Ellen G. White and Church Race Relations

The Betrayal of the Negro: 1895-1910

The real thrust of Ellen White’s counsels on race relations cannot be seen without an appreciation of the racial climate in the country at the time she was writing. Once the relevant aspects of Negro history during this period are grasped, what at first appears to be a contradiction in Ellen White’s writings becomes understandable. What is more, we can distinguish between the basic principles and the temporary expedients only on the basis of the historical backgrounds of her statements. EGWCRR 17.1

For these reasons, this chapter probes the subjects of race relations and Negro rights from 1895 through 1910. The year 1895 is chosen as a starting point in this chapter because, although Ellen White had written concerning the Negro before this date, she had written very little in comparison to what she wrote after 1895. EGWCRR 17.2

This date is important not only in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Negro but in American Negro history in general. The Seventh-day Adventist Negro remembers it because it was on January 10 of this year EGWCRR 17.3

that James Edson White landed in Vicksburg to begin his work. All American Negroes remember it because it was in 1895 that Booker T. Washington made his famous speech at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta and assumed virtually unrivaled leadership of Negro affairs in this country. ¹ The date 1910 is arbitrary—it is simply a point of time beyond 1908, the year in which Ellen White compiled the material for volume 9. EGWCRR 18.1

The first and most important thing that can be said about race relations and the status of Negro rights during this time is that they were bad and getting worse. Rayford Logan titled his book about the period 18771901 The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901. ² Later, upon revising it for paperback publication, he extended its scope to the time of Woodrow Wilson (1912 and following) and called it The Betrayal of the Negro. ³ Henry Arthur Callis, a physician who, until recently, was still active in the quest for equal rights, termed the first decade of the twentieth century a “low, rugged plateau.” ⁴ In the Sidney Hillman Lectures at Howard University in 1961, John Hope Franklin, professor of history at the University of Chicago, said that “The Long Dark Night” continued until 1923. ⁵ EGWCRR 18.2

Dr. C. Vann Woodward, in his book The Strange Career of Jim Crow, demonstrates that the “Jim Crow” system of racial segregation did not spring full grown from the womb of a dying Reconstruction era in the seventies, but that there was no generally accepted pattern of racial mores until the beginning of the new century. ⁶ Indeed, the clippings in Crisler’s scrapbooks indicate that the tendency to separate the Negro from the Caucasian in every phase of American life was still going on apace throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, and even beyond. It must be remembered that in 1913 Woodrow Wilson was busy segregating Federal office buildings in Washington, D.C. ⁷ EGWCRR 18.3

The Compromise of 1877 signaled the onset of a rapid decline in Negro rights over the next thirty years. Presidential candidates Samuel J. Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes were the principals. The election of 1876 had given Tilden a quarter of a million more popular votes than Hayes, and 184 uncontested electoral votes one short of the number required for his election. A complicated series of moves cornered some doubtful electoral votes for Hayes, who through the Compromise of 1877 was able to make his way into the White House. ⁸ EGWCRR 19.1

A part of the Compromise of 1877 was Hayes’s agreement to leave the South alone to work out the racial problem without interference from the Federal Government. This is significant as the beginning of what Logan calls the Negro’s “betrayal.” In The Strange Career of Jim Crow Woodward says: EGWCRR 19.2

The acquiescence of Northern liberalism in the Compromise of 1877 defined the beginning, but not the ultimate extent, of the liberal retreat on the race issue. The Compromise merely left the freedman to the custody of the conservative Redeemers upon their pledges that they would protect him and his constitutional rights. But as these pledges were forgotten or violated and the South veered toward proscription and extremism, Northern opinion shifted to the right, keeping pace with the South, conceding point after point, so that at no time were the sections very far apart on race policy. ⁹

W. E. B. DuBois put it a little more simply: “The Northern people, after freeing the Negro and giving him the right of suffrage, left him high and dry.” ¹⁰ In an article titled “What the Negro Thinks,” a writer in the New York Age observed: EGWCRR 20.1

There seems to be a growing conviction in the North that the solution of the race problem should be left to the South. Attending this settling conviction are the commercial and cowardly shrinkings of the North of her responsibility as to how that problem is solved. ¹¹

Ellen White wrote concerning the same situation: EGWCRR 20.2

Much might have been accomplished by the people of America if adequate efforts in behalf of the freedmen had been put forth by the Government and by the Christian churches immediately after the emancipation of the slaves. Money should have been used freely to care for and educate them at the time they were so greatly in need of help. But the Government, after a little effort, left the Negro to struggle, unaided, with his burden of difficulties. ¹²

Again and again Ellen White pointed to the time just after the end of slavery—the period of Reconstruction as the time when the most could have been done for the Negro. EGWCRR 20.3

When freedom was proclaimed to the captives, a favorable time was given in which to establish schools and to teach the people to take care of themselves. Much of this kind of work was done by various denominations, and God honored their work. ¹³ EGWCRR 20.4

In 1895 she wrote: EGWCRR 21.1

The colored people might have been helped with much better prospects of success years ago than now. The work is now tenfold harder than it would have been then....

The nation of slaves who were treated as though they had no souls, but were under the control of their masters, were emancipated at immense cost of life on both sides, the North seeking to restrict, the South to perpetuate and extend slavery. After the war, if the Northern people had made the South a real missionary field, if they had not left the Negroes to ruin through poverty and ignorance, thousands of souls would have been brought to Christ. But it was an unpromising field, and the Catholics have been more active in it than any other class. ¹⁴

In 1900 she wrote: EGWCRR 21.2

The Lord is grieved at the indifference manifested by His professed followers toward the ignorant and oppressed colored people. If our people had taken up this work at the close of the Civil War, their faithful labor would have done much to prevent the present condition of suffering and sin. ¹⁵

Dr. Woodward points to other factors that contributed to the triumph of racism, i.e. the doctrine of white superiority and white supremacy. The nation’s adventures in the Philippines and in the Caribbean began in 1898. ¹⁶ Americans shouldered the “white man’s burden,” and the South was quick to recognize that the arguments of the nation as a whole in favor of this program were not essentially different from the arguments for white supremacy and Negro disfranchisement. Says Woodward: EGWCRR 21.3

At the dawn of the new century the wave of Southern racism came in as a swell upon a mounting tide of national sentiment and was very much a part of that sentiment. Had the tide been running the other way, the Southern wave would have broken feebly instead of becoming a wave of the future. ¹⁷

Another indication of the trend toward depriving the Negro of his rights was the movement to disfranchise him. The vote was partially taken from him by a number of ingenious methods prior to the time when disfranchisement was actually written into the State constitutions, but it is significant that it was not until 1890 that the first State, Mississippi, undertook to write a clause into its State constitution that allowed for the elimination of the Negro voter. ¹⁸ A variety of methods were used—the “understanding” clause, the “good character” clause, and the “grandfather clause,” all, in some way, directed at the Negro, while allowing (at least sometimes, as applied by the local examiner) his white counterpart in the lower socio-economic classes to vote. But the important point here is to notice the dates for these constitutional actions: South Carolina, 1895; Louisiana, 1898; North Carolina, 1900; Alabama, 1901; Virginia, 1902; Georgia, 1908; and Oklahoma, 1910. ¹⁹ EGWCRR 22.1

These constitutional provisions did not come into existence without propaganda wars. Throughout Hoke Smith’s 1906 campaign for the governorship of Georgia, a “barrage of Negro atrocity stories” supported his disfranchisement platform. It might be added that the paper responsible was the Atlanta Journal, which Smith edited. The campaign victory was followed by four days of anarchy in Atlanta, in which roving mobs, white and black, freely looted, murdered, and lynched. ²⁰ EGWCRR 22.2

The nineties saw nearly twice as many lynchings as the first ten years of the twentieth century, but the statistics on this crime nevertheless reflect the rise of racial hatred. According to Woodward, of the lynchings committed in the first ten years of the present century, 11.4 per cent of the victims were white. In the previous decade 32.2 per cent had been white. From 1889 to 1899, 82 per cent of all lynchings occurred in the Southern States—the eleven former Confederate States plus Missouri, Kentucky, and what became Oklahoma in 1907. In the first decade of the twentieth century, 91.1 per cent of all lynchings occurred in these States. Lynching “was becoming an increasingly southern racial phenomenon.” ²¹ This was an era when an extreme white supremacist, Benjamin R. Tillman, of South Carolina, was elected to the United States Senate. In the Senate he defended lynching as a punishment for rape: EGWCRR 23.1

“It is idle to reason about it; it is idle to preach about it. Our brains reel under the staggering blow and hot blood surges to the heart. Civilization peels off us, any and all of us who are men, and we revert to the original savage type, whose impulses under any and all such circumstances have always been to kill! kill! kill!” ²²

While Ellen White was preparing her material for volume 9, Booker T. Washington came out in print in one of his strongest statements against lynching. He said in part: “Within the past sixty days twenty-five Negroes have been lynched in different parts of the United States. Of this number only four were even charged with criminal assault upon women.” ²³ EGWCRR 23.2

The Gospel Herald, a magazine published by Edson White in the interests of his work in the South, became alarmed when lynching was accomplished, not by hanging, but by burning at the stake. Commented the Herald: “The mind recoils before the horror of such torture.” ²⁴ EGWCRR 23.3

It may sound unbelievable to a reader in the latter half of the twentieth century to hear that Negroes were actually burned at the stake around the turn of this century, but it was not unknown. It happened in various parts of the country and in more than one case the perpetrator of the macabre crime followed the act by taking pieces of the victim’s charred body for souvenirs. ²⁵ EGWCRR 24.1

In 1901, the Gospel Herald quoted an editorial from the Nashville American against lynchings by fire, which the Herald said, “have become so common during the last four or five years.” ²⁶ EGWCRR 24.2

Six major race riots occurred between 1900 and 1910. ²⁷ In the riots the North vied with the South in both the number and scope of the violent outbreaks. And while there may be some temptation to minimize the seriousness of these riots in the light of more recent civil disorders, there is an essential difference between the riots of the first decade of this century and those of more recent vintage. The riots before 1910 entailed far less death and destruction, but they were authentic “race riots” in that they involved mobs of white citizens perpetrating crimes against Negro life and property, and Negro citizens returning the favor. ²⁸ Thus far, the recent riots have generally been directed toward symbols of economic and social oppression, not so much against persons of the opposite race. Mobs of white citizens were virtually unheard of in the riots of the 1960’s. Very few, if any, have been killed recently by white private citizens, and extremely few by Negro citizens. EGWCRR 24.3

The further relevance of this climate of violence in race relations will be seen when the work of James Edson White in Mississippi is considered. This element of violence is an area that has been largely overlooked in recent discussions on Ellen White’s statements on race relations. EGWCRR 25.1

C. Vann Woodward observes the increase in segregation laws as another index of worsening racial relations. Up to 1900 the only segregation law in the majority of the Southern States was that separating passengers on trains. ²⁹ But South Carolina did not have such a law until 1898, North Carolina did not adopt one until 1899, and Virginia, the last State to adopt such a law, did so in 1900. Only three States required separate waiting rooms before 1899, but in the next decade, nearly all the Southern States followed suit. Only Georgia segregated its streetcars before 1900. By 1907, such laws were binding in North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Maryland, Florida, and Oklahoma. ³⁰ These laws provided for separation within cars, but not for separate cars. An Atlanta ordinance requiring separate cars was annulled by the court, not on the basis that it might deny Negro citizens equal accommodations, but on the principle that it was “not reasonable nor just to the street railways.” ³¹ EGWCRR 25.2

Even the aspirations of Berea College in Kentucky were thwarted by this trend. Famous for its participation in the abolitionist campaign and for its integrated facilities after the Civil War, Berea was caught short in 1907 by a Kentucky law outlawing racially integrated education. ³² EGWCRR 25.3

The case was fought to the Supreme Court of the United States. When the Supreme Court ruled, the next year, that Kentucky law was constitutional, the editor of the New York Age remarked that the decision was “consistent with that high tribunal’s past evasion on technical grounds of the grave issue of Negro protection.” Then he went on to add an ominous and prophetic warning: EGWCRR 26.1

Just so sure as America cannot endure half slave and half free, just so sure this republic cannot endure with discrimination between its citizens legalized.... Judge Brewer, like judge Taney, has not settled the question of human rights in this republic. Judge Brewer has simply postponed the dreadful day of reckoning between human rights and race wrongs. ³³

Across the country the picture conformed to the same general pattern. By 1909 Oklahoma had passed laws requiring separate schools, train coaches, and railroad station accommodations. ³⁴ The Supreme Court of Iowa decided in 1909 that business concerns had the right to refuse to serve Negroes. ³⁵ There were segregation practices beyond those required by law. For example, there were even Jim Crow Bibles for Negro witnesses in Atlanta courts! ³⁶ EGWCRR 26.2

Page after page of Crisler’s scrapbooks reveal the same worsening trend, confirming C. Vann Woodward’s assertion that “whether by law or by custom, that ostracism extended to virtually all forms of public transportation, to sports and recreations, to hospitals, orphanages, prisons, and asylums, and ultimately to funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries.” ³⁷ EGWCRR 26.3

Woodward shows that by 1900 the pattern of segregation was established, but the process was not complete. This is borne out by Crisler’s scrapbook clippings, which reveal that the job was still going on all through the first decade of the twentieth century. Law, says Woodward, is not always a completely accurate index to practice. But it does reveal some consensus in practice and a willingness to accept a given situation as proper and permanent. EGWCRR 27.1

It was not until 1907 that the Arkansas legislature repealed a section of the State constitution known as Kirby’s Digest, which guaranteed the Negro equal rights with Caucasians in hotels, saloons, theaters, railroads, and other public and quasi-public places. ³⁸ The Age commented that the law had been a “dead letter” for thirty years, but it is indicative of the trend of the times that the legislature nevertheless felt it needed to be repealed. EGWCRR 27.2

The Little Rock [Arkansas] Democrat of May 5, 1907, presented its rationale for the repeal of Kirby’s Digest: EGWCRR 27.3

An absolute separation between the white man and the Negro, without enmity toward the latter, but marked by a dividing line which cannot be overstepped because of the existing conditions, is the ultimate object of the various legislators who have worked hardest for the repealing of the civil rights chapter. And they would have this separation complete and extending in every condition of life, social as well as in a business way. This bill is prompted, not so much by a desire to down the Negro, but rather to protect the white man from one of them, appropriately called “the black peril.”

One senator said: “I have nothing personally against Negroes. God put them here, and we cannot exterminate them, nor banish them from the land. But the primary cause for the repealing of this charter of the statute was one of fear of the ultimate amalgamation of the races; fear that, because of this amalgamation the time may come when a man will no longer be able to tell a white man from one who is not white. Now this sounds harsh, I admit—it sounds unusual; but it is nevertheless our duty to face conditions and probabilities, not theories, and we may as well call the thing by its name.” ³⁹ EGWCRR 28.1

Negroes of the period were not unaware of the trend. A writer in the American Baptist stated: “‘In the face of so much hostile legislation against the race and the apparent growth of prejudice along certain lines it is indeed encouraging that the race still has earnest and faithful friends.’” ⁴⁰ EGWCRR 28.2

John M. Henderson, a Negro medical doctor writing in 1907 in the Age, compared the Negro optimist and pessimist: EGWCRR 28.3

The least thoughtful of the race are decidedly optimistic in their ideas of the future of the race. The optimist does not reason, he indulges in dreams that are inspired by the hope that “springs eternal in the human breast.” ...The pessimist reaches his conclusions from meditation upon what he has actually observed and experienced. ⁴¹

Henderson favored neither the pessimist nor the optimist, but advocated the “rational Negro” who “seeks to take a hand in things” and does what he can to make them better. In 1909 Kelly Miller, a professor at Howard University, traveled around the country studying Negro schools and observing the extent of segregation in such areas as voting and public transportation. He reported in the Boston Guardian, another Negro daily: EGWCRR 28.4

I find, however, that in all cases the Negro has to maintain a ceaseless effort and eternal vigilance to safeguard the civil privileges which, it is sad to relate, are everywhere being restricted and confined to narrower and narrower limits. ⁴²

On the other hand, anyone listening to Booker T. Washington’s speeches during this period might think that the golden age of race relations had just dawned. In harmony with his philosophy concerning the importance of economic success for the Negro, he constantly recited statistics about how much land Negroes were acquiring, how many graduates they had in this or that profession, how many schools they had built, and so on. He rarely mentioned lynching, disfranchisement, or segregation laws. It was part of his philosophy to look on the “bright” side: EGWCRR 29.1

Let us never, as a race, grow discouraged. In the South there are more things upon which the races agree than upon which they disagree. Let us not be so much absorbed in our grievances that we fail to remember our successes and opportunities. ⁴³

Washington certainly lived up to that philosophy, and who can say that encouragement was not needed? In the light of that philosophy, it is interesting to follow his logic in the following statement: “‘Everything that can happen to disrupt the relations between the races has already happened. We have reached, in my opinion, the extreme of racial friction, and the reaction has already set in.’” ⁴⁴ This statement is significant, as we have pointed out, in the light of his passion for optimism. And it is, after all, an optimistic statement. EGWCRR 29.2

William Howard Taft was neither the greatest friend nor the worst enemy of the Negro. But since he was campaigning for the Presidency while Ellen White sat in her Elmshaven home penning some of the lines we are studying, it may be of interest to observe Taft’s statements in order to get an idea of the role the President played in race relations during this period. EGWCRR 30.1

The keynote of Taft’s inaugural address, March 4, 1909, was “I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling between the South and other sections of the country.” ⁴⁵ It goes almost without saying that the price for maintaining and increasing this “good feeling” was paid in part at the expense of Negro rights. EGWCRR 30.2

In his inaugural Taft also said: EGWCRR 30.3

While the fifteenth amendment has not been generally observed in the past, it ought to be observed, and the tendency of Southern legislation today is toward the enactment of electoral qualifications which shall square with that amendment. Of course, the mere adoption of a constitutional law is only one step in the right direction. It must be fairly and justly enforced as well. In time both will come. ⁴⁶

The importance of this statement lies both in the fact that it approves such “disfranchisement” laws (requirements for voters) as can be in harmony with the Fifteenth Amendment if fairly enforced, and that it expresses a willingness to wait for the just enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment. EGWCRR 30.4

When the New York World suggested that Taft’s position amounted to a virtual nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment’s requirement of nonabridgment of the elective franchise on account of race, color, or previous servitude, the Atlanta Constitution termed the World’s interpretation “strange and farfetched.” ⁴⁷ The Constitution gave Taft high praise for his renunciation of sectionalism and for his approval of voter tests, denying that he had ever approved anything but “proper franchise qualifications honestly administered as between the races.” ⁴⁸ EGWCRR 31.1

The ironic thing is that at the same time, the New York Age was printing articles that also praised Taft highly for this same inaugural address. It headlined one with the words “Taft Has No Prejudice,” and another with “Negroes Are Now Americans.” ⁴⁹ In the latter the writer asserted: EGWCRR 31.2

There is something reassuring in the ring of the President’s words when he says that the Fifteenth Amendment has not been generally observed in the past, but it ought to be observed; that it is a great protection to the Negro, and it never will be repealed and it ought not to be repealed. Surely there is no equivocation about this. ⁵⁰

But either there was equivocation in his statement or he entertained false hopes that the States would apply these voting requirements impartially to both white and black applicants. At any rate, he was either unwilling or unable to enforce the amendment. EGWCRR 31.3

Aside from his opposition to the Maryland disfranchisement amendment, the next autumn, the President did virtually nothing to stem the tide of opposition to Negro rights. When Taft’s threat of an attack through the courts was followed by the defeat of the measure, Francis D. Winston, former governor of North Carolina, quoted Taft’s speech given before the North Carolina Society in New York a year before and grumbled that the “Southern people accepted that utterance as a finality on the subject and we went about our business.” ⁵¹ Winston felt that the South had been betrayed by Taft’s opposition to the Maryland amendment. Taft made few such moves. EGWCRR 32.1

At Howard University he told the graduating students that “the friendship and sympathetic interest of the white man with whom he lives” was the “best hope” of the Southern Negro. ⁵² As President-elect, he comforted the Negroes with a supreme example of “tokenism,” asserting that a race that produced a Booker T. Washington in a century ought to “feel confident that it can do miracles in time.” ⁵³ EGWCRR 32.2

One must not suppose that all Negroes were comfortable with Taft’s public statements. His obvious wooing of the South led some Negro leaders to oppose him. ⁵⁴ It was during his administration that the policy of segregating Federal office buildings in Washington began. ⁵⁵ It is nevertheless not surprising that many Negroes supported him in the 1908 election; the alternative was William Jennings Bryan, who had said in March of that year: EGWCRR 32.3

The white man in the South has disfranchised the Negro in self-protection; and there is not a Republican in the North who would not have done the same thing under the same circumstances. The white men of the South are determined that the Negro will and shall be disfranchised everywhere it is necessary to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of carpet-bag rule. ⁵⁶

These political questions indicate the trend of the times. Edson White could have looked for very little help from Washington had he decided to integrate his little Mississippi schools! Much of Dr. Logan’s book The Betrayal of the Negro is taken up with showing that the other Presidents during this period were no more active than Taft in the field of Negro rights. EGWCRR 33.1

Long before, the Supreme Court of the United States had set the stage for the downfall of Negro rights during this period. In 1876 it rendered decisions in United States v. Reese and United States v. Cruikshank, which sharply curtailed the protection afforded Negroes by the Fifteenth Amendment. ⁵⁷ In 1883 it threw out the restrictive portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had barred discrimination in public places and on public carriers. ⁵⁸ The decision prompted T. Thomas Fortune to remark that the Negro had been “baptized in ice water.” ⁵⁹ EGWCRR 33.2

In 1890 the court ruled that a State could require segregation in public carriers, and in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, enunciated the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine. ⁶⁰ Finally, the Court, having virtually locked the Negro in the prison of second-class citizenship, threw away the key by approving, in 1898, the Mississippi plan for depriving the Negroes of the right to vote through poll tax and an “understanding clause.” ⁶¹ EGWCRR 33.3

The information in this chapter must not be taken to imply that the Negro made no progress during the period 1895-1910, nor that he was only a helpless pawn in the power-plays of white America. He did make rapid strides in education, economics, and other areas. ⁶² But in politics, in civil rights, in the matter of segregation versus integration, he made rapid strides backward under a multitude of irresistible pressures. EGWCRR 34.1

Attention has been focused on these areas because they are the ones in which the controversy over Ellen White’s statements centers. This book is concerned with Ellen White’s counsel about separate schools and churches, with her statements about Negroes’ working for their own race only, with her statements about “equality.” In these areas Negro history during this period was, as Franklin said, “a long dark night.” This was so, as Ellen White often noted, not because of the Negro, but because of his white oppressors. EGWCRR 34.2

Between 1895 and 1910 segregation came to be accepted by the majority of the people, North and South, as the American way. And in this the people were led by their President, the Supreme Court, and, ironically enough, the chief leader of the Negro race—not as the ideal way, but as being most realistic under the circumstances. EGWCRR 34.3