Digital History>Voices>Social History>A Southern Colored Woman
The
Race Problem - An Autobiography: A Southern Colored Woman
Independent, LVI (Mar. 17, 1904), 586 89.
My father was slave in name only, his father and master being
the same. He lived on a large plantation and knew many useful
things. The blacksmith shop was the place he liked best, and he
was allowed to go there and make little tools as a child He became
an expert blacksmith before he was grown Before the war closed
he had married and was the father of one child When his father
wanted him to remain on the plantation after the war, he refused
because the wages offered were too small. The old man would not
even promise an increase later, so my father left in a wagon he
had made with his own hands, drawn by a horse he had bought from
a passing horse drover with his own money.
He had in his wagon his wife and baby, some blacksmith tools
he had made from time to time, bedding, their clothing, some food,
and twenty dollars in his pocket As he drove by the house he got
out of the wagon to bid his father good by. The old man came down
the steps and, pointing in the direction of the gate, said: "Joseph,
when you get on the outside of that gate stay." Turning to
my mother, he said, " When you get hungry and need clothes
for yourself and the baby, as you are sure to do, come to me,"
and he pitched a bag of silver in her lap, which my father immediately
took and placed at his father's feet on the steps and said, "I
am going to feed and clothe them and I can do it on a bare rock."
My father drove twenty five miles to the largest town in the State,
where he succeeded in renting a small house.
The next day he went out to buy something to eat On his way home
a lady offered him fifty cents for a string of fish for which
he had only paid twenty cents. That gave him an idea. Why not
buy fish every day and sell them? He had thought to get work at
his trade, but here was money to be made and quickly. So from
buying a few strings of fish he soon saved enough to buy a wagon
load of fish.
My mother was very helpless, never having done anything in her
life except needlework. She was unfitted for the hard work, and
most of this my father did He taught my mother to cook, and he
would wash and iron himself at night.
Many discouraging things happened to them often sales were slow
and fish would spoil; many would not buy of him because he was
colored; another baby was born and died, and my father came very
near losing his life for whipping a white man who insulted my
mother. He got out of the affair finally, but had to take on a
heavy debt, besides giving up all of his hard earned savings.
My father said after the war his ambition was first to educate
himself and family, then to own a white house with green blinds,
as much like his father's as possible, and to support his family
by his own efforts; never to allow his wife and daughters to be
thrown in contact with Southern white men in their homes. He succeeded.
The American Missionary Association had opened schools by this
time, and my father went to night school and sent his wife and
child to school in the day.
By hard work and strict economy two years after he left his father's
plantation he gave two hundred dollars for a large plot of ground
on a high hill on the outskirts of the town.
Three years later I was born in my father's own home, in his
coveted white house with green blinds his father's house in miniature.
Here my father kept a small store, was burned out once and had
other trials, but finally he had a large grocery store and feed
store attached.
I have never lived in a rented house except for one year since
I've been grown. I have never gone to a public school in my life,
my parents preferring the teaching of the patient "New England
schoolmarm" to the Southern "poor white," who thought
it little better than a disgrace to teach colored children so
much of a disgrace that she taught her pupils not to speak to
her on the streets. My mother and her children never performed
any labor outside of my father's and their own homes.
To day I have the same feeling my parents had There is no sacrifice
I would not make, no hardship I would not undergo rather than
allow my daughters to go in service where they would be thrown
constantly in contact with Southern white men, for they consider
the colored girl their special prey.
It is commonly said that no girl or woman receives a certain
kind of insult unless she invites it. That does not apply to a
colored girl and woman in the South. The color of her face alone
is sufficient invitation to the Southern white man these same
men who profess horror that a white gentleman can entertain a
colored one at his table. Out of sight of their own women they
are willing and anxious to entertain colored women in various
ways. Few colored girls reach the age of sixteen without receiving
advances from them maybe from a young "up¬start,"
and often from a man old enough to be their father, a white haired
veteran of sin Yes, and men high in position, whose wives and
daughters are leaders of society. I have had a clerk in a store
hold my hand as 1 gave him the money for some purchase and utter
some vile request; a shoe man to take liberties, a man in a crowd
to place his hands on my person, others to follow me to my very
door, a school director to assure me a position if I did his bidding.
It is true these particular men never insulted me but once; but
there are others. I might write more along this line and worse
things how a white man of high standing will systematically set
out to entrap a colored girl but my identification would be assured
in some quarters. My husband was also educated in an American
Missionary Associa¬tion school (God bless the name!), and
after graduating took a course in medicine in another school.
He has practiced medicine now for over ten years. By most frugal
living and strict economy he saved enough to buy for a home a
house of four rooms, which has since been increased to eight Since
our marriage we have bought and paid for two other places, which
we rent. My husband's collections average one hundred dollars
a month We have an iron bound rule that we must save at least
fifty dollars a month. Some months we lay by more, but never less.
We do not find this very hard to do with the rent from our places,
and as I do all of my work except the washing and ironing.
We have three children, two old enough for school. I try to be
a good and useful neighbor and friend to those who will allow
me. I would be contented and happy if I, an American citizen,
could say as Axel Jarlson (the Swedish emigrant, whose story appeared
in the Independent of January 8th, 1903) says, "There
are no aristocrats to push him down and say that he is not worthy
because his father was poor." There are " aristocrats"
to push me and mine down and say we are not worthy because we
are colored. The Chinaman, Lee Chew, ends his article in The Independent
of February 19th,1903, by saying, "Under the circumstances
how can I call this my home, and how can any one blame me if I
take my money and go back to my village in China?"
Happy Chinaman! Fortunate Lee Chew! You can go back to your village
and enjoy your money. This is my village, my home, yet am I an
outcast See what an outcast! Not long since I visited a Southern
city where the "Jim Crow" car law is enforced. I did
not know of this law, and on boarding an electric car took the
most convenient seat. The conductor yelled, "What do you
mean? Niggers don't sit with white folks down here. You must have
come from'way up yonder. I'm not Roosevelt. We don't sit with
niggers, much less eat with them."
I was astonished and said, "I am a stranger and did not
know of your law." His answer was: "Well, no back talk
now; that's what I'm here for to tell niggers their places when
they don't know them."
Every white man, woman and child was in a titter of laughter
by this time at what they considered the conductor's wit.
These Southern men and women, who pride themselves on their fine
sense of feeling, had no feeling for my embarrassment and unmerited
insult, and when I asked the conductor to stop the car that I
might get off, one woman said in a loud voice, "These niggers
get more impudent every day, she doesn't want to sit where she
belongs."
No one of them thought that I was embarrassed, wounded and outraged
by the loud, brutal talk of the conductor and the sneering, contemptuous
expressions on their own faces. They considered me "impudent"
when I only wanted to be alone that I might conquer my emotion.
I was nervous and blinded by tears of mortification which will
account for my second insult on this same day.
I walked downtown to attend to some business and had to take
an elevator in an office building. I stood waiting for the elevator,
and when the others, all of whom were white, got in I made a move
to go in also, and the boy shut the cage door in my face. I thought
the elevator was too crowded and waited; the same thing happened
the second time. I would have walked up, but I was going to the
fifth story, and my long walk downtown had tired me. The third
time the elevator came down the boy pointed to a sign and said,
"I guess you can't read; but niggers don't ride in this elevator,
we're white folks here, we are. Go to the back and you'll find
an elevator for freight and niggers."
The occupants of.the elevator also enjoyed themselves at my
expense. This second insult in one day seemed more than I could
bear. I could transact no business in my frame of mind, so I slowly
took the long walk back to the suburbs of the city, where I was
stopping. My feelings were doubly crushed and in my heart, I fear, I rebelled
not only against man but God. I have been humiliated and insulted
often, but I never get used to it; it is new each time, and stings
and hurts more and more.
The very first humiliation I received I remember very distinctly
to this day. It was when I was very young. A little girl playmate
said to me: "I like to come over to your house to play, we
have such good times, and your ma has such good preserves; but
don't you tell my ma I eat over here. My ma says you all are nice,
clean folks and she'd rather live by you than the white people
we moved away from; for you don't borrow things. I know she would
whip me if I ate with you, tho, because you are colored, you know."
I was very angry and forgot she was my guest, but told her to
go home and bring my ma's sugar home her ma borrowed, and the
rice they were always wanting a cup of.
After she had gone home I threw myself upon the ground and cried,
for I liked the little girl, and until then I did not know that
being "colored" made a difference. I am not sure I knew
anything about "colored." I was very young and I know
now I had been shielded from all unpleasantness.
My mother found me in tears and I asked her why was I colored,
and couldn't little girls eat with me and let their mothers know
it
My mother got the whole story from me, but she couldn't satisfy
me with her explanation or, rather, lack of explanation. The little
girl came often to play with me after that and we were little
friends again, but we never had any more play dinners. I could
not reconcile the fact that she and her people could borrow and
eat our rice in their own house and not sit at my table and eat
my mother's good, sweet preserves.
The second shock I received was horrible to me at the time. I
had not gotten used to real horrible things then. The history
of Christian men selling helpless men and women's children to
far distant States was unknown to me; a number of men burning
another chained to a post an impossibility, the whipping of a
grown woman by a strong man unthought of. I was only a child,
but I remember to this day what a shock I received. A young colored
woman of a lovely disposition and character had just died. She
was a teacher in the Sunday school I attended a self sacrificing,
noble young woman who had been loved by many. Her coffin, room,
hall, and even the porch of her house were filled with flowers
sent by her friends. There were lovely designs sent by the more
prosperous and simple bouquets made by untrained, childish hands.
I was on my way with my own last offering of love, when I was
met by quite a number of white boys and girls. A girl of about
fifteen year said to me, "More flowers for that dead nigger?
I never saw such a to do made over a dead nigger before. Why,
there must be thousands of roses alone in that house. I've been
standing out here for hours and there has been a continual stream
of niggers carrying flowers, and beautiful ones, too, and what
makes me madder than anything else, those Yankee teachers carried
flowers, too!" 1, a litte girl, with my heart full of sadness
for the death of my friend, could make no answer to these big,
heartless boys and girls, who threw stones after me as I ran from
them.
When I reached home I could not talk for emotion. My mother was
astonished when I found voice to tell her I was not crying because
of the death of Miss W., But because I could not do something,
anything, to avenge the insult to her dead body. I remember the
strongest feeling I had was one of revenge. I wanted even to kill
that particular girl or do something to hurt her. I was unhappy
for days. I was told that they were heartless, but that I was
even worse, and that Miss W. would be the first to condemn me
could she speak
That one encounter made a deep impression on my childish heart;
it has been with me throughout the years. I have known real horrors
since, but none left a greater impression on me.
My mother used to tell me if I were a good little girl everybody
would love me, and if I always used nice manners it would make
others show the same to me.
I believed that literally until I entered school, when the many
encounters I had with white boys and girls going to and from school
made me seriously doubt that goodness and manners were needed
in this world The white children I knew grew meaner as they grew
older more capable of saying things that cut and wound.
I was often told by white children whose parents rented houses:
"You think you are white because your folks own their own
home; but you ain't, you're a nigger just the same, and my pa
says if he had his rights he would own niggers like you, and your
home, too."
A child's feelings are easily wounded, and day after day I carried
a sad heart To day I carry a sad heart on account of my children.
What is to become of them? The Southern whites dislike more and
more the educated colored man. They hate the intelligent colored
man who is accumulating something. The respectable, intelligent
colored people are "carefully unknown"; their good traits
and virtues are never mentioned On the other hand, the ignorant
and vicious are carefully known and all of their traits cried
aloud.
In the natural order of things our children will be better educated
than we; they will have our accumulations and their own. With
the added dislike and hatred of the white man, I shudder to think
of the outcome.
In this part of the country, where the Golden Rule is obsolete,
the commandment, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is forgotten;
anything is possible.
I dread to see my children grow. I know not their fate. Where
the white girl has one temptation, mine will have many. Where
the white boy has every opportunity and protection, mine will
have few opportunities and no protection It does not matter how
good or wise my children may be, they are colored When I have
said that, all is said Everything is forgiven in the South but
color.
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