By Scott Graber
It is Sunday, and it’s cold. This is a good day for a fire, and a novel, but this morning I am without any unread fiction. But I do have the “Yearbook of the New York Southern Society, 1915-1916.”
The New York Southern Society was founded by men, some of whom were veterans of the defeated Confederate Army, who made their way to New York City after the Civil War. These refugees were mostly welcomed into this opportunistic, commercial landscape. One such refugee — Byrd Walker — was my wife’s ancestor.
Each year in December, the Southern Society had an elaborate, sit-down dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. At each of these formal dinners there were speakers (Josephus Daniels, Woodrow Wilson, William McAdoo) and those speeches were thereafter transcribed, word for word, in the Society’s Yearbook.
This morning I’ve been reading two of these speeches, the first by John Skelton Williams (Comptroller of the Currency) who began his 1915 talk by saying that “The political side of the negro question, as far as the South is concerned, is thus happily solved …”
Intrigued by the phrase “happily solved” I continued to read.
“Nobody knows yet the capabilities or possibilities of the actual negro. Brought to us a slave and a chattel, a wild savage chased down and captured in his home jungles like an animal, he has adapted himself to our civilization and standards with amazing facility. The mutual affection established between the races, in the very face of the naturally antagonistic relation of master and slave, owner and intelligent creature, is a marvel.”
“There are many good mulatto citizens, but it is true undisputedly that any mixture of the races makes … ultimately, an inferior blend. It is for the good of the country, the negro and the white, that the races be kept apart.”
“I submit that considering the loss and destruction the South suffered, we have done great work of caring for, educating and developing the negroes left in our charge. The figures show that the black people have gained far faster in education and property under white rule than they did while the fearful experiment of giving them control was in progress.”
After the U.S. Comptroller ended his speech, he was followed by George W. Wickersham (formerly the Attorney General of the United States) who had the temerity to disagree.
“But, Mr. Comptroller of the Currency, without entering too deeply upon the delicate nature of the problem you have touched upon, of the relation between the white and black races, may I be permitted to say that I do not believe that that problem can ever be solved by the total disfranchisement, for all time, of ten millions of American Citizens.”
“I believe that no people can thrive and advance on the ways of freedom and right living, if side by side there are working with them ten millions of people, disfranchised from all voice in the affairs of government. God knows it is a difficult problem; God knows, and He alone knows, how it will be solved.”
“I believe there is no problem facing the American people more difficult of solution; but, believe me, it is not solved by the means to which you refer.”
As I re-read the remarks of Williams and Wickersham, I thought that here — about a year and a half before we got ourselves into World War I — there was pointed, public exchange about segregation and voting rights and, of course, I wondered how Byrd Walker came down on these issues.
Walker had arrived in New York City in the late 1800s — he was not a veteran — and then built a chemical company in New Jersey that made Naphthalene. During World War I, Naphthalene, along with creosote, was made into a paste that was applied to military uniforms that diminished the population of body lice. An application which helped prevent “trench fever.”
When Walker’s daughter, Elizabeth, died 15 years ago, I got his tuxedo, his formal waistcoat; the mother-of-pearl cufflinks he must have worn to Society events. I sometime wore his cuff links, but I never read the six Yearbooks that I also acquired.
As I sit in front of my fire, I consider the dramatic increase in mixed-race high school dating, and marriage; and the increased use of mixed-race families in television advertising. If these are any indication, the Comptroller’s theory about an “inferior blend” has been consigned to history’s dumpster.
I find some contentment knowing that debate is “happily solved.”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
