +set up by themselves.</p> + +<p>During those dark years the blacks were much more sinned against than +sinning. They were sinned against by their white leaders, who in the main +used them to advance their personal and party interest, and who employed +the positions they thus gained to steal the people’s money, to enrich +themselves at the expense of the states. There were colored leaders who +followed closely in the footsteps of the white leaders in perverting +public trusts to corrupt ends, but the chief malefactors, the biggest +scoundrels were members of the white race. In these circumstances the +blacks were the helpless victims of the misrule of their own leaders and +of the organized lawlessness of the Southern whites. In their need they +asked for bread and were given a stone, they required sympathetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> and +wise leadership and were handed instead a bunch of scorpions. They prayed +for peace and for that happiness which goes with freedom, and there swept +over them for six dreadful years a crime-storm which filled their nights +and days, the season of their planting and the season of their reaping +with terror and destruction, and they just out of the house of bondage. +They were able in these circumstances to get from the whites no lesson in +obedience to law, in reverence for constituted authority, for as we have +seen those selfsame whites were everywhere breaking the law and beating +down and destroying constituted authority. Nor did they get any training +in personal and civic righteousness from their own leaders of either race. +For those leaders initiated them promptly by the power of example into the +great and flourishing American art and industry of graft.</p> + +<p>This much however ought to be said in justice to the carpet-bag +governments, namely, that bad as they were the lawlessness and violence of +the Southern whites were a great deal worse. For while some good can be +placed to the credit of those governments nothing but bad can possibly be +set down to the account of Southern lawlessness and violence. To the +carpet-bag governments belongs the introduction into the South for the +first time of the democratic principles of equality, and of the right of +each child in the state, regardless of race or color, to an education at +the hands of the state. These are two vital things which the South needed +then and which it needs to-day but which the old master class opposed then +and which their successors oppose to-day. That is what the whites did to +educate the blacks during the most impressionable period of their new +freedom in orderly government and in civilization. That was the way their +education in citizenship and character building began and that was the way +it proceeded until the year 1876.</p> + +<p>In that year the two irreconcilable governments grappled in a final +struggle at the polls for mastery and possession of that section. When the +smoke of battle cleared over South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the +Southern forces of re-action were in complete possession of those states, +and the solid South had become an accomplished fact. Nothing stood now +between the blacks and their ancient enemy. They were again at the mercy +of the old master class, who returned promptly to the execution of their +interrupted program of inequality and injustice. As the whites could not +now reestablish constitutionally their old slave system, or directly their +new serf system they proceeded to do the next best thing, that is to +construct a caste system based on race and color. Such a system, once +firmly established, would fix the status of the blacks as a permanently +inferior caste, and to that extent would render nugatory the three great +amendments to the constitution. For members of an inferior caste would by +the force of circumstances, law, or no law, be deprived of certain rights +civil and political enjoyed by members<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> of the superior caste. Citizenship +of the one caste would not mean the same thing as citizenship of the +other. The lower caste could not possibly possess the same +rights—constitution or no constitution—which the upper caste possessed. +Inequality became thus the chief corner stone of the new Southern edifice. +Under this society there grew up two moral standards and two legal +standards for the government of the races. For example what under such a +system is bad for a black man to do to a member of the white race might +not be regarded as bad at all if done by a white man to a member of the +black race. The cruel and iniquitous sex relations of the races in the +South has grown out of this caste system. Under it we have the double +moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that +section with a vengeance. A white man cannot with impunity seduce another +white man’s daughter or wife in the South. But were he to seduce a colored +man’s daughter or wife the case would be wholly different. No bastardy +process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white +sister under like circumstances, and no maintenance could she possibly +obtain for her child from the white man who wronged her. Intermarriage +between the races has been made illegal by every Southern state and by +some Northern states also. Such a law makes colored women the safe quarry +of white men, and nowhere in the South do law or public opinion impose +upon them any deterrent punishment, moral or legal, for their crime, but +quite the opposite. For such men do not lose standing in Southern society +or the church or the state in consequence of their sin. In all this sexual +inequality and iniquity the South has eyes but sees not and ears but hears +not what is taking place everywhere in its midst.</p> + +<p>On the other hand what happens to the black man who ventures to look upon +a white woman with love or carnal desire, or who is even suspected of +doing so? Ask Judge Lynch, ask the blind and murderous sex fury of white +men, the red male rage of Southern mobs. Nevertheless black men cannot be +made to see the difference between the lust of black men and the lust of +white men, or to acknowledge the justice of such a distinction. Hold the +blacks responsible by all means for the crimes they commit, but hold the +whites responsible also for creating social and legal conditions which +lead directly to the growth of crime among both races. Race and color not +efficiency and character are the basis of the Southern caste system, and +such a system produces unavoidably ill-will, oppressions, and resentments +between the races which lead directly or indirectly to the commission of +crime. For all those who are black, regardless of what nature and +education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of social and +political inferiority, and all those who are white, regardless of what +nature and education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of +social and political superiority, and for no other or better reason than +that those of the first class are black, and those of the second class are +white. Civilization<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> finds it well nigh impossible to advance under such +iron bound conditions and against such a fatal obstruction to progress, +while civic righteousness must certainly share the same fate. Such social +injustice is as sure to provoke crime as stagnant water is to produce +disease. Yet, in spite of this iniquitous caste system the leaven of +democracy, of equality has found lodgment in the black man’s mind, and he +craves the chance to become all that the white man has become and to do +all that the white man does by virtue of his American freedom and +citizenship. Nothing less than this is going to satisfy the blacks, the +Southern caste system and appearances in spots among the blacks +themselves, to the contrary notwithstanding.</p> + +<p>But there is yet another aspect of the same subject, which tends to +produce the same result. I refer to the Southern policy of civil and +political repression and oppression of its colored population in order to +keep them within their caste of inferiority and subordination to the +whites. Discontent under such oppressive conditions is sure to arise among +the colored people, and this because of their growth and of the existence +of the hard and fast lines within which this growth must go on. For this +kind of discontent the South has no vent such as free institutions +provide. Its caste system sits upon this safety valve of democracy. Much +of the crime committed by oppressed peoples is in the nature of fullness +of life seeking greater freedom, of pent up energies seeking an outlet, +and much of the crime committed by oppressors is in the nature of +attempts, perilous always, to sit upon this safety valve of popular +governments, which is intended to relieve dangerous pressure within the +steam-chest of human expansion and progress. But the South is determined +to keep the Negro down however great may be his effort to rise. He is to +be kept down by brute force if he cannot be kept down in any other way, +below the social and industrial and political level of the lowest and most +worthless of the whites, because he is black and because they are white.</p> + +<p>This is the meaning of the Southern movement for segregating the races, of +its jim-crow car laws and waiting-rooms. This is the meaning of the +Negro’s exclusion from dining-cars and from restaurants along the line of +Southern railroads. He pays the same fare as the white passenger but he is +given inferior accommodations and in many instances these accommodations +are monstrously unequal and inferior. He is black and therefore the same +law which protects the white passenger against bad accommodations does not +apply to him. He is at the mercy of railroads, which may treat him as +badly as they choose, and there is none to say them nay. Why? Because all +these iniquitous distinctions and discriminations serve to teach colored +men and women, however intelligent and wealthy and respectable, that their +intelligence and wealth and respectability do not entitle them to equal +treatment with the most vicious and worthless of the whites. At the moral +retchings and manly revolt of the victim against this unequal treatment +the South either sneers or else grows angry, because it affects to see in +them the Negro’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> ambition for social equality, his secret desire to leave +his class and to enter that of the whites and to marry white women. And so +down on the safety valve which free institutions provide, and regardless +of the steam pressure within, the South has planted its brutal might with +reckless and insolent disregard of consequences.</p> + +<p>Everywhere the treatment of the Negro is the same, and everywhere the +purpose of the South is plain. What with its contract labor laws and +emigration laws and vagrancy laws and convict-lease and plantation-lease +and credit systems the South is working mightily, night and day, to reduce +the Negro laborer to wage slavery, to fix him in an industrial position +where he shall have no rights which the white employer class is bound to +respect. Negro labor toils and produces without adequate reward or +protection against the rapacity of Southern employers. What it gets as its +share bears no comparison with what the employer gets as his share. The +employer gets wealth while the Negro gets a bare subsistence. I am +speaking of course broadly, for there are many Negroes who get more than a +bare subsistence out of the products of their labor, and that in spite of +bad and unequal laws and conditions. But the great mass of Negro +agricultural labor is exploited and plundered by the white employer class, +and kept poor, because being poor they are esteemed less capable of giving +the South trouble. It is the only labor class in the South that is +deprived of the right to vote, and so is rendered powerless to influence +legislation and administration and the courts in its favor. If the poverty +of Negro labor renders it as a class less capable of giving the employer +class trouble this poverty is at the same time a crime breeder and a huge +crime breeder into the bargain.</p> + +<p>Take this case which has just been decided favorably for the colored +laborer by the United States Supreme Court, as a fair example of what +Southern law and administration are doing to reduce the Negro to a +condition of helpless industrial slavery:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>An Alabama case, involving charges of peonage in connection with the +operation of a convict labor law, now is before the Supreme Court, +where its disposition may have an important bearing on similar +statutes in other Southern States. The government contends that the +Alabama statute permits peonage in violation of the Federal +Constitution.</p> + +<p>The test case is that of a colored man named E. W. Fields, who was +convicted in Monroe County of larceny. Upon his failure to pay his +fine, J. A. Reynolds, a plantation owner, became surety for him, and, +as permitted by the Alabama law, contracted to work out his +indebtedness during nine months at the rate of $6 a month and keep. +The government charges that Reynolds later had Fields arrested for +failing to complete the contract. As a result of the arrest, Fields, +in court, entered into contract to work fourteen months for G. W. +Broughton, another plantation owner.</p> + +<p>Both Reynolds and Broughton were indicted by the Federal government, +but the Federal district court for southern Alabama held that peonage +had not been committed.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>I want to ask your attention in passing to a few points about this case. +First the Negro laborer is convicted on a charge of larceny. This charge +might have been trumped up by some white person who wanted the Negro’s +service. I do not know. I would not take the word of a Southern Court on +this point. At any rate the Negro laborer is convicted and a fine is +imposed upon him, which he is unable to pay. Now comes the opportunity of +the white employer, who happens to be conveniently in Court, to come to +the rescue of the poor Negro. He pays the fine and the Negro contracts to +pay him back by giving him nine months of his labor. The Negro thereupon +enters upon the performance of this contract, but fails for some reason, +not stated, to finish it. How long he worked does not appear either, but +this much does. He is haled into Court a second time and a second time a +fine is imposed upon him. And again an employer, who is opportunely +present at the second trial, pays the fine. The Negro now binds himself to +the service of this second man for fourteen months, which, to use a slang +expression, is surely “going some.” At this stage of the game, however, +the United States Government stepped into the case, otherwise a third +charge might have been preferred in due time, and again the term of +involuntary service lengthened, and so on ad infinitum until death +released the victim. This is a well-known Southern method for multiplying +Negro criminals to meet the demands of Southern employers of cheap labor. +It is a danger to which every colored man is exposed in the South, because +Southern Courts are as a rule administered in the interest of the employer +class wherever the Negro is concerned. There have been a few notable +instances of Southern Judges who have refused to lend their Courts to this +iniquitous business, like Judge Emory Speer, of Georgia, and the late +Judge Jones, of Alabama, but such examples are like angels’ visits—few +and far between in that land of race repression and oppression.</p> + +<p>Take another and different case, which is common enough in the South also. +It is, like the preceding clipping, taken from the <i>Washington Post</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="center">LYNCHED BY MOB OF 1,000.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Little Girl’s Assailant Dragged From Jail as Troops Are Assembling.</span></p> + +<p>Shreveport, La., May 12.—Edward Hamilton, colored, held on the +charge of attacking a 10-year old white girl, was taken from the +parish jail shortly after noon and lynched.</p> + +<p>For three hours a mob of 1,000 men and boys stood in the rain outside +the jail doors, hammering away with a heavy railroad iron at the +barrier. Steel saws finally were used, and entrance was gained by the +mob. Sheriff J. P. Flourney had telegraphed the governor for troops +and orders had been sent the Shreveport company of the national guard +to report for service. Before the company could be assembled the +prisoner had been taken from the jail. A rope was placed about +Hamilton’s neck and he was dragged half a block from the jail to a +telephone pole opposite the parish courthouse, and strung up. A knife +was left sticking in the body.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>Here we have Judge Lynch’s Court in full operation in the execution of one +suspected Colored criminal and the manufacture at the same time of a +thousand white criminals. This Colored man was only suspected of the usual +crime. There was no trial of him to find the facts, not even by Judge +Lynch himself. Edward Hamilton might have been guilty and then again he +might have been innocent. I think that a private inquiry into his case +subsequent to his murder, pointed to his probable innocence. But he was an +object of suspicion, and that was enough to justify the act of his +murderers. If the mob failed to lynch the guilty and lynched instead an +innocent man, it was so much the worse for the innocent man, not at all +for the mob, however red their hands were with that innocent man’s blood. +Why? Because that innocent man was black, and because his murder helps to +uphold white supremacy over millions of people whose only offense is that +they are black. Into the violent death of a man like Hamilton there might +not be instituted any official inquiry at all in many parts of the South +any more than if he had been a horse or a dog. But if there happens to be +an official inquiry the usual verdict is that “the deceased came to his +death by the hands of a person or persons unknown,” and that ends the +matter so far as the Negro is concerned. But it does not end the matter so +far as the South is concerned, for the Devil will exact his share of the +black deed from that section to the uttermost farthing. What has such a +mob done? In the murder of one black man, whether innocent or guilty, the +South has, as in the case of Hamilton, made hundreds of white criminals, +has tainted the blood of whole communities like Shreveport with the virus +of lawlessness and crime. In this same Shreveport there were five colored +men lynched in ten days and eight in a year, and one white woman testified +at an investigation conducted by the attorney general’s office that she +rode in an automobile crowded with men eighteen miles to see an old +colored man burned at the stake! Like begets like, and crime crime, and +there is no help for it. Because what a state sows that it shall surely +reap. If it sow sin it shall reap suffering and shame, and if it sow the +wind it shall likewise reap the whirlwind. Is not the South sowing into +the souls of both races the seeds of sin and violence, and shall it not +then reap its full crop of crime and misery, the wild and anarchic harvest +of the whirlwind?</p> + +<p>Hard indeed is the lot of the Negro whether in the country or the city of +the South, and in those of the North too for that matter. For wherever he +goes he carries the marks of his race with him, and that is the essence of +his offense in America. His lot is practically the same everywhere. He +faces either in city or country the white man’s courts and police power +and race prejudice and his industrial and residential exclusiveness and +jealousies, but above all he faces the white man’s church with its +undisguised color-phobia, with its virtual rejection of the brotherhood of +man in respect to all races who happen not to be white. They are in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> +regard of this church unclean and socially beyond the pale of its +Christian fellowship. They are salvable to be sure but from afar by +missionary efforts, the farther away the better, in China and Japan, in +India and Africa. For there this church is in no danger of race +contamination in its pews and at its altars and in its homes. The American +church is saying with the spirit of the unseeing Peter of old, “Not so +Lord, we have never accepted any man who is brown or black or yellow as +really our brother, for we are white and Thou hast made us of different +clay, of purer blood than all these millions of brown and black and yellow +peoples. Thou hast made us white and white we mean to remain, Thy common +fatherhood and the brotherhood of all these alien races to the contrary +notwithstanding. We try to be humble Lord, but we have never yet succeeded +in humbling the proud blood which Thou hast given us to the level of +brotherhood with these strange dark peoples.”</p> + +<p>That is the spirit which the Negro encounters in the American church; that +is the spirit which crushes him down and crowds him back whenever he tries +to rise and advance. He and his are denied the White man’s chance to make +the best of themselves and to get the most out of themselves. And when +many of them fail, as fail they must, they are beaten with many bitter +words by this so-called Christian people because of this failure, and when +some succeed in spite of the gates of this hell of race hatred and +oppression they are beaten with even more bitter words and sometimes with +bitter blows, and told to stay where they are put behind the poorest and +most worthless of the whites in America’s long procession of progress and +civilization. Is it any wonder that crime emerges out of such cruel and +unequal conditions? The wonder is that the colored criminal class is not +larger and more dangerous to person and property. Take a glance into the +alleys of misery, into the ghettos of wrong where human beings beaten by +other human beings stronger than they in the battle of life are penned in +their destitution and wretchedness to live and die like poisoned rats in a +hole, a prey to heat in summer and cold in winter and disease the year +round, a prey to vice, a prey to the saloons which the white man thrusts +upon them to steal away their last nickel and the remnant of their self +respect. One need not be a prophet to foresee that out of all this +injustice and inequality God’s avenging angel will come some day with +sword, double-edged and deadly with disease and crime, to smite and to +blight this land where white people having eyes refuse to see whither all +their race injustice is leading, and ears but who are deaf to the prayer +of Christ’s little ones crying for a man’s chance to get with others into +the sun and to grow the free and beautiful life which God intended them to +grow when first they came into the world, and that whether they are black +or red or brown or yellow.</p> + +<p>In the matter of education, to recur again to the South in particular, the +blacks are most outrageously discriminated against in favor of the whites, +who have more and better school buildings, more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and better paid teachers +even where the blacks out-number them, longer school terms and a much +higher per capita rate of the public school funds than have the children +of the blacks. The problem of the South appears to be not how much +education but how little it can possibly give the blacks in comparison +with what it gives the whites. In all this educational business the South +reasons that the blacks must be kept well in the rear of the whites, +because they are to remain a permanently inferior class. That section is +not anxious to reduce the illiteracy of its colored population and to +raise the standard of their intelligence, for it thinks that an ignorant +labor class is less difficult to manage than an intelligent one. Ignorance +is indeed apt to be stolid and submissive under circumstances in which +intelligence becomes restless and discontented. Therefore the South has +little love or use for an intelligent labor class, but desires above all +things an ignorant one, and does what in it lies to hinder educational +progress among its colored population. But ignorance is a breeder of crime +just as poverty is. They are the parents of much of the crime committed by +the Negroes just as they are the parents of much of the crime committed by +the whites. Our criminal classes do many things which the law forbids to +be done not because they are of one race or color or of another race or +color, but mainly because they are poor and ignorant. Who then in these +circumstances are the ultimate criminal, those who are unwillingly poor +and ignorant, or those who make and keep them so by bad and unequal laws, +by bad and unequal treatment?</p> + +<p>Such is the story of what the whites did to educate the blacks at the most +impressionable period of their freedom in democracy, in orderly government +and Christian civilization. And it is the story of that education during +the last fifty years. There was never kindness to the blacks and sympathy +from the Southern whites as of men to men. The human touch which makes, or +which ought to make, all men brothers has been woefully wanting in the +whites as a race towards the blacks as a race. There has been kindness and +perhaps much kindness from individual white people to individual Colored +people, but never from the mass of the whites to the mass of the blacks, +but just the contrary. Instead of kindness of the one race to the other +there has been increasing ill-will and active injustice as of one enemy to +another. If crime there has been in consequence of this deplorable, this +terrible fact who is the ultimate criminal? At the bar of history and at +the bar of God, I ask, Who is the ultimate criminal?</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b> Printer’s inconsistencies in the use of “childlike” and “child-like” have been retained.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Ultimate Criminal, by Archibald H. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Ultimate Criminal + The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 + +Author: Archibald H. Grimke + +Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31299] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ULTIMATE CRIMINAL *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + + + + + OCCASIONAL PAPERS, NO. 17. + + THE AMERICAN NEGRO ACADEMY. + + + THE ULTIMATE CRIMINAL + + ANNUAL ADDRESS + ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE + + + PRICE : : 15 CTS. + + WASHINGTON, D. C.: + PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY + 1915 + + + + +THE ULTIMATE CRIMINAL. + + +It is the fashion nowadays for every one with a stone in his hand to take +a shy at the poor Negro on account of his sins of commission and omission. +It is enough that some member of the race is caught _flagrante delicto_ or +merely on suspicion of evil doing to get himself into the public pillory +and the rest of the colored people into our national rogues' gallery, +where they evoke instantly the loud lamentation of white saints and +sinners alike, and the statistical and sophistical conclusions of a lot of +fools and hypocrites. Now do not misunderstand me. I do not deny that +Negroes commit crimes. Not at all, for I know full well that they +do--altogether too many for their own good. But what I object to among +other things is that America, because of the crimes of individual Negroes +or because of the suspected crimes of individual Negroes, draws an omnibus +indictment against the moral character of the whole race, which is +monstrously unjust and wicked. + +Who cares to inquire into the origin of Negro crime, or into the causes +which have contributed mightily to produce the Negro criminal? The book of +the Genesis of this man's crimes awaits to be written by an impartial and +sympathetic seeker after truth. The causes which have operated for fifty +years to produce Negro criminals will some day, I trust, be traced without +fear or bias to their source. I do not pretend to possess any scientific +qualification for such a task, but I do intend in these imperfect remarks +to try to indicate in outline merely the dismal stream of these causes +during the last half century, hoping thereby to cast a little light on a +dark and difficult subject: namely, how out of hostile and unequal social, +industrial and political conditions Negro crime emerged and why Negro +criminals abound. + +To say that individuals and races are the creatures of circumstances--that +they are the products of their social heredity and environment--is to +state a commonplace in the accepted doctrines of science to-day. It is +therefore perfectly safe to postulate that the greatest circumstance in +the life of the Negro before emancipation was the institution of slavery. +For it furnished for two and a half centuries both his social heredity and +his environment, and so shaped his growth and character along moral, +religious and industrial lines. Chattel slaves had no rights, the most +rudimentary, which their southern masters were bound to respect. They did +not, for example, possess that most elementary of rights, the ownership of +self and of the products of their labor. They were the legal property of +others and so were the products of their labor. They did not own the +cabins they slept in or the clothes they wore or the food they ate or the +tools they worked with or the air they breathed or the water they drank or +the bit of ground that they were buried in at last, any more than did the +cattle of those self same masters. The slave system owned the minds and +bodies of its victims, who loved but had no legal title to their mates, or +to the offspring who were born to them any more than did the cattle of the +masters own their mates or the young which were born to them. The slaves +were rated as so many human machines by the masters for the production of +wealth for themselves and to add to their liberty and leisure and pursuit +of happiness. Amid such evil conditions ignorance necessarily abounded and +moral degradation deposited its slime, generation after generation, over +the souls of masters and slaves alike. And in this moral mud there bred +apace bestiality and cruelty, superstition and sensuality, tyranny and +fear--the black brood of man's inhumanity to man. + +At the close of the war which destroyed slavery the two races emerged +together into the midst of vast changes. The old social structure had been +disrupted in the civil convulsion, and the old political order likewise. +The slave half of the national house had tumbled about former masters and +slaves. The slave race possessed no more and knew no more as freedmen than +they had possessed or known as slaves. Yes, they possessed themselves and +the hard hands which God had given them for their support. But being +landless and moneyless they were dependent for employment on the old +master class. This put them at an immense economic disadvantage as a labor +class on the threshold of their new life of freedom, and in the power of +the old master class. The outlook for the new freedmen under these +circumstances was not propitious. All the same these people, poor and +ignorant and at the mercy of a ruthless employer class, were happy as +children in the delight of their newfound freedom. The sound of their +childlike joy was heard in the land amid the grim desolations of war and +the sullen faces of their old masters. Care free and fear free, in spite +of unfriendly conditions and a threatening outlook, they gave themselves +up to such joy as God has rarely given in the history of the world to four +millions of people. Now no race can pass through such a spiritual +experience without being the better for it. For great happiness like great +suffering operates oftentimes as a moral purifier. Before the overwhelming +fact that they could no longer be bought and sold--that they could no +longer be separated from their loved ones, these simple black folk fell in +transports of gratitude before God, their mighty deliverer, their +everlasting Father. Love was in their mouths and love was in their hearts. +Cheerful they were by nature and hopeful, and gifted withal with an +extraordinary amount of the milk of human kindness. Service was natural +and easy for them, and the cherishing of friends and foes in their need; +but resentfulness and revenge moved them hardly at all during their long +years of bondage. Comparatively few crimes against persons or property had +been recorded against them before emancipation. The few slave +insurrections or attempted slave insurrections were exceptions to the +general tenor of their peaceable disposition and conduct, to the uniform +and singular absence of ill-will, of a spirit of revenge in them as a +race. + +This gentle trait was strikingly illustrated during the war of the +rebellion. They had opportunity enough and provocation enough, God knows, +to attack the property and the lives of the defenseless families of their +hard task-masters during those four dreadful years of sectional strife. +But in their beautiful simplicity and kindness of heart and fidelity to +the sacred and amazing trust reposed in them--the most sacred and amazing +ever reposed in a slave race by a master race in the history of the +world--they let their terrible opportunity for revenge pass them by and +seized instead the noble one to feed and cherish the helpless women and +children of masters who were fighting to rivet the chains of slavery on +them and on their children forever. This behavior of the slaves is the +supreme example which American Christianity has yet given of the vital +presence of the spirit of its divine founder in its midst. No other act in +its whole history approaches it in simple grandeur of forgiveness and +service. And it came literally out of the humble lives of a much oppressed +and long suffering race. + +This simple and kindly black folk issued then out of their two and a half +centuries of bondage without malice toward the whites, without any of the +violent emotions which lead to the commission of great crimes. The only +violent emotion which stirred their child-like minds, which filled almost +to bursting their kindly hearts was deep thankfulness to God and to Mr. +Lincoln for their deliverance--an emotion which no pen can describe and no +tongue can put into words. Out of such kindly hearts, out of such deep and +holy emotions crime does not come and it would not have come had there +been no injection into the race soul of the Negro of new and bitter +experiences of wrong at the hands of the whites. But this is exactly what +actually took place. On the simple and kindly hearts of the new freedmen +the old master class might have graven large the law of peace and +goodwill. All that this child-like race needed at this initial stage of +their education and forming character were wise and sympathetic guidance +and treatment on the part of the whites in order to convert all their deep +and holy emotions into moral and civic values, into social and industrial +service to the South and to the nation at one and the same time. Did the +blacks get this wise and sympathetic guidance and treatment at the hands +of the whites? To answer this question is to open up the whole subject of +the causation of Negro crime during the last fifty years. And this I will +try to do as concisely and clearly as possible. + +The first act of the South after the war was most unfriendly to the +blacks. For it was state legislation which remanded them to a new species +of bondage. Southern slaves they had been but by the new labor legislation +they were transformed into Southern serfs, chained to the soil by +cunningly devised laws to regulate their labor and movement. Force and +violence toward the blacks were relied upon to put through this +legislative and administrative program. This program was the cause of +Northern interference in the Southern situation at this juncture. But when +Congress intervened by its reconstruction measures to defeat the +reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a +crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their +purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern +into a secret society known as the "Ku Klux Klan," which was nothing else +than a gigantic conspiracy for the commission of crime. Lawlessness and +violence filled the land, and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The +"Ku Klux Klan" burned and murdered by day, and it burned and murdered by +night. The Southern states had actually relapsed into barbarism. During +that period a new generation was conceived and born to the South by both +races--a generation that was literally conceived in lawlessness and born +into crime-producing conditions. Lawlessness was its inheritance and the +red splotch of violence its birthmark. + +The period covered by this crime-storm was a bad way to begin the +education of the Negroes in respect for law, in self control and in +civilization. For they found no law strong enough to protect them in their +lives or property or freedom from the murderous attacks of that terrible +secret organization. Education in self-control, and in respect for +constituted authority became impossible where the dominating feeling of +the Negroes was one of terror. And as for civilization it was beaten down +by the red hand of violence. The blacks during these years were crushed +between two irreconcilable forces, two antagonistic governments which were +locked in a death grapple for possession of that section. The one +government was open and regular, while the other was secret and lawless. +The first was supported by a few native and Northern whites and by the +great body of the blacks, and the second was upheld by the great body of +the native whites under the trained and ruthless leadership of the old +master class, who would have no government, no social order which was not +set up by themselves. + +During those dark years the blacks were much more sinned against than +sinning. They were sinned against by their white leaders, who in the main +used them to advance their personal and party interest, and who employed +the positions they thus gained to steal the people's money, to enrich +themselves at the expense of the states. There were colored leaders who +followed closely in the footsteps of the white leaders in perverting +public trusts to corrupt ends, but the chief malefactors, the biggest +scoundrels were members of the white race. In these circumstances the +blacks were the helpless victims of the misrule of their own leaders and +of the organized lawlessness of the Southern whites. In their need they +asked for bread and were given a stone, they required sympathetic and +wise leadership and were handed instead a bunch of scorpions. They prayed +for peace and for that happiness which goes with freedom, and there swept +over them for six dreadful years a crime-storm which filled their nights +and days, the season of their planting and the season of their reaping +with terror and destruction, and they just out of the house of bondage. +They were able in these circumstances to get from the whites no lesson in +obedience to law, in reverence for constituted authority, for as we have +seen those selfsame whites were everywhere breaking the law and beating +down and destroying constituted authority. Nor did they get any training +in personal and civic righteousness from their own leaders of either race. +For those leaders initiated them promptly by the power of example into the +great and flourishing American art and industry of graft. + +This much however ought to be said in justice to the carpet-bag +governments, namely, that bad as they were the lawlessness and violence of +the Southern whites were a great deal worse. For while some good can be +placed to the credit of those governments nothing but bad can possibly be +set down to the account of Southern lawlessness and violence. To the +carpet-bag governments belongs the introduction into the South for the +first time of the democratic principles of equality, and of the right of +each child in the state, regardless of race or color, to an education at +the hands of the state. These are two vital things which the South needed +then and which it needs to-day but which the old master class opposed then +and which their successors oppose to-day. That is what the whites did to +educate the blacks during the most impressionable period of their new +freedom in orderly government and in civilization. That was the way their +education in citizenship and character building began and that was the way +it proceeded until the year 1876. + +In that year the two irreconcilable governments grappled in a final +struggle at the polls for mastery and possession of that section. When the +smoke of battle cleared over South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the +Southern forces of re-action were in complete possession of those states, +and the solid South had become an accomplished fact. Nothing stood now +between the blacks and their ancient enemy. They were again at the mercy +of the old master class, who returned promptly to the execution of their +interrupted program of inequality and injustice. As the whites could not +now reestablish constitutionally their old slave system, or directly their +new serf system they proceeded to do the next best thing, that is to +construct a caste system based on race and color. Such a system, once +firmly established, would fix the status of the blacks as a permanently +inferior caste, and to that extent would render nugatory the three great +amendments to the constitution. For members of an inferior caste would by +the force of circumstances, law, or no law, be deprived of certain rights +civil and political enjoyed by members of the superior caste. Citizenship +of the one caste would not mean the same thing as citizenship of the +other. The lower caste could not possibly possess the same +rights--constitution or no constitution--which the upper caste possessed. +Inequality became thus the chief corner stone of the new Southern edifice. +Under this society there grew up two moral standards and two legal +standards for the government of the races. For example what under such a +system is bad for a black man to do to a member of the white race might +not be regarded as bad at all if done by a white man to a member of the +black race. The cruel and iniquitous sex relations of the races in the +South has grown out of this caste system. Under it we have the double +moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that +section with a vengeance. A white man cannot with impunity seduce another +white man's daughter or wife in the South. But were he to seduce a colored +man's daughter or wife the case would be wholly different. No bastardy +process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white +sister under like circumstances, and no maintenance could she possibly +obtain for her child from the white man who wronged her. Intermarriage +between the races has been made illegal by every Southern state and by +some Northern states also. Such a law makes colored women the safe quarry +of white men, and nowhere in the South do law or public opinion impose +upon them any deterrent punishment, moral or legal, for their crime, but +quite the opposite. For such men do not lose standing in Southern society +or the church or the state in consequence of their sin. In all this sexual +inequality and iniquity the South has eyes but sees not and ears but hears +not what is taking place everywhere in its midst. + +On the other hand what happens to the black man who ventures to look upon +a white woman with love or carnal desire, or who is even suspected of +doing so? Ask Judge Lynch, ask the blind and murderous sex fury of white +men, the red male rage of Southern mobs. Nevertheless black men cannot be +made to see the difference between the lust of black men and the lust of +white men, or to acknowledge the justice of such a distinction. Hold the +blacks responsible by all means for the crimes they commit, but hold the +whites responsible also for creating social and legal conditions which +lead directly to the growth of crime among both races. Race and color not +efficiency and character are the basis of the Southern caste system, and +such a system produces unavoidably ill-will, oppressions, and resentments +between the races which lead directly or indirectly to the commission of +crime. For all those who are black, regardless of what nature and +education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of social and +political inferiority, and all those who are white, regardless of what +nature and education intend them to be are born into a fixed state of +social and political superiority, and for no other or better reason than +that those of the first class are black, and those of the second class are +white. Civilization finds it well nigh impossible to advance under such +iron bound conditions and against such a fatal obstruction to progress, +while civic righteousness must certainly share the same fate. Such social +injustice is as sure to provoke crime as stagnant water is to produce +disease. Yet, in spite of this iniquitous caste system the leaven of +democracy, of equality has found lodgment in the black man's mind, and he +craves the chance to become all that the white man has become and to do +all that the white man does by virtue of his American freedom and +citizenship. Nothing less than this is going to satisfy the blacks, the +Southern caste system and appearances in spots among the blacks +themselves, to the contrary notwithstanding. + +But there is yet another aspect of the same subject, which tends to +produce the same result. I refer to the Southern policy of civil and +political repression and oppression of its colored population in order to +keep them within their caste of inferiority and subordination to the +whites. Discontent under such oppressive conditions is sure to arise among +the colored people, and this because of their growth and of the existence +of the hard and fast lines within which this growth must go on. For this +kind of discontent the South has no vent such as free institutions +provide. Its caste system sits upon this safety valve of democracy. Much +of the crime committed by oppressed peoples is in the nature of fullness +of life seeking greater freedom, of pent up energies seeking an outlet, +and much of the crime committed by oppressors is in the nature of +attempts, perilous always, to sit upon this safety valve of popular +governments, which is intended to relieve dangerous pressure within the +steam-chest of human expansion and progress. But the South is determined +to keep the Negro down however great may be his effort to rise. He is to +be kept down by brute force if he cannot be kept down in any other way, +below the social and industrial and political level of the lowest and most +worthless of the whites, because he is black and because they are white. + +This is the meaning of the Southern movement for segregating the races, of +its jim-crow car laws and waiting-rooms. This is the meaning of the +Negro's exclusion from dining-cars and from restaurants along the line of +Southern railroads. He pays the same fare as the white passenger but he is +given inferior accommodations and in many instances these accommodations +are monstrously unequal and inferior. He is black and therefore the same +law which protects the white passenger against bad accommodations does not +apply to him. He is at the mercy of railroads, which may treat him as +badly as they choose, and there is none to say them nay. Why? Because all +these iniquitous distinctions and discriminations serve to teach colored +men and women, however intelligent and wealthy and respectable, that their +intelligence and wealth and respectability do not entitle them to equal +treatment with the most vicious and worthless of the whites. At the moral +retchings and manly revolt of the victim against this unequal treatment +the South either sneers or else grows angry, because it affects to see in +them the Negro's ambition for social equality, his secret desire to leave +his class and to enter that of the whites and to marry white women. And so +down on the safety valve which free institutions provide, and regardless +of the steam pressure within, the South has planted its brutal might with +reckless and insolent disregard of consequences. + +Everywhere the treatment of the Negro is the same, and everywhere the +purpose of the South is plain. What with its contract labor laws and +emigration laws and vagrancy laws and convict-lease and plantation-lease +and credit systems the South is working mightily, night and day, to reduce +the Negro laborer to wage slavery, to fix him in an industrial position +where he shall have no rights which the white employer class is bound to +respect. Negro labor toils and produces without adequate reward or +protection against the rapacity of Southern employers. What it gets as its +share bears no comparison with what the employer gets as his share. The +employer gets wealth while the Negro gets a bare subsistence. I am +speaking of course broadly, for there are many Negroes who get more than a +bare subsistence out of the products of their labor, and that in spite of +bad and unequal laws and conditions. But the great mass of Negro +agricultural labor is exploited and plundered by the white employer class, +and kept poor, because being poor they are esteemed less capable of giving +the South trouble. It is the only labor class in the South that is +deprived of the right to vote, and so is rendered powerless to influence +legislation and administration and the courts in its favor. If the poverty +of Negro labor renders it as a class less capable of giving the employer +class trouble this poverty is at the same time a crime breeder and a huge +crime breeder into the bargain. + +Take this case which has just been decided favorably for the colored +laborer by the United States Supreme Court, as a fair example of what +Southern law and administration are doing to reduce the Negro to a +condition of helpless industrial slavery: + + An Alabama case, involving charges of peonage in connection with the + operation of a convict labor law, now is before the Supreme Court, + where its disposition may have an important bearing on similar + statutes in other Southern States. The government contends that the + Alabama statute permits peonage in violation of the Federal + Constitution. + + The test case is that of a colored man named E. W. Fields, who was + convicted in Monroe County of larceny. Upon his failure to pay his + fine, J. A. Reynolds, a plantation owner, became surety for him, and, + as permitted by the Alabama law, contracted to work out his + indebtedness during nine months at the rate of $6 a month and keep. + The government charges that Reynolds later had Fields arrested for + failing to complete the contract. As a result of the arrest, Fields, + in court, entered into contract to work fourteen months for G. W. + Broughton, another plantation owner. + + Both Reynolds and Broughton were indicted by the Federal government, + but the Federal district court for southern Alabama held that peonage + had not been committed. + +I want to ask your attention in passing to a few points about this case. +First the Negro laborer is convicted on a charge of larceny. This charge +might have been trumped up by some white person who wanted the Negro's +service. I do not know. I would not take the word of a Southern Court on +this point. At any rate the Negro laborer is convicted and a fine is +imposed upon him, which he is unable to pay. Now comes the opportunity of +the white employer, who happens to be conveniently in Court, to come to +the rescue of the poor Negro. He pays the fine and the Negro contracts to +pay him back by giving him nine months of his labor. The Negro thereupon +enters upon the performance of this contract, but fails for some reason, +not stated, to finish it. How long he worked does not appear either, but +this much does. He is haled into Court a second time and a second time a +fine is imposed upon him. And again an employer, who is opportunely +present at the second trial, pays the fine. The Negro now binds himself to +the service of this second man for fourteen months, which, to use a slang +expression, is surely "going some." At this stage of the game, however, +the United States Government stepped into the case, otherwise a third +charge might have been preferred in due time, and again the term of +involuntary service lengthened, and so on ad infinitum until death +released the victim. This is a well-known Southern method for multiplying +Negro criminals to meet the demands of Southern employers of cheap labor. +It is a danger to which every colored man is exposed in the South, because +Southern Courts are as a rule administered in the interest of the employer +class wherever the Negro is concerned. There have been a few notable +instances of Southern Judges who have refused to lend their Courts to this +iniquitous business, like Judge Emory Speer, of Georgia, and the late +Judge Jones, of Alabama, but such examples are like angels' visits--few +and far between in that land of race repression and oppression. + +Take another and different case, which is common enough in the South also. +It is, like the preceding clipping, taken from the _Washington Post_: + + LYNCHED BY MOB OF 1,000. + + LITTLE GIRL'S ASSAILANT DRAGGED FROM JAIL AS TROOPS ARE ASSEMBLING. + + Shreveport, La., May 12.--Edward Hamilton, colored, held on the + charge of attacking a 10-year old white girl, was taken from the + parish jail shortly after noon and lynched. + + For three hours a mob of 1,000 men and boys stood in the rain outside + the jail doors, hammering away with a heavy railroad iron at the + barrier. Steel saws finally were used, and entrance was gained by the + mob. Sheriff J. P. Flourney had telegraphed the governor for troops + and orders had been sent the Shreveport company of the national guard + to report for service. Before the company could be assembled the + prisoner had been taken from the jail. A rope was placed about + Hamilton's neck and he was dragged half a block from the jail to a + telephone pole opposite the parish courthouse, and strung up. A knife + was left sticking in the body. + +Here we have Judge Lynch's Court in full operation in the execution of one +suspected Colored criminal and the manufacture at the same time of a +thousand white criminals. This Colored man was only suspected of the usual +crime. There was no trial of him to find the facts, not even by Judge +Lynch himself. Edward Hamilton might have been guilty and then again he +might have been innocent. I think that a private inquiry into his case +subsequent to his murder, pointed to his probable innocence. But he was an +object of suspicion, and that was enough to justify the act of his +murderers. If the mob failed to lynch the guilty and lynched instead an +innocent man, it was so much the worse for the innocent man, not at all +for the mob, however red their hands were with that innocent man's blood. +Why? Because that innocent man was black, and because his murder helps to +uphold white supremacy over millions of people whose only offense is that +they are black. Into the violent death of a man like Hamilton there might +not be instituted any official inquiry at all in many parts of the South +any more than if he had been a horse or a dog. But if there happens to be +an official inquiry the usual verdict is that "the deceased came to his +death by the hands of a person or persons unknown," and that ends the +matter so far as the Negro is concerned. But it does not end the matter so +far as the South is concerned, for the Devil will exact his share of the +black deed from that section to the uttermost farthing. What has such a +mob done? In the murder of one black man, whether innocent or guilty, the +South has, as in the case of Hamilton, made hundreds of white criminals, +has tainted the blood of whole communities like Shreveport with the virus +of lawlessness and crime. In this same Shreveport there were five colored +men lynched in ten days and eight in a year, and one white woman testified +at an investigation conducted by the attorney general's office that she +rode in an automobile crowded with men eighteen miles to see an old +colored man burned at the stake! Like begets like, and crime crime, and +there is no help for it. Because what a state sows that it shall surely +reap. If it sow sin it shall reap suffering and shame, and if it sow the +wind it shall likewise reap the whirlwind. Is not the South sowing into +the souls of both races the seeds of sin and violence, and shall it not +then reap its full crop of crime and misery, the wild and anarchic harvest +of the whirlwind? + +Hard indeed is the lot of the Negro whether in the country or the city of +the South, and in those of the North too for that matter. For wherever he +goes he carries the marks of his race with him, and that is the essence of +his offense in America. His lot is practically the same everywhere. He +faces either in city or country the white man's courts and police power +and race prejudice and his industrial and residential exclusiveness and +jealousies, but above all he faces the white man's church with its +undisguised color-phobia, with its virtual rejection of the brotherhood of +man in respect to all races who happen not to be white. They are in the +regard of this church unclean and socially beyond the pale of its +Christian fellowship. They are salvable to be sure but from afar by +missionary efforts, the farther away the better, in China and Japan, in +India and Africa. For there this church is in no danger of race +contamination in its pews and at its altars and in its homes. The American +church is saying with the spirit of the unseeing Peter of old, "Not so +Lord, we have never accepted any man who is brown or black or yellow as +really our brother, for we are white and Thou hast made us of different +clay, of purer blood than all these millions of brown and black and yellow +peoples. Thou hast made us white and white we mean to remain, Thy common +fatherhood and the brotherhood of all these alien races to the contrary +notwithstanding. We try to be humble Lord, but we have never yet succeeded +in humbling the proud blood which Thou hast given us to the level of +brotherhood with these strange dark peoples." + +That is the spirit which the Negro encounters in the American church; that +is the spirit which crushes him down and crowds him back whenever he tries +to rise and advance. He and his are denied the White man's chance to make +the best of themselves and to get the most out of themselves. And when +many of them fail, as fail they must, they are beaten with many bitter +words by this so-called Christian people because of this failure, and when +some succeed in spite of the gates of this hell of race hatred and +oppression they are beaten with even more bitter words and sometimes with +bitter blows, and told to stay where they are put behind the poorest and +most worthless of the whites in America's long procession of progress and +civilization. Is it any wonder that crime emerges out of such cruel and +unequal conditions? The wonder is that the colored criminal class is not +larger and more dangerous to person and property. Take a glance into the +alleys of misery, into the ghettos of wrong where human beings beaten by +other human beings stronger than they in the battle of life are penned in +their destitution and wretchedness to live and die like poisoned rats in a +hole, a prey to heat in summer and cold in winter and disease the year +round, a prey to vice, a prey to the saloons which the white man thrusts +upon them to steal away their last nickel and the remnant of their self +respect. One need not be a prophet to foresee that out of all this +injustice and inequality God's avenging angel will come some day with +sword, double-edged and deadly with disease and crime, to smite and to +blight this land where white people having eyes refuse to see whither all +their race injustice is leading, and ears but who are deaf to the prayer +of Christ's little ones crying for a man's chance to get with others into +the sun and to grow the free and beautiful life which God intended them to +grow when first they came into the world, and that whether they are black +or red or brown or yellow. + +In the matter of education, to recur again to the South in particular, the +blacks are most outrageously discriminated against in favor of the whites, +who have more and better school buildings, more and better paid teachers +even where the blacks out-number them, longer school terms and a much +higher per capita rate of the public school funds than have the children +of the blacks. The problem of the South appears to be not how much +education but how little it can possibly give the blacks in comparison +with what it gives the whites. In all this educational business the South +reasons that the blacks must be kept well in the rear of the whites, +because they are to remain a permanently inferior class. That section is +not anxious to reduce the illiteracy of its colored population and to +raise the standard of their intelligence, for it thinks that an ignorant +labor class is less difficult to manage than an intelligent one. Ignorance +is indeed apt to be stolid and submissive under circumstances in which +intelligence becomes restless and discontented. Therefore the South has +little love or use for an intelligent labor class, but desires above all +things an ignorant one, and does what in it lies to hinder educational +progress among its colored population. But ignorance is a breeder of crime +just as poverty is. They are the parents of much of the crime committed by +the Negroes just as they are the parents of much of the crime committed by +the whites. Our criminal classes do many things which the law forbids to +be done not because they are of one race or color or of another race or +color, but mainly because they are poor and ignorant. Who then in these +circumstances are the ultimate criminal, those who are unwillingly poor +and ignorant, or those who make and keep them so by bad and unequal laws, +by bad and unequal treatment? + +Such is the story of what the whites did to educate the blacks at the most +impressionable period of their freedom in democracy, in orderly government +and Christian civilization. And it is the story of that education during +the last fifty years. There was never kindness to the blacks and sympathy +from the Southern whites as of men to men. The human touch which makes, or +which ought to make, all men brothers has been woefully wanting in the +whites as a race towards the blacks as a race. There has been kindness and +perhaps much kindness from individual white people to individual Colored +people, but never from the mass of the whites to the mass of the blacks, +but just the contrary. Instead of kindness of the one race to the other +there has been increasing ill-will and active injustice as of one enemy to +another. If crime there has been in consequence of this deplorable, this +terrible fact who is the ultimate criminal? At the bar of history and at +the bar of God, I ask, Who is the ultimate criminal? + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. + +Printer's inconsistencies in the use of "childlike" and "child-like" have +been retained. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Ultimate Criminal, by Archibald H. 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