Black Man's Burden, Chapter 7

Besides, they usually cultivated with their own hands a certain portion of land for which they in reality paid no rent. They were unassuming, hardworking, honest individuals. They and their families made up the bulk of those who were

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found in the church and at Sunday school on Sundays, and they were in every way the leaders of the com- munity. This class of persons is interesting, if for no other reason than because they no longer exist as a class in this community. At that time, however, I believe this class was the rule and not the exception. I do not mean that they were all always the good men that they should have been, or even up to the standard of the men whose names I have mentioned. On some plantations conditions were bad. I have in mind now one of these influential men who had charge of a plantation south- west of the town of Utica. If all that was said of him was true, he was far from being a good man. I visited that plantation several times, and I was struck with the fact that, although he was an unmarried man, there were six women farmers who were employed by him and who lived in the same house with him at the headquarters of the plantation. More than once when I inquired what kind of a man he was the reply would be that he had no wife of his own and that he had little respect for the wife of any one else.

Nevertheless, he was boss of the situation there, and had great influence with the owner of that plantation, who was a merchant in the town. This Negro usually came to town every Saturday and brought with him between ten and twenty men, women, and children from the plantation. They would all usually make some purchases before they went back, but hardly one of them could buy a penny’s worth until this man’s name was attached to the bargain. I found that it was best to have little to do with this class of farmers, and I cultivated the friendship and good-will of better men.

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The women, too, should not be forgotten,—that is, the wives of the good men I have spoken of and of others like them.

Our methods in building up our enterprise were sim- ple: we had subscription lists printed, and every person kept one and placed thereon the name of any person who wished to become interested in the upbuilding of the school. Then we gave festivals, sociables, and various other entertainments, to which everybody in the com- munity contributed fried chicken, baked chicken, baked pigs, turkeys, and other edibles. These things were sold to the young people and indeed to any one that could be induced to' buy. It is surprising how much small change could be brought together in this way.

Mothers sent in their mites. The following letter from one of them was received at a critical time:

“dear fessor Please cept dis 18 cents it is all I has I saved it out n my washin dis week god will bless yo will send some more next week”

Similar letters accompanied baskets of eggs and other home products, and all breathed the fervent hope that I might succeed, that their children might have a chance to go to school in a good “school ’ouse.”

Suffice it to say that within six months after we started in the open air we had a new schoolhouse almost com- pleted. Up to this time the excitement occasioned by the building of a new and strange sort of school in the hitherto sleepy community had spread so rapidly that young people had been attracted from every direction; hence, although we started with twenty pupils, we now found ourselves with two hundred and twenty-five, one

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hundred and fifteen more than had ever before been known to attend school in that place. It is a fact that this extra one hundred and fifteen pupils were not resi- dent pupils. They had come from a great distance and were finding lodging with friends in cabins here and there, wherever they could; and this proved exceedingly unsatisfactory, so much so that I readily saw that if the school was to be a permanent success, it would have to provide some method of taking care of those pupils who came from a distance,—that is, that we should have to set up a boarding department.

In the first place, I myself had had no regular board- ing-place. My wife was still in Alabama, and I was re- ceiving from her daily letters in which she begged per- mission to joinme. I had asked her not to come, because I felt that the conditions would be intolerable for her. Still, she continued writing me to let her come, even after I had told her the exact conditions,—namely, that I was teaching out of doors, and that my living quarters were not much better. Her answer came by return mail. She said it did not matter what the conditions were, or what the hardships might be in the future, she preferred to come on and live with me and share them. There was nothing for me to do but consent, so she soon joined me.

As soon as she reached Utica we decided that it would be best to set up housekeeping, and use our own home as a temporary boarding-place for the school. We rented a little ramshackled log cabin, located in the middle of a cotton plantation near the school. It had one room and a loft above made by laying some loose boards upon the joists. In this room my wife and I lived. I improvised

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a kitchen at the back of the room with a stick-and-dirt chimney. We bought two chairs, a bedstead, two knives, two forks, two plates, and a frying-pan, and Mary, my wife, made a bedtick of crocus sacks and filled it with hay from the fields. This constituted our household goods; and with the exception of this bedtick filled with hay from the field there was nothing else in the house. But I was not to enjoy even this comfort long, for within a week two students came who wanted to board with us and go to school. We got another bedtick, filled it with hay, and put it up in the loft. The young man and I used that part of the house, while my wife and the young woman lived below. These were our first boarding-students.

The conditions were trying: the winter was cold, there was not covering enough, and I had no money with which to buy more. But my wife and I were used to hardships of this kind, and so was the young woman, but the young man could not hold out.

My wife was born and reared in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, so she was a city girl, and after the fashion of city girls she had always been accustomed to using a cooking-stove in preparing her meals, and she did not know how to cook at the open fireplace with a frying-pan. The conse- quence was that the task fell to me, and my wife tells me even now that she has never had a meal since then that has tasted so good as did those that I prepared in the frying-pan.

It is impossible to describe accurately the conditions through which we passed in order to get the school firmly established. Even after we had more room and fifty girls and boys as boarders it was almost, if not quite, as

Old log cabin where the Utica Normal and Indus- trial Institute had its birth. This house was used

as the first dormitory and was occupied by Prin- cipal and Mrs, Holtzclaw and their only child.

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difficult to make them comfortable, with our scanty means, as it had been that first winter. At one time, in fact, the young women determined to revolt,—to “strike,” as it were. They came to my office and said that they could not stand any longer the condition under which they were living, and that they would have to give up the effort to get an education. It was very cold; there was not enough fuel to go around, and not enough bedding. They were actually suffering for covering. I agreed with them that it was hard, but I asked them to come to the little chapel that night, promising that they should all have honorable dismissal from the school, if they so de- sired.

We went to the chapel two hours earlier than usual, at 7 o'clock. After prayers I gave them a little talk in which I told them something of my own experience at school and of Booker Washington’s having slept under a bridge when a boy; then I called on them to remember their future before taking the step that they were about to take. When I had finished talking I was surprised to see that there were fifteen or twenty girls crying hysteri- cally. They all came and shook hands with me before they left the chapel, and they declared they would never leave school of their own volition.

It was then 8 o'clock, and it was snowing. There would be much suffering that night, yet I did not know what I could possibly do to make the students comfort- able. When I went down from the chapel and opened my mail I was surprised to find that a friend in New York City had sent me a check for fifty dollars, with the wish that I should spend it for the comfort of the stu-

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dents. I took ten of the boys and set out for town, but when we got there the stores were all closed and the people gone to bed. I went down and woke up one of the merchants, told him the conditions, and got him to dress himself; then he came to the store and sold me fifty quilts. These were carried back and laid over the sleeping girls in twenty-five beds. Those girls slept warm that night, even though they did not know why. Some of them declare, even to this day, that they got warmed up in the chapel during my talk and stayed warm the remainder of the night. ;

Our difficulties were not all of this material sort. We had to adjust ourselves to the conditions that existed in the community, and that was a difficult task. It is so easy to be misunderstood by both whites and blacks. For instance, one of my first plans in the early years was to drill the boys in military tactics, both as a matter of physical training and as a matter of discipline. The ma- jority of the boys had to work in the fields during the day, so I devised a plan of drilling them one or two hours at night out in the open fields. They drilled with their old shot guns and fired a blank volley now and then. It was not long before a committee of colored men called on me and advised me to stop drilling the boys. They said that the white people were becoming excited and were freely saying that I had come into the state to bring about a return of ’76. I did not know just what was meant by 76, as I was a baby in ’76, but, in obedience to their wishes, I stopped drilling for the time, and it was several years before we resumed this practice. Drilling (with-

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out guns) is now a part of the daily routine, and nobody thinks anything about it.

There are many stories told in Utica about the Recon- struction period of 1876. I have heard many of them from the lips of old residents, both white and colored, and, from all that I can glean, the trouble seems to have had its origin in the determination of the white people at that period to rid themselves of Negro domination and to reinstate themselves politically. The principal point of hostilities was about twenty miles from here, in the vi- cinity of Clinton, where took place what were known at that time as the “Clinton Riots,’—riots in which the whites and the Negroes clashed, and in which several lives were lost. I had read of these riots, but the stories told by men who had seen them,—especially by one man who acknowledged that he had taken part in them,— were exceedingly interesting. The activity of the white people in Copiah county also, a few miles south of Utica, —which, it will be remembered, called forth at that time an investigation by a committee sent from Washington by the United States Government,—caused the Negroes to be subdued and stripped of political power.

Although Utica was not the storm center of all this trouble, being between the two main points, it was drawn into the diffi- culty. Suffice it to say that when the trouble was all over, and peace and order were again restored, it seems that the Negroes had been shown “their place.” Ever since that time the good white people of Utica and of all the other sections of the South have been working to keep harmony between the races. Here at Utica, therefore, the white people naturally looked with suspicion upon any

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stranger that came into their community and seemed to be preparing for future trouble. Therefore, when the news came to me that they objected to my drilling the boys, I stopped at once. I did not wish to antagonize them in any way, but on the other hand I wanted to cultivate their friendship, so that we could all work to- gether for a more peaceable community.

In this connection, let me tell of our first effort to have public exercises in the church at night. The people had warned me that it was a dangerous thing to attempt and had threatened not to let their children attend the exer- cises. But I created so much interest and enthusiasm among the young people while I was making my prepara- tions that on the night when the exercises took place there were more people, both white and black, in at- tendance than had ever before been in the church.

The church building was located deep in the forest, and it was not lighted, except by two or three smoky lamps that hung from the rafters. We charged ten cents admittance, which two of the deacons were to collect at the door. As soon as it was dark some one fired off a pistol, Women and children screamed and men sought places of safety. The deacons at the door were knocked down and run over, and all the people that the house could hold came in free of charge. Those who could not get in proceeded to break the windows, and one or two young fellows were on the roof ripping off the boards so that they could look through.

In the midst of all this confusion it was, of course, impossible for us to proceed with our concert. I made an effort to call the crowd to order, but only succeeded in

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producing more confusion. About this time a note was passed up to the stage. It read as follows: “Tf you do not proceed with that concert, we will show you how we do business in Utica.” I did not know just what the note meant, but I was just as much disturbed as if I did. One of the deacons attempted to interpret its meaning for me, and he said it meant that if I refused to go forward with the concert, I would be shot. It was impossible, how- ever, to proceed, and no one was shot. My next attempt to give a concert was in a new building which was still not ‘quite finished. We had completed the second story, but nothing had been done to the interior of the first story, and in order to get to the second story we had to use a ladder, as a stairway had not been constructed. So many people went up this ladder into the building that the floor on which they were seated began to give way. While we were down on our knees at prayer I happened to cast my eyes over the audience and I saw that the floor had given way in the center, it seemed to me, at least a foot.

Something had to be done immediately, otherwise it would only be a matter of a few minutes before the floor would break through and many lives would prob- ably be lost. I tiptoed out and went down-stairs and asked several colored men who were standing here and there to help me saw some timbers to brace the floor. No one of them would help, simply giving as their rea- son: “It’s Sunday. We can’t work on Sunday.” A few hours after that I saw one of those same men, a member of the church, buying “Blind Tiger” whiskey not fifty yards from the house.

I succeeded, however, with the assistance of Dan Lee,

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the leading colored carpenter of the community, in prop- ping up the floor and preventing a catastrophe. It was done so quietly that Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, of Tougaloo Uni- versity, who was delivering a sermon, never knew what was going on down-stairs, nor did the audience know.