The Hotel Vendome for colored people only
offenses, but the moment he assumes or demands any other relationship or stands up as an independent citizen, the white men—at least some white men—turn upon him with the fiercest hostility. The incident of the associated charities may now be understood. It was not necessarily cruelty to a cold or hungry Negro that inspired the demand of the irate subscriber, but the feeling that the associated charities helped Negroes and whites on the same basis, as men; that, therefore, it encouraged "social equality," and that therefore it was to be slopped.
I shall have to ask the indulgence of the reader here—and all through this series—for getting away from the main-traveled road of my narrative. Sooner or later I promise solemnly to get back again, and not without the hope that I have illuminated some obscure by-way or found a new path through a thorny hedge.
Most of the examples so far given are along the line of social contact, where, of course, the repulsion Is intense. They are the outward evidences of separation, but while highly provocative, they are not really of vital importance. Negroes and whites can go to different schools, churches and saloons, and sit in different street cars, and still live pretty comfortably. But the
Barber shop managed by A. F. Herndon, the richest Negro in Atlanta
longer I remain in the South, the more clearly I come to understand how wide and deep, in other, less easily discernible ways, the chasm between the races is becoming. It takes forms that I had never dreamed of.
The New Racial Consciousness among Negroes
One of the natural and inevitable results of the effort of the white man to set the Negro off, as a race, by himself, is to awaken in him a new consciousness—a sort of racial consciousness. It drives the Negroes together for defense and offense. Many able Negroes, some largely of white blood, cut off from all opportunity of success in the greater life of the white man, become of necessity leaders of their own people. And one of their chief efforts consists in urging Negroes to work together and to stand together. In this they are only developing the instinct of defense against the white man which has always been latent in the race. This instinct exhibits itself, as in the recent Brownsville case, in the way in which the mass of Negroes often refuse to turn over a criminal of their color to white justice; it is like the instinctive clannishness of the Highland Scotch or the peasant Irish. I don't know how many Southern people have told me in different ways of how extremely difficult it is to get at the real feeling of a Negro, to make him tell what goes on in his clubs and churches or in his innumerable societies.
A Southern woman told me of a cook who had been in her service for nineteen years. The whole family really loved the old darkey: her mistress made her a confidante, in the way of the old South, in the most intimate private and family matters, the daughters told her their love affairs; they all petted her and even submitted to many small tyrannies upon her part.
"But do you know," said my hostess, "Susie never tells us a thing about her life or her friends, and we couldn't, if we tried, make her tell what goes on in the society she belongs to."
The Negro has long been defensively secretive. Slavery made him that. In the past, the instinct was passive and defensive; but with growing education and intelligent leadership it is rapidly becoming
