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"THE CHASM YAWNS SO WIDE AND DEEP" -
MARY CHURCH TERRELL 1906
What It Means to be Colored in the
Capital of the United States
It follows the full text transcript of
Mary E. Church Terrell's What It Means to Be
Colored in the Capital of the United States speech, delivered at the
United Women's Club in Washington D.C. - October 10, 1906.
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Washington D.C.
has been called The Colored Man's Paradise. |
Whether this
sobriquet was given to the national capital in
bitter irony by a member of the handicapped
race, as he reviewed some of his own
persecutions and rebuffs, or whether it was
given immediately after the war by an
ex-slaveholder who for the first time in his
life saw colored people walking about like free
men, minus the overseer and his whip, history
saith not.
It is certain that
it would be difficult to find a worse misnomer
for Washington than The Colored Man's
Paradise if so prosaic a consideration as
veracity is to determine the appropriateness of
a name.
For fifteen years I have resided in Washington,
and while it was far from being a paradise for
colored people when I first touched these shores
it has been doing its level best ever since to
make conditions for us intolerable. As a colored
woman I might enter Washington any night, a
stranger in a strange land, and walk miles
without finding a place to lay my head. Unless I
happened to know colored people who live here or
ran across a chance acquaintance who could
recommend a colored boarding-house to me, I
should be obliged to spend the entire night
wandering about. Indians, Chinamen, Filipinos,
Japanese and representatives of any other dark
race can find hotel accommodations, if they can
pay for them. The colored man alone is thrust
out of the hotels of the national capital like a
leper.
As a colored woman I may walk from the Capitol
to the White House, ravenously hungry and
abundantly supplied with money with which to
purchase a meal, without finding a single
restaurant in which I would be permitted to take
a morsel of food, if it was patronized by white
people, unless I were willing to sit behind a
screen.
As a colored woman I cannot visit the tomb of
the Father of this country, which owes its very
existence to the love of freedom in the human
heart and which stands for equal opportunity to
all, without being forced to sit in the Jim Crow
section of an electric car which starts form the
very heart of the city– midway between the
Capital and the White House. If I refuse thus to
be humiliated, I am cast into jail and forced to
pay a fine for violating the Virginia laws.
As a colored woman I may enter more than one
white church in Washington without receiving
that welcome which as a human being I have the
right to expect in the sanctuary of God.
Unless I am willing to engage in a few menial
occupations, in which the pay for my services
would be very poor, there is no way for me to
earn an honest living, if I am not a trained
nurse or a dressmaker or can secure a position
as teacher in the public schools, which is
exceedingly difficult to do. It matters not what
my intellectual attainments may be or how great
is the need of the services of a competent
person, if I try to enter many of the numerous
vocations in which my white sisters are allowed
to engage, the door is shut in my face.
From one Washington theater I am excluded
altogether. In the remainder certain seats are
set aside for colored people, and it is almost
impossible to secure others.
With the exception of the Catholic University,
there is not a single white college in the
national capitol to which colored people are
admitted. A few years ago the Columbian Law
School admitted colored students, but in
deference to the Southern white students the
authorities have decided to exclude them
altogether.
Some time ago a young woman who had already
attracted some attention in the literary world
by her volume of short stories answered an
advertisement which appeared in a Washington
newspaper, which called for the services of a
skilled stenographer and expert typewriter. The
applicants were requested to send specimens of
their work and answer certain questions
concerning their experience and their speed
before they called in person. In reply to her
application the young colored woman received a
letter from the firm stating that her references
and experience were the most satisfactory that
had been sent and requesting her to call. When
she presented herself there was some doubt in
the mind of the man to whom she was directed
concerning her racial pedigree, so he asked her
point-blank whether she was colored or white.
When she confessed the truth the merchant
expressed deep regret that he could not avail
himself of the services of so competent a
person, but frankly admitted that employing a
colored woman in his establishment in any except
a menial position was simply out of the
question.
Not only can colored women secure no employment
in the Washington stores, department and
otherwise, except as menials, and such
positions, of course, are few, but even as
customers they are not infrequently treated with
discourtesy both by the clerks and the
proprietor himself.
Although white and colored teachers are under
the same Board of Education and the system for
the children of both races is said to be
uniform, prejudice against the colored teachers
in the public schools is manifested in a variety
of ways. From 1870 to 1900 there was a colored
superintendent at the head of the colored
schools. During all that time the directors of
the cooking, sewing, physical culture, manual
training, music and art departments were colored
people. Six years ago a change was inaugurated.
The colored superintendent was legislated out of
office and the directorships, without a single
exception, were taken from colored teachers and
given to the whites. Now, no matter how
competent or superior the colored teachers in
our public schools may be, they know that they
can never rise to the height of a directorship,
can never hope to be more than an assistant and
receive the meager salary therefore, unless the
present regime is radically changed.
Strenuous efforts are being made to run Jim Crow
cars in the national capital. Representative
Heflin, of Alabama, who introduced a bill
providing for Jim Crow street cars in the
District of Columbia last winter, has just
received a letter from the president of the East
Brookland Citizens' Association "indorsing the
movement for separate street cars and sincerely
hoping that you will be successful in getting
this enacted into a law as soon as possible." Brookland is a suburb of Washington.
The colored laborer's path to a decent
livelihood is by no means smooth. Into some of
the trades unions here he is admitted, while
from others he is excluded altogether. By the
union men this is denied, although I am
personally acquainted with skilled workmen who
tell me they are not admitted into the unions
because they are colored. But even when they are
allowed to join the unions they frequently
derive little benefit, owing to certain tricks
of the trade. When the word passes round that
help is needed and colored laborers apply, they
are often told by the union officials that they
have secured all the men they needed, because
the places are reserved for white men, until
they have been provided with jobs, and colored
men must remain idle, unless the supply of white
men is too small.
And so I might go on citing instance after
instance to show the variety of ways in which
our people are sacrificed on the altar of
prejudice in the Capital of the United States
and how almost insurmountable are the obstacles
which block his path to success.
It is impossible for any white person in the
United States, no matter how sympathetic and
broad, to realize what life would mean to him if
his incentive to effort were suddenly snatched
away. To the lack of incentive to effort, which
is the awful shadow under which we live, may be
traced the wreck and ruin of score of colored
youth. And surely nowhere in the world do
oppression and persecution based solely on the
color of the skin appear more hateful and
hideous than in the capital of the United
States, because the chasm between the principles
upon which this Government was founded, in which
it still professes to believe, and those which
are daily practiced under the protection of the
flag, yawns so wide and deep.
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