The Southern Negro as a Property-Owner

BY LEONORA BECK ELLIS

BETWEEN the Southern negro as property and the Southern negro as a property-owner worthy of account, American progress has set its milestones thick and strongly marked. Yet, as mere years go, the time has been short indeed for a transition of meanings so vast.

The act of emancipation brought in its train several very serious problems, and more than one of these must be acknowledged to have grown graver with further-reaching complexities and involutions as the decades have passed. But in the present article these are not under consideration.

The point we desire to emphasize is that one of the most difficult questions brought to issue in the emancipation of the negro has already solved itself by what we are accustomed to call natural processes.

When the epochal pen-stroke fell and $3,000,000,000 worth of Southern property was suddenly obliterated as property, yet stood there in plain world’s view, like the metamorphosed dragon’s teeth, as men with the rights of men, there were masters of statecraft everywhere who faced one another blankly, asking how such a situation was to resolve itself. Not even the most sanguine saw any reason to hope that so complex an issue as that involved in the relation of the freedmen to the land could be brought to satisfactory or righteous solution until at least three or four generations had mingled dust with dust.

The relation of the freedmen to the soil! Here was the problem that must have given pause to an older state, a European nation, say, upon the eve of liberating at one stroke four millions of serfs.

But young nations, like young individuals, often let their deep convictions sweep them unprepared into strange conditions and perils, from which only the magnificent vitality of youth rescues them without disaster.

The United States Government has, for half a dozen years past, recognized it as a duty to compile and offer for public reading certain facts and figures relating to the progress of the negro in acquiring education, following different pursuits and trades, and accumulating property. Out of the various reports upon these subjects issued from the Department of Labor since 1897 it is probably the information set forth regarding the property-holdings of the former slaves and slaves’ children in three or four Southern states that will strike the greatest number of people with surprise, even with that form of astonishment which borders on unbelief. Yet this surprise is of the healthful type, and the unbelief passes when a closer investigation is made into the matter.

The closer investigation is undoubtedly worth while, and it will prove profitable for a little while to exchange general statements and sweeping surveys for definite figures, well verified data and typical cases within a limited territory.

Therefore, to illustrate clearly that particular phase of the negro’s progress, the adjustment of his relations to the land and his steadily advancing gains in real estate and other property-holdings, it will serve best to take the state of Georgia and present certain comparative data relating to the situation here.

Our choice of the commonwealth of Georgia for the setting forth of this matter, instead of some sister state, can be easily justified. Although the youngest of the original thirteen states, and the only one whose early constitution barred slavery from its boundaries, yet, when the Civil War came on Georgia had long been a slave state of great importance, and at once took a leading part in the struggle. Her people suffered heavier losses from the war, it is authoritatively claimed, than those of any other state except Virginia, the old order of things being more utterly wrecked and old landmarks more completely effaced here than elsewhere.

There are other reasons for our choice less disputable even than these. Georgia has the largest area of any state east of the Mississippi River, and, in her great sweep of 59,475 square miles, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, exhibits the greatest diversity of soil, climate and physical features, all of which must be conceded to affect negro life and industry. Lying largely in the so-called “Black Belt,” the state still presents quite as marked a diversity of social conditions as of physical, nor have any of the former slave-holding states been more strongly affected than this by the industrial and educational movements which have stirred the South within the last few years. It is only fair to call attention, likewise, to the fact that, while Georgia is recognized as the centre of some of the most radical thought and action upon the negro question, yet this condition is counterbalanced by the existence within its borders of a mass of white voters who seem more than ordinarily swayed by an intense sense of justice to the black. Witness the manner in which all bills tending toward negro disfranchisement meet summary defeat before the Georgia Legislature, and, again, the defeat of the last year’s movement to divide the state’s educational funds in such a way as to allow to colored schools only the pro rata share representing taxes on the property of the negro.

Furthermore, it may be added here, that while the state has no Hampton or Tuskeegee within her borders, still she has most excellent public schools for negroes, and in several cities she is now giving them admirable training in manual and industrial arts along with the academic studies, as, notably, at Columbus; and she also has an important branch of her state university devoted to the industrial, technical and manual training of colored youths—that is, the Industrial College for Negroes at Savannah, a high-grade institution wholly supported by public funds.

If the selection of Georgia for a local study of the negro’s material progress does not yet appear justified, then the last, and in itself wholly adequate, reason may now be assigned, namely, that the state has the largest negro population of any in the Union, her colored people numbering 1,034,998, or a bare trifle under 50 per cent. of the entire population. Observe that in this state are congregated more than one-eighth as many blacks as are scattered throughout the remaining half a hundred states and territories of the Union.

New Year’s Day of 1863 saw 470,000 freedmen in Georgia, these in the main having been ushered into liberty in quite as destitute a condition, regarding land and other worldly possessions, as that in which they were ushered into existence. The exceptions to this generally prevalent destitution were favored slaves here and there whose former masters and mistresses, too often nearly destitute themselves, had deeded them little homesteads, or in some other way given them a start in independence. Or, again, there were exceptions in the case of the few thousands upon whom General Sherman and his associates had bestowed certain donatives in the shape of wages, usually unearned, and bounty money or lands, all distributed with the injudiciousness expected in such a situation.

Today, barely one generation’s space removed from that hour of strange and sorrowful conditions, these freedmen and their children pay taxes on more than a million acres of Georgia land, not to mention houses, household goods, stock, agricultural implements, merchandise and other taxable properties. If the situation speaks well for American life and opportunities, it also speaks well for the black man, and more eloquently still for his chances in the South.

The toilsome processes by which the Georgia negro has climbed from destitution to his present state of comparative prosperity deserve more than a passing glance. Do not think it was the same as if you or your neighbor, or even Mr. Riis’s European, who is to be refashioned into an American, should start today without money or lands, without friends except those destitute as yourselves. We should know where to turn, what work to take up, how to apply whatever of skill or energy or special aptitudes might exist within us. Failing of skill or marked aptitudes of our own, failing even of an ordinarily good education, we should at least have within us inherited instincts to help us out of the difficult situation. Above all, we should know what was in the world, what was worth striving for, where to set our aims.

But what of skill did the negro have, save in the rudimentary forms of agriculture? Whither, save for restraining influences, would his inherited instincts have led him? What did he know of life experientially beyond the log square of a slave’s cabin, or by observation and hearsay beyond the compass of the plantation lord’s domain?

No; set it down that the new freedman was poorer than the poorest, and, except in rare cases, more ignorant than can now be readily conceived of. In such condition, with no higher aims to impel him to work than the bare instinct of self-preservation, his work must of necessity be for many years only a bread-meat-and-shelter matter.

Yet, somehow—who can tell by what strange evolution?—working on blindly, gropingly, toilsomely, he has still contrived to press forward, until today, with a generation scarcely gone, he stands on a plane no one counted on his reaching under a hundred years. And the best of all his gains is that the most intelligent of his race have come to comprehend what true progress means, and to compare the slight space traversed by their people with the vast upward stretch reaching away in front of them.

During one of the large conventions which recently met in a Georgia city, a visitor from New England asked me, with genuine concern: “But where do your better class negroes live? Or are there no blacks decently housed, no places at least approximately clean and comfortable that they can claim as homes? In various cities through your section I have found only swarming and fetid negro quarters, the worst of slums, a menace to municipal health, both physical and moral. Is there nothing more hopeful than this to show for the race?”

Admitting the general truth of his imputation, I was still able to point out to him a few streets, or sections of streets, where the most intelligent and prosperous of the blacks of the city had made themselves real homes. Yet even these, he demurred, bordered too close upon those same slums he had been fretting over. For in Southern cities the people of this race keep together, it will be noted.

But I told my guest to come with me to the country if he would see the negro at his racial best. Agriculture, I assured him, had come very near to spelling out salvation for this people. Instance the state conference of colored farmers convening not so very long ago in Savannah. Nearly two hundred delegates were present, and everyone owned his own home, many being comparatively wealthy. One in particular was pointed out as worth $50,000, made entirely from agriculture.

In the country, then, we must still look for the best average of the negro’s home, his domestic life and virtues, as well as his industry and thrift. A brief investigation of conditions brought our New England friend to the same conclusion, and he went away much better satisfied as to the prospects of the race.

Certain facts and figures which interested this intelligent student of racial conditions will doubtless interest scores of others, and they are, therefore, offered in the present paper.

Georgia has 137 counties, each constituting a small commonwealth in itself. Being settled at irregular periods and under diverse circumstances, varying, moreover, in topography and character of the soil and climate, these counties exhibit each a different ratio of the negroes to the whites.

A glance at the maps may aid in forming a clear idea of the movements and growth of the black population in Georgia. In 1790, it will be observed, the counties near the coast were the only ones settled, and if the black folk were inconsiderable in numbers, so were the white.

But by 1800 the slaves were showing a rapid increase, and were being moved up the Savannah River, while from that time to 1840 the population, both white and black, exhibited a marked tendency to seek the rich lands of the interior, pushing westward and, a little later, southwestward.

At the close of the year 1900 the blacks of the state had increased from the few thousands of slaves of a century back, held chiefly on the coast, to more than a million free people, fairly well dispersed through all but the extreme mountain counties and paying taxes on many million dollars of Georgia property.

From the office of the comptroller-general of the state there is issued annually a full report of the property-holdings of both blacks and whites, set forth with exactness of detail county by county. From the file of these reports it is easy to make a comparative study, in brief or at length, of past changes, progress or retrogression, and the present status in any or all of the Georgia counties. But the general reader will be able to draw his conclusions from a glance at a few of these.

Chatham County, the original seat of settlement, is perhaps the best starting-point. It is located in Southeastern Georgia, washed by the Savannah River and the tides of the Atlantic, has for its county seat Savannah, the second city of the state, and comprises mainly a stretch of marshland, low islands and flat, sandy tracts. In early days a brisk slave trade brought many negroes to this county, and since the war the city of Savannah has attracted the freedmen in great numbers. The relations between whites and blacks have been more uniformly cordial here than elsewhere, the former being in the main of the original slave-holding class, and the latter largely house servants. The situation is thus in direct contrast to that in Atlanta, for instance. By the year 1790 there were already 8,313 blacks in Chatham County, as against 2,456 whites; while the census of a hundred years later shows an increase to 54,757 negroes and 22,966 whites.

Sherman’s celebrated field order, issued immediately after his investment of Savannah, gave hundreds of former slaves temporary possession of valuable lands on the coast and sea islands of this county, as it did to a lesser extent in certain other sections of the state. This tenure was in some cases brief, but in many others became permanent. Hence, even as early as 1875, we find the freedmen owning 1,491 acres of Chatham’s land, valued at upward of $70,000, besides town and city realty worth $152,760. Twenty-five years later they had multiplied these figures by four, approximately. No bad showing, when all things are taken into consideration.

Another coast county, Liberty, is beyond doubt the most interesting in its history of all the so-called “black counties.” This, too, is located in the southeastern portion of Georgia, a neighbor of Chatham’s, with much the same climate and topographical features, and was laid out in 1777. But the history of its first settlers deserves to be traced much further back, for, in 1695, there had come to South Carolina a little colony of New England Puritans, breaking off from the parent church at Dorchester, Mass., and led by Joseph Soul, a Harvard graduate and teacher. Their location in South Carolina having proved unhealthful, they were attracted by Oglethorpe’s little Georgia settlement, and, having secured a grant of 32,000 acres on the present site of Liberty County, they removed thither in 1752, their colony then numbering 280 whites and 536 negro slaves! The county was laid off as Midway, but later changed its name to Liberty. It should be remarked that when secession from the Union became an issue this county voted solidly against it.

After the Civil War the land here was thrown largely on the market, and at several places, notably Woodville, Ogeechee and Belmont, numbers of negroes united themselves into colonies and bought extensive tracts. There are now in the county nearly ten thousand negroes, with half that number of whites; and the former own more than 50,000 acres of land.

Appling is a county also in the southeastern portion of the state, but presenting a very different showing. It is a level county, inland, with poor soil, and the tide of slaves poured around it without touching it. In 1820 there were just eighty-six negroes within its borders. When manumission came there were only about seven hundred Appling County slaves to be set free. At the present time it is estimated that there are 3,000 negroes in the county, with more than twice that number of whites. But from the comptroller-general’s latest report it appears that the former own 17,946 acres of land, such land as it is!

Now run up to Central Georgia. Here is found the flourishing city of Macon, in the county of Bibb. The census of 1890 gave Macon a population of 22,746, of whom one-half were negroes. The land in this section is hilly, with soil mixed, good and bad. Twenty-five years ago there were something over 11,000 negroes in the county, outnumbering the whites by nearly two thousand, and they owned 2,611 acres of land. Now the blacks have a trifle more than doubled in numbers, as well as in property-holdings. Observe, too, the higher value of the negro’s farm lands in this section. His 4,500 acres of Bibb County land is now assessed at $413,300, which amount, added to his town and city realty and other taxable properties, makes an aggregate value of $719,380 in this county alone.

A little to the northeast of Bibb County lies Baldwin, of which Milledgeville, the former state capital, is the chief town. This was a very wealthy ante-bellum section, with large holdings in slaves as well as lands. When the Civil War began Baldwin County could muster 5,000 slaves, although of the whites, rich and poor, there were only 4,000. When the census of 1890 was taken the negroes had increased to 9,343, the whites only to 5,262. Last year the negroes were paying taxes on 6,501 acres of Baldwin County land, valued at $26,599, besides a large amount of city and town property and other possessions, the whole aggregating $104,592.

Take another county in Middle Georgia, a county of good lands but without a town of any size in it, therefore representing more nearly a plain agricultural average. Any one of a score might be selected. Let us say Butts, a small but prosperous county which was laid out in 1825 and at the outbreak of the war had 3,082 slaves and 3,375 whites. A quarter of a century ago its freedmen, numbering approximately 4,000 people, owned but ninety-seven acres of land in the entire county and $350 worth of town property. Have they climbed since 1875? In numbers they are now estimated at 7,000, against a like number of whites, and last year these negroes paid taxes on 1,613 acres of good average farming land, and on other property which ran the total valuation in Butts up to $49,941.

In the mountain counties of Georgia it has been different, the increase in number of negroes as well as their possessions being slow and uncertain, while the whites have maintained a steady progress in such sections. This, however, is clearly accounted for by the lesser ratio the agricultural interests bear to others in mountainous districts, and the dependence of the negroes upon the former. Glance at Gilmer County, with its sixty-nine blacks and almost 10,000 whites, the former paying taxes on a few hundred acres of rocky hillsides, and their whole county property aggregating, by the most recent returns, only $957, while the latter show taxable possessions valued at $728,000. In Rabun, Towns, Flannin and neighboring counties the situation shows much the same.

This brief study of typical counties may be closed with certain comparative data from Fulton, which contains the state’s capital, Atlanta, a progressive and rapidly growing city distinctly of the “New South” type. Fulton was not laid out until 1853, hence is relatively young in the sisterhood of counties. Only about 2,000 slaves were set free in this county. Compare the number with the 16,000 manumitted in Chatham. But today there are more than 50,000 negroes in Fulton, and, although they own but a thousand acres of land in the county, yet the aggregate value of their whole property is a bare trifle below one million dollars!

To extract the most important meanings from such figures is not difficult. In connection with them several facts should be kept in mind, the first of which is that the negro’s land-holdings in Georgia as well as in adjoining states are usually parceled out in very small individual lots. In a canvass of fifty-six typical counties of the state, the following table was established to show the average size of the farm lots among negro proprietors:

CLASSIFIED SIZE PER CENT. OF TOTAL OWNERS

Under 10 acres 30.50

10 or under 40 acres 27.00

40 or under 100 acres 21.85

100 or under 200 acres 12.80

200 or under 500 acres 6.89

500 acres or over .93

The fifty-six counties canvassed represent the majority of negro holdings in the state, and the average here established may fairly be taken as that of the state at large, or, indeed, of the agricultural South. The fact that a very large proportion of the farms are so limited in size as to amount only to gardens, or, in negro parlance, “patches,” augurs well rather than ill, for it means many small proprietors instead of merely a few large ones and the rest all renters or day laborers. Since out of 369,265 black people in the state ten years of age or over who are engaged in gainful occupations, almost two-thirds are employed in some line of agricultural work, is it not well that the million acres owned by negroes should be distributed in small holdings? It is easy to deduce from this the manifest decline of the metayer, or tenant system of farming. To be sure, these one-acre, or even ten-acre farms will seldom support the owner, though he may have the smallest family, or none at all. Such farms are largely instances of what may be called, in the German phrase, Parzellenbetriebe—that is, farms not large enough to occupy the labor of a family, but serving as sources of partial support to those with supplementary occupations. Yet, in many cases, these little plots of ground will grow to goodly farms within a few years. The same story has been traced a thousand times in the past quarter of a century.

It will be remarked, also, that the negro’s town and city property is increasing greatly. In 1880 the assessed value of such property was only $1,201,992, or 20 per cent. of their entire state property; while in 1902 it is $4,389,422, which is close to 29 per cent. of the state’s aggregate. Thus, while agriculture gave the freedman his start in self-maintenance, and is still his chief dependence, yet paths of employment and sources of revenue in cities are being discovered by him more and more as the years go by and his education progresses.

Before passing to the close, another point is worthy of especial note, interesting both the economist and the sociologist. In 1875 the assessed value of the household and kitchen furniture owned by all the negroes in the state, then numbering between six and seven million souls, was only $21,186, or something like three cents’ worth to each individual. But in 1902 the assessed value of the same class of property was $1,688,541, or a trifle over the value of a dollar and a half to each colored man, woman and child in the state. Upon this phase of development and progress no comment is needed.

In brief, then, the black people of Georgia paid taxes for 1902 on 1,175,291 acres of land, and upon an entire property aggregating $15,188,069 in assessed value. This means, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the negroes of Georgia, or, broadly speaking, the South, are accumulating property and acquiring homes. And since the negro with a home is almost sure to stand for law, order and civic faithfulness, it means, moreover, a reaching out toward higher standards of living, not material living alone, but social life, mental and moral striving and achievements.

Comprehending the situation in its fulness, no man can deny that the race is actually started on the road to better things than their past might have indicated that they were capable of attaining.