deserves careful attention. Enumerations of prisoners affording comparable results were made in 1880, 1890 and 1904.
| Date. | Negro Prisoners. |
Number per 100,000 Pop. |
| 1880 | 16,089 | 244 |
| 1890 | 24,277 | 324 |
| 1904 | 26,087 | 278 |
These figures show a rapid increase between 1880 and 1890 in the number and proportion of negro prisoners, and between 1890 and 1904 a slow increase in the number and a notable decrease in the proportion.
But in order to make the figures for 1890 and 1904 comparable, it is necessary to exclude from those for the earlier date 4473 negro prisoners mainly belonging to two classes, persons in confinement prior to sentence and persons in prison because of their inability to pay a fine, but all belonging to classes which were excluded from the enumeration for 1904. This gives the following result:—
| Date. | Negro Prisoners. |
Number per 100,000 Pop. |
Whites. |
| 1880 | 16,089 | 244 | 96 |
| 1890 | 19,804 | 264 | 84 |
| 1904 | 26,087 | 278 | 77 |
The proportion of negro prisoners to population increased rapidly between 1880 and 1890 and slightly between 1890 and 1904, the increase for the first period being most accurately shown by the first set of figures and that for the second period by the second set of figures. It is noteworthy also that the proportion of white prisoners to population decreased during the same period. Perhaps a more significant comparison is that between the proportion of prisoners of each race to the population of that race in the northern states and the southern states respectively, the distribution of population and the systems of penal legislation and administration being widely different in the two sections. It is impossible to make the correction just referred to except for the United States as a whole, but it must be remembered that the figures for 1890 are not comparable with those for 1904, and that the true figures for that year would be decidedly less.
| Date. | Southern States. | Northern States. | ||
| Negroes. | Whites. | Negroes. | Whites. | |
| 1880 | 157 | 58 | 495 | 99 |
| 1890 | 285 | 62 | 681 | 111 |
| 1904 | 221 | 40 | 743 | 83 |
These figures indicate that in the southern states in 1890 there were about four and a half times as many negro prisoners to population as white prisoners, and in 1904 about five and a half times as many; that in the northern states in 1890 there were about six times as many negro prisoners to population as white prisoners, and in 1904 about nine times as many. They throw no light whatever upon a point they are often quoted as establishing, the comparative criminality of the northern and southern negroes. Those residing in the north include an abnormal number of males, of adults, and of city population, influences all tending to increase the proportion of prisoners. It seems likely that if the figures for the south in 1890 could be made strictly comparable with those for the same region in 1904 the apparent decrease of 22% in the proportion of negro prisoners to population would almost but not quite disappear. The evidence regarding crime indicates a continued but slow and slackening increase in the proportion of negro prisoners to negro population in the country as a whole and in its two main sections, an increase in the proportion of white prisoners to white population during the first interval and a decrease during the second, and a growing difference between the two races in the proportion of prisoners.
Citizenship.—When the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution were adopted, the former conferring United States citizenship on all native negroes and the latter providing that the right of such citizens to vote should not be abridged by any state on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude, it was not the practice in northern states to allow negroes to vote. Proposals to grant them the suffrage were submitted to the voters in 1865 in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado, and in each state they were rejected. In all states containing a large proportion of negroes the results of the Federal policy of reconstruction were disastrous, and those bitter years probably contributed more than the Civil War itself to estrange the two sections. Since the withdrawal of Federal troops in 1877 the prevailing and persistent judgment of southern whites regarding the laws and the policy to be adopted upon this subject has been accorded more and more weight in determining the action of the states and the Federal government. The number of negroes voting or entitled to vote has been reduced at first by intimidation or fraud, later by legislation or provisions of the state constitutions. If such enactments are nominally directed not against any race but against certain characteristics which may appear mainly in the race, such as illiteracy, inability or unwillingness to pay an annual poll tax or to register each year, they have been and are likely to be held within the constitutional authority of the state. On the part of the overwhelming majority of negroes this practical disenfranchisement has aroused no protest, while it has tended to improve the government and to open the way for the gradual development and expression in word and vote of differences within the ranks of white voters regarding questions of public policy.
Along with this decrease of pressure from without the southern states and the development of economic competition between the races within them, there has gone an increased demand on the part of the whites for a complete social separation between the races in school, in church, in public conveyances and hotels, all founded upon a fear that any disregard of such separateness will make intermarriage or fruitful illegal unions between the races more frequent. In short, these developments are towards a more and more rigid caste system.
The negroes in the United States have played and are playing an important and necessary part in the industrial and economic life of the southern states, in which in 1908 they formed about one-third of the population. But that life was changing with marvellous rapidity, becoming less simple, less agricultural and patriarchal, more manufacturing and commercial, more strenuous and complex. It was too early to say whether the negroes would be given an equal or a fair opportunity to show that they could be as serviceable or more serviceable in such a civilization as they had been in that which was passing away, and whether the race would show itself able to accept and improve such chances as were afforded, and to remain in the future under these changing circumstances, as they had been in the past, a vital and essential part of the life of the nation.
Bibliography.—Writings about the American negro fall naturally into classes. The official governmental publications include those of the Census Bureau, notably Bulletin 8, “Negroes in the United States,” reprinted in 1906 in the volume called Supplementary Analysis, those of the Bureau of Labor, especially important articles in the Bulletin of the Bureau, and those of the commissioner of education. The information in these is largely statistical, but in the later publications not a little interpretative matter has been introduced. The point of view is usually that of a dispassionate northern man.
Among southern white men who have written wisely on the subject may be mentioned: Dr J. L. M. Curry, for many years general agent of the Peabody and Slater funds; H. A. Herbert, Why the Solid South? or Reconstruction and its Results (Baltimore, 1890); T. N. Page, The Negro—the Southerner’s Problem (New York, 1904); E. G. Murphy, Problems of the Present South (New York, 1904); E. R. Corson, Vital Equation of the Colored Race; and A. H. Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem (New York, 1908). F. L. Hoffman’s Race, Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro (New York, 1896) contains the most important collection of statistical data in any private publication and interpretations thoroughly congenial to most southern whites.
Among the southern negroes doubtless the most important writers are the two representatives of somewhat antagonistic views, Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York, 1901), Future of the American Negro (Boston, 1899), Tuskegee and its People (New York, 1905), &c., and W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), The Philadelphia Negro (Boston, 1899), Health and Physique of the Negro American (1907), &c. With these should be mentioned Atlanta University annual publications, the Proceedings of the Hampton Negro Conference and the file of the Southern Workman. No northern man since the war has written on the subject with the thoughtfulness and weight of Frederick Law Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York, 1856). See also Sir H. H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World (1910). (W. F. W.)
NEGUS. (1) The title of a king or ruler (Amharic negūs or n’gūs), in Abyssinia (q.v.); the full title of the emperor is negūs nagasti, “king of kings.” (2) The name of a drink made of wine, most commonly port, mixed with hot water, spiced and sugared. According to Malone (Life of Dryden, Prose Works, i. 484) this drink was invented by a Colonel Francis Negus (d. 1732), who was commissioner for executing the office of master of the horse from 1717 to 1727, when he became master of the buckhounds.
NEHAVEND, a small but very fertile and productive province of Persia, situated south-west of Hamadan, west of Malāyir, and north-west of Burujird. Pop. about 15,000. The capital is the ancient city of Nehavend, where Yazdegird, the last monarch of the Sassanian dynasty, was finally defeated by the Arabs. (A.D. 641). It has a population of about 5000, including 700 to 800 Jews; there are fine gardens, and an old citadel on a hill. It is situated at an elevation of 5540 ft., 27 m. from Doletābād (Malāyir), and 25 m. from Burujird.
