A Social History of the American Negro | Page 2

X
THE NEGRO A NATIONAL ISSUE 1. Current Tendencies 2. The

Challenge of the Abolitionists 3. The Contest
CHAPTER XI
SOCIAL PROGRESS, 1820-1860
CHAPTER XII
THE CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION
CHAPTER XIII
THE ERA OF ENFRANCHISEMENT 1. The Problem 2. Meeting the
Problem 3. Reaction: The Ku-Klux Klan 4. Counter-Reaction: The
Negro Exodus 5. A Postscript on the War and Reconstruction
CHAPTER XIV
THE NEGRO IN THE NEW SOUTH 1. Political Life:
Disfranchisement 2. Economic Life: Peonage 3. Social Life:
Proscription, Lynching
CHAPTER XV
"THE VALE OF TEARS," 1890-1910 1. Current Opinion and
Tendencies 2. Industrial Education: Booker T. Washington 3.
Individual Achievement: The Spanish-American War 4. Mob Violence;
Election Troubles; The Atlanta Massacre 5. The Question of Labor 6.
Defamation; Brownsville 7. The Dawn of a To-morrow
CHAPTER XVI
THE NEGRO IN THE NEW AGE 1. Character of the Period 2.
Migration; East St. Louis 3. The Great War 4. High Tension:
Washington, Chicago, Elaine 5. The Widening Problem
CHAPTER XVII

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 1. World Aspect 2. The Negro in American
Life 3. Face to Face

PREFACE
In the following pages an effort is made to give fresh treatment to the
history of the Negro people in the United States, and to present this
from a distinct point of view, the social. It is now forty years since
George W. Williams completed his History of the Negro Race in
America, and while there have been many brilliant studies of periods or
episodes since that important work appeared, no one book has again
attempted to treat the subject comprehensively, and meanwhile the race
has passed through some of its most critical years in America. The
more outstanding political phases of the subject, especially in the
period before the Civil War, have been frequently considered; and in
any account of the Negro people themselves the emphasis has almost
always been upon political and military features. Williams emphasizes
this point of view, and his study of legal aspects is not likely soon to be
superseded. A noteworthy point about the history of the Negro,
however, is that laws on the statute-books have not necessarily been
regarded, public opinion and sentiment almost always insisting on
being considered. It is necessary accordingly to study the actual life of
the Negro people in itself and in connection with that of the nation, and
something like this the present work endeavors to do. It thus becomes
not only a Social History of the race, but also the first formal effort
toward a History of the Negro Problem in America.
With this aim in mind, in view of the enormous amount of material, we
have found it necessary to confine ourselves within very definite limits.
A thorough study of all the questions relating to the Negro in the
United States would fill volumes, for sooner or later it would touch
upon all the great problems of American life. No attempt is made to
perform such a task; rather is it intended to fix attention upon the race
itself as definitely as possible. Even with this limitation there are some
topics that might be treated at length, but that have already been studied
so thoroughly that no very great modification is now likely to be made

of the results obtained. Such are many of the questions revolving
around the general subject of slavery. Wars are studied not so much to
take note of the achievement of Negro soldiers, vital as that is, as to
record the effect of these events on the life of the great body of people.
Both wars and slavery thus become not more than incidents in the
history of the ultimate problem.
In view of what has been said, it is natural that the method of treatment
should vary with the different chapters. Sometimes it is general, as
when we touch upon the highways of American history. Sometimes it
is intensive, as in the consideration of insurrections and early effort for
social progress; and Liberia, as a distinct and much criticized
experiment in government by American Negroes, receives very special
attention. For the first time also an effort is now made to treat
consecutively the life of the Negro people in America for the last fifty
years.
This work is the result of studies on which I have been engaged for a
number of years and which have already seen some light in _A Short
History of the American Negro and The Negro in Literature and Art_;
and acquaintance with the elementary facts contained in such books as
these is in the present work very largely taken for granted. I feel under
a special debt of gratitude to the New York State Colonization Society,
which, coöperating with the American Colonization Society and the
Board of Trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia, in 1920 gave