University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IV
NEGRO CRIME AND RACIAL SELF-HELP

NEGRO crime in the United States reached
its highest point in the years of financial
strain, beginning in 1892 and ending in
1896. The United States Census Statistics of Crime
show that from 1870 to 1890 there was an enormous
increase of Negro criminality, particularly in
the Northern states. The total number of Negro
criminals enumerated in the Census of 1870 was
8,056; in 1880 this number had increased to 16,748;
in 1890 it was 24,277; and in 1904 it was 26,087.
This meant that for every one hundred thousand
Negroes in the United States there were, in 1870,162
criminals; in 1880, 248 criminals; in 1890, 325
criminals. Fourteen years later, however, in 1904,
the number of Negro criminals to every one hundred
thousand of the Negro population had fallen to 282.

Some time between 1890 and 1904 the wave of
Negro criminality which, up to that time, had seemed
to be steadily increasing, reached its highest point
and began to recede. Between these two periods
no census figures for the whole country are available,
but a special study of the criminal statistics of

cities, North and South, shows that about 1894 and
1895 there was a marked decrease in Negro crime.

Statistics for Washington, District of Columbia,
from 1881 to 1902, showed that the maximum rate of
184 police arrests per thousand of Negro population
was reached in 1893. In Charleston, South Carolina,
the rate of arrests reached its maximum of 92 per
thousand in 1902. Cincinnati, Ohio, reached its
maximum rate of 276 per thousand of the Negro
population in 1894. In Savannah, Georgia, the
highest rate of 165 was not reached until 1898. In
Chicago the rate of arrests of Negroes reached its
maximum of 586 per thousand in 1892, the year of the
World's Fair. At this time, there was a considerable
transient population in Chicago, and, as the rate of
Negro criminality per thousand is estimated on the
basis of the permanent population, these figures are
like to be misleading.

The rate of arrests in St. Louis, Missouri, reached
its maximum, when the number of arrests per thousand
of the Negro population was 269. Statistics
from the cities of New York and Philadelphia,
the only cities for which data covering the period
prior to 1866 are available, show that the rate of
Negro arrests per thousand of the Negro population
was about as great prior to 1866 as it was in 1902.
The maximum rate for New York was reached in
1899 when the number of arrests per thousand of
the Negro population was in. The rate of arrests

per thousand of the Negro population in Philadelphia
has, at no time previous to 1902, been greater than
it was in 1864, when there were 150 arrests per
thousand of the Negro population.

The thing that makes these figures the more significant
is the fact that it is, as a rule, in the large cities
that much the larger proportion of crimes is committed.
At any rate, it is in the cities that the larger
proportion of crimes committed gets into court and
is recorded. Furthermore, it is in the cities that the
larger proportion of the increase of recorded crime
has taken place during the period that I have mentioned.
This is, no doubt, the reason why statistics
show that there are more Negro criminals in the
North than in the South. Seven-tenths of the
Negroes in the Northern states live in the cities
having at least more than 2,500 inhabitants, and
more than one-third of the Negroes in the Northern
states live in cities having more than one hundred
thousand inhabitants.

A comparison of the criminal statistics of the
Northern and Southern states will illustrate what I
mean:

Negro Prisoners in Northern States:

   

1870	1880	1890	1904
2,025	3,774	5,635	7,527

Negro Prisoners per 100,000 of Negro Pop. in Northern States:

   

1870	1880	1890	1904
372	515	773	765

Negro Prisoners in Southern States:

   

1870	1880	1890	1904
6,031	12,973	19,244	18,550

Prisoners per 100,000 of Negro Pop. in Southern States:

   

1870	1880	1890	1904
136	221	284	220

The increase in the amount of Negro crime in the
United States during the period of 1870 to 1890 was
so rapid and so marked that it made a great impression
on the public, North and South. A thing that
helped to emphasise these facts and make them seem
more serious than they actually were, particularly
in the Southern states, was the outbreak, at this
time, of mob-violence so savage and so terrible in its
manifestations, as to attract, for a time, the attention
of the whole civilised world. From 1882 to 1892 the
number of persons lynched in the United States
increased from 114 to 235 per annum. From that time
on to 1903 the number decreased to 104 per annum.
The total number of Negroes lynched during this
period of twenty-two years was 2,060; the total
number of whites lynched during the same period
was 1,169. In the case of the Negroes there was
an average of 93 and 7–11 per year; in the case of
the whites the average was 53 and 3–22 per year.

Of the 2,060 put to death in this way during this
period, 1,985, or more than 96 per cent., were lynched
in the Southern states. The offences for which these
people suffered death from the wild vengeance of the

mob were not, as has been supposed, in the majority
of cases assaults upon women. A little more than one-third
of the lynchings were due to assaults, attempted
assaults, upon women or insults to them. The larger
number were occasioned by the crime of murder.

The minor offences for which Negroes were lynched
were such things as robbery, slander, wife-beating,
cutting levees, kidnapping, voodooism, poisoning
horses, writing insulting letters, incendiary language,
swindling, jilting a girl, colonising Negroes,
political troubles, gambling, quarrelling, poisoning
wells, throwing stones, unpopularity, making threats,
circulating scandal, being troublesome, bad reputation,
drunkenness, rioting, fraud, enticing a servant
away, writing letters to white women, asking a white
woman in marriage, conspiracy, introducing smallpox,
giving information, conjuring, concealing a
criminal, slapping a child, passing counterfeit
money, elopement with a white girl, disobeying
ferry regulations, running quarantine, violation of
contract, paying attention to a white girl, resisting
assault, inflammatory language, forcing white boys
to commit crime, lawlessness.[1]

These cases of mob-violence and the crime which
occasioned them, were, as I have said, widely advertised
by the press through the North and through
the South. And they helped to give the impression
that the Negroes in the South were much more

lawless than they were in other parts of the country,
much more lawless than other races in the same
stage of civilisation as the Negro. As a matter of
fact, as may be seen from the statistics I have given,
the Negro criminals in the North were always much
more numerous, in proportion to the Negro population,
than they were in the South. Furthermore,
as I hope to show later in this chapter, the amount
of crime committed by other peoples who have come
here from Europe, and particularly from the South
of Europe, where the social conditions are in some
sense comparable to the social conditions of the Negro
in the South, is considerably larger in proportion
to the number of population they represent, than is
true in the case of the Negro.

The single fact to which attention was directed,
as a consequence of this outbreak of mob-violence,
was that the number of Negro criminals, in proportion
to the Negro population, was three times as great
as that of the white criminals in proportion to the
white population, and that Negro crime was increasing
with much greater rapidity than was the crime
committed by whites.

One of the wholesome results of these outbreaks
of mob-violence and of the discussion that they
aroused, has been to direct the attention of earnest
men and women of the Negro race to a study of the
actual facts and their causes, in the hope of improving
conditions by getting at the sources of Negro

crime. The attention of Negro teachers and students
was first called to these facts by the Hampton Negro
Conferences, and studies were begun under the
direction of these Conferences as early as 1898.
Some years later, in 1903 and 1904, a study of Negro
crime was made under the direction of W. E.
Burghardt Du Bois, Professor of Sociology at Atlanta
University. This study of Negro crime, which was
published in 1904, is all the more interesting because
it was made under the direction of a Negro and
represents, in so very large a degree, the results of
the studies and observations of Negro students and
teachers upon the sources of crime among the people
of their own race.

Referring to the work that Negro schools are
doing in the way of studying the social conditions of
the Negro people, I am reminded of something said
to me a few years ago by a gentleman who had been
devoting some months to travel through the Southern
states, in order to gather material for a book upon
the subject of the Negro and his relations to the white
man in the South. He told me, among other things,
that he had been greatly surprised to observe to what
extent educated coloured men, in all parts of the
country, had taken up in a serious and systematic
way the study of the social conditions of their own
people. He said that he had been informed in the
North that educated Negroes had little or no interest
in studying the conditions of their own people, but

were interested rather in getting as far away as they
were able from the masses of the Negro race. On
the other hand, he had been told in the South that
Negroes were so wholly ignorant and unreliable that
if he wanted to really get at the truth about the Negro
he must get his information from a white man.

When he came to meet the educated Negroes in
the Southern states, however, he had learned that
they were not only well-informed in regard to the
conditions of their own people but that they frequently
seemed to have gained a deeper insight into
the actual conditions of the Negro people, and to
have a more accurate knowledge of the situation, as
it looked to a man from the outside, than many
white men he had met. He added that, considering
the persons he referred to were in many instances the
sons and daughters of slave parents, and that few
of them had had opportunities for study that men
and women of the white race have had, this seemed to
him an evidence of very genuine progress on the
part of the Negro race.

The study of Negro crime to which I have referred
is interesting, however, not merely as an indication
of the serious interest that educated Negroes have
begun to take in the condition of the Negro race, but
it is interesting also for the new facts which were
first brought to light in this study, and have since
been confirmed by a census of crime published by
the United States Census Bureau in 1907.

One of the facts brought out by this census concerns
the method of enumeration used by the Census
Office. For instance, up to 1904 it had been the
practice, in taking the census of crime, to count all
persons who were in jails or prisons on a certain day.
The result was supposed to give the relative number
of criminals in different parts of the country and so
indicate the comparative amount of crime committed
in these different places.

A closer study of the statistics shows, however,
that it has been customary to sentence prisoners for
longer terms in some parts of the country than in
others, even though the crime committed was of the
same character or class. This is true, for instance,
of the Southern states as compared with the Northern
states. The result has been that an undue amount
of crime has been credited, by this method of enumeration,
to the Southern states.

I can, perhaps, make this point clear by an illustration.
Consider the case of a man who is engaged
in raising chickens, and who, for some reason or
other, desires to confine a certain number of his
chickens, while the others are allowed to run loose.
He has, let us suppose, two breeds, and he puts
five chickens of each breed into the hen-yard every
day, with, however, this difference, that the chickens
of one breed are confined in the hen-yard one week,
while the chickens of the other breed are confined
two weeks. Now it is evident that if you put five

chickens of each breed in the hen-yard every day,
you will have, at the end of the first week, an equal
number of each breed, namely, thirty-five. From
that time on, however, the number of chickens in
the hen-yard which are confined two weeks will be
larger than that of the breed confined one week.

So that at the end of the second week there will be
still only thirty-five chickens of the first breed, while
there will be seventy of the second. In other words,
there will be twice as many of the second in confinement
as of the first breed.

The result is the same whether we are counting
chickens in a hen-yard or prisoners in a penitentiary.
This illustrates, in a simple way, how it is
that in the Southern states, where the sentences
imposed upon criminals are heavier than they are
in the Northern states, the number of criminals
enumerated at any one time will be disproportionately
large.

In order to correct this error it was determined, in
the Census of 1904, not merely to enumerate the persons
found in confinement at any particular date, but
to obtain figures as to the number of commitments,
that is to say, to find out the number of persons who
had been sent to jail during the period of a year.

By this means, the Census of 1904 took account not
merely of those who happened to be in the jails or the
prisons at a given period, but also of those who had
come in during the year, and, either because they

had been able to pay their fines or because they
served their sentences, had been released.

The results showed at once some striking changes
in the statistics of crime, and materially corrected
some wrong impressions as to the relative amount
of crime committed in the different sections. For
example, the number of prisoners enumerated according
to the earlier method gave the North Atlantic
states in 1904, 27,389 prisoners. The number of
commitments for that same year was 76,235. In
other words, according to the second method of
enumeration, there was 48,846 more crimes committed
in the Northern states than there appeared
to be by the first method of counting. This was an
increase of nearly 200 per cent.

On the other hand, in the South Atlantic states
there were 11,150 prisoners enumerated, but only
10,643 had been committed to prison during the
year. By this method of reckoning it appeared that
there were 507 criminals less than were shown by
the earlier method of enumeration. The same differences
appear when the South Central states are
compared with the North Central states and the
Western states. By the census enumeration, it
appeared that there were 14,614 prisoners in the
penitentiaries and jails in the South Central states
while only 10,206 had been committed to prison
during the year. This was a decrease of 4,408.

In the North Central states, reckoning by the methods

of enumeration, there were 21,000 prisoners, but by
the method of commitment there were 38,603.
In other words, there appeared to be 17,603 more
criminals by this latter method of enumeration than
by the former. In the Western states there were
7,619 prisoners enumerated, but there were 14,004
commitments during the year.

One explanation of these differences is, as I have
said, that in the Southern states the sentences are
longer than they are in the Northern states. I do
not know exactly why the Southern courts impose
heavier sentences upon prisoners than the Northern
courts. Perhaps it is because the crimes committed
in the South are more serious than those committed
in the North and deserve heavier punishment.

But that, of course, is no reason why we should count
those crimes twice in making up our estimates of the
criminal population, as I fear has, in effect, sometimes
been done in comparing the amount of crime
committed in the South with the amount of crime committed
in the North.

The method of computing crime which has made
so large a difference in the apparent amount of
crime committed in the South, as compared with
the North, has been responsible for crediting a disproportionate
amount of crime to the Negro. For
instance, in the South Atlantic states, 8,281 criminals
were enumerated as in jails and prisons in 1904.
In the same year, however, only 6,847 prisoners had

been committed to prison. In the South Central
states, 10,269 prisoners were enumerated in the
prisons and jails during the year 1904. At the same
time it was found that only 6,066 prisoners had been
committed during that year. In other words, if we
were to estimate the amount of Negro crime in the
South by the number of persons found in the prisons
and jails, there would be 5,643 more criminals found
for the year 1904 than if we had counted the actual
number of Negroes arrested, convicted and committed
to prison. The reason here again is that
Negroes in the South are given longer sentences than
white men. For example, 50 per cent, of the
Negroes convicted of crime in the South Atlantic
states were sentenced to terms of one year or more,
while only 38 per cent, of the white men so convicted
were sentenced to terms of a year or more.

No doubt, also, there is a difference in the crimes
committed by the white and black population. It is
said that, in the South, stealing and ail crimes against
property are punished relatively with more severe
sentences than crimes of violence, or crimes against
the person, as they are termed. An illustration of
this is given in an article upon the "Negro in Crime,"
in the Independent for May 18, 1899, where the
following items clipped from the Atlanta Constitution,
of January 27, are quoted. The items are:

The two cases I have just cited are, perhaps,
exceptional, but they illustrate the kind of crime
upon which the Southern courts are disposed to put
the emphasis. At the time the crimes referred to
in these clippings were committed, there were, so
far as I know, no juvenile courts in any of the
Southern states, and with the exception of the
Virginia Manual Labour School, started in 1897, no
reformatories to which Negro children could be
sent. Where the principle of the juvenile court has
been established, an offence committed by a child,
such as the one referred to in the foregoing quotation,
is not considered a crime in the same sense in which
an offence committed by an adult person is so considered.
The imposition of heavier sentences for
minor offences and especially the disposition of Southern
courts to impose relatively heavier penalties
on children, has had the effect of largely increasing
the number of Negroes in the jail and prison
population.

It should be remembered, in this respect, also, that
among the members of the Negro race, owing, no
doubt, to the condition of the home surroundings,
to poverty, and, perhaps, also, to the fact that

mothers are so frequently employed away from home,
a much larger proportion of Negro criminals are
children than is true with the white race. This
makes the system which prevailed a few years ago,
and still continues in a less degree, of sending children,
particularly Negro children, to the penitentiaries
and the chain-gang, bear so heavily upon the members
of my race. When children are sent to prison,
they are not only subjected, during the period when
they are most impressionable, to the influences of
evil companions, but they sometimes get to thinking
of the prison as a place to which they naturally
belong, and where they expect to spend the larger
part of their lives. It is a very serious matter when a
race or a class of people reaches the point where it
begins to feel that it is looked upon by those to whom
it has been taught to look for guidance and control,
as a criminal people.

A few years ago, when I was in Kentucky, I remember
hearing a story which struck me as peculiarly
pathetic. One morning the officers of the State
Prison found, in counting over their prisoners, that
they had one too many. Upon investigation, they
discovered a young coloured boy, who had been discharged
from prison a few days before, had actually
broken into the prison during the night, apparently
in order to find a place to sleep. As I remember the
story, the boy said, when questioned, that after
leaving the prison he had wandered about till he was

very hungry, and as he had no place to stay he finally
decided to come back and crawl into the stockade,
where there were at least people who knew him, and
where he could find a place to sleep. From all that
I could learn, this boy had lived so long in prison that
he had come to feel more at home there than he did
outside.

Another reason why prison sentences are longer in
the South than they are in the North is because, under
the convict-lease system, crime has been or has
seemed to be immensely profitable, not only to the
states but to individuals. For instance, in 1900, the
state of Georgia received $61,826.32 from the earnings
of prisoners. From 1901 to 1903, the net income
was $81,000 a year. In 1904, new contracts were
made for a period of five years beginning April 1,
1904, which netted the state on an average of
$225,000 per annum.

It is only slowly that the public has begun to
realise that the new form of slavery, represented by
the convict-lease system, has made the condition of
the convict-slave infinitely worse than was possible
under a system of slavery in which the slave belonged
to his master for life. Gradually, however, the evils
of a system which made crime profitable have
been coming to light. In 1908, Georgia, seeing the
horrible conditions that existed in the convict camps,
abandoned its old methods of disposing of convict
labor and has since that time employed convicts

in building the public roads. The conditions that
formerly existed in Georgia still exist, however, in
several of the other Southern states.

In most cases where an effort has been made to
determine the relative criminality of the Negro it
has been customary to compare the Negro with the
white man. Because the white man stood higher in
the scale of civilisation, was better educated, had a
better home and was more respected, this comparison
has been to the disadvantage of the Negro.

The criminal statistics of 1890 showed, for example,
that there were 104 white and 325 Negro criminals in
the United States for every one hundred thousand
of the respective races. In other words, the crimes
of Negroes were more than three times those of the
whites. In the Northern states, the ratio was even
greater, the crimes of Negroes being more than five
times those of the whites.

In 1904, however, when the races were compared
upon the basis of the actual number of persons committed
to prison during the year, it was found that
the commitments per hundred thousand were 187
for the whites and 268 for the Negroes. That is to
say, the two races stood to each other, in respect to
the amount of crime committed by each, in about the
ratio of one to one and one-half. In the Northern
states, Negro crime, instead of being five times, was
a little more than four times that of the whites.

By the census of 1890 it appeared that the Negro

offenders in Southern states compared with the white
offender in those states, were in the ratio of 2 to 9.
That is to say, in those states, comparing the races
by the methods I have described, there were four
and one-half times as much crime committed by
Negroes as by whites. In 1904, however, considering
the actual number of both races committed to
prison, it appears that the Negro crime, compared
with the white, was in the ratio of less than three
and one-half to one—a decrease of 21 per cent.

In looking further into the statistics of crime
with special reference to the nationality of the criminals,
I have found that among the foreign-born
people in the United States, the different nationalities
range themselves, at very diverse distances, on two
sides of the general average of crime committed by
the foreign population as a whole. On the one side,
there are nationalities which fall far below the
average. On the other hand, there are others which
rise far above that average.

In comparing the Negro with the immigrants now
coming into the United States in such large numbers
from the South of Europe, we are comparing him
with races which in Europe have been, and still in
America are, living in the conditions that are in many
respects comparable to those in which the masses of
the Negro people now live. The people to whom
I refer are, in many instances, less advanced in education
in books than the majority of the coloured

people in the Southern states, though they are, no
doubt, far ahead of them in some of the more fundamental
things.

For instance, among the Italian people, as a
whole, more than 38 per cent, of the population
can neither read nor write. Of the people who come
into the United States, particularly from Sicily and
Southern Italy, no doubt a much larger per cent.
are illiterate. In Russia, more than 70 per cent. of
the population are without education. In other
parts of Southern Europe, like Roumania, 89 per
cent, of the people are wholly illiterate.

A good many of these people are now coming into
certain parts of the South. The following comparison,
therefore, of the relative criminality of these
different races as compared to the Negro is peculiarly
interesting:

                 

Nationality	Number in U. S. according to census 1900	Prison commitments in 1904	Commitments per 1,000 of each nationality
Mexicans	103,410	484	4.7
Italians	484,207	2,143	4.4
Austrians	276,249	1, 006	3.6
French	104,341	358	3.4
Canadians	1,181,255	3,557	3.0
Russians	424,096	1,222	2.8
Poles	383.510	1,038	2.7
Negroes	8,840,789	23,698	2.7

There is another class of crimes with which the
Negro has been more associated in the public mind
than any other. I refer to the assaults upon women,

to which attention has so often been directed because
they have so frequently been made the occasion of,
or excuse for, outbreaks of mob-violence, not only in
the Southern states but in the Northern states as
well. The total commitments for rape, in 1904, were
620; of this number 450 were by white persons, 170 by
coloured, and in by persons of foreign birth.

The number of cases of rape committed by coloured
people, including all the races in the United States
classed under that title, was 1.8 per hundred thousand
of the total coloured population. The total
number of commitments for the white population
was 0.6 per hundred thousand of the white population.
The number of commitments for this crime
per hundred thousand of the foreign population
was I. In other words, the number of commitments
for rape was proportionately three times as great
for the coloured population as it was for the whites.
It was nearly twice as great, proportionately, as that
for the foreign population.[2]

A comparison of the coloured committed for this
crime with that portion of the foreign-born population
which is nearest to the coloured in respect to
education and social condition shows, however, that
the Negro is by no means the worst offender in
respect to this crime. The following table shows the
number of commitments per hundred thousand for

this crime of the foreign-born people to whom I
have referred:
     

Italians	5.3	Hungarians	2.0
Mexicans	4.8	French	1.9
Austrians	3.2	Russians	1.9

For other portions of the foreign-born population
the percentage is less. For example, among the
Canadian-born population statistics indicate for
every one hundred thousand of the population that
1.2 are guilty of assaults on women. For other
foreign-born portions of the population the figures
are Polanders 1.0, Germans 0.4, Irish 0.3.

While it is true that the Negro furnishes a proportionately
large number of the crimes of assault
upon women, I do not think it is true, if we are to go
by the statistics, that there is any more disposition on
the part of men of the Negro race to commit this
crime than on the part of men of other races.
While no statistics can possibly determine this fact,
I have taken the trouble to find out what per cent. of
the major offenders, that is to say, of the men who
committed the worst crimes, were sent to prison for
the crime of rape during the year 1904. From these
figures it appears that only 1.9 per cent, of the coloured
offenders committed for major offences were committed
for the crime of rape. On the other hand,
2.3 per cent, of the white and 2.6 per cent, of the
foreign major offenders were committed in 1904
for that crime. The following table will show the

per cent, of major offenders of the races to whom
I have already made reference, who were committed
for this offence:
           

Hungarians	4.7	Canadians	3.0
Italians	4.4	Mexicans	2.7
Austrians	4.2	Poles	2.1
French	3.1	Germans	1.8
Russians	3.0	Irish	1.3
	Coloured	1.9

As a further confirmation of the facts which these
statistics show, I might mention that in the South
Atlantic states, where 35.7 per cent, of the total population
are Negroes, the rate of commitments per
100,000 of the population for assault on women is
0.5. On the other hand, in the Western Division,
where only 0.7 per cent, of the total population are
Negroes, the commitments for rape amount to 1.4
for each 100,000 of the population. In the North
Atlantic states, where Negroes represent 1.8 per cent.
of the population, the number of commitments for
this crime per hundred thousand is 0.9. In the South
Central states, where 29.8 per cent, of the population
are Negroes, the number of commitments for rape
per hundred thousand is 0.7.

It may be said that the reason the commitments
for assaults upon women are lower in those regions
where the Negro population is proportionately larger,
is due to the fact that the men who commit these
crimes are summarily executed by lynch law. The

fact is, however, that were the total number of
Negroes lynched for rape in the United States in 1904
added to those arrested and committed to prison, it
would not change these percentages more than a
quarter of one per cent.

Before concluding what I have to say on the subject
of Negro crime I want to add a word in regard
to the work that Negroes, sometimes in association
with their white neighbours and sometimes independently,
have done and are doing to get at and destroy
the sources of crime among members of their race.

Immediately after the Atlanta Riot, September 22,
1906, during which ten white people and sixty
coloured people were wounded, and two white and
ten coloured people were killed, there came forward
two men, among others, with definite measures of
"re-construction." These men were ex-Governor
W. J. Northen and Charles T. Hopkins.

Ex-Governor Northen set on foot what was at
first known as the "Christian League" an organisation
composed of leading coloured men and leading
white men, formed for the purpose of putting down
mob-violence. Charles T. Hopkins, a prominent
young lawyer of Atlanta, organised, in association
with Reverend H. H. Proctor, pastor of the First
Coloured Congregational Church, and some others,
what was known as the Civic League, the purpose
of which was to bring leading coloured men and
leading white men of the city together in order to

coöoperate in doing away with the conditions which
had brought about the Atlanta Riot.

One of the first things that this dual organisation
did was to defend in the courts a Negro named
Joe Glenn, who had been charged with an assault
upon a woman. In fact, he had been identified by
the woman upon whom the assault was committed,
and the members of this organisation, both white
and coloured, believed that Joe Glenn was guilty.
Their purpose was merely to secure for him a fair
and speedy trial. Upon examination into the evidence,
however, they came to the conclusion that the
man was not guilty, and succeeded not only in proving
his innocence before the trial was ended, but in
finding the man who was guilty, and thus, undoubtedly,
saved the life of an innocent man.

The Civic League confined its operations to the
city of Atlanta, but ex-Governor Northen sought to
extend the influence of his organisation throughout
the state of Georgia and into adjoining states. Up
to 1909, he had organised eighty-three of what came
to be known as the Christian Civic leagues. These
organisations were located mainly in counties containing
the larger Negro populations, and were composed
of the very best people in the state, white and
black.

One of the indirect results of this "re-construction"
movement was the erection, under the direction of
Reverend H. H. Proctor, and at a cost of $50,000, of

a handsome institutional Negro church. This
church was dedicated in February, 1909. It was
intended to do a work among the coloured people that
would attack the causes of racial friction and make
mobs like that of 1906 impossible.

Before this time, however, Negro people themselves,
with very little assistance from their white neighbours,
had undertaken a kind of work intended to
remedy the evils in their present condition. All
over the South, and in many parts of the North,
wherever the Negroes live in large numbers, coloured
orphan asylums have been established to care for the
neglected children from among whom Negro criminals
are so frequently recruited. As near as I have
been able to learn, there are not less than fifty or
sixty of such asylums already in existence in different
parts of the United States. A number of these, like
the Carrie Steele Orphanage, of Atlanta, have been
started upon the small savings and pious faith of
some good coloured woman.

Carrie Steele, the founder of the orphanage at
Atlanta, which bears her name, was born a slave in
Georgia. For many years she was employed at
the Atlanta Union Depot. Here she had an opportunity
to see something of the dangers to which
homeless and neglected coloured children were subjected.
In order to raise money to carry out the
plan she then formed of establishing an orphans'
home, she wrote a little book, which was the story

of her life. This book found a ready sale among the
charitably disposed people, and with the proceeds
a home was organised in 1890. This institution
began with five orphans. In 1906, it was caring for
ninety-seven children, and had an income of $2,000
a year, a portion of which is paid by the coloured
people and the remainder by the city.

In 1897, a Negro reformatory association was
organised in Virginia by John H. Smythe, former
minister to Liberia. It had a Negro board of
directors, and an advisory board of seven white
people, and its purpose, as stated, was to "rescue
juvenile offenders." The association purchased
a large tract of land, amounting to four hundred and
twenty-three acres, which had been part of the
"Broadneck" estate in Hanover County, Virginia.

For a number of years this reformatory was supported
by private philanthropy, but eventually it became
a state institution.

In conclusion, I want to say a word here about a
work that the Negroes of Birmingham, Alabama, have
undertaken, at the suggestion and under the direction
of Judge N. B. Feagin, of the Municipal Court.

Judge Feagin is not only a lawyer, but a student of
sociology. Some years ago, when he first became
judge of the Municipal Court, there was no way of
disposing of children convicted in the City Courts
except to send them to the chain-gang. In 1898,
however, there was established at East Lake, about

twenty miles from Birmingham, a reformatory for
white boys.

The large number of juvenile offenders who found
their way into courts were, however, Negro children.

Nothing had been done, up to this time, to keep
them out of prisons and chain-gangs. Every year
large numbers graduated from the prisons into the
ranks of professional criminals. In 1903, an attempt
was made to remedy this by passing a juvenile court
law, but it failed. March 12, 1907, however, a law
was passed making it a misdeameanor to send any
child under fourteen years of age to jail or prison.
If there had been practical means for executing this
law, it would have effected a revolution in the treatment
of criminal children in Alabama. But, as in
the case of the Negro children, no such means existed;
the law was repealed the following August.

Meanwhile, Judge Feagin determined to establish,
upon his own responsibility, a modern system
of dealing with criminal children in Birmingham.
He found that there are thirty Negro churches in
Birmingham. He determined to call the preachers
of these churches together and explain his purpose to
them. He then asked them if they could not induce
the women of their congregation to raise two dollars
per month to support a coloured probation officer.
He said if they would do that, instead of sending the
coloured children, who were brought into his court,
to the chain-gang, he would send them back to their

homes or to the homes of relatives and friends, on
probation.

A coloured probation officer was appointed and
the city divided into thirty districts, in which three
women from each of the thirty Negro congregations
in the city were appointed to cooperate with the probation
officer in looking after the children on probation.
In order to arouse interest in this plan, an
association was formed of the coloured women of the
thirty different churches, and Judge Feagin went
around to the different Negro churches to speak to
the people in order to assist the association, in this
way, in raising money to support the voluntary
probation officer he had appointed.

So far as the plan outlined was carried out, it
concerned only those children who were brought
into the court for the first time. It was necessary
to devise some means for taking care of those who
were guilty of a second offence. Judge Feagin
decided that the way to dispose of them was to send
them to the country districts. He then announced
this plan in the papers and declared that wherever
he could find a coloured farmer of good character,
who would take these children and put them to work,
he would turn them over to him, under certain conditions,
which were named.

About twelve miles from Tuscaloosa, the former
capital of Alabama, there is a Negro farmer by the
name of Sam Dailey, who owns five hundred and

thirty-five acres of land. This man, reading of
Judge Feagin's proposal, came to see him and made
a proposition to set aside one hundred and twenty-five
acres of his farm, on which he would employ the
children whom Judge Feagin sent him. Sam Dailey
has been receiving these boys since 1903. With the
aid of funds which he has been able to collect and
from the profits of the farm he has established a school,
which is conducted by a coloured preacher employed
for that purpose. During this time, and up to
1909, he had had on his farm over one hundred
Negro boys. Some few of them have run away.
Several have been sent back to their relatives in the
city. Others have become permanently settled in
the farming districts and are making good citizens.

As a result of the interest aroused in this work,
two other reformatories for juvenile offenders of the
Negro race have been started. One of these is on the
outskirts of Birmingham, and the other is at Mount
Meigs, a few miles from Montgomery. At the time
this is written, the probation officer, Reverend J. D.
James, is supported not merely by the contributions
he receives from the coloured churches, but also
from two of the coloured secret orders in Birmingham.
It is the hope of Judge Feagin and those who are
associated with him that the work which is being
done will eventually receive the sanction and support
of the state, and that the juvenile court law, which
was passed and repealed, will then be reënacted.