Darkwater

ife, the maiden, and the outcast. They were, in color, brown and light-brown, yellow with brown freckles, and white. They existed n

ot know the truth or believe it when we heard it. Motherhood! What was it? We did not know or greatly care. My

ot know, neither did she, poor thing! It came to mean for her a litter o

with the passion of youth; but her life was a wild, awful struggle to crush her n

an, Ide Fuller. What she was, we did not know. She stood to

cal passion. Why unanswered? Because the youth are too poor to marry or if they marry, too poor to have children. They turn aside, then, in three directions: to marry for

kers to go childless at a horrible expenditure of moral force, or we damn them if they break our idiotic conventions. Only at the sacri

is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and

herhood at her own discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bes

rostitute and the nun. Civilization must show two things: the glory and beauty of creating life and the n

is L

is

no God

is His

man,-but what

diously forgets its darker sisters. They seem

tly visage

sense of

ore, to our

id with

n the mysterious dawn of Asia and Africa; from Neith, the primal mother of all, whose feet rest on hell, and whose almighty hands uphold the heavens; all re

d Ethiop que

beauty's

ea-ny

to our own day and our own land,-in gentle Phillis; Harriet, the cru

l of the African mother pervades her land. Isis, the mother, is still titular goddess, in thought if not in name, of the dark continent. Nor does this all seem to be solely a survival of the historic matriarchate through which all nations pass,-it

a, I have noticed that no greater affront can be offered a Negro than insulting his mother. 'Strike me,' cries a Mandingo to his enemy, 'but revile not my mother!'" And the Krus and Fantis say the same. The peoples on the Za

aunts or the sisters or the cousins or the nieces of the headman, and as their interests are identical with his in every particular, the good women spontaneously train up their children to implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the

mother and child which lasts for life is the measure

rocious sovereigns, like Chaka or Mtesa; sometimes sisters take her place. Thus even with chiefs who possess wives by hundreds the bonds of blood are the strongest and that the woman, though often heavily burde

bronzen grandmother, with beaked nose and shrewish eyes, who loved and scolded her black and laughing husband as he smoked lazily in his high oak chair; above all, my own mother, with all her soft brownness,-the brown velvet of her skin, the sorrow

ack women to every ten black men,-all too swiftly to a day, in 1870,-when there were nearly eleven women to ten men in our Negro population. This was but the outward numerical fact of social dislocation; within lay polygamy, polyandry, concubinage, and moral degradation. They fought agains

ly, no legal control over children. To be sure, custom and religion replaced here and there what the la

bram and Frank. Abram has a wife at Colonel Stewart's, in Liber

AM ROB

color, between thirteen and fourteen years of age-bareheaded and barefooted. She is small for

RD THO

I understand General R.Y. Hayne has purchased his wife and children from H.L. Pinckney, Esq., an

DA

are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim, with a trumpet tongue, the iniquity of our system. There is not a neighborhood where these heartrending scen

"We Southern ladies are complimented with the names o

answer this query in scathing terms and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of black slavery came not

h million daughters at the time of the Civil War and five million grand-daughters in 1910. Can all these women be vile and the hunted race continue to grow in wealth and character? Impossible. Yet t

m her childhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passion. All the virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tiger for the ownership and possession of her own person and ofttimes had to suffer pain and lacerations for her virtuous self-assertion. When she re

ns which affronted even the moral sense of an unmoral world. Many a man and woman in the South have lived in wedlock as holy as Adam and Eve and brought forth their brown and gold

blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust. I cannot forget that it is such

prostitute, the brawler, and the beast of burden; but it has also given the world an efficient womanhood, whose stren

e of our women writes: "Only the black woman can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my w

ancient African mother of men, strong and black, whose very nature beat back the wilderness of oppression and contempt. Such a one was that cousin of my grandmother, whom western Massachusetts remembers as "Mum Bett." Scarred

te character, which enabled her to limit the ravages of Shay's mob, was manifested in her conduct and deportment during her whole life. She claimed no distinction, but it was yielded to her from her superior experience, energy, skill, and sagacity. H

ay, with its five million members and ninety millions of dollars in property. One o

d the foundation of this connection. The women, like the women at the sepulcher, were early to aid in laying the foundation of the temple and in helping to carry up the noble structure and in the name of their God set up their

l aid, they banded themselves together in society capacity, that they might be better able to administer to each others' sufferings and to s

two striking figures of war-time,-

ectures, and other meetings; she was a black woman of medium size, smiling countenance, with her upper front teeth gone, attired in coarse b

849 and went to Boston in 1854, where she was welcomed into the homes of the leading abolitionists and where every one listened with tense interest to her strange stories. She was absolutely illiterate, with no knowledge of geography, and yet year after year she penetrated the slave states and personally led North over thr

the armies in the field, and serving as guide and nurse and spy. She followed Sherman in his great march t

rner Truth. She says: "I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and I would say, 'Mammy, what mak

e Negro race and as he proceeded he grew more and more excited and finally ended by saying that they had no hope of justice from the whites, no possible hope except in their own right arms. It must come to blood! They must f

ck, is G

characteristic of the Negro soul as is its quaint strength and sweet laughter. George Washington wrote in grave and gentle courtesy to a Negro woman, in 1776, that he would "be happy to see" at his headquarters at any time, a person "to whom nature has been so liberal

glooms look back

dence, Kate Ferguson was born in New York. Freed, widowed, and bereaved of her children before she was twenty, she took the children of the streets of New York, wh

arp eyes, she threw herself singlehanded into the great Canadian pilgrimage when thousands of hunted black men hurried northward and crept beneath the protection of the lion's paw. She became teacher, editor, and lecturer; tramp

welling lips, and dark eyes marked her for a woman of feeling and intellect. She began a successful career as a public reader. Then came the War and the Call. She went to the orphaned colored children of New Orleans,-out of freedom into insul

today furnishing our teachers; they are the main pillars of those social settlements which we call churches; and they have with small doubt raised three-fourths of our church property. If we have today, as seems likely, over a billion dollars of accumulated goods, who

two and a half-million were adults. As a mass these women were unlettered,-a fourth of those from fifteen to twenty-five years of age were unable to write. These women are passing throug

r ten years of age,-over half of the colored female population as against a fifth in the case of white women. These, then, are a group of workers, fighting for their daily bread like men; i

dependent working mother. Rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while the

e result of modern working and sex conditions and it hits the laborers with terrible force. The Negroes are put in a peculiarly difficult position, because the wage of the male breadwinner is below the standard, while the openings for colored women in certain lines of domestic work, and now

r conditions. Cessation of foreign migration has raised Negro men's wages, to be sure-but it has not only raised Negro women's wages, it has opened to them a score of new avenues of earning a living. Indeed, here, in microcosm and with differences emp

is, next to the problem of the color line and the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. Whe

is narrowed destiny the white world has lavished its politeness on its womankind,-its chivalry and bows, its uncoverings and courtesies-all the accumulated homage disused for courts and kings and craving exercise. The revolt of white women against this preo

sk not, how does he look,-but what is his message? It is of but passing interest whether or not the messenger is beautiful or ugly,-the message is the thing. This, which is axiomatic among men, has been in past ages but partially true if the messenger was a woman. The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, "What else are women for?" Beauty "is its own excuse

of America have in large measure escaped from the first. Not being expected to be merely ornamental, they have girded themselves for work, instead of adorning their bodies only for play. Their sturdier minds have concluded that if a woman be clean, healthy, and educated, she is as pleasing as God wills and far more useful than m

,-an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than God made them, but they are asked to be effici

rths less than white men. The result is curious and three-fold: the economic independence of black women is increased, the breaking up of Negro families must be more freque

lack belt than in the childless wives of the white North, and I have more respect for the colored servant who yields to her frank longing for motherhood than for her white sister who offers up children for clothes. Out of a sex freedom that today makes us shudder will come in time a day when we will no longer pay men for work they do not do, for the s

y passes," said a

she's a nigger,"

worth every taunt and groan. Today the dreams of the mothers are coming true. We have still our poverty and degradation, our lewdness and our cruel toil; but we have, too, a vast group of women of Negro blood who for strength of character, cleanness of soul, and unselfish devotion o

ll of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and

en of

m d

ehow, s

weird cont

that dread d

o Children

nd vast s

a woma

he streami

flows from H

and ca?ons l

the twis

ght of

lone and

dden highway

in sp

oo real

t foot upo

through the th

, above, below

ighty

a twilig

ardly hi

ly-sadden

wn to burn

the snow-w

hty sp

were t

ed and si

as sh

face of fear

n there

woman,

n mountin

and C

cry sa

heaven,

of almigh

ngs, endl

d earth a

flutter, fu

lding and

lding y

eiling s

eiléd

ing bla

folding and

ng and un

hty w

black me

r, falling f

clutched

y cringed

n mournfu

om, O F

dom ov

I'll be

uried in

home to

be f

angel

the

r, as t

ng of wings, fi

olding, and fol

eir blood a

eamed in u

silenc

d the wailin

ast, I saw

e dumb, dark, a

n blood

caves of u

ack caves of

h lay full

heir

ren sobbing

ren crying i

ocking and gropi

delving an

ng-dead and

dripping of w

beneath t

d unfolding of

tears and pi

dusky star-e

, with sweet-s

or light and l

I cr

ildren wee

find your

r your dee

send His

ripping o

ystic mu

rkness of

laughter i

ldren weep

find your

the stricken,

'ranged agai

shou

y, build

foremost, f

nfetter, a

n and

they

y pointed tow

stness

darkness

ok and live,"

I se

d unfolding of

ld of iron, br

y, a year, a

e mortar,-bl

Thing, the Th

folding Wi

sh much m

hat t

slower rose th

it rose

ast on one

, cloud-swep

eath the bu

he p

hirring of al

nward fro

long line o

ittle children so

e, a

ugh firmam

a of Alm

flaming sun

om!" I

ed heaven, ear

oice ne

and unfolding o

, "I am

my face

nd h

ed no

on deep-bowed hea

d on flecked a

onward, u

ng of sma

far down int

fted livid

ove: the fac

led: the fac

nderful as s

orrible as

he blood-

w grow

come

the blazi

veilé

folding an

nrolling of a

st ste

dim cry

across t

th

gs, triump

owering, waxi

waying, twirli

creaming, stream

weeping and sha

ngs, eter

hot, re

fleein

ough heaven a

across a p

t vast

ed to

the Mountain

lazing glory

ng of Children

e face o

I