HOME AND EDUCATION
Hunt, Caroline L. & Follette, Belle Case La
HOME AND EDUCATION The home is the real seat of government, and Wise Men of all nations bring their gifts to the cradle. Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Colored Folk of...
...I remember their crowded Sunday-afternoon dress promenades on Connecticut Avenue, though inno- cent enough, were the subject of much humorous comment...
...It is significant that today nearly everyone says "colored" quite unconsciously...
...The first of June she was with us again...
...Recently a fine type of New England woman, who remembers the war as a part of her girlhood experience, was asking me about the colored people of Washington...
...They have their own standards to emulate, and naturally follow the line of least resistance...
...Our offhand average judgment of the negroes is apt to be tnoughtlessly uncharitable...
...As I observe them on the street, in the cars, and in our homes, I wonder if, considering all the circumstances, there is a class of people more deserving of a word of appreciation than the colored folk of Washington...
...Often the rights or wrongs of black folks became the subject of heated discussion in Congress...
...They were the strongest influence for good upon the new generation, who were, for the most part, inexperienced, little educated, and undisciplined...
...They receive and spend a great deal of money...
...Mrs...
...nor had they awakened to the possibilities of separate race development...
...Education and refinement are changing the expression and the features of the negro...
...They were often foolishly imitative, sometimes offensively assuming...
...Quite lately I was in one of the best shoe stores in Washington, where a young colored woman was being waited on very courteously...
...It may not be too far from the subject to say at this point that an opportunity for artists has been created by the demand for bubble drinking fountains...
...RETURNING to Washington after an absence of twenty years, we find a great change...
...The elemental quality in their nature appeals to me...
...whose greatest longing, whose first ambition was to be like white folks...
...IN THE REALMS of philosophy, philanthropy, reform, culture, ethics, as in the kingdom of Heaven, sex lines fade...
...By issuing tickets which could be bought in quantity the companies would shift the responsibility for the communication of disease from themselves to their patrons...
...There were always those to denounce and those to defend the "dar- kies...
...Indeed, it is said there is a good colored theater in Washington where it is the white people who are not welcomed...
...There may be a class that warrants the charge of shiftless-ness, but against that it should be remembered that there is a class of very wealthy and prosperous negroes...
...If you observe the children out at play as you pass the colored school, you cannot but be impressed with the neatness and taste of their dress, and their bright attractive faces...
...It is interesting to note the effect of their purchasing power on the trade...
...There is nothing of that kind now...
...To a certain extent these little homes reflect the spirit of the pioneer home-makers of this country,—the sacrifices, the varied occupations, the industry, and the love of the land...
...There were two or three colored representatives in Congress from the Black Belt of the South...
...At the markets women sell flowers, vegetables, and eggs raised on these little places...
...At that time whatever their viewpoint on the negro problem, white folks assumed it was up to the "superior" race to solve it...
...Not even their strongest champions considered the possibility of black folks settling it for themselves...
...A friend who accompanied me remarked that there were always colored people buying shoes in that store...
...Ladd's work in Art and Progress, Everybody's for August has as a frontispiece a reproduction of a statue which Daniel Chester French has made for his own garden...
...When women condemn the whole race,—as women are wont to do,—because of their hard experiences with servants, I think how much more fortunate households are here where there is always some help available, than in many parts of the country where there is none at all to be had...
...Colored children are interesting, and often beautiful...
...And it seems to me it can be fairly said to their credit, they have not shirked, nor flinched, nor failed...
...Of her "Young Pan" and her "Youth," she herself says, "They are meant to be seen crouching among the leaves, peering out like joyous wild things, animal-like, faun-like, personifying the American 'Spirit of the Woods...
...Jenkin Lloyd Jones...
...They did not realize that abolishing slavery had not removed the barriers of race and __color...
...that they are availing themselves of the opportunity to develop as a separate race...
...With all their faults, I loved the colored folk then, as I do now...
...They are wage-earners...
...More significant than either of these extremes is the very notable tendency of the working people to save and to buy homes...
...In these times of high cost of living, you wonder how it is done...
...Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Colored Folk of Washington (ILLUSTRATED WITH SNAP SHOTS BY NELLIE DUNN) IN THESE DAYS of research and statistics one fears to venture an opinion not based on exact knowledge...
...While the colored help does often lack reliability, much or it is very good...
...As they learn from experience the shortest road to advancement and achievement they care less to imitate white people, or to be allied with them socially...
...In the same number F. Allen Whiting describes the "Arts and Crafts Exhibition" in Boston and Anna Seaton-Schmidt writes of "Anna Coleman Ladd," an American sculptor who loves the open and works to beautify it...
...It seems to me that almost every thoughtful black face carries its shadows of sorrow, but it is hardly ever too deep for a bright smile to break through...
...Quite naturally the negroes took little thought of their obligation...
...The colored people no longger appear to weigh on the conscience or the consciousness of their white brethren...
...The status of the negro was still a political issue...
...Ladd's work is at the present seen by few, but being designed for open spaces it is peculiarly well suited to give pleasure to the many, for people frequent public pleasure grounds more than they do museums...
...The long ages of hot sunlight darkened their skin, but it seems to have implanted deep into their nature an inner warmth and glow,—a magnetism and hold upon the elemental life as different from ours as artic ice from the Gulf Stream...
...When I hear employers finding nothing but fault, I wonder what Washington would do without the colored help...
...G. Stanley Hall, the philosopher, calls "euphoria,"—the joy of living...
...I happen to know how one mother gets up early every morning, gives her children a good breakfast, and gets each one ready for school, before beginning her day at service...
...As a generalization, I would say that they consciously or intuitively recognize the color barrier...
...They have naturally good physique, good poise, and good manners...
...Only a generation from slavery, they were but beginning to adjust themselves to new conditions...
...Art and Progress for July THE JULY NUMBER of Art and Progress, a magazine which is growing in popularity, though not so rapidly perhaps as it deserves to, indicates that artists are turning their attention more and more to the things which people must see whether they want to or not, and are not satisfied to use their talents exclusively upon things which find their places in art galleries and museums...
...There were among them many of the old type whose habits, manners, traditions, and example were whol-some...
...The Blair bill, providing national aid to education, was debated almost altogether as affecting our obligations to the colored race...
...In Washington there is much complaint of the service of the colored people, and very little said in appreciation of it...
...They had then, as now, low voices, ease of manner, and ingratiating kindness...
...Very little thought seems to be given to the race question, either public or personally...
...At that time the citizens of Washington were also very quick to take sides on the race question...
...They constitute one-third of the population of Washington...
...We spent six years in Washington in the eighties,—midway between the war and the present time...
...that they accept their place at the foot cf the economic ladder...
...If her work fulfills its present promise American cities should avail themselves of it for the adornment of their parks...
...Ladd's statues are planned for the out-of-doors and have up to this time been placed chiefly in the forest-gardens of the rich along the ocean-shore north of Boston...
...This opportunity seems not to be appreciated either by the artists themselves or by their patrons...
...Those years in Washington were inseparably associated with Maria, the faithful nurse, her mother, a typical mammy, John, the - waiter at the boarding-house, with his wide, good-natured smile, Margaret, the cook, with her marvelous wisdom and judgment, and the happy little coons who played and danced in the street...
...Well, the hills all about are dotted with little homes like Anna's, and there are many new ones in process of building...
...Mrs...
...Where the women do not go out to service, they take home washing and sewing...
...The theme interests me and is one upon which my mind often dwells, and yet I can only speak of it from my own personal viewpoint...
...Colored folk are presumed to settle their own problems and carry their own burden...
...The picture shows a "Baby Pan" lying on the grass as if he had fallen asleep on his way to the woods...
...THE FIRST wealth is health.—EMERSON...
...It is more common in nature for water to bubble up out of the ground after the fashion of the new fountain than for it to spout forth after the fashion of the old, and it would seem as if artists might design settings for the new fountains which would suggest the settings of natural springs...
...The race question was very much more in evidence then than now...
...Easter Sunday her baby was born...
...The possibility of such unpleasant experiences might be greatly lessened if the car companies would issue tickets...
...This led me to observe that when the customer came to the desk to pay the bill, the clerk told her he would make a memorandum of the number of the shoes she had just purchased, so she could get them again if they pleased her, evidently taking pains to hold her trade...
...One of the principal articles is by Fredrick W. Coburn upon "An American City's Shop Fronts," the city being Boston and the shop fronts including not only new ones but also those remodeled from old dwelling houses...
...those who said "niggers," and those who said "negroes," with equal emphasis...
...As children suddenly coming to maturity are sobered by the responsibility of life, so the colored folk have lost some of that quality that Mr...
...Tickets pass from printer to passenger without going through many hands and stand a much better chance of being clean than money does...
...When I had given her my impressions she urged me to put them in One of Many Little Homes writing...
...An exception...
...They perform nearly all of the manual labor of the city...
...It happens opportunely that, following this description of Mrs...
...No allowance is made for their handicap, their disadvantages in opportunity and environment...
...There are also some fine business blocks exclusively for colored patronage...
...Married women stay in service, and this lends a stable element that is unusual...
...It took nearly an hour to reach her by street car, and as I made the tedious changes and wearisome waits, I reflected that all last winter while she had cooked for us, in good weather and bad, she had taken that long ride, night and morning, just to be at home...
...A while ago I went to visit our cook, Anna...
...Tickets More Sanitary than Money THERE ARE few people who have not had the disagreeable experience of receiving from a Street car conductor change which has just been taken from a very dirty or from the obviously diseased person...
Vol. 3 • August 1911 • No. 31
