Produced by David Edwards, Paul Clark and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some changes of spelling have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. OE ligatures have been expanded. HALF A MAN THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO IN NEW YORK BY MARY WHITE OVINGTON _WITH A FOREWORD BY DR. FRANZ BOAS OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY_ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1911 _Copyright, 1911, by_ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS [W · D · O] NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER THEODORE TWEEDY OVINGTON FOREWORD Miss Ovington's description of the status of the Negro in New York City is based on a most painstaking inquiry into his social and economic conditions, and brings out in the most forceful way the difficulties under which the race is laboring, even in the large cosmopolitan population of New York. It is a refutation of the claims that the Negro has equal opportunity with the whites, and that his failure to advance more rapidly than he has, is due to innate inability. Many students of anthropology recognize that no proof can be given of any material inferiority of the Negro race; that without doubt the bulk of the individuals composing the race are equal in mental aptitude to the bulk of our own people; that, although their hereditary aptitudes may lie in slightly different directions, it is very improbable that the majority of individuals composing the white race should possess greater ability than the Negro race. The anthropological argument is invariably met by the objection that the achievements of the two races are unequal, while their opportunities are the same. Every demonstration of the inequality of opportunity will therefore help to dissipate prejudices that prevent the best possible development of a large number of our citizens. The Negro of our times carries even more heavily the burden of his racial descent than did the Jew of an earlier period; and the intellectual and moral qualities required to insure success to the Negro are infinitely greater than those demanded from the white, and will be the greater, the stricter the segregation of the Negro community.