The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918

From even a few such documents, it might be possible to plot cultural areas, as has been done for North America—the areas in question being regions of fairly uniform culture, marked off with some sharpness from other such areas. It would then appear whether the African areas depended on geographic conditions, on plant or animal distributions, or on the superior inventive genius of certain tribes or races. On the other hand, it might appear that the whole culture area hypothesis was untenable, and that within any given geographic area, or within any given tribe, there would exist elements of culture which were adopted at widely differing times and belonged to different culture levels. Thus, a true stratification of cultures might be exposed. Yet again, it might be found that people living in similar environments tended to develop a like culture regardless of any contact or close ethnic affinities.

At the present moment the task of correlating existing material in such a way as to test the validity of current theories and presuppositions of the anthropological sciences is quite as important as that of adding to existing collections of information. In this way only can the mass of information now extant be made available for the use of students in the secondary social sciences, like sociology and political science, which are dealing with immediate and practical problems. It is only in this way, for example, that the knowledge we have gained of the Negro in Africa will contribute to the solution of the race problem in America.

Interesting as is the prospect which opens with the first volume of the African Studies, the untechnical reader will probably be more impressed with imposing appearance of the volume, with the character of its illustration and its general typographical appearance than with its contents. These consist of twelve articles of an average length of 23 pages dealing with the following types: Siwan customs, Oral surgery in Egypt during the Old Empire, Worship of the Dead as practiced by some African Tribes, The Paleoliths of the Eastern Desert, Notes on the Nungu Tribe, Nassawara Province, A study of the Ancient Speech of the Canary Islands, Benin Antiquities in the Peabody Museum, The Utendi of Mwana Kupon, Notes on Egyptian Saints, Dafûr Gourds, An Inscription from Gebel Barkal, and Ancient Egyptian Fishing.

Perhaps the most interesting of these articles, for the sociologist, is that of R. H. Blanchard entitled Notes an Egyptian Saints. Sainthood, as the author remarks, "is not a difficulty of achievement in the Islamic world." Every hamlet has its shrine and in the larger villages there will usually be found two or three such sanctuaries. Once a year, on his birthday, a festival and religious fair in honor of the saint is held. The primitive character of these religious celebrations is attested by the orgiastic and often licentious performances that accompany them. For example on the occasion of the festival of el-Hamâl et-Rayah, a purely local celebrity, "the whole adult male population of the town, in defiance of all orthodox Moslem sentiment, intoxicated themselves with whatever alcoholic beverages they could procure. Half a dozen prostitutes, hired for the occasion, set up their booths or tents in the town, and received all comers. There was among the revelers a great deal of horseplay of the most licentious character, particularly in the vicinity of the booths if the sharamît. Drunken men were dragged into the lanes by their friends, and there left lying, exposed to the village wags and wits. In 1914 this festival was modified by Government, which suppressed the more offensive features of the celebration."

One of the most interesting of these saints referred to was "an old Negro slave well known for his long, harmless, pious life." It is generally held that the body of a man who has during his life attained an unusual degree of sanctity is gifted with a supernatural power which is often exerted on those who carry his bier to the grave. The supernatural power of this old Negro saint was attested to in the following peculiar way: "Having died toward evening, he would not, on any account, have himself buried the same evening, and the bearers, in spite of all their shouting of la ilah ill Alllah (sic), could not bring the corpse to the graveyard. It remained therefore, all night in the house (though the people do not like to keep a corpse at night), watched by a multitude of people praying. Next morning also it could not be buried for a long time, the blessed dead compelled the bearers to go through all the streets of the town, till at last, on the recommendations of the governor, the higher officials carried the bier to the grave, even the Turkish soldiers could not accomplish it. The whole town was in uproar. The Mohammadans say the angels exercise this coercive power. The Christians believe it is the devil."

It seems probable, as the author suggests, that we have in these religious festivals in honor of a local celebrity surviving examples of localized and more primitive type of religious cult which has not yet been wholly superseded by the religion of Islam, with its wider outlook and more rational conceptions of life. The notes here recorded suggest at once questions which can only be answered by further investigation and by comparison of the materials gathered in this region with those that are now being brought to light in other fields. It is the purpose of the Harvard African studies to answer these questions, so far as they can be answered by a study of African life.

Interesting from other points of view are the reproductions of the remarkable collection of Benin antiquities at the Peabody Museum, of the celebrated Vai syllabary, and of an interesting poem of 100 lines in the Suaheli language said to have been dictated by a dying mother to her daughter. Transliteration and translation accompany the reproduction in the original script.

    Robert E. Park.

Fifty Years and Other Poems. By James Weldon Johnson. With an Introduction by Brander Matthews. The Cornhill Co., Boston, 1917. Pp. xiv, 92.

From time to time for the last fifteen years Mr. James Weldon Johnson has been remarked as one of the literary men of the race. He has now brought together his verses in a little volume, Fifty Years and Other Poems, an introduction to which has been written by Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia University. The task was eminently worth while.

The book falls into two parts. The first is made up of poems in the commonly accepted forms, though there are one or two examples of vers libre; and the second is entitled Jingles and Croons. This second division consists of dialect verses, especially the songs that have been set to music, most frequently by the poet's brother, Mr. J. Rosamond Johnson. Outstanding are the very first lines, Since you went away. It is well that these pieces have been brought together. For artistic achievement, however, attention will naturally be fixed upon the first division. Fifty Years was written in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the emancipation of the race. Professor Matthews speaks of it as "one of the noblest commemorative poems yet written by any American—a poem sonorous in its diction, vigorous in its workmanship, elevated in its imagination, and sincere in its emotion." This is high praise, and yet it may reasonably be asked if there are not in the book at least four pieces of finer poetic quality. These are, first of all, the two poems that originally appeared in the Century, Mother Night and O Black and Unknown Bards, and The White Witch and The Young Warrior. The first of these four poems is a sonnet well rounded out. The second gains merit by reason of its strong first and last two stanzas. The White Witch chooses a delicate and difficult theme, but contains some very strong stanzas. The Young Warrior is a poem of rugged strength and one that deserves all the popularity it has achieved with Mr. Burleigh's musical setting. Mr. Johnson is strongest in the simple, direct, and sometimes sensuous expression that characterizes these latter poems, and it is to be hoped that he may have the time and the inclination to write many more like them.

    Benjamin Brawley.

Battles and Victories of Allen Allensworth. By Charles Alexander. Sherman, French and Company, Boston, 1914. Pp. 429.

Here we have the story of a successful Negro born a slave in Kentucky but who, determined to succeed, rose to the distinction of a teacher and preacher and finally to that of a chaplain in the United States army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The value of this book to the historian, however, is not the mere sketch of Colonel Allensworth but the valuable facts bearing on the history of the Negroes in various parts of the United States. The philanthropic attitude of the Quakers toward Negroes, the life of the slave on the Mississippi, the relations between the poor whites and the slaves, the escape of fugitives to Canada, and the work of the abolitionists are all mentioned from page to page.

The larger portion of the book, however, gives details of the life of Allensworth, which would interest only those who knew him personally. But his founding a town in California inhabited altogether by Negroes stamps him as a pioneer whose achievements in this field must engage the attention of the historian. The detailed accounts of his service as a chaplain in the United States army in the Spanish-American War and later in the Philippines add other valuable experiences which the public should know. The book contains also references to the work of Frederick Douglass, Judge William Jay and John Brown. The author mentions also scores of other persons who have in various ways helped to make the history of the Negro in the United States and especially those who were effective in bringing about the emancipation of the race.

The style of this book is decidedly rough. The work does not show organization. It is written in such a way as to indicate that the writer recorded his facts as they came to him at random without regard as to the principles of composition. It was wholly unnecessary for him to wander astray, discussing in detail the careers of almost every man of that time influencing the life of the Negro, without showing the connection between those facts and the life of the subject of this sketch. The chief value of this work, therefore, is that of a source book.

The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh, A study in Social Economics. By Abraham Epstein. Published under the supervision of the School of Economics, University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, Pa., 1918.

The movement of the Negroes from the South to the North during the present world war bids fair to be recorded as the most significant event of our local history during this decade. In about two years a million Negroes have gone North to take the places of those immigrants who annually sought our shores prior to this upheaval. To show the significance of the exodus a number of writers have sketched it in newspapers and magazines. Books bearing on the subject are forthcoming. The first scientific study of the transplanted southern Negroes to appear in print, however, is Epstein's interesting and valuable work.

Departing from the newspaper Pullman-palace-car method of studying social conditions, Mr. Epstein assiduously applied himself to the task of making a house-to-house investigation of the home life of this large and typical community of Negroes recently brought to the North. He learned whence they came, their antecedent circumstances, why they abandoned their old homes, what they seek in the North and to what extent they are realizing their dreams. The various factors contributing to the solution of their local problems in Pittsburgh and those effective in confusing the situation are well treated.

This work is especially valuable in its portrayal of home conditions. The author directed his attention to what these migrants do, where they live, how they spend their earnings and how they amuse themselves. In this treatment, therefore, appears a discussion of health, disease and crime as influenced by the presence of these newcomers from a section in which their condition differed materially from what they find in the North. Whether or not we agree with him in his conclusions, therefore, this treatise must claim the attention of students of present-day problems, desiring to deal with facts rather than theories.

On the whole, Mr. Epstein does not find the Negro an exception to any other migrant. Most of the facts which he sets forth are after all favorable to blacks when one considers that their peculiar circumstances are due to race prejudice and the proscription of trades unions. The author did not find them unusually afflicted with disease, as was predicted, and he saw no evidence of a wave of crime. Most of the offenses charged to the account of the migrants are of the petty sort which arise from the stimulus given such by the denizens of vice tolerated by the community. Students of Negro life and history, therefore, should read this dissertation.

    C. G. Woodson.

NOTES

Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard who was kind enough to call our attention to the misprint of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton Hart, for Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart., on page 20 of the January number of The Journal of Negro History, has sent us the following note in William Lloyd Garrison's own words concerning his relations with this distinguished friend of the Negro in England:

"On arriving in London I received a polite invitation by letter from Mr. Buxton to take breakfast with him. Presenting myself at the appointed time, when my name was announced, instead of coming forward promptly to take me by the hand, he scrutinized me from head to foot, and then inquired, somewhat dubiously, 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Garrison, of Boston, in the United States?' 'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I am he; and I am here in accordance with your invitation.' Lifting up his hands he exclaimed, 'Why, my dear sir, I thought you were a black man! And I have consequently invited this company of ladies and gentlemen to be present to welcome Mr. Garrison, the black advocate of emancipation from the United States of America!' I have often said that that is the only compliment I have ever had paid to me that I care to remember, or to tell of! For Mr. Buxton had somehow or other supposed that no white American could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and therefore I must be black!"

"The worthy successor of Wilberforce, our esteemed friend and coadjutor, Thomas Fowell Buxton," had this picture drawn of him by his guest (Mr. Garrison) on his return to America:

"Buxton has sufficient fleshly timber to make two or three Wilberforces. He is six feet and a half in height, though rather slender than robust. What a formidable leader of the anti-slavery cause in appearance! We always felt delighted to see him rise in his seat in Parliament to address the House, for his towering form literally caused his pro-slavery opponents to 'hide their diminished heads.' He is a very good speaker, but not an orator: his manner is dignified, sincere, and conciliating, and his language without pretence. But he has hardly decision, energy, and boldness enough for a leader. His benevolent desires for the emancipation of the colonial slaves led him to accede to a sordid compromise with the planters, and he advocated the proposition to remunerate these enemies of the human race, and to buy up wholesale robbery and oppression, in opposition to the remonstrances of the great body of English abolitionists, and it furnishes a dangerous precedent in the overthrow of established iniquity and crime throughout the world. The results of the bargain do not (January, 1836) reach Mr. Buxton's anticipations.... Still, aside from this false step, Mr. Buxton deserves universal admiration and gratitude for his long-continued, able and disinterested efforts, amidst severe ridicule and malignant opposition, to break every yoke and set the oppressed free."

President Nathan B. Young, of the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College, has kindly directed our attention to the following facts which appeared in an article in the Tampa Tribune, showing how adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment was effected:

"How the vote that made the Federal amendment abolishing slavery was polled in the house of representatives on January 26, 1863, was told to a representative of The Tribune yesterday by the reading clerk of that congress—now a Florida winter resident and nearing ninety years of age.

"A change of two votes would have defeated the amendment; and urgent business kept one man from being present to cast his vote against the measure, so it is seen that history came near being made another way that memorable day.

"The story was told, with all the vigor and freshness of a man just from the existing scenes and actions, by E. W. Barber, editor of the Jackson (Mich.) Daily Patriot, now at Crooked Lake, happy in the summer of Florida's winter. Mr. Barber was reading clerk for the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth and fortieth congresses, from December, 1863 to 1869; and he is today the only official of that body who is living. He will be ninety years old on the third of July, coming, and is wonderfully preserved, all except his leg. Indeed he laughingly declared that he would have been a dead tree if he had not been pruned of a dead limb!

Tells of Memorable Day

"On the morning of December 26, 1863, said Mr. Barber, there was a stillness in the house that betokened doubt even then of the passage of the amendment, for but four men in the world knew that it was a matter of accomplishment before the roll was called.

"The senate had already passed the amendment, he said, and the house had defeated it in the first session of the congress; and there was a doubt of its passage over in the lower body.

"After its defeat in the house, the party machinery was put in motion to bring into line sufficient votes to make the necessary three-fourths required. J. M. Ashley of Toledo and Augustus Frank of Warsaw, N. Y., were appointed a committee of two to see if votes enough could be secured at the short session to pass the bill through the house.

"Edward W. Barber, the reading clerk, and Richard U. Sherman, the tally clerk, kept a secret rollcall under lock and key in their desk, and on this was marked the name of every man who had voted against the amendment. As a man was changed or converted, his name was reported to these two and his name added to those already secured for the amendment. One by one the change came, and at last one day when a name was added—the member from the Gettysburg district—Ashley exclaimed "There, by God. We've got enough."

"That day in the house Ashley, who had changed his vote to "nay" after the defeat of the bill earlier so he could move its reconsideration, and had complied with that parliamentary condition, gave notice that on January 26 he would call up the bill for a vote.

Measure Sways in Balance

"Betting ran high for and against the passage of the amendment, says Mr. Barber. The odds were that it would not be passed because of the violent opposition which it had evoked at the former attempt. There were but four men who knew how the matter would go, and those were E. W. Barber, reading clerk; Richard U. Sherman, tally clerk; J. M. Ashley, and Augustus Frank, the committee of two named to get the proper number of votes for the bill.

"The margin was close, two changes would have defeated it; and one member opposed to the amendment was absent, so he said afterward, because a large number of soldiers from his state were at Aquia Creek, and he felt he must pay them some attention. The name of this member was not given.

"Mr. Barber is still editing his paper, sending some fourteen editorials a week to Jackson, Mich., for publication in The Daily Patriot, from his Florida home, five miles south of Lake Wales.

"He has been coming to Florida for forty-five years and, while he has been delaying his coming until well into December, he said yesterday that from now on he expects to come early in November and stay until well into spring.

"He is a most entertaining and interesting speaker and is full of enthusiasm for his adopted home and his future prospects here."

A group of Southern folks have organized a Southern Publicity Committee to advertise among themselves some of the South's constructive work in racial matters. They propose to furnish Southern daily papers with brief and accurate accounts of things actually being done in definite places by given persons or groups or States in the South, for or in cooperation with Negroes for Negro betterment, and to make the South a better place, morally and economically, for both races to live in.

The chairman of the committee is Dr. J. H. Dillard, director of the Jeanes and Slater Funds, a Virginian, and an LL.D. of three Southern universities, including his alma mater, Washington and Lee. The other members are Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, specialist of the U. S. Bureau of Education; Mrs. Percy V. Pennypacker, of the National Federation of Women's Clubs; the Rt. Rev. Theodore D. Bratton, D.D., of the Diocese of Mississippi; Messrs. Clark Howell of the Atlanta Constitution; Arthur B. Krock, of the Louisville Courier-Journal; D. P. Toomey, of the Dallas News; C. P. J. Mooney of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal; E. E. Britton, formerly of the Raleigh Observer, private secretary to Secretary Daniels; Jackson Davis of Richmond, general field agent of the General Education Board; Walter Parker, general manager of the New Orleans Association of Commerce; the Rev. J. W. Lee, D.D., of St. Louis, the well-known Southern Methodist minister, author and lecturer; Dr. W. S. Currell, president of the South Carolina State University; Dr. Chas. L. Crow, of the State university of Florida; Dr. W. D. Weatherford, of Nashville, Tenn., secretary of the International Y. M. C. A.; and Mrs. John D. Hammond of Georgia, who will act as secretary for the committee.

The Committee will undertake publicity work in behalf of the best aspects of our inter-racial relations in no spirit of boastfulness or of self-satisfaction as Southerners. They are aware of the shadows, the back eddies, the sinister influences in the lives of both races. But they believe the good outweighs the evil, and deserves at least as wide a hearing; and that to give publicity to successful constructive work done by their own people will encourage others to similar efforts, and will further the interests of both races. They ask a hearing from the Southern public for these aspects of Southern life.

Dean Benjamin P. Brawley, of Morehouse College, has brought out a new work entitled The Negro in Literature and Art, published by Duffield and Company, New York City. It was incorrectly reported in our last issue that this work was to be published by Dodd, Mead and Company.

Dean Brawley contributed to the Sewanee Review for January an article entitled Richard le Gallienne and the Tradition of Beauty. This is a literary study of merit.

Dr. James H. Dillard contributed to School and Society an article entitled County Machinery for Colored Schools in the South. It contains information both helpful and valuable to persons interested in the education of the Negro.

M. M. Ponton's Life and Times of Henry M. Turner has come from the press of A. B. Caldwell Publishing Company, Atlanta, Georgia.