By Ray Sprigle
Were at breakfast in this pleasant, comfortable, Negro home. One of the daughters
is home on a visit from Tennessee where she and her husband are university instructors.
The conversation drifts, as it inevitably will wherever and whenever Negroes gather, to
the all-overshadowing race problem. Her 5-year-old son is at the table too. Whenever she
uses the word "white," she spells it out w-h-i-t-e. She spells N-e-g-r-o too. So
far, she hopes, her youngster doesnt know the difference between Negro and white. He
probably doesnt because some of his relatives are as white in color as any white man
and others range all the way to deep black.
Those spelled-out words highlight another and vitally important problem of the
intelligent Negro.
When do you begin teaching your child how he is to live as a Negro? When do you begin
teaching him the difference between black and white -- not as colors but as races? When do
you begin teaching him how to live under the iron rule of a master race that regards him
as an inferior breed? When do you begin teaching him that for him, the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence are scraps of paper?
Parents Must Answer
Those are questions that every Negro mother and father has to answer.
"We try to let them have their childhood free of prejudice and confusion,"
the mother says after we have shooed young Bobby out to play. "But weve got to
tell them before they come up against the hard facts of discrimination and prejudice for
themselves. You people up North have only one set of the facts of life
to put before your children. Down here weve got two. And sometimes I think the
racial facts of life are the most important." (When she says "you people up
North," she does so with the assumption that I, too, am a Negro.)
Generally the Negro child gets his first lessons in race relations before he goes to
school. But one couple I know delayed. So one day their little daughter brought home a
white friend, a girl of her own age. They had encountered each other when their pathways
to school crossed -- one on her way to her white school, the other on her way to the Jim
Crow school house. The parents had to work fast.
First, as considerately as possible, they sent the little white girl on her way home
with the understanding that she was never to come back. To their own little one they had
to explain that she could not enter a white home except through the back door. That no
white could enter a Negros house except on business and that certainly no little
white girl could ever visit a little black girl.
Guest From North
All through the day, friends of the visiting daughter of my hosts were dropping in to
see her. And of course Mr. James R. Crawford, the guest from Pittsburgh, was introduced to
all of them. (James R. Crawford was the name I was using.) So what was more logical and
natural than that Mr. Crawford should seek to slant the conversation toward a comparison
between life in the South and the North?
The Southern Negro woman, particularly one of refinement and culture, has Jim Crow
problems all her own. For instance, theres the seemingly simple matter of buying
hats and dresses. In most Southern cities with the notable exception of Atlanta
no Negro woman is permitted to try on anything, not even a $200 dress if shes
got the $200 right in her hand. In some millinery departments the sales girl will
carefully pin a cloth over her black customers head before shell let her try
on a hat. But in most places the Negro customer just picks her hats and dresses off the
rack. If she touches them shes made a purchase theyre all hers.
All the women agreed that Baltimore was the worst town in the country for mistreatment of
Negro patrons.
Shoe stores arbitrarily set aside certain benches in the rear of the store for Negro
customers. Every woman there recalled what happened to Roland Hayes, famous Negro tenor,
when his New York-born wife went into a Rome, Ga., shoe store for a pair of shoes. Hayes
had purchased the plantation, not far from Rome, where his mother had been born and lived
in slavery. He planned to establish a model plantation that would supply ideas, modern
methods, pure-bred seed and stock to neighboring farmers, white and black. In town for the
weekly shopping, Hayes had dropped his wife off at the shoe store and had driven on to
park. In the shoe store, Mrs. Hayes sat down on the first bench available. A white clerk,
determined to keep his race pure, ordered her to a rear bench. She refused. By the time
Hayes got back to the store a noisy argument was underway. "If it can happen to
Roland Hayes in Rome," agreed all the women, "it can happen to any Negro
anywhere in the South."
Telephone Is Ordeal
Even using the telephone is likely to be something of an ordeal for a Negro woman in
the South. One quite frequent difficulty stems from a peculiar quirk of Southern white
psychology. No Southern white who even pretends to be worthy of the noble traditions of
the South -- white supremacy -- the purity of the race, the sanctity of white Southern
womanhood would ever call a Negro "Mr." or "Mrs." Hell call them
"Doctor," "Professor," "Counselor," but hed cheerfully
burn at the stake before hed ever so far forget his white heritage as to call one of
the creatures "Mr." or "Mrs."
All of which presents a pretty involved problem to your Southern telephone operator who
is emphatically Southern before she is a telephone operator. She wont say Mrs. to a
Negro woman either -- not if she knows it.
One woman in the group, on a visit to Jackson, Miss., some time ago, wanted to
telephone her family in Atlanta. She put in the call and gave her name as Mrs. John Black
-- or at least Mrs. John Black will do for this story. If I used her real name shed
never get another long-distance call through as long as she lives. Anyway, the operator
asked her, politely, "Whats your first name?" So she told her,
"Grace."
"Is this the colored woman, Grace Black?" asked the operator when she rang
back a little later. "Yes," was the response. A couple of other questions and
the replies, "Yes," "Yes."
"Look here," was the infuriated response of the operator, "dont
you yes me. When you talk to me you say Maam if you know whats
good for you."
Then there was the incident of a purchasing agent of Tuskeegee Institute who tried to
call his wife from Atlanta. He put in the call for "Mrs. Morgan," and gave the
Tuskeegee number.
"Whats her first name?" demanded the operator. "Theres only
one Mrs. Morgan there," she was told. "Just get any Mrs. Morgan at that number
and shell be the right one."
"But shes a nigger aint she?" was the wrathful response. "Do
you think Im going to say Mrs. to a nigger?"
Well, the next day Mr. Morgan was in the office of the telephone company manager. The
lily white operator was summoned and summarily fired. But the soft-hearted black man
interceded and she got her job back.
Negroes get normal telephone service in Atlanta today.