I

HAVE often been asked to what extent the Negro race has the ability for self-direction and government, and the power to initiate and to make continuous progress unaided.

I want to try to answer this question, in part at least, not by abstract argument, but by telling the story of a self-governing community of colored people.

The group of negroes whose story I want to tell reside in Cass County, Michigan. Among the early settlers of that part of the State were several Quakers who had left their former homes in the South because they did not approve of slavery. In Michigan, as elsewhere, these Quakers soon let it be known that not only were they opposed to the institution of human slavery, and that runaway slaves would receive a friendly welcome among them, but that they would also receive physical protection if necessary. In addition to becoming an asylum for escaping slaves, this community of Quakers soon became a station on the "Underground Railroad."

The townships in Cass County in which the Quakers for the most part settled were named Calvin and Porter. It was about the year 1840 that a few colored people, mostly from Kentucky, began to find their way into these townships. Every year after that the number of escaped slaves grew larger, until in the year 1847 a determined effort was made on the part of some slaveholders to recapture their runaway negroes. Quite a number of slave-owners or their representatives appeared in Calvin township in that year, coming in one band, mounted and well armed, and made a bold and determined effort to regain possession of their property and return it to Kentucky. The effort at capture was successfully resisted by the Quakers, the colored people, and other residents of the community.

While a few of the colored people, as a result of this raid, became uneasy and fled to Canada, the ultimate result was

to advertise Cass County, Michigan, as being a part of the country where negroes could enjoy a reasonable freedom from the constant fear of being snatched up and returned to their former masters. After the "raid" a still larger number of colored people began to go into the two townships named, and they covered a much wider territory than the first settlers. In addition to those who came directly to Michigan, not a few escaped slaves left Ohio, where they had first located themselves, in order to settle in Cass County, where the good Quakers had so effectually proved their courage and loyalty.

It was not, however, until the year 1849 that one of these townships, Calvin, began to assume the character which invests it with special interest at present. In 1847 a large slaveholder by the name of Saunders, who lived in Cabell County, Virginia -now a part of West Virginia-died. When his will was opened, it was found that provision had been made to the effect that all his slaves must be made free. The will further provided a generous amount of money which was to be used in removing all of the testator's slaves into a free State. In addition, the slaveowner made arrangements for the purchase of a tract of land in some free State to be divided among these people, and the building of a house for each of his former slave families, the will also providing the money to do all this.

The Saunders ex-slaves, forty-one in number, at last were started northward. One who was entitled to accompany them refused to go into a land of freedom, even with all the added advantages of this opportunity, because his wife was a slave and could not go with him. After a long journey, which was attended by many hardships, the members of the party finally reached their Michigan home a few days before Christmas. A large tract of land which was a complete wilderness had been purchased by the executors.

upon these people in rather a discouraging manner before many months in their new home had passed. It soon became evident that there were some things that the mere gift of freedom and the gift of lands and money could not do. Freedom, lands, and money could not give one experience in self-direction and selfdependence. In the words of another, Freedom is a conquest, not a bequest." For several years the Saunders families were in a majority in the township, and they prospered in a reasonable degree. But, as time passed, many of them began to let their wants increase faster than their ability to supply these increased wants. In their extravagant ideas and practices they began to demonstrate the truth of the old saying that a man values only what he has had experience in accumulating. Besides this, while these new settlers were in the possession of lands and houses, they were without education. Some of them began to give mortgages on their land, and while their good Quaker neighbors would protect them in their freedom, and help them to get an education, they were not averse at any time to driving a shrewd and safe business bargain. Not many years passed before a good part of the land once owned by the Saunders families began to fall into the hands of the Friends.

I will not recite in more detail the story of the Saunders community, except to say that most of the property owned by these people gradually passed out of their hands in one way and another, some part of it being secured by other shrewd colored men who had settled in Calvin township. I think I make a correct statement in saying that when I visited the township a few weeks ago I found only one of the original Saunders settlers who at the present time owns any of the land bought by the executors of the Saunders estate. The bare mention of "a Saunders family would quite likely cause a quiet smile to creep over the face of one of the old inhabitants who did not belong to that group. These people not only had not held their own materially, but I found that, a few years after the newcomers began to get planted in their free homes, not a few of the young men began developing habits of idleness, not a few became criminals, while still others made them

selves offensive to the whites and sensible blacks by becoming "uppish" and in other ways disagreeable. All these things resulted in giving the community something of a bad name for several years.

From the foregoing some may draw the conclusion at once that the whole effort was a failure. Not by any means. What I have stated simply emphasizes the fact that human nature is very much the same, no matter under what color of skin it is found. What I have related of the history of the Saunders community illustrates what I have often tried to say in relation to my race in general in this countrythat the first one or two generations of freed people would naturally in many cases mistake freedom for license and would be overcome, in a large measure, by the first temptations of their new life; but that the second or third generations would begin to settle down to hard, sober business. If any one wants to get direct and specific proof of the truth of this statement, he should spend one or two days, as I have done, in making a firsthand investigation of the present condition of the negroes in Calvin township.

My visit of inspection, however, before I had been in the township two hours, taught me that the weak points exhibited by the people of the earlier generations had wrought a most beneficial work. It is often said that a thing that is bad has to get worse before it gets better. This I found to be true of Calvin township. At about the time when matters had gone down to their lowest ebb, industrially and morally, the more level-headed of the colored people began to realize the situation and to resolve that by strong and earnest effort they would bring about a reform. At about this time there began coming into the township a different class of people. These came mainly from Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. As a rule, they or their parents represented a class of people who had been set free-the class which in North Carolina were termed "free niggers," a designation which, strange to say, was used as a term of contempt by negro slaves as well as by their masters. The main point that I want to bring out here, though, is that these later settlers, either in Ohio or in some of the Southern States, had got over the first flush of freedom, and so were ready to

settle down to business when they reached Calvin township. The money and the experience that these people brought with them to Calvin had been dearly earned by themselves. This new element joined itself with the better representatives of the earlier settlers, and very soon Calvin township began to acquire a new atmosphere. The real solid growth of the township began from this time.

My attention was first attracted to this settlement some years ago when I was in South Bend, Indiana, the site of the Studebaker wagon factories. I noticed that the colored people of South Bend seemed to be an unusually prosperous and solid lot of people, far above the average of those generally found in large cities, or anywhere in the North. I asked one of the Studebakers the reason for this difference, and he said that he thought it grew out of the fact that from the first the Studebaker firm had never permitted any color line to be drawn in any department of their works-that a negro was not made to feel that on account of his race he was assigned

to a certain minor place in the factory, and could not hope to rise above that place, no matter how well he did his work. Mr. Studebaker said that they had held out to their negro workmen the same hope of reward in the way of promotion or increase of pay that the white workmen had held before them. There is a lesson in this treatment of the negro workmen by the Studebakers that has in it a solution for many of the problems connected with the negro. Take away from any race or individual the hope of reward, and you help destroy the race or individual.

From this discussion of the condition of the colored people in South Bend, Mr. Studebaker called my attention to the large community of colored people in Calvin township, Michigan, which is not very far from South Bend, since Cass County, in which Calvin is situated, is on the southern boundary of Michigan. When I asked Mr. Studebaker about these people he said in substance that for a number of years his firm had sold them wagons and other farm machinery, and had often sold