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
The mass of coloured people still maintain, as I have said, a more or less
intimate connection with white families--frequently a very beautiful and
sympathetic relationship like that of the old mammies or nurses. To one
who has heard so much of racial hatred as I have since I have been down
here, a little incident that I observed the other day comes with a charm
hardly describable. I saw a carriage stop in front of a home. The expected
daughter had arrived--a very pretty girl indeed. She stepped out eagerly.
Her father was halfway down to the gate; but ahead of him was a very old
Negro woman in the cleanest of clean starched dresses.
"Honey," she said eagerly.
"Mammy!" exclaimed the girl, and the two rushed into each other's arms,
clasping and kissing--the white girl and the old black woman.
I thought to myself: "There's no Negro problem there: that's just plain
human love!"
_"Master" Superseded by "Boss"_
Often I have heard Negroes refer to "my white folks" and similarly the
white man still speaks of "my Negroes." The old term of slavery, the use
of the word "master," has wholly disappeared, and in its place has arisen,
not without significance, the round term "Boss," or sometimes "Cap," or
"Cap'n." To this the white man responds with the first name of the Negro,
"Jim" or "Susie"--or if the Negro is old or especially respected: "Uncle
Jim" or "Aunt Susan."
To an unfamiliar Northerner one of the very interesting and somewhat
amusing phases of conditions down here is the panic fear displayed over
the use of the word "Mr." or "Mrs." No Negro is ever called Mr. or Mrs. by
a white man; that would indicate social equality. A Southern white man
told me with humour of his difficulties:
"Now I admire Booker Washington. I regard him as a great man, and yet I
couldn't call him Mr. Washington. We were all in a quandary until a
doctor's degree was given him. That saved our lives! we all call him 'Dr.'
Washington now."
Sure enough! I don't think I have heard him called Mr. Washington since I
came down here. It is always "Dr." or just "Booker." They are ready to
call a Negro "Professor" or "Bishop" or "The Reverend"--but not "Mr."
In the same way a Negro may call Miss Mary Smith by the familiar "Miss
Mary," but if he called her Miss Smith she would be deeply incensed. The
formal "Miss Smith" would imply social equality.
I digress: but I have wanted to impress these relationships. There are all
gradations of Negroes between the wholly dependent old family servant and
the new, educated Negro professional or business man, and,
correspondingly, every degree of treatment from indulgence to intense
hostility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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