As we look at the life of a segregated people, however, we see that we tend always to regard not the individual but the group. The Negro is a man in Europe, because there he is an individual, standing or falling by his own merits. But in America, even in so cosmopolitan a city as New York, he is judged, not by his own achievements, but by the achievements of every other New York black man. So we will leave these able colored Americans, who won much both for themselves and for their race, and turn to the mass of the Negroes, the toiling poor, who dwell in our tenements today.
[1] Daniel Horsmanden, "New York Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot."
[2] James Grant Wilson, "History of New York," Vol. II, p. 314.
[3] POPULATION OF NEW YORK FROM 1800 TO 1900: TOTAL AND NEGRO.
BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN Percentage Total Negro of Negroes
[4] For a full account of the Negro's political status in New York consult Charles Z. Lincoln's "Constitutional History of New York."
[5] Thomas Boese's "Public Education in the City of New York," p. 227.
[7] A. Emerson Palmer, "The New York Public School."
[9] B. F. Wheeler, D.D., "The Varick Family."
[10] Geo. H. Hansell, "Reminiscences of New York Baptists."
[11] _New York Tribune_, February 23, 1855.
[12] "The Story of an Old Wrong," in _The American Woman's Journal_, July, 1895.
[13] Life of the Reverend Charles B. Ray.
[14] _Colored American Magazine_, October, 1907.
It is thirty-five years since, in his Symphony, Sidney Lanier told of
"The poor That stand by the inward opening door Trade's hand doth tighten evermore, And sigh their monstrous foul air sigh For the outside hills of liberty."
Were Lanier writing this today, we should wonder whether New York's crowded tenements had not served as inspiration for his figure. The island of Manhattan, about eight miles long by two miles wide, with an additional slender triangle of five miles at the north end, in 1905, housed two million one hundred and twelve thousand people. These men and women and children were not scattered uniformly throughout the island, but were placed in selected corners, one thousand to the acre, while a mile or so away large comfortable homes held families of two or three. This was Manhattan's condition in 1905, and with each succeeding year more congestion takes place, and more pressure is felt upon the inward opening door.[1]