at sea made it certain, and the future of Norfolk, with Hampton Roads and Newport News, is to be the primary naval base of the Atlantic coast. The military and naval activities of Norfolk during the war were very important. Eastern Virginia was a great training ground, and Norfolk the main port of embarkation of troops for Europe. Shipbuilding[33] and naval construction also were in full swing. Great numbers of laborers, especially Negroes, seem to have been attracted. The number no doubt is exaggerated, but the colored people there number themselves now at one hundred thousand. They have been attracted by the high wages and the record of Norfolk for immunity from mob violence. A lynching is not in anyone’s remembrance. Trouble might have broken out during the war, but Norfolk possessed an excellent “City Manager” who was always prepared. [33] On one occasion some five hundred sailors set out to “clean up colored town,” but they were met by an adequate force of armed police and marines and changed their minds. On the other hand, a mob of colored crews and troops started an attack on the town jail, but a few armed men quickly dispersed them. I noticed at once that the Blacks of Norfolk were very much more black than those of Washington or New York. Their hair was more matted. Their eyes were more goggly. They were more odorous. When the black chambermaid had been in my room for two minutes it was filled with a pungent and sickening odor. The elevator reeked with this odor. It was the characteristic smell of my first Southern hotel. I noticed it on the trolley cars. It was wafted among the vegetables and fruit of the city[34] market. Indeed, the whole town had it. I grew used to it after a while and was told by those who were liberal of mind that every race had its smell. For instance, to certain tribes of Indians there was said to be nothing so disgusting as the smell of a perfectly clean white man. Even when a man who has a bath every day and a change into perfectly fresh linen came into his presence, the Indian felt sick. Negroes were supposed to notice the smell of white men, but were too subservient or polite to remark upon it. There is, however, a good deal of doubt about this point in human natural history. The smell that we have is the smell of the animal in us, and not of the more human or spiritual part of us. One knows the smell of the bear and the fox, and that the wolf has a stronger smell than the dog, and the wild cat than the domestic cat. Bloodhounds are said to follow the trail of the Negro more readily than that of the white man, and it might reasonably be argued that the terrible odor of the
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