Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
History
Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
So much for Southern conditions. How is it in the North where
intermarriage is not forbidden by law?
In 1903, during a heated political campaign in Mississippi, United States
Senator Money repeatedly made the assertion that in Massachusetts in the
previous year, because there were no laws to separate the Negro and
prevent intermarriage, 2,000 white women had married Negro men. I heard
echoes of Senator Money's statistics in several places in the South.
I have made a careful investigation of the facts in several northern
cities, and I have been surprised to discover how little intermarriage
there really is.
If intermarriage in the North were increasing largely, Boston, being the
city where the least race prejudice exists and where the proportion of
mulattoes is largest, would show it most plainly. As a matter of fact, in
the year 1902, when according to Senator Money, 2,000 white women married
coloured men, there were in Boston, which contains the great bulk of the
Negro population of Massachusetts, just twenty-nine inter-racial
marriages.
Although the Negro population of Boston has been steadily increasing, the
number of marriages between the races, which remained about stationary
from 1875 to 1890, has since 1900 been rapidly decreasing. Here are the
exact figures as given by the registry department:
RACIAL INTERMARRIAGES IN BOSTON
Groom Groom
Coloured White Total
Bride Bride Mixed
White Coloured Marriages
1900 32 3 35
1901 30 1 31
1902 25 4 29
1903 27 2 29
1904 27 1 28
1905 17 2 19
At Boston and in other Northern towns I made inquiries in regard to the
actual specific instances of intermarriage.
There are two classes of cases, first, what may be called the
intellectuals; highly educated mulattoes who marry educated white women. I
have the history of a number of such intermarriages, but there is not
space here to relate the really interesting life stories which have grown
out of them. One of the best-known Negro professors in the country has a
white wife. I saw the home where they live under almost ideal
surroundings. A mulatto doctor of a Southern town married a white girl who
was a graduate of Wellesley College; they had trouble in the South and
have "gone over to white" and are now living in the North. They have two
children. A Negro business man of Boston has a white wife; they celebrated
recently the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage.
[Illustration: MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
MRS. ROBERT H. TERRELL Photograph by Clinedinst
TWO OF THE LEADING WOMEN OF THE NEGRO RACE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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